"...[Everard] and his fellows were the beneficiaries of a treatment that kept them unaging." (p. 245)
This seems to establish that the treatment does not merely prolong life but extends it indefinitely with death caused only by violence or accident. Patrol agents are also immunized against every historical disease. Everard is as immortal as Hugh Valland in World Without Stars or as Hanno in The Boat Of A Million Years.
Unattached agents face danger in the course of their work but attached agents do not and none of them seem to retire so does history become full of Time Patrol agents? Their perspective on time must be completely different from ours. If lives lasted for centuries, then decades would seem like months. And they would have to leave behind the era in which they had been born. If lives lasted for millennia, would agents remain human - or become Danellians?
1 comment:
I think Danellians are genetically distinct from human beings -- that's mentioned in several stories.
And indefinite lifespans wouldn't affect the DNA.
This is how the Patrol has enough (though barely) agents to cover 1,000,000 years of history and all of prehistory and post-history too.
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