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forwards that threat back Uptime so that if anything happens to me the authorities will know who to question about it. Have a nice day, Citizen.” I walked out, leaving the still-annoyed aristocrats to focus on a visibly uncomfortable Harry. For an allegedly experienced T.I., he'd pulled a real amateur trick, boasting of a win. Granted, that win made things harder for me. Undoing something that's already happened is a lot harder than doing something new. If I was another amateur, I'd focus my effort on trying to stop Harry's outfit from getting their win instead of looking at the long game. Fortunately for my client, I wasn't an amateur.
    "Jeannie, I need an inventor."
    American? Operating during this down-time segment?
    "Yes. No. I don't care what nationality, as long as he or she lives in the current United States."
    Jeannie hummed softly while she thought, then offered her results. There are several possibilities. All are male, which is characteristic of this period.
    "Any of them specialize in maritime engineering?"
    Yes. One. Name John Ericsson. Scientist and engineer. Produced a mix of minor inventions. Remembered primarily for first successful design of a screw propeller.
    "I see. What exactly is a screw propeller?"
    A relatively efficient means of propelling a waterborne craft via rotary motion.
    "He sounds like our man. Do you have his current address?”
    Jeannie thought about that. Yes, Michael.
    “How about maritime engineering information? Things invented and built within the next half-century of here-and-now?”
    Yes, Michael. You brought the necessary data modules.
    "Good. Now, where's this Ericsson live?"
    New York City.
    Technology let me jump thousands of years in the wink of an eye, but once in a here-and-now I was limited to their forms of transport, which in this particular here-and-now tended to be both slow and uncomfortable. The fact that armies were arrayed for battle between me and my objective didn’t simplify things any. Fortunately, the old United States was so big and so sparsely settled that slipping through the battle lines turned out to be a piece of cake. It still took time, though, and based on what I'd learned in Richmond and Portsmouth I realized there wasn’t any too much time left to make sure Harry's win next year didn't last.
    People who don’t work as Temporal Interventionists have a real hard time grasping the process, or maybe only people who can think in the right way become T.I.’s. I recalled the baffled look on my current client’s face as I’d tried to explain things. “But if we change the past, won’t that change the present?”
    “The present has already been changed,” I explained patiently. “Before time travel became practical, people worried that it violated causality, because they thought causality had to be linear through time. That’s not necessarily the case, of course. That’s why even in pre-time travel eras the physics equations indicated time travel was possible.”
    “Because causality is circular through time, right?” the client recalled.
    “Exactly. It’s a loop. We do something Uptime which causes something to happen Downtime which creates the conditions for us to do the something Uptime.”
    “Then you already know how you’ll achieve what I want. It’s in the history files.”
    “No, I don’t, and no, it isn’t.” This was where clients’ eyes always glazed over. “I haven’t done it, yet.”
    “But if you’re starting the process now . . . ”
    “The process doesn’t start anywhere. It’s a loop, Citizen. Where does a circle begin? Yes, it’s already happened, but it hasn’t happened, yet. Sort of like Schrodinger’s Cat on a really big scale. We live in a world that’s the end result of countless Interventions, but we aren’t aware of the Interventions until they’ve closed their loops. That’s how time works.”
    “I don’t understand,” the client noted helplessly.
    “I know. That’s why you’re hiring