The Prehistorical Patrol: The Pleistocene

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006); The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991).

The Pleistocene geological epoch, from about 2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago, was a period of repeated glaciations. "Pleistocene," meaning "Most New," contrasts both with the immediately preceding "Pliocene, " ("More New") and with the immediately succeeding "Holocene" ("Wholly New"), which extends to the present day.

Thus, the Time Patrol series informs us of Patrol activity in five successive epochs:

Oligocene;
Miocene;
Pliocene;
Pleistocene;
Holocene.

The Holocene, containing human history, is the main epoch for Patrol activity.

Patrol Activity in the Pleistocene
(i) A Patrol lodge in the Pyrenees employs Cro-Magnon guides 20,000 years ago;

(ii) Wanda Tamberly studies Cro-Magnon Europe;

(iii) in 18,244 BC, the Pyrenees lodge is the headquarters for an attempt to return history to the preferred course;

(iv) several years later, although earlier in Everard's experience, he reported a temporal change at the lodge but that was dealt with following a conference at the Academy back in the Oligocene;

(v) in 15,926 BC, the Patrol maintains a ranch in North America before human beings arrived

(vi) Wanda Tamberly studies the fauna of the Beringia land mass joining Siberia to Alaska, 13,212-13,211 BC;

(vii) Ralph Corwin studies the Paleo-Indians crossing Beringia in 13,211 BC;

(viii) Tamberly preserves a few generations of native Beringians from oppression by the socially and technologically more advanced Paleo-Indians.

Geological Epochs In Other Anderson Time Travel Fiction I

In Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), Jack Havig's group of time travelers establishes its main base in the middle Pleistocene - maybe a million years ago? - close to where its adversary, the Eyrie, will be in the twenty second century.

Thus, Havig's base is much longer ago than the Time Patrol's Pleistocene Pyrenees lodge and also, of course, not only in a different timeline but also in a different kind of timeline with opposite rules of time travel:

circular causality but no causality violation, thus one single invariable timeline;
no instantaneous time hopping in temporal vehicles but instead lifespan-consuming time travel as a psychic power.

Time Patrol members can instantaneously jump into the Pleistocene or any earlier epoch whereas Havig's group must expend personal time and energy traveling by their own effort with aids like miniature oxygen tanks, a specially designed navigation device and caches en route and must also ferry everything that they want to use in the past one piece at a time. On the other hand, that far in the past, they are safely undetectable by their less well-organized enemies.

Their base, on a wooded hill near "...a mighty river..." (p. 157) sounds exactly like the Time Patrol Academy in the Oligocene.

In "Delenda Est" II

See here.

Timelines
(i) Roman victory.
(ii) Carthaginian victory.
(iii) Restored Roman victory.

This situation is more complicated than I had thought.

Two Neldorians travel pastward from the 205th millennium in order to change the course of the Second Punic War. Because they succeed, they depart from the 205th millennium of timeline (i) but arrive during what comes to be called the Second Roman War of timeline (ii).

Manse Everard and Piet van Sarawk travel futureward from the Pleistocene lodge in order to arrive in New York, 1960. Because the Neldorians have succeeded, Manse and van Sarawak depart from the Pleistocene lodge in timeline (i) and arrive in the equivalent of New York in the year 5964 from the creation of the world (as it is believed) in timeline (ii).

Remaining within timeline (ii), the two Patrolmen travel pastward to the lodge, then to the Academy. After some exploratory futureward journeys by other agents, Manse and Everard lead a team to the Battle of Ticinus to restore Roman victory in the war against Carthage. Because they succeed, they depart from the Academy in timeline (ii) but intervene in the Battle of Ticinus in timeline (iii).

In timeline (i), Manse and van Sarawak have simply disappeared, never to be seen again, on a shared timecycle in the Pleistocene lodge. In the previous post, I hypothesized that Patrol HQ in each of their home milieus would send an agent to the lodge to investigate their disappearance. I further hypothesized that, because they were investigating what had happened to Manse and van Sarawak, each of these agents would also arrive in timeline (ii). In that case, they also would have disappeared forever from timeline (i).

In any case, I think that Patrol theoreticians and Danellians in timeline (i) would deduce what had happened. These guys have disappeared into another timeline. We can't get them back but their fate does not affect our timeline. It is the equivalent of missing (not killed) in action or a ship lost at sea. To be regretted but not affecting anything else.

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.

A Pleistocene Hunter

When David Falkayn realized the potential of the planet Satan:

"Sheer instinct roused him. He was abruptly a Pleistocene hunter again.
"'Judas!' he yelled. 'Yes!'" (p. 358) (For full reference, see here.)

I quoted this passage at greater length before. See The Realization About Satan. Now I want to connect it with two similar passages about Dominic Flandry (see Our Animal Ancestry and A Moment Of Truth?) and also with some comparable passages in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series (see Subjectivity and The Presence Of Innocence).

