An indefinitely prolonged lifespan (see
here)
would enable someone to live from the twentieth century until 2319. However, Manse Everard gained his longevity when he joined the Time Patrol in 1954 at the age of thirty and we last see him in the twentieth century in 1990 but, by then, he is considerably older than sixty six. On many occasions between 1954 and 1990, Everard has departed from the twentieth century, then returned to it, e.g., on the following day, having spent days, weeks or months in another period or in other periods. Once he did not return immediately to his apartment in New York but that was because he had sub-let the apartment for several months to another Patrol agent on a mission to the twentieth century.
Carl and Laurie Farness have lived in the 1930s as far as 1935 but Carl spends days, weeks or months in the fourth century between leaving Laurie in the morning and returning in the evening. He was in his mid-forties when he joined the Patrol in 1980 and they moved to the 1930s but by 1935 he is nearly a hundred.
So how old would Everard be in 2319 if he continues to travel to either the past or the future and return between 1990 and 2319? In any case, after terminating the lease of his apartment, e.g., in 2000, he might relocate to elsewhere in space and time and thus not still be around in 2319 even if he was going to live that long.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I would have liked to have known what was the mission or task of the Patrol agent that Manse sublet his apartment to. This also indicates how busy the Patrol was, showing us more than one agent working in the same "milieu."
Sean
There would have to be agents present in every year of human history and much of prehistory, and robot "watchdogs" in much more. That gives a hint of how huge the Patrol must be.
Everard could be hundreds of years old; I got the impression that he was several centuries old by the (on his life-line) "time" of THE YEAR OF THE RANSOM.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I agree, Everard HAS to be much older than he appears to be in "The Year of the Ransom." And the Patrol has to be far larger than, again, it appears to be. We do see mention of how its members comprise more than field or milieu agents. Cynthia, Keith Denison's wife, was a Patrol clerk.
Sean
There would be ways to economize on manpower.
For example, in eras past-ward of the Industrial Revolution, you could have satellites monitoring continuously for the use of anachronistic energies (radio, electricity, etc.). If they detect it where it shouldn't be, they send one of those message capsules to a Patrol base with a warning and the spatio-temporal coordinates.
The Time Patrol also has a built-in failsafe, because it has large facilities in the very remote past -- the Academy, for example.
So even if conspirators managed to change things in historic times, there would still be large reserves of Patrol personnel and equipment.
To really get rid of the Patrol, you'd have to strike before the evolution of human beings -- well before, since the Academy is in the Oligocene, 30 million years ago.
Even then, there would be scattered Patrol agents -- researchers, for instance -- further back, and you'd never be completely safe from them.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I agree, and we see those agents and reserves in the far past being used by Anderson in "Delenda Est."
Sean
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