Everard to Denison:
"'Look, all the scientific historians in the future are convinced that the story of Cyrus' childhood as told by Herodotus and the Persians is pure fable. Well, maybe they were right all along. Maybe your experiences here have been only one of those little quirks in space-time which the Patrol tries to eliminate.'" (p. 107)
The story is that, as is supposed to have happened to Zeus, Moses, Romulus, Sigurd, Jesus, Arthur etc, Cyrus' life was threatened soon after his birth so that he had to be concealed and to live in obscurity for a while until he was able to come forward to claim his rightful place. Denison has had to play the role of a Cyrus to whom this had happened. He has lived inside a manufactured fable.
Now Everard and Denison will make that fable unnecessary by preventing the murder in infancy of the original Cyrus. But the fable will live on in any case. As Everard remarks in similar circumstances elsewhen:
"'Kind of spooky, uh?'"
-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 467-640 AT 2, p. 487.
Maybe more powerful forces are at work than just some time travel.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And one of the CREEPY things about this story of the infant Cyrus was that it was his own grandfather, King Astyages, who threatened his life!
Ad astra! Sean
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