Circular Causality And Discontinuity

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

In "Star Of The Sea," the Time Patrol must:

preserve a timeline in which, as described in Tacitus One, Veleda preaches war but later peace;

prevent a timeline in which, as described in Tacitus Two, she continues to preach war.

The Patrol are in the Tacitus One timeline, which is why they preserve it. Therefore, Tacitus Two is merely a potential although it is one that might be realized unless there are effective countermeasures.

This raises two questions:

(i) why did Veleda initially preach war?
(ii) how does the Patrol know of the potential timeline?

To answer (ii) first, the Patrol acquires a Tacitus Two manuscript. How this might happen in the Tacitus One timeline is discussed in the post, "Unstable Space-Time II."

(i) Veleda preached war against Rome in the name of the goddess because, in her teens, she was raped by Roman merchants but rescued by Janne Floris of the Patrol whom she mistook for the goddess. Janne was able to witness and interrupt the rape because she was remotely observing Veleda's birthplace for any odd events. She was doing this because she had already observed Veleda, later in life, preaching war in a way that could potentially lead to Tacitus Two. And Janne observed Veleda's later life because the Patrol had found the Tacitus Two manuscript.

Thus, the discovery of the Tacitus Two manuscript is a necessary part of the Tacitus One sequence of events. There are two time travel paradoxes here: not only circular causality but also causation from a prevented timeline.

To ensure that the German rebels make peace with Rome, Manson Everard of the Patrol acts as the initial go-between. I had thought that there must have been an original timeline in which Romans and rebels made peace without any help from the Patrol. However, both the Tacitus Two manuscript and Janne's intervention in Veleda's early life are necessary for Tacitus One. Thus, Patrol efforts to prevent Tacitus Two also seem to be necessary for Tacitus One. So Everard's involvement in the peace negotiations was there from the beginning.

If Veleda's companion, Heidhin, had not killed himself but instead had remained alive and continued to argue for war, carrying Veleda with him, then the outcome would have been Tacitus Two.

Unstable Space-Time II

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

By investigating Veleda's new religious movement, the Time Patrol caused it. But why did they investigate? This could have been a simple causal circle. For example, if Jens Ulstrup, Patrol ethnographer in residence among the German barbarians, had reported a new movement that contradicted the records, then they would have had to investigate. However, Ulstrup was unaware of the new myths until Everard and Floris, already investigating, alerted him to them.

In the timeline guarded by the Patrol, Tacitus records that Veleda helped to arrange the armistice that ended the Northern revolt. Sociologists studying Rome in the early second century acquire an altered text, "Tacitus Two," according to which Veleda instead preached against peace and, with a big following, began to change German religion in a way that in turn can be expected to change European history. I think that such an altered text could only be acquired in the alternative timeline described by that same altered text. However, Everard and Floris, investigating, travel to the period of the Northern revolt from the twentieth century of the timeline guarded by the Patrol.

Arriving during the revolt, they necessarily arrive at a date earlier than the acquisition of Tacitus Two, which describes an alternative ending to the revolt. Yet they have come from a future in which Tacitus One gives the historically accurate account of the end of the revolt. This looks like a contradiction. Either timeline can exist but not both.

I suggested a solution in correspondence with Poul Anderson. As Floris tells Everard, sociologists studying Rome and wanting to consult Tacitus acquired a contemporary copy rather than "...send uptime for a data file." (p. 486) If they had simply extracted a copy of Tacitus Two from a contemporary library, then they would already have been in the altered timeline. Therefore, the twentieth century guarded by the Patrol and containing both Everard and Floris would not have existed in their future.

Instead, let us say this. The sociologists were in Rome at a time when the Tacitus One and Tacitus Two versions of events were both potential futures. Unable to enter an immediately contemporary library without being noticed by the locals, one of the sociologists instead traveled a short distance uptime to a moment when he would be able to enter a library unobserved. By doing this, he entered the potential Tacitus Two timeline. He returned with a copy to a moment when Tacitus One and Tacitus Two were still both potentials. From that moment, it was possible to communicate with the twentieth century of the Tacitus One timeline.

This idea is an addition to the physics of time travel already established in the series but it is the only way that I can account for the existence of a Tacitus Two text in a Tacitus One timeline.

