Change

Yet another Time Patrolman surrounds himself with artifacts from previous decades. In Shalten's Paris flat:

"The clutter around him, furniture, hangings, pictures, books, busts, bric-a-brac, declared a solidity that had endured and accumulated since the Congress of Vienna." (The Shield Of Time, p. 119)

-thus for eighty seven years. Yet again, Poul Anderson shows us the quiet before the storm.

The quiet:

"...under trees where green had begun turning yellow and brown, people thronged the sidewalks. Cafes, boutiques, boulangeries, patisseries did lively trade. The noise that rolled in was full of cheer." (ibid.)

The storm:

"Everard tried not to remember that in a dozen years this world would crash to ruin." (ibid.)

The chapter is headed 1902 A. D. Visiting Paris in that year, Everard reflects that:

"...California, 1987...was quite another world, remote as a dream - a nightmare?" (pp. 119-120)

The entire Time Patrol series is about change, even before humanity. The pouring of the Atlantic into the Mediterranean:

"...would move the planet from its Miocene to its Pliocene epoch." (Time Patrol, p. 119)

"...now had begun a hundred years of thunder. When that was done, nothing would ever be the same again." (p. 114)