Unburning Alexandria (16 page)

He turned to Synesius's slave. "Thank you for answering my questions so truthfully – may we continue this conversation on another day, as well?"

"Certainly," she said.

Synesius rose, and he and his slave left the room.

* * *

The Nubian drew close to his master. "Your impressions?" Augustine asked his slave.

"Synesius had his hand on a weapon. She restrained him."

"I noticed," Augustine said, "and why do you suppose she did that?"

"She worries about undermining the future, which the murder of Your Eminence at this time would do."

"Yes," Augustine agreed. "Is that all?"

"I am not sure."

"And what does Synesius know?"

"Not clear, either," the Nubian said. "But surely Synesius knew I would have snapped his arm in two before his knife left his garment."

"Presumably," Augustine said, "which is precisely why I ordered you to bring more drink." He shook his head and sighed. "He passed this test. But I would not venture an opinion about the future."

* * *

Synesius and the slave were in bed together. The only clothes in the room were their robes on the floor. A soft Mediterranean breeze blew through the open window.

"He wants me to kill her," Synesius said.

"Of course," the slave replied.

"If I do not kill him, he will instruct someone else to kill Hypatia – someone more devoted to the Church than I."

"Of course," the slave said again, this time kissing the spot right below Synesius's chest where her head had been resting. She lifted her head to speak. "But you know why you – why no one – can kill Augustine. He will become one of the two greatest saints in the Church after the initial disciples. The loss of either Augustine or Aquinas, before their contributions have been made in full measure, would cause irreparable damage to history."

"That was not Augustine," Synesius said.

"We cannot be sure, not on the basis of just a single conversation."

"I can be sure," Synesius said. "I know Augustine."

"Granted," the slave said. "You believe, then, we were conversing with whom, Heron?"

"You no doubt know Heron better than I."

The slave nodded. "And killing Heron here could well do even more damage to history than killing Augustine."

"History can go to hell–"

"You do not believe that. But there is another way to save Hypatia – to save Sierra Waters," the slave said.

"Heron has access to the portals of time. He controls them. No place, no time, can be safe for her."

"We have access to the portals, too."

"Do you know where she is?" Synesius asked.

"No," the slave replied. "But if she is not in Alexandria, in this time, there are only a limited number of places and times where she could be."

* * *

Synesius awoke suddenly. He thought he heard a sound outside his chamber. He looked over at his slave, sound asleep, mouth slightly open, breasts slightly rising, slightly falling, but before he had a chance to fully appreciate her beauty–

Four Roman legionaries burst into the room, followed by a Nubian who looked familiar– Augustine's Nubian servant.

Synesius jumped out of bed and grabbed his sword. His slave, awake now, seized two knives and plunged them into the neck of the legionary closest to her. His wound was fatal, but she received a similar wound from the sword of a second legionary, straight through her naked back into her heart. She collapsed backward into the legionary's free arm, as he withdrew his sword. "Waste of a good night ahead," he said, as she died.

Synesius saw all of this, in the periphery of his vision, as he savagely slashed at two legionaries. One of them shortly sliced off his head.

"Bring everything," the Nubian pointed to the bodies of Synesius and the slave, and to Synesius's head.

* * *

Synesius awoke suddenly. He thought he heard a sound outside his chamber. He looked over at his slave, sound asleep, mouth slightly open, breasts slightly rising, slightly falling, but before he had a chance to fully appreciate her beauty–

Her double, with the exact same face, but fully clothed, entered the room. "We must leave, immediately," she said, loudly enough to wake her twin.

The slave on the bed awoke, and said the same to Synesius. "She comes from the same time and place as I do," she added. "She means to protect us, just as I did you in future London."

* * *

The three walked quickly to the dock.

"We will wait until dawn, and then book passage to Alexandria," the second slave spoke. "Obviously, it is no longer safe for you – or her, or me – in Carthage."

Synesius nodded. He was glad, at least, that the twin slaves were in different garb. He was also glad that he and the slave he loved were still alive – the slave he believed he loved in some strange way. His head ached with the thought of what the second slave had said had just happened. Had he really been killed again? He of course had not actually experienced the cruel death of which the new slave had informed them. Not that he disbelieved her–

"Our choices are as we discussed before we fell asleep," his first slave said. "Hypatia means to save some texts from the fires. There are only three fires she could attempt to prevent – Caesar's, Theophilus's, Omar's."

"True," the second slave said. "But she could also save texts by removing them from the Library at any time prior to any of those fires."

"And put them on a vessel?" Synesius asked. "To where?"

"Let us stay focused on where Hypatia might be, at this moment," the second slave said.

"Likely in times close to all three of the fires, but in other times, as well, if I understand this time travel correctly," Synesius said.

"If you can say that, then you do," the second slave said.

"Are there any times that might be attractive to her for reasons other than the fires?" the first slave asked.

"She first met Heron, when she was posing as Ampharete in 150 AD in the Library," the second slave replied.

Synesius finally smiled. He was beginning to appreciate the value of two other-worldly intelligences, better than just one, attempting to help in these other-worldly pursuits, even if he did not yet know whom they ultimately served. But beggars could not be choosers, and he was most certainly a beggar when it came to understanding the situation, beyond bizarre and incredible, in which he found and had inserted himself. "Thank you for saving us," he said to the second slave.

She smiled, too. "We call it, 're-setting'."

"'Re-setting'"?

"Yes," the second slave replied. "Not just the saving of you, but alerting you to the imminent danger of what you are being saved from. It is a delicate business. You of course have no direct knowledge of what killed you the first time."

"True," Synesius said, "but I find I have not much difficulty believing you."

The second slave nodded. "It is almost as if you have some knowledge of what now did not happen to you. This sometimes occurs – we call it 'wash back'."

