Undo

“So who’s this Hitler character?”

“German, born 1889, served in the Great War and afterwards active in German Military Intelligence. Rose to be deputy head of intelligence for the Reichswehr; early recipient of Prolong treatments in the late 60s, career with Reichswehr Intelligence stretched all the way to 2000, when he finally retired.”

Kierman leaned back in his chair, watching his superior across the cafe table. He’d abandoned his chai, the way they made it here tasted more like Christmas than like India.

“Still alive?” 

“Yeah, living in one of those ‘young retirees’ communities on Titan.”

Smythe was pretty old himself, sporting one of those giant old mustache-mutton chop combinations. Specialized in complicated timeline problems, something of a legend among time agents.

“Weird to think of someone who participated in the Great War still kicking around in 2014.”

“I know what you mean.” 

Smythe never gave a damn thing away.

“So what’s the mission? I mean, career civil servant, sounds like, though one of the spooky ones.”

“Yes, well. Maybe twenty years ago, they’d got some bright boys over at Central Records going through old files, you know, looking for patterns that aren’t obvious to the naked eye? When they loaded them all up, they found that this Hitler fellow had been... well, something of an anti-semite.”

Kierman raised an eyebrow. “Well? It’s not against the law to not like Jews.”

“Yes, well.” Smythe seemed to like the chai, he kept sipping it, getting foam in that ridiculous mustache. “It seems that over the course of his time with RI, he’d managed to pretty systematically screw over the German Jewish population; might even have been single-handedly responsible for the mass migration of Jews from Germany to Alaska in the latter half of the century.

“We think...” Smythe paused again, sipping the awful chai. “We think he may have been responsible for the illegal detainment of several hundred Jewish leaders. You remember those terrible detention and torture facilities they found in Poland? The ones for Political Enemies?”

Kierman nodded slowly. “I think I read about it, yeah,” he said. “A little before my time.”

“Hitler was almost certainly the mover, the big boss, behind those.”

“I see.”

“So back in ninety three, just after the Time Service came online, this Hitler fellow was one of its first targets. Seems that just after the War, he was involved in this DAP thing, some sort of Nationalist Worker’s Party in Germany. The sort of lunatic fringe militia thing you get after a bad war, you know? Unhappy vets having marches, that sort of thing. Anyway, he’d been sent in to investigate it, one of his first assignments with German Intelligence.

“Well, he did more than investigate: he took it over, ended up second-in-command. Designed their logo. Something of an amateur artist.”

Kierman was nodding along.

“Anyway, eventually he got reassigned, and after that the DAP just sort of fizzled out, dried up; some arrests, some sort of plan for a coup. Laughable, really.”

“OK,” said Kierman, “What’s this have to do with 1993?”

“So in ’93, as I said, Hitler became a target for the Time Service. It was thought that if he’d been discharged from the Reichswehr, rather than reassigned... he almost was... he’d go off and end up just another crank, publishing newsletters and rabble-rousing and whatnot. Out of Government service, where he can't do any harm.”

“Sounds like a reasonable plan,” said Kierman, “Sort of bread-and-butter Time Service stuff.”

“Indeed. But something happened: the team assigned to tweak Hitler’s timeline suffered... well, I’d characterize it as a suspicious series of misfortunes. One of them fell under a tram, another one shot himself suddenly.”

“Ugh.”

“Yes, laser pistol in the mouth, nasty business.”

“So we think Hitler got wind of our move against him and took action.”

“More than think it, we’ve got pretty definitive evidence that he did.”

“And now that it’s been twenty years, ’93 falls into the Time Service’s bailiwick...”

“So we’re going to fix it.”

“OK, so we go back to ’93 and neutralize this Hitler character then, and then the ’93 team goes back and tweaks him in...”

“1920.”

“OK, sounds pretty straightforward.”

The two men stood, straightening their uniforms. They regarded one another for a second, then turned and strolled out of the little cafe.

“This is why I love the time service, you know,” said Smythe. “Never a mistake we can’t undo later.”