Synesius put his hand over the boy's heart and said a prayer.
Benjamin stepped forward. “I did not understand his last word."
"Nor I,” Synesius replied. “Not Greek. Perhaps a Latin tongue of which I am unfamiliar.... It does not matter. I must go to Alexandria now and let Marcellinus know the insanity he will be facing."
Flavius joined them. “He may already know."
* * * *
[Alexandria, four days later, 413 ad]
Synesius spotted the Pharos Lighthouse, agleam in the distance.
His trip from Ptolemais had taken a little longer than he wanted, but now he regretted that it had not taken just a bit longer still. It was late afternoon, and the magnificent light required the pitch of night for its best effect.
The Sun was setting behind his back when his ship docked in the harbor. God help him, he knew there were matters before him that concerned many lives, but he could think only of Hypatia. Her eyes of coal shone through him. He could feel their gaze in every part of his being.
He could not leave her to the Nitrians. But she was stubborn. Devoted to Alexandria, far more than a daughter to a father's memory, than a scholar to a wondrous tome. What kept her here? What secret of Alexandria, what chasm in her soul?
Synesius and Josephus left the ship. “Go to Marcellinus,” Synesius said. “Tell him what happened in Ptolemais. I will join you later."
Josephus nodded, started to walk, then turned back, nervously, to Synesius. “Where are you going?” His voice quavered a little more than usual.
"The Library."
Josephus nodded again, involuntarily raised an eyebrow, and left.
Synesius was not happy about Josephus being the one to first inform Marcellinus, but he had waited long enough to see Hypatia. Too long, given that the Nitrians had already infected Alexandria. He walked quickly toward the Library. From this distance, it was alabaster in the setting sunlight, like the pillars of his home. White against the surging darkness...
Synesius did not feel good, either, about leaving Flavius back in Ptolemais as the ranking Church official. He was sure not all the Nitrians were dead in Ptolemais.... But he had to focus now on how many were alive here, in Alexandria, and what those demented boys might have planned for Hypatia....
The pastels on the wall of the Library now coalesced into shapes and patterns. He had been here so many times with Hypatia. “The sky is glass,” she once had remarked to him, “the clouds its colors, those hues on the wall what is left when the Sun in its absence shines through the glass."
She sometimes spoke as if she inhabited some other realm, and he—
She was standing in front of the Library. He put his hand over his eyes. Had his mind conjured her into being, right here in front of him, looking at the same Library wall, her back to him now? Had his need to see her somehow plucked her out of Plato's perfect realm and brought her here before him? He took his hand from his face. He was trembling. She was real. He walked a few steps forward.
"Hypatia!"
She turned around.
"Synesius,” she replied. He could listen all day to the way she spoke his name. “An unexpected pleasure! You should have sent word that you were coming. Ptolemais to Alexandria is a long way to travel for a surprise visit."
"The winds were kind,” he mumbled tritely. “I boarded the ship four mornings ago, and here I am."
"What is wrong?” she asked him, with tender concern.
"People of my faith are angrier than ever about you and your pagans. I am concerned about your safety."
She scoffed. “Why, if you have such confidence that yours in the one true inevitable faith, do you have such animosity towards others? Surely, if your faith is right, all others including mine will fade of their own accord."
"Not all of us want to kill you,” he said tenderly. “I certainly do not.” He blushed. “Most of us indeed believe that in time the whole world will become Christian. But there are fanatics among us—Nitrian young men—who see their mission as cleansing the world of all impurities immediately, including the purveyors of impure thoughts. Your elegance, your beauty, your intelligence make you the most dangerous purveyor of all. They burn with hatred—I have seen it."
She turned from him and looked again at the Library. Synesius followed her gaze. The Library looked older now than he remembered it. Almost as if the walls were weary beneath the pastel facade.
"My father did his best to stave off the bloodshed,” she spoke softly, “to contest with ideas not knives, but he lost that battle.” She was talking about Theon, her father. The great Librarian had succumbed to a fatal fever—the less charitable among Synesius’ brethren had said it was an act of God. That was only three years ago, in 410 AD. Just a few months before he met Hypatia...
