Hitler’s at an Exhibition

by

Michael W. Graves

It wasn’t until his fifth vault that Willie McCormick first felt the itch. Every

crumb of logic he possessed demanded that he ignore it. It would go away. All through training, he’d been warned of this. It happened to every time vaulter without fail. About the only way to not get the itch would be to not be human. The key was to let it slide.

Bradley saw it in Willie even before he did. Before closing the portal to the pod he leaned over and said, “Watch the itch, Willie.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, man.” He squirmed in the pod, wondering if the little secret he had hidden beneath his clothing was giving off radio waves or something.

Bradley brushed an invisible speck off the immaculate sleeve of his pinstriped jacket. “You look like a man with a plan. This is just a research mission. Remember that?”

“And just what is it you think I might be planning?”

“Don’t really know, but I hope your not planning on bringing back any souvenirs.”

“You know me better than that, Bradley. Why would I do something stupid like that?” He stroked the close-cropped mustache he’d grown just for this mission, as though it would do any good. It was a nervous gesture he wasn’t even aware he’d developed.

“Oh, I don’t know. What would Hitler’s fountain pen or a handful of silver dollars in mint condition be worth on today’s market?"

“You know we’re not allowed to own precious metals. The United Congress took away that right back in 2085 with that stupid Ericson Act.”

“It wasn’t a stupid act and you know it. We’ve just about used up our supply of precious metals. How are we supposed to make ultra-conductors without silver? And beside, you are allowed to own artifacts. The big boys who passed that law saw to that. They weren’t about to cough up their own precious collections.”

“Relax, Bradley. I’m cool, okay?”

Bradley looked deeply into Willie’s eyes and not even Willie thought he looked convinced. “Be careful over there,” he said. “I don’t want to be scraping pieces of you off the walls of the return chamber.”

Willie understood Bradley’s concern. When time travel first became possible, those chosen to make the vaults discovered a brand new piggy bank. Once back in time, the travelers had their choice of hundreds of small items, easily pocketed, that would fetch a sizable reward in 2143. That’s where Article 1 of the Temporal Standards Commission came into play. The law was pretty straightforward on the issue of collection souvenirs. To interfere in any way, shape or form with the passage of time (POT as the vaulters liked to call it) during an episode was punishable by death. TSC conveniently ignored the fact that POT was affected simply by their presence.

Today, Willie was going on his first real mission. The target year was 1911, and the assignment was to attempt to get real time holography of a 21-year old artist by the name of Adolf Hitler. Finally! A true challenge.

But Bradley was wrong about him feeling the itch. He might be feeling an itch all right, but it wasn’t the kind vaulters usually talked about. Greed had nothing to do with it. He was on a vendetta that just wouldn’t wait.

“Now remember,” Bradley continued. “From a distance, your HoloGen looks like an old folding plate camera. These were common enough among the upper crust in that day. But if anybody gets their hands on this one, they’re going to get really confused. Don’t let that happen.”

“Don’t worry, Jeff,” Willie responded. “I’m a trained professional. I can handle it.”

“You’ve been on four vaults and none of them were populated. That doesn’t make you a trained professional.”

“If the Commission didn’t think I was ready, I wouldn’t be doing this vault, and you know it.”

Bradley gazed into Willie’s eyes a little longer than normal in those few moments before his fifth vault. It didn’t really shake Willie. It just wiggled him a little. What did his friend see? What did he know about the itch?

“I know,” he replied after an extended pause. “And I think you’re ready, too. Just don’t call me Jeff at work, okay? Here, I’m your boss.”

“Sorry, Jeff. It just slipped out. I didn’t mean anything.”

Bradley looked into the heavens in exasperation, said “Get me those holos,” and closed the tube. Countdown began.

“Thirty seconds to final immersion,” a mechanical female voice said. “Twenty-nine, twenty-eight,” and so on and so on.

Immersion was when a rocket launcher injected the insertion tube into a vortex of nearly infinite mass. The launch complex amounted to a contained black hole held in check only by a massive field of unipolar magnetism. Another field of UPM of the opposite polarity surrounded the tube itself.

One thing nobody ever figured out was why the tube always returned six seconds later, with or without its passenger. On impact, Willie had less than six seconds to grab his pack and roll out of the tube. If he wasn’t quick on the draw he’d end up grinning like an idiot into Bradley’s unamused face.

