Guderian's device
Names: Guderian's devicethe gazebothe apparatustau-fieldtime-portaltime-gatePliocene gateGuderian time-portalExilethe gateExile gateportalgatewaydevil's gatetemporal singularitytime-warpGuderian deviceGuderian tau-field generatorGuderian's Gazeboopen gateopengatePliocene time-gatetau-field generatorgate projectGuderian Projecttime-gate machinetime-gate generatortau-generatortime-gate device
First appears in Book 1: The Many-Colored Land, chapter 1 (Prologue)
Appearances
B1
B2
B3
B4
What you know
Book 1: The Many-Colored Land
- Ch 1Guderian's device opens a singularity to the Pliocene in the Rhône valley; living things returning are aged by over six million years and die.
- Ch 1The device only works in Guderian's region, fixed in Pliocene time; only dense, crystalline matter, amber and coal return unharmed. It is a one-way trip for living creatures.
- Ch 9It opens in one direction only, with no return; a traveler must move three or four meters from the arrival point or be snatched back and turn to dust.
- Ch 9Its gazebo-like chamber holds about six cubic meters, limiting what travelers can bring; recording equipment could never be sent through.
- Ch 10The time-portal leads into Exile; people such as Mercy pass through it voluntarily, and a large literature on it exists.
- Ch 15The time-portal sends people six million years into the past; Mercy's destination is not specified in her records.
- Ch 20A latticed gazebo-like booth in the cellar; its field makes mirrored walls, translation is theoretically instantaneous, and the field is kept up for some minutes.
- Ch 20Translation is painful, with a snap into gray limbo, and travelers arrive in a bright green-and-blue place where helpers pull them out.
- Ch 21The time-portal appears as a shimmering force-field block near four cornerstones on a rock outcropping, delivering arrivals to the Pliocene in groups.
- Ch 22Time translation is a prolonged version of the subspace snap of starship travel, with a compressed, more brittle gray and a sense of diminishing life-force.
- Ch 25The time-portal opened and began sending humans, including women, to the Tanu, whom they regard as an answer to prayer.
Book 2: The Golden Torc
- Ch 8The time-gate brings new humans to Exile, which Nodonn considers perilous.
- Ch 16The time-portal, Professor Guderian's device, delivers time-travelers to the Pliocene at dawn; arrivals are frisked for iron and sorted, with unfit ones discarded.
- Ch 29The Tanu people brook no interference with the time-gate, which Nodonn says did great harm to them by opening a path across the aeons.
- Ch 29Claude and Angélique leaped into the time-field wearing the torc, which destroyed the gate; the modern-era travelers saw them turn to skeletons then dust.
Book 3: The Nonborn King
- Ch 1The time-gate had operated for more than forty years, normally at dawn, and Concilium rules forbid exporting modern weapons or translating operant metapsychics.
- Ch 14The time-gate's singularity is restricted by unique geology to a small region of the Rhone Valley in Europe; altering the geology would close it permanently.
- Ch 29If the time-gate reopens, agents of the Magistratum would punish the surviving rebels; Marc believes Hagen would keep it open.
Book 4: The Adversary
- Ch 3Must be built to reopen the time-gate; requires raw materials from across Europe and Milieu-trained technicians.
- Ch 7The young rebels took complete schematics, manufacturing equipment and components for the Guderian device, and need Milieu-trained technicians, raw materials and access to the gate site.
- Ch 7Reopening the time-gate to the Milieu would also reopen the original gate leading from the Milieu to the Pliocene.
- Ch 8The Remillards hope to reopen the time-gate with the voice's help, which the voice already knows.
- Ch 9The Milieu-to-Pliocene gate is one-way; the Remillard children plan to build a second Guderian tau-field generator to return, which Aiken supports.
- Ch 10Marc predicts a war over the time-gate site once he reaches Europe.
- Ch 12The time-gate needs a rare-earth element mined in Fennoscandia; Aiken is assembling technicians in Goriah and will shield the project with a sigma generator.
- Ch 14The Guderian Project aims to reopen the time gate to the future Galactic Milieu that Madame Guderian closed; scientists have been recruited to Goriah to build it.
- Ch 15Device the group is building at Goriah, to be carried to the gate site, which requires air transport.
- Ch 22The aircraft will help build the time-gate that would let people return to the Milieu.
- Ch 23The device will not work if its arrival point is inside solid matter; the gate must open into empty air.
- Ch 26The Guderian device, a time-gate component, needs niobium-dysprosium core wire; rare-earth ores are being sought in Fennoscandia, and completion would take a month or more after getting wire.
- Ch 26The labs in Goriah cannot be moved easily, and the device cannot be used in Goriah because the sigma-field does not work for aerial operation.
- Ch 31The time-gate project needs forty kilos of niobium-dysprosium wire; contaminated holmium-laden dysprosium from the mining team is delaying it.
- Ch 33Its time-gate device is expected to be finished around Grand Tourney week, with materials safe inside Castle Gateway.
- Ch 34Hägen and his crew are building the Guderian device, which would send the children through to the Milieu.
- Ch 35The Children of Rebellion have nearly built it; cables with fine cladded-wire core-mesh still need tuning, perhaps finished by tomorrow.
- Ch 36The new Guderian device is larger than Theo Guderian's original, resembles a vine-draped latticework gazebo, and stands on scaffolding over two meters high to compensate for terrain rise.
- Ch 36In its first test a potassium sample returned dated about 11.78 million years old, proving the gate reaches the Milieu era, but the tau-field was only a handspan wide.
- Ch 36The narrow tau-field is blamed on a probable faulty cable core, to be bench-tested immediately.
- Ch 36The time-gate focus is fixed on the grounds of l'Auberge du Portail on 2 November 2111 Milieu date.
- Ch 37Rumored escape to the Milieu; Marc says it is not yet operative, though the Guderian device is supposed to be a working project.
Connections
- created byThéo Guderian
- led byMadame Guderianfirst custodian
- inGuderian cottage
- related toAiken Drumprotects it
- has memberTony Waylandconscripted
- has memberAlice Greatorex
- has memberBogle
- has memberDmitrios Anastos
Key moments
- Book 1 · Ch 1Guderian's demonstration
Guderian shows visiting scientists his Pliocene time-gate near Lyon, retrieving a Hipparion that dies into dust, and explains the one-way trip.
- Book 1 · Ch 9Richter passes through the time-gate
Poet Karl Josef Richter pays Madame Guderian a large sum; she sends him and his dog Schatzi to the Pliocene, becoming the first time-tripper.
- Book 2 · Ch 29Claude and Angélique close the time-gate
Under invisibility, the two run to the gate and jump into the tau-field, linked by hands. The field reverses and they vanish, closing the gate while Aiken flies back too late.