Pride, Pomp, Priesthood And Power

(Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi.)

"...Cyrus the Great King rode past with his chief courtiers Kobold, Croesus, and Harpagus, and the pride and pomp and priesthood of Persia followed."
-Poul Anderson, "Brave To Be A King" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), pp. 55-112 AT p. 110.

"......the pride and pomp and power of the Mughals was the wonder of the world..."
-SM Stirling, The Peshawar Lancers (New York, 2003), Chapter Ten, p. 168.

A phrase in ...Lancers rang a bell although it turns out not to be identical.

Dare I say that I prefer Stirling's description of multi-ethnic Indian street life in ...Lancers to Kipling's in Kim? For page after page, Athelstane King and his companions ride through the outskirts and into the center of Old Delhi where Chandi Chowk, the Square of Silver Moonlight:

"...was a shoving, chattering mass of folk on foot, riders or rickshaws, oxcarts..." (ibid.)

Anderson's description of a multi-species market on an extra-solar planet in The Game Of Empire is comparable.

When Stirling refers to "...the First Men and the Tree of Life...," (p. 164) I think that that is a homage to Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Gods Of Mars?

Coping With A Crisis

Several Time Patrol agents respond to the crisis in "Amazement of The World," Part Six of Poul Anderson's The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991). We have met no less than four of these agents before:

Manson Everard was introduced in the opening short story, "Time Patrol," and has reappeared in every subsequent story usually, although not always, as the central character;

Keith Denson was introduced in the second short story, "Brave To Be A King," and mentioned in "Delenda Est" but has not previously reappeared;

Wanda Tamberly was introduced in "The Year Of The Ransom" and has reappeared more than once earlier in The Shield Of Time;

Guion was introduced in Part One of The Shield Of Time and reappeared in Parts Three and Five although he remains off-stage during Part Six - but he had anticipated this crisis.

"Amazement Of The World" involves four timelines:

(i) the original Time Patrol timeline;
(ii) the alpha timeline;
(iii) the beta timeline;
(iv) the restored Time Patrol timeline.

I call (i) "original" for convenience in this context. However, it incorporates many interventions by Danellians, the Patrol and time criminals so it is not the very "earliest" timeline. See here. I plan to discuss Guion's role but might run out of time now so this could be another post.

Ancient Persia

Ancient Persia was another world but not beyond Poul Anderson's power to take us there.

"...the Great King had given so much law to his dominions that it was said a virgin with a sack of gold could walk unmolested across all Persia." (Time Patrol, p. 65)

"Cilicia would yield without a fight, seeing that Persia's other conquests were governed with a humanity and a tolerance of local customs such as the world had not known before." (p. 66)

"Manse Everard entered Pasargadae as if into a springtime of hope." (p. 67)

"'Alms, Lord. Alms, for the love of Light! Alms, and Mithras will smile upon you!...'" (ibid.)

"...a long hall where vigorous murals showed the Sun and the Bull of Mithras..." (p. 70)

"Harpagus drew the sign of the cross, which was a Mithraic sun-symbol." (p. 77)

(Something seems familiar but is not.)

"Overhead he saw a painted roof, where a youth killed a bull, and the Bull was the Sun and the Man." (p. 92)

"Beyond the city walls lay harvest fields where peasants readied sacrifice to an Earth Mother who was old in this land when the Aryans came, and that was in a dark predawn past. High over the walls floated the mountains, haunted by wolf, lion, boar, and demon. It was too alien a place." (ibid.)

Autumn Wind

In "Brave To Be A King," Manse Everard tells Cynthia Denison to:

"'Cut out that shimmy...'" (Time Patrol, p. 65)

Having googled this word, I am still not sure what he meant by it.

The proverbially rich Croesus tells Everard that Cyrus' life was threatened in infancy but that he was hidden and grew up as a herdsman until he could come forth, attested by signs. After hearing this:

"Everard lay quiet on the couch for a while. He heard autumn leaves rustle dryly in the garden, under a cold wind." (p. 73)

The cold autumn wind underlines the mystery of what he has heard. He must ask:

"'This is true, and no fanciful gossip?'" (ibid.)

Yes, it is confirmed by Cyrus and by others who were involved, all of them Persians fanatical about truthfulness.

"...yet Everard had heard nothing so fantastic in all his Patrol career." (ibid.)

It is the hero myth told by Herodotus of Cyrus but also told of many others. Everard/Anderson lists three but we can think of more, including the central figure of Matthew's Gospel. That cold wind sounds as if blows from the same source as such legendary stories.

When Everard finds a slave girl waiting in his room, he tells us one of the lessons learned by time travelers:

"A man had to take whatever the gods offered him, and they were a miserly lot." (p. 74)