She looked at him, suspicious, "Are you sure you don’t want to know what’s going to happen to you?"

He shook his head, "Absolutely not. I only dabble in other people’s fates."

She lowered the submachine gun, "It’s because of what you are going to do that I’m going to trust you."

"If I don’t convince you, you can always come back and shoot him."

"Ok."

International waters. April 14th, 1912.

The White Star liner Titanic steamed through the open sea, cutting a wide swath through the deep blue water. Her dank gray smoke trail flowed back, rising into the cloudless, sunny afternoon sky.

They sat on deck chairs high above the foamy gray sea, sipping brandy, wrapped in blankets.

Anne still had the Sperry, but she held it concealed beneath her blanket, out of sight, "So talk, Jared. Convince me."

Jared took a long drink of his brandy. It was obvious he did not relish whatever he was about to relate to her.

He looked about them for a moment, "This very ship was the first place I ever jumped to as the senior agent in this time stream. It was proposed to the council that we could save at least two thousand strands if someone cried ‘iceberg’ a few minutes before it was actually sighted."

Anne didn’t see the point, but at least his story had her attention. He continued, "It worked, of course, and the Titanic reached New York. Imagine my surprise when the downstream analysis showed a decrease of seventeen thousand temperons."

She leaned forward, the submachine gun forgotten, "What went wrong?"

"Well, some consequences are better than others, but there are always consequences to everything we," he waved his hand around, "and they do. Without the Titanic disaster and the maritime laws that followed, the safety restrictions didn’t happen, and people died for a long time because of it. A few here, a few dozen there, more in the long run than on this ship. Some of those people were meant to do things, have children who did things, and so forth. I sent back a message to myself to abort, and it rebounded. Two thousand people die so that tens of thousands may live. That’s what it means to be a tuner."

Anne frowned at him over her brandy, "And?"

Jared turned his merry blue eyes on her, but his voice was serious, "What I am about to tell you is classified. Only the Kohei in charge of a time stream, or a member of the Prometheus council is ever made aware of it.

"The second major alteration project I worked on was Historical Construction Project number 437. It had never been done before, and I was the first to achieve it. This time stream was the first where it happened, but it has been repeated countless times since in other streams. It is standard tuning today, but is only carried out at high levels of the service."

She began to sense the terrible truth. Anne whispered, "What is it?"

Jared tossed back the rest of his brandy and set it on the table between them. He resolutely faced the sea and did not meet her eyes.

"You once wrote that even after all you had been through, you still believe that all people are good at heart. You were right. He wasn’t born a monster, Anne. I made Adolph Hitler the monster he became."

"Gott im himmel." (God in heaven.)

The submachine gun fell out of her lap and thumped to the deck. She scrambled to get it back. As she gathered it beneath the blankets Jared glanced back and forth casually. It was cold, and few people were about on deck.