The end of eternity book free download

I have every certainty that those assigned to this project have given accurate data. Have you evidence to the contrary? 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?

There is a loop of small dimensions with no tributaries on either side. The alternate tensor-complex you refer to, or the forking of the road, as we might say, is nonsignificant. The forks join up again and it is a single road. There was not even any need to mention it in our recommendations. However, there is still the matter of the M.

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. 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. 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. 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. Voy looked up, his dark face struggling somewhere between chagrin and anger.

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. I felt I could correct it before damage was done. I have done so. Why go any further? You have been a friend. He probably resents it. I have the data necessary here with me. I have also the data for a suggested Reality Change in the nd.

I want to know the effect of the Change on the probability-pattern of a certain individual. Surely you have the facilities for doing this in your own Section? I want a confidential answer. You raised no objection to that. You follow me, I think? He held out his hand. The main hurdle had been passed. Only once did the Sociologist speak.

Too small, I think. No use running this past the point of safety. Voy stood up. You understand, though, that this is not to be taken as establishing a precedent.

I trust you will honor us by conducting the M. The engineers had focused them already to the exact co-ordinates in Space and Time and then had left. Harlan and Voy were alone in the glittering room. The molecular film arrangement was perceptible and even a bit more than perceptible, but Harlan was looking at the screens.

Both views were motionless. They might have been scenes of the dead, since they pictured mathematical instants of Time. One view was in sharp, natural color; the engine room of what Harlan knew to be an experimental space-ship. A door was closing, and a glistening shoe of a red, semi-transparent material was just visible through the space that remained. It did not move.

Nothing moved. If the picture could have been made sharp enough to picture the dust motes in the air, they would not have moved. In the current Reality, that is. He was putting on his gloves and already his quick eyes were memorizing the position of the critical container on its shelf, measuring the steps to it, estimating the best position into which to transfer it.

He cast one quick look at the other screen. It was a space-port. A deep blue sky, blue-tinged buildings of naked metal on blue-green ground. A blue cylinder of odd design, bulge-bottomed, stood in the foreground. Two others like it were in the background. All three pointed cleft noses upward, the cleavage biting deeply into the vitals of the ship. Harlan frowned. No propellants, no nucleonics. A pity. Disapproval of courser Why not?

He was the Technician. To be sure, it had been some Observer who had brought in the details of drug addiction. It had been some Statistician who had demonstrated that recent Changes had increased the addiction rate until now it was the highest in all the current Reality of man.

Some Sociologist, probably Voy himself, had interpreted that into the psychiatric profile of a society. Finally, some Computer had worked out the Reality Change necessary to decrease addiction to a safe level and found that, as a side effect, electro-gravitic space-travel must suffer. A dozen, a hundred men of every rating in Eternity had had a hand in this. But then, at the end, a Technician such as himself must step in.

Following the directions all the others had combined to give him, he must be the one to initiate the actual Reality Change. And then, all the others would stare in haughty accusation at him. Their stares would say: You, not we, have destroyed Page 8 this beautiful thing. And for that, they would condemn and avoid him. They would shift their own guilt to his shoulders and scorn him.

They were little puppets in clusters, these people: Their tiny arms and legs were in raised, artificial-looking positions, caught in the frozen instant of Time.

Voy shrugged. Harlan was adjusting the small field-generator about his left wrist. I want to get in touch with the Life-Plotter and find out how long his job for you will take. I want to get that job done, too. Another characteristic of this Section of Eternity, thought Harlan--sound codes in clicks. Clever, but affected, like the molecular films. He stared a moment at the Sociologist and turned abruptly.

If there was a flaw in Eternity, it involved women. From that moment it had been an easy path to this one, in which he stood false to his oath as an Eternal and to everything in which he had believed. For what? And he was not ashamed. It was that which really rocked him. He was not ashamed. He felt no guilt for the crescendo of crimes he had committed, to which this latest addition of the unethical use of confidential Life-Plotting could rank only as a peccadillo.

He would do worse than his worst if he had to. For the first time the specific and express thought came to him. And though he pushed it away in horror, he knew that, having once come, it would return. Page 9 The thought was simply this: That he would ruin Eternity, if he had to. The worst of it was that he knew he had the power to do it. It had been very simple once. There were such things as ideals, or at least catchwords, to live by and for. First, there was the period of fifteen years in which he was not an Eternal at all, but only an inhabitant of Time.

Only a human being out of Time, a Timer, could become an Eternal; no one could be born into the position. At the age of fifteen he was chosen by a careful process of elimination and winnowing, the nature of which he had no conception of at the time. He was taken beyond the veil of Eternity after a last agonized farewell to his family. Even then it was made clear to him that whatever else happened he would never return. The true reason for that he was not to learn till long afterward.

