Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson by Greg Bear, Gardner Dozois

that haven’t died.
    “Why have you detained me in this lawless manner?” he went on, doing his best to register starchy indignation.
    The Austrian smiled. “Not only good German, but excellent Viennese!” he said, flicking a monogrammed lighter and extending a slim gold cigarette case to either side and then—surprisingly—to Everard. The Patrol agent took it; Turkish tobacco, and very high quality, soothing as he dragged the smoke in. Plus the Danellian-era longevity treatment made you immune to cancer, heart disease, and pretty well everything else.
    Then the Austrian gave a little tuck of the head that was the seated equivalent of a bow and heel-click before he blew a cloud of fragrant smoke:
    “Permit me; I am Colonel Freiherr—” Baron, roughly “—Rudolf von Starnberg of the Imperial and Royal Army. My colleagues are Hauptman Ritter Horst von Stumm of the German Reich, and Binba şı Mustafa Kemal of the Ottoman Empire. All from the Intelligence sections of our respective services, of course, and here for the Three Emperors conference to keep watch for foreign agents, domestic anarchists, Serbs, and similar vermin.”
    “Why have I been detained?” Everard demanded again.
    I should have taken the hypno for standard German , he thought; complete fluency in the idiosyncratic local version looked suspicious now. But this was supposed to be a vacation, not a mission!
    “ Sie brauchen mi echt net für an Trottel halten, Herr Everard ,” Von Starnberg said, and held up a hand.
    “Please don’t insult my intelligence. Before we waste time with a tiresome protestation of how you are an innocent tourist from . . . Wisconsin, is it called? Please examine these.”
    He slid a folder across the table with one finger. Manse opened it and sighed. The stills were a little blurred, taken from the reel of a movie camera, doubtless the one on the flatbed. They were clear enough to show him and Wanda: him using the stunner, Wanda leaning forward and her hand streaking towards the controls; the timecycle there and then not there.
    Girl, get back to the Academy soonest, he thought, in what he knew was probably a futile hope.
    That made his heart race until he used Patrol technique to calm it. Either a Patrol rescue team would arrive to break him out in a flourish of energy guns, able to be as blatant as they pleased since this wasn’t a history they had any desire to preserve . . . or he’d vanish when this world was cancelled.
    You’ve done that twice, he told himself. Uncounted billions of human beings wiped out as you restored the real history, which in a sense makes you a mass murderer on a scale even Hitler or Stalin or Stantel V couldn’t imagine. Perhaps there’s a certain ironic justice to it . . . but that future that needs restoring contains Wanda and Monica. So to hell with it.
    The Austrian went on, with a gesture towards a neat pile of Manse’s folded clothing and the contents of his pockets and wallet:
    “Plus, of course, there are your clothes and documents.”
    And my communicator in that watch, dammit. Aren’t Austrians supposed to be a bit sloppy? You certainly aren’t, Freiherr von Starnberg, even if you’re a dead ringer for Graf Bobby’s sidekick. You had me stripped right down to the skin and separated from everything I carried down to belly-button lint.
    As if to prove Everard’s judgment of his capacity, the baron went on: “None of them quite what they should be, even the American passport. Money in a denomination which doesn’t exist, printed with the name of the Austrian Republic . . . which, almighty Lord God be thanked, does not exist either. You were accompanied by a most attractive young lady showing enough leg that she would have been arrested in any city in Europe, except possibly Paris or Bucharest, who then disappeared into thin air on that remarkable vehicle. And the pièce de résistance , this.”
    He lifted a cloth and Manse’s stunner lay beneath it. The smooth,