by James Gunn
On his return, however, Harlan is forced to reveal to Finge all that has happened. Finge taunts him with the information that aristocratic women of the 482nd believe that Eternals are immortal (which isn't true) and that intercourse with an Eternal will make them immortal. But Harlan persuades himself that it doesn't matter why Nos loves him. He searches until he finds a proposed Reality Change that is inexpertly computed; with this as blackmail, he persuades the Sociologist responsible and a Life-Plotter to perform a Life-Plot for Nos in the Reality Change planned for the 482nd. To his joy he discovers that Nos doesn't exist in the new Reality (and thus can be removed from the present one without notice). The Life-Plotter doesn't quite see how she fit in the old one.
Harlan smuggles Nos into Eternity and hides her far upwhen in the untenanted 111,394th. He does mathematical research on an aspect of Eternity that came to him during his sexual experience with Nos. In going back several times to her estate in the 482nd to obtain clothes and books (films) for her, he is shaken to hear someone in the same house with him and then, on a second occasion, to see himself. It is the kind of paradox that some Eternals believe Time cannot endure. On his return to his room, Twissell relays a message from Finge that the 482nd Reality Change has been completed, and then Twissell tells Harlan that he has something to tell him the next day. Harlan tries to rejoin Nos but finds a block at the 100,000th that he cannot go beyond.
Harlan obtains a neuronic whip and makes Finge confess that he has known about Harlan and Nos's activities and has sent a report about them to the Allwhen Council. Harlan is willing to bargain with Eternity for Nos and thinks he has secret knowledge that will protect them. The next day he meets at lunch with a subcommittee of the Allwhen Council and believes he is being taunted by one member. Afterward he faces Twissell with his supposition about what has been happening: Vikkor Mallansohn, he says, could not have built a Temporal Field without equations that were not invented until the 27th. Cooper, he thinks, had been educated to go back to the 24th and teach Mallansohn the equations so that Eternity can be invented. Twissell says that he knows about Harlan and the girl and that everything will work out all right. Twissell has more important matters on his mind.
Harlan is partly right, Twissell says. Mallansohn left a record of his life in a Time-stasis. It was opened by the first of the great Eternals and passed along in strictest security until it reached Twissell. The memoir reveals that Cooper did go back to teach Mallansohn the equations, but Mallansohn died; Cooper took his place. At the end of his life, Cooper realized that he was the Mallansohn who invented the Temporal Field. All the preparations described in the memoir have been carried out so that Cooper can go back, do what Mallansohn was said to have done, and write his memoir so that it can be found and the cycle renewed.
Twissell takes Harlan to a room in which a time-travel machine stands. It is like the kettles used by all Eternals but enclosed and double-walled to contain its own Temporal Field. It must take Cooper back to the 24th, to Primitive history before Eternity. While Harlan is inspecting the control room, Twissell locks him in because Cooper's memoirs mention that Harlan was at the controls. If Harlan does not pull the switch, someone outside the control room will pull it.
Harlan feels that he is being tricked but cannot think of anything he can do. After Cooper has been told everything he recounted in his memoirs that he was told, Harlan is given the countdown and pulls the switch. But when Twissell comes in to congratulate him, Harlan says that the plan did not work. He used the energy cell of the neuronic whip to melt the locking mechanism on the time-gauge, moved it down blindly, and brought it back blindly when the time-thrust was over. Cooper is lost in the Primitive Era. Harlan waits for Eternity to blink out of existence.
Twissell says that they still can restore Eternity as long as they can undo the damage, by going back, for instance, to find Cooper and restore him to the right spot in Time. They must discover when that spot was, through research in Harlan's Primitive history materials, where Cooper might have left a message. An advertisement in the news magazine that Cooper knows Harlan possesses would be a good possibility, Harlan suggests.
