Identifying

I do not spend much time identifying with fictional characters but which ones might I identify with?

Of Nicholas van Rijn's trade pioneer crew, neither David Falkayn nor Chee Lan but maybe Adzel because of his meditation and studiousness.

Of James Blish's magicians: none. (A book with nothing but villains!) 

Of Alan Moore's Watchmen: Doctor Manhattan.

Of Neil Gaiman's Endless: Destiny.

Of SM Stirling's five American time travellers, Mark, who says:

"'I'm really not good at the nonverbal stuff, you know.'"

-To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO, p. 337.

Paula, who has been dropping hints, has to spell out that, when she suggests going to bed, she means together - a woman who realizes the need to take the initiative.

(We are just about to go to our daughter's place for Fathers' Day.)

A Sound Policy

To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER NINETEEN.

Marcus Aurelius agrees with Artorius that toleration of all forms of worship that do not upset the public order is a sound policy but thinks that there will still be problems with Christians because they refuse to participate in sacrifices to the Emperor and Rome. Artorius replies that, as with the Jews, Christians could be permitted to pray for the Emperor. He also clarifies that Christian rituals are not cannibalistic feasts and explains them in a way that reminds the Emperor of Orphic beliefs and Eleusinian Mysteries. Men seeking the Infinite:

"'...find common aspects of it.'" (p. 289)

Persecution of Christians might be halted and persecution by Christians prevented. How symbolic is it that a Jew named Josephus has sponsored Artorius? Also, how symbolic is the name "Arthur"?

(Marcus Aurelius in this novel, like Augustus and Lycius in Neil Gaiman's "August," is an Initiate of the Eleusinian Mysteries.)

Artorius seems to be individually wise because he is able to encapsulate the wisdom of subsequent centuries and millennia.

Marcus Aurelius

To Turn The Tide.

Temporal displacement involves place name change. "Vienna, Austria" had been and becomes again "Provincia Pannonia Superior, Imperium Romanum."

Artorius' first meeting with Emperor Marcus Aurelius gets a massive buildup. In CHAPTER FIFTEEN, Marcus Aurelius discusses Artorius while still in Rome. In CHAPTER SEVENTEEN, Marcus Aurelius discusses Artorius after he has travelled to Vindobona in the Province of Pannona Superior. In CHAPTER EIGHTEEN, Artorius reflects that he is about to meet someone whose life and death he has studied and whose books he has read, then does meet him. The Emperor closely resembles his own face on coins and statues. Artorius quotes a book that Marcus Aurelius has not written yet and presumably will not write, or not in the same way, in this new timeline. 

This has to be a classic of time travel fiction.

(It was fortunate not only that the merchant Josephus who found the newly arrived and defenceless time travellers did not kill and rob them but instead helped them and treated them with respect but even that they had arrived near a road where they could be and were discovered immediately. However, my friend Andrea informs me that it is inappropriate either to entreat or to thank Fortuna.)

West Of Hibernia

The Turn Of The Tide.

The barbarians use the swine-array which we have seen before.

Irish people that I have known would be amused by this description of their country:

"Hibernia was a proverb for squalor and backward savagery, full of chanting robed Druids making human sacrifices and tattooed, head-hunting lunatics with lime-bleached hair, still driving war chariots to battle." (p. 220)

(Elsewhere and longer ago, Krishna was Arjuna's charioteer at the Battle of Kurukshetra where He spoke the Bhagavad Gita.)

Artorius is from a country:

"'...west even of Hibernia; they call it America.'" (ibid.)

West and in one other direction. The future is another country.

Marcus Aurelius, Galen And Artorius

To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER FIFTEEN. 

We take for granted what writers of fiction do. They have had to learn how much can be done with written words.

At the end of CHAPTER FOURTEEN, a legate tells Artorius (time traveller):

"'The Emperor in Rome shall hear of you service to the State.'" (p. 213)

From its opening sentence, CHAPTER FIFTEEN is narrated from the point of view of Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus in Rome. (Names of earlier Emperors are confusingly used as a mixture of titles and additional names.)

The Emperor receives reports about Artorius and converses with Galen who has corresponded with Artorius.

They are impressed by Artorius' mixture of knowledge and modesty. He claims to know much that turns out to be true but also acknowledges that there is much that he does not know. The Emperor is impressed with Artorius' clever derivation of distillation from distillare! 

Marcus Aulerius and Galen deduce some of the structure of English from Artorius' written Latin: use of capital letters; spaces between words.

Artorius and his companions have strange powers but are prepared to use them for Rome and mankind. Marcus Aurelius will go to where Artorius is. The mountain will go to Muhammad.

Some Practical Implications

See Theorizing.

The base timeline cannot be changed.

There is no need for a Time Patrol to prevent causality violations in the base timeline.

In that timeline, one theory of "time travel" might be that it is an elaborate form of suicide and should therefore be discouraged or even prevented for that reason. However, once a time traveller has departed, nothing further can be done.

Of course we know that the first departures into the past coincided with the outbreak of a civilization-destroying nuclear war so maybe that is the end of the matter in any case?

