More From "Pele"

A kzin says, "'Glory to the race!'" (Man-Kzin Wars III, p. 61)

Sounds familiar.

"Henrietta departed in the prograde direction...
"Caroline...was going retrograde..." (p. 64)

"...a hurtling hyperbolic trajectory." (p. 64)

"...monstrous plasmas..." (p. 66)

"...magnetic lines twisted around each other..." (p. 66)

"...main-sequence evolution..." (p. 66)

The explorers realize that a new planetary system must contain many metastable agglomerates easily volatilized by "'...solar input, impact energy, perhaps cumulative cosmic ray effects...'" (p. 54), thus all disrupted "'...long before intelligence evolves...'" (p. 54) They are surprised when an asteroid explodes in front of them but quickly deduce the cause. The captain wisely decides not to risk any more live crews in such unpredictable conditions.

Tyra starts a relationship with a guy who sets the readers teeth on edge - a bit like Wanda Tamberly's Time Patrol colleague in Beringia.

This post is occasioned by insomnia. It might be the last for a while.

13,212 BC-1965 AD

In Poul Anderson's The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), we proceed directly from a chapter headed 13,212 B.C. to one headed 1965 A.D. When rereading, I am more drawn towards passages set in high tech periods although the low tech passages also present a great deal of information as recent posts demonstrate.

1965 A.D. reveals more about how the Time Patrol operates. The organization needs a special office for its Beringia project. The office is in the twentieth century US because most of its workers are from there. However, too much traffic in and out of regional headquarters in San Francisco would make that headquarters too noticeable whereas Berkeley in the 1960s is ideal because it is easy to pass unnoticed and unremarked in a community of deliberate nonconformists. The office is in a residential building rented by Patrol agents who live there and maintain it well so that their landlord will not become inquisitive. By the time police surveillance increases because of drug use, the Patrol will have completed its project and moved out. The building lacks a hidden place for timecycles to arrive and depart so Wanda Tamberly must visit by local transportation.

Ralph Corwin, the resident anthropologist, was born in 1895 and worked among Native Americans in the 1920s and '30s before his recruitment to the Patrol. Thus, in less than three pages, we learn considerably more about Time Patrol organization in the twentieth century.

High Tech And Low Tech II

There are two technology levels in 13,212 BC. The Beringians known to Wanda are naked fishers and gatherers. Suddenly, leather-clad, spear-carrying mammoth hunters with a sexual division of labor arrive from Siberia, Paleo-Indians. Wanda, in the field as a naturalist, must now be joined by an anthropologist.

Meanwhile, we learn more about Patrol technology. Wanda's voice-controlled computer plays music on request. A small instrument on a headband has recorded everything that she saw and heard while she was outside her shelter during the day. (Carl Farness in Gothland has small full sensory recorders.) Wanda inputs her recordings to a databox and also records an audiovisual report illustrated by extracts from the full recording of her experiences, then sends her report in a message capsule to the project office in the twentieth century United States. The office could send a response to arrive immediately but probably judge that she needs a meal and sleep first.

Previously, I have read this passage very quickly and instantly forgotten most of these details.

High Tech And Low Tech

See here. Also, if Shalten had been talking to a version of Everard who had not experienced and accomplished what he did in Bactria in 209 BC, then how would telling him about it in 1902 AD rectify the situation? I do think that Shalten's dialogue lacks logical coherence at this point.

Meanwhile, so to say, Wanda Tamberly is in Beringia. In the Time Patrol series, we appreciate the contrast between the high technology of the time travelers and the low technology of the periods visited. Wanda surveys Beringia in 13,212 BC:

a low sun that will sink briefly beneath the sea;
gold sunlight on towering cumulus clouds and gleaming water;
short grass, peat moss, stunted aspen, scrub willow;
sedges by a brook entering a river with dwarf alder at the sides;
smoke from the dens of the locals;
a damp wind off the sea;
hundreds of gulls, ducks, geese, cranes, swans, plover, snipe and curlews;
a hovering eagle.

She then enters her low domed shelter containing:

her timecycle under a shelf with mattress and sleeping bag;
one chair and table with computer and other apparatus;
a cooking-washing unit;
storage.

By policy, her dome is small and unobtrusive in the lives of the natives although, inside it, she has a Patrol computer, far beyond the capacity of any twentieth century equivalent, and also a vehicle that can return her instantly to the late twentieth century. She is exploring the prehistoric past but remains part of a time traveling organization with its headquarters in a remote future.

At The Academy

While contemplating temporal paradoxes and historical periods, we must also remember Poul Anderson's descriptions of nature, including pre-human nature:

"Light streamed golden across a prairie reaching beyond sight. Wildflower-starred, grass rippled and, she knew, rustled under the wind. In places, a grove or a thicket interrupted immensity, and in the distance trees lined a great brown river. She knew also how its water and its mud surged with life, larvae, insects, fish, frogs, snakes, waterfowl, herds of rooting merycoidodon like giant hogs or small slender hippopotami. Wings filled heaven." (The Shield Of Time, pp. 129-130)

(I remember "High is heaven and holy" in another Anderson series.)

The following paragraph describes the Time Patrol Academy on an elevation reinforced against floods. Gardens, lawns, bowers and low subtly curved buildings of changing colors have stood for millennia and will be carefully demolished fifty millennia hence. Next, of course, we read that Cadet Wanda Tamberly breathes mild, rich air with odors of growth, soil and herbs - so nothing is missing from an Andersonian appreciation of natural beauty.

We read of the "...great brown river..." and the low, curved buildings of shifting colors when Everard was at the Academy (Time Patrol, p. 6) and Havig's main base in another time travel scenario is similar although in the Pleistocene:

"It stood on a wooded hill, and through the valley below ran a mighty river which...shone in the sunlight like bronze."
-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), p. 157.

The Patrol Academy is in the Oligocene and the Patrol also has a lodge in the Pleistocene.