Noys said, "In ironing out the disasters of Reality, Eternity rules out the triumphs as well. It is in meeting the great tests that mankind can most successfully rise to great heights. Out of danger and restless insecurity comes the force that pushes mankind to newer and loftier conquests. Can you understand that? Can you understand that in averting the pitfalls and miseries that beset man, Eternity prevents men from finding their own bitter and better solutions, the real solutions that come from conquering difficulty, not avoiding it."
Harlan began woodenly, "The greatest good of the greatest number--"
Noys cut in. "Suppose Eternity had never been established?"
"Well?"
"I'll tell you what would have happened. The energies that went into temporal engineering would have gone into nucleonics instead. Eternity would not have come but the interstellar drive would. Man would have reached the stars more than a hundred thousand Centuries before he did in this current Reality. The stars would then have been untenanted and mankind would have established itself throughout the Galaxy. We would have been first."
"And what would have been gained?" asked Harlan doggedly. "Would we be happier?"
"Whom do you mean by 'we'? Man would not be a world but a million worlds, a billion worlds. We would have the infinite in our grasp. Each world would have its own stretch of the Centuries, each its own values, a chance to seek happiness after ways of its own in an environment of its own. There are many happinesses, many goods, infinite variety… That is the Basic State of mankind."
"You're guessing," said Harlan, and he was angry at himself for feeling attraction for the picture she had conjured. "How can you tell what would have happened?"
Noys said, "You smile at the ignorance of the Timers who know only one Reality. We smile at the ignorance of the Eternals who think there are many Realities but that only one exists at a time."
"What does that gibberish mean?"
"We don't calculate alternate Realities. We view them. We see them in their state of non-Reality."
"A kind of ghostly never-never land where the might-have-beens play with the ifs."
"Without the sarcasm, yes."
"And how do you do that?"
Noys paused, then said, "How can I explain that, Andrew? I have been educated to know certain things without really understanding all about them, just as you have. Can you explain the workings of a Computaplex? Yet you know it exists and works."
Harlan flushed. "Well, then?"
Noys said, "We learned to view Realities and we found Basic State to be as I have described. We found, too, the Change that had destroyed Basic State. It was not any Change that Eternity had initiated; it was the establishment of Eternity itself-the mere fact of its existence. Any system like Eternity, which allows men to choose their own future, will end by choosing safety and mediocrity, and in such a Reality the stars are out of reach. The mere existence of Eternity at once wiped out the Galactic Empire. To restore it, Eternity must be done away with.
"The number of Realities is infinite. The number of any subclass of Realities is also infinite. For instance, the number of Realities containing Eternity is infinite; the number in which Eternity does not exist is infinite; the number in which Eternity does exist but is abolished is also infinite. But my people chose from among the infinite a group that involved me.
"I had nothing to do with that. They educated me for my job as Twissell and yourself educated Cooper for his job. But the number of Realities in which I was the agent in destroying Eternity was also infinite. I was offered a choice among five Realities that seemed least complex. I chose this one, the one involving you, the only Reality system involving you."
Harlan said, "Why did you choose it?"
Noys looked away. "Because I loved you, you see. I loved you long before I met you."
Harlan was shaken. She said it with such depths of sincerity. He thought, sickly: She's an actress- He said, "That's rather ridiculous."
"Is it? I studied the Realities at my disposal. I studied the Reality in which I went back to the 482nd, met first Finge, then you. The one in which you came to me and loved me, in which you took me into Eternity and the far upwhen of my own Century, in which you misdirected Cooper, and in which you and I, together, returned to the Primitive. We lived in the Primitive for the rest of our days. I saw our lives together and they were happy and I loved you. So it's not ridiculous at all. I chose this alternative so that our love might be true."
Harlan said, "All this is false. It's false. How can you expect me to believe you?" He stopped, then said suddenly, "Wait! You say you knew all this in advance? All that would happen?"
"Yes."
"Then you're obviously lying. You would have known that I would have you here at blaster point. You would have known you would fail. What is your answer to that?"
She sighed lightly, "I told you there are an infinite number of any subclass of Realities. No matter how finely we focus on a given Reality it always represents an infinite number of very similar Realities. There are fuzzy spots. The finer we focus, the less fuzzy, but perfect sharpness cannot be obtained. The less fuzzy, the lower the probability of chance variation spoiling the result, but the probability is never absolutely zero. One fuzzy spot spoiled things."
"Which?"
"You were to have come back to the far upwhen after the barrier at the 100,000th had been lowered and you did. But you were to have come back alone. It is for that reason that I was momentarily so startled at seeing Computer TwisseIl with you."
Again Harlan was troubled. How she made things fit in!
Noys said, "I would have been even more startled, had I realized the significance of that alteration in full. Had you come alone, you would have brought me back to the Primitive as you did. Then, for love of humanity, for love of me, you would have left Cooper untouched. Your circle would have been broken, Eternity ended, our life together here safe.
"But you came with Twissell, a chance variation. While coming, he talked to you of his thoughts about the Hidden Centuries and started you on a train of deductions that ended with your doubting my good faith. It ended with a blaster between us… And now, Andrew, that's the story. You may blast me. There is nothing to stop you."
Harlan's hand ached from its spastic grasp on the blaster. He shifted it dizzily to the other hand. Was there no flaw in her story? Where was the resolution he was to have gained from knowing certainly that she was a creature of the Hidden Centuries. He was more than ever tearing at himself in conflict and dawn was approaching.
He said, "Why two efforts to end Eternity? Why couldn't Eternity have ended once and for all when I sent Cooper back to the 20th?" Things would have ended then and there would not have been this agony of uncertainty."
"Because," said Noys, "ending this Eternity is not enough. We must reduce the probability of establishing any form of Eternity to as near zero as we can manage. So there is one thing we must do here in the Primitive. A small Change, a little thing. You know what a Minimum Necessary Change is like. It is only a letter to a peninsula called Italy here in the 20th. It is now the 19.32nd. In a few Centicenturies, provided I send the letter, a man of Italy will begin experimenting with the neutronic bombardment of uranium."
Harlan found himself horrified. "You will alter Primitive history?"
"Yes. It is our intention. In the new Reality, the final Reality, the first nuclear explosion will take place not in the 30th Century but in the 19.45th."