Chronica (Sierra Waters Book 3)

by Paul Levinson

  "Not only do we not have such a rule, we'll be happy to help you reclaim it," Bertram said, not at all insulted by the sarcasm.

  "Woodruff certainly has a gun," Max said, turning away from the view. "How do you propose we do this?" He looked one more time at the top of the stairs. "There's nothing more to see here."

  Woodruff and Porter had turned to walk down the wide set of stairs, and were no longer in sight.

  "You have your knife," Bertram replied. "And we also have surprise on our side."

  "There is another set of stairs that even the members do not know about," Charles added. "We can split forces and approach Woodruff and Porter from two or more sides at the same time."

  "We also have a firearm under lock and key," Bertram said, reluctantly.

  "You know how to use it?" Max asked.

  Bertram gave him a look that said, of course.

  ***

  Bertram and Charles emerged close to the vestibule at the entrance to the club. Bertram had a gun in his hand.

  Porter and Woodruff were walking out of the door.

  "Please don't leave," Bertram said, and pointed his gun at Woodruff.

  Woodruff almost laughed. "I'm an officer of the law – put that gun down right now, before I haul your backside off to jail."

  "You're not upholding the law when you aid and abet a robbery," Bertram said, and kept his gun pointed at Woodruff.

  "I see," Woodruff said coldly. He looked at Porter. "I believe there is a fireplace just inside that room," Woodruff gestured to a waiting room, just outside the vestibule, with books, newspapers, and comfortable seating. "Do what you have to do there."

  Porter hesitated.

  "Please do not move," Bertram said, and moved his gun slightly in Porter's direction.

  Woodruff took the opportunity to pull two guns from his holsters, one in each hand. He managed to fire one at Bertram, before Max and Sierra, having run down the wide flight of stairs, tackled him.

  Bertram, wounded in the arm, dropped his gun.

  "I'm not badly hurt," he told Charles, who leaned over him.

  Charles picked up the gun, but he had never fired one in his life.

  Porter was still a statue.

  Max and Sierra struggled on the floor with Woodruff, who dazed Sierra with a sharp elbow to her face. Max lunged at him with his knife, but Woodruff managed to pull away and land a hard boot on the side of Max's head. Max blacked out.

  Porter was suddenly moving towards the room with the fireplace.

  Charles ran after him. He couldn't just shoot this man, even if he knew how.

  Both guns had been knocked out of Woodruff's hands in the scuffle on the floor. Fully alert, he picked up one, and took in the situation. Porter was going out the door. Charles was a few steps behind Porter. Max was unconscious on the floor, and Sierra looked woozy. Woodruff thought quickly. Even if Charles stopped Porter from burning the Chronica, Woodruff could recover it later and destroy it then. The real threats to what Heron wanted done were laying right here in front of him, half or less conscious, on the floor.

  He pointed his gun at Sierra, now fully awake. "I take no pleasure in hurting women," he said, truly, "but—"

  Max, now also awake and knife in hand, screamed and charged Woodruff.

  Woodruff turned to face his attacker. Now Sierra was upon him, too, slashing with her knife. Woodruff, bleeding from multiple knife wounds and flailing, soon lost possession of his gun. He reached out, growled from the depth of his being, and sought to get to control of Sierra and Max with just his bare hands. For a moment he almost succeeded. But all he was able to hold on to were the sharp points and edges of knife blades, which cut through his hands to his body in a frenzy. He soon was dead on the floor.

  "Quick!! He's going to the fireplace to burn the scroll!" Bertram, now standing and holding his wounded arm, pointed at Porter.

  Sierra and Max ran into the next room. Charles and Porter were fighting right in front of the fireplace – Charles attempting, not yet successfully, to wrest the scroll from Porter.

  "Stop," Sierra shouted. "Please."

  She and Max reached Charles and Porter. But the young British doorman, with half a dozen club members who had been in the bar, entered the room.

  "What's going on here?" he demanded.

  Charles tried to explain, as did Bertram, who was at the door.

  Sierra tackled Porter. The scroll, which had been in his hand, fell to the floor in front of the fire.

  Max went to get it. But the club members, not yet understanding what was going on, wanting only to end the violence, took hold of him by his shoulders to restrain him.

  Porter had a free hand, and used it to grab the scroll.

  "No!" Sierra screamed, as Porter threw the scroll into the flames.

