Chronica (Sierra Waters Book 3)

by Paul Levinson

  "It's not crazy but it won't bring closure," Max said, softly. "The 1999 coroners will examine the body – what will they do with gun wounds made by an 1899 weapon? It'll just create more unanswered questions."

  "I can see that he gets a proper burial now, in Woodlawn Cemetery," Astor said. "I know that place has meaning for you."

  Sierra nodded sadly, as the ferry reached the New York dock.

  ***

  Woodruff made it to a different part of the New York shore, about half a mile south, about an hour later. He was exhausted and wounded, but his badge had survived the plunge. He flagged down a carriage, showed the driver his badge, and told him to go to Bellevue, just across town.

  He asked the driver to write his address on a piece of paper and give it to him. "You may have saved my life. I'll see to it that you're well paid."

  "No need," the driver said, with a thick East European accent, as he wrote down his address. "You are our police. I support you!"

  "I insist," Woodruff said, and took the paper. He staggered into the hospital and collapsed into an orderly's arms.

  He awoke in a bed, his wet clothes removed, under a nice warm blanket.

  "Detective! You're awake," a woman's voice said.

  He turned and saw a nurse smiling at him.

  "How long have I been unconscious?" Woodruff asked her.

  "Only about an hour, I think," the nurse said. "The doctor will be in to see you soon." She turned and left.

  Woodruff looked at her receding figure and thought about that old joke he had heard somewhere, "I was in the hospital, not feeling very well, and then I took a turn for the nurse!" Come to think of it, he had heard that from Flannery. Woodruff felt a stab of remorse.

  ***

  Heron called Woodruff the next morning, returning Woodruff's call, just before the detective was released from the hospital. Woodruff told Heron the story step by step, and stopped with the shooting of Flannery.

  "What happened to Flannery?" Woodruff said. "I know I shot him more than once."

  "I'm afraid he's dead," Heron said. "I'm sorry that happened – I know you didn't want this – but that's the line of work you are in, and, as you said, he shouldn't have gotten in the way at that point. But he was a good man – and I will see to it that his family will never want again for money."

  "You're sure that he's dead?" Woodruff still couldn't believe it, and that he was responsible, even though he was greatly relieved that Flannery could not seek justice and vengeance.

  Heron nodded. "My sources confirm it."

  "How many goddamned sources do you have?"

  "I have had lots of time to cultivate my associates, like you," Heron replied.

  Woodruff made no response.

  "Please, continue with your account," Heron requested. "What happened after Flannery fell? What happened to the Chronica?"

  Woodruff confirmed that the Chronica was gone. "It sunk like a stone," Woodruff said, "in the deepest part of the river. I couldn't see so much as a page of it. That manuscript will never be seen again, except maybe by a fish."

  "It was a manuscript not a scroll?"

  "Yeah," Woodruff replied.

  "And it was written in?"

  "Greek, ancient Greek," Woodruff replied. "I know the difference between the modern and archaic forms."

  Heron asked Woodruff to repeat that part of his story – clearly much more interested in what happened to the Chronica than what happened to Flannery, Woodruff thought, with a flash of black anger.

  "Ok," Heron replied, not entirely happy at all with the results of the evening. "Get back to your police work now – no one knows you were with Flannery last night, right?"

  "I certainly didn't tell anyone," Woodruff replied.

  "Let's hope he didn't tell anyone, either," Heron said. "At this juncture, your best course is to just be as surprised as everyone else about Flannery's unexplained absence. I'll contact you with any further instructions."

  "As you wish," Woodruff said.

  Heron got off the public phone he was using, a half a block from the seafood restaurant, which had received the call from Woodruff an hour earlier. Heron no longer looked like J. P. Morgan, but he still had all the money he needed to pay for the services he required, including getting messages for him under the name Harry from the maître d'hôtel.

  Heron sighed mightily. What he disliked more than anything else was making the same mistake twice. He had thought Sierra was destroyed as Hypatia in Alexandria in 415 AD, and with it the scrolls she had stolen from the Library, including his Chronica. And he had been wrong.

  He believed Woodruff about what had happened to the manuscript of the Chronica. But he was not going to make the mistake of assuming it was the only copy. And there was still the original, presumably but not definitely still in possession of the dying Appleton.

  ***

  Astor, Sierra, and Max walked slowly from the grave of James Flannery in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. The ceremony had been simple and brief. The gravestone, which would be put in later, would say, "A lawman who tried his best."

