"'The nearest dwelling where you might have spent last night is a goodly walk from this...'"
-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 333-465 AT 300, p. 349.
Carl replies:
"'I was at none...'
"'You would be bound to find that out. I would not have you believe I lied to you...'
"'There are things I may not talk about.'"
-op. cit., pp. 349-350.
This is clearly a mistake from the start. He is as good as stating that he is supernatural and thus is generating some of the stories about Odin that he has come to study. If he had not made this mistake, then those particular stories would not have existed...
When Manse Everard travels to Tyre in 950 B.C., he could have materialized seated on a timecycle inside the Patrol base. However, the time criminals whom he hopes to apprehend have instruments that would detect a time machine arrival so instead he travels by ship, time-consuming though this is. Carl does not suspect the presence of time criminals but should have considered his effect on the locals and should have walked to Winnithar's.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Exactly, Carl should have passed over to the Gothic lands from the Empire, crossing the Danube River and posing as a Roman scholar interested in the Goths.
Ad astra! Sean
Or a trader; there was a good deal of trade across the border, and there were Goths fairly close to the Imperial frontier by then.
It's actually harder to be anonymous in a setting like that than in a modern city, which is full of people who are strangers to each other.
You don't need ID papers, but you do need a convincing story.
Mind you, to the Goths being a God in disguise IS a convincing story -- but one with consequences.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Of course! If you want to be INCONSPICUOUS, you don't want to be thought a god in disguise! You want to be something like a trader, as you suggested.
We even see that idea in Anderson's THE GAME OF EMPIRE. A tigery named Targovi posed as an itinerant trader within the Patrician system--but was actually an Imperial Intelligence agent.
Ad astra! Sean
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