To Sail Beyond the Sunset by Heinlein Robert A

Author:Heinlein, Robert A. [Heinlein, Robert A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Adventure, Classics
ISBN: 9780441748600
Amazon: 0441748600
Goodreads: 354
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 1987-07-01T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

Torrid Twenties, Threadbare Thirties

During the fifty-odd years on my personal time line from my rescue in 1982 to the start of the Time mission which aborted into my present predicament on this planet I spent time equal to about ten years in study of comparative history, in particular the histories of the time lines that the Circle of Ouroboros attempts to protect, all of which appear to share a single ancestral time line at least through A.D. 1900 and possibly through about 1940.

This sheaf of universes includes my own native universe (time line two, code Leslie LeCroix) and excludes the uncounted but far more numerous exotic time lines—universes in which Columbus did not sail for the Indies (or failed to return), ones in which the Viking settlements succeeded and “America” became “Great Vinland,” ones in which the Muscovite empire on the West Coast clashed with the Hispanic empire on the East Coast (worlds in which Queen Elizabeth died in exile), other worlds in which Columbus found America already owned by the Manchu emperors—and worlds with histories so exotic that it is hard to find even a remote ancestral line in common with anything we can recognize.

I am almost certain that I have slipped into one of the exotics…of a previously unsuspected sort.

I did not spend all my time studying histories; I worked for a living, supporting myself first as a nursing assistant, then as a nurse, then as a clinical therapist, then as a student rejuvenator (all the while going to school), before I shifted careers to the Time Corps.

But it was this study of histories that caused me to think about a career in Time.

Several of the time lines known to “civilization” (our name for ourselves) appear to split off about 1940. One cusp at which these splits show is the Democratic National Convention of 1940 at which Mr. Franklin Delano Roosevelt either was or was not nominated by the Democratic party for a third term as president of the United States, then either was or was not elected, then either did or did not serve through the end of the Second World War.

In time line one, code John Carter, the Democratic nomination went to Paul McNutt…but the election to Republican Senator Robert Taft.

In the composite time lines coded “Cyrano,” Mr. Roosevelt had both a third and a fourth term, died in his fourth term and was succeeded by his vice-president, a former senator from Missouri named Harry Truman. In my own time line there was never a senator by that name but I do remember Brian speaking of a Captain Harry Truman whom he knew in France. “A fighting son of a gun,” Briney called him. “A real buzz saw.” But the Harry Truman whom Brian knew was not a politician; he was a haberdasher, so it seems unlikely that it could be the same man. Briney used to go out of his way to buy gloves and such from Captain Truman. Brian described him as “a dying breed—an old-fashioned gentleman.

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