Chronica (10 page)

Her thoughts returned to Sierra Waters. She thought she understood this human woman – not surprising, since she had known all along that so much of her own mental architecture, her patterns and penchants of thinking, were based on Sierra.

Sierra Waters had tried to improve human existence by literally saving some vital parts which been lost in original history – assuming, of course, that the world and the history which Sierra had grown up with was the original, and not the creation of another time traveler such as Heron. Sierra had attempted to save Socrates from the hemlock and the philosopher's own stubborn nature. She had attempted to save some volumes from the flames that at three times different times in history had engulfed parts of the magnificent, ancient Library of Alexandria. Ironically, the ancient Library burned was the very history Sierra had grown up with, but she had come to believe that the conflagrations were the work of Heron.
 

And Sierra Waters had achieved something of both lofty goals, after a fashion, for Socrates and the Library -- though the life of Socrates, after she had saved him, did not amount to very much for the world, and she had managed to save just a fraction of the ancient Library's immense holdings.

But one of the scrolls Sierra Waters had saved was Heron's
Chronica
, which he had wanted burned, and now Sierra Waters was out to save the process of time travel itself -- or its recipe, contained in the
Chronica
-- lest Heron keep it from everyone but himself. Heron wanted to keep the instructions and equations of the
Chronica
and its usage suggestions about time travel from the world at large, which Sierra might agree was a good thing. But keeping them from Sierra herself was something Sierra would not think was good.

Why had Sierra entrusted so much responsibility in this quest of hers, this fight to keep humanity on the best course, to an android? Debates raged as to whether the androids were more or less than human, but all agreed, including Sierra Waters, that they were not human. So why did Sierra trust her?
 

The answer was that it was not so much that Sierra trusted an android, the android realized, it was that Sierra did not trust humanity.

But androids were not completely trustworthy. Heron had some access to them, too. And he had constructed androids with faces and bodies that looked like those loyal to Sierra. One had killed Synesius and Max and many others in the Parthenon in 2042, probably the most horrible event which Sierra had requested her to re-set.
 

How could Sierra be sure that she, this android sitting at a console with a true-view of Cape Cod Bay right now, was not true to Heron?

The answer was Sierra could not know that for sure. But in her android brain, she believed with every ounce of her being that she was trying to do the best for Sierra and humanity, just as her sister androids had done. They had sacrificed their lives for Sierra, whatever that meant, and she knew, or believed she knew, that she would do the same if necessary.
 

She got little reassurance from the fact that, if she was now in existence, and Sierra Waters had created her, then that meant Sierra Waters had survived. Time travel had a way of leaving the most logical reasoning in tatters and shreds.

Chapter 6

[New York City, 1896 AD]

Max and Sierra joined John Jacob Astor IV and Nikola Tesla in front row seats at the National Conservatory of Music. Astor had reserved the seats for them at the
Dvořák
concert.

"The music will be beautiful," Tesla said to Sierra and Max, "but I keep telling Jack that we best repair to 1899."

"We'll get there soon enough, the old-fashioned way," Astor responded, genially. "I'm no expert, but it strikes me that traveling in those Chairs incurs a lot more risk to everyone than even riding in a one of Ford's quadricycles! Have you seen it?"

"I try to steer clear these days of anyone associated with Thomas Edison," Tesla replied, stiffly.

"Of course," Astor replied. He turned to Sierra and Max. "But surely the two of you would agree on the inadvisability of time travel except when absolutely necessary."

Sierra nodded. She and Max were still trying to absorb all they had learned in the past few days, in particular the discovery that at least some people more or less famous from this part of history had knowledge of time travel – in Astor and Tesla's cases, not only knowledge but actual experience in the Chairs.

Although Appleton, trustworthy as always, had presumably not divulged a thing, apparently his publication of the Aristotle texts Sierra had rescued from the doomed Library of Alexandria, as well as his attempt to find a translator for the
Chronica
, had brought into being a group of people back here all too conversant in time travel. Some were already known to Sierra and Max, like Astor and Tesla. Others likely were not.
 