Or worse. It could go like Gault. That poor sucker was just a little too slow. He got halfway out of the tube and found himself wedged half in and half out of the tube. The infamous Gault’s Vault. It was the bottom half they got back. Naturally, Gault’s failure forced another vault. TSC couldn’t go around leaving half a body lying around in half a jump suit. And at nearly twenty billion a vault, that was hell on the budget.

Willie’s first four trips went flawlessly. Then again, as with most newbies, the first ones were no-brainers. Trip number one was to the Cretaceous. Everybody had to run an errand to one of the early epochs. Willie’s job was to film some ugly creature that looked like his wife’s aunt pigging out on a giant lizard and vault back. When he looked at the muck still stuck to the bottom of his feet after he returned, he’d wondered at the time just how badly he managed to damage POT with that. How may billions of species of microbes never evolved because Willie didn’t scrape their ancestors off his shoes before he went into detox on his return?

Still, the Dino Vaults, as they were called, were easy. Pickup points were never more than sixty feet away. It wouldn’t do to have a nice juicy vaulter sprinting across a mile of carnivore-infested grasslands to reach pickup.

Still, even though he’d experienced immersion four times already, familiarity did little to help. It was a horrifying experience. First came the drop. That part was bad enough, but it wasn’t anything your average interplanetary shuttle pilot didn’t tolerate every day. It was the split that did it. Bradley had described this effect to him most eloquently in training, but until he actually experienced it, the words did little more than rattle around in his head.

“First it feels like you’re being dropped from the top of the Global Trade Centers right into the pits of hell,” Bradley had said. “Then all of the sudden you find out what it’s like to be in two places at the same time. It’s like your body is going so fast your soul gets left behind. Then for the next five or six seconds you feel like you’re trying to catch up to yourself.”

“Sounds like the ultimate carnival ride,” Willie replied at the time.

“For some people it is. But the Commission owns and operates a private sanitarium for the ones whose souls never catch up.”

The jolt of impact knocked Willie out of his memories. Nobody had ever figured out why, but the pods always materialized five feet above the ground. Willie’s training served him in good stead. He stomped on the footswitch that opened the hatch. In a single rolling motion, he gathered his service pack and exited the tube. He must be getting better. He cleared the tube with two seconds to spare and for the first time actually got to watch its return. First it went deep black, then, a nanosecond later wasn’t there. Air rushed back into the space where it used to be with an audible POP!

Willie picked himself up off the ground and peeled the jump suit off, shoving it into the space provided in his pack. That left him dressed in the period attire the costuming department had decked him out in. He wondered what kind of impression he was going to make on the ladies of the day in his double-breasted jacket with wide lapels, heavily starched shirt and narrow tie.

Looking around, he found himself in the middle of a pasture and considered himself lucky he hadn’t landed in anything more unpleasant than he did. Four cows stared at him with wide, very frightened eyes. But they didn’t stampede. It was almost as if they were pretending nothing was out of the ordinary. Was it possible for an animal to not believe what she was seeing?

If Bradley had done his job right, he should be on the German side of the border. Getting his bearings, he walked nonchalantly to the road -- just a man on his daily walk through a cow pasture. It was then that he noticed the young lady staring at him. He waved cheerfully her way and frantically wondered how much she saw. His prayers that she might lose interest and go on her way went unanswered and she was there waiting when he stepped awkwardly over the fence and joined her on the side of the road.

“Guten tag,” she said hesitantly.

Willie’s cover was that he was an American tourist, so he answered in English. “Do you speak any English?” he asked. She only shook her head.

He threw out his hands in feigned frustration and faked his biggest smile. “This is a problem,” he said, laughing. Act crazy enough, and maybe she’d forget he just stepped out of a cow pasture wearing a suit. “Bus?” he asked, waving dramatically up and down the road.

She brightened perceptibly. “Ya,” she said. “Der bus kohmst morgens.” He understood well enough to know that she was saying it came in the morning.

“What time?” he asked. Hopefully that was a simple enough question she would pick it up in context. Luckily, she did.

“Zehn Uhr zwanzig.” Whatever the hell that meant. His blank expression gave him away, and she struggled to remember what little English she knew. She held up all of her fingers and flashed them twice, swept her hands wide behind her and flashed them all again. Twenty after ten, he translated. Pretty precise answer, he thought. She must use it a lot. Now came the embarrassing part. He tapped his unadorned wrist and shrugged his shoulders. She smiled and held out a dainty watch on a chain. It was no doubt her most prized possession. According to her watch, it was nine fifteen. He smiled and said the one word anyone would know. “Danke.”

