Ralph Corwin, anthropologist, has been with the Wanayimo, the Cloud People, whereas Wanda Tamberly, biologist, has been out in the field with the animals. However, when wind-blown snow falls for days, Corwin suggests that they spend some time together but Tamberly replies:
"'I figure I'll skip uptime to when this has cleared.'" (p. 212)
An obvious solution for a time traveller, especially for one who wants to avoid Ralph Corwin.
Also, by travelling backwards and forwards in time, Tamberly can study animals in several places miles apart simultaneously: an army of one. There are very few limits to what a time traveller can do. Manse Everard roves the period studied by Carl Farness from end to end to check a hunch that something is not right. Tom Namura helps his older and younger selves to rescue Feliz a Rach. A few Time Patrol agents can do the work of many.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And, even so, we see repeated mention of how overstretched and strained the Patrol was in its efforts to mount guard over a million years of history.
Ad astra! Sean
They also have to be very, very careful about crossing their own world-lines and being in multiple places at the same time -- or multiple instances of their own selves being present at the same time. It's all too easy to make something go badly wrong, or to end up not existing any more.
I think that a time traveller arriving, e.g., at time t1, 10 years before he was due to be born, can prevent his own birth and thus also his whole remembered life until the moment of departure into the past, but this would neither prevent him from existing from time t1 nor cause that version of him that had arrived at t1 to cease to exist at any time after t1.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And we get glimpses of that kind of "self multiplication" in "Gibraltar Falls" and your own story "A Slip in Time."
Ad astra! Sean
Note how risky the fighting technique of throwing yourself backward in time to be present multiply is in THERE WILL BE TIME. You're x times as vulnerable to a stray bullet, and if "one of you" is hit, all the ones downstream of that movement on your personal world-line are too.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That I missed, till you pointed it out.
Ad astra! Sean
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