"...the roast-chestnut carts...were beginning to come out of estivation..." (Time Patrol, p. 342)
Farness returns from 372 not only to a particular moment in 1935 but also to a sense of time passing here as well. Autumn has begun and roast-chestnut carts are coming out of summer storage. "...estivation..." connotes seasonal life-processes that are not literally applicable to street carts! But Anderson knows what he is doing with language.
I took two days away from the Time Patrol to continue rereading the third volume of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy but have not finished it yet. It has 743 pages. One department of Swedish Intelligence investigates an even more secret "Section" that is acting illegally. The Section, originally legitimate, has become so clandestine that Intelligence officers directly authorized by the Prime Minister must spy on their colleagues in order to find out who is in the Section, where it is based and how it is funded.
Now - in another universe - would that degree of inter- (and even intra-) departmental espionage unearth any concealed Time Patrol agents? In 1955, Manse Everard has:
"...a list of contemporary agents (several of them holding jobs in places like military intelligence)..." (p. 16) -
- and, in 1912, an English agent who penetrates a German spy ring might also find the Patrol's military studies group unless the group, with Everard's expert help, manages to divert his attention without arousing his suspicions further. This means that Manse Everard is outwitting Sherlock Holmes whom he had already misled in 1894!
(Both Stieg Larsson and Ketlan, my son-in-law, worked with Gerry Gable, editor of the British ant-fascist magazine, Searchlight. Thus, Ketlan heard of Stieg through Gerry. Small world.)
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And, of course, since you have recently reread THE PESHAWAR LANCERS, you are aware of how the Russian Okhrana used the Sisterhood of the True Dreamers to discover which persons in the military and Intelligence services of the Angrezi Raj were susceptible to being bribed, blackmailed, or otherwise recruited to becoming traitors serving Russia. One such traitor being Richard Allenby, an officer of the Imperial Political Service. And I'm sure the Russians used the True Dreamers to plant their own agents in at least Dai-Nippon and the Caliphate.
Sean
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