She walked away and left him to wait. About twenty paces down the road, she turned, gave him a heart-melting smile and waved. He returned her wave and then she continued walking. He watched her until she was out of sight. A pity he didn’t have a bit more time.

There wasn’t anything that resembled a bus stop, so he could only hope to wave it down. For the next hour, he sat on the ground by the side of the road and organized his few belongings and extracted his money. He had enough Austrian Schills, all dated 1909 or earlier to equal ten thousand US dollars. That was a lot of money for that time, all freshly printed and artificially aged in TSC labs. Germany’s own presses couldn’t have made it more real.

“Wonder what an extra ten grand piped into the economy is going to do to POT?” he asked aloud. “Anybody ever do any research on that?”

He extracted two more items from the lining that Bradley didn’t know about. Into his hand rolled two flawless one carat diamonds. They were synthetic, of course. But in early twentieth century Austria, there wasn’t a jeweler alive who wouldn’t certify them as genuine. They were his ace in the hole.

The bus came; he got on and ended up in a town he couldn’t even pronounce just south of the Germany-Austria border. Fortunately, the person at the ticket counter moved enough Americans in and out that her English was excellent. The bad news was that he had another two hours to kill.

It seemed like an awful waste of time to go in the back door this way. If it was up to Willie, he’d just drop right into downtown Vienna and cut out all the clandestine bullshit. But, he had to trust that Bradley knew what he was doing. Somewhere in that man’s maze of logic was a reasonable explanation why he had to do it this way.

He eventually made it to Vienna, took a horse-drawn carriage to the Hotel Kummer, as per instructions, and took a room for three days. The hotel was much nicer than he’d expected. In fact, it was marvelous. The amenities were amazing considering what year he was in. The telephone had not yet become a necessity so he was going to have a hard time plugging in his Com-Server. But the place was, as the brochure had promised, fit for a King. He went to bed early, for tomorrow was a big day. Without the benefit of phone books, he had to find a man named Josef Neumann.

Early the next day, he was out on the street, trying to hire a coach. He turned three away before settling on one who spoke perfect English.

“I would like to hire you for the entire day,” he told the driver. “I could pay you a thousand Schills.”

The man gazed at him in disbelief and astonishment. That was about two weeks’ wages for him. His offer had the effect Willie was looking for. Not only would this driver do just about anything Willie asked, he wouldn’t be asking any questions.

“That would be most wonderful,” the man replied. “My name is Wilbur, and I shall be most happy to be your guide.”

Wonderful. Wilbur and Willie. What a pair they were going to make. Wilbur was a slight man, no more than five feet, six inches tall, and didn’t look like he would weigh more than a hundred and thirty pounds after a sudden rain shower. But his light-colored hair and blue eyes proved that he was a true Aryan.

“Excellent, Wilbur, you can call me Willie. I want to find a man. All I know about him is that his name is Josef Neumann and he sells artwork to some of the shops in Vienna. If I’m not mistaken, he has a large Jewish clientele.”

Wilbur was quick to disguise his reaction, but not before Willie got the idea. His driver didn’t like Jews. He had a feeling he was going to see a lot of that before this vault was over.

“It’s just business, my friend,” he assured the hack. “We’re not going to be sleeping with their daughters or anything.”

The man’s shocked expression reminded him of time and place and he cursed his stupidity. Rule number 2:  Never break character. Now that he’d broken both of the first two rules, he shouldn’t have any problem moving on down the rest of the list.

“I apologize,” he said, attempting a recovery. “We Americans can be a bit crass at times. I will take care to watch myself. Do you know of a gemstone dealer who might be interested in making a purchase from me?”

“What is it you wish to sell?”

Willie extended an open hand with one of the stones for Wilbur to see.

“My goodness,” he sputtered. “I believe I do know where we might arrange a transaction.”

“You’ll want it to be as favorable of a transaction for me as possible,” offered Willie. “You’ll be receiving ten percent as my broker.” The gears that suddenly switched direction in Wilbur’s head were all too apparent to Willie. That last remark, he figured, just doubled the amount of money he was about to receive.

