Chapter Three

[Alexandria, 52 BC]

A young woman, no more than 15, walked through a dimly lit corridor of the Library. A man in his early 20s accompanied her. She was dressed like a princess. His garb was plain.

"My sister loves these," Arsinoe said with thinly disguised dislike, of both the scrolls in her robe and her sister.

"And you? What do you love?"

"I love my father. I love my brothers. I love anything that is not my sister – not Cleopatra." Arsinoe smiled, defiantly.

"You would be pleased, then, if someone took away all of these scrolls – which your sister loves?"

She laughed. "Yes. And who would do that for me, you?" She looked up at the man, flirtatiously.

He laughed now, too. "Not all of them. No one man could do that. But I could remove some of them. I could remove a few of your sister's favorites, if you helped me."

Arsinoe moved close to the man's face, so he could feel her warm, sweetened breath on his lips. "Yes," she whispered. Then she pulled her head back. "You would do this to sell them?"

"I would do this to please you," Jonah replied.

[Alexandria, 150 AD]

Heron waited patiently in the evening shadows by the sea. It had been a very unsettling day. It was always that way, always a shock to the body and soul to see younger versions of people you had recently seen, even for one as steeled in the ways of time travel as he.

But, yes, Heron had been disconcerted by the sight of Jonah and Sierra boarding the Lux this morning. Jonah at the very start of his journey, still devoted to Heron, still loving his mentor. And Sierra – who called herself Ampharete – close to the beginning of her journey, too, given all that would come after.

The two had left on the Lux, thinking they were going to Athens, about to be blown off course to something much more. Heron laughed to himself. He was sounding like that 20th-century playwright, Rod Serling. That man with the hypnotic voice had somehow understood something of what time travel can do to you. Heron wondered – had Serling somehow gotten use of a chair, without Heron's knowledge? That could be dangerous. Heron would have to look into it, if ever he had the time. . . .

For now, he looked out at the dark, rippling sea. Heron was glad, at least, that he hadn't seen himself back here, also not far from the beginning of his journey. Heron shuddered – seeing yourself, coming that close to the paradox of running into yourself, knowing you and the paradox might be just around the next corner – that was the hardest to contemplate of all.

He turned from the sea to the calcite Library. There likely would be no further ships arriving tonight. And if one or two more did come in, they likely would not be bringing Sierra. Heron reckoned that 150 AD was the least likely time that Sierra would choose to come back to Alexandria, to start her rescue of the scrolls. But on the chance that she might, Heron would need to wait here, at least a little longer.

[Alexandria, 413 AD]

Synesius's boat passed the Pharos Lighthouse. Though it did not look as impressive at mid-afternoon as at midnight, it was still an inspiration. He turned from the Lighthouse to the Library. It was inspiring, too, he had to admit. But it was a more complicated inspiration than the Lighthouse. The Library contained scrolls, some of which Synesius admired, some of which he detested, some of which evoked no feeling in him at all. And the Library had contained Hypatia, and she invoked the utmost of his feelings. She once had told him,"You should most love a library not for what it contains but for what it does not contain – readers who may not even be born yet." But what this Library most evoked in him now was sadness and frustration about Hypatia's inexplicable absence.

Synesius disembarked. This was the fourth time he found himself in Alexandria, in half as many months. He had talked to Hypatia here the first time, when he had warned her of the Nitrians. When he had returned the second time, about 10 days after she had returned to Alexandria from Ptolemais, she was gone. He was reasonably certain the Nitrians had not quietly slain or even abducted her. None of his priests or friends here had received any reports of that. And the Nitrians did nothing quietly. A fundamental part of their strategy was loudly spreading fear in the hearts of the masses.

But if Hypatia was not murdered or taken somewhere by the Nitrians, where was she? Perhaps the Library held the answer. He had only a few days to find it. The event that Jonah had prophesied was less than a month away. Two months had passed since Jonah had come to him in Carthage. Synesius could not stay long in Alexandria, lest he miss his possible appointment with destiny.

He found Josephus in his room in the Library. It was easy to claim a room for your own in the Library these days. So many had been abandoned. Like Hypatia's.

The younger priest shook his head. "Nothing has changed since the last time you were here," he told Synesius. "No one knows what happened to her."

Synesius sat, wearily.

Josephus brought him bread and wine. "I did find more of the scrolls – the ones Augustine requested."

"Heron's?"

