"Water sparkled blue, flecked with white, dusted with radiance. Sunlight called pungencies out of dittany underfoot. A breeze ruffled Varagan's hair, which sheened obsidian black...
"'A lovely vista,' he said...
"'Does the exile planet offer anything comparable?'
"'I don't know. They don't tell us.'
"'To make it more feared, I daresay. "That undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns.'"
(The Shield Of Time, pp. 42-43)
Varagan quotes from Hamlet. Thus, a capital "N" in mid-sentence signifies the beginning of a new line of verse. The phrase "...undiscovered country..." provided the title for a Star Trek film.
Everard does not know what the exile planet is like. I have always assumed that:
the exile planet is extra-Solar;
it is used as a prison in one of the far future eras when the Patrol operates openly;
thus, the prison functions in a period when it is a routine matter to cross interstellar distances on business like the transportation of prisoners etc.
All of these assumptions are questionable. First, the spatio-temporal coordinates of the exile planet must be kept top secret to prevent time bandits like Neldorians from trying to raid or destroy it. Secondly, the prison could be located on an artificial or terraformed planet in Solar orbit in the post-human future or pre-human past so that no interstellar journey would be necessary to reach it. The planet might even be moved around in space and time, technology permitting. But we were never going to be told any of this. The exile planet is one of a number of necessary background details that are never allowed to intrude on the historical focus of the series.
We can wonder about the Nine, the exile planet, the Era of Oneness and other future periods tantalizingly alluded to but the only conclusion to be drawn is the realization of how little we know about the Time Patrol universe.
No comments:
Post a Comment