An hour later, he walked out of a jeweler’s shop with twenty-five hundred Schills. He counted out two hundred and fifty of them and handed the stack to Wilbur. “A deal’s a deal,” he said. Wilbur looked at the money and beamed. This day was getting better and better.

“Now about Josef Neumann?”

“Personally, I can’t help you. But I think I know someone who can.”

It took only three stops. One was to an art store that specialized in local artists. That particular establishment didn’t deal with Mr. Neumann, but they knew of someone who did. Wilbur drove them to that location, where they were kindly provided with an address for the elusive agent. Fate was with them that afternoon, and within the hour Willie was face to face with Hitler’s agent. Wilbur was kind enough to translate for them.

“I understand you represent a certain Adolf Hitler,” he said to Neumann.

“That is correct. Are you familiar with Mr. Hitler’s work?”

“I have only been introduced to its intrigue. Some of his smaller pieces. But I may be interested in commissioning him for a larger piece, if he’s available.”

“He most certainly would be interested in your proposal. What do you have in mind?”

“Please don’t be offended, Mr. Neumann. But quite frankly, I would rather discuss the details with Mr. Hitler, himself. I assure you, sir. You will be paid your full commission, plus a finder’s fee from me as well. But it is imperative that I meet with the man.”

Neumann appeared to ponder that idea at great length. Collecting his thoughts, he said, “I’m not sure that is such a wise idea.” He paused. “Mr. Hitler is, how shall I say, a little different than the rest of us.” He smiled faintly, as if at some deeply disguised joke. “Were you to meet him, I’m afraid you may have a change in heart.”

“Nonsense! I’m aware of the man’s reputation in this city. He’s a hot head and can be very arrogant. I could care less. I’m not hiring him as a public relations expert. I want him for his unique viewpoint and style.”

“Unique! Now that’s a good word for his style.”

“Oh? You don’t care for his work?”

“It’s appalling!”

“Really?” Willie let the tone of amazement linger in his voice for a moment before he continued. “Then why, pray tell, do you continue to represent him?”

“Because he’s a friend. And people do buy his work from time to time, although I dare not tell him what they use his pictures for.”

“Do you dare tell me?”

“Only if I have your word you’ll not repeat a word I say.”

“On my mother’s grave.”

He cast a confused look Wilbur’s way. “Is that good,” he asked.

“It’s an American thing,” Wilbur explained. “They put great value on the memory of their parents.”

“I see,” said Neumann, looking more confused than ever. “Shopkeepers buy Adolf’s work so they can have something to display in the frames they have for sale. Something that won’t detract from the stock of paintings they are trying to sell.” He looked embarrassed as he said those last words.

Willie laughed out loud. “I have heard worse said about the work of Picasso.”

“Picasso? That French madman? That’s not surprising.” Willie made a mental note to try and finagle a Paris trip.

“Be that as it may, our disagreement aside, I still wish to commission his services. Will you help me?”

“Meet me at Rinaldo’s Gallery in an hour. He’ll be there.”

It had gone much better than Willie had ever hoped. Not yet lunchtime on his first day in Vienna, and his first contact had succeeded. His itch was about to be scratched.

If Neumann hadn’t been with him, Hitler would have passed Willie right on by. The not-yet Fuhrer’s appearance did nothing to forecast what the man would look like when he grew older. He was a street punk, unclean, unshaven and rancid. It was plain to see why he had somebody else do his selling for him. Nobody in their right mind would let this creature into their shop.

“I am Randall Davis,” said Willie. The cover was automatic. “I wish to own one of your paintings.” Willie did not fail to notice the sharp glance that Wilbur gave him when he offered his stage name.

“And how is it you know my work?” Hitler asked. A suspicious tone colored his voice.

“I am a collector. I make it my business to know up and coming artists. Especially artists of a stature I expect a man of your talent to achieve.”

“Very interesting,” reflected the young Fuehrer. “Around here, they seem to take an opposite view of my work. It is refreshing to meet someone as refined as yourself.”

“There are no connoisseurs of true art in Vienna!” spat Willie. He was enjoying the effect he was having on Hitler. He tried to conjure up an image of Hitler’s reaction once he discovered Willie to be a fake and a fraud. If only he could be there to see it! Willie could go back to his own time, hang a genuine Hitler on his wall for his guests to ridicule and revel in the knowledge that he, Willie McCormick, had inflicted more pain on the most evil man in history than any bullet ever could. That was the itch he was trying to scratch.