Josephus nodded and withdrew a small bundle from his robe.

"Where did you find these?" Synesius put the scrolls to his nose.

"Not in Hypatia's quarters. In several other places. Can you discern her scent in the papyrus?"

"I can imagine that I can," Synesius replied, eyes closed. "I shall always prefer papyri and their textures to the codices, regardless of what our brothers say. The textures make my eyes water."

"I once heard Augustine say the same," Josephus said, "though I heard that the codices far outnumber the papyri in his rooms. What do you suppose he wants of these scrolls from Alexandria?"

Synesius moved them from his nose to his eyes. "Machines of war . . . pressures of air and water . . . how heavy objects may be lifted . . . reflections and mirrors . . . I have seen these so often in the past few months, they are engraved in my memory. . . . Augustine already possesses copies of these, and other works of Heron. I do not know why he seeks additional copies. . . . But I do know that Hypatia had a great interest in Heron, too."

"She told you of this interest, did she not?" Josephus humored Synesius by asking what he had already been told by Synesius, weeks earlier.

"Yes. She has spoken of Heron many times in our conversations through the years." Synesius considered. "She spoke of him with admiration and . . . awe . . . and . . ."

Josephus sat, and poured himself some wine. This was something he had not previously heard from Synesius. "Something more than awe?"

"I am not sure. . . . Fear? No, Hypatia seems afraid of no one. . . ."

Josephus nodded. "And why would she or anyone be afraid of a mathematician – or anyone – dead some 300 years?"

"I can think of no reason," Synesius agreed. He shook his head, as if to clear it of thoughts of Hypatia. "Perhaps Augustine seeks a text by Heron that we have not yet located," Synesius said.

Josephus sipped his wine. "Perhaps it is in Hypatia's keeping – that would be an auspicious coincidence."

[Alexandria, 52 BC]

Arsinoe left the room.

She had kissed Jonah. He had found that pleasurable, even exciting. But also disturbing. She was a woman by the standards of her society, and also by the standards of the society in which Jonah had been born, two centuries later. But he had spent so much time in futures with different standards, futures that regarded someone of Arsinoe's age as too young for consummation of adult passions, that her mouth on his felt wrong. . . . And yet that had made it even more enticing–

He shook his head and turned to the bundle of scrolls Arsinoe had brought to him. They were all by Heron, as Jonah had requested. He examined them – and felt guilt, again, but of a different kind. He had first read copies of many of these nearly two hundred years from now, when he had first become Heron's student. He felt tears in his eyes. Those had been simpler years, when all he had felt and known was love for Heron and his astonishing knowledge. He missed those years, sorely. They jostled like the glass of broken dreams inside him. Now he was looking at these same scrolls as Heron's inquisitor. And why was that? It was because Heron was not the man Jonah had loved and learned from two hundred years from now, more than five years ago in Jonah's life. Heron was something very different, a man from a distant future who had left his words throughout hundreds of years of Alexandrian history, and who knew when and where else. But to what ultimate ends?

Perhaps these scrolls held an answer. None were titled – that convention in naming was still centuries away. These were known by their incipit – the beginning, the first few words, of the text. He read through the scrolls – looked at them more than read them – as quickly as he could. His index finger flew over the lines. He knew if he spent more time with these familiar words, he would be drawn into them, and that was not what he wanted. He wanted to find not the comfort of familiarity but the slap of surprise – he needed to see if there was anything different in these texts in front of him.

Arsinoe had given him 17 in all. She said there might have been others, in other parts of the Library. When Jonah reached the 11th scroll, he received the surprise he had been seeking. It was a text he had never seen before. Everything about it was different, including the title at the top of the scroll, where none should have been.

There, written in the clear, careful hand which Jonah was certain was Heron's, was the single word, Chronica.

[Alexandria, 150 AD]

Heron walked through the main hall of the Library, moderately populated at this hour with scholars and their students. He passed by Claudius Ptolemy, forever pacing, forever muttering, bowing slightly up and down, like a Jew in prayer. Heron had long toyed with the idea of setting Ptolemy straight, coaxing him to consider how his spheres might work were the Sun not the Earth situated at the center. Ptolemy's mathematics were already good, extraordinarily so. Their only real fault was their incorrect geocentric premise.

