Isaac Asimov - The End of Eternity

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THE END OF ETERNITY

by Isaac Asimov

Printed in the United States at The Country Life Press, Garden City, N.Y.

First Edition

[In the paper edition of this novel, the name "Noys" is spelled with an umlaut

y.]

To Horace L. Gold

CONTENTS

1Technician

2Observer

3Cub

4Computer

5Timer

6Life-Plotter

7Prelude to Crime

8Crime

9Interlude

10 Trapped!

11 Full Circle

12 The Beginning of Eternity

13 Beyond the Downwhen Terminus

14 The Earlier Crime

15 Search through the Primitive

16 The Hidden Centuries

17 The Closing Circle

18 The Beginning of Infinity

1 Technician

Andrew Harlan stepped into the kettle. Its sides were perfectly round

and it fit snugly inside a vertical shaft composed of widely spaced rods that

shimmered into an unseeable haze six feet above Harlan's head. Harlan set the

controls and moved the smoothly working starting lever.

The kettle did not move.

Harlan did not expect it to. He expected no movement; neither up nor

down, left nor right, forth nor back. Yet the spaces between the rods had

melted into a gray blankness which was solid to the touch, though nonetheless

immaterial for all that. And there was the little stir in his stomach, the

faint (psychosomatic?) touch of dizziness, that told him that all the kettle

contained, including himself, was rushing upwhen through Eternity.

He had boarded the kettle in the 575th Century, the base of operations

assigned him two years earlier. At the time the 575th had been the farthest

upwhen he had ever traveled. Now he was moving upwhen to the 2456th Century.

Under ordinary circumstances he might have felt a little lost at the

prospect. His native Century was in the far downwhen, the 95th Century, to be

exact. The 95th was a Century stiffly restrictive of atomic power, faintly

rustic, fond of natural wood as a structural material, exporters of certain

types of distilled potables to nearly everywhen and importers of clover seed.

Although Harlan had not been in the 95th since he entered special training and

became a Cub at the age of fifteen, there was always that feeling of loss when

one moved outwhen from "home." At the 2456th he would be nearly two hundred

forty millennia from his birthwhen and that is a sizable distance even for a

hardened Eternal.

Under ordinary circumstances all this would be so.

But right now Harlan was in poor mood to think of anything but the fact

that his documents were heavy in his pocket and his plan heavy on his heart.

He was a little frightened, a little tense, a little confused.

It was his hands acting by themselves that brought the kettle to the

proper halt at the proper Century.

Strange that a Technician should feel tense or nervous about anything.

What was it that Educator Yarrow had once said:

"Above all, a Technician must be dispassionate. The Reality Change he

initiates may affect the lives of as many as fifty billion people. A million

or more of these may be so drastically affected as to be considered new

individuals. Under these conditions, an emotional make-up is a distinct

handicap."

Harlan put the memory of his teacher's dry voice out of his mind with an

almost savage shake of his head. In those days he had never imagined that he

himself would have the peculiar talent for that very position. But emotion had

come upon him after all. Not for fifty billion people. What in Time did he

care for fifty billion people? There was just one. One person.

He became aware that the kettle was stationary and with the merest pause

to pull his thoughts together, put himself into the cold, impersonal frame of

mind a Technician must have, he stepped out. The kettle he left, of course,

was not the same as the one he had boarded, in the sense that it was not

composed of the same atoms. He did not worry about that any more than any

Eternal would. To concern oneself with the _mystique_ of Time-travel, rather

than with the simple fact of it, was the mark of the Cub and newcomer to

Eternity.

He paused again at the infinitely thin curtain of non-Space and nonTime

which separated him from Eternity in one way and from ordinary Time in

another.

This would be a completely new section of Eternity for him. He knew

about it in a rough way, of course, having checked upon it in the _Temporal

Handbook_. Still, there was no substitute for actual appearance and he steeled

himself for the initial shock of adjustment.

