Fork, Split And Instability

"Star of the Sea," 4.

Of Buhrmund, the rebel leader, Everard thinks:

"We need an idea of how he, the key man in all this, thinks, if we're to discover how it is that the time stream forks - and which is the right course, which the wrong one, for us and our world." (p. 506)

Everard and Floris:

"...could not take years to feel out the whole truth. The Patrol could ill spare that much lifespan of theirs. Moreover, this segment of space-time was unstable; the less they from the future moved about in it, the better. Everard had decided to start with a visit to Civilis several months downtime of the split in events." (p. 516)

(Buhrmund has taken the Latin name Claudius Civilis.)

This must be very imprecise language:

the time stream forks;

there is a right and a wrong course for a whole world;

a segment of space-time is unstable;

visitors from the future increase the instability;

events split.

I quote and paraphrase these passages because I cannot devise a dimensional framework to account for them. We have to accept that something as paradoxical as quantum mechanics is happening. However, and fortunately, Everard spends most of his time in concrete historical events, not inside abstract dimensional diagrams. This is a good story, not a bad time travel pig's breakfast like some we could name.