"Your father was a wise man, as you his daughter are wise,” Synesius said. “Indeed, you are wiser still—you have an understanding, a perspective, that speaks of centuries, not just years."
"Thank you,” she replied politely. “A high compliment from the Bishop of Ptolemais."
"Yes, a compliment but a warning, too.” He mustered his strength. “In return for your wisdom, the awe you evoke in people, you court death from the Christian fanatics."
"What would you have me do?"
"Leave with me,” Synesius said. Marcellinus could wait a little longer—what if Synesius's ship had encountered adverse winds on the trip he had just made? It would have taken twice as long. “Come with me to Ptolemais. There is nothing here for you now. Just memories and scrolls. And the scrolls are dwindling...."
"I am devoted to saving them, to stemming the exodus of scholars from Alexandria,” she said.
"Come with me,” Synesius pleaded. “You will be safe in Ptolemais. Under my protection. I will care for you."
"No,” she said.
That stubborn nature ... impossible to overcome.
"The Library requires—and deserves—my attention,” she added.
"Very well.” Synesius knew it was more than the Library that kept her here. He lowered his head in acceptance of her decision. “I will spend the night with my brothers—at quarters generously provided by Marcellinus—and leave for Ptolemais in the morning."
"Marcellinus of Carthage? Your importance has grown since the last time we met. That makes me happy."
"If only my importance were enough to convince you.” Synesius reached into his robe and extracted a small bundle of scrolls. “These were recently recovered in a house that the Nitrians set on fire. They were written by your father.” Synesius knew it would take far more than a scroll, by whatever hand, to deflect her from her fate. He touched another scroll inside his robe—the scroll Jonah had given him in Carthage. Synesius wondered if its words offered any insight into what was compelling Hypatia to stay in Alexandria. He wondered if he would be able to resist reading it, until the appointed time.
* * * *
He watched her walk back to the Library. He watched a long time, as she receded, and his imagination gradually supplanted his perception. But he was aware that imagination was present from outset, with everything that passed between him and Hypatia. What she looked like under those diaphanous robes, which gave him so little and so much in this setting sunlight. What she might truly feel for him....
He was aware that his own life, even when he was not regarding Hypatia, was becoming entwined with the stuff of fantasy, almost beyond comprehension. He touched the Jonah scroll again. A man who claimed he could travel through time, as any other man might walk through a city or sail on the sea. Other than desperation to protect Hypatia, what drove Synesius to believe him and not dismiss him as a lunatic? Faith? Synesius had faith in angels—would he deny that they had the power to move through time? Faith could be applied to anything. It could save you. But it could also propel you to insanity, as it had done to the Nitrians.
Synesius could no longer see Hypatia. He turned and began slowly walking toward the quarters of Marcellinus. How to
defeat evil, save good, and save what he loved in the process? His only assets were his understanding, still cloudy in these matters, and a scroll said to prove that travel through time was possible. He prayed that would be enough.
Copyright (c) 2008 Paul Levinson
[Back to Table of Contents]
Reader's Department: THE REFERENCE LIBRARY by Tom Easton
The Stars Down Under, Sandra McDonald, Tor, $24.95, 334 pp. (ISBN: 978-0-7653-1644-8).
Implied Spaces, Walter Jon Williams, Night Shade Books, $24.95, 265 pp. (ISBN: 978-1-59780-125-6).
The Stone Gods, Jeanette Winterson, Harcourt, $24.00, 209 pp. (ISBN: 978-0-15-101491-0).
The Time Engine, Sean McMullen, Tor, $26.95, 302 pp. (ISBN: 978-0-7653-1876-3).
The Devil's Eye, Jack McDevitt, Ace, $24.95, 368 pp. (ISBN: 978-0-4410-1635-8).
Odd Girl Out, Timothy Zahn, Tor, $24.95, 381 pp. (ISBN: 978-0-7653-1733-9).
