The previous post differentiated three kinds of timelines: current, deleted and prevented. Deleteds have been current whereas preventeds have not. Time Patrol members:
experience the current timeline;
remember some deleted timelines;
discuss prevented timelines.
Which kind of timeline is the one that the Patrol deals with in "Star Of The Sea" - a timeline in which Northern Europe would have developed an alternative civilization based on Goddess-worship? No one claims to have experienced this timeline and, by the end of the story, it has been prevented from becoming the current timeline. However, the Patrol has a text that originated in that timeline so someone must have been in it?
What happened was that some Patrol agents in the Roman Empire during the early Christian era wanted to consult Tacitus and borrowed a copy from a local library instead of sending uptime for a Patrol copy. The copy that they borrowed turned out to be an alternative version, designated "Tacitus Two," describing a different course of events and a change in German religion. My explanation is that, when the agents needed to consult Tacitus, they were at a time when the alternative history had a high probability. It was convenient for them to move forward a short distance in time in order to extract the book from a library. By moving forward, then back, they briefly entered the alternative timeline because of its high probability. Therefore, it counts as a deleted timeline.
Poul Anderson, in correspondence, said that he accepted this explanation. Although it is my best attempt to make sense of the existence in the current timeline of the Tacitus Two text, it does not quite fit in with my overall view of the current timeline succeeding deleted timelines along a second temporal dimension.
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