Once within Eternity, he spent ten years in school as a Cub, and then graduated to enter his third period as observer. It was only after that that he became a Specialist and a true Eternal. He, Harlan, had gone through it all so neatly. He might say, successfully. School done, Cubhood over, he was standing with the five who completed training with him, hands clasped in the small of his back, legs a trifle apart, eyes front, listening.

Educator Yarrow was at a desk talking to them. Harlan could remember Yarrow well: a small, intense man, with ruddy hair in disarray, freckled forearms, and a look of loss in his eyes. Cold, objective facts uncolored by your own opinions and likings, you understand.

Facts accurate enough to be fed into Computing machines. Facts definite enough to make the social equations stand up. Facts honest enough to form a basis for Reality Changes. Your period as Observer is not something to get through with as quickly and as unobtrusively as possible. It is as an Observer that you will make your mark. Not what you did in school, but what you will do as an Observer will determine your Specialty and how high you will rise in it.

This will be your post-graduate course, Eternals, and failure in it, even small failure, will put you into Maintenance no matter how brilliant your potentialities now seem.

That is all. For the first time he would be working unsupervised, and knowledge of that fact robbed him of some of his self-assurance when he first reported to the Computer in charge of the Section. That was Assistant Computer Hobbe Finge, whose pursed, suspicious mouth and frowning eyes seemed ludicrous in such a face as his.

He had a round button of a nose, two larger buttons of cheeks. He needed only a touch of red and a fringe of white hair to be converted into the picture of the Primitive myth of St. Harlan knew all three names. He doubted if one Eternal out of a hundred thousand had heard of anyone of them. Harlan took a secret, shamefaced pride in this sort of arcane knowledge. From his earliest days in school he had ridden the hobbyhorse of Primitive history, and Educator Yarrow had encouraged it.

Harlan had grown actually fond of those odd, perverted Centuries that lay, not only before the beginning of Eternity in the 27th, but even before the invention of the Temporal Field, itself, in the 24th. He had used old books and periodicals in his studies.

He had even traveled far downwhen to the earliest Centuries of Eternity, when he could get permission, to consult better sources. For over fifteen years he had managed to collect a remarkable library of his own, almost all in print-on-paper.

There was a volume by a man called H. Wells, another by a man named W. Shakespeare, some tattered histories. Best of all there was a complete set of bound volumes of a Primitive news weekly that took up inordinate space but that he could not, out of sentiment, bear to reduce to micro-film.

Occasionally he would lose himself in a world where life was life and death, death; where a man made his decisions irrevocably; where evil could not be prevented, nor good promoted, and the Battle of Page 11 Waterloo, having been lost, was really lost for good and all.

There was even a scrap of poetry he treasured which stated that a moving finger having once written could never be lured back to unwrite. And then it was difficult, almost a shock, to return his thoughts to Eternity, and to a universe where Reality was something flexible and evanescent, something men such as himself could hold in the palms of their hands and shake into better shape.

The illusion of St.. Nicholas shattered when Hobbe Finge spoke to him in a brisk, matter-of-fact way. I want it good, thorough, and to the point. There will be no slackness permitted.

Your first spatio-temporal chart will be ready for you tomorrow morning. Got it? He decided as early as that that he and Assistant Computer Hobbe Finge would not get along, and he regretted it. The next morning Harlan got his chart in intricately punched patterns as they emerged from the Computaplex. He used a pocket decoder to translate them into Standard Intertemporal in his anxiety to make not even the smallest mistake at the very beginning. Of course, he had reached the stage where he could read the perforations direct.

The chart told him where and when in the world of the nd Century he might go and where he might not; what he could do and what he could not; what he must avoid at all costs. His presence must impinge only upon those places and times where it would not endanger Reality.

The nd was not a comfortable Century for him. It was not like his own austere and conformist homewhen. It was an era without ethics or principles, as he was accustomed to think of such. It was hedonistic, materialistic, more than a little matriarchal. It was the only era he checked this in the records in the most painstaking way in which ectogenic birth flourished and, at its peak, 40 per cent of its women gave eventual birth by merely contributing a fertilized ovum to the ovaria.

Marriage was made and unmade by mutual consent and was not recognized legally as anything more than a personal agreement without binding force. Union for the sake of childbearing was, of course, carefully differentiated from the social functions of marriage and was arranged on purely eugenic principles. In a hundred ways Harlan thought the society sick and therefore hungered for a Reality Change. More than once it occurred to him that his own presence in the Century, as a man not of that time, could fork its history.

If his disturbing presence could only be made disturbing enough at some key point, a different branch of possibility would become Teal, a branch in which millions of pleasure-seeking women would find themselves transformed into true, pure-hearted mothers.

They would be in another Reality with all the memories that belonged with it, unable to tell, dream, or fancy that they had ever been anything else. Unfortunately, to do that, he would have to step outside the bounds of the spatio-temporal chart and that was unthinkable. It could be made worse. Only careful analysis and Computing could properly pin-point the nature of a Reality change.

