Careers In Space And Time

(Including "The Chronic Argonauts" transforms the "conceptual sequence" into two pre-Wells, two Wells, two pre-Anderson and two Anderson items, for what that's worth. See previous post.)

One of my job titles was Careers Adviser. See here.

Readers of Poul Anderson's works view the careers of:

David Falkayn from apprentice to Nick van Rijn's confidante;
Dominic Flandry from Ensign to Fleet Admiral;
Manson Everard from Time Patrol recruit to experienced Unattached agent.

We first see Everard while he is being recruited aged 30 in 1954. His pre-Patrol career was:

lieutenant, US Army Engineers;
design and production work in America, Sweden and Arabia.

In 1952, he had visited Amsterdam and returns there on Patrol business in 1986:

"Thirty four years was a long absence. (Longer than that on his personal world line, of course. He had meanwhile joined the Patrol and become an Unattached agent and snaked around through the ages, across most of the planet. Now the London of Elizabeth the First or the Pasargadae of Cyrus the Great stood him nearer than did the streets he would walk today. Had that summer really been so golden, or had he simply been young, unburdened with too much knowledge?)"
-Poul Anderson, The Time Patrol (New York, 1991), p. 300.

Anderson reminds us of a previous story involving Pasargadae while for the first time informing us that Everard has also visited Elizabethan London. Loss of innocence is the persistent theme of this series. 

 "The Midwest of his boyhood, before he went off to war in 1942, was like a dream, a world forever lost, already one with Troy and Carthage and the innocence of the Inuit. He had learned better than to return."
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), p. 178.

We last see Everard in 1990 and his career will go on because he has received Patrol anti-age treatment.