The problem with the phone call is that he would have no control of the situation, no real chance to influence Sierra's actions, from so far away, if his words were not enough. She could hang up the phone and step onto the invisible conveyor that had drawn her irresistibly into this, anyway -- the conveyor that he had already set in motion .... No, seeing her in person, sitting next to her in the same actual room, was his best chance for changing things...
Assuming he really, truly wanted to change them. He of course didn't want Sierra dying as Hypatia or anyone -- he didn't want Hypatia dying as Hypatia, either, for that matter. But Hypatia's horrible death was history. And Thomas knew he was no Heron. Thomas had been drawn into this scheme to save Socrates, but he had no intention of running through creation, trying to rescue every good person who had been put to death … as much as he might have wanted to. No, he understood the dangers that entailed....
But Sierra was different. He was obligated to protect her now in any way he could. To hell with any other moral imperative. The question was how to protect her without jeopardizing what she had already done, what she would do....
And what if Sierra was not Hypatia, after all? Did he want to risk deleting everything else Sierra and Ampharete had accomplished.... Perhaps there was something else he could do to prevent Sierra from dying as Hypatia ... something later on in the flow, something other than editing Sierra out of this at the very beginning...
Still … he could stay here in London. He could talk to Appleton, get him not to send Sierra and Max back to Londinium that first time .... He could intercede with Sierra and Max himself. He sighed. He felt terrible about Max's death. But- no, he dared not do anything that might get in the way of Sierra's first meeting with Heron in Alexandria 150 AD. That visit had drawn Heron into this plan. Dangerous as he was, he was absolutely crucial to all else that followed--
A soft but penetrating voice announced that his flight was boarding.
He walked to the entrance gate, and realized again how little real control he seemed to have over anyone's actions, including especially his own. An odd part of him thought: if the plane I'm boarding crashes, never makes it to New York, well that would be one way of resolving this ....
* * *
Thomas got little rest on the plane. He ran his fingertips over silky, upholstered armrests and fathomed the threads of history. He recalled the first time he had seen Sierra, the first time they had talked ... It seemed so long ago, another lifetime ...
His plane landed, on time and without incident. It was past midnight, local time, Tuesday morning. Had Sierra gone to sleep? She already knew about the missing boat. She and Max would be flying to London today. Appleton was already there. But he would be here in New York, likely in the Millennium Club, in the next few days. Thomas considered. Sierra, Max, Appleton ... none of them had seen him in this precise period, as far as he knew. He had to be exceedingly careful, and make sure no one saw him unless he wanted that to happen. An inadvertent encounter with any one of the three could wreak havoc....
He walked on the new cobblestone pathway to the cab-port. The cobblestones on his course of action were egg shells. He couldn't afford a single misstep... He stopped, abruptly, and walked in other direction.
He couldn't risk going back to his apartment tonight. The safest thing was to spend the night in an airport hotel.
He would get up early the next morning, and scout out the Millennium Club.
* * *
[New York City, 2042 AD]
The alarm clock showed him no mercy. He cursed it, even though he knew full well, barely awake, that he had been the one to set it for 6:45 am. He had sentenced himself to five short hours of sleep...
He grabbed breakfast in the coffee shop. He often wondered how his stomach came to be so tolerant of food from so many different places and times. Well, right now it was only the places that were mixed in his digestion -- ouzo from Athens, duck from London, and eggs over easy from New York City, all in 2042.
Eggs over easy. He had the distinct feeling that they would be the only things to go over easy in the next few days....
His new phone rang in his shirt, as if to prove it. He had picked up the phone in Blair. His old one was somewhere beneath the azure waves of the Aegean.
It was Mr. Charles on the phone. "Where are you, Thomas?"
"Back in New York, not in my apartment, long story."
"Ah, just got back myself -- but I was here in New York, at my nineteenth-century post. Had several meetings with you, back then, in fact--"
"Yes."
"Though I suppose you might not recall all of them -- some perhaps being a bit later in your life than where you are, now. Strange business, this time travel. Appleton and I were just discussing it--"
"Back then?"
"Yes ... But that's not the reason I'm calling you. There's something going on at the Club--"
"Right now?"
"Yes. We have the continuous camera surveillance in the room with the chairs, you know. And it sends notifications to my home, and yours, when anyone enters the room -- I'm surprised you didn't see it--"
"I'm not home."
"Yes, yes, of course. I just got home myself."
"Someone entered the room? From the stairs or the chairs?"
"I believe the chairs," Charles replied.
"One person?" Thomas asked.
"Two. They apparently arrived in the middle of the night -- I haven't looked back any further -- then they left for a little while, and then returned to the room. But they haven't taken the chairs again."
"They're still there in the room?"
"Yes."
"Can you see who they are?"
"One is definitely Sierra Waters."
"Good ... and the other?"
"I don't know the face. A man. But they were speaking Greek."
"How are they dressed?"
"Modern clothes."