Outwardly, whatever his private opinions, Harlan remained an Observer, and the ideal Observer was merely a set of sense-perceptive nerve patches attached to a report-writing mechanism. Between perception and report there must be no intervention of emotion.

Page 12 Assistant Computer Finge called him in after his second weekly report. But what do you really think? Surely this Century disturbs you. The last three Reality Changes in the aboutwhen have accentuated that. Eventually, I suppose the matter should be rectified.

Extremes are never healthy. Harlan, of course, did have the right and the duty to check those facts. Finge must know that. Every Century was continually being shaken by Reality Changes. No Observations, however painstaking, could ever stand for long without rechecking. It was standard procedure in Eternity to have every Century in a chronic state of being Observed. And to Observe properly, you must be able to present, not only the facts of the current Reality, but also of their relationship to those of previous Realities.

Finge seemed definitely hostile. Why do you ask? Vanity and caution battled and the former won. At school? On my own. It can be studied in detail whereas the Centuries of Eternity are always changing. We would see a great deal we would miss if we just scanned the film as it went past. I think that helps me a great deal with my work. Harlan was not sure whether to regret the whole matter or to regard it as a possible way of speeding his own advancement.

His own feeling for Finge approached something like detestation thereafter. He was expecting a change in assignment. His final summary had been prepared days before. The nd was anxious to export more cellulose-base textiles to Centuries which were deforested, such as the th, but were unwilling to accept smoked fish in return.

A long list of such items was contained in due order and with due analysis. He took the draft of the summary with him. But no mention of the nd was made. Instead Finge introduced him to a withered and wrinkled little man, with sparse white hair and a gnomelike face that throughout the interview was stamped with a perpetual smile. It varied between extremes of anxiety and joviality but never quite disappeared.

Between two of his yellow-stained fingers lay a burning cigarette. So this is the young man who writes those excellent reports? Laban Twissell was a legend, a living myth. Laban Twissell was a man he should have recognized at once. He was the outstanding Computer in Eternity. He was the dean of the Allwhen Council.

He had directed more Reality Changes than any men in the history of Eternity. He nodded his head with a doltish grin and said nothing. Twissell put his cigarette to his lips, puffed quickly, and took it away. I want to talk to the boy. There is nothing to be nervous about. It is always disconcerting to find that someone you have thought of as a giant is actually less than five and a half feet tall. Could the brain of a genius actually fit behind the retreating, bald-smooth forehead?

Was it sharp intelligence or only good humor that beamed out of the little eyes that screwed up into a thousand wrinkles. The cigarette seemed to obscure what small scrabble of intelligence he could collect. He flinched visibly as a puff of smoke reached him. My speech of ten-millennial is over than perfect. But having made his point to his own satisfaction, apparently, he shifted to Intertemporal and remained there.

Smoking is approved of hardly anywhen in history. In fact, good cigarettes are made only in the 72nd and mine have to be specially imported from there. I give you that hint in case you ever become a smoker. It is all very sad. Last week, I was stuck in the rd for two days. No smoking. I mean, even in the Section of Eternity devoted to the rd.

The Eternals there have picked up the mores. If I lit a cigarette it would have been like the sky collapsing. Sometimes I think I should like to calculate one great Reality Change and wipe out all the no-smoking taboos in all the Centuries, except that any Reality Change like that would make for wars in the 58th or a slave society in the lth. Always something. Surely these rattling irrelevancies must be hiding something.

His throat felt a little constricted. You are intuitive. You feel strongly. I think I know your proper position in Eternity and I have come to offer it to you. He held all triumph out of his voice. Whereupon Senior Computer Twissell, having come to the end of his cigarette, produced another in his left hand by some unnoted feat of legerdemain and lit it. Great honor, bah. Say what you feel in plain language.

You should be. How would you like to be a Technician? Sit down. You seem surprised. They expect anything but that. Yet Technicians are hard to find, and are always in demand. Not a Section in Eternity has what it considers enough. So the fools will avoid you and you will feel ostracized.

You will grow used to that. And you will have the satisfaction of knowing you are needed, and needed badly. By me. By you particularly? You will be my personal Technician. You will have special status. How does that sound now? I may not qualify. I need just you. Your reports assure me you have what I need up here. I said it was suitable. He recommended that you be removed from all duties connected with Reality Changes.

You are interested in Primitive history, eh? I told you what was in the report because it hinges on the purpose I need you most for. Actually, the report was confidential and you are to forget I told you what was in it. Permanently, boy. You understand me, boy? It was impossible to avoid picking up psychiatric lingo. That phrase above all. Every member of Eternity was supposed to have a strong drive, the stronger for being officially suppressed in all its manifestations, to return, not necessarily to his own Time, but at least to some one definite Time; to become part of a Century, rather than to remain a wanderer through them all.

