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repairman.”
    There was no point in asking the nature of a Speedy-vac. It might be a suction cleaner, a computing machine, a type of spray painter. Anything. Harlan wasn’t particularly interested.
    He said, “Do you know anything about history? Any kind of history?”
    “I studied European history.”
    “Your particular political unit, I take it.”
    “I was born in Europe. Yes. Mostly, of course, they taught us modern history. After the revolutions of ’54; 7554, that is.”
    “All right. First thing you do is to forget it. It doesn’t mean anything. The history they try to teach Timers changes with every Reality Change. Not that they realize that. In each Reality, their history is the only history. That’s what’s so different about Primitive history. That’s the beauty of it. No matter what any of us does, it exists precisely as it has always existed. Columbus and Washington, Mussolini and Hereford, they all exist.”
    Cooper smiled feebly. He brushed his little finger across his upper lip and for the first time Harlan noticed a trace of bristle there as though the Cub were cultivating a mustache.
    Cooper said, “I can’t quite—get used to it, all the time I’ve been here.”
    “Get used to what?”
    “Being five hundred Centuries away from homewhen.”
    “I’m nearly that myself. I’m 95th.”
    “That’s another thing. You’re older than I am and yet I’m seventeen Centuries older than you in another way. I can be your great-great-great-and-so-on-grandfather.”
    “What’s the difference? Suppose you are?”
    “Well, it takes getting used to.” There was a trace of rebellion in the Cub’s voice.
    “It does for all of us,” said Harlan callously, and began talking about the Primitives. By the time three hours had passed, he was deep in an explanation concerning the reasons why there were Centuries before the 1st Century.
    (“But isn’t the 1st Century
first?
” Cooper had asked plaintively.)
    Harlan ended by giving the Cub a book, not a good one, really, but one that would serve as a beginning. “I’ll get you better stuff as we go along,” he said.
     
    By the end of a week Cooper’s mustache had become a pronounced dark bristle that made him look ten years older and accentuated the narrowness of his chin. On the whole, Harlan decided, it would not be an improvement, that mustache.
    Cooper said, “I’ve finished your book.”
    “What did you think of it?”
    “In a way—” There was a long pause. Cooper began over again. “Parts of the later Primitive was something like the 78th. It made me think of home, you know. Twice, I dreamed about my wife.”
    Harlan exploded. “Your
wife?
”
    “I was married before I came here.”
    “Great Time! Did they bring your wife across too?”
    Cooper shook his head. “I don’t even know if she’s been Changed in the last year. If she has, I suppose she’s not really my wife now.”
    Harlan recovered. Of course, if the Cub were twenty-three years old when he was taken into Eternity, it was quite possible that he might have been married. One thing unprecedented led to another.
    What was going on? Once modifications were introduced into the rules, it wouldn’t be a long step to the point where everything would decline into a mass of incoherency. Eternity was too finely balanced an arrangement to endure modification.
    It was his anger on behalf of Eternity, perhaps, that put an unintended harshness into Harlan’s next words. “I hope you’re not planning on going back to the 78th to check on her.”
    The Cub lifted his head and his eyes were firm and steady. “No.”
    Harlan shifted uneasily, “Good. You have no family. Nothing. You’re an Eternal and don’t ever think of anyone you knew in Time.”
    Cooper’s lips thinned, and his accent stood out sharply in his quick words. “You’re speaking like a Technician.”
    Harlan’s fists clenched along the sides of his desk. He said hoarsely, “What do you imply? I’m a