* * *
Thomas caught a cab to the Millennium. With any luck, he'd get into Manhattan just under the morning rush hour. The timing -- this tiny part of the timing, at least -- was good: the Club didn't open until 9:00 am. That would give Charles and him a chance to get upstairs, and see who was in the room with the chairs, with no one to trip over downstairs. He only hoped that Sierra and her companion would still be there. He had no way of keeping them there. He certainly couldn't call the police and report a break-in at the Club. He tried to piece together Sierra's likely trajectory. If she had been across the Atlantic at any time other than the recent past -- even at the end of the nineteenth century -- then sailing or steaming across the ocean would have been a cumbersome option. She would have been better off first using the chairs in Athens or London to get to the present, then fly to New York.
Ok. So that meant Sierra and her companion had likely already arrived in New York, recently, and entered the Club the conventional way, through its front doors. Likely they were looking for chairs, didn't find any, so left and came back hoping for better luck. Though ... Sierra and friend conceivably could also have come in via chairs from the future ... maybe from Heron's time, whenever, exactly, that was...
Heron had blocked travel to the future in his chairs, which is why Thomas didn't usually think about that. But Heron himself of course had traveled from that future to now, as well as further back....
New York City's expressways were remarkably unblocked this morning, and Thomas was in midtown Manhattan before eight. He'd asked Charles to meet him in front of the Club. Thomas's cab pulled up. Charles was there, reliable as always.
He also had the keys.
"Anyone else around?" Thomas asked. He still was not sure if he wanted a meeting with Sierra now, but his overriding need was seeing who had been captured in that spiderweb of a room.
"No one I recognized in the past ten minutes I have been here," Charles replied, "except that derelict selling algae-dogs."
"This early in the morning?"
Charles nodded. "I find them vile
any time of day." He applied his keys to the door. "Our overtime guests are still upstairs. I routed their streaming images from the room to my phone."
"Can I see?"
"Only Ms. Waters has been in camera range for the past ten minutes," Charles replied. "It might take me a few moments to retrieve the earlier--"
"Let's just go in and see for ourselves."
* * *
The two men walked quickly on plush carpets, up the wide central staircase, to the series of libraries with big, burgundy armchairs and wide maple tables. Thomas saw what he always did when he was here and the place was empty: Samuel Clemens, Henry Adams, the Roosevelts Theodore and Franklin, John O'Hara, Ogden Nash, I. F. Stone, Carl Sagan, Walter Cronkite ... Thomas had seen all of them, and many others, famous and anonymous, not their books or their vids but their real-life persons relaxing in these armchairs at one time or another.... Other than Stone, of course, not a one of them had any knowledge of real time travel, and the little room upstairs... Well, maybe Clemens, and, come to think of it, Thomas wouldn't put it past Nash or Sagan, either...
Thomas and Charles approached the Greeks in the bookcase. The Plato, the Xenophon--
"You've actually met some of these, shaken their hands, haven't you?" Mr. Charles asked.
"Yes, I have..."
Charles turned from the books to Thomas then back to the books, with equal awe. "I envy you." He turned to the spiral ladder. "Shall we?"
Thomas climbed the steps, with Charles behind.
Thomas reached the top, and pressed his palm against the trap door in the ceiling. It clicked, almost imperceptibly, and opened inward.
Thomas heard voices, speaking in Greek.
He climbed up into the room. Mr. Charles followed.
"Thomas!" Sierra cried out, delighted.
Thomas beamed and he felt his heart pound. But he couldn't take his eyes off of Sierra's companion, who was looking with great interest at Thomas and Charles. He was indeed dressed in contemporary clothing.
Sierra saw that Thomas noticed. "The clothes should make him less conspicuous here," she said.
The man said something to her in Greek.
"My God!" Charles exclaimed, no longer able to contain himself. "Is this Alcibiades? I thought he was younger..."
Chapter Eight
[Athens, 2042 AD]
Sierra looked out into the cobalt. It was half sky, half sea, and the line between them quivered like a bruised lip. She saw tiny specks of white in the distance. They could have been the pieces of paper she had just torn, the pieces of a plan, but she knew they were only mindless birds....
She thought of Alcibiades' lips, slightly parted, peacefully asleep in their bed back in ancient Athens, nearly 2500 years ago this morning. She would kiss them again, soon. She had taken the chair here to her own original time in the future, along with Heron's instructions that she had carried with her for nearly two years. The years never mattered -- she could help implement Heron's plans whenever she wanted. She had left Alcibiades a note this morning, explaining what she was doing, letting him know she would be coming back to him after she had finished executing Heron's requests. What had since changed is she now had decided, finally, that she no could no longer be a cog in Heron's machine. She and Alcibiades could save Socrates on their own. And save Max, if there was some way they could, and find Thomas, too, if he was still alive.
Heron's plan called for her to travel back to the night of the dialog, to be Andros' back-up, whoever Andros was. It called for her to seduce Socrates if necessary. At seventy or so, he was no less open to such temptations than when he was fifty. "He was still a stallion, the last time I saw him," Alcibiades had told her, more than once. These Greeks had a healthy lifestyle -- cereal, fruit, fresh air, olive oil. Heron's plan was quite detailed. It told her how to set the chair with utmost precision to arrive at just the right time. "Drug him, if your other entreaties fail," Heron had said, and he had provided her with ample ingredients. "Call upon Crito and his friends, if need be. He never wavered in his zeal to save Socrates." And Heron had provided her with the exact details of their locations.