Of course in most Eternals the drive remained safely hidden in the unconscious. In fact, I think your hobby is interesting and valuable. I want you to teach a Cub I shall bring to you all you know and all you can learn about Primitive history. In between, you will also be my personal Technician. Is that agreeable? To have official permission to learn all he could about the days before Eternity?

To be personally associated with the greatest Eternal of them all? His caution, however, did not entirely fail him. He threw his cigarette butt from him with such energy that it hit the far wall and bounced off in a shower of sparks. He had time to grow used to his new quarters and to the antisepsis of glass and porcelain. Others smiled disdainfully when that was done and turned colder as though they suspected an attempt to invade their friendship on false pretenses.

Senior Computer Twissell brought him problems daily. Harlan studied them and wrote his analyses in drafts that were four times rewritten, the last version being handed in reluctantly even so. He was despondent over the fact that he was never asked to put any of his own analyses into action. Did that mean that the Computaplex was not checking him, that he had been choosing the wrong item for the induction of a Reality Change, that he did not have the knack of seeing the Minimum Necessary Change in an indicated range?

It was not until later that he grew sufficiently sophisticated to have the phrase come rolling off his tongue as M. The fellow was on the shortish side, with dark hair parted in the middle. His chin was narrow, his eyes an indefinite light brown, his ears a little large, and his fingernails bitten. If you can manage two afternoons a week.

I think that would be fine. Use your own method of teaching him. Eh, boy? Sit down, son. This project was his! Primitive history was something that was all his own. Something too bad to be true? Cooper blushed painfully. How long have you been a Cub?

Fifteen to sixteen was the age of entrance into Eternity. What was this? A new kind of testing of himself on the part of Twissell? Your name in full and your homewhen. That was close. It was only seventeen Centuries downwhen from his own homewhen. Almost a Temporal neighbor. Temporal engineering.

Back in the 78th, I was a Speedy-vac repairman. It might be a suction cleaner, a computing machine, a type of spray painter. Any kind of history? Mostly, of course, they taught us modern history. First thing you do is to forget it. The history they try to teach Timers changes with every Reality Change. Not that they realize that. In each Reality, their history is the only history.

No matter what any of us does, it exists precisely as it has always existed. Columbus and Washington, Mussolini and Hereford, they all exist. He brushed his little finger across his upper lip and for the first time Harlan noticed a trace of bristle there as though the Cub were cultivating a mustache.

I can be your great -great -great -and-so-on -grandfather. Suppose you are? By the time three hours had passed, he was deep in an explanation concerning the reasons why there were Centuries before the 1st Century. Harlan ended by giving the Cub a book, not a good one, really, but one that would serve as a beginning.

On the whole, Harlan decided, it would not be an improvement, that mustache. Cooper began over again. It made me think of home, you know. Twice, I dreamed about my wife. Did they bring your wife across too? Of course, if the Cub were twenty-three years old when he was taken into Eternity, it was quite possible that he might have been married. One thing unprecedented led to another. What was going on? Eternity was too finely balanced an arrangement to endure modification. You have no family.

So I defend them and demand that you accept them? You just hear everyone else talking, is that it? Does it make you feel sophisticated to join in? It makes you a big man? He welcomed the chance to kill that excuse now.

It would be almost a penance. He could say to Cooper: Yes, because of something I have done, this many millions of people are new personalities, but it was necessary and I am proud to have been the cause. Quite a touch, boy. Well, then, was all lost? And because in that sickening moment he was sure all was lost it did not occur to him to run again or to attempt flight into Eternity once more. He would face Finge. Harlan stepped to the door from behind which the laugh had sounded, stepped to it with the soft, firm step of the premeditated murderer.

He flicked loose the automatic door signal and opened it by hand. Two inches. It moved without sound. The man in the next room had his back turned. Then, as though the paralysis that seemed to hold both men in rigor was slowly lifting, the other turned, inch by inch. Harlan never witnessed the completion of that turn.

Its mechanism, not Harlan, closed it soundlessly. January 1, History. An edition of The End of Eternity This edition was published in by Feng huang chu ban chuan mei gu fen you xian gong si , Jiangsu wen yi chu ban she in Nanjing Shi. Written in Chinese — pages. Not in Library. Libraries near you: WorldCat. El fin de la eternidad The End of Eternity Jan 01, , Audiogo. The end of eternity , Tor. The end of eternity , Voyager.

The End of Eternity July 1, , Gollancz. End of Eternity, The September 1, , Spectra. Evrenim canlari , Altin Kitaplar.

El fin de la eternidad , Orbis. The End of Eternity , Granada. The End of Eternity Aug 12, , Fawcett. The end of eternity. The end of eternity , J. The end of eternity , Abelard-Schuman.