Chronica (Sierra Waters Book 3)

by Paul Levinson

Charles pointed to the flickering light. "Another Chair is arriving. We need to step outside."

  The other four followed Charles out the door, which Charles quickly closed.

  "Did you find the Chronica in the future?" Max asked Charles.

  "Not exactly," Charles replied.

  There was a familiar whirring sound from within the room – the kind that occurred when Chairs were in motion. The whirring stopped.

  "Can you tell how many Chairs just arrived?" Tesla asked Charles.

  "No," Charles replied. "The room, however, cannot accommodate more than four at the same time."

  "Who do you think it is?" Astor asked.

  "Best case, Appleton; worst case, Heron," Max replied.

  "If it is Heron, would we not be safer if we waited downstairs and perhaps called the police?" Astor asked.

  "I vote we stay right here," Max said, touching the knife in his pocket, standing at the side of the door, ready to stab the first person in the neck who came through if it was Heron.

  Astor guessed what Max was thinking. "What kind of weapons could Heron – or anyone – bring back from the future?" Astor asked.

  "Nothing that uses digital guidance – electricity," Sierra said. "But knives and early combustion guns would make the leap through time just fine."

  Max tightened his grip on the handle of his knife.

  Tesla started to speak, but there was no time for a vote or any further discussion.

  The door opened.

  Nikola Tesla, looking at least 20 years older than he did right now, stepped out to greet them.

  ***

  Sierra's mind sped in a dozen directions, most thinking one variant or another of this was the first time she had seen this, in her life or anyone else's, in all her years of time travel, and the reason she had not seen it in hers was because she always took such care to avoid it.

  Max's hand was still on the hilt of his knife. He moved closer to the older Tesla. "You could be Heron," he said softly, in almost a hiss. "Prove to us you're not."

  The older Tesla looked at his younger self, and then at Max. "When I was 12 years old, a friend of my older sister Angelina stayed with our family for a few days. One early morning, I saw her step out of the bath. I had never seen such beauty before. It was thrilling to me, arousing, in a way I had never experienced before. I still think about her shimmering skin sometimes, late at night."

  The younger Tesla wasn't quite blushing, but looked embarrassed. "I have never told a soul about that, and doubt I ever will."

  "Until now," the older Tesla said and smiled.

  Max relaxed his grip on his knife.

  "So you knew we would be having this meeting," Sierra said to the older Tesla, "with us and your younger self, for all the years beginning with now."

  "Yes," the older Tesla replied, "but not until now. I have that memory now, of this meeting taking place 22 years earlier in my life, but I know I did not have that memory before."

  "Just as Sierra and I discovered with some political developments in the future," Max said, warming up to the conversation now that his concern that the older Tesla might have been Heron was allayed.

  "Shall we continue this discussion in more comfortable surroundings, downstairs?" Cyril Charles asked.

  ***

  Sierra, Max, Astor, and the two Tesla's sat beneath the Raphael nude. Charles went to get suitable libations.

  "I cannot stay too long," the older Tesla said, "for all the obvious and not-so-obvious reasons."

  "And the purpose of your visit, then?" Astor asked. "Not that I'm not pleased to the core to see you, to be part of this experience, as I am!"

  The older Tesla nodded. "Several reasons. First, my presence here demonstrates that our side won – that someone other than Heron was able to construct a Chair."

  The younger Tesla nodded. "Me."

  "Yes," the older Tesla said.

  "But that could change in an instant," Max said. "Heron could yet succeed, and you could disappear in an eye-blink."

  "Yes," the older Tesla agreed. "But as of now, no, not yet. I wanted you to know that."

  "Ok," Sierra said. "That makes me glad."

  "But the main reason I came back is that Mr. Appleton could not—"

  Sierra was suddenly far from glad.

  "He is still alive," the older Tesla continued, "but he is very weak. The trip to the future exhausted him."

  "Why did he go?" Sierra asked.

  "He had to see to the Chronica," the older Tesla replied. "He said the original scroll that you brought forth from ancient Alexandria was stolen from his home in Wave Hill last night."

  ***

  Charles returned with the drinks.

  The older Tesla drank his appreciatively, and smacked his lips. "It is best that I return now. This conversation is doing you no good at all," he said to his younger self. "Anything that you now know about me, your future self, will constrict your actions, eclipse your free will, as you live your life. You know too much already." He put his glass down on the mahogany table and stood.