For all Sierra knew, these people might have learned about the Millennium Club and its room with the Chairs even if Sierra had not saved a single scroll from the flames. Appleton had told her that Thomas, after all, had contacted Appleton before the venerable publisher had met Sierra. But it seemed a safe bet that Sierra and Max's expedition in Alexandria was for some reason what had brought most of this out. She regretted not having checked her history in 2062 AD more carefully before rushing back here with Max. Joe Biden elected President in 2008 might well be the least of the changes in history, with these scientists and financiers knowing about time travel back here.

William Arms Fisher,
Dvořák
's student and now conductor at the Conservatory, took the stage and indicated that the performance of the symphony was about to begin. It occurred to Sierra, as it occasionally did, that music was a kind of psychological time travel itself. When you heard it, you could be instantly transported to the last significant time you heard it – a trigger of how you felt at the time, whom you were with, even the smallest details of that moment. The auditory nerve had tendrils in the deepest memory centers of the brain.

She squeezed Max's hand. She had no association of the
New World Symphony
with Max or anyone else in her life, other than that time in the office with Thomas. She wondered if Astor or Tesla or anyone else here did – the symphony, after all, was less than three years old, not much time to build up deep associations. She and Max had looked up
Dvořák
, Tesla, and Astor when they had finally arrived at the uptown library yesterday – they found nothing of apparent significance to anything they were doing here.
 

But the nearness of the
New World Symphony
's creation in 1893 to where she and Max were right now made her realize something about time travel which was easily overlooked: you could gain as much from a leap a few years forward or back as you could from one far forward or way back in time. A small leap forward was precisely what she had had in mind about Mark Twain.

The mellifluous, beautifully sad harmonic of the symphony began.

***

The symphony ended with the crescendo of every horn, string, and woodwind in the orchestra. Then a heartbeat of silence . . . and everyone in the audience rose and applauded.

Sierra, grasping Max's hand again, found she had been crying. This was the first symphony she had heard in its entirety since she was a child.

Astor, who had been seated next to Sierra and was now standing with her, leaned over and spoke softly in her ear. "Do you know why I invited you here?" he asked.

Sierra, still moved by the music and not wanting to speak, shook her head no.

"I wanted you to meet someone," Astor said.

"Who?" Sierra managed, and looked around.

"You," Astor replied.

Sierra whirled around—

"No, no," Astor assured her. "I didn't mean it literally – though given who you are, I can well see why you would think that. Apologies," he said sincerely, "I didn't mean to startle you." He lowered his voice. "What I was saying was, with all of this
traveling
you have been doing, you need to take a bit of time to reflect on who you are, what you really want. There is a very good book by Sigmund Freud, a Viennese physician--"

Max, who had been listening to all of this, interrupted. "We know who he is. Sierra doesn't need a psychoanalyst!"

Tesla, who had been staring off into the distance, but also apparently listening, joined the conversation. "Freud thinks we all do," he said, with a touch of derision, though about Freud or what Max had said, was not clear. "Should we repair for coffee? I know a perfect place!"

"I've always loved that word," Sierra said, and the four left the concert hall.

***

All four ordered alcohol in the café. Astor raised his glass in a toast. "These 1890s are the grandest time in human history, would you agree?"

"I have not traveled enough to other times to render an informed judgment," Tesla replied, "and, in truth, neither have you," he said to Astor, but met his glass with a loud clink.

Sierra and Max did the same but said nothing.

"I've seen enough of other times, past and future, to know," Astor insisted, after a long sip of his single malt scotch. "The two of you should think about settling down here, after all of this unpleasant business with Mr. Heron is finished."

"It may never be finished," Sierra said.

"Tell me more about Heron," Tesla asked Sierra and Max. "He was one of the great inventors, a Da Vinci of his time, yes?"

