Mohenjodaro And Persia

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

"Mohenjodaro" (p. 108), "Mound of the Dead," an archaeological site in Pakistan, was a large early Indus Valley city contemporary with ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Cretan civilizations, abandoned in the 19th century BC and rediscovered in 1922.

Re-encountering this word on rereading "Brave To Be A King," it has just occurred to me to check its meaning. For some reason, agents of the Middle Mohenjodaro office of the Time Patrol often need to disguise themselves with luminous robes, halos and wings of light. Thus, there is at least one milieu in which time travelers presenting themselves as supernatural beings is a regular occurrence.

Everard borrows disguises for use in ancient Persia. At Ecbatana in 578 BC, a timecycle bearing the disguised Everard and Denison crashes through a palace door, terrifying guards and slaves, and approaches the royal bedchamber where Everard knocks with his sword. Now Denison delivers an admirable performance. Everard, assuming that their disguises and violent entry will have made his purpose clear, has neither briefed Denison nor given him any time to prepare a speech. He merely says:

"'Take over, Keith...You know the Median version of Aryan.'" (p. 108)

Denison needs no second bidding:

"'Open, Astyages!...Open to the messengers of Ahuramazda!'" (ibid.)

- and, when the man in the bedroom has come out:

"'O infamous vessel of iniquity, heaven's anger is upon you! Do you believe that your least thought, though it skulk in the darkness which begot it, was ever hidden from the Day's Eye? Do you believe that almighty Ahuramazda would permit a deed so foul as you plot...'" (p. 109)

Everard does not even bother to listen, until the conclusion:

"'...Know, Astyages, that this child Cyrus is favored of heaven. And heaven is merciful: you have been warned that if you stain your soul with his innocent blood, the sin can never be washed away. Leave Cyrus to grow up in Anshan or burn forever with Ahriman! Mithras has spoken!'" (ibid.)

The Patrol ought to present awards for roles performed on missions.

Denison's moral theology is (dare I say it?) heretical. Most higher religions teach that any sin can be washed away. There is a Buddhist story about a mass murderer who became a monk and was then enlightened - eventually.

How Everard Persuades Wanda To Stay in The Time Patrol

Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991).

Wanda wonders whether to go through with Time Patrol training. Everard persuades her.

(i) "'...studying prehistoric life...Earth was a planet fit for the gods...'" (p. 100)

(ii) "'...no harm to your parents...undercover help you can give them...'" (ibid.); 

(iii) "'- centuries of lifespan...never sick...'" (ibid.);

(iv) "'- friendship...splendid people in our ranks...'" (ibid.);

(v) "'- fun. Experiences.'" (ibid.) - the Parthenon new, Chrysopolis on Mars, pre-Columbian Yellowstone, Columbus' departure, Nijinsky dancing, Garrick playing Lear, Michelangelo painting.

Need it only be centuries of lifespan? In Anderson's World Without Stars and The Boat Of A Million Years, some "immortals" live for millennia and must manage memory accumulation. At the end of Boat, the original immortals agree to reconvene a million years hence but, statistically, they are likely to die by accident before then and, secondly, they cannot possibly be the same people after all that time. They will have had to forget everything or almost everything about their earliest centuries.

I would like to read Time Patrol stories about Pummairam completing his training and beginning active service and also about Everard's thousandth birthday.

How Time Travelers Appear As Gods

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006); The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991).

How often do Time Patrol agents masquerade as supernatural beings - gods, angels or demons? More often than we might think.

(i) Everard's and Whitcomb's Jutish host sends a boy to accompany them to the river. Not wanting to walk that far, Everard calls their timecycle from where it hovers above and tells the boy:

"'Know that thou hast guested Woden and Thunor, who will hereafter guard thy folk from harm.'" (TP, pp. 33-34)

My first thought was that this is irresponsible. The boy, expecting divine protection, will be badly let down when it is not forthcoming. However, that is the wrong mindset. The experience will fade in memory and, in any case, the gods are not believed to be omnipotent.

(ii) Everard and Denison appear as angels to terrorize Astyages and prevent him from ordering the assassination of the infant Cyrus.

(iii) Having warned a Mongol leader that, if he advances any further into North America, then Badguys sorcerors or subtle engineers will annihilate his expedition with thunderbolts, Everard uses a weather control system from the Cold Centuries to generate an impressive lightning display and also projects onto the horizon a giant image of his colleague's Indian war dance. Because the Mongols are undeterred, Everard must later swoop down to kill their horses and burn their ships.

