Time Travellers And A Causal Nexus

Conceptually, HG Wells' Time Traveller is intermediate between Poul Anderson's Time Patrolman Manse Everard and mutant time traveller Jack Havig. Like Everard, the Time Traveller sits on (and not in) a vehicle while time travelling. Like Havig, he experiences reduced duration but not instant transition. Also like Havig, the Time Traveller travels only through time, not also through space - although Havig can walk around in space while travelling through time. As a child, he walked into a hill and nearly suffocated before he found his way out again. Later, Leonce and he escape from the Eyrie by walking out of the stronghold while time travelling.

Everard knows nothing of mutant time travellers because they exist in different fictional universes, perhaps too far apart in the megaverse even to count as alternative or parallel timelines. But Everard does know of an individual with a strange relationship to time. Lorenzo da Conti is a personal causal nexus. His world-line interacts with so many others that small changes in his life cause great changes in the timestream almost as if he were a time criminal without knowing it. While living in any timeline, da Conti does not know of any others just as we experience only one version of our lives even if there are others.