Falkayn, Flandry and Everard are high tech hunters.

Glaciers

"'...Earth was full of animal life in the Pleistocene...'"
-Poul Anderson, Planet Of No Return, Chapter 5, p. 37.

We know:

"The hunting is good in Europe twenty thousand years ago and the winter sports are unexcelled anywhen. So the Time Patrol, always solicitous for its highly trained personnel, maintains a lodge in the Pleistocene Pyrenees."
-Poul Anderson, "Delenda Est" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 173-228 AT p. 173.

Manse Everard, on leave, has shot a mammoth, skied, mountain-climbed and watched natives dance.

"'...and it wasn't till hunting got worse when the glaciers receded that man was forced to develop agriculture and become civilised.'"
-Planet Of No Return, p. 37.

The human turning point is summarized in part of a single sentence and suggests an alternative history narrative set on an Earth where the glaciers never receded.

"'Anyway, those glaciers are on the way out; I've seen distinct moraines in the photographs.'" (ibid.)

We learn some geology.

Everard's Vacations

(i) Twenty thousand years ago, there is good hunting and winter sports at the Time Patrol lodge in the Pleistocene Pyrenees where the Patrol pays Cro-Magnon guides with items like steel knives. Everard has killed a mammoth, skied, mountain climbed and watched native dances. With two weeks of furlough left, Piet Van Sarawak suggests relocating to Augustan Rome but Everard replies that that period is overrated and that the best decadence, apart from a long way into the future, is New York in his own milieu if you know the right phone numbers. (Can New Yorkers confirm this?)

Van Sarawak concedes that a pioneer society like his twenty-fourth century Venus "'...has little use for the finer arts of amusement.'" (Time Patrol, p. 175) They set off to New York, 1960.

(ii) Everard vacations in the scientific base that the Patrol maintains in southern Iberia during the hundred or so years of inflow from the Atlantic into what becomes the Mediterranean.

(iii) In 18,244 BC, Everard and Wanda Tamberly holiday at the Pleistocene lodge. She photographs mammoths etc instead of shooting them.They ski, climb and visit Cro-Magnon settlements. The lodge has a large stone fireplace, the Patrol symbol cast in brass on a wall and also a mural of bison by a local artist.

(iv) Everard frequently holidays at the lodge. His vacation with Van Sarawak is subjectively earlier but objectively later than the one with Wanda.

(v) In early January 1990, Everard and Wanda agree to holiday on the coast near San Francisco. On 8 March, they are in San Francisco when his part of the holiday is interrupted by the last ever mission that we see him go on - although we are to understand that, after it, he will return to San Francisco, then to the rest of his Patrol career.

The Lives And Times Of Dan

 

The Time Patrol Academy exists for 500,000 years:

"...long enough to graduate as many as the Time Patrol would require..."

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 2, p. 6.

The Patrol requires a finite number and that number is known. Imagine a Danellian whom we may call "Dan." He is based at Danellian HQ over a million years in the future. HQ has complete records of the lives and activities of every Patrol agent that ever was. Dan copies the entire contents of the records into a computer inside an enclosed time machine. In that machine, he travels pastward and spends a microsecond in the early pre-stellar universe. He returns to the Danellian era a microsecond after his departure from it. Then he checks for any discrepancies between HQ records and the records in his time machine. There is no discrepancy. Dan conducts this procedure periodically. Eventually, there is a discrepancy.

According to Dan's records:

Manson Everard and Piet Van Sarawak vacationed at the Patrol Pleistocene lodge. Growing bored there, they left the lodge, completed their vacation in New York in 1960, then returned separately to their Time Patrol duties.

According to HQ records:

Manson Everard and Piet Van Sarawak vacationed at the Patrol Pleistocene lodge, Growing bored there, they left the lodge but did not arrive in New York in 1960. Instead, they returned to the lodge half an hour after leaving it, accompanied by Deirdre Mac Morn who had never existed in this timeline before. Much Patrol activity was necessary for an intervention in the Second Punic War. Then Van Sarawak returned to twenty-fourth century Venus, taking Deirdre with him.

Observations

The Danellians now have records of two timelines and some information about an intermediate timeline where Deirdre originated. 

Dan has travelled from Danellian timeline (i) to Danellian timeline (ii). 

Deirdre has travelled from her home timeline to Danellian timeline (ii).

The Dan of Danellian timeline (ii) will also have travelled to the pre-stellar past and returned to his present.

Therefore there are now two Dans, unless we call one of them "Daniel."

The Time Patrol And There Will Be Time

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series and There Will Be Time make such a good contrast.

(i) There Will Be Time is a single time travel novel about the circular causality paradox whereas the Time Patrol is a time travel series about the causality violation paradox but with causal circles used to prevent causality violations.

