Unburning Alexandria (Sierra Waters)

by Paul Levinson

"You agree with Heron about that?" Jonah asked in disbelief. "Heron has done more to tamper with time than any human ever alive."

  "That is an ambitious statement," Heron said. "But if I have, I am now trying to stop a meddling in time that could have far worse consequences than anything I ever did."

  "Bringing all of that knowledge forward to the future will have unforeseen consequences," Ruth said to Jonah. "You have said so to me many times."

  "Yes," Jonah said, "but I also said some of those consequences could be wonderful – could make the future a much better world, one which benefits from knowledge otherwise lost in the past."

  Heron started to speak–

  "He is a murderer," Jonah pointed his finger at Heron. "He tried to kill not only Hypatia, but Alcibiades. His legionaries tried to kill Plato!"

  "I saved Alcibiades in the first place from the death that our original history meted out to him," Heron replied. "As for Plato," Heron grimaced in distaste, "his philosophy, his dislike of the practical, could well have kept the world away from technology for more than the thousand years that it did. But I did not grasp at the time just how important Plato's work was to Augustine. I was younger then. I have since learned that saving usually accomplishes more than killing."

  "Are you trying to save Hypatia right now?" Jonah demanded.

  "I am not trying to hurt her, I assure you," Heron replied. "I'm only trying to protect history from her looting of the Library."

  "'Looting'? She's trying to save precious texts that you would let burn. You say your opinions changed as you aged – what if you decide a year from now that this current plan of yours of stopping Hypatia from saving the texts to be burned in Alexandria was a bad idea – what if you change your mind and see you were wrong?"

  "As they say in the future, you don't get do-overs in life but you do in time travel. . . . But this is no longer any concern of yours, my once devoted student. All you need to know now is that I will not let you interfere any more with my plan to stop Sierra Waters."

  The tone of Heron's voice sent a chill through Ruth.

  [Alexandria, 150 AD]

  Synesius and the android had already decided that the android would go next. She sat in the chair, smiled at Synesius, and pressed the initiation key.

  [Alexandria, 414 AD]

  The android's reflexes were faster than human. Her fingers went to set and initiate an immediate return trip the instant she saw Heron and his legionaries.

  "Stop her!" Heron shouted to the legionaries. The two Romans ran to the android and the chair, slashing with their blades at the disappearing figure.

  [Alexandria, 150 AD]

  "What happened?" Synesius re-entered the room and helped the android out of the chair. He noticed the sleeve of her robe was torn and touched it.

  "I'm not harmed," the android said. "But we need to leave here, immediately. We could use the chair to travel to go a different time or–"

  The chair vanished with a pop.

  Synesius looked thoroughly confused.

  The android considered. "Heron must have a way of controlling this chair by remote means. We need to leave. The next thing we see in this room could be a legionary, and that could be in an instant." She directed Synesius out of the inner room. Then she restrained Synesius with one hand, and slowly opened the outer door with her other hand. She peeked out. "No one here," she said.

  "Do you want to go back the way we arrived?" Synesius said.

  "I don't care," the android said. "We just need to move . . . no, you're right, let us leave the Library from a different exit."

  [Alexandria, 414 AD]

  Heron looked at the chair he had just retrieved from 150 AD and considered his options.

  "I would suggest it is too dangerous for you to travel back there now," Titus said, "certainly not without Lucius and me, and only one person can travel in that chair."

  Heron nodded.

  "Let Lucius travel back there now," Titus said. "And I will immediately follow."

  "I supposed you are right," Heron said, slowly. "I need to make sure you do not cross paths with Jonah and Ruth back there, before they came here – that would surely bring on disturbing consequences."

  Titus and Lucius nodded, not necessarily in agreement or full understanding of what Heron was saying, but in appreciation of his agreement with their recommended action.

  "I will send you back five minutes after the time in which the chair began its journey in 150 AD," Heron said. "Be prepared to fight and capture anyone who is in the room, and, if no one is there, to pursue them wherever they are. If you need help, you can find legionaries to command in the usual places in the city."

