The temporometer read: 111,394.

He said, "Far enough."

Then he held out his hand gravely, "Come, Noys. This will be your home for a while."

They wandered through the corridors like children, hand in hand. The lights along the mainways were on, and the darkened rooms blazed at the touch of a contact. The air was fresh and had a liveliness about it which, without sensible draft, yet indicated the presence of ventilation.

Noys whispered, "Is there no one here?"

"No one," said Harlan. He tried to say it firmly and loudly. He wanted to break the spell of being in a "Hidden Century," but he said it in only a whisper after all.

He did not even know how to refer to anything so far upwhen. To call it the one-one-one-three-ninety-fourth was ridiculous. One would have to say simply and indefinitely, "The hundred thousands."

It was a foolish problem to be concerned with, but now that the exaltation of actual flight was done with, he found himself alone in a region of Eternity where no human footsteps had wandered and he did not like it. He was ashamed, doubly ashamed since Noys was witness, at the fact that the faint chill within him was the faint chill of a faint fear.

Noys said, "It's so clean. There's no dust."

"Self-cleaning," said Harlan. With an effort that seemed to tear at his vocal cords he raised his voice to near-normal level. "But no one's here, upwhen or downwhen for thousands and thousands of Centuries."

Noys seemed to accept that. "And everything is fixed up so? We pa.s.sed food stores and a viewing-film library. Did you see that?"

"I saw that. Oh, it's fully equipped. They're all fully equipped. Every Section."

"But why, if no one ever comes here?"

"It's logical," said Harlan. Talking about it took away some of the eeriness. Saying out loud what he already knew in the abstract would pin-point the matter, bring it down to the level of the prosaic. He said, "Early in the history of Eternity, one of the Centuries in the 300's came up with a ma.s.s duplicator. Do you know what I mean? By setting up a resonating field, energy could be converted to matter with subatomic particles taking up precisely the same pattern of positions, within the uncertainty requirements, as those in the model being used. The result is an exact copy.

"We in Eternity commandeered the instrument for our own purposes. At that time, there were only about six or seven hundred Sections built up. We had plans for expansion, of course. 'Ten new Sections a physioyear' was one of the slogans of the time. The ma.s.s duplicator made that all unnecessary. We built one new Section complete with food, power supply, water supply, all the best automatic features; set up the machine and duplicated the Section once each Century all along Eternity. I don't know how long they kept it going--millions of Centuries, probably."

"All like this, Andrew?"

"All exactly like this. And as Eternity expands, we just fill in, adapting the construction to whatever fashion turns out to be current in the Century. The only troubles come when we hit an energy-centered Century. We--we haven't reached this Section yet." (No use telling her that the Eternals couldn't penetrate into Time here in the Hidden Centuries. What difference did that make?) He glanced at her and she seemed troubled. He said hastily, "There's no waste involved in building the Sections. It took energy, nothing more, and with the nova to draw on--"

She interrupted. "No. I just don't remember."

"Remember what?"

"You said the duplicator was invented in the 300's. We don't have it in the 482nd. I don't remember viewing anything about it in history."

Harlan grew thoughtful. Although she was within two inches of being as tall as himself, he suddenly felt giant-size by comparison. She was a child, an infant, and he was a demiG.o.d of Eternity who must teach her and lead her carefully to the truth.

He said, "Noys, dear, let's find a place to sit down and--and I'll have to explain something."

The concept of a variable Reality, a Reality that was not fixed and eternal and immutable was not one that could be faced casually by anyone.

In the dead of the sleep period, sometimes, Harlan would remember the early days of his Cubhood and recall the wrenching attempts to divorce himself from his Century and from Time.

It took six months for the average Cub to learn all the truth, to discover that he could never go home again in a very literal way. It wasn't Eternity's law, alone, that stopped him, but the frigid fact that home as he knew it might very well no longer exist, might, in a sense, never have existed.

It affected Cubs differently. Harlan remembered Bonky Latourette's face turning white and gaunt the day Instructor Yarrow had finally made it unmistakably clear about Reality.

None of the Cubs ate that night. They huddled together in search of a kind of psychic warmth, all except Latourette, who had disappeared. There was a lot of false laughter and miserably poor joking.

Someone said with a voice that was tremulous and uncertain, "I suppose I never had a mother. If I go back into the 95th, they'd say: 'Who are you? We don't know you. We don't have any records of you. You don't exist.'"

They smiled weakly and nodded their heads, lonely boys with nothing left but Eternity.

They found Latourette at bedtime, sleeping deeply and breathing shallowly. There was the slight reddening of a spray injection in the hollow of his left elbow and fortunately that was noted too.