  "Let's talk a tiny bit more," Max said. "I'm not sure that your returning to the future is the best way to use your Chair, at this point."

  Sierra looked at Max.

  "I'm thinking the two of us take the Chairs to see Appleton," he said to Sierra. "I know you won't be able to fully believe what anyone says about Appleton until you see him yourself, and I don't blame you – and then we come right back here, a few moments after we left, and that won't make any difference to the senior Mr. Tesla, right?"

  "It would not," the older Tesla replied, "none at all, that is, unless something happened to you in the future and you did not return."

  "You could get back to the future even then, as soon as another Chair arrived," Max said.

  "True, but as we all know, there's no guarantee of when that will happen," the older Tesla replied, "and every second that I spend here with my younger self is a danger not only to his and my mental health, but to the world at large. Even the slightest disturbance in anyone's timeline can have unforeseen ripple effects."

  Sierra thought again about Joe Biden. "How about I accompany the older Mr. Tesla to the future. That way, everyone is satisfied – the two Teslas part ways here right now, and I get to see William—"

  "I'm not satisfied with that," Max began—

  Mr. Bertram appeared, flustered for Bertram, and whispered hurriedly to Charles.

  Charles turned to the seated five. "Heron is at the front door, with Edwin Porter."

  ***

  "If we try to stop him, or prevent him from using the Chairs, that could provoke all-out warfare," Bertram said, not shouting, but above the din of voices under the nude.

  Charles agreed. "We have had a very tenuous relationship with Heron, here and in London, throughout the centuries. It is more or less predicated on our looking the other way when he uses the Chairs – it's the price we pay, in effect, for the Chairs being available to us."

  "What would he do?" Max said, touching the hilt of his knife with his fingers again. "Destroy the Chairs? That would only make the Chairs useless to him."

  "He could lock us out," the younger Tesla said.

  "No," Sierra said. "If he could do that without locking himself out, he would have done that, long ago."

  "Can I at least see him?" Astor spoke up.

  "We can show you a picture," Max replied.

  "He changes his appearance often anyway," Charles said. "Knowing what he really looks like – whatever that may truly mean – would provide scant advantage."

  Bertram nodded. "My strong advice is that we should do nothing. But if we want to do something, we would need to act now. He is likely past the vestibule, and walking up the wide flight of stairs to this very floor right now."

  Max pulled out his knife and turned towards the wide staircase.

  "No!" Sierra said. "I want to rid this world of him as much as you do – but Bertram and Charles are right. If we go at him, and we
fail, there's no telling what he might do to the club and our access to the Chairs."

  Astor was on his feet, too. "Photographs can be deceptive -- I at least need to get a look at him in the flesh."

  Chapter 19

  [New York City, June, 1899 AD]

  "We have an observation room from which you can watch everyone who walks up the spiral stairs to the room with the Chairs," Charles said, and pointed upward.

  Bertram and the five rapidly followed Charles up the stairs to the classics library. Charles pointed to what looked like a door to a broom closet.

  "You learn something new every millennium in this club," Max quipped quietly to Sierra.

  The room with the view was large enough to comfortably accommodate the party of seven. Charles opened shutters to what looked like a large window. "We have a complex arrangement of mirrors," he said. "If you just look through the window, you'll see anyone on the bottom of the spiral staircase."

  They waited for a few minutes.

  "That's Heron with Porter and another man," the younger Tesla was first to comment on what they saw. "I thought you said Heron was accompanied by just the photographer."

  "The other gentleman must have either already been in the club," Bertram replied, "or he entered shortly after Heron and Porter."

  "Who is he?" the younger Tesla asked.

  "Woodruff, a police detective," Max replied. "And a stone-cold killer."

  "He is Heron's protection," the younger Tesla said.

  Sierra put her hand on Max's shoulder. "Isn't this better than rushing that fucker with our knives?" she asked, softly.

  Max touched her hand and nodded. But he kept his knife in his other hand, anyway.

  ***

  Heron stood at the foot of the stairs with Woodruff and Porter. For the first time in a long time, he felt he stood at the verge of concluding this wretched, tangled business with the Chronica, in his favor.

  Woodruff had retrieved it from Appleton's Wave Hill home in the dark hours of the morning, bright for Heron in its outcome. Heron had held it in his hand, dared to unscroll it, and the handwriting was his, committed to this parchment nearly two thousand years ago. He had felt his heart flutter, it was beating fast now, something that didn't happen too often for Heron. He resisted the urge to take another look at it, one more look, one last time. The Chronica was now in Porter's ample vest pocket, as per Heron's carefully considered plan.

