Timeline 2: Everard and Denison disguised as angels terrify Astyages so that he does not order the murder of Cyrus, who therefore grows up and succeeds his father in the normal way but the hero myth is applied to him in any case.
Morals of the story (if any):
the hero myth is extremely resilient - it is told of hundreds of great men, including Cyrus in both timelines;
history seems to want a Cyrus - he was killed in infancy but first he is impersonated by a Patrolman, then his life is saved by two Patrolmen.
Later, contemplating a different problem, Everard thinks:
"...that structure [of the plenum] isn't just changeable in time as well as space. It seems to be subtler and trickier than they see fit to teach us about at the Academy. Coincidences can be more than accidents. Maybe Jung glimpsed a little of the truth, in his notions about synchrony - I dunno. The universe isn't for the likes of me to understand. I only work here." -The Shield Of Time, p. 261.
Something strange happened with Cyrus. And, when the continuum is vulnerable and reality is unstable around the nexus of 69-70 AD, there is the potential for a new religion to start in barbarian Germany - in case a new religion did not start in Palestine?
4 comments:
Hi, Paul!
Just a small mistake you made here, it was King Astyages, not Harpagus who was so terrified by Manse Everard and Denison appearing to him as "angels" that he kept his hands off the infant Prince Cyrus.
Sean
Sean,
Thanks.
Paul.
Sometimes I spot a mistake and correct it before anyone draws attention to it.
Hi, Paul!
Ha! Good! And more than one SF writer has commented on how eagerly fans seize on the mistakes they made in their stories. I admit having done that a time or two with Poul Anderson. And he always took such corrections with good humor and grace!
Commenting on your last paragraph, yes, history, or the space time plenum, certainly did seem to want a Cyrust the Great. It reminded me a bit of how powerfully that plenum chanced to focus on poor Lorenzo de Conti.
But, Christianity already EXISTED by the time of the Veleda crisis in AD 69-70. Most likely, if the Veleda timeline had not been aborted, we might have seen a quasi monotheistic faith arising in the Germanic lands capable of opposing Christianity.
Sean
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