  Astor was talking. "So many notable people resting in peace here. Herman Melville the author, Jay Gould the financer, Bat Masterson another lawman – are they still known in the world you come from?"

  Max nodded. "Herman Melville and Bat Masterson more than Jay Gould, but, sure, we know of all three."

  "Gould helped finance the railroads?" Sierra asked. But all kinds of other thoughts were smashing like half-submerged icebergs in her brain. Socrates and her Thomas, once Alcibiades, would be buried here about a century and a half from now, Mark Twain in about a decade.

  "That's right," Astor answered Sierra's question about Gould.

  As always, she never knew how much to tell him. "I'm thinking I should see Flannery's wife, and maybe bring her to this place in 1999 . . . I don't know."

  Astor looked at her.

  "So how will this change the course of history," Max wondered. "Not much if at all back here, but Flannery had a life to live in the 21st century, which will be gone now."

  "Perhaps he was destined to die early in the 21st century, or even in 1999, all along," Astor said. "And he could not escape his fate, even back here, like in an O'Henry story."

  Max nodded. "In our experience," he looked at Sierra, "the universe seems to have a lot invested in keeping its original timelines intact – whatever original really is."

  Sierra nodded, but addressed a different issue. "You've read O'Henry?" she asked Astor. "I'm pretty sure his major stories were not published until a few years into the 20th century."

  "Yes," was all that Astor said.

  Lots of other notable people were buried here, Sierra thought. Not Astor, but other important people who would die on the Titanic. Isidor and Ida Straus, almost as rich as Astor. Her grandmother had worked on some arbitration committee with their grandson, Donald Straus. Sierra didn't want to cry but there it was again. Max squeezed her shoulder.

  Astor was looking at her. "I want to tell you something," he said, very softly.

  Sierra shook her head. "No."

  "It's ok," he said, very gently, "it's ok. I've been to the future. I know I'm supposed to die on the Titanic."

  "Don't go!" Sierra said. "Don't go on that fucking ship! History can take care of itself!" She flung her arms around Astor, and pressed her face, slick with tears, against his neck.

  "It's ok," Astor said again, and put a consoling arm around her.

  "I don't know you very well, but I know you don't deserve to die," Sierra said, her voice ragged.

  "If the only people who died were those who deserved it, this cemetery would be a ghost town," Astor replied, with a slight smile.

  Sierra smiled weakly, pulled away, and took Max's hand.

  "I haven't made a decision about the Titanic yet," Astor said. "Let's concentrate on the matter at hand. Perhaps we should go see Tesla."

  [West Orange, New Jersey, May, 1899 AD]

  Edison w
as outraged but not really surprised when he discovered the Chronica missing, two days after it had been taken from his office. Especially infuriating was that Edison couldn't be sure when exactly the Chronica was stolen, which he was sure it had been, since he kept it in only one cubbyhole and could picture it in his sleep. It had been five days since he'd last looked at the Greek manuscript. He'd been busy with all kinds of other projects, and this damn head cold had kept him from playing at the top of his game.

  He called Henry Ford with the bad news.

  Ford was sympathetic, but felt compelled to add, "truthfully, I doubt that such a device could ever be built even with an explicit set of instructions written in English. Whoever stole that from you may have been doing you a favor – my guess is all that they stole was a pipe dream."

  Edison exhaled, and was glad that Ford couldn't see how disgusted he was – about Ford, about everything concerning this beguiling manuscript that he had somehow let slip out of his hands before he'd had a chance to find a translator. "I know someone who claims to use the device described in the book," Edison said, "and he has impressive evidence."

  Ford didn't answer.

  "Do you not believe me?" Edison asked.

  "Of course I believe you," Ford said. "But the world is full of pranksters, people who deceive, do the Devil's work with their every moment on this Earth. Do you think he is the one who stole the Chronica, because he seeks to keep this knowledge for his own use?"

  "Perhaps," Edison replied. He hadn't named Heron to Ford and had no intention of doing so, but Ford might well have been right that Heron, aware and angered that Edison had pried the Chronica from Appleton, but not given it to Heron, had sought to reclaim it as something that was, after all, his. "I think a more likely culprit is Tesla – he and his friends have sought to undermine me at every turn in the road."

  "Does he read Greek?" Ford asked.

  "He probably does," Edison said, "he's European."

  "I do not see how what is written in the book, even if it were entirely comprehensible, could be applied to an actual device," Ford reiterated, "though I know you and I disagree about that."

  "Certainly not by Tesla," Edison responded. "He lacks the discipline."