Harlan finally discovers the message but will not tell Twissell what it is until he recovers Nos. Twissell does not know about the barrier at the 100,000th but thinks it is impossible. When they go to find Nos, no barrier stops them. En route Twissell speculates about the possibility that Reality Changes might conceal a fear among Eternals of meeting supermen and that the Hidden Centuries might hide such people. Harlan shows him Cooper's message: an advertisement for a market newsletter in front of a drawing of a mushroom cloud. The drawing would mean nothing to 1932. To reinforce the message, the newsletter is called:
All the
Talk
Of the
Market
The first letters vertically spell "ATOM." Harlan insists that Nos accompany him in the kettle to 1932 (or 19.32, as the Eternals think of it). In a cave there he confronts her with the accusation that she is from the Hidden Centuries. Perhaps she is one of the supermen that Twissell was talking about. Harlan believes that he has been manipulated from his first meeting with Nos. He believes that she whispered to him, just before they made love, the clues that led him to suspect Twissell's plans for Cooper. He suspects that the barrier at the 100,000th had been set up by Nos and her confederates to lead him into the acts of rebellion that resulted in Cooper's being cast away in Time. He threatens to kill her with a blaster, then to take Cooper back to his correct destination and save Eternity.
Nos admits she is from the Hidden Centuries. People there had learned of Eternity's existence before it reached them, even before it had reached the 10,000th. The Hidden Centuries had time travel, but it was based on a different set of postulates. They viewed rather than shifted masses and were able to perceive alternate Realities. They discovered that they were in a Reality of low probability, and traced their way down to Eternity and up to the 125,000th, where humanity at last had discovered the secret of the interstellar drive and the Jump through hyperspace. But humanity found the Galaxy occupied by other intelligent races. Humanity returned to Earth and died out.
Nos says that Eternity must be destroyed. It has persistently eliminated spaceflight from humanity's Realities. The Hidden Centuries have discovered what they call the Basic State. In this Reality, humanity discovers spaceflight early, goes out to the stars, and builds a human Galactic Empire (one might call this The Foundation Trilogy Reality). If Eternity had not been established, Nos says, the energies that went into temporal engineering would have gone into nucleonics, the interstellar drive would have been invented, and humanity would have reached the stars more than a hundred thousand centuries earlier. At that time the stars would have been untenanted, and mankind would have established itself throughout the Galaxy.
"Any system like Eternity," Nos says, "which allows men to choose their own future will end by choosing safety and mediocrity, and in such a Reality the stars are out of reach." Nos wants to send a letter to an Italian scientist (Enrico Fermi?) so that the first nuclear explosion will take place in 1945, not in the 30th century. There is a chance that Earth will end up with a radioactive crust (the Pebble in the Sky Reality), but before that happens a Galactic Empire can be achieved, an actual intensification of the Basic State. Nos says, ''Cooper will disappear along with his advertisement; Eternity will go and the Reality of my Century, but we will remain to have children and grandchildren, and mankind will remain to reach the stars."
Before Harlan himself knows whether he will carry out his threat to kill Nos and rescue Cooper or do as Nos asks, the kettle disappears, signaling the final end of Eternity . . . "and the beginning of Infinity."
The plot, thus outlined, is reasonably straightforward. Its time sequence has been realigned into linear form here, but as written, the novel is told in various kinds of flashbacks. A pattern of confusion about time results that is appropriate to the theme of the novel and even pleasing, though this may not b
e why Asimov chose to narrate the novel in that fashion. Contemporary literary critics using theories of structuralism and semiotics, who find themselves concerned about time, among other matters, might find interesting the varieties of time that exist within this novel, which deals with time, discusses time, swears by time ("Time!" and "Father Time!"), and was inspired by Time.
The End of Eternity deals with all sorts of time, from the time involved in the procession of the Centuries within Eternity (which is traveled spatially by kettle, although the kettles never move), the time that passes for the Eternals (physiotime), the times of entry into Time, the sequence of events within Time (our temporally bound definition), and the artifacts of Time that never was (that Eternity has altered out of Reality) that still are preserved within Eternity (such as the matter duplicator, the neuronic whip, and the dozens of variations of the works of a writer named Eric Linkollew). One person's time is not another person's time, of course, unless they may accidentally come together for a brief period, but each can describe it to others.