(ii) Time Patrollers make instantaneous space-time jumps seated on timecycles whereas, in There Will Be Time, mutants travelling only through time not through space by an act of will experience reduced duration but not instant transition.

(iii) The Time Patrol Academy is in the Oligocene and the Patrol has a lodge in the Pleistocene whereas Jack Havig's group has a base much earlier in the Pleistocene.

(iv) A narrative of Dr. Watson influenced a Time Patrol case and a mutant time traveller influenced HG Wells.

(v) The two works present different visions of the future.

Three Successive Timelines II

Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991).

The three timelines were:

(i) Lorenzo does not make a flank attack.
(ii) Lorenzo makes a flank attack and wins the battle.
(iii) Lorenzo makes a flank attack but is stunned by Everard.

(i) and (iii) have the same historical outcome but (iii) is more complicated. It reaches the same destination but by a longer route.

It is idle to ask, "What would Everard have been doing in 1137 if it had not been necessary to sabotage (ii)?" This amounts to asking, "What was Everard doing in 1137 in (i)?" The answer is that he was not there/then.

By noting what Everard did in timeline (iii), we can infer what he would have done in timeline (i).

(iii)
In 18,244 BC, Everard is on holiday at the Pleistocene lodge where he is informed of a temporal catastrophe in twelfth century Italy.
Everard intervenes in twelfth century Italy until the crisis is resolved.
He returns to 1990 and starts a holiday with Wanda Tamberly.
In San Francisco, on 8 March 1990, his holiday is interrupted when he is asked and agrees to intervene in Paris in 1307.

(i)
In 18,244 BC, Everard is on holiday at the Pleistocene lodge.
He returns to 1990.
In New York, on 8 March 1990, he is asked and agrees to intervene in Paris in 1307.

Since he lives an indefinitely extended lifespan, it does not matter that he does more in (iii) than he did in (i). Thus, crises like (ii) do not prevent him from doing anything that he would have done. They merely increase his workload.

Two Culminations II

In "Delenda Est"

The temporal crisis comes to light when Manse Everard and Piet van Sarawak, on a single timecycle, leave the Time Patrol Pleistocene Pyrenees lodge twenty thousand years ago, expecting to arrive in New York, 1960, but instead arrive in Afallon in the year 5964 from the creation of the world.

In "Amazement of the World"

The temporal crisis comes to light when:

in 1137alpha, Emil Volstrup of the Time Patrol is told that King Roger of Sicily has died at Rignano;

Keith Denison leaves Babylon in 1765 BC, expecting to arrive in Paris, 1980, but instead arrives in that city in 1980alpha;

Wanda Tamberly leaves the Pleistocene Pyrenees lodge in 18,244 BC, expecting to arrive in San Francisco, 1989, but instead arrives in 1989alpha when there is no San Francisco;

Unattached agent Komosimo arrives in the lodge immediately after Tamberly's departure and informs Manse Everard of a temporal upheaval on about Julian day 2,137,000.

Everard reflects:

"Wanda was bound for twentieth-century California. "Now" she won't come out in anything of the kind..."

-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991) AT PART SIX, "Amazement of the World," 18,244 B. C., I, p. 298.

Not necessarily. For all that Everard knows as yet, the Wanda who has just left the lodge might be one of the many time travellers who did travel forward into the twentieth-century of the Danellian timeline.