* * * *
Sandra McDonald's The Outback Stars introduced a far future colored by the imagery and mythology of Australia. Earth is limping in the aftermath of environmental collapse, but humans have gone to the stars via a hyperdimensional highway—the Alcheringa—discovered near Mars. Once out there, they found that many worlds had huge egg-shaped domes; if you entered one, a ring in the shape of a snake or ouroborous would appear and take you on to the other worlds of the Seven Sisters. In Outback, Lieutenant Jodenny Scott and underling Terry Myell fought problems, were attracted to each other, and discovered that the domes made a great many more than seven worlds available through what was not a highway, but an immense transportation network. Myell also discovered himself of interest to a Rainbow Serpent and other figures out of the Australian Dreamtime, possibly representing the aliens who built the network.
In The Stars Down Under, Scott and Myell are married. Both have been promoted, but Myell is taking some heat for not coming up through normal channels. He doesn't want to have anything further to do with the domes, the transportation network, or the maybe-aliens behind them. It's all a bit moot, anyway, since the system has stopped working. People step in and nothing happens, and the crews that had been sent out to explore the network are lost. But when he and Scott are pressured just to step into a dome and see if it responds to them—that's all, honest! they are told—they give in. An ouroborous appears, of course, and Myell discovers that “honest!” is something his employers just cannot be. He's drafted, and off he goes, part of a team hunting for lost explorers. Before long, they reach a world inhabited by Australian aborigines, who promptly haul them off to a village. Feather-cloaked aliens with too many teeth—the Roon, or Bunyips—are also there, as well as a number of other characters who conspire to inform Myell that the Roon are up to no good and that he is crucial to events. His mother didn't call him “Jungali” for nothing. The aliens who built the network are gone, their heir is in sad shape, and the system needs a helmsman.
Meanwhile, Jodenny Scott is on her way to Earth under another name, being kept from interfering with Myell's draftee mission. When she gets there, alien ships are in orbit, computers are dead, and soon she's in a lifeboat crashing in the Australian outback. Myell's there too (don't ask how!), and resolution is at hand.
The late Arthur C. Clarke once said that any sufficiently advanced technology must look like magic, so it may not really be fair to say that McDonald is writing science fantasy more than science fiction. She takes great pains to keep things consistent and working with the technology of domes and ouroborouses she has imagined. She brings in addition loads of mythical aboriginal imagery but insists that it is all part of her alien superscience. It's not magic, not fantasy, no matter how it looks to the bemused reader, and no matter how a climax of human sacrifice and elevation resonates with the mythical side of the modern mind.
Overall, a satisfying novel that holds great promise for McDonald's future.
* * * *
Walter Jon Williams's Implied Spaces begins with a swordsman, Aristide, accompanied by a talking cat, Bitsy, walking across a desert of Midgarth to a crowded caravanserai, where caravans huddle in fear of bandits on the trail ahead. He takes a dip in the Pool of Life so that if he must be resurrected he will not have lost much memory, leads them onward, defeats the bandits (or Vengers), and discovers that their fanatical masters, equipped with magical balls that suck people away to some other realm, are a threat to the multiverse.
We soon learn that Aristide is centuries old and once had a part in creating the modern civilization in which a ginormous AI can have an avatar named Bitsy. Ten more such AIs orbit the sun, using their huge computational powers to create pocket universes in which people can live and or play. Some, like Midgarth, were made to suit the preferences of hardcore gamers (their descendants are stuck there). Some are vacation worlds. All are wondrous and crowded with a humanity that never dies, thanks to nanotechnological resurrection with backup in Pools of Life. People can even have themselves copied so they can live in several worlds at the same time.
Aristide's self-appointed mission has long been the study of “implied spaces"; features of buildings or worlds never deliberately designed by architects, but there nonetheless because something else was designed. Think of a drop ceiling installed to hide plumbing pipes and heating ducts. The ceiling is designed, and the ducts are designed, and many a writer has sent heroes crawling through those ducts. But there is also space outside the ducts, implied by the existence of the ducts.
