There was nothing more to be achieved. All was known, all was accomplished. Nakamura’s Law of Spatial Acceleration had proved interplanetary travel to be impossible for all time. Charnwood’s Law of Temporal Metabolism had done the same for time travel. And the Schwarzwalder Compendium, which everyone admired and no one had read, established such a satisfactory and flawless picture of knowledge that it was obviously impossible that anything remained to be discovered.
It was then that Dyce-Farnsworth proclaimed the Stasis of Cosmos. A member of the Anglo-Physical Church, product of the long contemplation by English physicists of the metaphysical aspects of science, he came as the prophet needed to pander to the self-satisfaction of the age.
He was curiously aided by Farthing’s laws of regularity. The article, direct or indirect, Farthing had proved to be completely unnecessary—had not languages as world-dominant as Latin in the first centuries and Russian in the twentyfirst found no need for it?—and semantically misleading. “Article,” he had said in his final and comprehensive study This Bees Speech, “bees prime corruptor of human thinking.”
And thus the statement so beloved in the twentieth century by metaphysical-minded scientists and physical-minded divines, “God is the cosmos,” became with Dyce-Farnsworth, “God bees cosmos,” and hence, easily and inevitably, “God bees Cosmos,” so that the utter scientific impersonality became a personification of Science. Cosmos replaced Jehovah, Baal and Odin.
The love of Cosmos was not man nor his works, but Stasis. Man was tolerated by Cosmos that he might achieve Stasis. All the millennia of human struggle had been aimed at this supreme moment when all was achieved, all was known, and all was perfect. Therefore this supernal Stasis must at all costs be maintained. Since Now was perfect, any alteration must be imperfect and taboo.
From this theory logically evolved the State, whose duty was to maintain the perfect Stasis of Cosmos. No totalitarian government had ever striven so strongly to iron out all doubt and dissension. No religious bigotry had ever found heresy so damnable and worthy of destruction. The Stasis must be maintained.
It was, ironically, the aged Dyce-Farnsworth himself who, in a moment of quasi-mystical intuition, discovered the flaw in Charnwood’s Law of Temporal Metabolism. And it was clear to him what must be done.
Since the Stasis of Cosmos did not practice time travel, any earlier or later civilization that did so must be imperfect. Its emissaries would sow imperfection. There must be a Barrier.
The mystic went no further than that dictum, but the scientists of the State put his demand into practical terms. “Do not ask how at this moment,” Stephen added. “I be not man to explain that. But you will learn.” The first Barrier was a failure. It destroyed itself and to no apparent result. But now, fifty years later, the fears of time travel had grown. The original idea of the imperfection of emissaries had been lost. Now time travel was in itself imperfect and evil. Any action taken against it would be praise to Cosmos. And the new Barrier was being erected.
“But John knows all this,” Martha protested from time to time, and Stephen would shake his head sadly and smile sympathetically at Brent.
“I don’t believe a word of it,” Brent said at last. “Oh, the historical outline’s all right. I trust you on that. And it works out sweetly by analogy. Take the religious fanaticism of the sixteenth century, the smug scientific self-satisfaction of the nineteenth, the power domination of the twentieth—fuse them and you’ve got your State. But the Barrier’s impossible. It can’t work.”
“Charnwood claimed there beed no principle on which time travel can work. And here you be.”
“That’s different,” said Brent vaguely. “But this talk of destroying the Barrier is nonsense. There’s no need to.”
“Indeed there bees need, John. For two reasons: one, that we may benefit by wisdom of travelers from other ages; and two, that positive act of destroying this Barrier, worshipped now with something like fetishism, bees strongest weapon with which we can strike against State. For there be these few of us who hope to save mankind from this fanatical complacency that race haves failed into. George Starvel beed one,” Stephen added sadly.
“I saw Starvel— But that isn’t what I mean. There’s no need because the Barrier won’t work.”
“But you telled us that it haved to be destroyed,” Martha protested. “That it doed work, and that we—”
“Hush,” said Stephen gently. “John, will you trust us far enough to show us your machine? I think I can make matters clearer to Martha then.”
“If you’ll keep me out of the way of Stappers.”
“That we can never guarantee—yet. But day will come when mankind cans forget Stappers and State, that I swear.” There was stern and noble courage in Stephen’s face and bearing as he drained his glass to that pledge.
“I had a break when I landed here,” John Brent explained on the way. “Derringer equipped the machine only for temporal motion. He explained that it meant running a risk; I might find that the coast line had sunk and I’d arrive under water, or God knows what. But he hadn’t worked out the synchronized adjustments for tempospatial motion yet, and he wanted to get started. I took the chance, and luck was good. Where the Derringer lab used to be is now apparently a deserted warehouse. Everything’s dusty and there’s not a sign of human occupation.”
Stephen’s eyes lit up as they approached the long low building of opaque bricks. “Remember, Martha?”
Martha frowned and nodded.
Faint light filtered through the walls to reveal the skeletal outlines of the machine. Brent switched on a light on the panel which gave a dim glow.
“There’s not much to see