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

"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?

Records Of What Did Not Happen II

Another "record of what did not happen" is the Tacitus Two document. My theory of how the Patrol acquired this alternative version of Tacitus' Histories contradicts the terminology of successive timelines. I theorize that:

the sociologists doing field research in the early second century AD were at a time when the sequence of events described in Tacitus One and the alternative sequence of events described in Tacitus Two were both possible;

the sociologist who acquired a copy of Tacitus from a private library had to travel a short distance uptime in order to do so;

thus, he traveled forward into the Tacitus Two timeline and acquired a version of the Histories that described the alternative sequence of events;

rejoining his companions and reading the alternative account, the sociologist became alarmed and traveled futureward, this time along the Tacitus One timeline, to alert the Patrol in the twentieth century;

when Everard and Floris travel into the past to investigate, they know that they have traveled back along the Tacitus One timeline to a time before a fork in events;

their task is to ensure that, at that "fork," events move in the Tacitus One direction;

until the fork has been passed, events are in an "...unstable space-time zone..." (Time Patrol, p. 629);

after that, Tacitus Two records events that "did not happen."

Evocative Phrases II

Some phrases in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol story, "Star of the Sea," are tantalizingly evocative, hinting at a mysterious and unelaborated perspective on time that, I think, cannot be fitted into any coherent framework.

(i) "...if we're to discover how it is that the time stream forks - and which is the right course, which the wrong one, for us and our world."
-Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 506.

"Time stream" merely seems to be straightforward. A stream in the normal sense is moving water that can be seen to flow past a fixed point. However, events occurring at different times are merely before or after, earlier or later than, each other. None of them moves anywhere. They do not flow past any fixed point.

Is there really a "fork" in time such that Everard, moving futureward, could turn left into the Tacitus One timeline or right into the Tacitus Two timeline? Or does the entire stream of events somehow flow along one course rather than the other, leaving the other empty? Obviously, that is not what happens but the language used can suggest some such image.

(ii) "...intervene, most carefully, now and then, here and there: till at last [events] were out of the unstable space-time zone and could safely be left to themselves." (p. 629)

Objects move through space, taking time, but events do not move through space-time. They occur in space and are temporally related. Thus a volume of space-time contains a sequence of events. Some "space-time zones" are "unstable"; others not. Time Patrol agents must sometimes intervene in unstable zones.

(iii) The following terminology is more familiar to Time Patrol readers:

"'Often a causal loop has a powerful and subtle force to it. What we've got to do is prevent it from developing into a causal vortex.'" (p. 600)

Since, rather unaccountably, the Patrol has historical texts from two timelines, Everard knows what they need to do:

"'We have to forestall the events that would lead to Tacitus Two, while not unduly perturbing those that are described in Tacitus One.'" (ibid.)

Events cannot be left to themselves and Patrol intervention may be the decisive factor. Indeed, it was Patrol investigation of the events that had destabilized them in the first place.

"'The time is out of joint...'" - Hamlet - "'...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)

Some "zones" are so unstable that the mere presence of a time traveler is problematic. The "fork" is the moment at which Heidhin did or did not commit suicide.

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 Ontological Status Of Fictional Texts

Tacitus Two is a text from an alternative timeline but is all fiction not in this category? Fiction describes events that do not occur in our timeline. Therefore, notionally, these events occur in other timelines. When a character becomes a public figure in his fictional world, then that world more detectably diverges from ours but, even when the character remains obscure, his world differs from ours to the extent of his existence in it.

In Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix multiverse and in some other fictional multiverses, persons and events that are fictional in one world are real in another. Is this because every possibility exists or because writers can mentally tune in to other universes? Writers exercise creative imagination but does this imagination tune in to other universes?

A work of fiction can contain contradictions. Thus, the fictional world cannot exist exactly as described. However, this shows that the author's mind distorts the information that it receives. Dr Watson's narratives are published in his world and in ours so was Arthur Conan Doyle mentally linked to Watson? If so, then he missed the Time Patrol that coexists with Holmes and Watson but then so did Watson.

