er; that thought
kept recurring to him. There had been the time when he had alluded to
the colonies on Mars and Venus. There had been the time he'd mentioned
the secession of Canada from the British Commonwealth, and the time
he'd called the U. N. the Terran Federation. And the time he'd tried
to get a copy of Franchard's _Rise and Decline of the System States_,
which wouldn't be published until the Twenty-eighth Century, out of
the college library. None of those had drawn much comment, beyond a
few student jokes about the history professor who lived in the future
instead of the past. Now, however, they'd all be remembered, raked up,
exaggerated, and added to what had happened this morning.

He sighed and sat down at Marjorie's typewriter and began transcribing
his notes. Assassination of Khalid ib'n Hussein, the pro-Western
leader of the newly formed Islamic Caliphate; period of anarchy in the
Middle East; interfactional power-struggles; Turkish intervention. He
wondered how long that would last; Khalid's son, Tallal ib'n Khalid,
was at school in England when his father was--would be--killed. He
would return, and eventually take his father's place, in time to bring
the Caliphate into the Terran Federation when the general war came.
There were some notes on that already; the war would result from an
attempt by the Indian Communists to seize East Pakistan. The trouble
was that he so seldom "remembered" an exact date. His "memory" of the
year of Khalid's assassination was an exception.

Nineteen seventy-three--why, that was this year. He looked at the
calendar. October 16, 1973. At very most, the Arab statesman had two
and a half months to live. Would there be any possible way in which he
could give a credible warning? He doubted it. Even if there were, he
questioned whether he should--for that matter, whether he
_could_--interfere....

* * * * *

He always lunched at the Faculty Club; today was no time to call
attention to himself by breaking an established routine. As he
entered, trying to avoid either a furtive slink or a chip-on-shoulder
swagger, the crowd in the lobby stopped talking abruptly, then began
again on an obviously changed subject. The word had gotten around,
apparently. Handley, the head of the Latin Department, greeted him
with a distantly polite nod. Pompous old owl; regarded himself, for
some reason, as a sort of unofficial Dean of the Faculty. Probably
didn't want t