And the silence was piercing.
It took a moment for the significance to penetrate. Just a moment. The Summator had ceased its inner clucking.
Harlan jumped up. "You have the answer, Life-Plotter."
Feruque looked down at the flimsies in his hand. "Yeah. Sure. Sort of funny."
"May I have it?" Harlan held out his hand. It was trembling visibly.
"There's nothing to see. That's what's funny."
"What do you mean-nothing?" Harlan stared at Feruque with eyes that suddenly smarted till there was only a tall, thin blur where Feruque stood.
The Life-Plotter's matter-of-fact voice sounded thin. "The dame doesn't exist in the new Reality. No personality shift. She's just out, that's all. Gone. I ran the alternatives down to Probability 0.0001. She doesn't make it anywhere. In fact"-and he reached up to rub his cheek with long, spare fingers-"with the combination of factors you handed me I don't quite see how she fit in the old Reality."
Harlan hardly heard "But-but the Change was such a small one."
"I know. A funny combination of factors. Here, you want the flimsies?"
Harlan's hand closed over them, unfeeling. Noys gone? Noys nonexistent? How could that be?
He felt a hand on his shoulder and Voy's voice clashed on his ear. "Are you ill, Technician?" The hand drew away as though it already regretted its careless contact with a Technician's body.
Harlan swallowed and with an effort composed his features. "I'm quite well. Would you take me to the kettle?"
He _must not_ show his feelings. He must act as though this were what he represented it to be, a mere academic investigation. He must disguise the fact that with Noys's nonexistence in the new Reality he was almost physically overwhelmed by a flood of pure elation, unbearable joy.
7. Prelude to Crime
Harlan stepped into the kettle at the 2456th and looked backward to make certain that the barrier that separated the shaft from Eternity was truly flawless; that Sociologist Voy was not watching. In these last weeks it had grown to be a habit with him, an automatic twitch; there was always the quick backward glance across the shoulder to make sure no one was behind him in the kettle shafts.
And then, though already in the 2456th, it was for upwhen that Harlan set the kettle controls. He watched the numbers on the temporometer rise. Though they moved with blurry quickness, there would be considerable time for thought.
How the Life-Plotter's finding changed matters! How the very nature of his crime had changed!
And it had all hinged on Finge. The phrase caught at him with its ridiculous rhyme and its heavy beat circled dizzyingly inside his skulclass="underline" It hinged on Finge. It hinged on Finge…
Harlan had avoided any personal contact with Finge on his return to Eternity after those days with Noys in the 482nd. As Eternity closed in about him, so did guilt. A broken oath of office, which seemed nothing in the 482nd, was enormous in Eternity.
He had sent in his report by impersonal air-chute and took himself off to personal quarters. He needed to think this out, gain time to consider and grow accustomed to the new orientation within himself.
Finge did not permit it. He was in communication with Harlan less than an hour after the report had been coded for proper direction and inserted into the chute.
The Computer's image stared out of the vision plate. His voice said, "I expected you to be in your office."
Harlan said, "I delivered the report, sir. It doesn't matter where I wait for a new assignment."
"Yes?" Finge scanned the roll of foil he held in his hands, holding it up, squint-eyed, and peering at its perforation pattern.
"It is scarcely complete," he went on. "May I visit your rooms?"
Harlan hesitated a moment. The man was his superior and to refuse the self-invitation at this moment would have a flavor of insubordination. It would advertise his guilt, it seemed, and his raw, painful conscience dared not permit that.
"You will be welcome, Computer," he said stiffly.
Finge's sleek softness introduced a jarring element of epicureanism into Harlan's angular quarters. The 95th, Harlan's homewhen, tended toward the Spartan in house furnishings and Harlan had never completely lost his taste for the style. The tubular metal chairs had been surfaced with a dull veneer that had been artificially grained into the appearance of wood (though not very successfully). In one corner of the room was a small piece of furniture that represented an even wider departure from the customs of the times.
It caught Finge's eye almost at once.
The Computer put a pudgy finger on it, as though to test its texture. "What is this material?"
"Wood, sir," said Harlan.
"The real thing? Actual wood? Amazing! You use wood in your homewhen, I believe?"
"We do."
"I see. There's nothing in the rules against this, Technician"-he dusted the finger with which he had touched the object against the side seam of his trouser leg-"but I don't know that it's advisable to allow the culture of the homewhen to affect one. The true Eternal adopts whatever culture he is surrounded by. I doubt, for instance, if I have eaten out of an energic utensil more than twice in five years." He sighed. "And yet to allow food to touch matter has always seemed unclean. But I don't give in. I don't give in."
His eyes returned to the wooden object, but now he held both hands behind his back, and said, "What is it? What is its purpose?"
"It's a bookcase," said Harlan. He had the impulse to ask Finge how he felt now that his hands rested firmly upon the small of his back. Would he not consider it cleaner to have his clothes and his own body constructed of pure and undefiled energy fields?
Finge's eyebrows lifted. "A bookcase. Then those objects resting upon the shelves are books. Is that right?"
"Yes, sir."
"Authentic specimens?"
"Entirely, Computer. I picked them up in the 24th. The few I have here date from the 20th. If-if you intend to look at them, I wish you'd be careful. The pages have been restored and impregnated, but they're not foil. They take careful handling."
"I won't touch them. I have no intention of touching them. Original 20th Century dust is on them, I imagine. Actual books!" He laughed. "Pages of cellulose, too? You implied that."
Harlan nodded. "Cellulose modified by the impregnation treatment for longer life. Yes." He opened his mouth for a deep breath, forcing himself to remain calm. It was ridiculous to identify himself with these books, to feel a slur upon them to be a slur upon himself.
"I dare say," said Finge, still on the subject, "that the whole content of those books could be placed on two meters of film and stored in a finger's end. What do the books contain?"
Harlan said, "They are bound volumes of a news magazine of the 20th."
"You read that?"
Harlan said proudly, "These are a few volumes of the complete collection I have. No library in Eternity can duplicate it."
"Yes, your hobby. I remember now you once told me about your interest in the Primitive. I'm amazed your Educator ever allowed you to grow interested in such a thing. A complete waste of energy."
Harlan's lips thinned. The man, he decided, was deliberately trying to irritate him out of possession of calm reasoning faculties. If so, he must not be allowed to succeed.
Harlan said flatly, "I think you've come to see me about my report."
"Yes, I have." The Computer looked about, selected a chair, and sat down gingerly. "It is not complete, as I said over the communicator."