The Time Patrol Timeline

The Oligocene.	The Patrol Academy exists for half a million years in the American West, then is carefully demolished. Babylonian recruits cannot understand time travel and have to be given a battle-of-the-gods routine. An ancient Roman does not understand that a machine cannot be treated like a horse. Stephen and Helen Tamberly meet at the Academy. Everard meets Whitcomb and Elizabeth Gray. Wanda Tamberly meets Tu Sequeira, from Mars in the Solar Commonwealth, who will monitor early spacefaring. The Academy is the venue for an emergency conference to deal with the Punic timeline.
31,275,389 BC.	Wanda Tamberly, training at the Academy, is interviewed by Guion who is investigating the possibility of temporal changes not caused by time travellers.
Miocene-Pliocene transition.	A Patrolwoman from the First Matriarchy makes a full-sensory record of the Atlantic flowing into the Mediterranean. Tom Nomura rescues and marries her.
The Pleistocene.	A Patrol lodge in the Pyrenees employs Cro-Magnon guides. Half an hour after departing for 1960, Unattached Agents Everard and Van Sarawak return to the lodge from a timeline where Carthage won the Second Punic War.
18,244 BC.	The Pleistocene lodge is the venue for emergency conferences to deal with two divergent timelines. Wanda Tamberly and Keith Denison return from the European theocracy of 1989alpha AD.
15,926 BC.	A Patrol ranch in pre-human North America.
15,000 BC-900 AD.	Stephen and Helen Tamberly holiday in archaic Japan.
13,212 BC.	The Paleo-Indians cross Beringia, observed by Patrol Specialists Ralph Corwin and Wanda Tamberly.
2937-2930 BC.	Patrolman Stephen Tamberly, marooned in South America by Luis Castelar, duplicates contemporaneous Japanese pottery.
2930 BC.	Guillem Cisneros of the Universarium of Halla solves the archaeological mystery of the Valdivia ware and rescues Tamberly.
1765 BC.	A Patrol base in a vault under the Babylon of Hammurabi. Disguised and guided, Denison and Mikelian tour the city after tracking Indo-European migrations.
c.1550-1292 BC.	Unattached Patrol Agent Komozino investigates the disappearance of an expedition from her home millennium that was seeking cultural inspiration in the Egyptian Eighteenth Dynasty. Patrol bases in 1137 AD contact her about their crisis.
c.1300 BC.	Everard and Cynthia Cunningham holiday in pre-human Hawaii.
c.1040-597 BC.	Epsilon Korten from twenty-ninth century New Edom on Mars directs Jerusalem Base which is responsible for temporal traffic in Hebrew lands from the birth of David to the fall of Judah.
950 BC.	Exaltationist time criminals threaten to destroy Tyre. Zakarbaal (Chaim Zorach) and his wife are Patrol agents in Tyre. Everard recruits Pummairam, who expects to battle wizards in a strange realm, and captures Varagan but the latter's clone mate, Raor, remains at large.
500's BC.	Keith Denison, Patrol Specialist in East Indo-European Proto-History, traces the migration of Aryan clans.
578 BC.	Everard and Denison prevent the murder of the infant Cyrus, thus also preventing Denison's sixteen years as a surrogate Cyrus.
542 BC.	(Everard, investigating the disappearance of Keith Denison, receives hospitality from Croesus, then learns that Cyrus the Great is Keith Denison.)
218 BC.	Neldorian time criminals intervene, and the Patrol counter-intervenes, in the Battle of Ticinus.
213 BC.	Plautus' Asinaria is first performed. The date and the exact text do not agree with what later scholars recorded. Guion thinks that this indicates instability in that section of history.
209 BC.	Patrolman Benegal Dass has spent and will spend widely separated decades watching the growth and death of a city now threatened by Exaltationists. However, Everard captures the remaining Exaltationists, including Raor.
c.5 BC - 30 AD.	The Patrol must know what happened but we are not told. However, Carl later reflects that he cannot in honesty argue either for heathenism or for Christ. On the other hand, it is possible that Koch is a sincere Catholic.
22-37 AD.	Patrol Specialist Janne Floris lives for fifteen years with the Frisii, marries and bears two children.
43 AD.	Patrol intervention accidentally initiates a Goddess movement that, without further Patrol intervention, would prevent Northern Europeans from converting to Christianity. Everard visits Carl and Laurie Farness at the Patrol's Polynesian resort.
49 AD.	Patrol ethnographer Jens Ulstrup has spent twelve years as Domar among the Langobardi.
70-95 AD.	After Everardus the Goth has initiated peace negotiations between Civilis and Cerialis, Janne Floris, appearing as the goddess, helps the pagan prophetess Veleda to re-conceive her deity as peaceful.
Early 100's AD.	Time travelling sociologists studying Rome find a copy of Tacitus' Histories that differs from the standard version.
300-372 AD.	Carl visits four generations of his Gothic descendants.
372 AD.	Wodan appears and betrays his followers as described in the Volsungasaga.
458-461 AD.	Stane from 2987 tries to re-organise post-Roman Britain. Killed by unknowns, he is buried with his belongings in a barrow.
900's.	Jean-Louis Broussard from the 24th century is a Patrol observer in France.
985 or 986 AD.	Everard accompanies Bjarni Herjulfsson to Vinland.
The Middle Ages.	Stalemate in church-state conflict prevents either theocracy or autocracy, allowing the growth of freedom and science.
1137 AD.	Patrol milieu headquarters for the Holy Roman Empire are in Mainz. The director is Otto Koch whose "servant"/assistant is Karel Novak.
