ASSIGNMENT IN ETERNITY — Robert A. Heinlein
ASSIGNMENT IN ETERNITY — Robert A. Heinlein
For Sprague and Catherine
Contents
1. Gulf
2. Elsewhen
3. Lost Legacy
4. Jerry Was a Man
ELSEWHEN
Excerpt from the Evening, STANDARD:
SOUGHT SAVANT EVADES POLICE
City Hall Scandal Looms
Professor Arthur Frost, wanted for questioning in connection with the mysterious disappearance from his home of five of his students, escaped today from under the noses of a squad of police sent to arrest him. Police Sergeant Izowski claimed that Frost disappeared from the interior of the Black Maria under conditions which leave the police puzzled. District Attorney Kames labeled Izowsld’s story as preposterous and promised the fullest possible investigation.
“But, Chief, I didn’t leave him alone for a second!” “Nuts!” answered the Chief of Police. “You claim you put Frost in the Wagon, stopped with one foot on the tailboard to write in your notebook, and when you looked up he was gone. D’yuh expect the Grand Jury to believe that? D’yuh expect me to believe that?”
“Honest, Chief,” persisted Izowski, “I just stopped to write down — ”
“Write down what?”
“Something he said. I said to him, ‘Look, Doc, why don’t you tell us where you hid ’em? You know we’re bound to dig ’em up in time.’ And he just gives me a funny faraway look, and says, Time-ah, time…yes, you could dig them up, in Time.’ I thought it was an important admission and stops to write it down. But I was standing in the only door he could use to get out of the Wagon. You know, I ain’t little;
I kinda fill up a door.”
“That’s all you do,” commented the Chief bitterly. “Izowski, you were either drunk, or crazy-or somebody got to you. The way you tell it, it’s impossible!”
Izowski was honest, nor was he drunk, nor crazy.
Four days earlier Doctor Frost’s class in speculative metaphysics had met as usual for their Friday evening seminar at the professor’s home. Frost was saying, “And why not? Why shouldn’t time be a fifth as well as a fourth dimension?”
Howard Jenkins, hard-headed engineering student, answered, “No harm in speculating, I suppose, but the question is meaningless.”
“Why?” Frost’s tones were deceptively mild.
“No question is meaningless,” interrupted Helen Fisher.
“Oh, yeah? How high is up?”
“Let him answer,” meditated Frost.
“I will,” agreed Jenkins. “Human beings are constituted to perceive three spatial dimensions and one time dimension. Whether there are more of either is meaningless to us for there is no possible way for us to know-ever. Such speculation is a harmless waste of time.”
“So?” said Frost. “Ever run across J. W. Dunne’s theory of serial universe with serial time? And he’s an engineer, like yourself. And don’t forget Ouspensky. He regarded time as multi-dimensional.”
“Just a second, Professor,” put in Robert Monroe. “I’ve seen their writings-but I still think Jenkins offered a legitimate objection. How can the question mean anything to us if we aren’t built to perceive more dimensions? It’s like in mathematics-you can invent any mathematics you like, on any set of axioms, but unless it can be used to describe some sort of phenomena, it’s just so much hot air.”
Fairly put,” conceded Frost. “I’ll give a fair answer. Scientific belief is based on observation, either one’s own or that of a competent observer. I believe in a two-dimensional time because I have actually observed it.”
The clock ticked on for several seconds.
Jenkins said, “But that is impossible. Professor. You aren’t built to observe two time dimensions.”
“Easy, there…” answered Frost. “I am built to perceive them one at a time-and so are you. I’ll tell you about it, but before I do so, I must explain the theory of time I was forced to evolve in order to account for my experience.
Most people think of time as a track that they run on from birth to death as inexorably as a train follows its rails-they feel instinctively that time follows a straight line, the past lying behind, the future lying in front. Now I have reason to believe-to know-that time is analogous to a surface rather than a line, and a rolling hilly surface at that. Think of this track we follow over the surface of time as a winding road cut through hills. Every little way the road branches and the branches follow side canyons. At these branches the crucial decisions of your life take place. You can turn right or left into entirely different futures. Occasionally there is a switchback where one can scramble up or down a bank and skip over a few thousand or million years-if you don’t have your eyes so fixed on the road that you miss the short cut.