The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov Read Free Book Online

“We’ll get through someday. Meanwhile, 70,000 Centuries is quite enough to take care of.”
    It did not sound wholly convincing.
    “What happens to Eternity after the 150,000th?” asked Cooper.
    Harlan sighed. The subject, apparently, was not to be changed. “Nothing,” he said. “The Sections are there but there are no Eternals in it anywhere after the 70,000th. The Sections keep on going for millions of Centuries till all life is gone and past that, too, till the sun becomes a nova, and past that, too. There isn’t any end to Eternity. That’s why it’s called Eternity.”
    “The sun
does
become a nova, then?”
    “It certainly does. Eternity couldn’t exist if that weren’t so. Nova Sol is our power supply. Listen, do you know how much power is required to set up a Temporal Field? Mallansohn’s first Field was two seconds from extreme downwhen to extreme upwhen and big enough to hold not more than a match head and that took a nuclear power plant’s complete output for one day. It took nearly a hundred years to set up a hair-thin Temporal Field far enough upwhen to be able to tap the radiant power of the nova so that a field could be built big enough to hold a man.”
    Cooper sighed. “I wish they would get to the point where they stopped making me learn equations and field mechanics and start telling me some of the interesting stuff. Now if I had lived in Mallansohn’s time—”
    “You would have learned nothing. He lived in the 24th, but Eternity didn’t start till late in the 27th. Inventing theField isn’t the same as constructing Eternity, you know, and the rest of the 24th didn’t have the slightest inkling of what Mallansohn’s invention signified.”
    “He was ahead of his generation, then?”
    “Very much so. He not only invented the Temporal Field, but he described the basic relationships that made Eternity possible and predicted almost every aspect of it except for the Reality Change. Quite closely, too—but I think we’re pulling to a halt, Cooper. After you.”
    They stepped out.
    Harlan had never seen Senior Computer Laban Twissell angry before. People always said that he was incapable of any emotion, that he was an unsouled fixture of Eternity to the point where he had forgotten the exact number of his homewhen Century. People said that at an early age his heart had atrophied and that a hand computer similar to the model he carried always in his trouser pocket had taken its place.
    Twissell did nothing to deny these rumors. In fact most people guessed that he believed them himself.
    So even while Harlan bent before the force of the angry blast that struck him, he had room in his mind to be amazed at the fact that Twissell could display anger. He wondered if Twissell would be mortified in some calmer aftermath to realize that his hand-computer heart had betrayed him by exposing itself as only a poor thing of muscle and valves subject to the twists of emotion.
    Twissell said, in part, his old voice creaking, “Father Time, boy, are you on the Allwhen Council? Do you give the orders around here? Do you tell me what to do or do I tell you what to do? Are you making arrangements for all kettle trips now?”
    He interrupted himself with occasional exclamations of “Answer me,” then continued pouring more questions into the boiling interrogative caldron.
    He said finally, “If you ever get above yourself this wayagain, I’ll have you on plumbing repair and for good. Do you understand me?”
    Harlan, pale with his own gathering embarrassment, said, “I was never told that Cub Cooper was not to be taken on the kettle.”
    The explanation did not act as an emollient. “What kind of an excuse is a double negative, boy? You were never told not to get him drunk. You were never told not to shave him bald. You were never told not to skewer him with a fine-edged Tav curve. Father Time, boy, what
were
you told to do with him?”
    “I was told to teach him Primitive history.”
    “Then do