Why?

The first time I read Poul Anderson's "The Only Game in Town" 1, I uncritically accepted its account of a conversation between Manse Everard and John Sandoval. A few rereadings later, I suspected a factual contradiction because, at the beginning of the section, Sandoval seems not to know why an Unattached agent should accompany him on a mission whereas, at the very end of the section, he states the reason.

The relevant passages are:

"'Okay,' [Manse] said. 'The Chinese discovered America. Interesting, but why does the fact need my services?'
"'I wish to hell I knew,' Sandoval answered." (p. 129)

"'When I'd reported, my orders came straight back from Danellian headquarters. No explanation, no excuses, the naked command: to arrange that disaster. To revise history myself!'" (p. 133)

Sandoval meant not that he did not know what he was being ordered to do but that he did not know why he was being ordered to do it. The Patrol's role is not to revise history but to prevent such revision. Sandoval hesitates to explain the mission because he is unhappy with it. He becomes unhappier but that is in later sections.

Everard is about to learn "...the truth about his own corps..." (7, p. 171) and that the game is crooked. Although he later refers to God, in this story he realizes that:

"...the distant supermen...weren't merely safeguarding a perhaps divinely ordained history which led to them." (ibid.)

They meddle for their purposes.