He adjusted the controls, a simple matter in passing into Eternity (and

a very complicated one in passing into Time, a type of passage which was

correspondingly less frequent). He stepped through the curtain and found

himself squinting at the brilliance. Automatically he threw up his hand to

shield his eyes.

Only one man faced him. At first Harlan could see him only blurrily.

The man said, "I am Sociologist Kantor Voy. I imagine you are Technician

Harlan."

Harlan nodded and said, "Father Time! Isn't this sort of ornamentation

adjustable?"

Voy looked about and said tolerantly, "You mean the molecular films?"

"I certainly do," said Harlan. The _Handbook_ had mentioned them, but

had said nothing of _such_ an insane riot of light reflection.

Harlan felt his annoyance to be quite reasonable. The 2456th Century was

matter-oriented, as most Centuries were, so he had a right to expect a basic

compatibility from the very beginning. It would have none of the utter

confusion (for anyone born matter-oriented) of the energy vortices of the

300's, or the field dynamics of the 600's. In the 2456th, to the average

Eternal's comfort, matter was used for everything from walls to tacks.

To be sure, there was matter and matter. A member of an energyoriented

Century might not realize that. To him all matter might seem minor variations

on a theme that was gross, heavy, and barbaric. To matter-oriented Harlan,

however, there was wood, metal (subdivisions, heavy and light), plastic,

silicates, concrete, leather, and so on.

But matter consisting entirely of mirrors!

That was his first impression of the 2456th. Every surface reflected and

glinted light. Everywhere was the illusion of complete smoothness; the effect

of a molecular film. And in the ever-repeated reflection of himself, of

Sociologist Voy, of everything he could see, in scraps and wholes, in all

angles, there was confusion. Garish confusion and nausea!

"I'm sorry," said Voy, "it's the custom of the Century, and the Section

assigned to it finds it good practice to adopt the customs where practical.

You get used to it after a time."

Voy walked rapidly upon the moving feet of another Voy, upside down

beneath the floor, who matched him stride for stride. He reached to move a

hair-contact indicator down a spiral scale to point of origin.

The reflections died; extraneous light faded. Harlan felt his world

settle.

"If you'll come with me now," said Voy.

Harlan followed through empty corridors that, Harlan knew, must moments

ago have been a riot of made light and reflection, up a ramp, through an

anteroom, into an office.

In all the short journey no human being had been visible. Harlan was so

used to that, took it so for granted, that he would have been surprised,

almost shocked, if a glimpse of a human figure hurrying away had caught his

eyes. No doubt the news had spread that a Technician was coming through. Even

Voy kept his distance and when, accidentally, Harlan's hand had brushed Voy's

sleeve, Voy shrank away with a visible start.

Harlan was faintly surprised at the touch of bitterness he felt at all

this. He had thought the shell he had grown about his soul was thicker, more

efficiently insensitive than that. If he was wrong, if his shell had worn

thinner, there could only be one reason for that.

Noys!

Sociologist Kantor Voy leaned forward toward the Technician in what

seemed a friendly enough fashion, but Harlan noted automatically that they

were seated on opposite sides of the long axis of a fairly large table.

Voy said, "I am pleased to have a Technician of your reputation interest

himself in our little problem here."

"Yes," said Harlan with the cold impersonality people would expect of

him. "It has its points of interest." (Was he impersonal enough? Surely his

real motives must be apparent, his guilt be spelled out in beads of sweat on

his forehead.)

He removed from an inner pocket the foiled summary of the projected

Reality Change. It was the very copy which had been sent to the Allwhen

Council a month earlier. Through his relationship with Senior Computer

Twissell (_the_ Twissell, himself) Harlan had had little trouble in getting

his hands on it.

Before unrolling the foil, letting it peel off onto the table top where

it would be held by a soft paramagnetic field, Harlan paused a split moment.

The molecular film that covered the table was subdued but was not zero.

