Unburning Alexandria (18 page)

The outer room shook from the pounding. The door began to part from its hinges.

Max, Josephus, and the slave applied themselves to keeping it shut.

They heard the whoosh from the inner room again.

"Your turn," the slave said to Max. "I have ten times your strength. You won't be missed too much here," she said, with a smile.

Max nodded. "We weren't introduced," he said to Josephus in Latin. "I'm Max."

Josephus smiled. "Josephus"

Max entered the inner room and closed the door.

The legionaries were making progress on the outer door despite the slave's best efforts.

"You must go next," the slave said to Josephus. "You do not have the power to keep this door closed."

"But you are far more valuable," Josephus said. "You have already created the list of the missing texts. Synesius may need that immediately wherever he is now. He may not have time to find someone like you to generate a new one. He may lose the scroll before he finds someone like you. And you are the best one to offer defense should Synesius and his friends encounter killers in the future. Am I wrong?"

The slave started to disagree, but instead gave Josephus her blade. "This could give you a few moments of time. It is sharper, deadlier, than yours. Aim for the throat. I will try to come back and save you should you not prevail."

Josephus nodded. A pike penetrated the upper part of the outer door. A whoosh came from the inner room.

The slave quickly entered the inner room and closed its door.

The legionaries broke through the outer door.

There were only two of them.

Josephus shouted, raised the slave's blade with two hands and drove it into the first legionary's throat.

Josephus turned to face the other, but was dead from this legionary's sword in the heart before he finished turning around.

[Alexandria, 150 AD]

The four stood in an outer room exactly the same as the outer room more than 250 years in the future from which they had just departed, except the room in which they now stood suffered no clanging.

"I don't think Josephus survived," the slave said, with real regret.

"I'm going to send the chair to him anyway," Sierra said, and entered the inner room.

"Won't that make the chair available to the legionaries?" Max asked.

"Only if they know how to use it," Sierra said, and made ready to send the chair.

"But it is a safe assumption that they do," Max said.

"Do not send the chair," Synesius said, "Josephus understood the danger of his devotion to the truth – as we all do."

Sierra shook off what Synesius said.

The slave spoke. "I believe there were only two legionaries pounding the door. And it is likely that Josephus killed or wounded at least one, before he died, if he died. I can kill the other legionary if he comes here." She removed a second, smaller blade from her robe.

Sierra nodded, pulled the go lever on the chair, and exited the small room.

The four waited ten minutes in the outer room. There was no sound in the inner room.

"I set the chair to automatically return here in an hour. I guess there's no point in waiting," Sierra said, sadly.

Synesius nodded, and said a prayer for Josephus. "Amen," everyone except the slave intoned.

"I can set the chair to go back a few minutes before I left in 413 AD and save Josephus," the slave said.

"How?" Synesius asked. "If you had been sure you could stop the two legionaries, you would have done that in the first place."

The slave considered.

"Synesius is right," Max said. "We need you here with us now."

Sierra grudgingly agreed. "Let's get out of here now," she said to the slave. "If we survive, you can go back for Josephus later."

* * *

The four walked out of the outer room, and listened in the corridor. Hearing no footsteps or any other sounds, the group proceeded slowly in the tunnel, back towards the stairs to the ground floor.

"The room with the chair should make our rescue of the texts a little easier," Synesius half said and half asked.

"Only a little easier," Sierra replied. "It is unlikely that the room and this tunnel survived Omar's destruction of the Library in 642 AD. There is no mention of any activity at the Library at all after that date."

"But we could start bringing some texts forward in time in that room," Max said, "and then figure out how to get them to Athens for ultimate transport to our 21st century world."

Sierra nodded. The sounds of the Library, scholars walking and talking, began to permeate the corridor. The four proceeded into a central reading area – a large hall with scrolls poking out of cubbyholes along the walls, and readers colorfully attired running their fingers over unfurled texts. Synesius stopped and surveyed the scene. Tears of awe and regret filled his eyes. "This is your Library at its height, is it not," he said to Sierra. "It already had fallen far when you and I first met. How did we let that happen?"

Sierra took his hand. "There were many causes," she said softly.

"This is the Library at its height in Christian times," Max said. "It had a majesty all its own when Cleopatra was here."

"It is not safe to stay here" was the slave's contribution to the historical appreciation.

"She's right," Sierra said. "Let's find someplace away from the Library where we can sit and consider our options."

* * *

The four made their way quickly but carefully along a bustling, broad street of Alexandria. The slave looked back and forth, in all directions. Synesius was as impressed with the 150 AD thoroughfare as he had been with the Library. Sierra recalled the first time she had walked such a street, with Heron and Jonah, when she had first come to Alexandria, as Ampharete. Not only a different name, a different lifetime, which seemed long, long ago.

"How about there?" Max pointed to a small restaurant. It looked much like the place Sierra and Jonah and Heron had first dined, where the Nubian had tried to kill her and Jonah had saved her, though that place was in an opposite direction from the Library.

"Sure," Sierra said. Synesius and the slave agreed.

They found a table inside with an unobstructed view of the street. The slave walked to the back and returned to their table. "There is an exit in the rear, in case we should need it."

They ordered date wine and bread. "We need to see how many lost texts we can locate back here," Synesius said, after their food arrived.

"We already have one," the slave said, "the
Pinakes
." She bit into a piece of dark bread. "Delicious."

Synesius touched the scroll in his robe, and explained the calculations the slave had made to identify the lost texts.

"That is wonderful," Sierra said. "We should get that to the future – to an age in which it can be effortlessly copied – as soon as possible."