1137AD (and 1137alpha AD).	Space-time-energy fluctuates as Guion feared. (Events occurring in divergent timelines would have to be listed separately. Also, although they were visited, very little is known about the divergent timelines.)
(1137alpha AD.)	(King Roger of Sicily dies in battle. Emil Volstrup, Patrolman in Palermo, knows that Roger should live for nearly twenty years...)
1140 AD.	The Patrol base in Palermo is expanded from a one-man operation when Norman Sicily gains importance.
1146 AD.	The Patrol kills a knight who interacts with so many important figures that small changes in his career have major effects on medieval politics.
c.1160/65-1225 AD.	Ma Yuan, Chinese painter. The exact objects depicted on one of his scrolls are another of Guion's instabilities.
1196 AD.	Stefan Nemanya, Grand Zhupan of Serbia, abdicates. Another of Guion's instabilities.
1198 AD.	Patrol milieu headquarters move from Mainz to Rome.
1200's AD.	Amerindian Patrol Specialist John Sandoval traces Native American history, including Athabascan migrations.
1280 AD.	Mongol expedition to North America.
1287-1307 AD.	Boniface Reynaud establishes himself as Reinault Bodel, wool dealer in Harfleur, chief seaport of Northern France, where he directs Patrol operations headquarters. Timecycles arrive in a locked dockside shed.
1295-1307 AD.	Patrolman Hugh Marlow rises in the Knights Templar.
1307 AD.	The Templars are suppressed but their fleet escapes.
1524 AD.	Exaltationists try to prevent the civil war that made it easy for Pizarro to conquer the Incas.
1533 AD.	Exaltationists try to steal Atahualpa's ransom but instead kidnap Conquistador Luis Castelar and Patrolman Stephen Tamberly.
1536 AD.	Time vehicles are glimpsed above the siege of Cuzco.
1589-1613 AD.	Everard and Cynthia Cunningham go to the theatre in London.
1610 AD.	At Machu Picchu, Castelar and Tamberly escape from Exaltationists on a timecycle. The Patrol attacks the Exaltationists.
1638-1715 AD.	Reign of Louis XIV. An agent recruited from this period is assigned to the same milieu. The Patrol has few recruits from before the First Industrial Revolution.
1731 AD.	On Good Friday, a time traveller records Bach's St Mark's Passion in Leipzig Cathedral.
1800's.	Everard and Cynthia Cunningham waltz in Vienna.
1826 AD.	Simon Bolivar receives bad advice - from an Exaltationist. Everard's first meeting with the Exaltationist leader Merau Varagan who escapes in a causal loop.
1843 AD.	Everard and the Farnesses see Lola Montez in Paris.
1850-2000 AD.	The period covered by Patrol headquarters 1890-1910 with smaller offices in other decades.
1850 AD.	Charles Whitcomb, formerly of the RAF and the Time Patrol, and his wife Mary settle down in Victorian England.
1856 AD.	Helen Tamberly born in Cambridge.
1858 AD.	At the Friedrick Wilhelm University in Berlin, Carl, reporting to Patrol agent Professor Herbert Ganz, displays a 3D recording of his meeting with Ulfilas, the Arian Apostle to the Goths.
1864 AD.	Emil Volstrup born in Copenhagen.
1873 AD.	Helen Tamberly orphaned, studies classics, later recruited by the Patrol.
1875 AD.	Cowboy Jack Hall recruited by the Patrol.
1880's AD.	Because Helen Tamberly would not like Stephen's birthtime, they live on York Place (crossing Baker St) in Victorian London, Stephen as an American employee of Dalhousie and Roberts. Helen studies the Ionic colonies in the seventh and sixth centuries BC, interpreting reports from Patrol observers. Next, they might live as Spanish colonials while he directs other researchers for several decades.
1885 AD.	Everard, investigating the disappearance of Stephen Tamberly in 1533, visits Dalhousie and Roberts for a second time.
1890's AD.	Everard knows a New York saloon that sets out a magnificent free lunch.
1890-1910 AD.	Patrol milieu headquarters in London, Moscow and Peiping.
1891 AD.	Otto Koch born in Germany.
1894 AD.	Time shuttle fuel chest discovered in an ancient British barrow. Dalhousie and Roberts, Importers (the Patrol's London base) must prevent assassination of Queen Victoria. Mainwethering of the Patrol would like to engage a private inquiry agent but the only worthwhile one is too clever and might detect time travel.
1895 AD.	Ralph Corwin born.
1908 AD.	Agop Mikelian recruited by the Patrol after the massacre at Van.
1910 AD.	Will Rogers teaches Everard lassoing.
1912 AD.	The Irish-American Altamont penetrates a German spy ring but might also uncover the Patrol military studies group and must be diverted.
1914 AD.	Otto Koch, studying medieval history, is called into the German army.
1917 AD.	German steals time machine and goes to 1894 to murder Queen Victoria.
1918 or 1919 AD.	Otto Koch, adrift after the war, recruited by the Patrol.
1920's-1930's AD.	Corwin studies American Indian anthropology before joining the Patrol.
1924 AD.	Everard born in the US Midwest.
1925 AD.	Wanda and Manse have dinner in Paris and a drink in the Deux Magots two tables away from two of Wanda's literary idols.
1927 AD.	Keith Denison born.
1930's AD.	After Carl is recruited to the Patrol, he and his wife opt to live in 1930's New York. Carl's visits to 300-372 are supervised by Everard from 1980.
1930 AD.	John Sandoval born.
1936-1945 AD.	Patrollers studying the earliest stages of spacefaring work their way into Peenemunde.
1936 AD.	Stephen Tamberly born.
1941-1982 AD.	Patrollers monitoring early spacefaring work their way into White Sands.
1942-1945 AD.	Everard is a lieutenant in the US Army Engineers.
