The End of Eternity - By Isaac Asimov Page 0,18

arrangement were expected to be most discreet about it, out of common decency and consideration for the majority.

Among the lower classes of Eternals, particularly among Maintenance, there were always the rumors (half hopeful, half resentful) of women imported on a more or less permanent basis for the obvious reasons. Always rumor pointed to the Computers and Life-Plotters as the benefiting groups. They and only they could decide which women could be abstracted from Time without danger of significant Reality Change.

Less sensational (and therefore less tongue-worthy) were the stories concerning the Timer employees that every Section engaged temporarily (when spatio-temporal analysis permitted) to perform the tedious tasks of cooking, cleaning, and heavy labor.

But a Timer, and such a Timer, employed as "secretary," could only mean that Finge was thumbing a nose at the ideals that made Eternity what it was.

Regardless of the facts of life to which the practical men of Eternity made a perfunctory obeisance it remained true that the ideal Eternal was a dedicated man living for the mission he had to perform, for the betterment of Reality and the improvement of the sum of human happiness. Harlan liked to think that Eternity was like the rnonasteries of Primitive times.

He dreamed that night that he spoke to Twissell about the matter, and that Twissell, the ideal Eternal, shared his horror. He dreamed of a broken Finge, stripped of rank. He dreamed of himself with the yellow Computer's insigne, instituting a new regime in the 482nd, ordering Finge grandly to a new position in Maintenance. Twissell sat next to him, smiling with admiration, as he drew up a new organizational chart, neat, orderly, consistent, and asked Noys Lambent to distribute copies.

But Noys Lambent was nude, and Harlan woke up, trembling and ashamed.

He met the girl in a corridor one day and stood aside, eyes averted, to let her pass.

But she remained standing, looking at him, until he had to look up and meet her eyes. She was all color and life and Harlan was conscious of a faint perfume about her.

She said, "You're Technician Harlan, aren't you?"

His impulse was to snub her, to force his way past, but, after all, he told himself, all this wasn't her fault. Besides, to move past her now would mean touching her.

So he nodded briefly. "Yes."

"I'm told you're quite an expert on our Time."

"I have been in it."

"I would love to talk to you about it someday."

"I am busy. I wouldn't have time."

"But Mr. Harlan, surely you could find time someday."

She smiled at him.

Harlan said in a desperate whisper, "Will you pass, please? Or will you stand aside to let me pass? Please!"

She moved by with a slow swing of her hips that brought blood tingling to his embarrassed cheeks.

He was angry at her for embarrassing him, angry at himself for being embarrassed, and angry, most of all, for some obscure reason, at Finge.

Finge called him in at the end of two weeks. On his desk was a sheet of perforated flimsy the length and intricacy of which told Harlan at once that this concerned no half-hour excursion into Time.

Finge said, "Would you sit down, Harlan, and scan this thing right now? No, not by eye. Use the machine."

Harlan lifted indifferent eyebrows, and inserted the sheet carefully between the lips of the scanner on Finge's desk. Slowly it passed into the intestines of the machine and, as it did so, the perforation pattern was translated into words that appeared on the cloudy-white rectangle that was the visual attachment.

Somewhere about midpoint, Harlan's hand shot out and disconnected the scanner. He yanked the flimsy out with a force that tore its tough cellulite structure.

Finge said calmly, "I have another copy."

But Harlan was holding the remnants between thumb and forefinger as though it might explode. "Computer Finge, there is some mistake. Surely I am not to be expected to use the home of this woman as base for a near-week stay in Time."

The Computer pursed his lips. "Why not, if the spatio-temporal requirements are such. If there is a personal problem involved between yourself and Miss Lam--"

"No personal problem at all," interposed Harlan hotly.

"Some kind of problem, certainly. In the circumstances, I will go as far as to explain certain aspects of the Observational problem. This is not to be taken as a precedent, of course."

Harlan sat motionless. He was thinking hard and fast. Ordinarily professional pride would have forced Harlan to disdain explanation. An Observer, or Technician, for that matter, did his job without question. And