Yes, it was tempting. A heliocentric model, a solar system as it really was, backed not just by Greek speculation but solid mathematics. What would that have done to human history? A space-faring civilization in Alexandria or Rome? Not likely. They were still far away from basic combustible engines, even though Heron had left them his Pneumatica and his Automata. Those two scrolls should have been enough to have given the Romans steam power and locomotives. They had been the first lessons from the future he had planted back here.

But they had not been enough. And so, Heron had learned many, many times – the hard way, as they put it in some cultures – that ideas were not enough. For they moved neither material nor inertial stupidity.

Heron looked back at Ptolemy, still moving in his own epicycle. No, a solar system rendered correctly even by Ptolemy and his equations would likely not have much effect – would likely not be accepted by very many, because it went so blatantly against common sense, what people were sure they were seeing with their own eyes when the sun rose from one side of the Earth every morning and set on the other side every night. After all, it did seem for all the world that the world was standing still and the sun was slowly moving.

Still, it was tempting, very tempting – doing something to get humans into space much sooner. . . . Heron had tried to do it, one other time, with someone in the ancient world who was really no less a cosmic thinker than Ptolemy. And Heron had failed. He had traveled to the island of Samos around 300 BC, and put ideas of a solar system into the head of the bright 10-year-old, Aristarchus. And the boy had grown into a brilliant ancient astronomer, who devised a heliocentric system, and yet here was Ptolemy 450 years later, mumbling in the hall, working out his equations for a system with the Earth still at the center, as if Aristarchus had never existed.

Fortunately, Heron had had better luck with Copernicus.

He bid goodnight to his rumination about Ptolemy and speeding up the development of space travel, and went to his room.

A good time to turn to time travel, as he waited for Sierra Water's possible arrival, just as he had awaited her here in Alexandria, in this very room, at almost this very same time, when he had been much younger, and he did not yet know her name. Heron took a piece of papyrus that he had already inscribed in great detail. He wrote a single word on the top: Chronica.

[Alexandria, 413 AD]

Synesius could not sleep. He donned his garments, took a beeswax candle, and walked slowly to Hypatia's room. The halls of the Library were empty. He thought the dawn was close.

Hypatia's room was as empty as the halls. He knew she was not here, but he was disappointed, nonetheless. He sat on her bed and imagined her, hair across her face, messy with half sleep. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her many times, in many places. . . . She began to respond. . . .

He opened his eyes. Plato was wrong about this, as was Plato's new champion, Augustine. Flesh was better than what the mind could conjure, at least what his poor mind could imagine. . . . Yet he was aroused by these imaginings.

He picked up his candle from the floor and looked around the room one more time. A small gleaming object caught his attention. It was in a corner, nearly under the bed, likely invisible to anyone from any other angle, with any other kind of lighting.

He placed it in the palm of his hand, and examined it in the candle light. Its shape was an ab – the Egyptian heart-soul. He opened the hinge. A picture flickered within – in three dimensions. He jerked his head back, involuntarily. But the locket did not frighten him. It captivated him. Another of Heron's inventions, no doubt. . . .

In the picture, an older man was pulling a younger man away from a woman, the same age as the younger man. None looked familiar to Synesius. The young man and woman were very fair – likely of far Northern origin. The older man was balding.

Synesius could not even be sure this was Hypatia's, but he felt that it was, and, more, was of great value to her. Her leaving it here, then, bode no good. Either she had left in a fearful hurry, or had been taken against her will. This strange picture in his hand was slim evidence, he knew, but–

He heard footsteps in the hall.

"Synesius!" It was Josephus. "I am glad that I found you."

"What is it?"

"A ship arrived last hour from Carthage," Josephus replied.

"Odd time for a ship to arrive."

"I know," Josephus replied. "But it carried important information for you– "

"Yes?"

"Marcellinus – and his brother, Apringius – have been taken prisoner."

"By who, the Donatists?" Synesius knew better than to say the Nitrians – they took no prisoners. "Are they insane? Now General Maricus has just the reason he needs to destroy them!"

Josephus's mouth worked before he replied. "Maricus is the one who took them prisoner – and at the Donatists's behest, no doubt. The General was growing angrier by the hour at the brutal tactics of Marcellinus and Apringius."

Synesius was silent.

"Augustine is pleading for their lives," Josephus said.

Synesius nodded slowly. "We must return to Carthage, immediately – alert the gubernator of the ship that brought this report. Tell him he will be very well paid. . . . Go!"