1943 AD.	Everard knows a girl in Streatham who later marries someone else.
1944 AD.	Everard defies the Patrol and the Danellians by helping Whitcomb who has gone to London in a recovered Ing time shuttle to prevent his fiancee, Mary Nelson, from being killed in an air raid. A Danellian intervenes and Everard is promoted to Unattached status in the Patrol.
1945-1954 AD.	Everard, a mechanical engineer, has design and production experience in America, Sweden and Arabia before responding to a job ad for "Engineering Studies Co."
1947 AD.	Tom Nomura born.
c.1950's-1960's.	Everard and Cynthia Cunningham visit bars in "Tom Lehrer's New York."
1950's AD.	John Sandoval fights in Korea, goes through college on the GI bill and joins the Patrol.
1950 AD.	Denison completes his PhD in Anthropology after taking a collegiate boxing championship and crossing the Atlantic in a thirty-foot ketch. Drafted to Korea. Karel Novak, on the run from the Czechoslovakian government, is hidden by an acquaintance who persuades him to take curious tests and recruits him to the Patrol. A young black woman recruited in Jamaica will be part of the team that rescued Everard from Exaltationists at a temple outside Bactria, 209 BC. Janne Floris born.
1952 AD.	Everard visits Amsterdam. Denison, discharged from the US Army, recruited to the Patrol.
1954-1990 AD.	Everard maintains an apartment in New York for at least this long. It acquires Bronze Age spears and a helmet, also a polar bear rug given to Everard by Bjarni Herjulfsson. Cynthia Denison (nee Cunningham), John Sandoval and Guion visit the apartment.
1954 AD.	Manson Everard recruited. Just back from training at the Academy, he reads about "...the singular contents of an ancient British barrow."
1955- AD.	Patrollers studying early spacefaring work their way into Tyuratam.
1965 AD.	Wanda Tamberly, Stephen's niece, is born. Wanda Tamberly from 1990 visits Corwin in Berkeley.
1968 AD.	Stephen Tamberly takes tests and finds that he has been recruited into the Patrol.
1970 AD.	Following advice given by Shalten in 1987, Everard posing as a tourist reconnoitres the terrain in preparation for his mission to the Greek kingdom of Bactria in 209 BC.
1971 AD.	Chaim Zorach, working as an archaeologist in Israel, meets his future wife, Yael.
1972 AD.	Tom Nomura recruited to the Patrol in San Francisco. Physicist Elizabeth Gray recruited.
1975 AD.	The Zorachs are recruited into the Patrol.
1980 AD.	Carl Farness, who must play the role of Wodan, is recruited by the Patrol.
1980-'81 AD.	Keith and Cynthia Denison start new identities in Paris.
1985 AD.	Laying a trap for the Exaltationists, Shalten of the Patrol plants fake evidence about Bactria, then, later in his experience, removes the evidence so there are records of mutually inconsistent events in Afghanistan.
1986 AD.	Everard re-visits Amsterdam on a Patrol case. Willem Ten Brink manages the export-import firm that fronts for the Patrol's Amsterdam office and is chief of Patrol operations in that corner of Europe.
May, 1987 AD.	Everard rescues Wanda from Castelar and recruits her to the Patrol.
September, 1987 AD.	Castelar kidnaps Wanda Tamberly from the Galapagos.
1998 AD.	Everard lends his apartment to an operative who needs such a base.
1990 AD.	A Danellian reveals the real meaning of the Patrol to Manse Everard and Wanda Tamberly. Manse and Wanda begin a holiday, interrupted by Manse's mission to 1307.
2000's.	Mainwethering from Victorian London visits the twenty first century. Hassan, an Iraqi recruited to the Patrol, will work at the ranch in 15,926 BC.
2100's.	Andean Resurgence; Inca revival. Andean Patrol agent Julio Vasquez born.
2200's.	Insulsynth.
c.2207.	Boniface Reynaud born.
2300's.	Van Sarawak born in a pioneer society on Venus. Birth of Jean-Louis Broussard, a Patrol observer in tenth century France.
2319.	A hospital with artificial gravity on the Moon.
2800's.	New Edom on Mars; Second Asteroid War.
2900's.	Rozher Schtein (Stane) and Guillem Cisneros born. Interplanetary wars; Venus attacks Earth; blast-ray guns; synthrope; trade with the Saturnian System.
2987.	Disappearance of a trader from the Ing Empire and his time shuttle; Patrol notified.
post-2987.	Interregnum; secret of synthrope lost; Ing Empire; trader leaves for 2987 to barter raw materials for synthrope.
3100's.	Genetic engineering in the Saturnian System.
3700's.	Coordinator Stanel V, the Great Experimenter; colonies reproducing past societies.
3890.	Martian War; Guidance Corps on Earth; First Matriarchy soon.
9573.	Dard Kelm, Patrol Academy tutor, born.
11511.	The Morennian Triumph.
19352 AD, the 7841st year of the Morennian Triumph.	The Chorite Heresiarchy breaks up. Commercial and genetic rivalry on a galactic scale. The Nine discover time travel. The Danellians appear and found the Patrol.
30,000's.	Exaltationist princes, genetically engineered for adventure on the cosmic frontier, seize power, lose it and flee on stolen timecycles.
204,000's.	Neldor; an age of time bandits.
Undated:	Everard's viking Scandinavian mission. Chrysopolis on Mars. Venusian Renaissance. Scientific Renaissance. Three Technological Renaissances. Patrol suppression of the Trazon matter transmuter during the third Technological Renaissance. Three Matriarchies. Solar Commonwealth. The Cold Centuries; weather control systems. The Universarium of Halla. Home eras of Komozino, Guion and Shalten.
pre-1,000,000.	Era of Oneness.
post-1,000,000's.	Danellians, our evolutionary successors, the High Command of the Time Patrol.

