Uncertainty

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

December 1944: Moe Berg, former major league baseball catcher and now spy for the Office of Strategic Services, finds himself on a mission that would make him something he never thought he’d be: assassin. Specifically, assassin of Werner Heisenberg, whose work could lead Germany to an atomic bomb.

Leah Hammerschmidt, an agent for a future version of the OSS, witnesses Berg’s assassination attempt. She finishes the job Berg failed to complete, and meets a compelling stranger in the process. But when she returns to her own time, she realizes everything has changed. Now, the future seems more uncertain than ever. And she alone might hold the key to resetting the timeline.

A finalist for the Sidewise Award for the Best Short-Form Alternate History, “Uncertainty” offers a thrilling tale of spy craft that stretches morality not only into the future but also into the past.

“...a fun story and one of the few that respects the time travel genre without needing to get bogged down in the theoretical science behind it.”
—Tangent

USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.
To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com, fictionriver.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Aug 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311505194

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

New York Times bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. She publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov's Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.   

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Uncertainty

Copyright © 2014 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, March, 2013

Published by WMG Publishing

Cover and Layout copyright © 2014 by WMG Publishing

Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing

Cover art copyright © Amacistock/Dreamstime

Smashwords Edition

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

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‘When we know the present precisely, we can predict the future,’ is not the conclusion but the assumption. Even in principle, we cannot know the present in all detail…

—Werner Heisenberg

quoted in The Quantum Story: A History in 40 Moments

by Jim Baggott

POSITION ONE

December 18, 1944

Physics Department

Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule

Zürich, Switzerland

THE WINTER COLD bit through Moe Berg’s coat. He walked silently with fellow agent Leo Martinuzzi, their shoes crunching on the icy sidewalks. The sky overhead was gray, the entire world seemed gray, from the buildings around him to the mountains beyond.

Some of that was the light. Zürich had banned most outdoor lights—and many indoor lights as well—terrified of being an Allied bombing target, even though Switzerland remained carefully neutral.

It didn’t feel neutral. Zürich in particular felt like the center of the war itself, with spies and expatriates from everywhere. Germans could travel freely here as could Americans, and what was more, they could mingle without causing too much difficulty.

Although Berg had hidden his American identity for this little venture. This afternoon, he was a student, although how anyone thought him a student at 42 still boggled his mind. Berg guessed it was simply because so many post-doctoral students at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule had aged before their time.

Paul Scherrer claimed the aging had nothing to do with the war, but with the stress of the work. He should know. He was the director of the Physics Institute at ETH, which was sponsoring this lecture.

More to the point, Scherrer had sponsored Berg.

Berg had the invitation in his coat pocket. He resisted the urge to finger the paper. He was nervous for the first time in years.

The last time he remembered being nervous was standing at home plate in Shibe Park in Philadelphia, on his very first at bat for the Brooklyn Dodgers, twenty-one years and an entire lifetime ago. That day, he’d been happy to hit a single, thinking it a miracle that the ball, which bounced left, had stayed in bounds.

A miracle. Back then he had such small expectations of miracles. Back then he had actually believed the Great War was the War to End All Wars, and he never imagined himself undercover for the United States government, not military, but more than a spy.

When (if) he carried out the worst part of this afternoon’s mission, he would not only be an assassin, but he would be a dead assassin. And the headlines all over the world would confuse baseball lovers everywhere:

Former Major League Catcher Moe Berg Dead in Assassination Plot.

Or, more accurately:

German Scientist Werner Heisenberg Assassinated! And then, the smaller headline: Swiss Authorities Claim Scientist Assassinated by Former Major League Catcher Moe Berg.

Berg chuckled dryly. Martinuzzi looked at him, frowning. Berg shrugged. It didn’t matter. If he assassinated Heisenberg, he wouldn’t live to see the headlines. His family would, and they would wonder. They probably had no idea he was capable of killing a man in cold blood.

He wasn’t sure he was capable of killing a man in cold blood, but he was here, pistol in a shoulder holster underneath his suit coat, cyanide tablet in his breast pocket.

Ahead of him, the ETH looked foreboding in the fading daylight. Perhaps it was the police presence outside the huge neo-classical building, calling attention to the fact that the guest inside was someone who needed protection.

Entering the building was the key. Berg had to stay calm, act like this was any other day. Martinuzzi was nervous enough for the both of them.

Berg didn’t ask why, just like he hadn’t asked what Martinuzzi’s mission was. He