Agents Of Chaos

"The Year of the Ransom."

About thirty Exaltationists of both sexes are identically dressed in black, close-fitting, single-piece, silver-patterned garments, some with colourful cloaks. Only four Exaltationists will remain to be rounded up in The Shield Of Time. Raor is a minor character here but the major villainess in The Shield Of Time, PART TWO, so the same actor should appear in the part in both if these stories are filmed.

The Exaltationists are an expression of temporal chaos and, as such, cause further chaos. Thus, they stole timecycles and kidnap a Conquistador who steals a cycle from them. Raor tells Everard that they would have fought among themselves if they had succeeded in changing history. Chaos would have been unconfined.

The Hierarchy Of Chaos

temporal chaos

the Exaltationists

Luis Castelar

Earth

In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, Earth is seen twice from space and once from the Moon.

During training in the Oligocene:

"Everard said nothing. He was too captured by the spectacle of Earth, rolling enormous against the stars."

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 2, p. 14.

Before the attack on the Exaltationists in Machu Picchu in 1610:

"[The spacecraft] was orbiting dayside when Everard arrived, and the planet stretched vast, blue swirled with white around the ruddinesses that were continents."

-Poul Anderson, "The Year of the Ransom" IN Time Patrol, pp. 641-735 AT 15 April 1610, p. 719.

On the Moon:

"...heaven black but reigned over by an Earth nearly full. I lost myself in the sight of that glorious white-swirled blueness. Jorith had lost herself there, two thousand years ago."

-Poul Anderson, "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth" IN Time Patrol, pp. 333-465 AT 2319, 375.

Machu Picchu

 

"The Year of the Ransom," 15 April 1610, pp. 655-667; pp. 719-722.

Machu Picchu, occupied from 1420 to 1532 but then abandoned, is a perfect hideout for time criminals. In 1610, the Exaltationists use force fields for roofs and doorways. Their timecycles arrive and depart on a platform attached high on a wall. Magical apparitions frighten the Indians and keep them away. The stories die out but the city remains shunned.

When Time Patrol agents, alerted to the Exaltationists' presence, observe Machu Picchu from space, they see the arrival of the prisoners, Castelar and Tanaquil/Tamberly and must time their own attack for immediately after the prisoners' escape. Thus, the Exaltationists remain safe in Machu Picchu until that later moment.

In The Serpent House

"The Year of the Ransom."

Another load of Atahualpa's ransom arrives in Caxamalca. In the treasury called the Serpent House, where Spanish priests have defaced wall paintings, precious metal gleams in multiple chambers and the new consignment lies in an anteroom:

"Pizarro's officers had hastily unwrapped the bundles, to assure themselves about the contents, and left everything where they tossed it. Tomorrow they would weigh the mass and put it with the rest. Cords and wrappings rustled under Castelar's boots, Tanaquil's sandals." (p. 652)

I quote this passage because I think that it must be very close to an accurate description of the interior of the Serpent House, so called because of a snake carved above its entrance.

The friar, Tanaquil, blesses the beautiful pagan ornaments by holding and turning them in front of a reliquary containing two crystals that look like lenses. They are lenses.

In 1987, a man on a timecycle kidnaps the lady Wanda Tamberly, as he calls her. In 1533, a man on a timecycle renders Don Luis unconscious by pointing a tube at him. Time travel is afoot.

History In Time Travel Fiction

"The Year of the Ransom," 3 June 1533 [Julian calendar].

By reading Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series, we learn some history concerning:

post-Roman Britain

Cyrus the Great

the Second Punic War

Tyre

the Spanish conquest of Peru

the Volkerwanderung

Bactria

the medieval church-state conflict

the Knights Templar

We can trust Anderson to get the historical details as right as he was able to at the time of writing. We can also check independently on, e.g., Atahualpa. The Spanish lured the last Inca Emperor into an ambush, slaughtered his men, held him to ransom, executed him anyway and justified their actions in terms of their religious ideology:

"'God's will... We bring the Faith to these heathen.'" (pp. 648-649)

Multiple Viewpoints

A fictional universe requires multiple viewpoints. Thus, in Poul Anderson's Technic History, having met Nicholas van Rijn, David Falkayn and Adzel in the Polesotechnic League Tetralogy and Ythrians on Avalon in The People Of The Wind, we next turn to The Earth Book Of Stormgate where we find the Avalonian Ythrian, Hloch of Stormgate Choth, introducing:

James Ching's account of his student days with Adzel;

Emil Dalmady's encounter with van Rijn;

events on the planet Ivanhoe after Falkayn had been there;

a narrative in which van Rijn is mentioned as a public figure;

van Rijn's granddaughter travelling with him in an Ythrian ship to Mirkheim where they meet Falkayn and Adzel;

etc.