Email address: paul

Guardians And Shield

Guardians Of Time

Everard's training at the Academy

the truth or as much as the cadets can take

an early meeting with a Danellian

Everard and Denison masquerade as angels

Mongol invasion of North America

the Pleistocene Lodge

an altered timeline

The Shield Of Time

Wanda's training at the Academy

Siberian invasion of Beringia

the Pleistocene Lodge

two altered timelines

Everard masquerades as an angel

a later meeting with a Danellian

the meaning of the Patrol

Time Travelers' Bases

First Manson Everard, then Wanda Tamberly, is trained at the Time Patrol Academy in the Oligocene period. We see Everard at the Patrol's lodge in the Pleistocene Pyrenees twice. The Patrol has a ranch in North America in 15, 926 B.C. and a secret vault under Hammurabi's Babylon in 1765 B.C. There is a Patrol office in London in 1000 A.D. In 209 B.C., there are stations in several cities. See here. In Harfleur, France, in 1307, timecycles arrive and depart in a locked dockside shed. In 1890-1910, there are milieu headquarters in London, Moscow and Peiping. In the twentieth century, the Patrol has a warehouse in New York and a bookshop in San Francisco. In the late twentieth century, an export-import business fronts the Amsterdam office of the Patrol.

In The Dancer From Atlantis, a futurian expedition has a building with airy, iridescent arches and a terrace above forest and water. See Chapter Twenty.

In There Will Be Time, we are told only that the main base of Havig's group is in the middle Pleistocene, on a wooded hill above a might river that shines like bronze in the sunlight. We want to read a chapter about what the group does when they are in the base.

GUARDIANS And THE SHIELD II

We are comparing Poul Anderson's Guardians Of Time with his The Shield Of Time. See the previous post. Their titles are interchangeable. The "Guardians" are the Time Patrollers and the "Shield" is the Patrol.

Guardians... culminates with "Delenda Est." The Shield..., as it stands, culminates with PART SIX, "Amazement of the World." Even if, in accordance with my earlier suggestion, a future edition of The Shield... were instead to conclude with "Death And The Knight," this short story would serve as an epilogue rather than as an alternative culmination.

In both "Delenda.." and "Amazement...," history is altered and the Patrol must change it back. "Amazement..." is "Delenda..." writ large. The author has had more time to elaborate the idea and his characters discuss it in greater detail.

In "Delenda...":

Manse Everard and Piet Van Sarawak time travel from the Patrol Pleistocene lodge to what should be New York, 1960, only to arrive in the wrong timeline.

Thus, we see how the alteration affects two travellers on a single timecycle.

In "Amazement...":

in 1137alpha, Emil Volstrup, Patrol agent, learns that King Roger of Sicily, who should have lived until 1154, has been killed in battle;

Keith Denison time travels from 1765 BC not to 1980 AD but to 1980alpha AD;

Wanda Tamberly time travels from the Pleistocene lodge in 18,244 BC not to 1989 AD but to 1989alpha AD;

Manse Everard at the lodge in 18,244 BC is informed of a temporal upheaval on about Julian day 2,137,000.

Thus, we see how the upheaval affects four individuals in different periods.

The question of why only some time travellers enter the altered timeline is raised but not answered in "Delenda..." and is answered, although inadequately, in "Amazement..."!

