The Broken Bridge

"Star of the Sea."

Janne Floris reminds Manse Everard:

"'Finally Civilis agreed to meet with Cerialis and discuss terms. It is a dramatic scene in Tacitus - a bridge across the Ijssel, from which workers first removed the middle - the two men stood each at an end of the broken span and talked -'" (2, p. 489)

- and Everard remembers that that was where Tacitus' manuscript had broken off. 

Poul Anderson makes the broken bridge a dramatic scene in 19 which, like some other chapters, is pure historical fiction. Snow covers burned buildings. The southerly sun casts shadows. Ice crusts dried reeds and drifts midstream. Wilderness glooms on the horizon. Civilis/Burhmund and his men ride to their side of the broken bridge and he walks to the end of it to face Cerialis while the workers who had demolished the middle of the bridge and a few ranked legionaries wait on the other side. The two leaders hail each other and begin a grave exchange in Latin.

And there ends this chapter. But the fact that the chapter is here confirms that the Time Patrol agents have completed their mission with the Northern Rebellion ended on schedule. 19, less than a page and a half in length, is followed by III, the third of the four mythological passages, as we approach the conclusion to this, one of the best ever time travel stories.

The (Prevented) Veleda Timeline

"Star of the Sea," 11, A.D. 49.

Is the Veleda timeline entirely prevented? The Tacitus Two text comes from it. 

In the history that is known to us, Burhmund/Civilis made peace with Rome whereas in Veleda's divergent timeline:

Burhmund was crushed;

the prophetess, Veleda, returned to free Germany where her new religion spread;

it grew and developed without competition after her death;

the goddess became the supreme figure, appealing to women who influenced their children;

with the Western Empire collapsed, Christianity did not admit its North European converts to the commerce and culture of civilization;

instead, the Nerthus faith became the core of a Germanic civilization, able, like Zoroastrian Persia, to resist Christianity;

the world was very different by the twentieth century;

"'That's what we're trying to head off,' Everard said harshly." (p. 569)

Only wanting to post once more today, I preferred to return to "Star of the Sea" than to stay with Dinosaur Beach but I will try to get the rest of the latter read and out of the way this evening.

Tomorrow, a new month. We approach the end of the first quarter-century of the Third Millennium. I wish that I could look forward with confidence to a long future ahead.

No New God

"Star of the Sea," 11, A.D. 49.

Time Patrol ethnographer Jens Ulstrup to Unattached Agent Manse Everard and Specialist Janne Floris:

"'...Edh is not introducing the gospel of a whole new religion. That is outside the pagan mentality. In fact, I rather imagine her ideas are evolving as she goes along. She is not even adding a new deity. Her goddess is known through most of the Germanic range. The local name is Naerdha. She must be more or less identical with the Nerthus whose cult Tacitus describes.'" (p. 565)

Christianity began not as the gospel of a whole new religion but as the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets. Moses, representing the Law, and Elijah, representing the Prophets, appeared at either side of Christ at the Transfiguration. (The Law was a revelation. The Prophets applied that revelation to historical contexts. History climaxed in the Messiah.) The new movement, not yet called Christianity, was a culmination of the Abrahamic tradition, not the initiation of a new tradition. There was not meant to be a new tradition. The earliest Christians, persuaded by Peter at Pentecost, were Jews who accepted that the historical process was now complete because the Messiah had come and who continued to worship in the Temple. Paul was arrested making an offering in the Temple. After that, the two communities had to split. Later, Muhammad claimed to fulfil the prophetic monotheist tradition but was not accepted as a prophet by either Jews or Christians. Result: three different world religions. We live with that.

Has anyone ever added a new deity? I think that both the Mosaic and the Koranic names for the one God were originally names of tribal gods. Veleda's Naerdha would have become the one Goddess. We wonder what her history would have been like.

How Do Religions Change?

"Star of the Sea."

Tacitus Two is an alternative text signaling a potential divergent timeline. Janne Floris tells Manse Everard:

"'Tacitus - Two - remarks near the end of the Histories that the religion of the wild Germans has changed since he wrote his book about them. A female deity is becoming prominent, the Nerthus he described in his Germania. Now he compares her to Persephone, Minerva, and Bellona.'" (2, pp. 490-491)

(An important planet is named Nerthus in Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History. We project mythological names onto the heavens. "Woden" is a planet in the Technic History.)

The Tacitus Two Nerthus combines death, wisdom and war at a time when, as Everard observes, "'...the male sky-gods...'" (p. 491) should have become dominant. How do religions change, particularly when there is conflict between male and female figures? We see the beginning of this process when the warrior, Heidhin, begins:

"'The Anses -'" (3, p. 500)

- but the charismatic prophetess, Veleda, interrupts:

"'Let Woen and the rest grumble at Niaerdh, Nerha, if they like. I serve her.'" (ibid.)

