Harlan's finger trembled on the blaster's contact point. Yet he hesitated. Something irrational within him could still plead her case and point up the remnants of his own futile love and longing. Was she desperate at his rejection of her? Was she deliberately courting death by lying? Was she indulging in foolish heroics born of despair at his doubts of her?
No!_
The book-films of the sickly-sweet literary traditions of the 289th might have it so, but not a girl like Noys. She was not one to meet her death at the hands of a false lover with the joyful masochism of a broken, bleeding lily.
Then was she scornfully denying his ability to kill her for any reason whatever? Was she confidently relying on the attraction she knew she had for him even now, certain that it would immobilize him, freeze him in weakness and shame.
That hit too closely. His finger clamped a bit harder on the contact.
Noys spoke again. "You're waiting. Does that mean you expect me to enter a brief for the defense?"
"What defense?" Harlan tried to make that scornful, yet he welcomed the diversion. It could postpone the moment when he must look down upon her blasted body, upon whatever remnants of bloody flesh might remain, and know that what had been done to his beautiful Noys had been done by his own hand.
He found excuses for his delay. He thought feverishly: Let her talk. Let her tell what she can about the Hidden Centuries. So much better protection for Eternity.
It put a front of firm policy on his action and for the moment he could look at her with as calm a face, almost, as she looked at him.
Noys might have read his mind. She said, "Do you want to know about the Hidden Centuries? If that will be a defense, it is easily done. Would you like to know, for instance, why Earth is empty of mankind after the 150,000th? Would you be interested?"
Harlan wasn't going to plead for knowledge, nor was he going to buy knowledge. He had the blaster. He was very intent on no show of weakness.
He said, "Talk!" and flushed at the little smile which was her first response to his exclamation.
She said, "At a moment in physiotime before Eternity had reached very far upwhen, before it had reached even the 10,000th, we of our Century-and you're right, it was the 111,394th-learned of Eternity's existence. We, toe, had Time-travel, you see, but it was based on a completely different set of postulates than yours, and we preferred to view Time, rather than shifting mass. Furthermore, we dealt with our past only, our downwhen.
"We discovered Eternity indirectly. First, we developed the calculus of Realities and tested our own Reality through it. We were amazed to find we lived in a Reality of rather low probability. It was a serious question. Why such an improbable Reality?… You seem abstracted, Andrew! Are you interested at all?"
Harlan heard her say his name with all the intimate tenderness she had used in weeks past. It should grate on him now, anger him with its cynical faithlessness. And yet it didn't.
He said desperately, "Go on and get it over with, woman."
He tried to balance the warmth of her "Andrew" with the chill anger of his "woman" and yet she only smiled again, pallidly.
She said, "We searched back through time and came across the growing Eternity. It seemed obvious to us almost at once that there had been at one point in physiotime (a conception we have also, but under another name) another Reality. The other Reality, the one of maximum probability we call the Basic State. The Basic State had encompassed us once, or had encompassed our analogues, at least. At the time we could not say what the nature of the Basic State was. We could not possibly know.
"We did know, however, that some Change initiated by Eternity in the far downwhen had managed, through the workings of statistical chance, to alter the Basic State all the way up to our Century and beyond. We set about determining the nature of the Basic State, intending to undo the evil, if evil it was. First we set up the quarantined area you call the Hidden Centuries, isolating the Eternals on the downwhen side of the 70,000th. This armor of isolation would affect us from all but a vanishingly small percentage of the Changes being made. It wasn't absolute security but it gave us time.
"We next did something our culture and ethics did not ordinarily allow us to do. We investigated our own future, our upwhen. We learned the destiny of man in the Reality that actually existed in order that we might compare it eventually with Basic State. Somewhere past the 125,000th, mankind solved the secret of the interstellar drive. They learned how to manage the Jump through hyperspace. Finally, mankind could reach the stars."
Harlan was listening in growing absorption to her measured words. How much truth was there in all this? How much was a calculated attempt to deceive him? He tried to break the spell by speaking, by breaking the smooth flow of her sentences. He said:
"And once they could reach the stars, they did so and left the Earth. Some of us have guessed that."
"Then some of you have guessed wrong. Man tried to leave Earth. Unfortunately, however, we are not alone in the Galaxy. There are other stars with other planets, you know. There are even other intelligences. None, in this Galaxy at least, are as ancient as mankind, but in the 125,000 Centuries man remained on Earth, younger minds caught up and passed us, developed the interstellar drive, and colonized the Galaxy.
"When we moved out into space, the signs were up. _Occupied! No Trespassing! Clear Out!_ Mankind drew back its exploratory feelers, remained at home. But now he knew Earth for what it was: a prison surrounded by an infinity of freedom… And mankind died out!"
Harlan said, "Just died out. Nonsense."
"They didn't just die out. It took thousands of Centuries. There were ups and downs but, on the whole, there was a loss of purpose, a sense of futility, a feeling of hopelessness that could not be overcome. Eventually there was one last decline of the birth rate and finally, extinction. Your Eternity did that."
Harlan could defend Eternity now, the more intensely and extravagantly for having so shortly before attacked it so keenly. He said, "Let us at the Hidden Centuries and we will correct that. We have not failed yet to achieve the greatest good in those Centuries we could reach."
"The greatest good?" asked Noys in a detached tone that seemed to make a mockery of the phrase. "What is that? Your machines tell you. Your Computaplexes. But who adjusts the machines and tells them what to weigh in the balance? The machines do not solve problems with greater insight than men do, only faster. Only faster! Then what is it the Eternals consider good? I'll tell you. Safety and security. Moderation. Nothing in excess. No risks without overwhelming certainty of an adequate return."
Harlan swallowed. With sudden force he remembered Twissell's words in the kettle while talking about the evolved men of the Hidden Centuries. He said: "_We bred out the unusual_."
And wasn't it so?
"Well," said Noys, "you seem to be thinking. Think of this, then. In the Reality that now exists, why is it that man is continually attempting space-travel and continually failing? Surely each space-travel era must know of previous failures. Why try again, then?"
Harlan said, "I haven't studied the matter." But he thought uneasily of the colonies on Mars, established again and again, always failing. He thought of the odd attraction that space-flight always had, even for Eternals. He could hear Sociologist Kantor Voy of the 2456th, sighing at the loss of electro-gravitic space-flight in one Century, and saying longingly: "_It had been very beautiful_." And Life-Plotter Neron Feruque, who had sworn bitterly at its passing and had launched into a fit of railing at Eternity's handling of anti-cancer serums to case his spirit.
Was there such a thing as an instinctive yearning on the part of intelligent beings to expand outward, to reach the stars, to leave the prison of gravity behind? Was it that which forced man to develop interplanetary travel dozens of times, forced him to travel over and over again to the dead worlds of a solar system in which only Earth was livable? Was it the eventual failure, the knowledge that one must return to the home prison, that brought about the maladjustments that Eternity was forever fighting. Harlan thought of the drug addiction in those same futile Centuries of the electro-gravitics.