Time Patrol Unattached Agents

Manse Everard is one of the most important Unattached agents working in the past three millennia but the Patrol covers a million years so there must be Unattached agents very unlike him operating in future millennia. We are shown one.

Just as Poul Anderson's Technic History extends from post-Chaos recovery to the period of the Commonalty, the Time Patrol history extends from the Academy in the Oligocene period through other past periods visited by Everard and future periods guarded by agents like Komozino to the civilization of the Danellians.

The most remarkable fact that we learn about Komozino is that she might have spent years of lifespan in research and preparation between learning of the temporal upheaval and contacting Everard. Dealing with the upheaval is a matter of urgency but a time traveller can spend years on something urgent.

Behind The Scenes

I never got into Fritz Leiber's time travel series - which seems to be about a lot of things other than time travel - but I remember that one of its characters remarked that, if you imagine a conspiracy big enough, then you can explain anything, even the universe!

Is there someone behind the scenes pulling the strings on a historical or cosmic scale? Poul Anderson's Time Patrol operates behind the scenes of history, ensuring that every event, even the Holocaust, happens on schedule. The Patrol has counterparts in mythology and fiction:

pantheons include gods of the elements;

Rupert Bear (see image) meets Imps of Spring, Elves of Autumn and a Clerk of the Weather;

Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series features anthropomorphic personifications of seven aspects of consciousness - Destiny, Death, Dream, Desire, Despair and Destruction.

Time Patrollers are in good company. Maybe.