Heidhin scowls but does not reply. One person can move the world - if she is standing in the right place.

The story culminates with a prayer to:

"Mary, mother of God..." (IV, p. 639)

The female in the highest place? The Catholic Church has resisted a move to have Mary declared Mediatrix. Years ago, a devout Irish Catholic fellow student embarrassingly said to me as someone else was walking past, "But in a way, Paul, the Blessed Virgin is the Mediatrix of all Graces because it was she who consented..." Of the four canonical Gospels, two contain different legendary Nativity stories. In one of these, Gabriel appears and "Announces" to Mary. My friend accepted this fairytale as a historical event. The original of Mary would have consented to nothing more than marital relationships with her husband. But belief is a powerful force. Veleda served the goddess. My friend revered the Mother of God. Poul Anderson dramatizes a historical progression from Germanic polytheism to the complex Christian synthesis.

The Time Stream Forks

"Star of the Sea," 4.

The Time Patrol needs:

"...to discover how it is that the time stream forks - and which is the right course, which is the wrong one, for us and our world." (p. 506)

This is the only passage in the Time Patrol series in which the time stream is said to "fork." From the time at which Everard is when he thinks this, it is possible to live or to travel forward either into the Tacitus One or into the Tacitus Two timeline. A Tacitus Two text has been brought from that timeline. Presumably anyone who travels into the "wrong" - Tacitus Two - timeline and does not return from it will spend the rest of his life there and will never be seen again in the "right" - Time Patrol-protected - timeline. Some Patrol agents are lost in the Carthaginian timeline of "Delenda Est."

Tacitus One And Two

"Star of the Sea," 2.

By "Tacitus One," Everard and Floris mean the restored version of Tacitus' Histories that recounts history as we know it. By "Tacitus Two," they mean a different version that has been found by time travelling sociologists in the early second century and that recounts a very different outcome of the Northern revolt. The problem as I see it is: how can a Tacitus Two manuscript exist in the Tacitus One timeline? My suggested solution is that the sociologists were in the second century at a time when both Tacitus One and Tacitus Two were possible. When they wanted to borrow a contemporary copy of the Histories from a private library, they had to travel a short distance into the future in order to enter the library surreptitiously and this short journey took them into the then possible Tacitus Two timeline but then they returned pastward and forward again into the Tacitus One timeline. As far as I can remember, Poul Anderson indicated in private correspondence that he would accept this explanation. However, the problem that I still have with it is that I cannot fit it into any other theoretical framework to explain events as recounted in the Time Patrol series. But then I do not think that anything else fits either. 

Although:

"The Patrol speech had a grammar capable of handling chronokinesis, variable time, and the associated paradoxes..." (2, p. 482)

- Everard and Floris several times postpone speaking Temporal and prefer to stay with English because they do not want to go too deeply into the problem at their first meeting. We understand their English but not what they are trying to say with it.

I think that that is enough time travel for this evening, don't you?

Civilized Time Travel

"Star of the Sea."

In HG Wells' The Time Machine as in Poul Anderson's "Flight to Forever," an experimental temporal vehicle sets off into the future. These two vehicles are called the Time Machine and the time projector, respectively. 

Anderson's Time Patrol series could not be more different. No one from either the nineteenth or the twentieth century has to set off into any future period. There are time travelling civilizations in the future - after 19352 A.D. There is also a time travel police force, the Patrol, with vehicles called "timecycles" and with local agents and bases in earlier centuries. Within that organization, Janne Floris, born and based in the twentieth century, is:

"A field agent, Specialist second class..." (2, p. 479)

"...she did field research in the Roman Iron Age, that period when the archaeology of northern Europe began fitfully merging with recorded history." (p. 481)

Of course, the Patrol has its own recorded history even of the archaeological period thanks to the researches of agents like Floris although she must not read the findings of her own researches until after she has conducted those researches.

The Middle Command of the Patrol is concerned about some events in:

"'...the Low Countries in the first century A.D.'" (pp. 483-484)

(I think that the Middle Command is so called because it is human... The Time Traveller's future mankind devolves in to Morlocks and Eloi whereas the Time Patrollers' evolves into Danellians.)

Everard and Floris agree that neither of them has yet been on the scene in relation to this particular concern but, of course, they have. If they are going to visit the first century Low Countries in order to investigate:

"'...a report of inconsistencies in a chronicle of Tacitus's...'" (p. 483)

- the they have already done so. They just do not yet know what they did back then.