In the following outline, subdivided by chapters, the kinds of time within the narrative are identified in brackets by character initials and a sequence number. A minus ( - ) before the initial or number means that this sequence has been eliminated in at least one Reality.
Chapter 1. Harlan goes upwhen from the 575th to the 2456th to blackmail Sociologist Kantor Voy into calculating Nos's Life-Plot [H 19]. While there, he looks some twenty-five Centuries into the future to the time of electro-gravity space travel [ - 2481st 1].
Chapter 2. Harlan, standing at the gateway to Time in the 2456th [H 20], recalls his experience as a Cub, after having spent fifteen years in Time (the 95th): his graduation, his four plus years as Observer and assignment to Finge at the 482nd, and the invitation from Twissell to be his personal Technician [H 2].
Chapter 3. Harlan, still standing at the gateway to Time in the 2456th [H 21] and still recalling his earlier experience, recalls his meeting with Cooper and a year or so of experience as Twissell's Technician in the 575th [H 3]. He remembers Cooper telling him what he was as a Timer in the 78th [C 1]. One alteration of Reality for Twissell in the 223rd [223rd 1] resulted in the elimination of a war in the 224th [ -224th 1]. Then Harlan dreams of his mother [H 1].
Chapter 4. Harlan, still standing at the gateway of Time in the 2456th [H 22] and still recalling his earlier experience, recalls his temporary assignment to Finge at the 482nd [H 4]. Finge is from an energy-centered culture in the 600s [F 1]. Harlan meets Nos [N 3] and is assigned an Observer task in the 482nd where he is to live in Nos's house [H 5].
Chapter 5. Harlan, still standing at the gateway to Time in the 2456th [H 23] and still recalling his earlier experience, recalls his first sexual experience with Nos. She mentions a discrepancy in time in which she went into Eternity [N 2] and came out [N 4]. She has lost three months of Time but not three months of physiotime [H 6].
Chapter 6. Harlan, still standing at the gateway to Time in the 2456th, recalls that a month has passed since the night he made love to Nos [H 6]. Now he enters the 2456th from Eternity, moves a small container, and returns [H 24]. Sociologist Voy is studying the 2481st, where a rusty spaceship sits at a deserted spaceport [2481st 1]. During his talk with the Life-Plotter, Harlan thinks of Nos and the morning after their lovemaking [H 7]. Then the Life-Plotter tells him that Nos does not exist in the new Reality planned for the 482nd [H 25].
Chapter 7. Harlan leaves the 2456th [H 26] and recalls sending his report to Finge [H 8] on his observations in the 482nd and going back to his room [H 9]. There Finge contacts him by vision plate and then comes to see him in person [H 10].
Chapter 8. Harlan goes back to the 482nd to take Nos up when to the 111,394th [H 11]. While there, Harlan remembers his early Cubhood when he learned that his Hometime and even his family might not exist as he remembered them [H 2]. Then he tells Nos about Reality [H 12].
Chapter 9. Harlan moves his effects from the 482nd to the 575th where he picks up his duties with Cooper and Twissell. He shuttles back and forth to spend time with Nos in the 111,394th [H 13]. He goes back to Nos's house in the 482nd to pick up some books [H 14] and recalls [H 16] having been there before [H 15] to get some clothing and feeling that someone else was in the house, hearing a loud noise, and feeling that a door had closed behind him. Now [H 16] he hears someone laugh and drops his knapsack.