  Titus nodded.

  [Alexandria, 150 AD]

  Synesius and the android encountered no legionaries in their hurried exit from the Library. None were in view outside, either.

  "Should we seek a place to stay for the day and the night?" Synesius said.

  The android considered. "Too dangerous. We would be sitting ducks there – I learned that expression in 2087 – easy targets."

  "A ship to Athens, then?" Synesius asked. "We would at least be moving ducks in that case."

  The android smiled. "Jonah said there were two ships docked in the harbor that could provide passage to Athens. If the chair's controls were precise, it is now a little less than two hours after noon." She looked at the position of the sun in the teal blue sky and confirmed the time. "Assuming Hypatia and Max are already out at sea on the way to Athens on one ship, that leaves the other ship for us."

  Synesius nodded. The two walked quickly but observantly to the harbor. Synesius pointed. "There is a ship that could take us to Athens."

  The android looked further, then pointed. "And there are four legionaries who could reach the ship before we did." The android pulled Synesius behind a pillar, so they were out of the legionaries' line of sight.

  "If I recall my study of history correctly, there should be some houses of worship that way," Synesius pointed in a direction away from the legionaries. "We could go there and likely not be seen."

  "And when we are there what our strategy be?" the android asked. "Huddle frightened in the night? And tomorrow we will be no closer to delivering our rescued scrolls to the future than we are right now. We would still be ill advised to use the chair, which would mean we would be back here again hoping to find passage to Athens."

  Synesius had no good answer. He had no reason to think that the legionaries would not be guarding the harbor tomorrow. "Do you think the two of us can best the four legionaries?" he asked, and touched the hilt of his blade.

  "I believe I have a pretty good chance," the android said. "At very least, I can delay them long enough for you to get on the boat." She gave him a bag of coins. "Tell the captain there will be more of this when he get you to Athens – that might well give him incentive to resist the legionaries. Those boats are well armed."

  Synesius shook his head no. "You are far more valuable to our quest than am I – you carry a complete catalog of the Library in your head. "

  "But I am not truly alive" the android said. "It is wrong for a living being to sacrifice his own life to save the existence of a nonliving being."

  "I appreciate the subtly of your ethics," Synesius said, "but Max told me I am to die in original history in 414 AD, or less than a year from now in my lifetime. So I would be sacrificing very little of my life if I died here to save you and the catalog."

  The android poked her head around the corner. "There is no time left for talk. The legionaries are approaching."

  "Can they see through pillars?" Synesius asked in disbelief.

  "Perhaps one of them caught a glimpse of us the moment we saw them," the android said. "But we have no time for discovery of causes. All we have time for now is escape and battle." She looked at the ship. "If we run we might reach the ship before the legionaries."

  Synesius nodded. He and the android drew their weapons, secured the scrolls in their robes as b
est they could, and ran to the ship.

  Some of their scrolls slipped through their robes as they ran. "Don't stop to retrieve them," the android shouted. "Maybe the legionaries will."

  The legionaries did not stop to pick up the scrolls, and reached the ship just as Synesius and the android were boarding.

  "Pay the captain for the voyage and for some of his men to help us now," the android said, and jumped off the ship back on the shore. She let out a fierce cry and charged the four approaching legionaries.

  The captain put a strong arm on Synesius's shoulder. "We do not take fugitives on this ship," the captain said harshly.

  Synesius caught the Phoenician accent and thought there might be hope in that. Phoenicians were no friends of the Romans. "We are not fugitives, I am Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais." Synesius pulled out the gold insignia he wore around his neck and hoped it would have meaning to the captain. "They are not legionaries, but thieves wearing legionary garb after this money." Synesius pulled the bag of coins from his robe. "I would rather give half of this to you, for voyage to Athens for me and the acolyte you see fighting below. And a few more coins for a few of your men to help us fight those thieves."