The Tacitus Discontinuity

In "Star of the Sea," there is just a single temporal discontinuity. A time travelling sociologist in second century Rome wants to borrow and duplicate a copy of Tacitus. He enters destination coordinates for a short space-time jump into a private library, intending to return immediately to his departure point. He does not arrive in the private library but does return to his departure point with an alternative version of Tacitus, Tacitus Two. (I am recording only events that occur in the timeline guarded by the Patrol.) Then the Patrol must work to ensure that historical events conform to Tacitus One, not to Tacitus Two.

This brief jump into and back out of a divergent timeline is unique in the Time Patrol series.

The Bridge

"Star of the Sea."

"'Finally Civilis agreed to meet with Cerialis and discuss terms. It is a dramatic scene in Tacitus - a bridge across the Ijssel, from which workers first removed the middle - the two men stood each at an end of the broken span and talked -'

"'I remember that,' Everard said. 'It's where the manuscript ended, till the rest was recovered. As I recall, the rebels got a pretty fair offer, which they accepted.'" (2, pp. 489-490)

The Tacitus Two manuscript with no peace settlement but continued warfare and subjugation of the tribes had diverged just after that point. As Everard commented:

"'Kind of spooky, huh?'" (2, p. 487)

Chapter 18 ends when Niaerdh tells Veleda:

"'When [the kings and chiefs] are gathered before you, give them the word of peace.'" (p. 622)

Chapter 19 describes the parley on the broken bridge. Burhmund lists his services to Rome. Peace talks begin.

Chapter III contrasts with I and II by describing not conflict between gods but peace among men.

Turning Point

"Star of the Sea," 18.

Burhmund and Veleda are historical figures in Tacitus' Histories. Heidhin, Veleda's companion, and of course Manse Everard of the Time Patrol are fictional characters created by Poul Anderson. Thus, several narrative strands converge when Burhmund tells Heidhin:

"'Yon Everard is an odd one. He may be able to bring something about.'" (p. 617)

That is how a time traveller intervening in historical events might appear to a participant in those events: odd but possibly effective. We value alternative viewpoints in fiction. In Anderson's Technic History, we sometimes read how van Rijn, Falkayn or Flandry appear to others.

Burhmund and Heidhin converse although neither is presented as the viewpoint character. Veleda arrives and leads Heidhin outside. We are told what Burhmund says to others who are present when the door closes, then we follow events outside the building without any break in the text. Heidhin and Veleda converse with Janne Floris/Niaerdh. As in the previous chapter, Floris hears Everard's voice internally so she, Floris, has become the viewpoint character.

This chapter is the turning point. Heidhin releases Veleda from her oath by killing himself. His death ensures the Tacitus One timeline. If Heidhin had refused to yield and had carried Veleda with him, then the Tacitus Two timeline with continued warfare and a new religion of the Goddess would have followed.

Shakespeare And Ecclesiastes In The Time Patrol

"Star of the Sea," 14.

Janne Floris has killed the Romans who were raping Edh and is holding her where she is still lying on the ground:

"'What do you want of me, Niaerdh?' [Edh] whispered. 'I am yours. As I always was?'

"'Slay the Romans, all the Romans!' Heidhin bawled.'" (p. 592)

Edh, in shock, asks the goddess what she should do and hears "Slay the Romans!" Of course, it is not the goddess who bawls that but Edh is confused and trying to understand. She asks whether Niaerdh is troubled that the Romans befoul her world.

Heidhin says that he will pay with his life. He will. Unable to accept peace with Rome, he will kill himself, thus moving events towards the Tacitus One timeline.

Everard tells Floris:

"'The time is out of joint and you can't set it right today. You can't. Meddle any more, and I swear there'll never be a Tacitus One book, maybe never a Tacitus Two. We don't belong in these events, and that's why the future is in danger. Leave them be!'" (p. 593)

He quotes Shakespeare:

"The time is out of joint. O cursed spite

"That ever I was born to set it right!"

-Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5, lines 189-190.

Wanda Tamberly and Aryuk quote Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5, lines 15-20 when they stage an apparition of a ghost in Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), PART FOUR, 13,211 B. C., XII, p, 244, whereas Janne Floris quotes Ecclesiates 3: 1-8, when she stages an apparition of the goddess in "Star of the Sea," 17.

Everard is a time traveller who knows that he does not belong in these events. The time is not out of joint. He is.

The Veledan Alternative

"Star of the Sea," 11.