In the Time Patrol series:

the central continuing character, Manse Everard;

other Patrol agents, Tom Nomura and Carl Farness;

the niece of a Patrol agent.

In "The Year of the Ransom," Wanda Tamberly refers to her Uncle Steve. Her kidnapper refers to her uncle Estaban. The following chapter, headed 3 June 1533 [Julian calender], introduces Fray Estaban Tanaquil. So we gradually get the message that Stephen Tamberly is a Patrolman.

Starting "The Year of the Ransom"

Poul Anderson, "The Year of the Ransom" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 641-735.

Continuing the line of thought from the previous post: devolution into Morlocks and Eloi and evolution into Danellians are two alternative future evolutionary histories. The Time Traveller must go to the Morlocks and Eloi whereas the Danellians come to 19352 AD and earlier.

"The Year of the Ransom" was originally published as a single volume. The Time Patrol is not mentioned until p. 657. As in "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth," the text alternates between first and third person narration. 

Wanda has a:

"...dream of joining the research staff at Darwin Station..." (10 September 1987, p. 642)

However:

"...another dream could come along meanwhile and take me." (ibid.)

That is the kind of phrase, appearing early in a text, that becomes significant later if we remember it. Otherwise, we recognize the significance on rereading. Similarly, we might guess that "Uncle Steve" (p. 641), planted in the opening paragraph, will become an active character.

We might recognize an outsize wheelless motorcycle hanging in the air as a Patrol timecycle. (p. 645) This vehicle can hover, fly, jump to a different set of spatial coordinates, jump to a different set of temporal coordinates and is armed. More than just a time machine.

Goths And Morlocks

The Time Traveller spends three days in 802,701 AD when he interacts with Morlocks and Eloi. Poul Anderson's Carl Farness travels repeatedly to 300-372 AD when he interacts mainly with Goths. Both authors present colourful descriptions of nature in their respective periods: pre- and post-civilization.

Timecycles are like improved Time Machines. Patrol message shuttles recall the model Time Machine. Patrol milieu HQ is based in the period when The Time Machine was published.

In There Will Be Time, mutant time travellers fast forward and rewind the universe like the Time Traveller and one mutant gives the time travel idea to a young British writer.

Time is a direction of extension both in The Time Machine and in The Corridors Of Time.

The moral as ever: read Wells and Anderson.

Unwarranted Interference In The Past?

"The Sorrow of Odin the Goth."

The Wanderer tells Winnithar:

"'As far as Weard allows, I mean to watch over your house. But that may not be so far.'" (302-330, p. 379)

Winnithar's great-grandson, Hathawulf, tells the Wanderer:

"'You have worn yourself out for us...'" (366-372, p. 442)

Surely Carl Farness should devote his time in the fourth century only to his research for the Time Patrol? Furthermore, surely the Patrol has fail-safe means of contraception, especially for use in the past? Thus, Carl and Winnithar's daughter, Jorith, would not have had a son?

Sunsets

"The Sorrow of Odin the Goth."

Sunsets are colourful symbols of the passage of time: 

the end of a day; 

metaphorically, the end of an era; 

the Sunset of Mankind in The Time Machine; 

the sunset of the Terran Empire in the Dominic Flandry series; 

PG Wodehouse's Sunset At Blandings.

Here are three significant sunsets.

When Dagobert is killed in battle:

"The sun sank westward, blood-red in a greenish heaven. Its light glimmered of carrion fowl awheel overhead. " (337, p. 392)

When Ermanaric's men kill Randwar and Swanhild:

"This was a bleak evening, where wind shrilled. Tatters of smoke mingled with scudding wrack. Sunset smoldered. A few slain defenders sprawled on the cobbles." (366-372), p. 444.

Before Ermanaric kills himself:

"He had watched sunset smolder away in the west, while thunderheads gathered blue-black in the east. Those clouds now loomed across a fourth of heaven." (374, p. 463)

All fully appropriate.