The first slave smiled enigmatically. "I see you have developed quite the vocabulary since I first was sent to re-set Synesius."

* * *

"I'm growing weary of your face," Augustine said to Heron, who snorted briefly in response. "And please don't remind me that I see the same in the mirror every day. It is unsettling to talk to oneself. Maybe unholy."

"That is one reason I did not have my voice altered to sound completely like yours," Heron replied, "though my rasp might not have been enough to convince Synesius."

"I suppose I should be grateful that you did not just take my life, and my place, altogether," Augustine said.

"I do not have the time to live out the rest of your life in the years to come," Heron said, "and no one knows exactly what you will do or say in every moment of the rest of your life. Even the slightest difference risks–"

"I know," Augustine said, "risks unraveling history."

Heron nodded. "And you have books to finish, books to write, and I have not the capacity to write them. Some of your greatest work is ahead."

"If you know this, and you read those works, you would not have recollection sufficient to recall and rewrite them?" Augustine chided.

"I have not read most them," Heron admitted. "There are far more books in the future than any man can read, even books as important as yours. You are author of more than one hundred volumes."

Augustine did some quick calculation. "I see I have much work ahead. But . . . if you were to take my life today, and knew that you were intending to do this, could you not have put my works in the future in some safe place, impervious to my death, so that they survived, or–"

Heron shook his head. "No. They would disappear, wherever I might have put them, since if I killed you today, those books would never have been written in the first place. The same would happen were I to go back in time and destroy the very first text of a book, the original, before any copies had been made. Those books would then exist only in my memory, only if I had read them. And even then–"

"So my books yet to be written which you have not read are my best defense," Augustine mused.

"Yes," Heron said, "an example of what some wit in the future described as the pen being mightier than the sword. And there's also the small matter of my not being a murderer."

Augustine raised his eyebrows. "What would you call what you are trying to do to Hypatia?"

"She already died of a fever, as you know," Heron replied. "I am trying to keep her impostor from doing untold damage."

"And Synesius?"

"Dead in less than a year, also of an illness, as I already told you," Heron replied.

"He has nothing further to write? His treatise on dog breeding is highly respected."

"None that I know of," Heron replied.

"But every minute of anyone's life has value. It is wrong to take another person's life, even a pauper's life, an impostor's life, an author who has written all he will ever write, even someone who is hopelessly ill. Some say it is wrong even to take even one's own life. Those are powers not permitted to mortals," Augustine said. "Though I suppose someone with your power is evidently more than mortal. You somehow inhabit more than the City of Man."

"I am a human being, just like you," Heron said, "caught in the same kind of chess game – chaturanga – as you play in your own affairs, except my opponents are myriad and armed with a knowledge the vastness of which you cannot begin to comprehend and which may even include some future version of myself. But I apologize – I do not mean to be insulting."

"No insult taken," Augustine said. "I share your goal of maintaining history and future history as it was – assuming that it itself was not the product of some tampering in time, which I admit I can never really know." Augustine sighed.

"At least I will embark soon to Athens, and then the future, and rid myself of your face." Heron tried to lighten the conversation.

Augustine nodded.

"But there may be moves in the game, places on the board, of which even I am unaware," Heron said, and his tone retuned to foreboding.

Chapter Nine

[Alexandria, 413 AD]

Synesius and his pair of wondrous slaves regarded the looming Lighthouse of Alexandria. There were tears in the bishop's eyes. "It will stand nearly another thousand years," one of the slaves said softy. "Only the tomb of Mausolus in Persia and the Great Pyramid will live longer."

"Hypatia wants the scrolls in the Library to live longer still, to live forever," Synesius said. "I am beginning to understand that now. If the texts in the Library can survive into Hypatia's future age – into your time – then the powerful means of recording in your age will insure that the texts will never die. Am I correct?"

"Yes," one of the slaves replied.

"And I believe I know a way to help her," Synesius said.

* * *

The three entered the Library, glistening in full moonlight. "It looks beautiful in a different way every time," Synesius noted. "I never tire of it."

They walked to Hypatia's quarters. "I do not expect her to be here," Synesius said, "but we lose nothing by testing our expectations." His expectations were soon confirmed. Synesius gestured to a corridor. "The manuscript I am seeking should be in a hall in that direction."

"A scroll by Heron?" one of the slaves inquired, as the three proceeded quickly in the corridor.

Synesius shook his head no. "A scroll by an illustrious scholar from my city Cyrene – Callimachus's index of the Library's holdings. His Pinakes lists every author with a scroll in the Library, along with details about the author's life and the text."

"Many of the books he listed are already destroyed," one of the slaves remarked. "What purpose would the index now serve, other than a guide to frustration?"

"I can see its value," the other slave said. "It could provide a list of books that need to be saved. If a scroll is indexed by Callimachus, but no longer known in our future, then that scroll would have the highest priority for rescue from the flames."

The first slave acknowledged the point. "We're programmed to fast-read the script from this era, and we already have a complete listing of all existing books at the end of the 21st century."

"That is what I was hoping you would say." Synesius smiled and pointed to a far wall in the hall the three had just entered. "There were many copies of the index throughout the Library. I recall one being there." The three walked quickly to the wall and its polished wooden cubbyholes. Most had scrolls. "Theophilus seems to have missed this room. Thank God."

The two slaves looked at each other. "You thank God that a bishop from your own beloved Church, a bishop who presided over your conversion to Christianity, who blessed the marriage of you and your wife, did not complete his work? You are indeed seeing the light," one of the slaves said to Synesius.

"Not to mention that you told me that you were just as glad to see some of the scrolls destroyed," remarked the other slave, the one who had accompanied Synesius from the future.