it exists for half a million (500,000) years in the Oligocene;
Manse Everard trains at the Academy in its thousandth year;
Wanda Tamberly trains there in its 450,000th year;
its builders demolish it, removing every trace of its existence;
the builders/demolishers could perform both jobs in a single mission to the past;
the buildings last on their elevation while gardens and lawns grow around them through the five hundred millennia of the Academy's existence;
titanotheres bellow, sabretooths squall and a great brown river flows;
prehistoric past and post-historic future clash.
14 comments:
Tho' it would be impossible for a settlement of thousands to exist for 500,000 years without having a profound environmental impact.
One thing that isn't so vividly expressed in the later stories is how friggin' -enormous- the Time Patrol is.
Say it graduated 500-1000 people per year, which seams reasonable given the description in the first story.
500,000 x 1,000 = 500,000,000
Now add in that none of those graduates is ever going to die of "natural" causes like sickness or old age.
Yet Everard continually says that the Patrol is understaffed.
Paul: they have to oversee over 1,000,000 years of human history, so a huge organization is none too large.
Keep in mind that Everard is mostly shown in contemporary or past times from our p.o.v.
Kaor, to Both! And there must have been a constant trickle of losses and casualties of all kinds for many reasons. I suspect the Patrol had to guard something like three million years of pre-history and history. Which would also strain its personnel. Ad astra! Sean
Environmental impact.
Time Patrollers riding horses near the academy bothered me.
Even if the horses are all geldings making sure there are no seeds of future plants in the horse dung would be needed.
Can you say 'invasive species'?
Jim: I presume the Patrol would have some treatment to make sure nothing in the horsedroppings was viable.
Kaor, Jim!
Mr. Stirling beat me to making comments similar to what he said. Also, before horses were shipped to the Oligocene, it would be a simple matter to give them feed that would have no such seeds for a week or two.
Ad astra! Sean
It's mentioned elsewhere that the Patrol has horse-breeding ranches in various spots uninhabited by human beings -- equine equivalents of the Academy, as it were. I think we saw one once.
In THE SHIELD OF TIME. Keith Dennison.
Kaor to Both!
I had been wondering where to find this "equine academy."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
THE SHIELD OF TIME, PART SIX, 1765 B. C. - 15,926 B. C. - 1765 B. C., pp. 281-282.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Thanks! And it was mentioned in "Brave To Be A King" and "The Only Game In Town" how the Patrol uses esp. trained horses.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment