Sierra nodded. "We have had Edison on our short list of people who may have somehow obtained the Chronica from William Appleton for several months. You understand 'short list'"? she asked Mary and Astor.
They both nodded.
"Heron is likely involved in this," Max said.
"You believe he was the one who drugged me, on the day we were supposed to meet last month," Mary said to Max. "I still feel guilty about being dead to the world when you came up to see me that day." And now her own face turned red, because her doctor had helpfully told her, with a slight leer that he couldn't disguise, that she had been partially nude when discovered, unconscious, on her bed.
"Heron is the only one with a motive," Max said, "if he had any reason to believe you were helping us."
"But I saw no one strange on that day, in the morning or at lunch before I returned to my hotel," Mary mused. "There was nothing untoward at Luchow's. Just J. P. Morgan entertaining some friends in his usual grand way."
Astor furrowed his brow. "What?" he asked Mary.
"What about what?" she asked, good naturedly. "Luchow's?"
"You said you saw J. P. Morgan there, in the early afternoon, having lunch?"
"Yes," Mary said.
"Is that significant?" Max asked.
"You said you were meeting J. P. Morgan that day," Sierra said to Astor, "before Max went off to see Mary, when you were with us in the lobby – you said that's why you couldn't see Mary, and you would set up the appointment for Max and Mary."
"That's right – and I indeed saw J. P. Morgan, it was in a saloon uptown, at the same time Mary saw him in Luchow's, on 14th Street," Astor said, emphatically.
"He couldn't be in two places at the same time," Mary said, "unless . . . ." She then realized what the other three were thinking. "Unless one of them was Heron!"
***
Astor bundled Mary into a motorized carriage that returned her to her hotel. He then proceeded "with all due haste" with Sierra and Max in their own motorized carriage to the Millennium Club. Mary had objected – she wanted to go with them to the club – but Astor kindly insisted that she not. "It could be dangerous – you have already been laid low by that man!"
"What are the chances that he's there now?" Max asked, as their vehicle approached the club.
Astor shrugged. "J. P. Morgan has long been in frequent attendance at the club. If Heron has a face that looks like J. P.'s – if there are two men with J. P. Morgan's face out and about now – then I guess that makes it twice as likely that we'll encounter some version of J. P. Morgan, real or impersonated, if I have my mathematics right."
"Possibly more likely than that," Sierra said, "since Heron as J. P. Morgan might well be using the club more often than the real J. P. – to get to the Chairs."
Astor grunted. "Of course."
Their carriage arrived at the club. "Please wait here," Astor told the driver, and thanked him.
"Good man – he's on retainer," Astor said to Sierra and Max, as the three walked right up to the front door of the club.
Mr. Bertram opened it.
"Mr. Bertram," Astor and Sierra said at the same time. "You look a little peaked," Astor said to Bertram, with a little concern. "Are you well?"
Bertram nodded. "Just a little matter in another time," he said. "I'm sure you understand. All's well that ends well," he added, with a slight smile.
"Right," Astor said. "No need to explain."
Bertram nodded.
"We came here to see J. P. Morgan," Sierra said. "Is he here today?"
"Yes, he is indeed!" Bertram said, pleased to be no longer on the subject of what had made him peaked. "In the first-floor lounge, I believe, under the Raphael nude. I saw him there conversing with several men about 20 minutes ago."
"Thank you!" Astor said.
The three walked to the top of the wide staircase. The lounge was off to the left. They stopped to talk.
"We're unarmed – we have no weapons," Max said to Astor. "You didn't give us much notice before the meeting with Mary – we barely had time to dress."
"We should have thought of that before we rushed up here," Sierra said. "What do you suggest we do? If we leave now, to get help or weapons, J. P. Morgan could be gone when we return."
"Here is what we'll do," Astor said. "I know J. P. Morgan well enough to have conversations with him about events we both attended, which Heron could not possibly know about, unless he copied J. P.'s brain as well as his face. Let me talk to him, and the two of you stay back."
"What will you do if he's Heron and he attacks you?" Max asked.
"He wouldn't dare – not here, in front of everyone in the lounge," Astor replied.
Sierra and Max reluctantly agreed to let Astor go ahead with his plan. They couldn't risk entering the lounge – if J. P. Morgan in there was really Heron, he would recognize them instantly. They agreed to stand where they were until Astor returned.
***
Astor returned an excruciating nine minutes later, with a big smile.