“These old farts,” he continued, “wouldn’t know real art if it wrapped itself around their face. All they want is derivations of the old masters. I have heard it said in this city that Pablo Picasso is a pretentious child, turned loose with finger paints. Mark my words, even though he is French, he will join the ranks of the masters. As will you if only you get your work in the right hands.”

There was magic playing itself out in the face of Adolf Hitler. Jagged edges of hate were smoothing over as hope filled the lines of his face. Oh, God, screamed Willie within himself. I would give anything to be a fly on the wall when he is forced to face the truth! He was hurting Hitler where no other man had. He would give him hope, and then step aside and watch as it dashed on stones below. It was all he could do to conceal his elation.

“I have some completed paintings in my quarters,” said Hitler. “Would you be interested in seeing them? It is only a block away.”

“By all means. Perhaps you have already created something that would delight me. That would relieve me of the anxious waiting to see what masterpiece you might produce.”

The four of them, Willie and Hitler, Wilbur and Neumann, strolled down the street together, an odd mixture. Hitler’s apartment was as vile as his personal hygiene had let Willie to expect. The odor was horrific. The flat had probably never been cleaned from the day Hitler moved in. Half a dozen or so unframed paintings leaned against the walls. One of them, a landscape that encompassed a small village, caught Willie’s eye. It was actually reasonably good. The rest of them pretty much looked like a ten year old had gotten hold of daddy’s paint set.

“That one!” exclaimed Willie. “I must have it! Is it for sale?”

“Of course,” Hitler replied, beaming with pleasure. “Would three hundred schills be too much?” he asked tentatively.

Willie gazed at him, feigning shock and incredulity. “Three hundred shills? My God, man! You must learn to value yourself before others will value you.” He counted out twelve hundred shills and placed the bills in the young German’s hands. “True art is a precious commodity. You don’t price it like you do the swill they’re peddling on the streets of Vienna!” Oh, the effect he was having! Hitler was like a balloon inflated to maximum capacity. Fill his ego any more and he would burst. He turned to Neumann. “Your commission is how much?”

“I normally receive ten percent of Mr. Hitler’s sales.”

“Most fair. Here are three hundred schills. I promised you a finder’s fee, and there it is. It has been most excellent doing business with you gentlemen. But now, I must get my treasure back to safety!” He gathered up the painting and motioned for Wilbur to follow.

The two men left Hitler and his agent alone. Once they were on the street, safely out of earshot, Wilbur asked, “That painting--is it really worth that much? I am no art expert, but that is not something I would want hanging on my wall.”

Willie chuckled. “Art, my good man, is in the eye of the beholder. You’ve done well by me today. Perhaps I could trouble you for just one more favor before we call it a day.”

“Oh?”

“I wish to take some photographs of Mr. Hitler, but I would rather he not know I was doing it. Is this something you can help me with?”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“I wish to have a record of the artist as well as the art. Mr. Hitler has a reputation for not liking the business end of a camera. I knew better than to ask him. I actually had to do the same thing when I purchased a picture of Mr. Picasso’s in France last year.” The lies were coming easier.

“Well, I suppose we could park my carriage along the other side of the street. He has to come out eventually.”

“Excellent! You’re a good man, Wilbur.”

It took over two hours, but eventually; Neumann and Hitler came out onto the street together. They were talking excitedly about something, but Willie was too far away to pick out any of their conversation. He held the camera up to his eye and clicked it three times. That, of course, was for effect. The holographic recorder was silent. “Got it,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Back at the hotel, as Willie was climbing down from the carriage, he asked Wilbur, “Are you up to one last run tomorrow? I need a ride to the outskirts of town.”

“Certainly, sir. What time?” Willie thought quickly. The pickup was scheduled for a little after four in the morning. He wanted Wilbur good and gone by then. “Three o’clock?”

“In the morning?”

“There’s another hundred shills in it for you.”

“Oh, that won’t be necessary, sir. You’ve compensated me enough today that if you wanted a ride to the moon, I’d be happy to oblige.”

“Three AM it’ll be, then?”

“I shall see you in the morning.”

Willie’s instructions were precise. Follow a certain road a certain distance out of town and he’d find a burned out farmhouse. Go inside that farmhouse and at exactly two minutes and sixteen seconds after the hour of four o’clock, he would be extracted.

