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... such as your gal Hazel, who is a real fox when
it comes to robbing a henhouse. You know what we are trying to do in Task Adam
Selene; you don't know what it is for, I believe. Our methods of prognosticating
the results of a change introduced into history are less than perfect. Whether
it's digging in on one side in a key battle, or something as simple as supplying
a high school student with a condom some midnight and thereby avoiding the birth
of a Hitler or a Napoleon, we can never predict the results as well as we need
to. Usually we have to do it, then send a field operative down that new time
line to report the changes."
"Hilda," said Lazarus, "may I offer a horrible example?" "Certainly,
Woodie. But make it march. I plan to finish before lunch."
"Colonel Campbell, I come from a world identical with yours to about 1939.
Divergence, as usual, showed most at the start of space flight. Both your world
and mine showed a tendency toward religious hysteria. In mine it peaked with a
television evangelist named Nehemiah Scudder. His brand of fire and brimstone
and scapegoatism-Jews of course; no novelty-peaked at a time when unemployment
also peaked and public debt and inflation got out of hand; the result was a
religious dictatorship, a totalitarian government as brutal as my world has ever
seen.
"So this Circle set up an operation to get rid of Nehemiah Scudder
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