Josephus left. Synesius considered. No, he could not stay in Alexandria any longer. Which meant he was less likely to see Hypatia again. Maybe he would never see her again. Maybe he would never know for sure if she lived or had died. . . .

Synesius opened his hand. It had clenched closed the moment Josephus had arrived. Synesius was not a thief. But he knew he could not leave this place without the heart-soul of Hypatia that he held in his hand.

[Alexandria, 150 AD]

Sierra walked swiftly through the Library. It had been a day. She had timed her arrival here to miss Heron as well as her younger self and Jonah. Not that it likely would have mattered if she had run into herself as Ampharete, and Jonah as Heron's apprentice. Neither would have recognized her passing on the street.

Certainly Sierra had had no idea what Hypatia looked like, when Sierra had been here as Ampharete back then. Neither would Jonah at that point, Sierra was pretty sure. No one back here had ever seen Hypatia. Except, possibly, Heron.

But he had left before Ampharete and Jonah – he was already gone, Jonah had told her, when she had awoken that morning. She remembered every instant of that strange day. She'd been sound asleep, dreaming that someone was looking at her, enjoying looking at her . . . . And when she awoke, Jonah was indeed in the next room, in Heron's quarters right here in Library, and Heron was gone. And she and Jonah had boarded the Lux. . . .

She quickened her pace. She glanced at her wrist for her watch. She'd left it in the future, of course. But even her brief sojourn in the future had brought back a flood of reflexes she had carefully diverted during her time in the past. . . . So she had no precise knowledge of the time of day, but–

Good, there was the Nubian. She had acquired him earlier. He approached from the shadows. She knew he had a knife under his garb. It wasn't to hurt her. It was to protect her. She nodded at him and smiled slightly. They turned a corner.

Claudius Ptolemy was mumbling into his scrolls, moving his head up and down. He reminded Sierra of a pigeon in a playground. Ptolemy barely noticed her and the Nubian as they swept past him.

Heron's quarters were straight ahead–

She put her hand on the Nubian to stop him. The door was wide open. She could see Heron inside. As far as she could tell, Heron could not see her. What was he doing here?

Had Jonah lied to her all those years ago about Heron's leaving? Had Jonah simply been mistaken? Or was this a later Heron, who had doubled or tripled or whatever back here?

That was the most likely explanation, but–

She started to slowly back off. No–

She shook her head and her caution off and walked quickly to Heron's open doorway. The Nubian was right behind her. She could not back away from this now. She and the Nubian entered.

Heron rose. "I've been expecting you–"

"Sit down," Sierra ordered. The Nubian enforced this with a heavy hand on the inventor's shoulder.

"You needn't be concerned," Heron said, with some irritation. "None of my men are here."

"I know," Sierra said.

"You came here to save some of the texts," Heron said.

"Yes, but I realize there is no point in my trying to save anything with you at large."

Heron smiled. "You wish to make me your prisoner?"

"There is probably no point in my doing that, either."

"Then. . . ." Heron's bushy brows knitted, and he laughed. "You wouldn't kill me – I still have a near infinity of information that you need. Such as how to fully control the chairs."

"True," Sierra replied. "But I can get that kind of information from your younger self, any time.

Heron tried to rise. The Nubian kept him down. "You're not a killer," Heron said.

"You weren't supposed to be here," Sierra said.

"You won't kill me – you can't be sure that I'm not an earlier Heron than you suppose, whose future self has already interacted with you in some significant way, and you won't risk killing me and thereby unraveling your own past–"

"I'm willing to risk it." Sierra nodded to the Nubian, who put his knife under Heron's neck.

"I can show you something, right now," Heron rasped.

Sierra considered. She looked at the Nubian. "Kill–"

"I can show you something that will be useful, essential, to exactly what you want to do, right now. As you must know by now, the process of traveling through time to the future strips the very electrons from your recording devices and renders them useless. You'll get no texts to the future that way. But I can show you a different way to save them."

"I gave Alcibiades a dictionary from the future, and the electrons worked just fine in that," Sierra responded.

"Yes, but that was then, and this is now, and travel to the past is not the same as travel to the future, which exacts a far greater toll on electrons."

"Are you saying you changed the settings in the chairs to prevent transport of recorders from here to the future?" Sierra put her hand on the Nubian's wrist. "I'll take this knife from the Nubian and slit your throat myself."

Heron was not smiling. "I am saying you need me, alive, with what I know now, at this instant, to show you how to save the scrolls."