  She, too, was now restrained by several men from the bar.

  Astor and the two Teslas entered the room, having at last reached the first floor by yet a third route, more circuitous than the other two. Their presence only added to the confusion.

  By the time Bertram and Charles managed to explain what was happening, the original scroll of the Chronica, written in Heron's hand, had at last found its intended resting place, and was a nest of cinders in the fire.

  Chapter 20

  [New York City, June, 1899 AD]

  Sierra, Max, Astor, the two Teslas, Bertram and Charles braced for whatever impact the destruction of the Chronica might have. There was none – or nothing immediately discernible.

  "What do we do now?" Max asked.

  Porter was the one who replied. "You have no authority to keep me here," he said mainly to Bertram and Charles, who made no response. Porter looked at the assembled group, adjusted his jacket and his vest, and left.

  "We have to report Mr. Woodruff's death to the police," Bertram said, quietly.

  The British doorman was calming the members of the club who had accompanied him, and urging them to go back up to the bar, where "drinks would be on the house".

  "Yes," Astor agreed. "What do we say happened to him?"

  The younger Tesla chimed in. "I say the best explanation is a maniac came through the front door, knife in hand, and stabbed the first person he encountered, who happened to be Detective Woodruff." He shrugged. "It happens."

  Max nodded. "But will the forensics in this day and age be able to determine that he was stabbed dozens times by not one but two people?"

  "You mean, will the police physicians be able to see that?" Astor asked.

  "Yes," Max replied.

  "Who knows," the younger Tesla said, "but we have more important things to worry about now, do we not?"

  "Speaking of physicians, you should have that tended to," the older Tesla said to Bertram, gesturing to the doorman's arm.

  "Thank you," Bertram replied. "I will."

  "We still have the problem of what to do about Appleton in 2096, and Heron, too, wherever he is . . . ," Max said.

  "Which might also be in 2096," Sierra finished the thought, which was heading towards Heron going after Appleton.

  "To make sure there are no longer any copies of the Chronica," Max picked it up, "which there well might be, in Appleton's possession or elsewhere now, since we've seen nothing changed since that Chronica's been in ashes." He looked again at the fire. Its flames seemed to sneer at him, like his brother, after he'd swiped a cupcake off the table and eaten it right before dinner.

  "And you would know if there was a change in our very . . . timeline?" Astor asked.

  "Yes," the older Tesla said. "I can testify to that: I remember my life before I came back here and met my younger self – that is, what my life was like for the past two decades – even though it also seems to me now as if I had always come back here."

  Max and Sierra nodded in agreement and understanding.

  "And as far I can tell, nothing has changed in the past two decades of my life – the next two decades for you," the older Tesla said to his younger self.

  "So the
logical thing to do now is go to 2096 to protect Appleton," Max said.

  "Yes," Sierra said, "but we still have the problem of just the one Chair."

  "There are other Chairs in London and in Athens," Astor said. "Yes?"

  "Yes, perhaps," Max said, "but it would take weeks to cross the Atlantic now, and that kind of wait would be excruciating, even though it wouldn't matter how long we took to find another Chair to get to Appleton, because we'd make it our business to get catch up to him in time."

  "Just a little more than a week," Astor corrected. "You're behind the times, Max."

  Sierra and Max looked at each other.

  Sierra made a decision. "You should go," she said, to the older Tesla. "Your being back here now with your younger self could well unhinge your mind."

  The younger Tesla laughed.

  The older one said, "if it hasn't already."

  Max nodded slowly.

  "You," she said to the older Tesla, "are still our best bet for actually constructing a Chair, whatever happened to the Chronica. We need to safeguard that – safeguard you."

  Now Astor agreed and nodded.

  The older Tesla hugged his younger self. "Life won't be easy for you," he said. "Don't let the retrogrades all around you slow you down." He smiled broadly and waved at the others. "The Chronica has had its impact, whatever may become of it," he said. "A major one of your holidays has been named after it," he looked at Astor and Max.

  Both men looked like they had no idea what the older Tesla was talking about.

  "Chanukah, the Festival of Lights?" Astor hazarded a wild guess.

  "Yes," the older Tesla replied.

  "How?" Astor asked. "That holiday has nothing to do with time travel – it celebrates the miracle of lights continuing to burn, after all the oil had been depleted."

