The End of Eternity

by Isaac Asimov

6. Life-Plotter

  A month of physiotime had passed since that night in the 482nd, when he grew acquainted with many things. Now, if one calculated by ordinary time, he was nearly 2000 Centuries in Noys Lambent's future, attempting by a mixture of bribery and cajolery to learn what lay in store for her in a new Reality.

  It was worse than unethical, but he was past caring. In the physiomonth just gone he had, in his own eyes, become a criminal. There was no way of glossing over that fact. He would be no more a criminal by compounding his crime and he had a great deal to gain by doing so.

  Now, as part of his felonious maneuvering (he made no effort to choose a milder phrase) he stood at the barrier before the 2456th. Entry into Time was much more complicated than mere passage between Eternity and the kettle shafts. In order to enter Time the coordinates fixing the desired region on Earth's surface had painstakingly to be adjusted and the desired moment of Time pin-pointed within the Century. Yet despite inner tension Harlan handled the controls with the ease and quick confidence of a man with much experience and a great talent.

  Harlan found himself in the engine room he had seen first on the viewing screen within Eternity. At this physiomoment Sociologist Voy would be sitting safely before that screen watching for the Technician's Touch that was to come.

  Harlan felt no hurry. The room would remain empty for the next 156 minutes. To be sure, the spatio-temporal chart allowed him only 110 minutes, leaving the remaining 46 as the customary 40 per cent "margin. " Margin was there in case of necessity, but a Technician was not expected to have to use it. A "margin-eater" did not remain a Specialist long.

  Harlan, however, expected to use no more than 2 minutes of the iio. Wearing his wrist-borne field generator so that he was surrounded by an aura of physiotime (an effluvium, so to speak, of Eternity) and therefore protected from any of the effects of Reality Change, he took one step toward the wall, lifted a small container from its position on a shelf, and placed it in a carefully adjusted spot on the shelf below.

  Having done that, he re-entered Eternity in a way that seemed as prosaic to himself as passage through any door might be. Had there been a Timer watching, it would have seemed to him that Harlan had simply disappeared.

  The small container stayed where he put it. It played no immediate role in world history. A man's hand, hours later, reached for it but did not find it. A search revealed it half an hour later still, but in the interim a force-field had blanked out and a man's temper had been lost. A decision which would have remained unmade in the previous Reality was now made in anger. A meeting did not take place; a man who would have died lived a year longer, under other circumstances; another who would have lived died somewhat sooner.

  The ripples spread wider, reaching their maxium in the 2481st, which was twenty-five Centuries upwhen from the Touch. The intensity of the Reality Change declined thereafter. Theorists pointed out that nowhere to the infinite upwhen could the Change ever become zero, but by fifty Centuries upwhen from the Touch the Change had become too small to detect by the finest Computing, and that was the practical limit.

  Of course no human being in Time could ever possibly be aware of any Reality Change having taken place. Mind changed as well as matter and only Eternals could stand outside it all and see the change.

  Sociologist Voy was staring at the bluish scene in the 2481st, where earlier there had been all the activity of a busy space-port. He barely looked up when Harlan entered. He barely mumbled something that might have been a greeting.

  A change had indeed blasted the space-port. Its shininess was gone; what buildings there stood were not the grand creations they had been. A space-ship rusted. There were no people. There was no motion.

  Harlan allowed himself a small smile that flickered for a moment, then vanished. It was M. D. R. all right. Maximum Desired Response. And it had happened at once. The Change did not necessarily take place at the precise moment of the Technician's Touch. If the calculations that went into the Touch were sloppy, hours or days might elapse before the Change actually took place (counting, of course, by physiotime). It was only when all degrees of freedom vanished that the Change took place. While there was even a mathematical chance for alternate actions, the Change did not take place.

  It was Harlan's pride that when he calculated an M. N. C. , when it was his hand that contrived the Touch, the degrees of freedom vanished at once, and the Change took place instantly.

  Voy said softly, "It had been very beautiful. "

  The phrase grated Harlan's ears, seeming to detract from the beauty of his own performance. "I wouldn't regret," he said, "having spacetravel bred out of Reality altogether. "

  "No?" said Voy.

  "What good is it? It never lasts more than a millennium or two. People get tired. They come back home and the colonies die out. Then after another four or five millennia, or forty or fifty, they try again and it fails again. It is a waste of human ingenuity and effort. "

  Voy said dryly, "You're quite a philosopher. "

  Harlan flushed. He thought: What's the use in talking to any of them? He said, angrily, with a sharp change of subject, "What about the Life-Plotter?"

  "What about him?"