(iv) A shipwreck survivor reports seeing men on flying chariots fighting with flames, an "'...onslaught of demons...'" (TP, p. 313)

(v) Carl Farness accepts that he must appear as Odin to betray his followers. It is written - in the Volsungasaga.

(vi) Janne Floris appears as the goddess Niaerdh to guide her prophetess, Veleda.

(vii) When Time Patrolmen have apprehended a time criminal above the siege of Cuzco, Everard tells one of them, "'...your operation is part of history.'" (TP, p. 727) Apparitions of the Virgin and of St James were reported.

(viii) "To Yuri Alexeievitch Garshin, the captain appeared as an angel from his grandmother's Heaven." (ST, p. 11) This Time Patrol agent claims to be an army captain, not an angel, but would have known how his appearance was likely to affect Garshin psychologically.

(ix) "'You have seen the wrath of Poseidon...'" (ST, p. 114) Thus, Everard explains a Patrol intervention to a witness. Again, he makes promises that he cannot keep but that does not matter. He does give a lot of help when he is able to.

(x) When Paleo-Indians kill the native Beringian, Aryuk, Wanda Tamberly of the Time Patrol takes Aryuk from before his death to after his death so that he can appear to his killers as a ghost, terrifying them into moving on and thus ceasing their oppression of his people.

(xi) Everard appears as an angel to change Lorenzo de Conti's course of action.

(xii) Everard says that Patrol agents in the Middle Mohenjodaro office often disguise themselves with wings and halos.

And, in The Corridors Of Time, a time traveler tells a twentieth century man that she is the Goddess.

By contrast, in "Death And The Knight," the Patrol could extract their imprisoned colleague on a timecycle but must avoid anything that would resemble magic or divine intervention so instead they must stage a robbery and kidnapping.

How Everard Rescues Denison

Poul Anderson, The Guardians Of Time (New York, 1981).

Cyrus the Great reigned for twenty nine years and is an essential part of the timeline guarded by the Time Patrol. Sixteen years into Cyrus' reign, Time Patrolman Manson Everard learns that the Median Harpagus had killed Cyrus as a baby but that when, at a later date, a Cyrus was necessary, Harpagus had forced Time Patrolman Keith Denison into the role. The mysterious arrival of a time traveler was transformed into the providential return of Cyrus.

Denison has had no access to a time vehicle for sixteen years. Now it is impossible for him simply to leave ancient Persia to return to the twentieth century that he remembers having left. A history in which Cyrus did not die in battle after reigning for twenty nine years but disappeared after reigning for sixteen years would not be the history guarded by the Patrol.

Everard's solution: he and Denison travel back further and scare Astyages so much that he does not order Harpagus to kill the infant Cyrus. Thus, the real Cyrus grows up to perform all the deeds that are credited to him in the Bible and in other historical records; Denison is not needed in ancient Persia and can go home.

I think that this means that there are three successive timelines in which:

(i) Cyrus was killed but Denison impersonated him for twenty nine years;
(ii) Cyrus was killed and Denison impersonated him for sixteen years but then disappeared;
(iii) Everard and Denison prevented Cyrus from being killed. 

(i) is the timeline that Everard was in before he traveled back to generate (ii), then (iii).

When Everard asks Denison to guide him to Astyages' court thirty six years previously, Denison suggests:

"'If you're going to change the past anyway, why use me at this point? Come and get me when I'd been Cyrus only one year...'" (p. 119)

Everard refuses for two reasons. The second is:

"'...you're not a suicidal type. Would you actually want the you of this instant never to have existed? Think for a minute precisely what that implies.'" (ibid.)

It implies nothing because it is self-contradictory. It is counter-intuitive though not contradictory to believe that remembered experiences did not happen but it is contradictory to believe that present experiences are not happening - although, of course, they can happen in this timeline though not in a subsequent one. If Everard had followed Denison's suggestion, then the Denison who made the suggestion would have lived for thirteen more years in timeline (i). Everard would have departed to generate two further timelines in which:

(ii) Cyrus was killed and Denison impersonated him for one year but then disappeared;
(iii) as above.

Anderson writes so effectively that he usually conceals the incoherence of the Time Patrol's understanding of causality violation but I think that this incoherence is exposed by Everard's question to Denison, "'Would you want the you of this instant never to have existed?'" (see above)

How A Time Patrolman Survives

Poul Anderson, The Guardians Of Time (New York,1981).

Eight horsemen with remounts chase Everard and shoot his single horse but he runs into a forest where they must follow on foot. Concealed by the trees, he wades up a high-banked, tree-walled brook, forcing them to split their forces. Four run upstream, four down, then come back, one on each bank, two in the brook. Thus, Everard confronts four opponents, including their leader, Harpagus, on one bank. Digging his shield into the slippery mud of the bank, he climbs towards Harpagus. Thus, he has some chance of dispatching his main opponent.