Janne Floris speculates about a Germanic religion inspired by Veleda:

"'It could grow and develop onward after her death. Oh, it would not become monotheistic or anything like that. But this goddess would be the supreme figure, around whom everything gathered. She would give folk as much, spiritually, or almost as much, as Christ could. Few would ever join the Church.'" (p. 568)

Jens Ulstrup concurs:

"'Quite conceivably the Nerthus faith can become the seed and core of a Germanic civilization - not barbarism but a civilization, however turbulent - which has the inner richness to resist Christendom as Zoroastrian Persia will.'" (ibid.)

Does this timeline exist somewhen even if prevented, in their experience, by the Patrol? How did the Tacitus Two manuscript originate? 

Why should the Nerthus faith not become monotheistic? One deity becoming the supreme figure around whom everything else gathers is one way that monotheism does emerge from polytheism. Floris can only mean that full monotheism would not be immediate

I have tried to imagine a world religion as different from Buddhism and Christianity as they are from each other. The best that I can think of is a feminine monism recognizing many local manifestations of the Goddess. I would expect it to be tolerant and to be able to practice just sitting meditation within it.

What does any deity give folk spiritually? A local Evangelical apparently reached rock bottom with drug abuse, then asked for help from Whoever was there, then began to recognize and accept help offered by other people and external events. She did that. She personified the source of the help as the deity named by the local dominant tradition - Jesus, not Krishna or Allah. Of course, she also believes that that deity literally exists and that the others do not. Someone brought up in the Nerthus tradition would believe likewise.

Historical Summary

"Star of the Sea," 9.

This chapter summarizes Tacitus:

"A sketch suffices." (p. 543)

We recognize the voice of the omniscient narrator.

Burhmund occupies the country of the Sunici and recruits there. At the Moselle River, he defeats some Germans but, while he struggles to pursue them through the Belgic woods, his allies, Classicus and Tutor, are idle or slow. Romans advance, link with auxiliaries led by Burhmund's nephew, Julius Briganticus, and defeat Tutor.

Petillius Cerialis, in charge of the Imperial campaign, pacifies Gaul, enters Trier, declares an amnesty, reincorporating defected units into his army, and rejects the imperium of Gaul offered to him by Burhmund and Classicus. He defeats a rebel attack, retakes the city of the Aggripenses and would have ended the war in a two-day battle near Old Camp if he had had ships to prevent the rebels from escaping across the Rhine. The rebels dig in with guerrilla resistance as winter approaches.

More Cans Of Worms II

"Star of the Sea," 6.

"...we have no evidence of anybody trying to monkey with events." (p. 521)

The irony is that it is Everard's and Floris's investigation of past events that "monkeys with" them:

"'...what we've found is the irony that our investigation of a disturbance to the plenum is what brought it about. To be quite frank, that sort of nexus is by no means unprecedented.'" (15, p. 599)

But the nature of the disturbance is not what we expect from reading previous Time Patrol episodes. Sociologists studying Rome in the early second century find an altered text of Tacitus' Histories, Tacitus Two. That should mean that the sociologists are in the Tacitus Two timeline. But when they report uptime it is to the Tacitus One timeline. If they are still in the Tacitus One timeline, then how have they acquired a Tacitus Two manuscript? I can try to explain this but the attempted explanation cannot fit into the successive timelines theory.

An Attempted Explanation

The sociologists are studying Rome at a time when the events described in Tacitus One and the alternative sequence of events described in Tacitus Two are equally probable. To extract a copy of the Histories from a library, they had to travel a short distance into the future when the library would be empty. This short journey took them forward into the Tacitus Two timeline. Returning to their base in the early second century took them back to before the turning point between Tacitus One and Tacitus Two. Travelling futureward again returned them to the future of their familiar Tacitus One timeline. But Patrol action is necessary before the turning point to ensure, as far as possible, that all other time travellers returning from the further past stay with Tacitus One. 

Tacitus One And Two And Guion

"Star of the Sea," 2.

Janne Floris compares two versions of Tacitus' Histories:

"'...the chronicle as such, the narrative line, does not split until the fifth book, very soon after the scene where the copy that survived breaks off. Is this coincidence?'

"'I dunno,' Everard replied. 'and better we pass that question by. Kind of spooky, huh?'" (p. 487)

They never do return to that point. History split just after the point where the surviving Histories had broken off. Poul Anderson fills his Time Patrol series with hints of something just out of sight or out of reach. Guion tells Wanda Tamberly:

"'There are occasions when we know only that the web is troubled, not where or when the source of the disturbance lies; for that source perhaps does not exist in our yet, our reality. We can only trace it back up the threads -' He broke off. 'Enough. I do not mean to frighten you.'

"'I don't scare easy, sir.' This could do it, though."

-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), PART THREE, 31,275,389 B. C., 135.