The motion of his arm fixed his eye and for an instant the reflection of his

own face seemed to stare somberly up at him from the table top. He was

thirty-two, but he looked older. He needed no one to tell him that. It might

be partly his long face and dark eyebrows over darker eyes that gave him the

lowering expression and cold glare associated with the caricature of the

Technician in the minds of all Eternals. It might be just his own realization

that he was a Technician.

But then he flicked the foil out across the table and turned to the

matter at hand.

"I am not a Sociologist, sir."

Voy smiled. "That sounds formidable. When one begins by expressing lack

of competence in a given field, it usually implies that a flat opinion in that

field will follow almost immediately."

"No," said Harlan, "not an opinion. Just a request. I wonder if you

won't look over this summary and see if you haven't made a small mistake

somewhere here."

Voy looked instantly grave. "I hope not," he said.

Harlan kept one arm across the back of his chair, the other in his lap.

He must let neither hand drum restless fingers. He must not bite his lips. He

must not show his feelings in any way.

Ever since the whole orientation of his life had so changed itself, he

had been watching the summaries of projected Reality Changes as they passed

through the grinding administrative gears of the Allwhen Council. As Senior

Computer Twissell's personally assigned Technician, he could arrange that by a

slight bending of professional ethics. Particularly with Twissell's attention

caught ever more tightly in his own overwhelming project. (Harlan's nostrils

flared. He knew now a little of the nature of that project.)

Harlan had had no assurance that he would ever find what he was looking

for in a reasonable time. When he had first glanced over projected Reality

Change 2456--2781, Serial Number V-5, he was half inclined to believe his

reasoning powers were warped by wishing. For a full day he had checked and

rechecked equations and relationships in a rattling uncertainty, mixed with

growing excitement and a bitter gratitude that he had been taught at least

elementary psycho-mathematics.

Now Voy went over those same puncture patterns with a half-puzzled,

half-worried eye.

He said, "It seems to me; I say, it _seems_ to me that this is all

perfectly in order."

Harlan said, "I refer you particularly to the matter of the courtship

characteristics of the society of the current Reality of this Century. That's

sociology and your responsibility, I believe. It's why I arranged to see you

when I arrived, rather than someone else."

Voy was now frowning. He was still polite, but with an icy touch now. He

said, "The Observers assigned to our Section are highly competent. I have

every certainty that those assigned to this project have given accurate data.

Have you evidence to the contrary?"

"Not at all, Sociologist Voy. I accept their data. It is the development

of the data I question. Do you not have an alternate tensorcomplex at this

point, if the courtship data is taken properly into consideration?"

Voy stared, and then a look of relief washed over him visibly. "Of

course, Technician, of course, but it resolves itself into an identity. There

is a loop of small dimensions with no tributaries on either side. I hope

you'll forgive me for using picturesque language rather than precise

mathematical expressions."

"I appreciate it," said Harlan dryly. "I am no more a Computer than a

Sociologist."

"Very good, then. The alternate tensor-complex you refer to, or the

forking of the road, as we might say, is non-significant. The forks join up

again and it is a single road. There was not even any need to mention it in

our recommendations."

"If you say so, sir, I will defer to your better judgment. However,

there is still the matter of the M.N.C."

The Sociologist winced at the initials as Harlan knew he would.

M.N.C.--Minitnum Necessary Change. There the Technician was master. A

Sociologist might consider himself above criticism by lesser beings in

anything involving the mathematical analysis of the infinite possible

Realities in Time, but in matters of M.N.C. the Technician stood supreme.

Mechanical computing would not do. The largest Computaplex ever built,

manned by the cleverest and most experienced Senior Computer ever born, could

do no better than to indicate the ranges in which the M.N.C. might be found.

It was then the Technician, glancing over the data, who decided on an exact

point within that range. A good Technician was rarely wrong. A top Technician

was never wrong.

