Chapter Fifteen
[New York City, 2061 AD]
Sierra and Max awoke the next morning in the soft, fresh sheets of their bed in the New Barclay Hotel. "So the question still is can we completely trust her," Max said about the android, picking up their conversation from precisely where it had left off when they both had fallen asleep, spent in each other's arms, about 10 hours earlier the night before.
"Probably not, but what choice do we have," Sierra said, and stretched herself further awake.
"She told me you programmed her in the future," Max continued. "And she knows all kinds of things about you, such as exactly when you arrived in the Millennium Club in this year with Socrates. But she also said that Heron has programmed copies of her that look and think like her, and know everything about you that she does, except the copies are working for Heron."
"Well no one else knows what she personally experienced – say, what I said to her just yesterday – unless she deliberately communicated that to Heron or the other androids, right?" Sierra asked.
"Yeah, I suppose so."
"This whole question is related to the paradox of the liar in some way, isn't it?" Sierra said, and kissed Max lightly on the chest.
"How would that be?" Max asked, a little distracted.
"If someone says this very statement is a lie, then you can't know if that's a lie or true. If the statement that 'this statement is a lie' is true, then that means it's truly a lie, which means it's not true, which means it's a lie, but if the statement that 'this statement is a lie' is a lie, then that means it's true, which means. . . ." She said most of this while tracing lines with the tip of her finger on Max's chest and a little below.
"I'm still not completely getting this," Max said.
"Good," Sierra said, thinking this hotel room was the first place she felt really comfortable in bed in she couldn't remember how long, and last night she had been too exhausted to fully enjoy it, but she felt rested to the bone and raring to go now.
* * *
"I get what you were saying before about the android and the paradox of the liar," Max said to Sierra, as they consumed with gusto an old-fashioned American breakfast of grits and shrimp. "She says she's a good android and as evidence of her goodness she tells us there are bad androids that are just like her. So how do we know she's not really a bad android, warning us that there are bad androids, just to put us at ease and get us to think she's good?"
"Right," Sierra said and let the flavor of a perfectly genteched cherry-orange juice work its way around her tongue and the roof of her mouth. "Or she could just be truly good, truly trying to warn us. Her one statement counts equally against her being bad and her being good – or equally in favor of both of them – and without further evidence, we can never know which one is true."
"So far the evidence suggests that she's good," Max said.
Sierra nodded.
"She told me some things about you," he said, slowly. "If she's good, that likely means they're true. If not, then–"
"What did she tell you?" Sierra asked.
"That Alcibiades loved you deeply, but stayed away from you because he was afraid that you and he were Heron's parents," Max said, almost tenderly, in concern about Sierra's feelings and how she would react to this. "I guess he must have had some reason to believe this."
"It didn't happen," Sierra said, "and I just can't believe that it ever could happen, in any timeline however warped."
"You already knew this about Alcibiades?" Max could tell from Sierra's reaction that she already did. "You talked so much about Alcibiades, and why he disappeared on you–"
"The android told me when I first arrived in Athens 2061 AD," Sierra replied. "When you ran off to the hospital. Why did you really do that? It was reckless."
Max ordered two cups of pineapple mint green tea. He finished the last of his cherry-orange juice. "I wanted to tell him, if there was any chance he was still at the hospital, that he didn't have to stay away from you – that his just leaving you like that caused you years of pain."
Sierra felt her eyes burn with the beginning of tears.
"I'm sorry," Max said, softly, "now I've caused you pain. But – I was also being goddamn selfish. I wanted to tell him there was no need to become Thomas, no need to start this whole insane thing we're in. We were pretty happy back then in New York, 19 years ago. Life was fun. And I'm not even sure we made the world a better place with all that we've done. Socrates didn't have any more impact on the world after you saved him. He may have made Thomas – Alcibiades – happy, but–"
"What? What did you say?"
"That all your bringing Socrates to the future did was make Thomas happy for a few months–"
"What does that have to do with Alcibiades?" she demanded. She hadn't quite gotten it the first time Max had said it, but now it was ringing with deafening clarity in her head.
Max realized what was happening. "But you told me the android told you about Alcibiades and why he stayed away from you – she didn't tell you about Thomas?"
"What exactly are you telling me?" Sierra asked, through tears.
"That, according to the android, Alcibiades at some point had his face changed to look like someone else, just like you did with Hypatia, except in Alcibiades's case the face was of no one in particular, just very different from the face you loved in Alcibiades."
"Why? Why didn't she tell me herself?" Sierra asked.
"I don't know," Max replied. "Maybe because she was afraid you wouldn't come back here if you knew, because you didn't want to have a confrontation with Thomas–"
The human waiter approached and put the tea on their table. "Will there be anything else?"