  "Would you check with the man? He ought to have made some progress by now. "

  The Sociologist let a look of disapproval drift across his face, as though to say: You're the impatient one, aren't you? Aloud he said, "Come with me and let's see. "

  The name plate on the office door said Neron Feruque, which struck Harlan's eye and mind because of its faint similarity to a pair of rulers in the Mediterranean area during Primitive times. (His weekly discourses with Cooper had sharpened his own preoccupation with the Primitive almost feverishly. )

  The man, however, resembled neither ruler, as Harlan recalled it. He was almost cadaverously lean, with skin stretched tightly over a high-bridged nose. His fingers were long and his wrists knobby. As he caressed his small Summator, he looked like Death weighing a soul in the balance.

  Harlan found himself staring at the Summator hungrily. It was the heart and blood of Life-Plotting, the skin and bones, sinew, muscle and all else. Feed into it the required data of a personal history, and the equations of the Reality Change; do that and it would chuckle away in obscene merriment for any length of time from a minute to a day, and then spit out the possible companion lives for the person involved (under the new Reality), each neatly ticketed with a probability value.

  Sociologist Voy introduced Harlan. Feruque, having stared in open annoyance at the Technician's insigne, nodded his head and let the matter go.

  Harlan said, "Is the young lady's Life-Plot complete yet?"

  "It is not. I'll let you know when it is. " He was one of those who carried contempt for the Technician to the point of open rudeness.

  Voy said, "Take it easy, Life-Plotter. "

  Feruque had eyebrows which were light almost to invisibility. It heightened the resemblance of his face to a skull. His eyes rolled in what should have been empty sockets as he said, "Killed the spaceships?"

  Voy nodded. "Cut it down a Century. "

  Feruque's lips twisted softly and formed a word.

  Harlan folded his arms and stared at the Life-Plotter, who looked away in eventual discomfiture.

  Harlan thought: He knows it's his guilt too.

  Feruque said to Voy, "Listen, as long as you're here, what in Time am I going to do about the anti-cancer serum requests? We're not the only Century with anti-cancer. Why do we get all the applications?"

  "All the other Centuries are just as crowded. You know that. "

  "Then they've got to stop sending in applications altogether. "

  "How do we go about making them?"

  "Easy. Let the Allwhen Council stop receiving them. "

  "I have no pull with the Allwhen Council. "

  "You have pull with the old man. "

  Harlan listened to the conversation dul
ly, without real interest. At least it served to keep his mind on inconsequentials and away from the chuckling Summator. The "old man," he knew, would be the Computer in charge of the Section.

  "I've talked to the old man," said the Sociologist, "and he's talked to the Council. "

  "Nuts. He's just sent through a routine tape-strip. He has to fight for this. It's a matter of basic policy. "

  "The Allwhen Council isn't in the mood these days to consider changes in basic policy. You know the rumors going round. "

  "Oh, sure. They're busy on a big deal. Whenever there's dodging to do, the word gets round that Council's busy on some big deal. "

  (If Harlan could have found the heart for it, he would have smiled at that point. )

  Feruque brooded a few moments, and then burst out, "What most people don't understand is that anti-cancer serum isn't a matter of tree seedlings or field motors. I know that every sprig of spruce has to be watched for adverse effects on Reality, but anti-cancer always involves a human life and that's a hundred times as complicated.

  "Consider! Think how many people a year die of cancer in each Century that doesn't have anti-cancer serums of one sort or another. You can imagine how many of the patients want to die. So the Timer governments in every Century are forever forwarding applications to Eternity to 'please, pretty please ship them seventy-five thousand ampules of serum on behalf of the men critically stricken who are absolutely vital to the cultures, enclosed see biographical data. '"

  Voy nodded rapidly, "I know. I know. "

  But Feruque was not to be denied his bitterness. "So you read the biographical data and it's every man a hero. Every man an insupportable loss to his world. So you work it through. You see what would happen to Reality if each man lived, and for Time's sake, if different combinations of men lived.

  "In the last month, I've done 572 cancer requests. Seventeen, count them, seventeen Life-Plots came out to involve no undesirable Reality Changes. Mind you, there wasn't one case of a possible desirable Reality Change, but the Council says neutral cases get the serum. Humanity, you know. So exactly seventeen people in assorted Centuries get cured this month.

  "And what happens? Are the Centuries happy? Not on your life. One man gets cured and a dozen, same country, same Time, don't. Everyone says, Why that one? Maybe the guys we didn't treat are better characters, maybe they're rosy-cheeked philanthropists beloved by all, while the one man we cure kicks his aged mother all around the block whenever he can spare the time from beating his kids. They don't know about Reality Changes and we can't tell them.

