The time travellers':
"...cover story was that they were political exiles from a land beyond Hibernia called America, now torn by a terrible war. It accounted for their various strangenesses, and was reasonably plausible, since the Romans had vague accounts of Britannic legends of fantastic realms out there." (p. 133)
That is more than a plausible cover story. It is the truth as far as it can be expressed without going into unnecessarily confusing detail. Remember when, in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, a Tyrian in 950 BC deduced the truth about Time Patrolman Manse Everard:
"'I think,' said Pum, 'my lord intends to do battle, in a strange realm where wizards are his foes.'
"Am I that transparent to him?'"
-Poul Anderson, "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (December 2010), pp. 229-331 AT p. 32.
Yes, Eborix. You are that transparent to a Tyrian wharf rat. Pummairam has deduced the truth. "Time travel" is just a detail of that "strange realm" where there will be battles with wizards.
(We keep Time Patrol to hand for useful comparisons.)
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, it was right Stirling had Artorius telling the truth, as much as it was possible for him to do without dangerously confusing details. Albeit some very shrewd people were soon figuring out much was being left unsaid.
I remember that about Pummairam. And how he told Everard that it was precisely because of his erratic, unsettled earlier life, forcing him to put a premium on alertness and shrewdness, which enabled Pum to see there was more to Manse than he was letting on.
Ad astra! Sean
Yeah, people in the past weren't any more stupid than we are. They just had less -information-.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Absolutely! And some were certainly as shrewd as we see Josephus, Marcus Aurelius, and Galen being in your Antonine books.
Ad astra! Sean
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