In There Will Be Time, the Maurai develop chemicals such that:
"'Under their influence, the subject comes to believe whatever he is told. In detail. As you do in a dream, supplying every necessary bit of color or sound, happiness or fear, past or future....'"
-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), XI, p. 126.
Jack Havig's time travel group returns its enemies to their home periods and destroys their belief in time travel. They now believe that, while ill or demonically possessed etc, they had imagined impossible things that should never be mentioned again. Havig's group convince their main enemy, Caleb Williams, that he is still in charge of his organization, the Eyrie, whereas it is in fact now controlled by them. While dying, he possibly remembers and flings himself far into time...
Clever uses of a drug in different timelines.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
One thing I remember about this part of THERE WILL BE TIME is of how Jack Havig did not like the drugging and brain washing of Caleb Wallis. He was an enemy, yes, but also, in his way, a great who dreamed grandly and achieved much while aspiring to yet greater things. I think Havig would far rather have killed Wallis quick and clean. It would have been better than turning him into a drugged zombie.
And where and when did Caleb Wallis GO, at the end, when he was dying?
Ad astra! Sean
But it was necessary to drug Wallis, because he'd been seen in their scouting trips into the future. They could create a "secret history" where he's not in charge but thinks he is; if they tried to kill him, they'd fail... and risk creating a future in which those same appearances indicated that he really -was- still in charge.
"Preserving the appearances", so to say.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, it was necessary for Havig to treat Wallis as we see him doing after seizing control of the Eyrie. I had, like Havig, a pang of sympathy for the Sachem!
Ad astra! Sean
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