The double would already be in the prison. Andros would have seen to that, or Heron. Yet according to the dialog she had seen, Socrates would refuse Andros' offer in the end. It wasn't clear why. It was almost as if he wanted to die, but that didn't make much sense, either. I. F. Stone's idea -- that it was to embarrass the Athenian democracy -- just did not seem sufficient. To wrack your body with a convulsive, corrosive poison that turned you inside out -- hard to believe that anyone, even Socrates, would do that, would allow that to be done to him, just to make a political point. Not when there was an alternative at hand -- indeed, one which would have allowed him to make that same point, and survive anyway.... The only reason Sierra could think of was Socrates trusted the death of his body more than the death of his double's, which he would have had difficulty understanding, however clear the explanation of Andros....
So, the dialog said Socrates would turn down, had turned down, Andros' offer. And Sierra was the insurance that he would nonetheless change his mind. Heron planned on saving Socrates whether he wanted to be saved or not. The unmitigated arrogance that came with travel through time. But Sierra had to admit that a part of her had come to admire it...
She regarded the sky and the sea, again. In addition to the birds, and the long-gone shreds of the paper she had torn, Thomas was out there, too... Was he long gone, also?
She had attempted to arrive a day before Thomas vanished. But despite Heron's claims, the chair was not precise enough. Or maybe she needed a little more training. She had arrived the day after Thomas's boat had disappeared.
She had walked this shore and the docks near Athens and Piraeus all this morning and afternoon, talking to everyone she could find who had anything to do with the sea... No one had seen anyone like Thomas. No one knew of three men who had chartered a boat. It was a long shore, and there were lots of out-of-the-way docks. But Sierra thought that if she walked and talked here for the rest of her life she would find out no more. And now the Athenian Global Village carried the report that had been the deciding factor that had pulled her onto this path...
It was an unsigned story. It had been so all along. No one at the Athenian Global Village was sure who had written it. Several of the staff were on vacation. And the Greek media were in something of an uproar today, because two men were suspected of having used forged IDs to fly from Athens to London the day before. She could see the writing on the wall-screen: she was unlikely to find anything more about this here, under the Grecian sun...
But nor could she just go ahead now, follow Heron's plan, and hope that it saved the people she cared about. Maybe her self-appraisal had been wrong. Maybe she did have a deeper connection to something other than her work.
She would find out now, once and for all.
She kissed the sky and the sea goodbye, and headed for the bar, halfway on the road from Piraeus to Athens.
* * *
She approached the restaurant cautiously. It had been empty when she had arrived this morning. If it had stayed that way, there would be a chair waiting in the back room. She would take it back to Alcibiades. With any luck and her proper use of the settings, he would never know she had been gone.
She waited outside, from a safe distance, for a few minutes.... But there was no point in waiting, she realized. Sooner or later she would have to enter the bar, see if anyone was there, and if the chair was still available. It might as well be now.
She opened the door and walked inside. Rays of sunlight followed her and lit up particles of dust in the air.
The particles led to a lone man at the bar.
He looked very tired, drunk, or both.
He looked at her and smiled so hard his eyes teared. He walked over and hugged her. He didn't seem drunk.
"I have searched the millennia for you, my dear. I have seen things, talked to people ... and here you are, right in front of m
e. I guess I could have just stayed here to begin with, and not moved a second or an inch .... You know, I learn something new about time travel almost every minute."
Sierra relaxed. "Mr. Appleton."
* * *
They went into the private room in the back, on the authority of Sierra's palm. She thought it would work. There was no reason to think Heron would take the drastic step of locking her out. But she was relieved, anyway.
Two chairs were now against the wall. "I know we don't have much time to talk," Appleton said. "Who knows when Heron will return -- and you no doubt need to be on your way. But there are some things I need to tell you."
Sierra nodded.
Appleton cleared his throat. "When I first came to this room, I sat in one of the chairs. I knew how to command it -- Thomas had shown me. It took me to the age of Socrates. I arrived a few years before his death. Ironically, the body of Socrates had arrived in the same place, about 15 minutes before me. It had been seated in another chair, in this room. I don't know why it went back to the same time and place as I did -- I assume Heron intended that, for whatever reasons."
"Did you command your chair to arrive at that particular time?"
"No. I just commanded it to travel. You see, I was in a fearful hurry. I... I think Alcibiades was more shocked by my appearance than the body of his mentor. But it was you I was seeking."
Sierra put a comforting hand over Appleton's, which was shaking. "Why?"
"It's not easy for me to tell you this."
She had never seen his face, or anyone else's, look so sad.
"Heron believes that you will die an awful death, under the name Hypatia, in the fifth century, AD, in Alexandria."
"I know." Sierra squeezed his hand.
"Yes, I went back to tell you that, but Alcibiades told me that he already told you .... So my goal, now, is a little different."
The Plot to Save Socrates (Sierra Waters Book 1) Page 20