Chapter Five

[London, 2042 AD, the night before]

Synesius awoke to a sound in the room. The slave was asleep next to him, her mouth open, her lips against his shoulder. He gently moved her head, sat up, and tried to see in the darkness.

A figure approached.

He saw who she was. "Stop!" he commanded. "Who–"

"She will embed a deadly, exploding device in you while you sleep," the figure said. "I have been instructed to prevent that."

"But–" Synesius looked at the sleeping slave and then the slave now standing at the foot of his bed. The two slaves were the same woman.

The sleeper mumbled softly in her sleep, lifted her head and opened her eyes for a moment.

Her double directed an intense white light into those eyes. The sleeper fell back dead on the bed, mouth and eyes now both wide open.

* * *

The shooter walked to the door, looked out, and turned back to Synesius. She produced a group of strange garments from beneath her robe and tossed them to Synesius. "Wear these robes. Come with me," she said.

Synesius didn't move. He looked at the bed and the dead, unclothed version of what had just spoken to him. "Who are you?"

"I am sorry you had to see this," she said. "I was supposed to come here to your room before she arrived. I was delayed."

"How do I know that you are not the twin who has come to kill me, and she your first victim?" He gestured with a shaky hand to the body on the bed. "She might have acted to protect me."

"You do not."

Synesius looked at the strange garments which had landed on top of his own robe near the bed. He moved as if to examine the garments, but instead seized a knife from under his robe and lunged at the shooter in a single, swift motion.

She stopped the knife an inch from her neck, and twisted Synesius's arm with an iron grip that caused the weapon to fall to the floor. "Sierra Waters sent me here to help you. Does that convince you?"

"No, it does not. You know one of Hypatia's alternate names – that does not prove that you are her slave."

She relaxed her grip on Synesius, and regarded him. "You are naked – literately and figuratively, Synesius. You are defenseless before me. You just saw what I did to my sister. Does not the fact that I am not doing that to you convince you?"

Synesius considered, sighed, and fetched his robe. "Perhaps. Where do you propose to escort me?"

She picked up one of the strange garments from the floor. "Put your feet and legs through these."

Synesius slowly obliged, and she continued dressing the Bishop of Ptolemais in clothing very different from his customary robes.

* * *

"These garments are similar to what I saw in the dining hall earlier," Synesius remarked, as he and the slave walked quickly along the hallway. Lights flickered briefly on and off on the ceiling above their heads as they passed.

"Yes," she said.

"Are we joining my friends in the feasting room?"

"No."

"Do they know that we–"

"They do not," the slave replied, as they turned a corner. She opened a door and motioned Synesius to follow.

He stopped.

"I was told you understand a sufficient amount about time travel to comprehend what I am about to tell you," the slave continued. "Your friends are asleep right now. They have no idea that my twin will be putting a weapon inside of you. It is better that they do not know about that – it is better that they think you were summoned away when you do not join them at the breakfast table tomorrow."

"Because such knowledge could somehow change history?"

The slave nodded. "Yes. Because one of the primary principles of time travel is that when you make changes – such as I am doing now to prevent your death – you do so in a way which causes the least number of disturbances in history."

"My leaving unexpectedly causes less disturbance than knowledge that a weapon was placed inside me?" Synesius asked.

"Yes."

Synesius nodded slowly, and followed the slave through the doorway. They quickly descended three flights of stairs.

"We are proceeding to the room with the chair?" Synesius asked.

"We are not," the slave replied.

"Where–"

"We are going outside of this facility," the slave said.

* * *

Synesius looked at the sky a long time. "Thank God there are stars," he muttered. "They are different from the stars I know, but at least they are stars."

He was standing with the slave in front of the Parthenon Club. The street was wet with recent rain and devoid of people. It was two in the morning.

"Our conveyance should be here soon," the slave said. "Prepare yourself. It will be drawn by no living organism."

"I have seen automata in Alexandria," Synesius said.

"You have seen nothing like this," the slave said.

Synesius regarded her. For some reason, he felt a little more at ease with her – enough to admire her beauty, as he had her sister's, whom she had just killed. "You look a little different from your twin, now that I am regarding you in this light."

She smiled. "Each of us is a little different – just as with natural twins, as they live their lives."

"You are not a natural twin? What does that mean? Jonah tried to explain, but–"

"I am made of flesh, but I was purposely constructed."

Synesius tried to understand. "Jonah spoke of your twin being instructed. . . ."

"Yes."

"You were instructed to save me," Synesius said, "and to take me on this journey, but not via the chair."

"Yes," the slave replied. "If you use the chair, certain people will know exactly where you are – some of whom could be your enemies, the people who sent my twin to kill you."

Synesius nodded.

A bubble slid towards them along the blackness of the street, like a bubble on a dark river, Synesius thought. The bubble stopped before them. It was big enough to enter.

The slave motioned Synesius to walk into the bubble. "This is our means of conveyance," she said, and entered.

Synesius hesitated for a moment, then did the same. He felt as if he was walking into a shimmering dream. But whose?

* * *

Synesius discovered he could see the stars through the top of the bubble, even though it was sealed. "Some sort of glass," he muttered.

The slave nodded. She was muttering, too, in a language Synesius did not comprehend, into a small, colorless device she held in her hand, or perhaps it was just her hand she was addressing. Synesius could not be sure. He looked above, again, at the stars. He suddenly felt nauseated, more disoriented than he had felt before. He had been trying to banish a thought, but he suddenly felt powerless now to keep it out of his mind. "Tell me the truth," he blurted, and he realized there were tears in his voice. "Am I dead?"