Harlan was never wrong.

"Now the M.N.C. recommended," said Harlan (he spoke coolly, evenly,

pronouncing the Standard Intertemporal Language in precise syllables), "by

your Section involves induction of an accident in space and the immediate

death by fairly horrible means of a dozen or more men."

"Unavoidable," said Voy, shrugging.

"On the other hand," said Harlan, "I suggest that the M.N.C. can be

reduced to the mere displacement of a container from one shelf to another.

Here!" His long finger pointed. His white, well-cared-for index nail made the

faintest mark along one set of perforations.

Voy considered matters with a painful but silent intensity.

Harlan said, "Doesn't that alter the situation with regard to your

unconsidered fork? Doesn't it take advantage of the fork of lesser

probability, changing it to near-certainty, and does that not then lead

to----"

"--to virtually the M.D.R." whispered Voy.

"To _exactly_ the Maximum Desired Response," said Harlan.

Voy looked up, his dark face struggling somewhere between chagrin and

anger. Harlan noted absently that there was a space between the man's large

upper incisors which gave him a rabbity look quite at odds with the restrained

force of his words.

Voy said, "I suppose I will be hearing from the Allwhen Council?"

"I don't think so. As far as I know, the Allwhen Council does not know

of this. At least, the projected Reality Change was passed over to me without

comment." He did not explain the word "passed," nor did Voy question it.

"You discovered this error, then?"

"Yes."

"And you did not report it to the Allwhen Council?"

"No, I did not."

Relief first, then a hardening of countenance. "Why not?"

"Very few people could have avoided this error. I felt I could correct

it before damage was done. I have done so. Why go any further?"

"Well--thank you, Technician Harlan. You have been a friend. The

Section's error which, as you say, was practically unavoidable, would have

looked unjustifiably bad in the record."

He went on after a moment's pause. "Of course, in view of the

alterations in personality to be induced by this Reality Change, the death of

a few men as preliminary is of little importance."

Harlan thought, detachedly: He doesn't sound really grateful. He

probably resents it. If he stops to think, he'll resent it even more, this

being saved a downstroke in rating by a Technician. If I were a Sociologist,

he would shake my hand, but he won't shake the hand of a Technician. He

defends condemning a dozen people to asphyxiation, but he won't touch a

Technician.

And because waiting to let resentment grow would be fatal, Harlan said

without waiting, "I hope your gratitude will extend to having your Section

perform a slight chore for me."

"A chore?"

"A matter of Life-Plotting. I have the data necessary here with me. I

have also the data for a suggested Reality Change in the 482nd. I want to know

the effect of the Change on the probability-pattern of a certain individual."

"I am not quite sure," said the Sociologist slowly, "that I understand

you. Surely you have the facilities for doing this in your own Section?"

"I have. Nevertheless, what I am engaged in is a personal research which

I don't wish to appear in the records just yet. It would be difficult to have

this carried out in my own Section without----" He gestured an uncertain

conclusion to the unfinished sentence.

Voy said, "Then you want this done _not_ through official channels."

"I want it done confidentially. I want a confidential answer."

"Well, now, that's very irregular. I can't agree to it."

Harlan frowned. "No more irregular than my failure to report your error

to the Allwhen Council. You raised no objection to that. If we're going to be

strictly regular in one case, we must be as strict and as regular in the

other. You follow me, I think?"

The look on Voy's face was proof positive of that. He held out his hand.

"May I see the documents?"

Harlan relaxed a bit. The main hurdle had been passed. He watched

eagerly as the Sociologist's head bent over the foils he had brought.

Only once did the Sociologist speak. "By Time, this is a small Reality

Change."

Harlan seized his opportunity and improvised. "It is. Too small, I

think. It's what the argument is about. It's below critical difference, and

I've picked an individual as a test case. Naturally, it would be undiplomatic

to use our own Section's facilities until I was certain of being right."

