Two Levels Of Time Patrol Agents

"'Your work will be mostly within your own eras, unless you graduate to unattached status. You will live, on the whole, ordinary lives... But you will always be on call. Sometimes you will help time travellers who have gotten into difficulties, one way or another. Sometimes, you will work on missions, the apprehension of would-be political or military or economic conquistadors.'"

-"Time Patrol," 2, pp. 11-12.

Would-Be Conquistadors

Stane

Danellians

Exaltationists

Luis Castelar, a Conquistador with a stolen timecycle

"Normally a member, even if a police officer, works within a single milieu, so that he or she can get to know it inside out, and as part of a closely coordinated team. The Unattached may go anyplace they choose and do anything they see fit, responsible only to their consciences, their peers, and the Danellians."

-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 333-465 AT 1980, pp. 351-352.

Unattached agents work alone or with colleagues communicating through Temporal if they are from different periods but is a common artificial language enough to overcome historical and cultural differences over a million years? There will be more to be said about that.

Dard Kelm, the instructor who mentions apprehending conquistadors, adds:

"'Sometimes the Patrol will accept damage as done, and work instead to set up counteracting influences in later periods which will swing history back to the desired track.'"

-"Time Patrol," p. 12.

How often does that happen? How much of recorded history is not what did happen but what the Patrol manages to make it look as if it happened?