Most Goths returned from battle. Some had seen a blue-cloaked spearman in the sky. (Antigrav.) Monsters charged the Vandals who saw eerie lights and felt blind fear. (Illusions and subsonic beams.) The Wanderer united the Gothic tribes, led their chiefs and imparted military intelligence. Lootless Vandals withdrew.
Carl killed no one and saved lives on both sides. That Vandal raid was unrecorded and its outcome was insignificant apart from the fact that Gothic victory preserved a society where Carl was able to continue his mission. He claims that the line of descent that he had started was a minor statistical fluctuation that would soon average out. However, very soon, he will accept and take for granted without any apparent surprise or concern that that line of descent is the exact same family that is central to the stories that he has come to investigate. Something does not quite add up there.
Referring to Indian, Persian, Celtic and Slavic myths, Carl tells Everard:
"'...those last are even more poorly chronicled. Eventually, my service will-'" (p. 390)
It is difficult to know what the words, "are," "Eventually" and "will," mean within a time travelling organization spanning a million years. An individual field agent who, on his own world-line, has not yet done the research must be prevented from knowing the results of the research before he has done it but, apart from that, surely all of his colleagues should benefit from his research whichever part of the timeline they are working in?
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
A possible difficulty for the possibility of there being a time traveling policing and investigation service?
Ad astra! Sean
Note that the Goths are living in 'mythic' time, not historical. They tend to interpret situations in the light of their mythology, in other words, and bend them to fit it.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
As we all still do, except our myths are different from theirs.
Ad astra! Sean
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