"We have automatic copying machines that you can hold in your hand in the future," Max explained to Synesius, "but the copies they would produce if we were to employ those little machines back here would not survive time travel to the future." He laughed. "Sorry, I am explaining that a device does not work that you do not even know about, so why am I explaining. . . . "

"No, I understand," Synesius said. "What you are saying is that we will have to transport either the scroll itself, or a copy we write by hand, if we wish to save it."

"Exactly," Max said.

"But then . . . ." Synesius looked at the slave. "Will the list of lost texts that you carry in your brain endure your passage to the future?"

"Unknown," the slave replied. "It accompanied me with no loss in this trip to the past."

"Could you read a scroll and remember every word of it?" Sierra asked.

"No," the slave said. "What I have in my head now is the result of calculation – a different cognitive function than committing texts to memory."

"How long would it take you write out the list of lost texts that you now have in your memory?" Max asked.

"I can write by hand, but not easily," the slave replied. "The task would take at least a day and a night."

"Then that is what I suggest should be our first order of business now," Max said. "And we can bring forward to future both the Pinakes and your list of texts on that index that did not survive."

"Where shall we do this?" Synesius asked. "If the Library is not safe, then–"

"I believe I know someone we can trust, who can give us lodging," Sierra said.

"Jonah?" Max asked.

"Yes," Sierra said.

"I know him," Synesius said.

* * *

Jonah's premises were about 30 minutes by foot from the eating establishment, in the northern, Jewish quarter of Alexandria. The slave walked well ahead of the other three.

"Do you think we can trust her?" Max asked Sierra and Synesius about the slave.

"Her hearing is acute," Synesius replied. "But the noise of this street should protect our conversation."

"Good," Max said, barely above a whisper. "But as to my question–"

"She fought bravely against the legionaries," Sierra said, "though–"

"Right," Max said. "All we have is her word for that."

"She saved my life in Londinium in the future," Synesius finally said. "Why would she do that if she was working for Heron – presumably the man who was trying to kill me."

"The slave in front of us, or her twin?" Max asked. "You said the two were indistinguishable."

"The two were wearing different clothing," Synesius replied, "though I suppose that, given the magic I have seen, clothing which automatically changed shape and color would not be such a miracle."

"I know of nothing like that in our future," Sierra said.

"The slave says she comes from a future further down the line than ours," Max said.

"That does not matter, in any case," Synesius said. "The two of them came to my aid in Carthage - the one I had spent the night with, and the other who joined us."

"Are you sure of that?" Max pressed the point. "That you died - twice - and first one slave and then the other saved your life?"

Synesius started to answer then stopped.

Max looked at him.

"I am sure of nothing when it comes to time travel," Synesius finally said.

"Well, that at least is something I can agree with wholeheartedly," Max said.

"She could want you alive to lead us to whatever Max and I know," Sierra said to Synesius, "or whatever else you might have found in the Library – so she could relay that to Heron."

Synesius sighed. "I would wager she already knows everything I know."

The three walked on in silence. But Max touched his robe and looked at Sierra, to signal that there was one thing he and Sierra knew, of which neither Synesius or the slave was aware.

* * *

The three caught up to the slave a few feet in front of Jonah's home, a modest dwelling, suggesting comfort but not riches.

"I want to alert you about something regarding Jonah," Sierra said.

She had everyone's rapt attention.

"I first met him here in Alexandria, in this very year, 150 AD, when he was Heron's devoted student. Our meeting set in motion a series of events which led Jonah to part with his mentor, and oppose his goals and means."

"You mean like sending vicious legionaries to slaughter you in cold blood because in some way you interfered with the master plan?" Max asked, with no smile.

Sierra nodded. "The chairs in Athens, London, and New York are notoriously imprecise in their arrival times. Possibly this different kind of chair here in Alexandria is more punctual. In any event, from what I can tell, we are now about 8 months after the time Jonah, Heron, and I first met here. The pollen, the humidity, lead me to that conclusion."

Synesius nodded.

"And if that is so, then Jonah will have returned from the land across the big sea and his trips in time, and his loyalty to Heron will have all but disappeared."

"How do you know that?" Max asked.

"He warned Alcibiades about Heron when Jonah and Alcibiades met in Athens. From what Alcibiades told me about that meeting, Jonah was not much older than when he and I first met."

"What do you think turned Jonah against Heron?" Max asked.

"Possibly what you will tell him when you meet him now?" Synesius answered and asked.

"You are a quick study in the intricacies of time travel," Sierra told him.

"But you do think it unlikely that the Jonah we may now be meeting," the slave said and pointed to the house, "will be loyal to Heron."

"Yes," Sierra said.

"And if you're wrong?" Max asked.

"It is unsafe for us to spend time in any public room," the slave replied. "Heron's former student seems our best choice."

The group agreed and approached Jonah's house.

* * *

Apparently no one was home – several calls of Jonah's name at the front door produced no results – but neither was the front door locked. A less paranoid age, Sierra thought, though if the people of Alexandria 150 AD had any idea what she and her compatriots were doing they would have reason indeed to be suspicious of everyone.

"Should we enter?" the slave asked.

Sierra was about to say yes, when a young woman – about 18 years of age, Sierra guessed – approached the house. The slave and the men tensed and touched their weapons. Sierra smiled brightly at the young woman. "Do you know if Jonah is home?"

"He should be back in a few hours," the woman replied and smiled engagingly herself.

"We are his friends," Sierra said. "He does not know we are here, but I am certain he will be happy to see us."

"I agree," the woman said. "Jonah thinks very highly of you. I do, as well. Please come in, Hypatia."

Sierra's smile vanished. The two men and the slave withdrew their weapons.

"How do you know who I am?" Sierra asked sharply. "I come from a time in your future–"

"I am Ruth," the woman replied, "Jonah's wife."

Sierra's mouth hung open.

"I come from the future, too," Ruth said.