Voy was unresponsive and Harlan stopped. No use running this past the

point of safety.

Voy stood up. "I'll pass this along to one of my Life-Plotters. We'll

keep this private. You understand, though, that this is not to be taken as

establishing a precedent."

"Of course not."

"And if you don't mind, I'd like to watch the Reality Change take place.

I trust you will honor us by conducting the M.N.C. personally."

Harlan nodded. "I will take full responsibility."

Two of the screens in the viewing chamber were in operation when they

entered. The engineers had focused them already to the exact co-ordinates in

Space and Time and then had left. Harlan and Voy were alone in the glittering

room. (The molecular film arrangement was perceptible and even a bit more than

perceptible, but Harlan was looking at the screens.)

Both views were motionless. They might have been scenes of the dead,

since they pictured mathematical instants of Time.

One view was in sharp, natural color; the engine room of what Harlan

knew to be an experimental space-ship. A door was closing, and a glistening

shoe of a red, semi-transparent material was just visible through the space

that remained. It did not move. Nothing moved. If the picture could have been

made sharp enough to picture the dust motes in the air, _they_ would not have

moved.Voy said, "For two hours and thirty-six minutes after the viewed

instant, that engine room will remain empty. In the current Reality, that is."

"I know," murmured Harlan. He was putting on his gloves and already his

quick eyes were memorizing the position of the critical container on its

shelf, measuring the steps to it, estimating the best position into which to

transfer it. He cast one quick look at the other screen.

If the engine-room, being in the range described as "present" with

respect to that Section of Eternity in which they now stood, was clear and in

natural color, the other scene, being some twenty-five Centuries in the

"future," carried the blue luster all views of the "future" must.

It was a space-port. A deep blue sky, blue-tinged buildings of naked

metal on blue-green ground. A blue cylinder of odd design, bulgebottomed,

stood in the foreground. Two others like it were in the background. All three

pointed cleft noses upward, the cleavage biting deeply into the vitals of the

ship. Harlan frowned. "They're queer ones."

"Electro-gravitic," said Voy. "The 2481st is the only Century to develop

electro-gravitic space-travel. No propellants, no nucleonics. It's an

aesthetically pleasing device. It's a pity we must Change away from it. A

pity." His eyes fixed themselves on Harlan with distinct disapproval.

Harlan's lips compressed. Disapproval of course! Why not? He was the

Technician.

To be sure, it had been some Observer who had brought in the details of

drug addiction. It had been some Statistician who had demonstrated that recent

Changes had increased the addiction rate until now it was the highest in all

the current Reality of man. Some Sociologist, probably Voy himself, had

interpreted that into the psychiatric profile of a society. Finally, some

Computer had worked out the Reality Change necessary to decrease addiction to

a safe level and found that, as a side effect, electro-gravitic space-travel

must suffer. A dozen, a hundred men of every rating in Eternity had had a hand

in this.

But then, at the end, a Technician such as himself must step in.

Following the directions all the others had combined to give him, he must be

the one to initiate the actual Reality Change. And then all the others would

stare in haughty accusation at him. Their stares would say: _You_, not we,

have destroyed this beautiful thing.

And for that, they would condemn and avoid him. They would shift their

own guilt to his shoulders and scorn him.

Harlan said harshly, "Ships aren't what count. We're concerned with

those things."

The "things" were people, dwarfed by the space-ship, as Earth and

Earth's society is always dwarfed by the physical dimensions of spaceflight.

They were little puppets in clusters, these people. Their tiny arms and

legs were in raised, artificial-looking positions, caught in the frozen

instant of Time.

Voy shrugged.

Harlan was adjusting the small field-generator about his left wrist.

"Let's get this job done."

"One minute. I want to get in touch with the Life-Plotter and find out

how long his job for you will take. I want to get that job done, too."

