First, it is appropriate that, when Nomura glimpses himself, he is "...vague in the mists..." Those glimpses include his future selves. He should not see them too clearly, especially since he needs to concentrate on the task at hand.
Secondly, multilocation serves not only to locate Feliz in the crucial few seconds but also to rescue her. The tractor beam of Nomura's timecycle is unable to pull Feliz's timecycle free from the fall. However:
"The tide nearly had him when help came. Two vehicles, three, four, all straining together, they hauled Feliz's loose...he went back those few blinks in time, and back, and back, to be her rescuer and his own." (p. 138) (For reference, see the above link.)
This is the sort of stunt that the mutant time traveler, Jack Havig, pulls more than once in the immutable timeline of Anderson's There Will Be Time.
And that completes the story of Nomura's multilocation.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I thought of Jack Havig's bilocations as as well, esp. the drubbing he/they gave the "sportsmen." Assuming an immutable timeline made for a simpler story as well. And a probably more logical story as well.
Ad astra! Sean
I stole the multilocation trick in a way for my Time Patrol story, "A Slip in Time". Of course, there the action took place in a mutant alternative timeline that the Patrol had no interest in preserving, so the protagonist could be much less cautious than usual.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And I loved your "A Slip in Time"! At least partly because, just for once, we see Austria-Hungary--in fact a speculation by you on what might have happened if there had been no Sarajevo or WW I. It was counter intuitive of you to show a Dual Monarchy which was the dominant partner in the Triple Alliance, instead of Germany.
I have sometimes wondered what might have happened in our real history if there had been no Sarajevo Assassination and no WW I. Considering the hideous things that happened because of Sarajevo (WW I, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, etc.), it's hard to imagine it would have been worse than what we actually got!
And Paul has offered what I thought were convincing arguments for believing that timelines "deleted" by the Patrol were not actually snuffed out, rather they became inaccessible to the timeline guarded by the Patrol. Arguments which Anderson himself took seriously.
Ad astra! Sean
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