[Alexandria, 415 AD]
"Hypatia!" Benjamin exclaimed in concern and reproach as he entered Hypatia's quarters in the Library. "I heard that you had returned, I did not want to believe it, and I am grieved to see it is true."
"You have gotten older." She absently touched her chin, and was glad the face-change had taken so well.
"Please do not change the subject," Benjamin said. "The Nitrians are more aggressive than ever. It is unsafe for you to be here."
She waved that off. "How is your father?"
"Again, beside the point," Benjamin said, aggravated. "He has remarried, but I have not been in touch with him for months – he is in another time now." He moved closer and spoke in an urgent whisper. "What are you doing here? Have you grown tired of life?"
"I came back to retrieve a scroll. I arrived, first, in 410 - to steer clear of the Nitrians. But Appleton interrupted me and insisted I leave with him. He said he would make a spectacle if I did not, so I left – without the scroll. Now I'm back here – this is the last chance I will have."
Benjamin frowned and shook his head in disbelief. "A scroll?"
He received no answer.
"Are you sure it is not your lost love, Alcibiades, that you seek here?"
[New York City, 2061 AD]
Max and Sierra quickly packed their Victorian clothes in their room. They had gone to a vintage store in the Village after breakfast, and obtained clothing suitable for their visit to William Henry Appleton in the 1890s, with pockets deep enough to hold the scrolls. They had also spent a small fortune on fistfuls of silver dollars from the 1880s to cover their expenses on this trip. Sierra was glad the android had loaded their phones with so much credit. They had cleaned out five stamp and coin shops of every 1880s silver dollar in stock.
Max put a call into the Millennium. "Good," he said. "See you soon."
"Thomas is not there?" Sierra asked. She knew he had died in 2058, but with these chairs you never knew who might appear in the Club after their passing.
"No, just Cyril Charles, who's now expecting us. He checked and says there are two chairs there."
"I really don't want to see anyone now," Sierra said, "not before we get our scrolls safely lodged with Mr. Appleton. But I guess we have no choice with Mr. Charles."
Max nodded. "Have we made a final decision about whether to scan the scrolls and store the scans here as back-up, before we give the scrolls to Appleton?"
"Scanning the scrolls will be no easy process." Sierra said. "Could take hours, even a day or two - they're after all not flat paper – and we likely would have to leave them in someone else's possession during that time."
"Cyril said he'd be in the Millennium all week," Max said.
"And there's also the danger of any scan attracting Heron," Sierra said.
"We're a five-minute walk from the Millennium," Max said. "Let's forget the scans and go."
* * *
They pulled and pushed open the outer and inner doors of the Millennium Club about five minutes later. An elderly gent to who looked to be in his early hundreds welcome them. "Mr. Charles is upstairs," he said and glanced again at the photos on his phone, just to confirm that Sierra and Max were indeed the couple that Charles had said he was expecting.
They walked up the spacious central flight of stairs. Cyril Charles was seated at a far table, talking to a woman neither Max nor Sierra knew. Charles spotted them and walked quickly over with handshakes and a smile.
"Good to see the two of you again! Would you care for something to eat?"
Sierra thought Charles didn't look a day older than the last time they had met, or, for that matter, any and every other time they had met. "We're fine, thanks," she said, and gave him a big hug and a soft kiss on the cheek. She knew she had no idea how long it had been for Mr. Charles since she had last seen him, or how many times if any her older self might have seen him in the interim. And, if she remembered correctly, he didn't like time travelers asking him, because that courted too many paradoxical complications.
"Would you like to go upstairs to the chairs now?" he inquired, just the slightest bit flustered by the affection.
"Yes, thank you," Sierra said.
They walked past the library, past the ancient holdings, to the spiral staircase that led to the past or the future. Sierra had an urge to put the Aristotle scrolls she carried right there on the shelf along with the Jowett translations and other Aristotle books. But these were scrolls she had rescued from the flames to come in Alexandria, she reminded herself, not books, and they would stick out of the bookcase like sore thumbs. She wanted them nestled safely and securely somewhere, available in a non-flamboyant way for scholars or anyone who happened to come upon them, so their wisdom could naturally percolate into the culture. If they attracted too much attention, that could lead to questions about where they had come from and how they had gotten here. . . . Just like the manuscript with Socrates and Andros that had drawn her into all of this in the first place–
She realized that Max had a climbed a few steps up the staircase and was looking down at her.
"Is everything ok?" Charles inquired gently. "These trips you take can be very taxing."
"I'm fine," Sierra said.
"Would you like to postpone–" Charles continued.
"No, I'm fine, really," she said. She flashed him a bright smile and started the climb. She, Max, and Mr. Charles were in the room a half a minute later.
"Well, you know how this works," he gestured to the two chairs. "I'll bid you bon voyage now, walk back down those stairs, and won't tell a soul about this, including your future selves." He smiled again and turned to leave–
"Who do you work for?" Sierra suddenly blurted out.
