Unburning Alexandria (27 page)

Sierra knew he was talking about ancient Alexandria, which he wanted her never to revisit, at least not in any time near 415 AD.

"You were beautiful as Hypatia," Appleton continued. "But when I look at you now, I know I am looking at the real Sierra Waters, the way you were, the way you will be, the way you were meant to be."

"Here, here!" Max said, smiling.

"Please, come in," Appleton said. "I had my man prepare a light repast."

"Thank you," Sierra said, and she and Max joined Appleton at an elegant table laid out with breads, jams, cheeses, and fruit. "Not all that different from what we had not long ago in Alexandria – or very long ago, depending upon how you look at it."

"I know," Appleton said, "Tea? It's Pu-Ehr, an ancient fermented blend from the Orient. I don't recall seeing it when I was in Alexandria, but perhaps you sampled it?"

"I don't think so," Sierra replied. "But I'd love some now."

"Me too," Max said. "You know how to make us feel right at home."

Appleton poured the tea. "This is a special occasion. It is the first time I've seen the two of you back together, and that does my heart good. And it is the first time I've seen you again looking like yourself, as I said." He gave Sierra and Max a craggy, kindly smile. "But tell me, just so I can keep my head good – I have not already met you and seen you this way later for me, but earlier for you, is that right?"

"Yes," Sierra said, and took his hand across the table. "You mean so much to me."

Appleton returned the squeeze. "And you – the two of you – to me, as well. . . . You said on the telephone that you had something for me?"

Sierra and Max nodded, reached into their jackets, and gave the scrolls they had been carrying to Appleton.

He put down his tea and looked at the scrolls with eyes dilated in sheer pleasure. "This Aristotle is just extraordinary," Appleton said, unrolling a scroll. "Only a fragment of this text exists –
On Justice
–"

"I know," Sierra said, in almost hushed tones.

"And here you have brought the entire text before me," Appleton continued. "You have brought back to life something that scholars have been seeking for centuries, for millennia. And the timing could not be better - The Constitution of the Athenians was brought back to life from the sands of Egypt just five years ago, by the British Museum. Getting these scrolls that you saved to the world's attention will be easy and non-controversial – I have friends at the British Museum. Who's to say that these scrolls were not unearthed from Egypt as well – which, in truth, they in effect were, by the two of you!" He turned to another scroll.

"There is one which is not by Aristotle," Sierra said. She pointed to the
Chronica
, which Max and then she had carried all this way, and explained its significance.

Appleton unrolled the text. "You think this is by Heron's hand, or a student's?"

"I don't know that he would have confided a text of this import to any of his students," Sierra replied.

Appleton nodded. "I will have to be much more careful with how I release this to world than I need to be with the Aristotles. Perhaps it would be best to keep this hidden somewhere, until our species develops wisdom sufficient not only to build such a device but use it in a way that benefits the good." He gestured to another of Aristotle's lost scrolls, this one
On the Good
. "The publication of Heron's text might well be best postponed until after my death."

Max and Sierra both frowned, unconsciously. They both knew that Appleton's advertised date of death was 1899 – four years from where they were now.

Appleton caught and understood their expressions. He extended a reassuring hand. "Do not be perturbed. I couldn't help looking up the date of my death when I was in the future – impossible to resist such an impulse, given the opportunity. And I'm prepared for that. As a musician halfway between your time and my time said in one of his songs, "All Things Must Pass."

"George Harrison," Max said. "It's a beautiful song, isn't it?"

"Yes," Appleton said, "and very instructive."

The three spent the next few hours talking about Aristotle, Heron, and many other things.

"I feel bad that I lost the Antisthenes scroll," Sierra said at some point. "Now it's lost again to history."

"You two have done an extraordinary amount," Appleton replied, "not only against the stubborn inertia of history but in the face of vicious attacks on you by Heron. You can't do everything. You've done enough. You deserve to live a normal, happy life now."