His hands worked cleverly at a little movable contact and his ear

listened astutely to the pattern of clicks that came back. (Another

characteristic of this Section of Eternity, thought Harlan--sound codes in

clicks. Clever, but affected, like the molecular films.)

"He says it won't take more than three hours," said Voy at length.

"Also, by the way, he admires the name of the person involved. Noys Lambent.

It is a female, isn't it?"

There was a dryness in Harlan's throat. "Yes."

Voy's lips curled into a slow smile. "Sounds interesting. I'd like to

meet her, sight unseen. Haven't had any women in this Section for months."

Harlan didn't trust himself to answer. He stared a moment at the

Sociologist and turned abruptly.

If there was a flaw in Eternity, it involved women. He had known the

flaw for what it was from almost his first entrance into Eternity, but he felt

it personally only that day he had first met Noys. From that moment it had

been an easy path to this one, in which he stood false to his oath as an

Eternal and to everything in which he had believed.

For what?

For Noys.

And he was not ashamed. It was that which really rocked him. He was not

ashamed. He felt no guilt for the crescendo of crimes he had committed, to

which this latest addition of the unethical use of confidential Life-Plotting

could rank only as a peccadillo.

He would do worse than his worst if he had to.

For the first time the specific and express thought came to him. And

though he pushed it away in horror, he knew that, having once come, it would

return.

The thought was simply this: That he would ruin Eternity, if he had to.

The worst of it was that he knew he had the power to do it.

2 Observer

Harlan stood at the gateway to Time and thought of himself in new ways.

It had been very simple once. There were such things as ideals, or at least

catchwords, to live by and for. Every stage of an Eternal's life had a reason.

How did "Basic Principles" start?

"The life of an Eternal may be divided into four parts . . ."

It all worked out neatly, yet it had all changed for him, and what was

broken could not be made whole again.

Yet he had gone faithfully through each of the four parts of an

Eternal's life. First, there was the period of fifteen years in which he was

not an Eternal at all, but only an inhabitant of Time. Only a human being out

of Time, a Timer, could become an Eternal; no one could be born into the

position.

At the age of fifteen he was chosen by a careful process of elimination

and winnowing, the nature of which he had no conception.of at the time. He was

taken beyond the veil of Eternity after a last agonized farewell to his

family. (Even then it was made clear to him that whatever else happened he

would never return. The true reason for that he was not to learn till long

afterward.)

Once within Eternity, he spent ten years in school as a Cub, and then

graduated to enter his third period as Observer. It was only after that that

he became a Specialist and a true Eternal. The fourth and last part of the

Eternal's life: Timer, Cub, Observer and Specialist.

He, Harlan, had gone through it all so neatly. He might say,

successfully.

He could remember, so clearly, the moment that Cubhood was done, the

moment they became independent members of Eternity, the moment when, even

though un-Specialized, they still rated the legal title of "Eternal."

He could remember it. School done, Cubhood over, he was standing with

the five who completed training with him, hands clasped in the small of his

back, legs a trifle apart, eyes front, listening.

Educator Yarrow was at a desk talking to them. Harlan could remember

Yarrow well: a small, intense man, with ruddy hair in disarray, freckled

forearms, and a look of loss in his eyes. (It wasn't uncommon, this look of

loss in the eyes of an Eternal--the loss of home and roots, the unadmitted and

unadmittable longing for the one Century he could never see.)

Harlan could not remember Yarrow's exact words, of course, but the

substance of it remained sharp.

Yarrow said, in substance, "You will be Observers now. It isn't a highly

regarded position. Specialists look upon it as a boy's job. Maybe you

Eternals" (he deliberately paused after that word to give each man a chance to

straighten his back and brighten at the glory of it) "think so too. If so, you

are fools who don't deserve to be Observers.

"The Computers would have no Computing to do, Life-Plotters no lives to

Plot, Sociologists no societies to profile; none of the Specialists would have

anything to do, if it weren't for the Observer. I know you've heard this said

before, but I want you to be very firm and clear in your mind about it.