  The captain was impressed with both the insignia and the coins, which he took. "She seems to be doing well enough on her own," he said, admiringly. But he called out to his men for help.

  The android had dispatched two of the legionaries and was wheeling on the other two. But Synesius saw another four legionaries approaching from a direction behind the android. He knew if he shouted out to warn her that would distract her and could well lead to a sword in her neck from one of the legionaries she was engaging. Synesius ran back down to the shore with his own weapon drawn.

  Four men from the ship quickly followed. Two went to aid the android, and two stayed with Synesius.

  The android killed a third legionary and got cut deeply in the arm by the fourth. But the two men from the ship were now upon him, and the fourth legionary was soon dead. The men from the ship now turned to face the second group of legionaries, and the android saw them for the first time.

  She ran ahead of the two men from the ship and joined the battle. It was brutal, bloody, and soon over. The four additional legionaries, three men from the ship, and Synesius were down. The fourth man from the ship made sure with slashes that the fallen legionaries were all dead. Two of his brethren were dead on the ground. He helped the third, wounded, to his shaky feet.

  The android cradled Synesius's head in her arms. "I see tears in your eyes," Synesius said. "I see bleeding on your arm. You are more human than you admit." He coughed up blood and shuddered.

  "Let me carry you to the ship," the android said. "I can find a physician to heal you."

  Synesius shook his head. "Let me die here in Alexandria, in sight of the Lighthouse, not far from Hypatia's beloved Library. It is too late for healing."

  "No–" the android said.

  "I will see my wife and my sons again," Synesius said.

  She knew they were dead. She tried to lift him.

  He reached into his robe. "Give this to Hypatia," he said, barely audibly. "It is her heart."

  "You can give it to her yourself," the android said, but she took the blood-stained locket.

  "Promise me that you will not let Hypatia back here," Synesius said in a broken whisper. "Promise me you will not let her die by the Nitrians."

  "I promise," the android said, softly. "I promise you."

  And the Bishop of Ptolemais lifted his head so he could see the Lighthouse one last time, and died.

  Chapter Thirteen

  [Mediterranean Sea en route to Athens, 150 AD]

  Sierra awoke to waves splashing against the side of their boat. It was a comforting sound, and Sierra took it in. Max was still asleep beside her, the Chronica under his am. He likely had been reading it last night, after she had fallen asleep. She gently reached over for the scroll. This was the original. Jonah had obtained it in the time of Cleopatra and brought it forward to the Parthenon Club in 2061, where he had asked Mr. Gleason to make a copy for safekeeping and had given the original to Max to give to her. She kissed Max gently on the forehead. He had done well, and she had been doing much better with Max at her side. She opened the scroll. Its contents were complex, and reminded her that Heron, for all the damage he had caused and was causing, was a genius unsurpassed in the modern as well as the ancient world. For all of Hawking's, Einstein's, and Newton's accomplishment, they never built a thing. Heron had a built a time machine. And the theory behind it, with precise equations and instructions, were in this scroll. Heron was like Leonardo, except Heron mostly lived in a future time when the technology needed to implement his inventions was at hand. But Sierra was still not completely sure when Heron had built his first chair. If in this ancient world with technology Heron had brought back from the future, this ancient world whose sea she and Max sleeping so peacefully now traversed, then Heron was even more of a genius than she thought. What she did know for sure was that the knowledge in this scroll was more important than the knowledge contained in every other scroll in the Library of Alexandria, including the catalog that Synesius's android now carried in her head. For if the knowledge in this scroll could be used to construct a chair that traveled through time, then she or anyone with access to the chair could travel back to Alexandria and undo anything that Heron was now attempting. The scrolls could all be unburned, and the preventers of the fires could try as many times as they needed.