"It's not Heron, it's the real J. P. Morgan!" he said triumphantly.
"What are you so happy about?" Max asked him. "Our purpose in coming here was to find Heron not J. P. Morgan."
"I'm happy he wasn't Heron and didn't kill me!" Astor said, still jovial.
"How can you be sure he's not Heron?" Sierra asked.
"I told you, I know J. P. fairly well," Astor replied. "How about we test this another way: I introduce the two of you to J. P. Morgan, and see if anything about him strikes you as Heron."
Sierra and Max nodded slowly.
"By the way, J. P recalled his meeting with me on the day Mary was drugged – so he could not be the J. P. Morgan she saw in Luchow's," Astor told them, as the three walked to J. P. Morgan's table.
Introductions were made, conversations were had, and Sierra and Max were satisfied that this man was definitely not Heron. Astor pleaded that he and his friends had other engagements, thanked J. P. for his time and the libations he had bought them, and left with Sierra and Max.
"In a future time, we could contact the police and they could put out an all-points bulletin to apprehend someone who looked like J. P. Morgan, now anywhere other than in the Millennium Club, and we would have a chance of locating him," Max said.
"I would love to see such a time," Astor said, with that look in his eyes that he always had whenever Max or Sierra talked about the future.
***
Astor left for a business appointment. Sierra and Max went back to the hotel, where she made her weekly telephone call to Geoffreys to inquire about Appleton's heath and speak to Appleton if possible.
"He's worse than ever," Sierra later told Max, who had taken a walk around the block to do some thinking.
"Were you able to talk to him?" Max asked.
"Barely," Sierra said, her voice constricted with emotion. "He was barely responsive. All I could say to him was 'I love you'. I think he understood that." Her eyes smarted with unshed tears, as they often did when she thought about Appleton.
Max put his arms around her and kissed her gently on the temple. "Why is he in such bad shape? His death date is still a few months away, in October. Is Heron poisoning him? Maybe he got in to see William as J. P. Morgan."
"I don't know," Sierra said and shook her head. "I think it's just that the months that he lived in other times – trying to help me, saving my life in ways I probably don't even know about – are part of the total time he has for life. So he's actually older at this date right now than he was originally in 1899, before he got involved in all of this. It's easy to lose track of that." And now there were tears on her face.
Max held her tightly. "Why can't we extend his life, get him into the future to get some medical attention that can save him?" They had been over this before, many times, and Max had never been satisfied with the answer.
"I asked about that, more than once, when he was healthy," Sierra said, "and he always refused. He said he wanted to die when
he was due to die – he didn't want the time travel to change that. A part of him wants to be with his wife again. A part of him feels that he has already disrupted the natural order of events enough, with everything he has done for me. We don't even know what he's dying of – the obituaries don't list a cause, and give the impression he just died of old age."
"I know," Max said, softly, "but he's only slightly over middle aged by our mid-21st-century standards, which makes it especially hard for us to just go along with him on this." Looking into the cause of Appleton's death had long been one of the things he and Sierra had wanted to do, and it had remained that way, as the two had been caught up with one more urgent threat after another.
"He's too weak to travel anywhere now anyway," Sierra said. "He hasn't been to the Millennium Club in almost a year."
[New York City, 2087 AD]
Heron entered the reconstruction facility at the New York University Medical Center on First Avenue and 30th Street. This had taken a lot of doing. Unlike face stylings and remakes, which once had been difficult but now could be done in a beauty salon from just a good photograph, a full body reconstruction required a hospital and DNA from the body to be emulated. That was the only way to really get everything from the physique to the voice. And the voice was rarely a perfect match, since speech patterns depended upon upbringing, regional accents, and other factors that had nothing to do with genes.
The procedure was safe enough – otherwise, Heron would have traveled further into the future to get it – but it was not particularly pleasant or easy on the psyche. Finding yourself with a new face was traumatic enough. Finding yourself in a new body could take months of adjustment, and no new procedures in the future made that any better. Heron didn't care. He knew he'd adjust more quickly than most. And his needs demanded this.
Getting the DNA hadn't been easy. A doctor had to be carefully approached and copiously bribed. But Heron had no choice. There were only so many times he could go in and out of the club without being seen by Charles or Bertram or their treacherous ilk. Fortunately, he long ago developed a way to disguise his use of the Chairs. But he had no way to disguise his presence in the club.
