How does the Time Patrol get wind of extratemporal interventions? Patrol agents, monitoring South America in the 1820s, report that Simon Bolivar's behaviour is at variance with his biographies and that he has acquired a "friend," not mentioned in the biographies, who is becoming his "evil genius." (p. 275) Are these agents already in a divergent timeline where Bolivar's historical record is not as we know it and where the evil genius will be mentioned in the biographies? No, because they report to a Patrol HQ uptime where history is as it should be. Manson Everard, based in the second half of the twentieth century, arrives in 1826 to investigate. So it must be possible for the Patrol first to neutralize the evil genius and secondly to prevent Bolivar's biographers from learning either about his existence or about his temporary influence on Bolivar? (Except that in "Star of the Sea," written later, Patrol agents do spend time in a divergent timeline, then report to an unchanged twentieth century.)
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Such complexities as these brings home yet again what a powerfully imaginative and subtle a writer Anderson was!
Ad astra! Sean
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