Michael Swanwick's Periodic Table of Science Fiction

Hydrogen

1.00197

The Hindenburg

Time agents like to rendezvous at famous disasters. It goes with the

personality. They don't trust you to remember the date otherwise.

Which was why I met Ivan at Lakehurst Naval Air Base, on the day the

Hindenburg was due to burst into flame.

We were in the CO's office?don't think that wasn't hard to arrange?when

he gave his report. "Herr Eidenbenz wouldn't listen to reason. So I left

my briefcase under his couch and made an anonymous call to the Gestapo.

He died under interrogation three days later." Ivan grinned

incandescently. "No atom bomb for Uncle Adolph."

"Good work." I'm Jewish myself, and if it were up to me, Hitler would be

strangled at birth. But we'd tried that once, and only made matters

worse. Now we rely on men like Ivan, one-in-a-billion talents who are

able to remember multiple pasts, and so guide events toward the desired

future. "Have a drink."

I poured us each some of the commander's bourbon. Through the window I

could see the great zeppelin, so large and placid, moving with slow grace

toward the mooring tower. It was a creepy moment for me, knowing how many

people were about to die.

We clicked glasses. "Poor Eidenbenz," I said. "Does it bother you, all

the pain we inflict on innocents like him?"

"Are you nuts? I make history turn cartwheels. It's like being a god!" He

gestured toward the zeppelin. "You people are no more distinct to me than

so many hydrogen atoms. You rush about and bump furiously into each

other, and what difference do any of you make to where the airship goes?

"Me, I can do anything I like, and who's to stop me? You can't even tell

what I've done. You forget, and think it was always so."

He took out a pocket detonator and punched the button. Outside, there

were sudden shouts of alarm. "You even forget I did this."

The flames from the burning Hindenburg cast a Satanic glow over his

features.

He smiled. "Oh," he murmured, "the humanity."

The End