A very attractive doctor beckoned him to follow down the hall. It had been a long time, too long, since he had sampled the sweet pleasures of the flesh, of any kind. He would have to see to that, and the many pursuits he had neglected, when his Chronica was back in the place it belonged: nonexistence, except in Heron's head.
[New York City, May, 1899 AD]
Sierra received a telephone call at the hotel from Mr. Bertram, two days after her encounter with the real J. P. Morgan.
"Mr. Bertram!" she said. "Is everything ok? I don't believe you have ever contacted me on the phone before."
"I try not to," Bertram said.
Sierra chuckled. She could tell from his voice that this was about nothing bad. "But you made an exception this time," she said.
"Yes. I just received a call from William Henry Appleton – he's been quite ill, you know."
"Yes, I know," Sierra said. "He was able to call you?"
"Yes," Bertram said. "I was surprised to hear directly from him, too. I've been speaking with Appleton's man Geoffreys for the past few months, whenever Appleton needed to communicate anything regarding club business to me."
"That's wonderful!" Sierra said. "Thanks so much for letting me know!"
"There's more," Bertram said.
"Yes?"
"Mr. Appleton wanted to speak to you and wasn't quite sure where to reach you – he said his memory isn't what it used to be."
"Did you give him my number here at the hotel?" Sierra asked.
"I wanted to," Bertram said, "but giving out a telephone number, even at a hotel, even when requested by a trusted member, is against club policy. So I told him I would pass his request on to you."
***
Max had gone downstairs to fetch the morning newspapers. Sierra couldn't wait.
She called Appleton. Geoffreys took the call. "Yes, he is eager to speak with you," he told her. "I shall get him for you."
"My dear," a warm familiar voice soon said to her. "I know you've been trying to talk to me. I don't know how much longer I will have, but I'm feeling a little better today. In fact, if you are available, I thought I might even hazard a visit to see you at the club."
"No, no, let me come to Wave Hill," Sierra said. "No need to exhaust yourself! You need to conserve your energy."
"But I want to," Appleton said. "It would make me feel better – not only to see you, but see you in the Millennium Club."
***
Sierra made an appointment to see Appleton at the club in two hours. Max returned. Sierra hugged him hard, and told him what had happened. "And you come along, too. He'll want to see you, too," she said.
The phone rang again. "I hope he didn't change his mind, or realize he's still too weak – we can easily go up to Wave Hill today," she said to Max and picked up the phone. "Hello?"
"Please don't hang up," a familiar voice said to her, softly and slowly. "Please just listen, for a moment."
"Who is this?" she demanded. But she knew instantly who was on the phone. The voice was indelibly seared into her soul. It was Heron.
Chapter 15
[New York City, May, 1899 AD]
Heron sat in the bar in the Millennium Club, slowly nursing a beer. This was the best way. He had realized, as he walked down the hall with that attractive doctor in 2087, fired up by the seductive scent, that his looking like Appleton, even completely, and sounding like him, would not work for his purposes. Sierra Waters knew the real Appleton too well to be fooled for more than a moment. For her to ever really believe that Heron was Appleton, Heron would have had to have taken Appleton's mind as well as his face, bodily appearance, and voice – and that trick was beyond any technology Heron had ever come across, even in the furthest reaches of the future.
He assumed that Bertram and Charles, if they were here, had already recognized him. What could they do? Call the police? And tell them, what? A man from the future and the past is here in our little club, a man who created the means of time travel that brought him here? The two would be carted away to a lunatic asylum, as it was called in this time. No, the most those toads would do is alert Sierra Waters, and he had just done that.
He became aware of three people who entered the far side of the dining area. Sierra Waters and Maxwell Marcus, accompanied by Bertram. They saw Heron. They neither fled nor rushed him with weapons drawn. That was good.
Bertram accompanied the couple halfway across the room, then stopped, watching as Sierra and Max approached Heron's table. What did Bertram expect him to do? Pull out a weapon himself and kill the two or three of them? That's not how he operated. And if he had intended on doing harm here, just how would Bertram have been able to stop him?
Heron rose as Sierra and Max reached the table. Their clothes were damp, as if they had been caught in a downpour. They sat. Bertram receded.
"Thank you for coming here," Heron said. "I knew you would."
"You killed a lot of people," Max said, darkly.
"Not really," Heron responded. "I chose not to stop the killing of an android impersonating Hypatia – not a person, not Hypatia – in Alexandria. That impersonation was no doubt your doing," he said to Sierra.
Chronica (Sierra Waters Book 3) Page 20