Unburning Alexandria (19 page)

Sierra's head spun with all kinds of thoughts. How could she know whether Ruth was really Jonah's wife or another Heron agent? Benjamin, Jonah's son, had told her that his mother had died in his childbirth – if this woman was Benjamin's mother, should Sierra warn her? But that could erase Benjamin from existence and change history–

"I see you do not believe me," Ruth said, softy, without anger. "Suppose I were to tell you that I know Jonah loves you – in some sort of way, different from the way he loves me, but nonetheless profound – and that he first came to love you when the two of you were on the Lux, blown off course from its route to Athens. Would that convince you?"

Sierra supposed that Jonah might have told that truth to Heron, but it did not seem likely. "Yes, it does convince me. Please accept our apologies for showing up here at your home, brandishing weapons at you, and obliging you to explain who you are." Sierra looked at her companions, who returned their weapons to their sheaves, but kept their hands on the hilts.

"No need to apologize," Ruth said.

What a beautiful smile, Sierra thought.

"Please," Ruth said, "come in."

* * *

The aroma of slowing cooking chicken and olives made Sierra's mouth water. "It will be ready soon," Ruth said and walked over to the stone oven. The big clay pot was softly steaming. "Yes, it is almost ready now. Please, sit." Ruth gestured to a table. "Jonah will be home soon."

Sierra looked at Max, Synesius, and the slave. "I'm starving!" Max said.

The four sat at the table. Ruth brought honeyed wine and bread.

Synesius looked at Sierra. The chicken smelled so good, the wine beckoned, but could they be sure of Ruth? Sierra realized this was an impossible situation – it would be easy as pie, or in this case, sweet wine, for Ruth to introduce some odorless poison.

Sierra looked at her companions. They were clearly thinking the same thing. She sighed and cleared her throat. "I am very sorry, but–"

There was a noise at the door. The four rose and once again gripped their weapons.

"We have guests, your friends," Ruth said to the man who entered.

"Ampharete!" Jonah said to Sierra, and walked forward to greet her.

* * *

Everyone got to their feet. Sierra and Jonah hugged. The key with Jonah, Sierra knew, was determining where he was in his knowledge of her and what she was planning to do.

The two parted. Jonah looked around the room. "The last time I saw the two of you was in a certain gentlemen's club, as they called it, in a very distant future," he said to Max and Synesius.

Max and Synesius nodded.

"And I do not believe we have ever met," Jonah said to slave, with a courteous nod and a smile.

"I am with Synesius," the slave replied. "I come from the future."

"I see," Jonah said. "Welcome to our home," he said to everyone, and motioned to the table. "Please, make yourself comfortable."

So this Jonah is likely older than the Jonah who had gone to meet Alcibiades in Athens
, Sierra thought. Max had told her that the Jonah he and Synesius had met in London had been very knowledgeable in the ways of time travel. Good.

"Supper is ready," Ruth said from across the room, examining the hot pot with satisfaction.

"Be prepared for something truly delicious," Jonah said to the others, and sat with them at the table.

The six were soon dining on savory, succulent chicken.

"Melts in your mouth," Max said, and beamed at Ruth.

"Thank you," she said. "More wine?"

Everyone at the table said yes.

"I am glad you came here, and met Ruth," Jonah said to Sierra.

"I am glad, too," Sierra said. Jonah indeed looked a good deal older than she remembered, which didn't make sense, if this was when he and Ruth had first gotten married. Sierra looked at Ruth and smiled, and hoped the bit of turmoil she was feeling inside about Ruth dying in childbirth didn't show. It didn't seem right for Sierra to just sit and talk to Ruth, knowing what her fate would likely soon be–

"You have now met the two most important people in my life," Jonah said, "Ruth and my son Benjamin." Jonah caught the brief look of confusion on Sierra's face. "Oh, you thought – no, Esther was Benjamin's mother, may she rest in peace. It has been a long time since I lost Esther – Ruth is my second wife."

