The Instability

ISAAC ASIMOV
Gold, The Final Science Fiction Collection
Part One - The Final Stories

The Instability
Typed by Bateau


Professor Firebrenner had explained it carefully. "Time-perception depends
on the structure of the Universe. When the Universe is expanding, we
experience time as going forward; when it is contracting, we experience it
going backward. If we could somehow force the Universe to be in stasis,
neither expanding nor contracting, time would stand still."
"But you can't put the Universe in stasis," said Mr. Atkins, fascinated.
"I can put a little portion of the Universe in stasis, however." said the
professor. "Just enough to hold a ship. Time will stand still and we can move
forward or backward at will and the entire trip will last less than an instant.
But all the parts of the Universe will move while we stand still, while we are
nailed to the fabric of the Universe. The Earth moves about the Sun, the Sun
moves about the core of the Galaxy, the Galaxy moves about some center of
gravity, _all_ the galaxies move.
"I calculated those motions and I find that 27.5 million years in the future, a
red dwarf star will occupy the position our Sun does now. If we go 27.5
million years into the future, in less than an instant that red dwarf star will be
near our spaceship and we can come home after studying it a bit."
Atkins said, "Can that be done?"
"I've sent experimental animals through time, but I can't make them
automatically return. If you and I go, we can then manipulate the controls so
that we can return."
"And you want me along?"
"Of course. There should be two. Two people would be more easily believed
than one alone. Come, it will be an incredible adventure."
Atkins inspected the ship. It was a 2217 Glennfusion model and looked
beautiful.
"Suppose," he said, "that it lands _inside_ the red dwarf star."
"It won't," said the professor, "but if it does, that's the chance we take."
"But when we get back, the Sun and the Earth will have moved on. We'll be in
space."
"Of course, but how far can the Sun and Earth move in the few hours it will
take us to observe the star? With this ship we will catch up to our beloved
planet. Are you ready, Mr. Atkins?"
"Ready," sighed Atkins.
Professor Firebrenner made the necessary adjustments and nailed the ship to
the fabric of the Universe while 27.5 million years passed. And then, in less
than a flash, time began to move forard again in the usual way, and
everything in the Universe moved forward with it.
Through the viewing port of their ship, Professor Firebrenner and Mr. Atkins
could see the small orb of the red dwarf star.
The professor smiled. "You and I, Atkins," he said, "Are the first ever to see,
close at hand, any star other than our own Sun."
They remained two-and-a-half hours during which they photographed the
star and its spectrum and as many neighbouring stars as they could, made
spcial coronagraphic observations, tested the chemical composition of the
interstellar gas, and then Professor Firebrenner said, rather reluctantly, "I
think we had better go home now."
Again the controls were adjusted and the ship was nailed to the fabric of the
Universe. They went 27.5 million years into the past, and in less than a flash,
they were back where they started.
Space was black. There was nothing. Atkins said, "what happened? Where are
the Earth and Sun?"
The professor frowned. He said, "Going _back_ in time must be different. The
entire Universe must have moved."
"where could it move?"
"I don't know. Other objects shift position within the Universe, but the
Universe as a whole must move in an upper dimensional direction. We are
here in the absolute vacuum, in primeval Chaos."
"But _we're_ here. It's not primeval Chaos anymore."
"Exactly. That means we've introduced and instability at this place where we
exist, and _that_ means--"
Even as he said this, a Big Bang obliterated them. A new Universe came into
being and began to expand.

Eyes do more than see

Copyright © 1965 by Mercury Press, Inc.