The three talked further. Appleton eventually invited his guests for dinner.

Max was inclined to say yes, but Sierra wanted to leave. "We'll come back here again, I promise. That tea was too wonderful not to sip again, exactly as you brewed it."

Appleton smiled, sadly. "Please do not go back there again. You've done enough."

"I don't want to go back there, believe me," Sierra said. "But what will happen to history if Hypatia isn't murdered as history has recorded?"

"It will say that the date of Hypatia's death is unknown, that she disappeared at some point around 413 AD," Max said in clenched tones, able to contain himself only because he didn't want to scream in front of Appleton.

"History will take care of itself," Appleton said. "You've done enough."

* * *

Sierra wanted to go immediately back to the Millennium Club and its portal to the future.

"You sure?" Max asked. "It's nice back here." He looked up Fifth Avenue, which they had just reached after walking out of Grand Central. "You can't deny this charm."

"I know," Sierra said. "But now that we have the scrolls safely in Appleton's keeping, there is one more thing I need to do, to get some kind of peace of mind, some kind of closure."

"And that is?" Max asked, though he knew.

"Thomas. I need to talk to him just once. In 2042."

They walked to the Millennium Club and entered. This time Cyril Charles was in the vestibule. He'd either jumped in a chair from 2061 to 1895, or had been here already, at a time either earlier or later in his life.

"I didn't see you arrive," he greeted them, a little coldly, referring not to their current entrance in the evening but their earlier entrance in the morning from the room upstairs with the chairs. That meant he had indeed taken a chair from 2061 to a little before they had arrived in 1895, likely a few days before they had arrived, likely to be of whatever help he could for them.

"I'm sorry," Sierra said, sincerely, figuring that his attitude was the result of her outburst of distrust in 2061, which would have already occurred and not long ago in his timeline.

"That's quite all right," Charles said a little more warmly, "there's no need to apologize. I can well understand the difficulty of your labors. Would you care for bite to eat or–"

"If we could go upstairs, that would be best," Sierra replied, soothingly.

"Of course," Charles said.

The three soon reached the top of the spiral stairs. Charles smiled genuinely and pointed to the door of the room with the chairs. "Have a safe trip," he said.

"Thank you," Sierra said. She and Max entered the room.

"No chairs," Max said.

Sierra sighed.

"The dollar goes a long, long way back here," Max said, and reached in his pockets for the silver dollars. "We probably have enough money for a month or more in a decent hotel. The chairs should be back long before then."

* * *

Max was right about the hotel but not the chairs. They found a plain but comfortable and relatively clean hotel off Broadway for 65 cents a night. They went to the Club several times a day. Mr. Charles promised to call them at the hotel the moment he found the chairs had returned to the room at the top of the staircase. After five days with no results, Sierra began to think about another strategy.

"If we want to book passage to London and not go steerage, we can't stay here much longer," Sierra said. "We don't have enough money."

"We could ask Appleton for a loan," Max said. "He'd probably insist on making it a gift."

Sierra shook her head emphatically no. "He'll do his best to talk us out of traveling to London to take the chairs – he'll think we really want them to go back to Londinium. And when his best persuasion fails, the last thing he'll do is fund us, either as a loan or a gift."

"If Heron's responsible for the chairs not being here, don't you think he'd do the same thing to the London chairs?" Max tried a different tack.

"Yes, but we know the chairs are not here now in New York, and we don't know for a fact that they're not in London, so that's still our better option."

[Alexandria, 415 AD]

Benjamin again approached Hypatia in the Library, carefully looking over its dwindling collection of Heron scrolls. "It has been more than a week since I saw you last, and you continue to play with fire, play with your life."

He received no response.

"Apparently you are indeed looking for a scroll," Benjamin conceded. "And I can see on your face that you have yet to find it. If the scroll you are seeking is not here now, what leads you to believe it will be here tomorrow, or ever again?"

"I am not interested in a debate or your protection."