Yarrow was called and for a while it looked as though one Cub would be out of the course, but he was brought around eventually. A week later he was back in his seat. Yet the mark of that evil night was on his personality for as long as Harlan knew him thereafter.

And now Harlan had to explain Reality to Noys Lambent, a girl not much older than those Cubs, and explain it at once and in full. He had to. There was no choice about that. She must learn exactly what faced them and exactly what she would have to do.

He told her. They ate canned meats, chilled fruits, and milk at a long conference table designed to hold twelve, and there he told her.

He did it as gently as possible, but he scarcely found need for gentleness. She snapped quickly at every concept and before he was half through it was borne in upon him, to his great amazement, that she wasn't reacting badly. She wasn't afraid. She showed no sense of loss. She only seemed angry.

The anger reached her face and turned it a glowing pink while her dark eyes seemed somehow the darker for it.

"But that's criminal," she said. "Who are the Eternals to do this?"

"It's done for humanity's good," said Harlan. Of course, she couldn't really understand that. He felt sorry for the Time-bound thinking of a Timer.

"Is it? I suppose that's how the ma.s.s duplicator was wiped out."

"We have copies still. Don't worry about that. We've preserved it."

"_You've_ preserved it. But what about us? We of the 482nd might have had it." She gestured with little movements of two clenched fists.

"It wouldn't have done you good. Look, don't be excited, dear, and listen." With an almost convulsive gesture (he would have to learn how to touch her naturally, without making the movement seem a sheepish invitation to a repulse) he took her hands in his and held them tightly.

For a moment she tried to free them, and then she relaxed. She even laughed a bit. "Oh, go ahead, silly, and don't look so solemn. I'm not blaming you."

"You mustn't blame anyone. There is no blame necessary. We do what must be done. That ma.s.s duplicator is a cla.s.sic case. I studied it in school. When you duplicate ma.s.s, you can duplicate persons, too. The problems that arise are very complicated."

"Isn't it up to the society to solve its own problems?"

"It is, but we studied that society throughout Time and it doesn't solve the problem satisfactorily. Remember that its failure to do so affects not only itself but all its descendant societies. In fact, there is no satisfactory solution to the ma.s.s-duplicator problem. It's one of those things like atomic wars and dreamies that just can't be allowed. Developments are never satisfactory."

"What makes you so sure?"

"We have our Computing machines, Noys; Computaplexes far more accurate than any ever developed in any single Reality. These Compute the possible Realities and grade the desirabilities of each over a summation of thousands and thousands of variables."

"Machines!" She said it with scorn.

Harlan frowned, then relented hastily. "Now don't be like that. Naturally, you resent learning that life is not as solid as you thought. You and the world you lived in might have been only a probability shadow a year ago, but what's the difference? You have all your memories, whether they're of probability shadows or not, haven't you? You remember your childhood and your parents, don't you?"

"Of course."

"Then it's just as if you lived it, isn't it? Isn't it? I mean, whether you did or not?"

"I don't know. I'll have to think about it. What if tomorrow it's a dream world again, or a shadow, or whatever you call it?"

"Then there would be a new Reality and a new you with new memories. It would be just as though nothing had happened, except that the sum of human happiness would have been increased again."

"I don't find that satisfying, somehow."

"Besides," said Harlan hastily, "nothing will happen to you now. There _will_ be a new Reality but you're in Eternity. You won't be changed."

"But you say it makes no difference," said Noys gloomily. "Why go to all the trouble?"

With sudden ardor Harlan said, "Because I want you as you are. Exactly as you are. I don't want you changed. Not in anyway."

He came within a hair of blurting out the truth, that without the advantage of the superst.i.tion about Eternals and eternal life she would never have inclined toward him.

She said, looking about with a slight frown, "Will I have to stay here forever, then? It would be--lonely."

"No, no. Don't think it," he said wildly, gripping her hands so tight that she winced. "I'll find out what you will be in the new Reality of the 482nd, and you'll go back in disguise, so to speak. I'll take care of you. I'll apply for permission for formal liaison and see to it that you remain safely through future Changes. I'm a Technician and a good one and I know about Changes." He added grimly, "And I know a few other things as well," and stopped there.

Noys said, "Is all this allowed? I mean, can you take people into Eternity and keep them from changing? It doesn't sound right, somehow, from the things you've told me."

For a moment Harlan felt shrunken and cold in the large emptiness of the thousands of Centuries that surrounded him upwhen and down. For a moment he felt cut off even from the Eternity that was his only home and only faith, doubly cast out from Time and Eternity; and only the woman for whom he had forsaken it all left at his side.

