Harlan managed to remain outwardly unmoved. He said, "Now why the barrier at the 100,000th? What purpose did it serve? You weren't harmed. What other meaning could it have? I asked myself: What happened because of its presence that would not have happened had it been absent?"
He paused, looking at his clumsy and heavy boots of natural leather. It occurred to him that he could add to his comfort by removing them for the night, but not now, not now…
He said, "There was only one answer to that question. The existence of that barrier sent me raving back downwhen to get a neuronic whip, to assault Finge. It fired me to the thought of risking Eternity to get you back and smashing Eternity when I thought I had failed. Do you see?"
Noys stared at him with a mixture of horror and disbelief. "Do you mean the people in the upwhen wanted you to do all that? They planned it?"
"Yes. Don't look at me like that. Yes! And don't you see how it makes everything different? As long as I acted on my own, for reasons of my own, I'll take all the consequences, material and spiritual. But to be fooled into it, to be tricked into it, by people handling and manipulating my emotions as though I were a Computaplex on which it was only necessary to insert the properly perforated foils-"
Harlan realized suddenly that he was shouting and stopped abruptly. He let a few moments pass, then said, "That is impossible to take. I've got to undo what I was marionetted into doing. And when I undo it, I will be able to rest again."
And he would-perhaps. He could feel the coming of an impersonal triumph, dissociated from the personal tragedy which lay behind and ahead. The circle was closing!
Noys's hand reached out uncertainly as though to take his own rigid, unyielding one.
Harlan drew away, avoided her sympathy. He said, "It had all been arranged. My meeting with you. Everything. My emotional make-up had been analyzed. Obviously. Action and response. Push this button and the man will do that. Push that button and he will do this."
Harlan was speaking with difficulty, out of the depths of shame. He shook his head, trying to shake the horror of it away as a dog would water, then went on. "One thing I didn't understand at first. How did I come to guess that Cooper was to be sent back into the Primitive? It was a most unlikely thing to guess. I had no basis. Twissell didn't understand it. More than once he wondered how I could have done it with so little understanding of mathematics.
"Yet I had. The first time was that-that night. You were asleep, but I wasn't. I had the feeling then that there was something I must remember; some remark, some thought, something that I had caught sight of in the excitement and exhilaration of the evening. When I thought long, the whole significance of Cooper sprang into my mind, and along with it the thought entered my mind that I was in a position to destroy Eternity. Later I checked through histories of mathematics, but it was unnecessary really. I already knew. I was certain of it. How? How?"
Noys stared at him intently. She didn't try to touch him now. "Do you mean the men of the Hidden Centuries arranged that, too? They put it all in your mind, then maneuvered you properly?"
"Yes. Yes. Nor are they done. There is still work for them to do. The circle may be closing, but it is not yet closed."
"How can they do anything now? They're not here with us."
"No?" He said the word in so hollow a voice that Noys paled.
"Invisible superthings?" she whispered.
"Not superthings. Not invisible. I told you man would not evolve while he controlled his own environment. The people of the Hidden Centuries are Homo sapiens. Ordinary people."
"Then they're certainly not here."
Harlan said sadly, "You're here, Noys."
"Yes. And you. And no one else."
"You and I," agreed Harlan. "No one else. A woman of the Hidden Centuries and I… Don't act any more, Noys. Please."
She stared at him with horror. "What are you saying, Andrew?"
"What I must say. What were you saying that evening, when you gave me the peppermint drink? You were talking to me. Your soft voice-soft words… I heard nothing, not consciously, but I remember your delicate voice whispering. About what? The downwhen journey of Cooper; the Samson-smash of Eternity. Am I right?"
Noys said, "I don't even know what Samson-smash means."
"You can guess very accurately, Noys. Tell me, when did you enter the 482nd? Whom did you replace? Or did you just-squeeze in. I had your Life-Plot worked out by an expert in the 2456th. In the new Reality, you had no existence at all. No analogue. Strange for such a small Change, but not impossible. And then the Life-Plotter said one thing which I heard with my ears but not with my mind. Strange that I should remember it. Perhaps even then, something clanged in my mind, but I was too full of-you to listen. He said: '_with the combination of factors you handed me, I don't quite see how she fit in the old Reality_.'
"He was right. You didn't fit in. You were an invader from the far upwhen, manipulating me and Finge, too, to suit yourself."
Noys said urgently, "Andrew--"
"It all fit in, if I had the eyes to look. A book-film in your house entitled _Social and Economic History_. It surprised me when first I saw it. You needed it, didn't you, to teach you how best to be a woman of the Century. Another item. Our first trip into the Hidden Centuries, remember? _You_ stopped the kettle at the 111,394th. You stopped it with finesse, without fumbling. Where did you learn to control a kettle? If you were what you seemed to be, that would have been your first trip in a kettle. Why the 111,394th, anyway? Was it your homewhen?"
She said softly, "Why did you bring me to the Primitive, Andrew?"
He shouted suddenly, "To protect Eternity. I could not tell what damage you might do there. Here, you are helpless, because I know you. Admit that all I say is true! Admit it!"
He rose in a paroxysm of wrath, arm upraised. She did not flinch. She was utterly calm. She might have been modeled out of warm, beautiful wax. Harlan did not complete his motion.
He said, "Admit it!"
She said, "Are you so uncertain, after all your deductions? What will it matter to you whether I admit it or not."
Harlan felt the wildness mount. "Admit it, anyway, so that I need feel no pain at all. None at all."
"Pain?"
"Because I have a blaster, Noys, and it is my intention to kill you."
18. The Beginning of Infinity
There was a crawling uncertainty inside Harlan, an irresolution that was consuming him. He had the blaster in his hand. It was aimed at Noys.
But why did she say nothing? Why did she persist in this impassive attitude?
How could he kill her?
How could he not kill her?
He said hoarsely, "Well?"
She moved, but it was only to clasp her hands loosely in her lap, to look more relaxed, more aloof. When she spoke her voice seemed scarcely that of a human being. Facing the muzzle of a blaster, it yet gained assurance and took on an almost mystic quality of impersonal strength.
She said, "You cannot wish to kill me only in order to protect Eternity. If that were your desire, you could stun me, tie me firmly, pin me within this cave and then take to your travels in the dawn. Or you might have asked Computer Twissell to keep me in solitary confinement during your absence in the Primitive. Or you might take me with you at dawn, lose me in the wastes. If it is only killing that will satisfy you, it is only because you think that I have betrayed you, that I have tricked you into love first in order that I might trick you into treason later. This is murder out of wounded pride and not at all the just retribution you tell yourself it is."
Harlan squirmed. "Are you from the Hidden Centuries? Tell me."
Noys said, "I am. Will you now blast?"