13,212 BC-1965 AD

In Poul Anderson's The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), we proceed directly from a chapter headed 13,212 B.C. to one headed 1965 A.D. When rereading, I am more drawn towards passages set in high tech periods although the low tech passages also present a great deal of information as recent posts demonstrate.

1965 A.D. reveals more about how the Time Patrol operates. The organization needs a special office for its Beringia project. The office is in the twentieth century US because most of its workers are from there. However, too much traffic in and out of regional headquarters in San Francisco would make that headquarters too noticeable whereas Berkeley in the 1960s is ideal because it is easy to pass unnoticed and unremarked in a community of deliberate nonconformists. The office is in a residential building rented by Patrol agents who live there and maintain it well so that their landlord will not become inquisitive. By the time police surveillance increases because of drug use, the Patrol will have completed its project and moved out. The building lacks a hidden place for timecycles to arrive and depart so Wanda Tamberly must visit by local transportation.

Ralph Corwin, the resident anthropologist, was born in 1895 and worked among Native Americans in the 1920s and '30s before his recruitment to the Patrol. Thus, in less than three pages, we learn considerably more about Time Patrol organization in the twentieth century.