"Excuse me?" Charles replied, taken a little aback.
"She wants to know who hired you, who pays your salary, you know," Max said.
"Well, this Club, to be sure," Charles replied. "But you knew that."
"I think she wants to make sure that your employer isn't Heron of Alexandria," Max said.
"I assure you, I have never even met the man," Charles said.
"Then how did you come to be employed here, in the first place?" Sierra asked.
"I was hired in an earlier time, and when I first was hired, I did not even know about the chairs – Mr. William Henry Appleton showed them to me the first time."
"And who told him about the chairs?" Sierra asked.
"I believe that was Thomas O'Leary," Charles said. "I am puzzled by all of these questions – do you mistrust me? Did you find reason in your travels to think I might be working against your best interests?"
"I'm sorry," Sierra said. "I have never had any reason, found any occasion, to do nothing but trust you to the utmost, as I always have and always will." She squeezed his shoulder and he took her hand.
"That's quite all right, my dear," Charles said. "I know these trips take their toll." He left and closed the door behind him.
* * *
Sierra and Max changed into their Victorian clothes, and left their 2061 garb in a bag that Cyril Charles would retrieve and store as soon as they were gone. Sierra set the arrival time for 1895 on both chairs. "Five or more years since the last time he time-traveled, as far as we know, and four years before he died," she said to Max about Appleton, "should keep us clear of paradox but give him enough time to arrange for translations and quietly introduce the scrolls into his world."
Max nodded. "These chairs are not as precise as the ones we've been using."
"Right" Sierra said. "They're like stick shifts compared to automatics. Or automatics compared to robocars. But they have the synch feature, so even if they arrive a little earlier or later, they'll both arrive at the same time. Ready?"
Max smiled. "Yeah."
The bubble ascended in each chair. Sierra thought the kiss of the cosmos was a little more soulful than with the newer models. The bubbles went down. She and Max stood and quickly made their way downstairs. "I'm glad Mr. Charles is not here now," Sierra said quietly. "I shouldn't have jumped on him like that." And in fact she was glad that she saw no one in the main Millennium hall that she knew.
[New York City, 1895 AD]
Max and Sierra walked out into bright, crisp light. "It feels like either Spring or Fall," Max said. "Grand Central Depot should still be that way, right?"
"Yeah, it's been here since 1871," Sierra replied.
They came to a bustling newsstand about half a block later on Fifth Avenue. Max gave the man behind the stand a silver dollar and picked up a thin paper copy of The New York Times.
"Do you have anything smaller," the balding, bearded news agent asked.
"No, sorry," Max replied.
The news agent grunted and counted out three quarters, two dimes, and two shiny new Indian-head pennies, which Max took and pocketed.
"Cheapskate," Sierra scolded Max as they resumed their walk down Fifth Avenue. "Why didn't you tell him to just keep the change?"
"I didn't want to attract undue attention by appearing too generous back here," Max said.
"Right," Sierra said.
Max pointed to the date on the paper – "NEW-YORK, THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 1895".
"The chairs were pretty accurate this time," Sierra said, and took Max's arm.
The two reached Grand Central Depot five minutes later. "Uh, excuse me, Miss," Max said to a young woman who appeared to be in her 20s, with long black hair and bright blue eyes, "could you tell us where the nearest phone station is?"
She looked at Max, then Sierra, then back at Max, and smiled shyly. "I believe there is one in that direction." She pointed to an entrance to the Depot on the corner.
"Thank you," Max said, and smiled engagingly back. "And, would you by any chance have two nickels for this dime?" He proffered one of the Liberty Seated dimes he had received from the news agent.
"I believe I do," the woman said and reached into her pocket. Max exchanged the dime for two Liberty Head nickels.
"Thank you so much," Max said.
The woman smiled again and walked away.
Max, still smiling, looked carefully at the two nickels. "My grandfather was an avid collector," he told Sierra, "My father gave me the collection when I was a kid."
"Ok, maybe you're not just a cheapskate," Sierra said. "She has almost a British accent, doesn't she?" Sierra remarked about the woman. "I've noticed that about some people back here in New York in this time." She took Max's arm again and they walked into Grand Central.
"They didn't have phone booths quite yet," Max said, as they approached a phone on the top of a box mounted on a wall. A man who had been standing in front of the phone turned and nodded vigorously. "I'm going to have one of these installed in my home!" he said.
Max and Sierra nodded back and looked at the box as the man walked away. "Do not deposit nickel until told to do so by the Operator." Max slowly read aloud the engraved words on the box, and pointed to a slot below the word "deposit" that was precisely the size of a nickel. "Let's hope Appleton's phone number works."