After hundreds of billions of years, he suddenly thought of himself
as Ames. Not the wavelength combination which, through all the
universe was now the equivalent of Ames-but the sound itself. A faint
memory came back of the sound waves he no longer heard and no
longer could hear.
The new project was sharpening his memory for so many more of
the old, old, eons-old things. He flattened the energy vortex that made
up the total of his individuality and its lines of force stretched beyond
the stars.
Brock's answering signal came.
Surely, Ames thought, he could tell Brock. Surely he could tell
somebody.
Brock's shifting energy pattern communed, "Aren't you coming,
Ames?"
"Of course."
"Will you take part in the contest?"
"Yes!" Ames's lines of force pulsed erratically. "Most certainly. I
have thought of a whole new art-form. Something really unusual."
"What a waste of effort! How can you think a new variation can be
thought of after two hundred billion years. There can be nothing
new."
For a moment Brock shifted out of phase and out of communion, so
that Ames had to hurry to adjust his lines of force. He caught the drift
of other-thoughts as he did so, the view of the powdered galaxies
against the velvet of nothingness, and the lines of force pulsing in
endless multitudes of energy-life, lying between the galaxies.
Ames said, "Please absorb my thoughts, Brock. Don't close out. I've
thought of manipulating Matter. Imagine! A symphony of Matter.
Why bother with Energy. Of course, there's nothing new in Energy;
how can there be? Doesn't that show we must deal with Matter?"
"Matter!"
Ames interpreted Brock's energy-vibrations as those of disgust.
He said, "Why not? We were once Matter ourselves back-back- Oh, a
trillion years ago anyway! Why not build up objects in a Matter medium,
or abstract forms or-listen, Brock-why not build up an imitation of
ourselves in Matter, ourselves as we used to be?"
Brock said, "I don't remember how that was. No one does."
"I do," said Ames with energy, "I've been thinking of nothing else and
I am beginning to remember. Brock, let me show you. Tell me if I'm
right. Tell me."
"No. This is silly. It's-repulsive."
"Let me try, Brock. We've been friends; we've pulsed energy
together from the beginning-from the moment we became what we
are. Brock, please!"
"Then, quickly."
Ames had not felt such a tremor along his own lines of force in-well, in
how long? If he tried it now for Brock and it worked, he could dare
manipulate Matter before the assembled Energy-beings who had so
drearily waited over the eons for something new.
The Matter was thin out there between the galaxies, but Ames
gathered it, scraping it together over the cubic light-years, choosing
the atoms, achieving a clayey consistency and forcing matter into an
ovoid form that spread out below.
"Don't you remember, Brock?" he asked softly. "Wasn't it something
like this?"
Brock's vortex trembled in phase. "Don't make me remember. I
don't remember."
"That was the head. They called it the head. I remember it so clearly,
I want to say it. I mean with sound." He waited, then said, "Look, do
you remember that?"
On the upper front of the ovoid appeared HEAD.
"What is that?" asked Brock.
"That's the word for head. The symbols that meant the word in
sound. Tell me you remember, Brock!"
"There was something," said Brock hesitantly, "something in the
middle." A vertical bulge formed.
Ames said, "Yes! Nose, that's it!" And NOSE appeared upon it. "And
those are eyes on either side," LEFT EYE-RIGHT EYE.
Ames regarded what he had formed, his lines of force pulsing slowly.
Was he sure he liked this?
"Mouth," he said, in small quiverings, "and chin and Adam's apple,
and the collarbones. How the words come back to me." They appeared
on the form.
Brock said, "I haven't thought of them for hundreds of billions of
years. Why have you reminded me? Why?"
Ames was momentarily lost in his thoughts, "Something else.
Organs to hear with; something for the sound waves. Ears! Where do
they go? I don't remember where to put them!"
Brock cried out, "Leave it alone! Ears and all else! Don't
remember!"
Ames said, uncertainly, "What is wrong with remembering?"
"Because the outside wasn't rough and cold like that but smooth
and warm. Because the eyes were tender and alive and the lips of the
mouth trembled and were soft on mine." Brock's lines of force beat
and wavered, beat and wavered.
Ames said, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"
"You're reminding me that once I was a woman and knew love; that
eyes do more than see and I have none to do it for me."
With violence, she added matter to the rough-hewn head and said,
"Then let them do it" and turned and fled.
And Ames saw and remembered, too, that once he had been a man.
The force of his vortex split the head in two and he fled back across the
galaxies on the energy-track of Brock-back to the endless doom of life.
And the eyes of the shattered head of Matter still glistened with
the moisture that Brock had placed there to represent tears. The head
of Matter did that which the energy-beings could do no longer and it
wept for all humanity, and for the fragile beauty of the bodies they had
once given up, a trillion years ago.

in the future