Harpagus attacks but then retreats, playing for time. The other three arrive and attack but are disorderly - Persians, not Europeans. The first man, recklessly clashing his sword on Everard's Greek shield, is mortally wounded by a thrust from Everard and withdraws from the fight. The other two, unable to use lassos because of overhanging branches, attack from each side. Everard's shield protects only one side but his assailants have been ordered to take him alive.

By taunting the Persians for following a cowardly, traitorous Mede, Everard obliges Harpagus to save face by attacking with a sabre that bounces off Greek helmet and shield while Everard delivers a second mortal thrust. The two Persians would have finished him but the dying Harpagus calls them off.

There are many fight scenes in Poul Anderson's fiction but this one in particular is brilliantly choreographed. Everard obliges his pursuers first to leave their horses, then to split their forces, then to let the fight be between him and Harpagus, and he is better equipped for single combat. He had luck that Harpagus was one of the four that went upstream.

Then the conflict becomes moral or theological. Harpagus explains that he wanted to force Everard's "engine" (timecycle) from him but for the good of the realm, not for his own gain. Does that make it right? Torture is OK if it is done for the state? Not in my opinion, Harpagus. You ought to visit the twentieth century.

Harpagus asks whether, by finding another Cyrus, he has atoned for killing the original. He has no conception that killing that newborn child was wrong in and of itself, not just because it "'...brought the land close to ruin...'" (p. 114).

"'You have,' said Everard, and wondered how much absolution it lay in his power to give." (pp. 114-115)

When I first read this story, I had been indoctrinated in beliefs about a priesthood with the power to pronounce absolution - but would also have said that God deals with each soul individually.

The Guardians Of Time Internal Illustration

Brave To Be A King III

Poul Anderson, The Guardians Of Time (New York, 1981).

The Shah Nameh (p. 84) is "The Book of Kings," the Persian national epic.

A "snickersnee" (p. 89) is a long, sword-like knife.

The "Algonquian" (p. 108) is a group of Native American tribes.

A "hoplite" (p. 111) was a Greek citizen soldier, armed with spear and shield.

"Marathon" (p. 111) was a battle between Greeks and Persians in 490 BC.

"Gaugamela" (p. 111) was a battle between Greeks led by Alexander and Persians led by Darius III in 331 BC that led to the fall of the Persian Empire.

On previous readings, my attention skipped past these words as it followed the narrative. Now it is easy to google while blogging. (We live in a twenty first century of computers if not yet of space travel.) Of course I had known that Marathon was a battle from which was derived a race but had not known the date. Sometimes googling confirms an already existing, albeit vague, understanding of a word, as with "hoplite," but sometimes it presents substantially new information, like about the Shah Nameh or Gaugamela, and sometimes is a complete surprise, as with a previous example, "coffles."

And here is an interesting historical observation that I have not previously remembered however often I have reread "Brave To Be A King." When three Persians attack Everard:

"It was a disorderly attack. Superb fighters as individuals, the Persians had never developed the mass discipline of Europe, on which they would break themselves at Marathon and Gaugemela." (ibid.)

Keith Denison has lived as Cyrus the Great for sixteen years and must endure another thirteen before dying in battle. If he leaves ancient Persia to travel to the twentieth century after a mere sixteen years, it will not be to the twentieth century that he was born in and time traveled from. For one thing, Cyrus will not have allowed the Jews to return from Babylon. Anderson readers view that timeline in "The House of Sorrows." Everard, who has traveled to ancient Persia in search of the missing Denison, is forced in self-defense to kill the Chiliarch Harpagus but that too must change history...

Brave To Be A King II

Poul Anderson, The Guardians Of Time (New York, 1981).

To convey an appreciation of Poul Anderson's prose, I must again quote some sections from a rather lengthy passage:

"Overhead he saw a painted roof, where a youth killed a bull, and the Bull was the Sun and the Man." (p. 104)

(This Zoroastrian/Mithraic image is like a distorted echo. The sacrificial killing and the solemn identifications remind us of Christian theology but we expect a Lamb, not a Bull.)

"Beyond columns and vines trod guards in dragon skin mailcoats...faces like carved wood." (ibid.)

(That cannot be literal dragon skin. This is historical science fiction, not heroic fantasy.)

"Beyond the city walls lay harvest fields where peasants readied sacrifice to an Earth Mother who was old in this land when the Aryans came, and that was in a dark, predawn past. High over the walls floated the mountains, haunted by wolf, lion, boar and demon." (ibid.)