  There remained one loose end. Heron hoped with all of his being that it would be the last. It was Appleton. Heron had instructed Woodruff not to kill the doddering publisher – not because he would be dying of his own deteriorating condition soon enough anyway, but because Heron had wanted to question him, to see if Appleton had made any other copies of the Chronica. He had intended to do that today. He hadn't counted on Appleton, in his condition, running off to the future.

  Fortunately, Heron had long ago hacked into all surveillance on the Millennium Club, the Parthenon Club, and the bar in Athens, well into the future, since cameras had first been pointed at those places as part of city-wide security in the 21st century. He had already put Cyril Charles' face on the list. One of his agents caught the alert that Charles was leaving the Millennium Club in 2096. She saw he was with another man, and quickly identified him as Appleton. She traced their movements and saw that the two had gone to Brewster, Massachusetts via neo-rail.

  She went to the Millennium, seeking to take a Chair back here and tell Heron. All the people in his network above a certain level were able to ascertain at all times where Heron was. She was above that level. He would have to promote her to an even higher level, as soon as this work was finished.

  She found there were no Chairs at the Millennium in 2096, so she flew to London on the Hypersonic Transport plane, and took a Chair in the Parthenon Club back to London in June 1899, from where she promptly sent Heron a telegram:

  "Charles and Appleton in 2096 Brewster, MA"

  That's where Heron was going now. He looked at Porter. Woodruff and Porter both knew better than to interrupt Heron when he was thinking.

  Heron glanced again at Porter's vest. The safest thing to do, Heron knew, in almost all regards, was to destroy this scroll right now. But he hadn't done that. It was not that he could not bring himself to burn his own wondrous creation. It was that Heron couldn't be sure what would happen to the Chairs when the Chronica was destroyed. Presumably they would all still be intact, since Heron had perfected time travel before he recorded his knowledge of how to do that in the Chronica. No, all the destruction of the last copy of the Chronica should do – if this original was indeed the last – is prevent Sierra Waters from getting some control of these Chairs, and using them for her own purposes, as she had been doing. But Heron couldn't be 100% sure.

  So the truly safest course would be for Heron to use a Chair right now to get to Appleton, prior to Heron's destroying the Chronica, and avoid any disruptions that the destruction of the Chronica might cause. He had entrusted Porter with the job of burning the Chronica as soon as Heron left, and told Woodruff to ensure that Porter did as instructed.

  Heron smiled at the two, in what passed for him as a genuine smile, then turned and walked up the spiral stairs. He was close to concluding this.

  ***

  "It looks as if the séance is over," Astor said. He had been watching Heron, Porter, and Woodruff with a small magnification lens that he had brought back from the future. "Electronics can't travel through time on the Chairs, but this is just ground glass," he had said proudly to Sierra, Max, the two Teslas, Bertram, and Charles, standing beside him in the observation room. They all could see Heron, now halfway up the stairs to the room with the Chairs, and Porter and Woodruff standing at the bottom.

  "And we're just going to let him go up there and take a Chair?" Max said, close to bolting through the door and running through the classics library and up the stairs to stop Heron himself.

  Sierra again put a soft, restraining hand on his shoulder and stroked it. She knew he hadn't thought this through, least of all how he would get through Woodruff, who no doubt was armed and would hear Max as soon as he started running towards him on the library floor.

  "We just discussed this and concluded that would not be a good idea," Bertram said, also softly but with no affection.

  "Look at this," Astor said and handed his device to Sierra. "Heron was looking at Porter's vest right before he started walking up the stairs. I put this on maximum magnification. Does that look to you like what I think it is, or is my mind playing tricks on me?"

  Sierra put the lens to her eye and scrutinized the bulge in Porter's vest pocket, which was slightly open at the top. "I think you're right," she said slowly to Astor. "I can't say that's the Chronica, but it certainly could be a scroll."

  "It could be a scroll of anything," Max growled, still focused on Heron, who was now at the door of the room with the Chairs.

  "Does the club have a rule which would prohibit us from reclaiming a scroll which was stolen from a member in good standing, Mr. Appleton, last night?" the younger Tesla inquired, with an edge of sarcasm.

  The older Tesla enjoyed and laughed at his younger self's question.