SF Ultimate Collection: 20+ Time Travel & Dystopia Stories. Fritz Reuter Leiber

      Chapter 1.

       Enter Three Hussars

       Table of Contents

      When shall we three meet again

       In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

      When the hurlyburly's done.

       When the battle's lost and won.

      —Macbeth

      My name is Greta Forzane. Twenty-nine and a party girl would describe me. I was born in Chicago, of Scandinavian parents, but now I operate chiefly outside space and time—not in Heaven or Hell, if there are such places, but not in the cosmos or universe you know either.

      I am not as romantically entrancing as the immortal film star who also bears my first name, but I have a rough-and-ready charm of my own. I need it, for my job is to nurse back to health and kid back to sanity Soldiers badly roughed up in the biggest war going. This war is the Change War, a war of time travelers—in fact, our private name for being in this war is being on the Big Time. Our Soldiers fight by going back to change the past, or even ahead to change the future, in ways to help our side win the final victory a billion or more years from now. A long killing business, believe me.

      You don't know about the Change War, but it's influencing your lives all the time and maybe you've had hints of it without realizing.

      Have you ever worried