  "We're just making trouble for ourselves, Voy, unless the Allwhen Council decides to screen all applications and approve only those which result in a desirable Reality Change. That's all. Either curing them does some good for humanity, or else it's out. Never mind this business of saying: 'Well, it does no harm. '"

  The Sociologist had been listening with a look of mild pain on his face, and now he said, "If it were you with cancer. . . "

  "That's a stupid remark, Voy. Is that what we base decisions on? In that case there'd never be a Reality Change. Some poor sucker always gets it in the neck, doesn't he? Suppose you were that sucker, hey?

  "And another thing. Just remember that every time we make a Reality Change it's harder to find a good next one. Every physioyear, the chance that a random Change is likely to be for the worse increases. That means the proportion of guys we can cure gets smaller anyway. It's always going to get smaller. Someday, we'll be able to cure only one guy a physioyear, even counting the neutral cases. Remember that. "

  Harlan lost even the faintest interest. This was the type of griping that went with the business. The Psychologists and Sociologists, in their rare introvertive studies of Eternity, called it identification. Men identified themselves with the Century with which they were associated professionally. Its battles, all too often, became their own battles.

  Eternity fought the devil of identification as best it could. No man could be assigned to any Section within two Centuries of his homewhen, to make identification harder. Preference was given to Centuries with cultures markedly different from that of their homewhen. (Harlan thought of Finge and the 482nd. ) What was more, their assignments were shifted as often as their reactions grew suspect. (Harlan wouldn't give a 5oth Century grafenpiece for Feruque's chances of retaining this assignment longer than another physioyear at the outside. )

  And still men identified out of a silly yearning for a home in Time (the Time-wish; everyone knew about it). For some reason this was particularly true in Centuries with space-travel. It was something that should be investigated and would be but for Eternity's chronic reluctance to turn its eyes inward.

  A month earlier Harlan might have despised Feruque as a blustering sentimentalist, a petulant oaf who eased the pain of watching the electro-gravitics lose intensity in a new Reality by railing against those of other Centuries who wanted anti-cancer serum.

  He might have reported him. It would have been his duty to do so. The man's reactions obviously could no longer be trusted.

  He could not do so, now. He even found sympathy for the man. His own crime was so much greater.

  How easy it was to slip back to thoughts of Noys.

  Eventually he had fallen asleep that night, and he awoke in daylight, with brightness shining through translucent walls all about until it was as though he had awakened on a cloud in a misty morning sky.

  Noys was laughing down at him. "Goodness, it was hard to wake you. "

  Harlan's first reflexive action was a scrabble for bedclothes that weren't there. Then memory arrived and he stared at her hollowly, his face burning red. How should he feel about this?

  But then something else occurred to him and he shot to a sitting position. "It isn't past one, is it? Father Time!"

  "It's only eleven. You've got breakfast waiting and lots of time. "

  "Thanks," he mumbled.

  "The shower controls are all set and your clothes are all ready. "

  What could he say? "Thanks," he mumbled.

  He avoided her eyes during the meal. She sat opposite him, not eating, her chin buried in the palm of one hand, her dark hair combed thickly to one side and her eyelashes preternaturally long.

  She followed every gesture he made while he kept his eyes lowered and searched for the bitter shame he knew he ought to feel.

  She said, "Where will you be going at one?"

  "Aeroball game," he muttered, "I have the ticket. "

  "That's the rubber game. And I missed the whole season because of just skipping the time, you know. Who'll win the game, Andrew?"

  He felt oddly weak at the sound of his first name. He shook his head curtly and tried to look austere. (It used to have been so easy. )

  "But surely you know. You've inspected this whole period, haven't you?"

  Properly speaking, he ought to maintain a flat and cold negative, but weakly he explained, "There was a lot of Space and Time to cover. I wouldn't know little precise things like game scores. "

  "Oh, you just don't want to tell me. "

  Harlan said nothing to that. He inserted the pene-prong into the small, juicy fruit and lifted it, whole, to his lips.

  After a moment Noys said, "Did you see what happened in this neighborhood before you came?"

  "No details, N-noys. " (He forced her name past his lips. )

  The girl said softly, "Didn't you see us? Didn't you know all along that-"

  Harlan stammered, "No, no, I couldn't see myself. I'm not in Rea-- I'm not here till I come. I can't explain. " He was doubly flustered. First, that she should speak of it. Second, that he had almost been trapped into saying, "Reality," of all the words the most forbidden in conversation with Timers.

  She lifted her eyebrows and her eyes grew round and a little amazed. "Are you ashamed?"

  "What we did was not proper. "

  "Why not?" And in the 482nd her question was
perfectly innocent. "Aren't Eternals allowed to?" There was almost a joking cast to that question as though she were asking if Eternals weren't allowed to eat.

