The End of Eternity - By Isaac Asimov Page 0,29

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.
7. Prelude to Crime
Harlan stepped into the kettle at the 2456th and looked backward to make certain that the barrier that separated the shaft from Eternity was truly flawless; that Sociologist Voy was not watching. In these last weeks it had grown to be a habit with him, an automatic twitch; there was always the quick backward glance across the shoulder to make sure no one was behind him in the kettle shafts.

And then, though already in the 2456th, it was for upwhen that Harlan set the kettle controls. He watched the numbers on the temporometer rise. Though they moved with blurry quickness, there would be considerable time for thought.

How the Life-Plotter's finding changed matters! How the very nature of his crime had changed!

And it had all hinged on Finge. The phrase caught at him with its ridiculous rhyme and its heavy beat circled dizzyingly inside his skull: It hinged on Finge. It hinged on Finge...

Harlan had avoided any personal contact with Finge on his return to Eternity after those days with Noys in the 482nd. As Eternity closed