Historical And Cultural Differences Between Time Patrol Members

In "Delenda Est," we are told that Manse Everard has worked with Unattached agent Piet Van Sarawak from twenty-fourth century Venus before. (Thus, between instalments, Everard has had assignments that we are told nothing about. As the Time Patrol series proceeds, its instalments become more tightly connected chronologically, e.g. "Death And The Knight" is a direct sequel to The Shield Of Time which is a direct sequel to "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks.") Everard and Van Sarawak converse in Temporal.

In Tyre, 950 BC, when Everard is alone with the local Patrol agents, an Israeli couple called Zorach, their deportment changes so that he would have known that they were from the twentieth century without being told. But they might have been from somewhen else. Later, they introduce Everard to Epsilon Korten, director of Jerusalem Base:

"...between the birth of David and the fall of Judah."

-Poul Anderson, "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 229-331 AT p. 307.

Korten was born on Mars in the twenty-ninth century. Again, Temporal becomes necessary.

(Incidentally, Korten proposes that the Patrol should be prepared to take measures, if necessary, to swing history back onto the right track even if Tyre is destroyed during Solomon's reign! How much of that kind of treatment can history take? See here.)

Everard tells Carl Farness:

"'I was born in your state in 1924... That's why I decided I should be the guy who interviewed you. We have pretty much the same background; we ought to understand each other.'"

-"The Sorrow of Odin Goth," 1980, p. 352.

Far from relying just on Temporal, Everard tries to approximate the backgrounds of interviewer and interviewee as much as possible.

Because Janne Floris and he:

"'...are more or less contemporaries' - a generation between our births, is it?" -

- he thinks that:

"'...we should be able to cooperate more or less efficiently. That's why I'm the Unattached agent they contacted.'"

-"Star of the Sea," p. 484.

When Stephen Tamberly has disappeared, Everard tells Tamberly's wife, Helen:

"'...he and I were both born and raised in the USA, middle twentieth century. That's why I've been asked to head this investigation. A background shared with your husband just might give me some useful insight.'"

-Poul Anderson, "In the Year of the Ransom" IN Anderson, Time Patrol, pp. 641-735 AT 3 November 1885, p. 665.

When Hugh Marlow has to be rescued from his arrest by the Templars in Paris, 1307, Everard tells Wanda Tamberly:

"'...he's my contemporary by birth - not American: British, but a twentieth-century Western man who must think pretty much like me. That might help a bit.' A few generations can make aliens of ancestor and descendant."

-"Death And The Knight," pp. 747-748.

Tom Nomura reflects on the generational gulf separating himself, newly graduated from the Patrol Academy, from Manse Everard, a mature Unattached agent:

"That Everard had been recruited in New York, A.D. 1954, and Nomura in San Francisco, 1972, ought to make scant difference. The upheavals of that generation were bubble pops against what had happened before and what would happen after."

-Poul Anderson, "Gibraltar Falls" IN Time Patrol, pp. 113-128 AT p. 114.

However, Everard has, by now, lived so long and time travelled so much that Nomura suspects that the Unattached agent has:

"...become more foreign to him than Feliz - who was born two millenniums past either of them."

-ibid., p. 115.

Since Feliz a Rach is:

"...an aristocrat of the First Matriarchy..."

-ibid.

- there are indeed cultural differences between her and these two male twentieth-centurians. But Time Patrollers transcend their cultures. Feliz tells Tom:

"'Men like you make me understand what is wrong in the age I came from.'"

-ibid., p. 120.

And I shouldn't be constructing such long and involved posts at my age.