The End of Eternity Read Online Free PDF Page A

less than five and a half feet tall. Could the brain of a genius actually fit behind the retreating, bald-smooth forehead? Was it sharp intelligence or only good humor that beamed out of the little eyes that screwed up into a thousand wrinkles?
    Harlan didn’t know what to think. The cigarette seemed to obscure what small scrabble of intelligence he could collect. He flinched visibly as a puff of smoke reached him.
    Twissell’s eyes narrowed as though he were trying to peer through the smoke haze and he said in horribly accented tenth-millennial dialect, “Will you petter feel if I in your yourself dialect should speech, poy?”
    Harlan, brought to the sudden brink of hysterical laughter, said carefully, “I speak Standard Intertemporal quite well, sir.” He said it in the Intertemporal he and all other Eternals in his presence had used ever since his first months in Eternity.
    “Nonsense,” said Twissell imperiously. “I do not bother of Intertemporal. My speech of ten-millennial is over than perfect.”
    Harlan guessed that it had been some forty years since Twissell had had to make use of localwhen dialects.
    But having made his point to his own satisfaction, apparently, he shifted to Intertemporal and remained there. He said, “I would offer you a cigarette, but I am certain you don’t smoke. Smoking is approved of hardly anywhen in history. In fact, good cigarettes are made only in the 72nd and mine have to be specially imported from there. I give you that hint in case you ever become a smoker. It is all very sad. Last week, I was stuck in the 123rd for two days. No smoking. I mean,even in the Section of Eternity devoted to the 123rd. The Eternals there have picked up the
mores.
If I lit a cigarette it would have been like the sky collapsing. Sometimes I think I should like to calculate one great Reality Change and wipe out all the no-smoking taboos in all the Centuries, except that any Reality Change like that would make for wars in the 58th or a slave society in the 1000th. Always something.”
    Harlan was first confused, then anxious. Surely these rattling irrelevancies must be hiding something.
    His throat felt a little constricted. He said, “May I ask why you’ve arranged to see me, sir?”
    “I like your reports, boy.”
    There was a veiled glimmer of joy in Harlan’s eyes, but he did not smile. “Thank you, sir.”
    “It has a touch of the artist. You are intuitive. You feel strongly. I think I know your proper position in Eternity and I have come to offer it to you.”
    Harlan thought: I can’t believe this.
    He held all triumph out of his voice. “You do me great honor, sir,” he said.
    Whereupon Senior Computer Twissell, having come to the end of his cigarette, produced another in his left hand by some unnoted feat of legerdemain and lit it. He said between puffs, “For Time’s sake, boy, you talk as though you rehearsed lines. Great honor, bah. Piffle. Trash. Say what you feel in plain language. You’re glad, hey?”
    “Yes, sir,” said Harlan cautiously.
    “All right. You should be. How would you like to be a Technician?”
    “A Technician!” cried Harlan, leaping from his seat.
    “Sit down. Sit down. You seem surprised.”
    “I hadn’t expected to be a Technician, Computer Twissell.”
    “No,” said Twissell dryly, “somehow no one ever does. They expect anything but that. Yet Technicians are hard tofind, and are always in demand. Not a Section in Eternity has what it considers enough.”
    “I don’t think I’m suited.”
    “You mean you’re not suited to take a job with trouble in it. By Time, if you are devoted to Eternity, as I believe you are, you won’t mind that. So the fools will avoid you and you will feel ostracized. You will grow used to that. And you will have the satisfaction of knowing you are needed, and needed badly. By
me.
”
    “By you, sir? By you particularly?”
    “Yes.” An element of shrewdness entered the old man’s smile. “You are not to be