Van Sarawak: "What year is this? About the time of Christ? Then we're still upstairs of the turning point."
Everard: "Yeh. And we still have to find out what it was."
Van Sarawak: "Let's go back to some Patrol office in the farther past. We can recruit help there."
Everard: "Maybe... I think I can locate the key event right here, though, with Deirdre's help. Wake me when she comes back."
In an earlier section, 5, Everard was suddenly concerned that, if any other Patrolmen corrected the trouble, then:
"...this world would blink out of spacetime, and he would go with it." (p. 204)
Now he is prepared to go to sleep and to rely on Van Sarawak to wake him when Deirdre returns. When I first read this story in the 1960s, I thought that Everard should be hastening to reach a time before the turning point before "this world" blinks out of spacetime. Now it is clear that the phrase "a time before the turning point" refers to an earlier moment on this timeline whereas the phrase "before 'this world' blinks out of existence" cannot refer to any moment on this timeline. The entire timeline will "blink out" from the point of view of someone outside it but not from the point of view of anyone inside it. It is irrelevant whether Everard spends a long or a short time in the timeline as long as he does get out of it - unless he wanted to stay there, which he doesn't.
It is better if Everard and Van Sarawak avoid involving earlier Patrol offices. Hopefully, those offices have an unbroken history of travel to and from, and contact with, the Danellian timeline. They do not want to be disturbed by anyone arriving from a divergent timeline. Everard discusses this issue further in The Shield of Time, PART SIX.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Everard himself was "disturbed" when other Patrol agents came to consult him about divergent timelines they had discovered. Which is exactly what John Sandoval had done in "The Only Game In Town."
Ad astra! Sean
As far as the Patrol stories are concerned, the deviant timelines, once corrected, do not continue to exist -- they vanish and everyone/thing in them is gone.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree. Vanished so MUCH that they never even existed at all. However illogical that must seem to agents who had MEMORIES of those nullified timelines.
Ad astra! Sean
It’s made clear that cause-and-effect works differently (or sometimes not at all) in the context of Danellian time-travel. You can have people and events that are “unpaused” — if you prevent your parents from meeting, as long as you’re there in the past prior to the change, you continue to exist, but the chain of events that resulted in you is gone.
It’s sort of... disturbing...
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I'll say it's disturbing, to deliberately prevent your parents or grandparents from ever meeting! It feels like a weird kind of suicide attempt.
Strictly speaking, what actually happens is that a divergent universe or timeline splits off from the timeline where nothing prevented your parents from meeting.
Ad astra! Sean
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