Absence And Snow

There Will Be Time.

In early December, Jack's mother asks him whether he has thought about which college to attend. Jack's step-father shouts that he can damn well join the Army. Next day Jack has gone. He does not return until the end of January and refuses to say where he has been or what he has done. He does not have to have been anywhere. He could have time travelled directly from early December to the end of January. On the other hand:

"Both his appearance and his demeanor were shockingly changed." (II, p. 23)

- so maybe he has been doing things somewhen else and maybe for longer than two months? He has already had:

"'...remarkably fast physical and mental development, these past few months.'" (I, p. 14)

Scenes from different time travel scenarios resonate. As Robert Anderson and Eleanor Havig discuss Jack:

"Snow fell, thick whiteness filling the windows." (II, p. 23)

As Manse Everard and Carl Farness of the Time Patrol confer:

"Winter had fallen uptime. Snow tumbled past the windows of [Everard's] apartment, making a cave of white stillness for us."

-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 333-465 AT 1980, p. 385.

Readers remember.

(That is Carl Farness on the cover of Time Patrolman.)