-Poul Anderson, "Death and the Knight" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverside, NY, 1991), pp. 737-765 AT p. 765.
This is both the very last sentence in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series and our last sight of Manse Everard. The end of the series and our last sight of Everard were not necessarily going to be identical but there was always a good chance that they would be. The very beginning of the series is Everard's interview for his job with the Patrol. Then, after that introduction, he appears in every subsequent instalment including the few in which he is not the central character.
A chapter of The Shield Of Time has a similar ending:
"Through the transceiver: 'Come join us and let's get this business finished.'"
-209 B. C., p.118.
This also is the end of a mission although not the end of the novel or even of PART TWO. Instead, this fifth and final "209 B. C." chapter is followed first by Everard's debrief with Shalten in Paris in 1902 A. D., then by an authorized Time Patrol alteration of an event in 1985 A. D. Only then does the narrative proceed to PART THREE and to Wanda Tamberly at the Patrol Academy in the Oligocene period in 31,275,389 B. C., a setting with which we are already familiar from the opening instalment, "Time Patrol." The series goes a long way and could have gone much further.
2 comments:
I wish it had, but Poul had to follow his muse.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, but I'm also glad, because the stories Anderson wrote in his later years, a period I date from THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS, shows how he was not content to rest on his laurels. No, Anderson wanted to try out new ideas and themes, in stories I found so strange and difficult to grok that it took me years and repeated readings to assimilate.
Ad astra! Sean
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