Any technology that permits turning people into bitstreams implies that it can edit those bitstreams. Several writers have played with this notion, most recently Charles Stross (Glasshouse, reviewed here in November 2006), but there are further implications as well. Such editing would require immense computational power, such as only those big AIs have. And when it turns out that the Vengers are at work in other worlds as well, turning people into slavish adorers of the master Venger, Vindex, and plotting assassinations and coups, the war is on. Which of the AIs has gone bad, and why?
There's action and high-tech blow-ups enough for everyone. There are revelations of cosmic scope, including the identity of the villain of it all (keep an eye on those implied spaces) and the villain's motive (what does the anthropic principle imply?). You'll enjoy it, and perhaps you too will hope that Williams will soon bring us more.
* * * *
Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods stars Billie Crusoe (and yes, another character is named Friday) as an environmentalist in a world surrendering to environmental catastrophe. But the world is not Earth, despite similarities of culture and politics. Call it Orbus, note that red dust is blowing on the wind, and listen to the space explorers as they talk about a white world of ruins and a Planet Blue just waiting for people to move in. Of course, there's the problem of those pesky dinosaurs, but an asteroid can take care of that.
Billie's life is complicated by bureaucratic harassment, among other things. In due time, she is pressured to join an exploratory mission to Planet Blue, along with Spike, the very expensive Robo sapiens that was supposed to be dismantled after the last mission. She and Spike develop a relationship, and when the asteroid plan goes wrong and war breaks out back home, they die in each other's arms with the comment that, “This is one story. There will be another."
Jump to Easter Island, 1774, and another lesson in environmental carelessness and consequence. Now Billy's a guy, and after a contretemps with the natives, Captain Cook sails off without him. Spike, now Spikkers, is a marooned Dutchman. It's not the environment, they find, but human folly, and in due time they too die.
And now it's our turn. Billie's a woman again, but Spike is a mere robo-head, and it is her job to train it toward sentience. An open door tempts her, and the two are off to explore a post-war England with the aid of a manuscript found on the Tube, titled The Stone Gods. The world is a mess, with the only sign of sanity the mutant low-lifes in a neglected enclave, and both its damnation and its salvation lies in the tagline, “Everything is imprinted for ever
with what it once was."
Thoroughly post-modern, self-referential, and cyclical, with a touch of mysticism. Not the sort of thing to appeal to hardheaded rationalists. But there's a genuine point that deserves attention even from those hardheaded rationalists: If we don't pay attention to our mistakes, if we don't learn from history, we make those mistakes again and again and again. The point is marred, however, by what can only be taken as predestination. The first segment of the book, on Orbus of the red dust, is certainly history in the sense of prior event, but not in the sense of recorded event. The later Billies can have no inkling of that past and hence cannot possibly learn from it. They are thus doomed to repeat the past, with no hint that they are done repeating at the end of the book. “This is one story. There will be another."
* * * *
Sean McMullen returns to the world of the Moonworlds Saga with The Time Engine. The previous volume, Voidfarer (reviewed here in March 2006), had Wayfarer Inspector Danolarian Scryverin, once a prince of Torea, a land destroyed by an excess of sorcerous ambition, and his companion Wallas, once a lecherous courtier but now a corpulent cat, dealing with an invasion of Wellsian tripods while turning the enthusiastic Constable Riellan, inventor of electocracy (democracy) loose on a monarchical world. As Engine opens, things are just getting back to normal when a rather insane glass dragon comes looking for ex-lovers, and even would-be lovers, to destroy. Danolarian is trying to protect one such (Wallas) when a stranger appears, a line of red light destroys the dragon, and after an interlude chatting with the gods of his world, he awakens in the distant future. An enthusiastic descendant of Riellan has invented a time machine, and her daughter has collected him to exact justice of some sort. He escapes and finds a library, where he learns that electocracy has triumphed and the world is a mad, mad exaggeration of our own in certain ways. Once things are sorted out, it's time to go home and use the time machine to boost the villainous Pelmore into the past to undo the romantic curse that keeps Danolarian's lover from loving.
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