Extraction still confused him. It took eighty billion dollars worth of gear and a magnetically insulated pod to get him here, but extraction simply happened. TSC’s explanation was that nature abhorred a vacuum and when he left the twenty first century, he left a vacuum where he’d been. Missions could only last so long because, whether he liked it or not, the vaulter was coming back. His position on the planet’s surface at the time of extraction determined whether or not he materialized in the middle of a door jam or not. The one degree of control TSC had was that if they shut down the vortex of the sending unit, retrieval occurred instantaneously. If they let nature take her course, retrieval was random, happening anywhere from three days to five weeks later. Random wasn’t good.

Shutting down the vortex was the most expensive part of a vault. A shuttle flight to the moon and back actually cost less. Still, despite the expense, it sure beat the hell out of having a vaulter materialize in the core of Mount Rushmore. Since that had yet to happen, they were still arguing as to whether it would destroy the entire planet or simply life as they knew it. It was an argument nobody wanted to win.

Willie made sure he was at his assigned position, at his assigned time. In fact, as he had done in his previous vaults, he was there a half an hour early. Wilbur absolutely refused to accept any more money. Willie had already paid him too much, he insisted. However, when Willie pressed the second diamond into his hand and insisted that he give his wife a little something for the troubles he had caused her, the driver’s jaw simply dropped. He didn’t however refuse it.

Willie had removed the Hitler painting from its frame and wrapped it around his torso like very ugly and scratchy underwear. Wilbur drove his carriage off into the predawn mists and Willie sat back to wait.

As the last few minutes ticked off, he tensed. It really didn’t matter how much training he got. If he was still doing this when he was a hundred years old, he’d still be tensing up for retrieval. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Three … … … his stomach tensed up. Two … … … try to hold back the scream. One … … … HOLY SHIT, HERE IT COMES!!!! ZERO … … … screw it, scream anyway, who’s gonna hear?

But nothing happened. There he sat in his jump suit, Hitler’s mediocre painting driving him nuts with itching – and he had no place to go. What had happened? He knew he had the time right?

Damn it! Was he in the wrong place?

But no, that wouldn’t matter. When the time rolled around, he went bye-bye. Simple as that. If he was in the wrong place, he simply ran the risk of having a front row seat to end of the world. Since he was still sitting in a burned out farmhouse outside of Vienna, there was only one explanation. Nobody had shut down the core.

Why?

He didn’t know.

When were they going to do it?

He didn’t know.

Was he in the right place?

Who cared? It didn’t matter at this point.

Yet he didn’t dare leave. It’d be just his luck to get a hundred yards down the road and somebody on the other end would say, “Oh, shit! I was supposed to shut this baby down five minutes ago!”

But that was paranoid fantasy and he knew it. Bradley ran his ship with painfully exquisite precision. In a worst-case scenario, the guy would be saying, “Oh, shit! I was supposed to shut this baby down a tenth of a second ago!”

Something was wrong.

An hour later, he started walking back toward Vienna. The sun was peeking over the horizon and Willie was scared out of his mind. He could pop any second, and only God would be left to know if he got sucked into something solid. Or thirty thousand feet above the planet where he could spend the last moments of his life wondering if he could see his house from up there. The possibility that scared him most was that of popping into a point in time and space that Earth had not yet occupied, or had already vacated. That would really suck. That’s why random was not good. Time travel hadn’t quite reached the point of reliability and predictability of, say, a hovercraft ride to the mall.

He stopped in mid-stride. Shit! He thought to himself. What if it’s just a temporary glitch and they’re fixing it right now. They’ll do their recalculations based on where they think he’s going to be. It would NOT do to be several miles away. That was a sure way to end up in one of the aforementioned scenarios. He sprinted back to the old farmhouse and found a man sitting in his spot.

“Were you late, or had you already left?” the man asked. “Neither answer is particularly good.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Donald Findlich. TSC.”

“Don’t give me that bullshit. I know everybody at TSC, and you ain’t TSC.”

“On the contrary. You knew everybody in operations. They’re a very small, tight knit and very elite group. But they’re not as small and elite as mine.”

“So back to my question. Who the hell are you?”

“Donald Findlich. TSC.”

“Don’t fuck with me, man. I’m in no mood.”

“You’re in no mood? That’s a laugh. Do you really want to know who I am?”

