Tuesday 19 July 2022

Climaxes II

See Climaxes.

"Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks."

"What a help it would be to have native-born personnel! But such were very rare before the eighteenth century A.D., or still later in most parts of the world. How could a person who hadn't grown up in a scientific-industrial society even grasp the idea of automatic machinery, let alone vehicles that jumped in a blink from place to place and year to year? An occasional genius, of course; however, most identifiable geniuses carved niches for themselves in history, and you didn't tell them the facts for fear of making changes...." (p. 246)

(The Patrol prevents Sherlock Holmes from finding out about time travel during his active career but I think that they would have consulted him during his retirement.)

I quote the above passage because it plays the same role as the early passages in two Dominic Flandry novels cited in the first link above. Everard will recruit a native at the climax of "Ivory..." so the advantage of such recruitment has been highlighted near the beginning of the narrative. We might have guessed or deduced what was to come.

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