Outside it was a chill March night.
Noys stared thoughtfully into the smooth paraboloid interior of the Radiant as it slowly rotated. She said, "Andrew, what are your plans?"
"Tomorrow morning," he said, "I'll leave for the nearest town. I know where it is-or should be." (He changed it back to "is" in his mind. There would be no trouble. Twissell's logic again.)
"I'll come with you, won't I?"
He shook his head. "You can't speak the language, for one thing, and the trip will be difficult enough for one to negotiate."
Noys looked strangely archaic in her short hair and the sudden anger in her eyes made Harlan look away uneasily.
She said, "I'm no fool, Andrew. You scarcely speak to me. You don't look at me. What is it? Is your homewhen morality taking hold? Do you feel you have betrayed Eternity and are you blaming me for that? Do you feel I have corrupted you? What is it?"
He said, "You don't know what I feel."
She said, "Then describe it. You might as well. You'll never have a chance as good as this one. Do you feel love? For me? You couldn't or you wouldn't be using me as a scapegoat. Why did you bring me here? Tell me. Why not have left me in Eternity since you have no use for me here and since it seems you can hardly bear the sight of me?"
Harlan muttered, "There's danger."
"Oh, come now."
"It's more than danger. It's a nightmare. Computer Twissell's nightmare," said Harlan. "It was during our last panicky flash upwhen into the Hidden Centuries that he told me of thoughts he had had concerning those Centuries. He speculated on the possibility of evolved varieties of man, new species, supermen perhaps, hiding in the far upwhen, cutting themselves off from our interference, plotting to end our tamperings with Reality. He thought it was they who built the barrier across the 100,000th. Then we found you, and Computer Twissell abandoned his nightmare. He decided there had never been a barrier. He returned to the more immediate problem of salvaging Eternity.
"But I, you see, had been infected by his nightmare. I had experienced the barrier, so I knew it existed. No Eternal had built it, for Twissell said such a thing was theoretically impossible. Maybe Eternity's theories didn't go far enough. The barrier was there. Someone had built it. Or something.
"Of course," he went on thoughtfully, "Twissell was wrong in some ways. He felt that man must evolve, but that's not so. Paleontology is not one of the sciences that interest Eternals, but it interested the late Primitives, so I picked up a bit of it myself. I know this much: species evolve only to meet the pressures of new environments. In a stable environment, a species may remain unchanged for millions of Centuries. Primitive man evolved rapidly because his environment was a harsh and changing one. Once, however, mankind learned to create his own environment, he created a pleasant and stable one, so he just naturally stopped evolving."
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Noys, sounding not the least mollified, "and you're not saying anything about us, which is what I want to talk about."
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?"