Tuesday, 30 August 2016

Farewells

"'Fare always well.' [Oberon] raised the staff. 'Titania, away!'
"They were gone into the radiant winter night.
"After a long while, Rupert took Jennifer's arm and said, 'Come, darling, let's get home before the day.'"
-Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Tempest, Chapter xxv, p. 227.

This is the end of the last numbered chapter. There follows a one-page Epilogue with a different cast of characters.

"-Farewell, we heard. Blessings. Coyote, kachinas, and the Beloved Ones vanished. We rested alone on Dowa Yalanne.
"Balawahdiwa led Valeria out by the hand. 'It's all right if Owl flits us to our brooms,' he said. 'Let's go home.'"
-Poul Anderson, Operation Luna (New York, 2000), Chapter 49, p. 438.

There is just one more sentence, in which the wolf howls.

"The men were descending with their plunder. 'Let's go,' Everard said, and led them away."
-Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 765.

(Time Patrolmen play the role of plunderers.) Unfortunately, those two sentences are the very end of the Time Patrol series.

I think that, at the very end of the Star Trek episode, "The City On The Edge Of Forever," by Harlan Ellison, Kirk says, "Let's get out of here," then he, Spock and McCoy disappear in transport beams? Because this is a time travel story, I think of its ending in parallel with that of the last Time Patrol story.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I can see why you wished the ending of the very last Time Patrol story had not included "plundering" in it!

Sean