"I – I am so sorry," Sierra said, "both for my stupidity and the loss of Esther."

"No need to apologize," Ruth said, and took Sierra's hand. "Life is strange even without this travel through time."

"We saw Benjamin in 413 just yesterday," Jonah said. "We have a home there, as well," he said and touched Ruth's hand. "We are bi-temporal."

"That is my home time," Ruth said, with some sadness. "But it is daily becoming too dangerous for people such as us."

"She means Jews," Jonah said.

"Our time has become dangerous for any decent person," Synesius said.

Jonah nodded in agreement.

"You were in 413 just yesterday?" Sierra asked Jonah and Ruth. "But how did you get here so fast? The trip to Athens–"

"There was no need to go to Athens," Jonah said. "There is a room with a chair in the Library."

"But – Heron told you about it?" Sierra asked.

"No," Jonah replied. "I am not even sure that Heron knows about it."

"Then who built it?" Sierra asked.

"Possibly someone at this very table," Jonah said. "Most likely you, in your future."

* * *

Sierra settled into sleep, in a corner, with no man beside her. Max understood. No point in flaunting to Synesius that Sierra wanted to be with someone else, even though Synesius seemed happy enough to sleep next to the android. For that matter, no point in Sierra advertising her affection for Max to Jonah, either, who she felt still cared for her in some way more than a friend even though he was married. Sierra pulled the blanket around her. The only man missing in this potential
ménage à
whatever was Alcibiades. She fell asleep holding herself and thinking of him.

Chapter Eleven

[Carthage, 413 AD]

The Nubian ushered Heron into Augustine's room and left.

Augustine lifted his gaze from a scroll and smiled brightly. "Good to see you looking like your old self, for better or worse."

Heron returned the smile. "Thank you."

"You were here just last week, looking like me." Augustine said. "I gather you have been away longer than that to your future."

Heron nodded. "Three months. But the face-change took less than an hour."

"Ah . . . well, not much has changed here since we last met, in as much as that was just six days ago. And during the three months in your life?"

"Not much there either, I am afraid," Heron replied. "This Synesius of yours seems to be indestructible or in possession of a lucky charm. Two attempts to kill him have succeeded, only to be reversed by time travelers moments later."

"I have not talked to Synesius since you and I discussed how he might be of help to us," Augustine said. "You no longer wish to pursue that possibility?"

Heron shook his head no. "Events have moved beyond that."

"You have opponents adept at the same time travel game as you," Augustine said.

"Apparently," Heron replied, "though they are your opponents, too."

Augustine accepted that. "And have you discovered exactly how they gained the knowledge to travel through time?"

"Ampharete – Hypatia – Sierra Waters – whatever her name - knows how to use the chairs," Heron said. "And more than that."

"Oh?"

"Someone – quite possibly Hypatia - seems to know not only how to use the chairs, but to build them."

Augustine cocked his inquiring eyebrow even higher.

"And I am responsible," Heron said.

"You are responsible for all of this," Augustine said. "You committed knowledge of how to construct a time travel vehicle to a scroll. You dare not go back in time and stop your younger self because confronting your younger self invites the worst kind of paradox. Is my understanding of your predicament accurate?"

"You have given this much thought in just six days."

"I have thought of nothing else," Augustine said. "Do you have a plan?"

"Yes," Heron said. "I have to destroy the original scroll before it arrives in the future where the means of implementing its instructions exist. Destroying copies will not stop other copies from being made. I have taken other measures in case copies are already at large – I have affixed the title
Chronica
at the top of several texts which have nothing to do with travel across time, to confuse people in the future who might come upon a text by that name written by me. But that is not a complete solution, either. If I cannot confront or stop my younger self, our only option is to destroy the original. And if I cannot locate that scroll, our next best option is to let the Library burn as thoroughly as possible – an option which also has the merit of eliminating any other copies of the
Chronica
in the Library, though it would work only if the original was still lodged somewhere in the Library.