"It will be you youngsters who will go out into Time, under the most

strenuous conditions, to bring back facts. Cold, objective facts uncolored by

your own opinions and likings, you understand. Facts accurate enough to be fed

into Computing machines. Facts definite enough to make the social equations

stand up. Facts honest enough to form a basis for Reality Changes.

"And remember this, too. Your period as Observer is not something to get

through with as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible. It is as an Observer

that you will make your mark. Not what you did in school, but what you will do

as an Observer will determine your Specialty and how high you will rise in it.

This will be your post-graduate course, Eternals, and failure in it, even

small failure, will put you into Maintenance no matter how brilliant your

potentialities now seem. That is all."

He shook hands with each of them, and Harlan, grave, dedicated, proud in

his belief that the privileges of being an Eternal contained its greatest

privilege in the assumption of responsibility for the happiness of all the

human beings who were or ever would be within the reach of Eternity, was deep

in self-awe.

Harlan's first assignments were small and under close direction, but he

sharpened his ability on the honing strap of experience in a dozen Centuries

through a dozen Reality Changes.

In his fifth year as Observer he was given a Senior's rating in the

field and assigned to the 482nd. For the first time he would be working

unsupervised, and knowledge of that fact robbed him of some of his

self-assurance when he first reported to the Computer in charge of the

Section.

That was Assistant Computer Hobbe Finge, whose pursed, suspicious mouth

and frowning eyes seemed ludicrous in such a face as his. He had a round

button of a nose, two larger buttons of cheeks. He needed only a touch of red

and a fringe of white hair to be converted into the picture of the Primitive

myth of St. Nicholas.

(--or Santa Claus or Kriss Kringle. Harlan knew all three names. He

doubted if one Eternal out of a hundred thousand had heard of any one of them.

Harlan took a secret, shamefaced pride in this sort of arcane knowledge. From

his earliest days in school he had ridden the hobbyhorse of Primitive history,

and Educator Yarrow had encouraged it. Harlan had grown actually fond of those

odd, perverted Centuries that lay, not only before the beginning of Eternity

in the 27th, but even before the invention of the Temporal Field, itself, in

the 24th. He had used old books and periodicals in his studies. He had even

traveled far downwhen to the earliest Centuries of Eternity, when he could get

permission, to consult better sources. For over fifteen years he had managed

to collect a remarkable library of his own, almost all in print-on-paper.

There was a volume by a man called H. G. Wells, another by a man named W.

Shakespeare, some tattered histories. Best of all there was a complete set of

bound volumes of a Primitive news weekly that took up inordinate space but

that he could not, out of sentiment, bear to reduce to micro-film.

Occasionally he would lose himself in a world where life was life and

death, death; where a man made his decisions irrevocably; where evil could not

be prevented, nor good promoted, and the Battle of Waterloo, having been lost,

was really lost for good and all. There was even a scrap of poetry he

treasured which stated that a moving finger having once written could never be

lured back to unwrite.

And then it was difficult, almost a shock, to return his thoughts to

Eternity, and to a universe where Reality was something flexible and

evanescent, something men such as himself could hold in the palms of their

hands and shake into better shape.)

The illusion of St. Nicholas shattered when Hobbe Finge spoke to him in

a brisk, matter-of-fact way. "You can start in tomorrow with a routine

screening of current. Reality. I want it good, thorough, and to the point.

There will be xio slackness permitted. Your first spatio-temporal chart will

be ready for you tomorrow morning. Got it?"

"Yes, Computer," said Harlan. He decided as early as that that he and

Assistant Computer Hobbe Finge would not get along, and he regretted it.

The next morning Harlan got his chart in intricately punched patterns as

they emerged from the Computaplex. He used a pocket decoder to translate them

into Standard Intertemporal in his anxiety to make not even the smallest

mistake at the very beginning. Of course, he had reached the stage where he

could read the perforations direct.