"No," the slave answered calmly, almost tenderly. "You are not."

"But how can I be sure? How can I trust you?" Mixed feelings coursed through him. If he was dead, he could hold his wife and his sons again. But what of Hypatia?

"You know there is no way I can prove to you that you are dead or alive," she replied, "no way I can prove this is not just your evil – or good – dream."

"The position of the solipsist is logically impregnable," Synesius agreed. "If you splash my face with cold water, and I do not awaken, that is no proof that I am not dreaming – for I might well be dreaming that you splashed my face and dreaming I did not awaken."

"Yes."

"Still, if you could–"

"Would it comfort you if I assured you that, of the two of us, I am far less alive, at least by your standards, than you?"

Synesius looked at her, especially her eyes. No, it was not her eyes that seemed so familiar, even though they reminded him of Hypatia. "I have never held that slaves are less alive than their masters. We are all God's offspring."

"It is not my condition of servitude that renders me less alive than you," the slave responded. "It is . . . " The slave shook her head, slightly. "I am searching for the proper words, to explain."

Now Synesius shook his head. "But how could your explanation – how could any explanation – possibly convince me that I am not dreaming your very explanation, from some status in the afterlife? The position of the solipsist, as you said–"

She put a cool hand over his. The vehicle had halted. Synesius had to admit that he did feel less disoriented now that he was at rest. She spoke softly. "I will convince you, because what I will tell you and where I will take you would be impossible for you to dream."

Their vehicle resumed motion. And Synesius realized why this slave seemed familiar to him. Not because he had slept with her twin just hours earlier. Not because of her face, her eyes, her posture. It was the way she reasoned.

* * *

Synesius looked out at the dark quickness of this distant future night in Londinium, and struggled to make sense of what he thought he was beginning to understand. "You were her student . . . somehow, through time . . . ."

The slave regarded him. Her eyes narrowed. "No, I was never a student."

"But . . . surely, you received education? Slaves can be permitted to receive learning. Surely, you were taught to speak the Latin you utter – you speak it very competently. Surely, you were taught to reason."

The slave considered. "Perhaps. But I was not taught in the way you imagine."

Synesius again recalled Jonah's words . . . her being intrinsically instructed. . . . What did that mean? "You were instructed."

"I was programmed."

Also Jonah's word, once again. "Is that not a kind of learning?"

The slave pursed her lips, seeking the right words. "To be programmed is to have a text inserted into your brain, inserted whole, all at once."

"I have read of surgeons, students of Galen, who do medical wonders with the brains of their patients," Synesius mused. "But those brains had been injured, and the surgeons attempt only their repair."

The slave nodded. "I suppose that is the very childlike beginning of what I am saying was done upon my brain, but . . . it is so far from what I am attempting to explain to you, that I might just as accurately say that I was a child who consumed a scroll, and its words became imprinted upon my brain."

"That would be a miracle, not philosophy," Synesius said.

The slave nodded again. "In my world, they are often the same." She pointed to lights in the distance. "That is where this automatic conveyance is bringing us. When we arrive, we will leave this vehicle, and enter another. And then you will know yet another kind of miracle, truly derived from only technos, and the application of natural philosophy."

* * *

Their vehicle entered the realm of lights. Synesius and the slave disembarked, and walked into a lofty, brightly lit structure. It reminded Synesius, for some reason, of the great bath houses in Carthage, though there was no water to be seen.

"We will soon be entering the other vehicle I spoke of," the slave said, very seriously. "Recall what I told you. You will feel frightened, agitated, when you see the land and the sea far below you. Prepare yourself. We will be on a ship that sails not the sea but the sky."

Synesius nodded. "I believe Jonah spoke of it."

"Good."

"He thought travel across time was far more disruptive."

"It is," the slave agreed. "And it is an irony that, although travel through the sky challenges no laws of the universe – birds and butterflies, after all, also ply the sky – our travel in the clouds will nonetheless feel to you far more strange than what you encountered in the time chair that brought you to the Parthenon Club."

An announcement rang out. Synesius recognized the voice as a woman's, but the words she spoke were incomprehensible.

"We will be entering the sky vehicle soon," the slave said.

"To travel across the great ocean to the West?" Synesius asked.

The slave regarded him. "No."

"Where then?"

"Back to your part of the world," the slave replied.

"Why?"

"You are needed there, in your time, and it is not wise to subject you to the risk of another voyage in the northern sea of your own time."

"You would have taken me from – the Parthenon dwelling – even had I not been killed, in the first place?" Synesius asked.

"Yes."

"My killing was therefore–"

"Planned by people who do not want you to return to your time," the slave concluded his thought.

Synesius furrowed his brow. "Which, do you suppose, is the original, true reality? The one in which I died? Or were my slayers, acting through your twin in my bed, interfering with the reality that was meant to be, which you are now working to preserve?"

The slave smiled.

Synesius found that beautiful.

"Impossible to say," the slave said. "Except – whatever reality you inhabit always seems to be the right one, the true one, because you carry no real memory of what may have existed before. It is less than a dream to you, though you can be instructed to–"

The announcement rang out again.

"We must go to the vehicle now," the slave said.

"Who needs my help, back in my own time? Is it Augustine?"

"It is Hypatia who needs you," the slave replied.