"Merit?" Augustine asked sarcastically. "One act of vanity, the writing of a single text, requires the burning of an entire library?" Augustine shook his head in disgust. "And if you do manage to eliminate your
Chronica
, the knowledge of how to build a time travel portal will simply vanish like a bad dream in the sunlight? We have already discussed this, I know, but I have yet to fathom exactly how that would transpire, in the minds of real people, in the real world."

"It is a dangerous enterprise, stealing pieces of readers' memories," Heron said softly. "But it is still preferable to making the mechanics of time travel available to everyone in the future."

"Have you discovered where and when in the Library your scroll is – or, if not in the Library, in whose possession?

"I wrote it in the time of Cleopatra. It is no longer there."

"How do you propose to locate it?" Augustine asked.

"I have a source of information who is with Hypatia," Heron replied. "I await a report."

[Alexandria, 150 AD]

"Looks as if we are the first to rise in the house of Jonah," Max said quietly to Sierra, the morning after their arrival. The two had just awoken on different sides of the big room, seen that they were the only two awake, and walked to the front of the house. Max opened the door and squinted at the chalky pastel of dawn. "It's beautiful out there," he said. "How about a walk by the sea?"

Sierra nodded. The two had both slept in their robes. She noticed a stylus, a clay bottle of ink, and several blank pieces of thin papyrus on the table. She quickly scribbled a note in Latin to their hosts and Synesius. "I don't want them to worry," she said to Max in English.

The two walked along the shore and let their hands brush together. Max clasped her hand. "We've come a long way in time and place since Quivett Neck, haven't we," Max said.

Sierra nodded and squeezed Max's hand. She also squeezed back a tear in her eye.

"I don't trust anyone other than you," Max repeated what he had told her the day before.

"I trust Jonah and Synesius," Sierra said.

"I guess we have no choice," Max said. "We need their help. But I'm just saying that in the end, as the ultimate guardian of our lives and your plan, I trust only you."

Sierra squeezed his hand harder and put her head on his shoulder.

"What exactly is your strategy now, by the way?" Max asked. "Have you revised it in light of the past few days?"

"No," Sierra said. "I still think the only reliable way to get texts out of Alexandria is by putting the scrolls into our to robes and hand delivering them to the future. Even if we can rely on the robot's loyalty, we can't rely on her memory holding up across time."

"So each of us takes four or five scrolls – some of the lost Aristotle, some authors completely lost to our history – and we deliver them to Appleton in the 19th century," Max said.

[Carthage, 413 AD]

Augustine and Heron concluded their conversation in the windy harbor. "If you board this ship now, you will be cut off from any new information," Augustine said.

"I know," Heron replied, "this is one of the great limitations of your long age in which information did not yet move at the speed of Hermes – at the speed of lightning. But if I do not leave now, I risk missing the only opportunity I may have to intercept my scroll before it is transported to the future and the cornucopia of transmission devices that flourish there."

Augustine furrowed his brow. "I think I have yet to fully master the metaphysics of time travel. What does it matter when you embark, if you know the time to which you must travel in the past or the future?"

"You are correct in your understanding, in general," Heron replied. "But I have found from cruel experience that opportunities are better taken at the time in which they are first revealed. Delay can lead to complications from unforeseen factors. There is a saying attributed in the future to Brutus–"

"Julius Caesar's murderer?"

"Yes," Heron said. "'There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.'"

Augustine nodded. "Brutus in retrospect may have been more eloquent than the man in the flesh."

"Historians are in the business of embellishing history," Heron said. "Whereas I am in the business of attempting to actually improve it."

"Noble but dangerous," Augustine said, nodded his goodbye, and slowly walked away.

Heron regarded the receding bishop and briefly contemplated his important role in future history – it was worth tolerating his incessant criticism. Heron turned, called out to his legionaries on the ship, and boarded.

[Alexandria, 150 AD]

Max pointed to a figure walking towards them in the distance.

"It's just one person," Sierra said. "With your new combat prowess this shouldn't be much of a threat."