The End of Eternity - By Isaac Asimov Page 0,23

Instead what he heard himself saying was, "Thirty-two years." He meant physioyears, of course.

She said, "I'm younger than you. I'm twenty-seven. But I suppose I won't always look younger than you. I suppose you'll be like this when I'm an old woman. What made you decide to be thirty-two? Can you change if you wish? Wouldn't you want to be younger?"

"What are you talking about?" Harlan rubbed his forehead to clear his mind.

She said softly, "You live forever. You're an Eternal."

Was it a question or a statement?

He said, "You're mad. We grow old and die like anyone else."

She said, "You can tell me." Her voice was low and cajoling. The fifty-millennial language, which he had always thought harsh and unpleasant, seemed euphonious after all. Or was it merely that a full stomach and the scented air had dulled his ears?

She said, "You can see all Times, visit all places. I so wanted to work in Eternity. I waited the longest time for them to let me. I thought maybe they'd make me an Eternal, and then I found there were only men there. Some of them wouldn't even talk to me because I was a woman. You wouldn't talk to me."

"We're all busy," mumbled Harlan, fighting to keep off something that could only be described as a numb content. "I was very busy."

"But why aren't there more women Eternals?"

Harlan couldn't trust himself to speak. What could he say? That members of Eternity were chosen with infinite care since two conditions had to be met. First, they must be equipped for the job; second, their withdrawal from Time must have no deleterious effect upon Reality.

Reality! That was the word he must not mention under any circumstances. He felt the spinning sensation in his head grow stronger and he closed his eyes for a moment to stop it.

How many excellent prospects had been left untouched in Time because their removal into Eternity would have meant the non-birth of children, the non-death of women and men, non-marriage, non-happenings, non-circumstance that would have twisted Reality in directions the Allwhen Council could not permit.

Could he tell her any of this? Of course not. Could he tell her that women almost never qualified for Eternity because, for some reason he did not understand (Computers might, but he himself certainly did not), their abstraction from Time was from ten to a hundred times as likely to distort Reality as was the abstraction of a man.

(All the thoughts jumbled together in his head, lost and whirling, joined to one another in a free association that produced odd, almost grotesque, but not entirely unpleasant, results. Noys was closer to him now, smiling.)

He heard her voice like a drifting wind. "Oh, you Eternals. You are so secretive. You won't share at all. Make me an Eternal."

Her voice was a sound now that didn't coalesce into separate words, just a delicately modulated sound that insinuated itself into his mind.

He wanted, he longed to tell her: There's no fun in Eternity, lady. We work! We work to plot out all the details of everywhen from the beginning of Eternity to where Earth is empty, and we try to plot out all the infinite possibilities of all the might-have-beens and pick out a might-have-been that is better than what is and decide where in Time we can make a tiny little change to twist the is to the might-be and we have a new is and look for a new might-be, forever, and forever, and that is how it has been since Vikkor Mallansohn discovered the Temporal Field in the 24th, way back in the Primitive 24th and then it was possible to start Eternity in the 27th, the mysterious Mallansohn whom no man knows and who started Eternity, really, and the new might-be, forever and forever and forever and...

He shook his head, but the whirligig of thought went on and on in stranger and more jagged breaks and leaps until it jumped into a sudden flash of illumination that persisted for a brilliant second, then died.

That moment steadied him. He grasped for it, but it was gone.

The peppermint drink?

Noys was still closer, her face not quite clear in his gaze. He could feel her hair against his cheek, the warm, light pressure of her breath. He ought to draw away, but-strangely, strangely-he found he did not want to.

"If I were made an Eternal..." she breathed, almost in his ear, though the words were scarcely heard above the beating of his heart. Her