  "Don't use the word," said Harlan. "As a matter of fact, we're not, in a way. "

  "Well, then, don't tell them. I won't. "

  And she walked about the table and sat down on his lap, pushing the small table out of the way with a smooth and flowing motion of her hip.

  Momentarily he stiffened, lifted his hands in a gesture that might have been intended to hold her off. It didn't succeed.

  She bent and kissed him on his lips, and nothing seemed shameful any more. Nothing that involved Noys and himself.

  He wasn't sure when first he began to do something that an Observer, ethically, had no right to do. That is, he began to speculate on the nature of the problem involving the current Reality and of the Reality Change that would be planned.

  It was not the loose morals of the Century, not ectogenesis, not matriarchy, that disturbed Eternity. All of that was as it was in the previous Reality and the Allwhen Council had viewed it with equanimity then. Finge had said it was something very subtle.

  The Change then would have to be very subtle and it would have to involve the group he was Observing. So much seemed obvious.

  It would involve the aristocracy, the well-to-do, the upper classes, the beneficiaries of the system.

  What bothered him was that it would most certainly involve Noys.

  He got through the remaining three days called for in his chart in a gathering cloud that dampened even his joy in Noys's company.

  She said to him, "What happened? For a while, you seemed all different from the way you were in Eter-in that place. You weren't stiff at all. Now, you seem concerned. Is it because you have to go back?"

  Harlan said, "Partly. "

  "Do you have to?"

  "I have to. "

  "Well, who would care if you were late?"

  Harlan almost smiled at that. "They wouldn't like me to be late," he said, yet thought longingly just the same of the two-day margin allowed for in his chart.

  She adjusted the controls of a musical instrument that played soft and complicated strains out of its own creative bowels by striking notes and chords in a random manner; the randomness weighted in favor of pleasant combinations by intricate mathematical formulae. The music could no more repeat itself than could snowflakes, and could no more fail of beauty.

  Through the hypnosis of sound Harlan gazed at Noys and his thoughts wound tightly about her. What would she be in the new dispensation? A fishwife, a factory girl, the mother of six, fat, ugly, diseased? Whatever she was, she would not remember Harlan. He would have been no part of her life in a new Reality. And whatever she would be then, she would not be Noys.

  He did not simply love a girl. (Strangely, he used the word "love" in his own thoughts for the first time and did not even pause long enough to stare at the strange thing and wonder at it. ) He loved a complex of factors; her choice of clothes, her walk, her manner of speech, her tricks of expression. A quarter century of life and experience in a given Reality had gone into the manufacture of all that. She had not been his Noys in the previous Reality of a physioyear earlier. She would not be his Noys in the next Reality.

  The new Noys might, conceivably, be better in some ways, but he knew one thing very definitely. He wanted this Noys here, the one he saw at this moment, the one of this Reality. If she had faults, he wanted those faults, too.

  What could he do?

  Several things occurred to him, all illegal. One of them was to learn the nature of the Change and find out definitely how it would affect Noys. One could not, after all, be certain that. . .

  A dead silence wrenched Harlan out of his reverie. He was in the Life-Plotter's office once more. Sociologist Voy was watching him out of the corner of his eye. Feruque's death's-head was lowering at him.

  And the silence was piercing.

  It took a moment for the significance to penetrate. Just a moment. The Summator had ceased its inner clucking.

  Harlan jumped up. "You have the answer, Life-Plotter. "

  Feruque looked down at the flimsies in his hand. "Yeah. Sure. Sort of funny. "

  "May I have it?" Harlan held out his hand. It was trembling visibly.

  "There's nothing to see. That's what's funny. "

  "What do you mean-nothing?" Harlan stared at Feruque with eyes that suddenly smarted till there was only a tall, thin blur where Feruque stood.

  The Life-Plotter's matter-of-fact voice sounded thin. "The dame doesn't exist in the new Reality. No personality shift. She's just out, that's all. Gone. I ran the alternatives down to Probability 0. 0001. She doesn't make it anywhere. In fact"-and he reached up to rub his cheek with long, spare fingers-"with the combination of factors you handed me I don't quite see how she fit in the old Reality. "

  Harlan hardly heard "But-but the Change was such a small one. "

  "I know. A funny combination of factors. Here, you want the flimsies?"

  Harlan's hand closed over them, unfeeling. Noys gone? Noys nonexistent? How could that be?

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and Voy's voice clashed on his ear. "Are you ill, Technician?" The hand drew away as though it already regretted its careless contact with a Technician's body.

  Harlan swallowed and with an effort composed his features. "I'm quite well. Would you take me to the kettle?"

  He _must not_ show his feelings. He must act as though this were what he represented it to be, a mere academic investigation. He must disguise the fact that with Noys's nonexistence in the new Reality he was almost physically overwhelmed by a flood of pure elation, unbearable joy.