Our yet: a hint of Temporal phraseology. Up the threads, they will find either a time traveller who has arrived from neither past nor future of the current timeline or an event that contradicts history as they know it.

The Three Stages Of Temporal Quantum Change

For such change in "The Year of the Ransom," where it is introduced, see the previous post.

In The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), PART FIVE, Guion tells Everard about what might be minor fluctuations. In PART SIX, there is a major change, described as "a temporal upheaval" (p. 298), not caused by any time traveler:

"The fluctuation was in space-time-energy itself, a quantum leap, a senseless randomness." (p. 344)

In "Star of the Sea," the Tacitus Two text is described as:

"'An object uncaused, formed out of nothing for no reason.'" (20, p. 631)

But, in this case, there is a reason. The Tacitus Two timeline was given some kind of (potential?) reality by the activity of time travelers:

"'...what we've found is the irony that our investigation of a disturbance to the plenum is what brought it about.'" (15, p. 599)

This situation involves both circular causality, which can usually be accommodated within a single timeline, and interaction with a divergent timeline. I have tried to rationalize this situation in earlier posts (see Tacitus Two and, more specifically, Unstable Space-Time II) but it does not really fit into my five-dimensional analysis of causality violation.

They Wrote

See:

Tacitus Wrote
Thucydides Wrote

Raj Whitehall:

"'...let us do what men may, and suffer what we must like men.'"
-The Forge, CHAPTER FOURTEEN, p. 247.

Consulting the two links, the returning to this post, will show the following sequence:

SM Stirling's Snowbrother;

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol story, "Star Of The Sea," quoting Tacitus;

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol story, "Ivory, And Apes, And Peacocks," quoting Thucydides;

SM Stirling's and David Drake's The Forge.

The common themes here are human action and suffering which are reasonably comprehensive.

Tacitus Two

Manse Everard is first informed of causality violations that have no human cause in The Shield Of Time, Part Five. Despite this, he had referred to probability-waves changing their rhythm in "The Year of the Ransom" and to a reality that can at any instant cease to be in "Star of the Sea." This second story was written after The Shield Of Time but is set earlier than it in terms of Everard's duration sense.

How can we account for the Tacitus Two text in "Star of the Sea"? This text exists in the Time Patrol timeline but reads as if it had been written in an alternative timeline. I have proposed an explanation (see here) (scroll down) but what does Anderson's text imply?

"'An object uncaused, formed out of nothing for no reason.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 467-640 AT 20, p. 631.

In quantum mechanics, pairs of matter and anti-matter particles appear in, or emerge from, the energy-filled vacuum. Temporal anomalies are like quantum events scaled up to the human level. So did Tacitus Two just appear on a shelf in a second century A.D. Roman library? This account is logically possible and also avoids reference to a time journey in and out of a potential timeline so which account do you prefer?

Time Travel Correspondence

This post in an initial response to combox discussion for Warped Reality.

At different times, I corresponded with both James Blish and Poul Anderson about time travel. For the views that I expressed, see:

The Logic of Time Travel: Part I
The Logic of Time Travel: Part II

Both authors said that they would keep my letters on file for reference in case of writing anything further about time travel. In addition, Anderson accepted the explanation that I offered for the paradox in "Star of the Sea." However, this paradox differs from any of the others. The Tacitus Two text had not been carried into the past from a potential future by a time traveler but had simply been found in a Roman library. Therefore, the explanation that I offered (see Unstable Space-Time II) differed from my usual way of accounting for causality violation by referring to a second temporal dimension. Whether Anderson would have accepted the latter, I am less sure.

What the Time Patrollers say about causality violation is counter-intuitive and some of it is definitely contradictory. When time allows, I will elucidate this further.

Variable Reality

Manse Everard and Janne Floris discuss the variant copy of Tacitus that had launched them on their search for Veleda but that has now become "'...just a curiosity.'"

Janne says:

"'An object uncaused, formed out of nothing for no reason. What a terrifying universe. It was easier being ignorant about variable reality. Sometimes I regret I was recruited.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Star of the Sea" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 467-640 AT 20, p. 631.

As I said about the hereafter here, I would prefer to know the truth.

Imagine if something like Tacitus Two came to light, maybe a history book, preserved in a private library since the early twentieth century, that seemed authentic, not a work of fiction or a fake, but that also seemed to have originated in an alternative version of reality, e.g., where the Cuban Missile Crisis had become World War III: prima facie evidence that a time traveler from a future that has not come to pass, or that has been prevented from happening, had traveled to the period before the Crisis.

If reality really were "variable" in the way described by Time Patrol members, then evidence of other timelines could be out there.