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used. The result is an exact copy.
"We in Eternity commandeered the instrument for our own
purposes. At that time, there were only about six or seven hundred
Sections built up. We had plans for expansion, of course. 'Ten new
Sections a physioyear' was one of the slogans of the time. The mass
duplicator made that all unnecessary. We built one new Section
complete with food, power supply, water supply, all the best
automatic features; set up the machine and duplicated the Section
once each Century all along Eternity. I don't know how long they kept
it going--millions of Centuries, probably."
"All like this, Andrew?"
"All exactly like this. And as Eternity expands, we just fill in,
adapting the construction to whatever fashion turns out to be current
in the Century. The only troubles come when we hit an energy-
centered Century. We--we haven't reached this Section yet." (No use
telling her that the Eternals couldn't penetrate into Time here in the
Hidden Centuries. What difference did that make?)
He glanced at her and she seemed troubled. He said hastily,
"There's no waste involved in building the Sections. It took energy,
nothing more, and with the nova to draw on--"
She interrupted. "No. I just don't remember."
"Remember what?"
"You said the duplicator was invented in the 300's. We don't
have it in the 482nd. I don't remember viewing anything about it in
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history."
Harlan grew thoughtful. Although she was within two inches of
being as tall as himself, he suddenly felt giant-size by comparison. She
was a child, an infant, and he was a demigod of Eternity who must
teach her and lead her carefully to the truth.
He said, "Noys, dear, let's find a place to sit down and--and I'll
have to explain something."
The concept of a variable Reality, a Reality that was not fixed
and eternal and immutable was not one that could be faced casually
by anyone.
In the dead of the sleep period, sometimes, Harlan would
remember the early days of his Cubhood and recall the wrenching
attempts to divorce himself from his Century and from Time.
It took six months for the average Cub to learn all the truth, to
discover that he could never go home again in a very literal way. It
wasn't Eternity's law, alone, that stopped him, but the frigid fact that
home as he knew it might very well no longer exist, might, in a sense,
never have existed.
It affected Cubs differently. Harlan remembered Bonky
Latourette's face turning white and gaunt the day Instructor Yarrow
had finally made it unmistakably clear about Reality.
None of the Cubs ate that night. They huddled together in search
of a kind of psychic warmth, all except Latourette, who had
disappeared. There was a lot of false laughter and miserably poor
joking.
Someone said with a voice that was tremulous and uncertain, "I
suppose I never had a mother. If I go back into the 95th, they'd say:
'Who are you? We don't know you. We don't have any records of you.
You don't exist.'"
They smiled weakly and nodded their heads, lonely boys with
nothing left but Eternity.
They found Latourette at bedtime, sleeping deeply and
breathing shallowly. There was the slight reddening of a spray
injection in the hollow of his left elbow and fortunately that was noted
too.
Yarrow was called and for a while it looked as though one Cub
would be out of the course, but he was brought around eventually. A
week later he was back in his seat. Yet the mark of that evil night was
on his personality for as long as Harlan knew him thereafter.
And now Harlan had to explain Reality to Noys Lambent, a girl
not much older than those Cubs, and explain it at once and in full. He
had to. There was no choice about that. She must learn exactly what
faced them and exactly what she would have to do.
He told her. They ate canned meats, chilled fruits, and milk at a
long conference table designed to hold twelve, and there he told her.
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He did it as gently as possible, but he scarcely found need for
gentleness. She snapped quickly at every concept and before he was
half through it was borne in upon him, to his great amazement, that
she wasn't reacting badly. She wasn't afraid. She showed no sense of
loss. She only seemed angry.
The anger reached her face and turned it a glowing pink while
her dark eyes seemed somehow the darker for it.
"But that's criminal," she said. "Who are the Eternals to do
this?"
"It's done for humanity's good," said Harlan. Of course, she
couldn't really understand that. He felt sorry for the Time-bound
thinking of a Timer.
"Is it? I suppose that's how the mass duplicator was wiped out."
"We have copies still. Don't worry about that. We've preserved
it."
"_You've_ preserved it. But what about us? We of the 482nd
might have had it." She gestured with little movements of two
clenched fists.
"It wouldn't have done you good. Look, don't be excited, dear,
and listen." With an almost convulsive gesture (he would have to
learn how to touch her naturally, without making the movement seem
a sheepish invitation to a repulse) he took her hands in his and held
them tightly.
For a moment she tried to free them, and then she relaxed. She
even laughed a bit. "Oh, go ahead, silly, and don't look so solemn. I'm
not blaming you."
"You mustn't blame anyone. There is no blame necessary. We
do what must be done. That mass duplicator is a classic case. I studied
it in school. When you duplicate mass, you can duplicate persons, too.
The problems that arise are very complicated."
"Isn't it up to the society to solve its own problems?"
"It is, but we studied that society throughout Time and it doesn't
solve the problem satisfactorily. Remember that its failure to do so
affects not only itself but all its descendant societies. In fact, there is
no satisfactory solution to the mass-duplicator problem. It's one of
those things like atomic wars and dreamies that just can't be allowed.
Developments are never satisfactory."
"What makes you so sure?"
"We have our Computing machines, Noys; Computaplexes far
more accurate than any ever developed in any single Reality. These
Compute the possible Realities and grade the desirabilities of each
over a summation of thousands and thousands of variables."
"Machines!" She said it with scorn.
Harlan frowned, then relented hastily. "Now don't be like that.
Naturally, you resent learning that life is not as solid as you thought.
You and the world you lived in might have been only a probability
shadow a year ago, but what's the difference? You have all your
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memories, whether they're of probability shadows or not, haven't
you? You remember your childhood and your parents, don't you?"
"Of course."
"Then it's just as if you lived it, isn't it? Isn't it? I mean, whether
you did or not?"
"I don't know. I'll have to think about it. What if tomorrow it's a
dream world again, or a shadow, or whatever you call it?"
"Then there would be a new Reality and a new you with new
memories. It would be just as though nothing had happened, except
that the sum of human happiness would have been increased again." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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