  The older Tesla smiled slightly. "There are many holidays in history which have been celebrated for reasons having nothing to do with the original reasons for their celebration. There is a field of study known as anthropology, burgeoning already, which tells us that. In the case of the Chronica, the connection of the miracle of lights burning on no oil and travel through time may be more direct than you think - the candle burning no oil today may be burning on oil that existed yesterday." He bowed to the group.

  "I'll take you to the Chair," Charles said.

  "I'm going to miss him," the younger Tesla said, as his older self walked up the wide stairs with Charles.

  ***

  Charles came down the stairs a few minutes later.

  "So now that that's taken care of, we do, what, wait?" Max said.

  "A Chair or two or three could arrive any moment," Charles said. Bertram had gone to the small infirmary the club kept on its premises, to get his arm treated.

  "Or it could take a year," Sierra said.

  "Or never," Max said. "We can't be sure of anything not right in front of us."

  Charles nodded. "True. But for reasons I and no one who knows about the Chairs understands, there has never been a time when any of the places with Chairs were too long without them."

  "Heron's doing?" Astor asked.

  "Perhaps," Charles replied.

  "How long has 'too long' been?" Max asked.

  "Months, never years," Charles said.

  Max shook his head.

  "But there is another option," Charles said.

  "Yes?" Sierra, Max, Astor, and Tesla all said, almost in unison.

  "I could take an ocean liner to England," Charles said, trying not to look at Astor, because he, too, knew all about Astor's appointment with the bottom of the sea on the Titanic. "Then take a Chair to the future there, at a time in the 21st century when air flight across the Atlantic is fast, safe, and easy. I would travel that way to New York, proceed to the Millennium, recruit another doorman or two, and take those Chairs back here. For all of you, it would seem that I hadn't been gone any longer than I was when just escorting the senior Mr. Tesla up the stairs."

  "Why didn't you suggest that sooner?" Max asked.

  "Because it ages me in real time," Charles replied. "If I did that all the time, I would reach my 150-year lifespan with much less productive time, spent out on the ocean and cut off from most of the world."

  "I see your point," Astor said.

  "And there's also always the possibility that something could happen to me and prevent me from completing the journey," Charles said. He thought again of the Titanic, but didn't say it. "I could be murdered in London by Jack the Ripper, before I had a chance to get to the Parthenon Club."

  "Wasn't Jack the Ripper at large a decade ago?" Tesla asked.

  "I was just using him as an example," Charles replied. "There are no doubt other fiends at large right now in London."

  "I think it's a good option," Sierra said, "just this one time."

  "All right, then," Charles said. "I will walk out that front door, go to the Hudson River, book passage on the first available liner to England, and, if, all goes well, I will be walking down that staircase from above in just a minute or two."

  Astor pulled out a billfold. "You'll need this to purchase your tickets."

  "Thank you," Charles said and took the money. "I have access to funds at the Parthenon, but this is very helpful."

  "Off like Phileas Fogg, then," Astor said, and clapped Charles on the back. "For you it will be 80 days, for us just 80 seconds until we see you again."

  "Closer to 8 days to get to England, a little more than 80 seconds before I come back down the stairs, and I won't be traveling around the world, just back and forth across the Atlantic, but, yes," Charles said, and shook everybody's hand, except Sierra's, whose hand he kissed. Then he whispered in her ear, "in case I do not return, Mr. Appleton is at the Foster Square Facility in Brewster, Massachusetts as of June 27, 2096 – it's a nondescript little building at the far end of the square -- that is where he was when I left him."

  [RMS Campania, North Atlantic Ocean, July, 1899 AD]

  The trip across the North Atlantic was rough. Not only was the water choppier than usual, but Charles developed a croupy cough about three days into the voyage. He was supposed to be immune from all of these diseases, but, as the geneticists of later centuries said, new strains were always emerging.

  Charles was glad to arrive in Liverpool only four days later, where he caught a train down to London and the Parthenon Club.

  [London, July, 1899 AD]

  Charles was not happy to see Hakam at the door of the Parthenon. He was suspected of harboring sympathies for Heron. At the very least, Hakam would not have been pleased with what Charles was now doing.

  "You grew bored of Athens?" Charles asked, with a smile, and then succumbed to a hacking cough.

  "Are you ill?" Hakam asked. "You look as if you could use some rest."

  Charles waved the suggestion away, but coughed.