People From The Past II

(i) Benegal Dass, a Hindu recruited by the Time Patrol in the nineteenth century because of his thesis on Indo-Bactrian society, spends decades in different identities sometimes separated by lifespans studying from within the entire history of the city of Bactra. For example, as Rajneesh, he works in a silk dealership. Later, as Rajneesh's cousin, Chandrakumar, he is a seeker of enlightenment who has come to learn about Greek philosophy and stays in a Buddhist vihara.

(ii) Helen Tamberly, born in Cambridge, 1856, lives in London in 1885 with her husband, Stephen, from the following century, whom she met at the Academy. She studies the Ionian colonies in the seventh and sixth centuries BC and they holiday in ancient Japan. Next, they might spend several decades as a sixteenth century Spanish colonial couple because of Stephen's work in that period.

Patrol members do not age, die of old age, die of any illness or retire. They holiday in other periods and return to work a moment after they have left it. Thus, the twenty year existence of milieu headquarters must be a very small part of any Patroller's career. Quite apart from the obviously important time travel, we really are talking about a very different way of experiencing both life and work.