The Quotable Time Patrol III

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

The proposed "Quotable Time Patrol" volume would need a mythological section:

"By day Niaerdh roamed among the seals and whales and fish she had made." (TP, p. 467)

"Out of the east, the morning behind them, rode the Anses into the world." (TP, p. 557)

"Niaerdh was in [the waves] with dread and blessing." (TP, p. 583)

"Pure as yourself, your evenstar shines above the sunset. Guide us by your light...Ave Stella Maris!" (TP, p. 640)

The volume would need to illustrate these quotations with images of a sea goddess, a sky pantheon and the Mother of God. The goddess and God's Mother share the evening star.

Next:

"'...think of the countless world lines intermeshed throughout the continuum as a spiderweb. A touch on one strand trembles through many...There are occasions when we know only that the web is troubled, not where or when the source of the disturbance lies; for that source perhaps does not exist in our yet, our reality. We can only try to trace it back up through the threads -' He broke off." (ST, p. 135)

Dramatically, that is an appropriate place to break off. How creative to use the word "...yet..." as a noun. If the Patrol traces a disturbance through the threads and does not break off, then the most that they can find is an apparently uncaused event, which could be the arrival of a time traveler who has set off neither from any moment earlier than his arrival nor from any moment later than it. He is from another yet.

In the Upanishads, a spider and his web are one image for the Absolute and the universe so this quotation, appropriately illustrated, might also belong in the mythological section.