Chapter 10. Harlan opens a door, sees a man's back and the man starting to turn. As Harlan closes the door, he realizes that the man is himself. He had accidentally misadjusted the controls into the 482nd [H 14] to almost the previous time [H 15] . (This experience then can be identified as just after H 11 in the 482nd, but in Harlan's physiotime as H 14, H 15, and H 16; or, since H 15 and H 16 are identical times, they could be identified as H 15 and H 15.) Harlan returns to Eternity and studies scheduled Reality Changes until he comes up with the faulty one planned for the 2456th [H 17]. Twissell tells him by vision plate that the Reality Change in the 482nd was entirely successful and that he will see Harlan tomorrow in the Computing Room [H 18]. Harlan goes to the 2456th [H 19] to have Nos's existence Life-Plotted [H 20-26]. He goes racing upwhen to tell Nos and slams into the barrier at the 100,100th [H 27]. He returns, with the neuronic whip, to confront Finge.
Chapter 11. Harlan returns to his quarters in the 575th, tries to see Twissell and fails, finally goes to sleep, and is awakened the next morning for lunch with the subcommittee of the Allwhen Council. Finally, he confronts Twissell with his conclusion that Cooper is returning to the 24th to teach the Lefebvre equations to Mallansohn. Twissell tells him that Cooper is Mallansohn [H 28].
Chapter 12. Harlan expresses his concerns about Nos, and Twissell tries to reassure him [H 29]. Then Twissell tells Harlan about the memoir Mallansohn left behind [E (for Eternity) 1] and its description of how Cooper was inducted into Eternity [C 3], trained in mathematics by Twissell and in Primitive sociology by Harlan [H 3], and sent back to teach Mallansohn [C 4] but became Mallansohn and left the memoir [C 5, M 1]. Twissell tells Harlan how the memoir passed down through Eternity until it reached him when he became a Senior Computer [T 3]. He leads Harlan into the room with the enclosed kettle and then into the control room where Harlan finds himself locked in [H 30].
Chapter 13. As Harlan watches [H 31], Twissell tells Cooper [C 6] what Cooper later [C 7] will write in his memoir in the 24th [C 2]. Twissell also describes what his experimental group did to calibrate the energy thrust necessary to transport Cooper [T 4]. With Harlan's hands at the controls, Cooper is sent back [H 32] and Harlan awaits the end of eternity. Then Harlan tells Twissell [H 33] what he did with the controls [H 32].
Chapter 14. Twissell and Harlan [H 34] discuss the causes of Harlan's actions and the reasons for their misunderstanding [H 28-29]. Twissell also tells of Finge's request for Harlan's services and Finge's communication about Harlan to the Allwhen Council that came automatically to Twissell [T 5]. He also recalls a liaison he once enjoyed with a woman when he was a Junior Computer [T 1] and the child she bore before her death. He watched the child grow and even visited him when the son was 34 [T 21], and he describes the Reality Change he agreed to that as a side effect turned his son into a paraplegic at the age of four [T 22].
Chapter 15. Harlan tries to duplicate his spastic movement of the thrust control and then searches his news magazines for a message from Cooper [H 35]. After discovering the advertisement, he tells Twissell about the barrier at the 100,000th and what happened to him [H 27].
Chapter 16. While Twissell and Harlan are going upwhen to Nos [H 36], Twissell talks about the history of Eternity [E 2] and the possibility of supermen in the Hidden Centuries. After their return with Nos, Harlan shows Twissell the advertisement from a 1932 magazine [C 1]. Harlan agrees to go back for Cooper if Nos accompanies him [H 37].
Chapter 17. Harlan and Nos prepare to go [H 38] on an exploratory trip to determine Cooper's exact time of arrival, then return and travel again to a point in time fifteen
minutes after Cooper's arrival, pick him up, and deliver him to 2317. As that is done, Cooper's experience in 1932 will disappear (except for fifteen minutes) as will the advertisement [-C 1]. But when Harlan and Nos arrive in 1932 and Nos confronts Harlan and his coldness, he recalls [H 39] the barrier at the 100,000th [H 27] and its consequences [H 28-32]. He accuses Nos of being from the Hidden Centuries. He also recalls the night she whispered to him before their first sexual experience [H 7] and the comment of the Life-Plotter about Nos not fitting into the old Reality of the 482nd [H 25], their first trip to the 111,394th when Nos stopped the kettle [H 11]. He says he is going to kill Nos [H 40].