"He gave it to me more than once," Sierra said. She had written it on a piece of paper back in the hotel room in 2061. Max handed her a nickel, then took the phone off the hook and handed her the phone, too.
The operator asked Sierra what number she wished to call, and instructed her to place the nickel in the slot.
She waited what felt like a long time, but was actually less than a minute.
Then – "Mr. Appleton?"
[Carthage, 415 AD]
The Nubian ushered Heron into Augustine's room.
"Hypatia is back in the Library, at this very minute," Heron said, with some urgency. "She has to be stopped."
"Don't expect me to condone murder, because I will not," Augustine replied.
"There are many texts yet in the Library which could cause humanity irreparable harm – enabling the construction of fearsome weapons, well before the social and technological means existed to control them," Heron said. "That is why I've thought it best to let the whole remainder of the Library burn at Omar's hands in centuries to come."
"You do not know that those are the texts she would take to the future," Augustine said. "Perhaps she only wants to save another scroll written by Aristotle, which might well do humanity some good."
Heron shook his head in frustration. "What would you suggest we do, then? Nothing?"
"That could be the best policy – let history run its original course," Augustine replied. "The Nitrians, despite all I have done to eradicate them, are still at large. They will soon put Hypatia to death. History as well as your anxieties will be served."
"But she could go to the future today – tomorrow – at any time before the Nitrian attack," Heron responded.
"Then use your skills to disable at least some of those time-transgressing chairs."
[New York City, 1895 AD]
Sierra and Max took the Hudson River train up to Riverdale, enjoying every ray of sunlight that glinted off the river through the rattling window. They hiked up the road to Appleton's Wave Hill home.
Appleton was standing in front of his open door. Sierra thought he looked a little more tired and older. He walked forth and opened his arms to both of them. "Whatever happens now, no more travel overseas to time travel. You can live your lives here, or in your time, but on this side of the Atlantic, safe and sound."
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]
Heron strode right by the Nubian into Augustine's room.
"Yes?" Augustine lifted his head from the scroll he had been reading.
"Your counsel was wise," Heron said, and sat in a chair without invitation. "I received word that the event took place five days ago."
"So your secrets are saved, consigned to the future flames."
"Not all of my secrets," Heron said. "Some may have been smuggled to the future by Sierra and her cohort earlier. But, yes, the hemorrhaging of the past has been stopped, at least for now."
"Interesting, is it not, that you and Sierra both were intent on saving," Augustine mused, "you your secrets, Sierra the knowledge that previously had been lost. You sought to save your scrolls from unwanted eyes by safeguarding their appointment with the flames, she sought to save that knowledge for humanity by rescuing the scrolls from those very same flames."
"Your future has been safeguarded, too," Heron felt it necessary to point out. "I gave you the tools to make your Church permanent. If others had that knowledge – if others knew how to construct devices that move men through time – your position and that of the Church in the future would be far weaker."
"Are you sure it was Sierra whom the monstrous Nitrians slaughtered – the woman who travelled through time? Faces seem to transform with the regularity of the seasons when you are in residence."
"Benjamin – son of Jonah – confirmed it," Heron said. "He got there too late to save her. But he took her precious locket, which she always carried. Her body had been torn to pieces. A woman in my employ shares Benjamin's bed – when the time is right, I will ask her to retrieve the locket, so I can have the proof in my hands. It was bathed in blood – there are means in the future to identify exactly whose blood it was."
Augustine's lips moved with mixed emotions. "A mystery of the universe I have yet to comprehend is why it often takes the death of flesh to feed the life of ideas."
[New York City, 1895 AD]
Sierra closed the door behind Max and felt in her pocket once again, to make sure she had enough money to book passage on the next liner to London.
She walked down the stairs and out into morning light, which felt rude upon her face.
She walked about half a block. Everything felt very heavy, even though she was carrying nothing. She could buy an inexpensive change of clothes after she had purchased her ticket.
Why did the world feel so heavy? Why was it so hard for her to move? She stopped to catch her breath. She felt a little better. A red cardinal flew by her. It was chirping, and the sound soothed her. She took a step or two to see it more clearly, in the direction from which she had just come, and she discovered that the heaviness was gone. Her head felt lighter.
She walked a little further, more quickly, back to the hotel.
Max was standing in front of the hotel. He ran to her, flung his arms around, kissed her all over her face.
"I don't want to lose you, either," Sierra said. "We'll work this out, figure how to get back to the 21st century. In the meantime, we can help Appleton place the scrolls."
Max held Sierra close. "I'm getting to love this century. I spotted a little place yesterday that serves breakfast, about three blocks away. Just like 'The Girls in their Summer Dresses'."
"That's in the next century, decades away," Sierra said, "about a guy ogling every girl who walks by." She gave him a playful shove.
And the two walked off, hand in hand, to face the millennia.