"...kumiss..." (pp. 139, 162) is "...fermented mare's milk..." (p. 139), with mild alcohol content.
"...bonze..." (p. 166) is an obsolete Western term for Buddhist clergy.
"...kvass..." (p. 167) is a thin beer.
The Noyon Toktai offers to drink with the prisoner Eburar (Everard) but the latter does not like kumiss so they fetch his two captured canteens of Scotch. When Toktai samples it, he asks whether it is made of dragon's blood.
Everard, glimpsing a way out, offers a drink to his two guards. Toktai cannot object because Mongol officers share equally with their men. When Toktai says it is time to turn in, Everard taunts him with not being able to drink whisky so, of course, he continues. (In ancient Persia, Everard taunted Harpagus into attacking him, enabling Everard to dispatch Harpagus instead of continuing to fight with his two men.)
Most thirteenth century brews are well under five per cent alcohol with high food content whereas Scotch whisky cannot be drunk like beer or even like wine. Everard tries to grab the Scotch back and is knocked down to the guards' amusement. They do not notice Toktai passing out. One guard falls and vomits and the other is easily knocked out by Everard who is then free to escape.
This is perhaps Anderson's best "our hero has been captured but is able to knock out a guard and escape" scene. Every step from Toktai offering a drink to Everard knocking out the second guard is plausible. If Toktai had refused to continue drinking when taunted, what would have happened? Sandoval dies in captivity, Everard continues to be a prisoner, the Mongols conquer North America and the timeline guarded by the Time Patrol does not exist? Can the fate of the universe depend on the outcome of a drinking contest?
I think that some Danellians and retired Patrolmen, maybe including Everard, are based in the far past and can intervene to restore the preferred timeline if necessary.
9 comments:
Hi, Paul!
I've been reading your comments about "The Only Game in Town" with interest. One thought which came to my mind is wondering whether you think this story is the weakest of Anderson's Time Patrol series.
Sean
Sean,
No way! I don't think there is a weakest!
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
It was your agument that instead of being "nullified", alternate time lines "snipped off" by the Time Patrol from the time line which led to the Danellians survived as independent "alternate universes." And that led me to think you had discovered a weakness in Anderson's Time Patrol stories.
Sean
Sean,
If that is a weakness in the series, then it is present throughout the series, not just in "The Only Game In Town." However, if we can conceptualize two temporal dimensions at right angles to each other (just as the three temporal dimensions are at right angles to each other), then a nullified/deleted/annulled history is in the past of the second temporal dimension. In that sense, it no longer exists. But, within their own timeline, there is no moment at which the inhabitants of that timeline have ceased to exist. It does not matter to them that, at right angles to their temporal axis, there is a "later" timeline with different inhabitants.
By speaking of temporal changes resulting in altered timelines, Anderson was in fact invoking a second temporal dimension even though he did not clearly articulate this.
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
Many thanks for the explanation you gave both here and in your blog notes. It seems I had taken too literally comments by Manse Everard and otherr characters that deleted/annulled/nullified times simply disappeared, no longer existed. And that was not the case, logically speaking. These time lines continued to survived.
I recall you saying you made similar arguments to Poul Anderson. And that he accepted them as valid. Alas, he died before he might have incorporated your suggestions in any further Time Patrol stories. Pity!
Considering how intensively and voluminously you have been commenting on the Time Patrol stories, it's my belief you could easily make a hundred pages long book from your blog pieces. I would be very interested if you ever decided to edit them into a continuous work.
John Wright, whose blog I also read (and sometimes leave notes in the combox), is working to collect and edit some of his essays from the past ten years called TRANSHUMANISM AND SUBHUMAN, to be pub. in April.
Just a thought! Sean
Sean,
Two much work! and I would be very dubious of selling it. Unless an interested publisher did contact me with the suggestion, assigning an editor to discuss how to do it. But that would be a big investment, at least of time, on their part. But you never know what might happen these days. I would never have thought that I would have the means to discuss Anderson's work at such length in a public medium like this. I think that the next major event for this blog will be to discuss MULTIVERSE when that is finally with us.
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
True, it would be an investment of time by and a risk for the publisher of such a book failing. All the same I hope somebody will be brave enough to take that chance.
And I'm very impatient for MULTIVERSE to actually be published! I've read the delay was at least in part because of George R.R. Martin not finishing promptly the contribution he agreed to make. Which annoys me!
Sean
Sean,
Ketlan and Yossi (my granddaughter) follow GAME OF THRONES and say that Martin just stops writing during the baseball season, or something like that.
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
Understood! Altho I would have thought contractual obligations would have trumped watching baseball games.
Sean
Post a Comment