Sierra nodded and considered. Even in the worst-case scenario of these two being in league with Heron, it couldn't hurt to tell them what Heron already knew she knew. "I first met him in 150 AD. There are multiple possibilities as to who he was and is, when and where, and at this point it's not safe and probably not even possible to find out more. There might have been an original Heron back then, and our Heron, a genius from the future, took his place at some point – either before or after I met him in Alexandria in 150 AD. You know, in the future, even further from where Max and I were born, it's very easy to create faces—"

"You mean, masks?" Astor asked.

"No, faces," Sierra said. "In our future we know the codes – the ingredients – that can be used to create living things, such as cells, organs, and complete organisms."

"Codes . . . as in, what Charles Babbage was working with?" Tesla asked.

"That's right," Max said.

"But back to Heron, please," Tesla requested.

"So there might have been an original Heron, whom our Heron replaced at some point," Sierra said. "Or, our Heron may have been the original Heron, who somehow invented time travel—"

"But how, specifically, was Heron able to do that?" Astor asked. "We have all time traveled, of course, but how? Even in our own enlightened time, the mechanism of time travel is a firm denizen of fiction."

"Yes, I have traveled to the past with Jack," Tesla said to the questioning gazes of Max and Sierra, "though I grant that time travel is a lot more complex than the steam-powered doors and persistence-of-vision devices that the real Heron or whoever invented."

"I think that's correct," Sierra said, not really surprised that Telsa had used the Chairs, given that Astor had taken Telsa into his confidence. But she saw no reason, at this point, to spell out to Tesla – and to Astor, if he didn't already know it – that the entire blueprint for time travel was in the very
Chronica
that she was seeking.

"But please, go on about Heron," Tesla asked Sierra again.

"Well, the third possibility is that there never was a Heron in the past, until our man, a time traveler and inventor from the future, went back to ancient Alexandria for some reason and created a life and identity as Heron."

"Which do you think is the most likely?" Astor asked.

"I honestly do not know," Sierra said, truthfully, "probably an original, ancient Heron replaced by ours, but all three possibilities have factors in their favor."

Tesla stroked his moustache. "Tell me, do you think it is possible for a man – such as I, or Jack, or Max – to travel to the future, and take on Heron's appearance? What impact do you think that might have on your attempts to stop him?"

Sierra sipped her brandy. "I never thought of that."

***

"Why do you trust them?" Max asked Sierra about Astor and Tesla, as she lay in his arms in their bed at their hotel, after the two had made love, and then again.

"I don't know," Sierra said. "I don't – not completely. But something about the music tonight, and the brandy, made me feel, I don't know, better about them. I guess I drank too much."

"I'm not complaining about the music or the brandy," Max said, and kissed her softly on the forehead. "They made it easier for me to take advantage of you."

"Like you have to work so hard when there's no music and I haven't had a drop to drink," Sierra said, and kissed him on the side of his neck.

Max chuckled and closed his eyes. "You and I are changing roles now, aren't we," he said, eventually. "I'm the suspicious one, seeing the glass half empty, and you're seeing it half full or more." He became aware that Sierra was softly snoring, and kissed her even more gently on her head.

One thing that did appeal to Max about the conversation with Astor and Tesla, however, was the idea that he could travel into the future and put on Heron's face. Well, it wasn't a full-fledged idea, it was just a toss-away thought, but still. He as Heron would certainly put a crimp into whatever Heron was doing, and maybe permanently derail his plans. But . . . what did Heron look like now? Sierra was sure he changed faces whenever needed, and Max had a vague recollection of Synesius or Jonah or someone telling him at some point that Heron was looking like Augustine – was Tesla aware of that, aware that there was no specific Heron face that Tesla or Astor or Max could make themselves look like? Max sighed. This was the nub of the problem. For all he and Sierra knew, Tesla or Astor was Heron, and they had been talking to Heron right across that table, as Sierra sipped her brandy and Max his rum.