  Max grunted softly and turned on his side. He had a better head for this than she – or at least a better grasp of the engineering required to make a time traveling chair. She got the mathematics, for the most part. But there still were some rough spots. Her hope was that they could get some help with this from someone in the middle of the 21st century. Her mother, who had taken an early retirement from her mathematics professorship at Harvard a few years before Sierra had embarked on this insane, extraordinary journey, still had connections at Harvard and MIT. For that matter, her mother might be of help herself.

  The parts of the equations Sierra could not understand bothered her. Not just because she could make no sense of them, but because they raised the possibility that maybe the Chronica itself was a feint, a Trojan horse to draw her in to some plan of Heron's she could not fathom. But that seemed unlikely – why would Heron invest so much effort in stopping her, keeping the scrolls of Alexandria including the Chronica in ashes, if the theory and instructions it contained were false?

  "Hey," Max leaned over and kissed Sierra on her side. "Looks like a beautiful day to arrive in Athens."

  Sierra put the scroll down and ran her finger on Max's face. "We made good time. Nine days. I don't like being out of touch with everything that long, though," Sierra said.

  "That's the way it is back here, isn't it?" Max said. "There's a lot to like about it."

  "This era is one of my favorites," Sierra said. "The Roman Empire at its apex, the Western world bursting with knowledge and enthusiasm. If only we could be here as just tourists."

  "Tourists are part of ordinary life," Max said. "Time travel shatters everything ordinary." He moved up to her neck and kissed her.

  Sierra tightened her grip on Max, and thought, I'm being kissed by a man I saw slaughtered on the shore of the Thames in London this very year some three years ago.

  [Athens, 150 AD]

  Max and Sierra proceeded on the road from the Piraeus to where they hoped the structure with the chairs was recognizably standing. They repeated to each other what they already knew, just to keep their footing in a world in which their recollection was the firmest ground available. "I know the structure continued to exist at least into the 21st century," Sierra said. "I used its chairs in 399 BC to take Socrates to our future. There was a cheap restaurant and bar around the room with the chairs in our time. But I have no idea what exists around the chairs right now."

  "Let's hope there's more than one chair in whatever room we
find," Max said, "so we don't have to do this single-file like we did in the Library."

  The architecture visible from the road gave them something new to discuss. "The Pantheon was built since the last time I was here," Sierra said, "I wish we had time to go see it. And the aqueduct, the library, and the nymphaem."

  Max smiled.

  Sierra stopped. "I think the structure's in that direction." She pointed to a path that branched off to the right. "But I don't recall that sarcophagus." She pointed to a marble coffin that depicted the exploits of Achilles. She and Max crossed the road to get a closer look. "Most of these memorials are closer to Eleusis," Sierra said.

  Max nodded. "This looks like Roman work. It wouldn't have been here in the time of Socrates."

  Sierra agreed, took Max's hand, and proceeded with him on the path which she thought would lead to the structure with the chairs. They reached what looked like a good candidate about 30 minutes later. "It's different than it was in Socrates's time, but the size is pretty much the same." The two stopped and regarded the dwelling from a safe distance, so their scrutiny of the house was not too obvious. "Jonah was here in 150 AD," Sierra suddenly recalled. "It's too bad he never described it to me."

  "How about Alcibiades?" Max asked, walking a few paces ahead of Sierra and looking at the dwelling. "Did he ever describe it to you?" He turned back to face her.

  Sierra winced. "No."

  Max continued looking at her.

  "He never described it to me," Sierra said. "I have no knowledge of his being here now in 150 AD, though it's certainly not impossible."

  "He could be in that dwelling right now," Max said.

  "Yes, any time traveler could," Sierra said. "Heron, Mr. Appleton . . . ."

  Max considered, then pointed to a large stone a few feet away. "Let's sit and watch the dwelling and see if anyone emerges. We still have a few hours of daylight."

  "If we wait until sunset, we'll have a better idea if anyone is in the dwelling," Sierra said. "We'll be able to see any interior lights."

  * * *

  Sierra and Max walked quietly to the dwelling as the last rays of light left the Aegean sky. They saw no light within.