A CIA Director will know how many of his agents are currently operating in a particular country but that number will change over time. When Manse Everard is in 209 BC, he knows that there are hundreds of other time travellers on Earth at the same time as he is. But, at least in the timeline protected by the Time Patrol, that is all that there will ever be. 209 BC is a year, not a country. It does not have first hundreds, then thousands, then hundreds again of extratemporal visitors! There might be more in one day, week or month than in another but, at the precise time that Everard is thinking about, there are only a certain number which can neither increase nor decrease.
We travel through space between places that exist at the same time. I suspect that we imagine time travellers as travelling between times that are like places existing at the same time.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul! Your last paragraph. We are hampered by the limitations imposed by the language we use in trying to describe time traveling. Which English was not designed for. Ad astra! Sean
I had the impression that the Time Patrol had to pre-approve time travel from eras when it was known -- you had to apply for a permit, and they'd regulate that to keep the time-traveler "footprint" low in any particular place/time.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And if my memory is correct, that's my impression as well. The Patrol even had courts for judging temporal offenses, with many time criminals being sentenced to the exile planet.
Ad astra! Sean
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