-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), p. 316.
"...twisting time lanes." The Patrol would prefer to preserve a consistent and orderly sequence of causes and effects from the beginning to the end of time but has to accept that its timeline includes many discontinuities. For example:
Cyrus the Great survives infancy because two Patrollers who remember a different timeline appear as if from nowhere to terrorize his would be murderer;
the Mongols do not conquer North America, although a single expedition influences the potlatch tribes, because the Patrol intervenes to cause its own past;
the Templar fleet escapes when the Order is suppressed but the Patrol discovers that one of its own members is responsible for this escape.
Keith Denison, reflecting that he has twice been caught up in events, wonders:
"'Has it been entirely coincidence? I'm no physicist, but I have read and heard something about quantum probability fields, temporal nexuses.'" (p. 362)
Readers of the Time Patrol series know what is meant by a "nexus" but what is a "quantum probability field"? Time travel has three aspects: literature, logic and physics. I can comment only on the first and second but it is the third that determines whether time travel can happen and, if so, what it is like. What is certain is that it will be unlike anything imagined.
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