He said, and he meant it deeply, "No, it is a crime. It is a very great crime, and I am bitterly ashamed. But I would do it again, if I had to, and any number of times, if I had to."

"For me, Andrew? For me?"

He did not raise his eyes to hers. "No, Noys, for myself. I could not bear to lose you."

She said, "And if we are caught . . ."

Harlan knew the answer to that. He knew the answer since that moment of insight in bed in the 482nd, with Noys sleeping at his side. But, even yet, he dared not think of the wild truth.

He said, "I am not afraid of anyone. I have ways of protecting myself. They don't imagine how much I know."

9 Interlude

It was, looking back at it, an idyllic period that followed. A hundred things took place in those physioweeks, and all confused itself inextricably in Harlan's memory, later, making the period seem to have lasted much longer than it did. The one idyllic thing about it was, of course, the hours he could spend with Noys, and that cast a glow over everything else.

Item One: At the 482nd he slowly packed his personal effects; his clothing and films, most of all his beloved and tenderly handled newsmagazine volumes out of the Primitive. Anxiously he supervised their return to his permanent station in the 575th.

Finge was at his elbow as the last of it was lifted into the freight kettle by Maintenance men.

Finge said, choosing his words with unerring triteness, "Leaving us, I see." His smile was broad, but his lips were carefully held together so that only the barest trace of teeth showed. He kept his hands clasped behind his back and his pudgy body teetered forward on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet.

Harlan did not look at his superior. He muttered a monotoned "Yes, sir."

Finge said, "I will report to Senior Computer Twissell concerning the entirely satisfactory manner in which you performed your Observational duties in the 482nd."

Harlan could not bring himself to utter even a sullen word of thanks. He remained silent.

Finge went on, in a suddenly much lower voice, "I will not report, for the present, your recent attempt at violence against me." And although his smile remained and his glance remained mild, there was a relish of cruel satisfaction about him.

Harlan looked up sharply and said, "As you wish, Computer."

Item Two: He re-established himself at the 575th.

He met Twissell almost at once. He found himself happy to see that little body, topped by that lined and gnomelike face. He was even happy to see the white cylinder nestling smokily between two stained fingers and being lifted rapidly toward Twissell's lips.

Harlan said, "Computer."

Twissell, emerging from his office, looked for a moment unseeingly and unrecognizingly at Harlan. His face was haggard and his eyes squinted with weariness.

He said, "Ah, Technician Harlan. You are done with your work in the 482nd?"

"Yes, sir."

Twissell's comment was strange. He looked at his watch, which, like any watch in Eternity, was geared to physiotime, giving the day number as well as the time of day, and said, "On the nose, my boy, on the nose. Wonderful. Wonderful."

Harlan felt his heart give a small bound. When he had last seen Twissell he would not have been able to make sense of that remark. Now he thought he did. Twissell was tired, or he would not have spoken so close to the core of things, perhaps. Or the Computer might have felt the remark to be so cryptic as to feel safe despite its closeness to the core.

Harlan said, speaking ascasually as he could to avoid letting it seem that his remark had any connection at all with what Twissell had just said, "How's my Cub?"

"Fine, fine," said Twissell, with only half his mind, apparently, on his words. He took a quick puff at the shortening tube of tobacco, indulged in a quick nod of dismissal, and hurried off.

Item Three: the Cub.

He seemed older. There seemed to be a greater feeling of maturity to him as he held out his hand and said, "Glad to see you back, Harlan."

Or was it merely that, where earlier Harlan had been conscious of Cooper only as a pupil, he now seemed more than a Cub. He now seemed a gigantic instrument in the hands of the Eternals. Naturally he could not help but attain a new stature in Harlan's eyes.

Harlan tried not to show that. They were in Harlan's own quarters, and the Technician basked in the creamy porcelain surfaces about him, glad to be out of the ornate splash of the 482nd. Try as he might to a.s.sociate the wild baroque of the 482nd with Noys, he only succeeded in a.s.sociating it with Finge. With Noys he a.s.sociated a pink, satiny twilight and, strangely, the bare austerity of the Sections of the Hidden Centuries.

He spoke hastily, almost as though he were anxious to hide his dangerous thoughts. "Well, Cooper, what have they been doing with you while I was away?"

Cooper laughed, brushed his drooping mustache self-consciously with one finger and said, "More math. Always math."

"Yes? Pretty advanced stuff by now, I guess."

"Pretty advanced."

"How's it coming?"