Noys said, "I don't even know what Samson-smash means."
"You can guess very accurately, Noys. Tell me, when did you enter the 482nd? Whom did you replace? Or did you just-squeeze in. I had your Life-Plot worked out by an expert in the 2456th. In the new Reality, you had no existence at all. No analogue. Strange for such a small Change, but not impossible. And then the Life-Plotter said one thing which I heard with my ears but not with my mind. Strange that I should remember it. Perhaps even then, something clanged in my mind, but I was too full of-you to listen. He said: '_with the combination of factors you handed me, I don't quite see how she fit in the old Reality_.'
"He was right. You didn't fit in. You were an invader from the far upwhen, manipulating me and Finge, too, to suit yourself."
Noys said urgently, "Andrew--"
"It all fit in, if I had the eyes to look. A book-film in your house entitled _Social and Economic History_. It surprised me when first I saw it. You needed it, didn't you, to teach you how best to be a woman of the Century. Another item. Our first trip into the Hidden Centuries, remember? _You_ stopped the kettle at the 111,394th. You stopped it with finesse, without fumbling. Where did you learn to control a kettle? If you were what you seemed to be, that would have been your first trip in a kettle. Why the 111,394th, anyway? Was it your homewhen?"
She said softly, "Why did you bring me to the Primitive, Andrew?"
He shouted suddenly, "To protect Eternity. I could not tell what damage you might do there. Here, you are helpless, because I know you. Admit that all I say is true! Admit it!"
He rose in a paroxysm of wrath, arm upraised. She did not flinch. She was utterly calm. She might have been modeled out of warm, beautiful wax. Harlan did not complete his motion.
He said, "Admit it!"
She said, "Are you so uncertain, after all your deductions? What will it matter to you whether I admit it or not."
Harlan felt the wildness mount. "Admit it, anyway, so that I need feel no pain at all. None at all."
"Pain?"
"Because I have a blaster, Noys, and it is my intention to kill you."
18. The Beginning of Infinity
There was a crawling uncertainty inside Harlan, an irresolution that was consuming him. He had the blaster in his hand. It was aimed at Noys.
But why did she say nothing? Why did she persist in this impassive attitude?
How could he kill her?
How could he not kill her?
He said hoarsely, "Well?"
She moved, but it was only to clasp her hands loosely in her lap, to look more relaxed, more aloof. When she spoke her voice seemed scarcely that of a human being. Facing the muzzle of a blaster, it yet gained assurance and took on an almost mystic quality of impersonal strength.
She said, "You cannot wish to kill me only in order to protect Eternity. If that were your desire, you could stun me, tie me firmly, pin me within this cave and then take to your travels in the dawn. Or you might have asked Computer Twissell to keep me in solitary confinement during your absence in the Primitive. Or you might take me with you at dawn, lose me in the wastes. If it is only killing that will satisfy you, it is only because you think that I have betrayed you, that I have tricked you into love first in order that I might trick you into treason later. This is murder out of wounded pride and not at all the just retribution you tell yourself it is."
Harlan squirmed. "Are you from the Hidden Centuries? Tell me."
Noys said, "I am. Will you now blast?"
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.