Is there a cosmic evolutionary process whereby intelligence that is about to make itself extinct in one timeline creates and escapes into an alternative timeline?

Fly in the ointment: Fuchs, the inventor of the temporal displacement apparatus, has a real, not duplicate, dolabra (Roman soldier's entrenching tool). Has his apparatus reached into the past and extracted this tool? Or has someone travelled into the past and brought the tool with him on returning to the present? - thus upsetting my carefully constructed theory that all "time travel" is into an alternative timeline? Time travel is a very difficult concept to discuss consistently. 

Returning to my theory for the time being, if time travel is invented later in the alternative timeline, then that timeline becomes the base timeline for a second alternative timeline. And so on. 

Theorizing

To Turn The Tide.

We are trying to formulate a theory of time and time travel, nothing new but just enough to account for events recounted in this novel.

Base Timeline

There is a base timeline from which any and all time travellers disappear permanently.

Each moment (t0) is preceded by a single past but followed by one of many possible futures. Each subsequent moment (t1) actualizes only one possible future. Experience cannot be otherwise. If we experience the death of a friend, then we cannot simultaneously experience the survival of that friend. Mutually incompatible events cannot occur in a single timeline. But can there be multiple alternative timelines? Can t0 be followed by t1alpha, t1beta etc?

Alternative Timelines

Whether or not alternative timelines exist naturally, they do exist if there is time travel. Five Americans travel from June 25th, 2032 CE, to June 25th, 165 CE. Some moment (t0) on the latter date is followed not only by t1, history as we know it, but also by t1alpha, the arrival of the time travellers who have disappeared permanently from the base timeline. Their mere arrival changes the course of events, whether unnoticeably or globally. If they had been immediately killed for their valuable possessions and if that wealth had been merely squandered, then the change might have been unnoticed on a global scale. However, if they change the course of history, then the effects of their arrival are global.

That is all that we know about the theory. I think.

Nordics

To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER TWELVE.

We are about to set out on a long walk. However, before we depart:

"Wish I could show some of those noble-Nordic enthusiasts this, Artorius thought..." (p. 186)

- as he surveys corpses of women raped and men and animals blinded and crucified by barbarians, also burned buildings that had had people or animals in them.

Artorius' phrase about noble-Nordic enthusiasts seems familiar. Is it or something like it in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol? Blog readers can do some of the research?

Laterz.

Appendix, just before setting off: OK, folks. I have found the "'Noble Nordic' enthusiasts" in the Time Patrol in the first place I looked but I will leave the question with you all out there for a while longer.

Before The Eddas And The Vedas

To Turn The Tide, CHAPTER ELEVEN.

An apprehended but suiciding assassin invokes a name which Saruke and we recognize:

"'Wodinaz...God of fighters. God of good warrior death, leads warrior dead to halls of Gods.'" (p. 165)

When Denesh leaves the Bakhri, King Thuliash asks:

"'...Indra the Thunderer that he bid his warrior Maruts watch over you for as far as their range may reach...'"

-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, July 1991), PART SIX, p. 278.

These gods were around a long time ago, still multiple and of limited range, of course, back then.

In Preston ("Priest Town," a hot-bed of Catholicism), near here, by the river, there is a dog leg street with a Hindu Temple at one end and a pub that used to host a Pagan Moot at the other. I contemplate Vedic gods, British gods and the river god... As a matter of fact, the Temple is closed to the public in the afternoon so, on visits to Preston, I used to meditate in a more convenient Jesuit Church in the City Centre. Why am I posting about this now? I am inspired by references to Woden and Indra in different timelines.

Aryans

The Turn The Tide, CHAPTER ELEVEN.

To conclude the ceremonial transfer of Jewish merchant Josephus's Sarmatian woman warrior, Saruke, to time traveller Arthur Vandenberg, now called Artorius, Saruke raises her arms and addresses the four quarters in archaic North Iranian, then bows to Artorius with hands pressed together:

"...in a gesture that looked oddly Hindu.

"No, Artorius thought, with an eerie thrill.

"It's Aryan, original vintage, and survived in India all those thousands of years. And on the steppes where they came from in the first place, evidently; she's descended from the ones who stayed there when the others went south and ended up in the Punjab and became something different." (pp. 157-158)

Keith Denison of the Time Patrol traces:

"'...the migrations of the different Aryan clans.'"

-Poul Anderson, "Brave To Be A King" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 55-112 AT 2, p. 60.

Three Missions By Denison

(i) Denison and Manse Everard accompanied a prehistoric band from the Don over the Hindu Kush. There were steppes.

(ii) Denison went alone to Iran in 558 BC and played the role of Cyrus the Great in a divergent timeline.

(iii) In 1765 BC, Denison and Agop Mikelian stayed with the Bakhri of the Aryas until the tribe went to winter in the lowlands. When it was time for the two guests also to depart, Denesh (Denison) need only tell King Thuliash that his god beckoned him. Thuliash sensed that Denesh was a wizard.

(Some blog readers will already know this but that year of three emperors in "Star of the Sea" turns out to mean not that there were three contemporaneous contenders but just that two died in quick succession. Bit of an anticlimax.)