In the Time Patrol timeline, Tacitus Two is alternative history although it was not written as such. The fact that such divergent texts are not frequent shows that the circumstances of its origin were unusual. Tacitus One, known to historians, is incomplete: only four books and part of the fifth from an original twelve. Time travellers recovered the entire text but the Time Patrol has also discovered Tacitus Two and the narrative line of this alternative version does not diverge from Tacitus One until shortly after the scene where the surviving fifth book had broken off. Janne Floris asks whether this is coincidence and Manse Everard comments that it is kind of spooky. Something is always left unexplained.

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."

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.

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?

"Formed Out Of Nothing For No Reason"

A mutable timeline contains material objects that did not originate within it, including, if we remember the second Time Patrol story in order of publication, a living human body.

Guion says that the source of some disturbances "'...does not exist in our yet, our reality.'" (The Shield Of Time, p. 135)

Janne Floris says that the single copy of Tacitus Two is:

"'An object uncaused, formed out of nothing for no reason. What a terrifying universe. It was easier being ignorant of variable reality.'" (Time Patrol, p. 631)

And Guion's conversation had begun to scare Wanda Tamberly.

Manson Everard feared that he might be an uncaused object:

"There are quirks and discontinuities in space-time...things and events appear causelessly, meaningless flutters soon lost and forgotten. Such as Manse Everard, marooned in the past with a dead John Sandoval, after coming from a future that never existed as the agent of a Time Patrol that never was." (TP, p. 161)

Normally, I would tell Janne that the Tacitus Two text was "uncaused" in the current timeline but had been caused in a previous, "deleted" timeline. However, the status of the Tacitus Two timeline is highly ambiguous. But, in any case, surely the entire universe is "...formed out of nothing for no reason"? In the words of an old sf novel, we are "Children of the Void."

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.

Random Factor

"We've identified the random factor that could bring on an avalanching change; what we must do is damp it."
-Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006). pp. 607-608.

In a timeline without a Time Patrol, young Edh would have been raped and killed by Roman sailors. Instead, she is raped but rescued by Janne Floris who has time traveled to Edh's early life to find out what made her an anti-Roman prophetess...

But how did the Patrol know that this period needed to be investigated? In the twentieth century of the Tacitus One timeline, Everard and Floris discussed a document from the Tacitus Two timeline. I have rationalized the time travel paradoxes in the Time Patrol series as far as possible but this scene does not quite fit.

It seems to me that time travelers routinely travel pastwards and futurewards along our familiar temporal dimension and sometimes futurewards but never pastwards along a second temporal dimension. The latter quantum jump occurs only when they enter a new timeline. It seems however that in this story, "Star of the Sea," a Patrol researcher has traveled from the Tacitus One timeline to the Tacitus Two timeline, acquired a document and then returned with it to the Tacitus One timeline. As Everard elsewhen reflects on "the structure of the plenum":

"It seems to be subtler and trickier than they see fit to teach us about at the Academy."
-Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), p. 261.

That reflection is familiar to anyone who has trained and is now learning from the experience of practice.

A Fourth Kind Of Timeline?

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

The previous post differentiated three kinds of timelines: current, deleted and prevented. Deleteds have been current whereas preventeds have not. Time Patrol members:

experience the current timeline;
remember some deleted timelines;
discuss prevented timelines.

Which kind of timeline is the one that the Patrol deals with in "Star Of The Sea" - a timeline in which Northern Europe would have developed an alternative civilization based on Goddess-worship? No one claims to have experienced this timeline and, by the end of the story, it has been prevented from becoming the current timeline. However, the Patrol has a text that originated in that timeline so someone must have been in it?

What happened was that some Patrol agents in the Roman Empire during the early Christian era wanted to consult Tacitus and borrowed a copy from a local library instead of sending uptime for a Patrol copy. The copy that they borrowed turned out to be an alternative version, designated "Tacitus Two," describing a different course of events and a change in German religion. My explanation is that, when the agents needed to consult Tacitus, they were at a time when the alternative history had a high probability. It was convenient for them to move forward a short distance in time in order to extract the book from a library. By moving forward, then back, they briefly entered the alternative timeline because of its high probability. Therefore, it counts as a deleted timeline.

