The End of Eternity

Isaac Asimov

Tor Books


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.




Under ordinary circumstances all this would be so.












Harlan nodded and said, "Father Time! Isn’t this sort of ornamentation adjustable?"



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.


But matter consisting entirely of mirrors!


"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."



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


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.



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 tabletop. 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 tensor-complex 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.—Minimum 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 a 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?"


"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."

Excerpted from The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov.
Copyright © 1995 by Isaac Asimov.
Published in January 2010 by Tom Doherty Associates.