Time Patrolman Manse Everard's Tyrian guide, Pum, has uncovered a crucial piece of military intelligence and sees that it is important to Everard:
"'My lord gathers his forces, I see,' murmured the boy after a while.
"The Patrolman nodded absently. His mind was in a storm of its own."
-Poul Anderson, "Ivory, And Apes, And Peacocks" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 229-331 AT p. 317.
Everard is as yet oblivious of Pum's perceptiveness. However, after a while:
"'I think,' said Pum, 'my lord intends to do battle, in a strange realm where wizards are his foes.'
"Am I that transparent to him?"
-op. cit., p. 320.
Pum asks to follow him. Everard is astounded. But then:
"It's out of the question, of course.
"IS it? Everard stood thunderstruck."
-op. cit., p. 321.
That standing thunderstruck is the equivalent of all the other times that Anderson heroes have gasped, stiffened, gone rigid etc - realization.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
It seems to me that we see here TWO moments of realization: one being the implications of the information Pum had found and the other being Manse's realization that in Pum the Time Patrol might well had found something rare and precious.
Sean
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