The time corridor gates are marked by recognizable Arabic numerals whereas Time Patrol timecycles use post-Arabic.
In the seventh century A.D., Hu and his companions leave the Danish time corridor and fly by antigravity to a German corridor. When Lockridge asks why Storm had not used this route to return home, Hu replies:
"'Use your brain!...After meeting those Rangers in that corridor - you were there, you should know - she estimated too great a probability of doing so again. Only now, when we have Brann, is this a reasonably safe course to follow.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER FOURTEEN, p. 124.
If I travel along a corridor from 600 A.D. to 700 and you travel along the same corridor from 700 to 600, then there is not a certainty but only a probability that we will meet in the corridor. Why? And how is the probability estimated?
"Now" makes sense in terms of the Wardens' experience but why does their having taken Brann prisoner make it safer to use the Danish and German corridors?
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I find it difficult to even conceive of what post-Indian numbers would even LOOK like. Our system of using 1,2,3,4, etc., seems so satisfactory. But I would expect non-human alien races to depict numbers differently.
Yes, mathematicians use upper and lower case letters and special symbols for the more abstruse or advanced forms of mathematics. But our ordinary system of using 0,1,2,3, etc., is what we use for everyday life.
Sean
The actual written symbol used for the numerals 0 to 9 varies a lot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu%E2%80%93Arabic_numeral_system
Scroll down to 'Glyph comparison'.
I guess it is mostly a matter of slow changes over time, the way pronunciation of words in spoken language can change while the meaning doesn't.
I expect printing would slow the shift rather than stop it. So it isn't unreasonable that a far future society would use a base 10 number system, but with different symbols from what we use.
Kaor, Jim!
I agree, we have to expect far future societies to have different symbols for a base ten number system, with those symbols looking different from our current numbers.
Ad astra! Sean
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