Wednesday 19 February 2014

The Academy And The Lodge

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

In "Time Patrol," we are told that the Time Patrol Academy is in the American Oligocene. In "Delenda Est, " we are told that the Patrol "...maintains a lodge in the Pleistocene Pyrenees." (Time Patrol, p. 173)

In The Shield Of Time, we learn more about both. Wanda Tamberly studies at the Academy in 31,275,389 BC. She and Manson Everard holiday at the lodge in 18,244 BC. The lodge common room has Irish elk antlers above a huge stone fire place opposite a brass heraldic shield enclosing a stylized hourglass, the Patrol emblem, also displayed on rarely worn uniforms.

Introduced almost at the end of the series and only because it will be incorporated into the plot, this emblem appears on a Time Patrolman's sleeve on the cover of The Shield Of Time and on the front of a timecycle on the cover of Time Patrol. It should be displayed from the beginning of any visual adaptation of the series, whether graphic or cinematic.

After Beringia, Wanda's next assignment will be in Cro-Magnon Europe and the lodge employs Cro-Magnon guides so maybe she can base her assignment at the lodge? Finishing their holiday, Everard and Wanda agree to meet next at noon on Thursday, 10 April 1987, in New York HQ. For her, this will be after a trip home and three months in the field whereas, for him, it will depend "...on what he'd be doing." (The Shield Of Time, p. 297) It could be years.

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