Dimensions, A Realization And Circularity

There were fewer posts yesterday because I drove Aileen and Yossi, daughter and granddaughter, to Foulshaw Moss nature reserve where I drafted the previous post while seated at a picnic table.

If there are only four dimensions and if, as Storm tells Lockridge, a time corridor is:

"'...a tube of force, whose length has been rotated onto the time axis.'"
-Poul Anderson, The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER FOUR, p. 33 -

- then it follows that the corridor's temporal axis has been rotated onto one of the three cosmic spatial dimensions.

While escaping from the Warden-controlled village of Avildaro during an attack by an Iberian-British fleet, Lockridge has an Andersonian moment of realization:

"It came to him what he must do. He sat moveless so long that Auri grew frightened."
-CHAPTER TWENTY, p. 190.

He has realized that he himself, twenty five years older, must be leading the attacking fleet. This is the last causal circle in the novel. See Circularity In The Corridors Of Time. Robert Heinlein's circular causality stories are ingenious but lack the historical dimension. See Circular Causality I.

Before escaping, Lockridge sees that the Warden, Hu, has for some reason, run off on his own. This is because Lockridge's followers, attacking the village, have killed all the men that were with Hu. When this happens, Hu flies away by antigravity and calls for Storm. The younger Lockridge sees and hears him doing this. While escaping, Lockridge and his small group see the invasion fleet. That is the moment when Auri sees their younger selves. See They See Themselves.