"It Was Written..."

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series opens with "Time Patrol" (Time Patrol, pp. 1-53) and closes with "Death and the Knight" (pp. 741-765). In both stories, Everard fights a guy and kills him accidentally. In the first case:

"'I didn't mean for him to die,' said Everard. 'But time is...tough. It was written, I suppose.'" (p. 41)

Written? It is convenient for the narrative. Having recovered the stolen time machine, Everard and Whitcomb must return to 1894 separately, Everard on their Patrol time hopper, Whitcomb in the retrieved cylindrical Ing-model time shuttle. Unencumbered by the presence either of his partner or of a prisoner, Whitcomb is overcome by the temptation to use the shuttle to rescue his fiancee, Mary, from London, 1944, where-when she will otherwise die in an air raid. This in turn motivates Everard to intervene on behalf of Whitcomb and Mary at the expense of defying the Patrol and ultimately the Danellians.

We have already quoted a Danellian as telling Everard:

"Your appeal has been considered... It was known ages before you were born."
-see here.

The blazing shape continues:

"But you were still a necessary link in the chain of time. If you had failed tonight, there would not be mercy." (p. 51)

How might Everard have failed and why should there not have been mercy? Any other actions by Everard either in 1894 or in 1944 would not have prevented Charles and Mary Whitcomb from appearing in 1850 and living the rest of their lives during Victoria's reign.

The statement that Everard's appeal had been considered ages ago suggests to our minds that the Danellians had had to wait throughout those ages to find out precisely how Everard would intervene in the Whitcomb case. In fact, of course, the premise of time travel entails that waiting is unnecessary. And, in fact, the Danellians themselves originated over a million years after Everard's period. Again, we might ask: why did the Danellians have to wait to see what Everard would do? Why could they not first have surveyed the timeline to see what happened? But time travel makes the words "wait" and "first" redundant. At their one and only surveillance, they see how Everard intervenes and, on this basis, make their own decision in the case.