Poul Anderson, in correspondence, said that he accepted this explanation. Although it is my best attempt to make sense of the existence in the current timeline of the Tacitus Two text, it does not quite fit in with my overall view of the current timeline succeeding deleted timelines along a second temporal dimension.

Tacitus Zero

(See recent posts about Poul Anderson's Time Patrol story, "Star Of The Sea.")

OK. I have envisaged an "original" Tacitus Zero timeline without any extratemporal interference in the Northern revolt:

Edh is raped and killed in her teens;
thus, she never becomes Wael-Edh/Veleda;
the Germans revolt;
the details of the revolt differ since there is no Veleda to preach war and bring more tribes into the alliance;
although maybe some other sibyl fills her vacuum?;
Romans and rebels are reconciled without any Patrol help;
Tacitus records the revolt accurately;
no "Tacitus Two" manuscript is ever found;
the Patrol has no need to investigate and continues to concentrate its resources in Palestine during that period, 69-70 AD.

Everard's account of Tactitus One and Two is inadequate:

"'Since they don't have some improbable but safe explanation, like a forgery, these two variant texts are...a warning. An early sign, a ripple of change, something that may have had consequences which caused history to flow into a different channel till at last you and I and everything around us never existed - unless we heed the warning and take steps to see that this did not happen - Oh, Lord, we had better talk Temporal.'"
- Time Patrol (New York, 2006), pp. 492-493.

Much as we enjoy Anderson's prose about ripples in time, we know that this does not happen. There was a period when the Germans might have invaded England but no one found a history text describing the invasion.

Tacitus Two History

The Tacitus Two text:

the prophetess Veleda preached against peace;
Civilis did not yield to the Romans;
the war lasted another year;
the tribes were subjugated;
Civilis killed himself;
Veleda and many followers escaped into free Germany;
the religion of the wild Germans changed - Nerthus, instead of being replaced by the Aesir, became goddess of death, wisdom and war;
for decades, Germany developed independently, unknown to the Romans and unobserved by the Patrol.

Patrol supposition:

the goddess becomes supreme;
she gives people spiritually almost as much as Christ;
few join the Church;
the Nerthus faith becomes the core of a Germanic civilization, trading with southern Europe.

It sounds OK to me but it is another history, of course.

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.

The Time Patrol In Amsterdam

In the closing decades of the twentieth century:

the Amsterdam Time Patrol office is fronted by a minor export-import business with its warehouse and office in the Indische Buurt;

timecycles arrive in a secret room whose door looks like a wall to ordinary employees;

the manager, Willem Ten Brink, is Patrol chief for this part of Europe, where operations are routine;

the sector has seemed unimportant "...till now."
-Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 478.

What does "till now" mean? Sociologists studying Rome in the early second century AD found a mysteriously altered text of Tacitus' Histories. Janne Floris, ostensibly an administrator in Ten Brink's company, is a Patrol field agent, Specialist second class. Since her field is the Low Countries in the first century AD, the place and period covered by Tacitus, a special agent of the Patrol consults her at length in 1986. The Middle Command asks Unattached Agent Manson Everard to work with Floris because he and she are near contemporaries. Therefore, having called first Ten Brink, then Floris, Everard arrives immediately afterwards by timecycle at the Amsterdam office, speaks to Ten Brink and visits Floris in her apartment, three days after the special agent had consulted her.

But obviously "till now" does not mean "till 1986." I was puzzled by the phrase "Middle Command" until I realized that it must mean that the members of this level of command are human. They are high ranking Patrol officers who must be based in different times and places, communicating either by message shuttles or by time traveling to meet each other. Milieu headquarters is in London, 1890-1910, but obviously the Middle Command have not all crowded into that twenty year period, especially since Patrol medical treatment prevents aging.

The sociologists working in the second century sent a copy of "Tacitus Two" directly or indirectly to someone in the Middle Command. Members of that Command asked a special agent to consult Floris and also asked Everard to work with Floris. This had to happen some time during Floris' and Everard's careers and did happen in 1986 but it could have happened decades earlier or later. The problem that they have to deal with is in the first century so they could have set off to deal with it from any time in the twentieth or twenty first centuries. The phrase "till now" has lost its usual meaning.

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.