  The two exchanged pleasantries and concluded their conversation. Edison realized that if he wanted to pursue this, his only course would be to contact Appleton, own up to the fact that the Chronica which Appleton had entrusted to him had been stolen, and see if he could beg, borrow, or steal another copy.

  [New York, June, 1899 AD]

  Tesla joined Astor, Sierra, and Max in Astor's meeting room in his hotel three evenings later. He was nothing but discouraging at first.

  "It's not that your memory was overly faulty," Tesla tried to assure Sierra. "What's playing me false are the missing pieces of science – not in the science currently available, which I would expect, but in the science I cannot imagine."

  "So you don't think having the Chronica as a guide could help," Max said.

  "It might help, of course," Tesla said. "Knowledge of any sort is always welcome. But unless you left out major pieces in your rendition of it to me," he said to Sierra, "I doubt that it will enable me to build one of these Chairs that travel through time."

  "So it is impossible then?" Astor asked, in frustration. "But how could that be – the three of us in this room, everyone other than you, Nikola, have used the Chairs to travel through time!"

  "I believe you," Tesla said and put his hand over Astor's. "I am not saying it is impossible. Nothing is impossible, as far as I am concerned. That word is a shield, an excuse, for those who cannot accomplish very much. So no, not impossible. But, rather, not yet possible with what I know and what I can envision.

  "I have an idea," Sierra said.

  All three men gave her their rapt attention.

  "Let's say we take you to a time in the future when the knowledge you now lack and cannot even imagine is available," Sierra said.

  "Ha! I love it!" Tesla replied. "Using the product of what I cannot even imagine to transport me to a place – a time – in which I not only could imagine but build such a device! I love it! There is a music to that!"

  "And just to make sure we have every asset at our command, let us see if we can procure another copy of the Chronica, for Nikola to take with him, wherever we take him," Astor said

  Max looked at this pocket watch. "I suppose it's too late to go up and see Appleton now?"

  "It can wait until morning," Astor said. "Let's see if we can get some dinner."

  ***

  Sierra called Appleton the next morning.

  Geoffreys sounded distressed. "He's gone!"

  "What? No!" Sierra cried out. "It's only June – he was feeling so much better just last week—"

  "No, no," Geoffreys said, "I didn't mean that – sorry if I frightened you! But I am frightened, actually – there was a break-in at Wave Hill last night, when we were asleep. We only discovered it this morning. Mr. Appleton was very upset about it. I told him he needed to rest. The police are on their way. But when I checked his room a little while after that, he was gone! I called the train station, and the station master told me that Mr. Appleton had boarded a train to New York about an hour and a half ago. Perhaps he's gone to see you! Where are the police?"

  "I don't know," Sierra said, "but I'm sure he's ok. If he had enough strength to take a train into the city, that's certainly good news."

  "Yes, but—"

  "I'll keep you posted, Geoffreys, I promise," she cut him off. "Let me see if I can find out what's happening down here."

  She hung up the phone and briefed Max, who had just come out of the shower, dripping wet, looking for a towel.

  "We have to get to the Millennium, right away."

  Chapter 17

  [Foster Square Facility, Brewster, Massachusetts, 2096 AD]

  She had access to data from all Chairs in the past, from as far in the past as they reached, the oldest in Athens, then London, then New York City. She had access to data from Chairs in those places from even before they were known by those names – for as long as there had been hovels, constructed in stone, roughly hewn or even harvested, to contain the Chairs.

  Data from Chairs in the future was not as reliable. It was not available at all for some stretches of centuries and decades, and those times were increasingly closer to where she was now, in 2096. She suspected, but didn't know with 100% certainty, that this blocking of data from the future was Heron's doing. She also believed that some data from the future was distorted, filtered, or otherwise manipulated by Heron.

  She, and everything else brought into being by Sierra Waters, were at war with Heron, and he was gradually winning, always poised to make a major breakthrough that would destroy them. She thought of herself as holding the line against the onslaught.

  She knew Heron had broken through at times, done minor damage to the operation of Chairs in the past. Heron, as the person who had created the Chairs in the first place, held the upper hand. He had created a fourth Chair portal, in ancient Alexandria, then destroyed it. Sierra had survived and prevailed -- to the extent that she had -- only because, like all asymmetrical warriors, like all guerilla operatives, she was lean and quick and essentially unpredictable. Heron had realized at some point that the best way of fighting her was to engage her, whenever possible, on that one-on-one unforeseeable level.