"I promised my father I would not just stand by and let you die," Benjamin called after the receding figure. He could also see how his father had come to care so deeply for this impetuous, inscrutable woman.

[New York City, 1895 AD]

Sierra and Max got no sleep that night, and the reason involved not a smidgen of pleasure.

They were arguing, arguing, and arguing.

"How is this for a compromise," Sierra said, her voice hoarse from being raised for so long. "You stay here in New York, I go it alone to London?"

"Just how the hell is that a compromise?" Max demanded, his voice still loud.

"You're saying we would be best off waiting here in New York for the chairs to return, I'm saying London would be better, what I'm now proposing would give us both what we want."

Max shook his head in exasperation. "What you're proposing would give me nothing of what I want. In fact it would take from me what I want most – you," his voice cracked with emotion.

Sierra could not reply. She put her hand on his shoulder.

Max pushed it away. "You already have what you wanted, we have what we wanted. You saw how thrilled Appleton was. You've done what no one else in history has done. You rescued lost scrolls by Aristotle from the pyres of Alexandria. You stole them from the ashes. We have Heron's blueprints for time travel. The android as far as we know got the catalog into the future. We won! At least this battle! What more do you want?"

Sierra said nothing.

"I don't want to lose you again," Max said softly. "I know what you want, what's driving you now. It's not about the scrolls. It's about Alcibiades. You still love him. I know that."

"I need to see him, look into his eyes, just one more time . . . but I love you, too. I'll come back." Again she put her hand on Max's shoulder. This time he put his hand over hers and caressed it.

"Thomas does not have the eyes of Alcibiades," Max said. "The android said it was a total transplant. You won't see Alcibiades when you look into Thomas's eyes."

"That's what I need to know," Sierra said.

[Alexandria, 415 AD]

She walked by the water in the late afternoon, looking at the Pharos Lighthouse, looking back at the Library, as she had so many times. She touched the digi-locket that she always wore around her neck back here – with the painting by Jean-Baptiste Regnault from 1791,
Socrates dragging Alcibiades from the Embrace of Sierra
– that's how she thought of the title, it brought her comfort.

She had left Benjamin somewhere in the Library. He meant well. He had become her guardian angel back here. But she needed to be walking alone now. She had taken a secret passage to an exit that few others knew about.

She found herself crying.

She wondered if Alcibiades would suddenly come up to her. A part of her hoped so. She did not want to die.

But when she squinted into the distance along the shoreline she saw a group of men, walking quickly in her direction. The Nitrians.

Where was Alcibiades?

She wanted to run, but could not.

She thought about the people who loved her, who would mourn her death, who would hold themselves responsible.

She touched the locket again. At least Synesius would not be here to see this. She had taken the locket from him.

The Nitrians were shouting at her. "Harlot, Hypatia, whore!"

She stood her ground. The Nitrians and their sick hatred were around her. "We will rip your unholy body to shreds so no one will ever again be tempted by it!" they intoned in unison, and came at her with the sharp edges of shells and knives.

She thought many things in the seconds remaining. These are men of God? If so, there is no God, which she never believed in to begin with. . . . She really had wanted to save one more text from the Library, Heron had written another scroll about automata, which had special relevance to her. . . . She fell to the ground, bleeding. She held up her hands in a futile attempt to protect herself. Her hands and arms were ripped to shreds. No, no! Stop it! Leave me alone! The Nitrians were coming at her face, it hurt terribly. Hypatia's face, which she had had her face reconstructed to look like, when she had been in the future, after she had stored her catalog of the Library in a safe place. . . . Face changes were commonplace for an android, which she was. . . . She had to remind herself that she wasn't really human, she wasn't really alive, and history had to be served. This would give the real Sierra Waters precious time, that's why she had come here. . . . No, she wasn't really alive, but everything hurt so badly, everything exploded in red pain. . . . No–

She wasn't really alive.

But she died.

[Carthage, 415 AD]