"Not that kind o' time, Jim. I mean the problem o' Time. Whut it is, and how you can shift around in it an' all that sort o' stuff."
I said, "Oh. In other words, pal Jamieson has been making with the meta-physics, eh? On account of what?"
"On account," explained Hank, "of I happened to say wouldn't it be swell if somebuddy could go backward in Time and do somethin' to stop the Nazi movement from ever gettin' organized. Then there wouldn't be no war like we're fightin' today."
"That," I approved, "sounds like a swell idea. Go back and push a little paperhanger named Adolph Shicklgruber under a Munich street-car, huh? I'd gladly volunteer for the job—if there was any way of doing it."
"So would most of us. Oney Jamieson," continued Hank, "'lowed as how it was impossible. He claims all this warfare and stuff is inescapable. Says the progress of mankind is foreordained, an' they can't nobuddy do nothin' to change it, ever. He says the Book o' Time was all writ up in advance, an' they wasn't no way to change it—" Hank squinted at me dubiously. "He quoted some pome out of a book called The Di'mond Sailboat, or somethin'—"
"Sue me if I'm wrong," I grinned, "but maybe it was the Rubaiyat? By an old Persian named Omar? He wrote:
The Moving Finger writes, and having writ
Moves on; nor all your piety nor wit
Can lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears erase a Word of it."