The chart told him where and when in the world of the 482nd Century he

might go and where he might not; what he could do and what be could not; what

he must avoid at all costs. His presence must impinge only upon those places

and times where it would not endanger Reality.

The 482nd was not a comfortable Century for him. It was not like his own

austere and conformist homewhen. It was an era without ethics or principles,

as he was accustomed to think of such. It was hedonistic, materialistic, more

than a little matriarchal. It was the only era (he checked this in the records

in the most painstaking way) in which ectogenic birth flourished and, at its

peak, 40 per cent of its women gave eventual birth by merely contributing a

fertilized ovum to the ovaria. Marriage was made and unmade by mutual consent

and was not recognized legally as anything more than a personal agreement

without binding force. Union for the sake of childbearing was, of course,

carefully differentiated from the social functions of marriage and was

arranged on purely eugenic principles.

In a hundred ways Harlan thought the society sick and therefore hungered

for a Reality Change. More than once it occurred to him that his own presence

in the Century, as a man not of that time, could fork its history. If his

disturbing presence could only be made disturbing enough at some key point, a

different branch of possibility would become real, a branch in which millions

of pleasure-seeking women would find themselves transformed into true,

pure-hearted mothers. They would be in another Reality with all the memories

that belonged with it, unable to tell, dream, or fancy that they had ever been

anything else.

Unfortunately, to do that, he would have to step outside the bounds of

the spatio-temporal chart and that was unthinkable. Even if it weren't, to

step outside the bounds at random could change Reality in many possible ways.

It could be made worse. Only careful analysis and Computing could properly

pin-point the nature of a Reality Change.

Outwardly, whatever his private opinions, Harlan remained an Observer,

and the ideal Observer was merely a set of sense-perceptive nerve patches

attached to a report-writing mechanism. Between perception and report there

must be no intervention of emotion.

Harlan's reports were perfection itself in that respect.

Assistant Computer Finge called him in after his second weekly report.

"I congratulate you, Observer," he said in a voice without warmth, "on

the organization and clarity of your reports. But what do you really think?"

Harlan sought refuge in an expression as blank as though chipped

painstakingly out of native 95th Century wood. He said, "I have no thoughts of

my own in the matter."

"Oh, come. You're from the 95th and we both know what that means. Surely

this Century disturbs you."

Harlan shrugged. "Does anything in my reports lead you to think that I

am disturbed?"

It was near to impudence and the drumming of Finge's blunt nails upon

his desk showed it. Finge said, "Answer my question."

Harlan said, "Sociologically, many facets of the Century represent an

extreme. The last three Reality Changes in the aboutwhen have accentuated

that. Eventually, I suppose the matter should be rectified. Extremes are never

healthy."

"Then you took the trouble to check the past Realities of the Century."

"As an Observer, I must check all pertinent facts."

It was a standoff. Harlan, of course, did have the right and the duty to

check those facts. Finge must know that. Every Century was continually being

shaken by Reality Changes. No Observations, however painstaking, could ever

stand for long without rechecking. It was standard procedure in Eternity to

have every Century in a chronic state of being Observed. And to Observe

properly, you must be able to present, not only the facts of the current

Reality, but also of their relationship to those of previous Realities.

Yet it seemed obvious to Harlan that this was not merely unpleasantness

on Finge's part, this probing of the Observer's opinions. Finge seemed

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THEENDOFETERNITYbyIsaacAsimovCopyright1955,byIsaacAsimov.AllRightsReserved.PrintedintheUnitedStatesatTheCountryLifePress,GardenCity,N.Y.FirstEdition[Inthepapereditionofthisnovel,thename"Noys"isspelledwithanumlauty.]ToHoraceL.GoldCONTENTS1Technician2Observer3Cub4Computer5Timer6Life-Plotter7PreludetoC...

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Isaac Asimov - The End of Eternity

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