“I asked, didn’t I?”

“About three years into the program, TSC realized that eventually some dipshit like you was going to come along and screw up POT so badly nobody could fix it. So they made us.”

“They made you?”

“There are about fifteen of us all together. That includes Vault Engineers, Temporal Space Engineers and Jump Calculators. They cloistered us in a space station about ten times the size it needed to be in geosynchronous orbit on the back side of the moon. Then they wrapped us up in a unipolar field so massive it could throw off the orbit of the Earth if we were any closer. The theory was that if somebody screwed up POT on earth, our little group wouldn’t be affected. Until you came along, nobody ever gave us a chance to test that theory.”

“What do you mean until I came along?”

“One day, I woke up, starting monitoring the news from Earth, and guess what? There was no such thing as the United Planetary Council. Earth was still an unsettled mass of bickering countries, just like back in the twentieth century. The backwards twits living down there hadn’t even developed space flight yet.

“There was virtually no ozone layer and the damned factories were pumping out billions of tons of shit into the atmosphere every day. Poor SOB’s hadn’t even crawled out of the Industrial Age. So I scanned the computers to see where the anomaly occurred. It brought up your mission. Now just tell me this. What the hell did you do to keep Hitler from running for office?”

Willie stared at him blankly. “History changed?” he asked.

“It didn’t just change. It took a left turn. Just before I vaulted, I did a quick bio on Hitler. Son of a bitch died of old age in New York City after spending forty-five years as a commercial artist! He never contracted syphilis and he never ran for public office. The most impact he had on history was to be the first artist to get a nude painting published on the cover of New Yorker. And that magazine got run out of business in 1993 when the Orthodox Jews took control of the US. They outnumbered any other race three to one. What the hell did you do?”

“Nothing!” he protested, knowing full well the other man could see through his lies.

“You talked to him, didn’t you?”

“No, I...”

“The disjuncture occurred at precisely one fifteen on the day you were scheduled to film him and get the hell out of Vienna. That was yesterday in this time. I tried dropping in and intersecting you but I was delayed getting through customs and missed you. So I tracked you here. Now what did you do? Tell me, god damn it! We only have one chance to fix this!”

“They were supposed to run him out of Vienna,” protested Willie. “I studied the history. They even try to arrest him for draft dodging!”

“Except after whatever you did, he wound up in Boston. Somehow, and damned if I can figure it out, he tied in with Albert Einstein and convinced the guy to take up art. So instead of Relativity, Einstein gives us a painting of the cosmos colliding. In the version of the twenty-third century you’ve given us, that ugly piece of crap is hanging in the Louvre.”

“He was supposed be crushed,” muttered Willie.

“So you did do something!”

“I talked him up. I even bought one of his paintings. I figured that when the critics shot him down, he’d have even that much harder to fall.”

“You got the fuckin’ itch!”

“No, I swear!”

“You got it and just had to scratch it. You thought you could make the world a better place, didn’t you?”

“That’s not it at all!”

“Well, at least I know what needs to be done to fix this mess. I wonder just how much you’re going to like what the future holds for you, though, if Bradley’s theory holds water.”

“Bradley’s still with TSC?”

“Not in your future, he’s not. Doesn’t matter what I do now. You’re stuck with the future you created for yourself.” The man twisted a dial on his wristband and Willie was sucked into retrieval. He bounced out in a filthy alley in one of the most despicable cities he’d ever seen. He barely had time to tuck and roll before he tumbled that final five feet to the earth. Grunting from impact, he dragged himself to his feet and hobbled out to the street.

He barely recognized New York. The Empire State Building hovered high above all other buildings and the streets were teeming with gas-powered vehicles that made the city a parody of America in the sixties. People were milling about in the streets and a disproportionate number wore the attire of Hassidic Jews. Those who didn’t made way for those who did -- lower class yielding to the upper class. Above him, the skies were a brownish green.

In another wherefore and when, Jeff Bradley was at the controls waiting to receive Willie. The air in the retrieval chamber shimmered and fogged up. When they opened the hatch to extract him, it wasn’t Willie they got. A Time Sentry stepped out, brushing himself off.

“That was a close one,” he said, smiling.

“Willie?”

“Afraid so.”

“How bad did he screw up?”

“Bad enough.” The guy’s smile dried up a bit. “He framed Hitler.”