In "Delenda...," the Patrol restores its preferred timeline with a single intervention whereas, in "Amazement...," a second intervention becomes necessary because the first intervention generates the beta timeline.

In "Delenda...," Neldorian time criminals have altered history whereas, in "Amazement...," the upheaval is caused by a quantum fluctuation in space-time-energy.

Like the same author's History of Technic Civilization, the Time Patrol series definitely goes somewhere.

It's got legs.

The Realization About Satan

David Falkayn missed his shot because of a moment of realization on Ivanhoe. See here.

He broke off in mid-sentence, smashed down his fist and surged to his feet when he realized how Adzel and he would be able to rescue Chee Lan from her Merseian kidnappers. See here.

He fell silent and grew tense because of the realization that would lead to the discovery of Mirkheim. See again the second link above.

Here is another. When the Serendipity computer spells out the implications of Satan:

"The idea hit Falkayn in the belly, then soared to his head like champagne bubbles. The money involved wasn't what brought him to his feet shouting. Money was always pleasant to have; but he could get enough for his needs and greeds with less effort. Sheer instinct roused him. He was abruptly a Pleistocene hunter again, on the track of a mammoth.
"'Judas!' he yelled. 'Yes!'" (David Falkayn: Star Trader, p. 358)

Manse Everard bagged a mammoth in the Pleistocene.

There are three indications that the Serendipity partners will now break their own rules and try to acquire Satan:

the computer pauses - Falkayn wonders why but does not suspect anything;

then it strongly advises him, for reasons that cannot be given, not to divulge the truth to anyone else and to spend more time exploring the matter here and now;

when he emerges two hours later, Thea Beldaniel attempts to befriend him and to suggest cooperation.

Serendipity is abandoning its neutrality because, like the computer and Falkayn, it sees a source of great wealth on Satan.

A Consequence Of Deleted Timelines

See Split Time Or Moments Of Hyper-Time

In the Danellian timeline, Everard completes his vacation at the Pleistocene lodge, returns home in 1990 and is notified of a new mission.

In the alpha timeline, his vacation is interrupted by the emergency and he deals with that.

In the restored Danellian timeline, having deleted the alpha timeline, he returns home in 1990 and is informed of a new mission.

Thus, the effect of the temporal catastrophe is that Everard has lived longer than he would otherwise have done and the extra duration is not part of the current timeline but, apart from this, his career continues as if uninterrupted.

Global Freezing Counteracted By Artificial Warming

Genesis, PART ONE, V.

Global warming delayed the next Ice Age but the warming has been halted and the Ice advances. Now carbon must be put into the environment and technology, including conscious AI, meets this challenge:

carbon repeatedly strewn over the Arctic;

large aerial electric discharges forcing rainfall so that there are less clouds to reflect sunlight;

artificial algal weed covering the seas;

underwater explosions releasing methane hydrate into the atmosphere;

forests burned and replaced by grasses storing less carbon;

drilling into the planetary mantle;

nuclear explosions causing volcanoes that emit carbon dioxide and water vapour.

The Stormseeker minority would welcome the Ice which would not end the world but strengthen and liberate. Life was rich and vigorous and man was creative and free in the Pleistocene. Glaciers will kill AI. Men will make their own destinies in the cold tundras and the equatorial rainlands. (This does not happen.)

Chapters V and IX convey the message that advanced technology will be necessary to counteract future natural threats, both global and cosmic.

Immersed In Past Epochs

The Shield Of Time, PART THREE, 31,275,389 B. C., pp. 127-136.

Re-appreciating pp. 127-130, before Wanda and Sequeira ride back to the Academy stables, we check and find that quite a lot has already been posted about the Patrol in the prehuman past:

Immersed In 31,275,389 B.C.
The Prehistorical Patrol

The Prehistorical Patrol: The Pleistocene
The Prehistorical Patrol: Holocene

The Prehistorical Patrol: The Oligocene II
The Prehistorical Patrol: The Miocene
The Academy
Time Patrol Premises And Installations: The Academy
At The Academy
The Time Patrol Timeline
The Academy And The Lodge

If I can find anything to add, I will.  

The Anthropocene

Poul Anderson's Time Patrollers visit many historical periods but also:

the Oligocene period;
the Pleistocene Epoch;
the Miocene Epoch.

I thought that I had first read of the Anthropocene in Anderson's Genesis but cannot find any reference to this epoch on the blog. (However, all that this proves is that I have not posted about it yet.) I will reread the chapters where it is most likely to have been mentioned.

I thought that the Anthropocene should date from the agricultural revolution because hunters and gatherers were not yet changing their environment but merely surviving within it like other animal species. However, some scientists date this epoch from the beginning of catastrophic human impact on the environment - very recently. The data are scientific but their interpretation is embedded in politics and ideology.

However, inspired by Poul Anderson, we tackle all the big issues here.