(Again, there are no literal demons but a time traveler has no difficulty in imaginatively entering into the ancient world-view.)

"It was too alien a place. Everard had thought himself hardened to otherness, but now he wanted suddenly to run and hide, up to his own century and his own people and a forgetting." (ibid.)

But he can do that. Imagine being able to travel between ancient Persia and the twentieth century.

Brave To Be A King

I usually try to paraphrase but this passage needs to be quoted in full:

"'...let's check up. Doesn't the King lead a procession at the winter solstice festival?'
"'Yeah. Let's go. Quickly.'
"And the sunlight burned around them, high above Pasargadae. They left their machine hidden and walked down on foot, two travelers among many streaming in to celebrate the Birthday of Mithras. On the way, they inquired what had happened, explaining that they had been long abroad. The answers satisfied them, even in small details which Denison's memories recorded but the chronicles hadn't mentioned.
"At last they stood under a frosty-blue sky, among thousands of people, and salaamed when Cyrus the Great King rode past with his chief courtiers Kobad, Croesus, and Harpagus, and the pride and pomp and priesthood of Persia followed.
"'He's younger than I was,' whispered Denison. 'He would be, I guess. And a little smaller...different face entirely, isn't it?...but he'll do.'
"'Want to stay for the fun?'asked Everard.
Denison drew his cloak around him. The air was bitter. 'No,' he said. 'Let's go back. It's been a long time. Even if it never happened.'
'Uh-huh.' Everard seemed more grim than a victorious rescuer should be. 'It never happened.'"
- Poul Anderson, The Guardians of Time (New York, 1981), pp. 122-123.

"It" - Denison's sixteen years as Cyrus - "...never happened..." in the current timeline but I think that it makes more sense to say that it did happen in an earlier timeline along a second temporal dimension than simply that it didn't happen period. But I have argued this point before.

It is as if Denison has played a dramatic role and is now reviewing another actor taking that same part in the play. But, in this case, that other actor is the real Cyrus. In the previous timeline, Cyrus was killed at birth and Denison was later forced to play the role of a Cyrus who had not really been killed and had returned in adulthood. In the current timeline, Cyrus was not killed and therefore did not have to return in adulthood. Denison and Everard had contemplated creating a timeline in which someone else again had played the role.

Sandra Miesel, in "Of Time And The Rover," (pp. 245-254) rightly praises several aspects of this passage.

(i) Irony and allusion: two men accustomed to effortless space-time travel must walk to "...an archaic ritual and prostrate themselves to verify their triumph." (p. 250) There is an appropriate natural contrast between cold sky and burning sun.

(ii) Contrast between, on the one hand, ancient Persian celebration of the sun's return and, on the other hand, the end both of Denison's glory and of Everard's hope. (If Keith had had to remain Cyrus, then maybe Everard and Cynthia Denison...)

(iii) Mithras' Birthday became Christ's. Cyrus and his three courtiers suggest Christ and the Three Wise Men, supposedly Persian Magi. (I had not thought of that but they do.) (The account in Matthew mentions wise men and lists three gifts.)

(iv) Epiphany and Christmas associations evoke Kingship and its cost which are the themes of this Time Patrol story.

I would also draw attention to the alliteration in "...the pride and pomp and priesthood of Persia..." (p. 123).

In general, an excellent passage that encapsulates basic themes of the Time Patrol series.

"Of Time And The Rover"

Sandra Miesel, "Of Time And The Rover" IN Poul Anderson, The Guardians Of Time (New York, 1981), pp. 245-254.

Brilliant title. "The Rover" is Poul Anderson and some of his characters:

"The same thought must have occurred to the time rover." (p. 241)

Sandra Miesel advises us to:

"Compare [Anderson's] Old Phoenix Inn filled with heroes from everywhen in A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1974, with the gatherings in Robert A Heinlein's Number Of The Beast, 1980." (p. 246)

I prefer not to!

Miesel writes that Anderson's "...time transit stories...compare favorably with the famous efforts of John Brunner, L Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber, Ward Moore, Larry Niven, Andre Norton, H Beam Piper, Keith Roberts, and Robert Silverberg." (p. 246)

I disagree. I think that Anderson's time travel works are far superior to any of these. And several of the mentioned writers make a complete mess of time travel paradoxes.

in "Brave To Be a King":

"The climactic procession celebrating the Birthday of Mithras would take longer for a critic to analyze in full than it does for Anderson to describe." (pp. 249-250)

This is probably right. Next, I will reread "Brave To Be A King."