"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.
Appendix
The following real people appear in Unburning Alexandria (along with characters for whom there is no historical record). The details provided below are what we know of them, as of the time of this writing (April 2013).
Alcibiades, 450-404 BC. Reputed to be handsome, amorous, wealthy, brilliant, brave, unpredictable, egotistical, and Socrates' favorite student. The two saved each other's lives as soldiers near the beginning of the Second Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. Alcibiades later became an Athenian general, with mixed results. He fell in and out of favor with various oligarchic and democratic governments in Athens. While taking temporary refuge in Phrygia, on the east side of the Aegean, he was murdered by a band of Spartans (either loyal to Sparta, or hired by Alcibiades' political opponents in Athens). According to I. F. Stone in The Trial of Socrates (1988) and his sources, Alcibiades was surprised while in bed with a woman, and fought "naked, outnumbered, but brave with sword in hand" till the end.
Antisthenes, 444?-365 BC. Oldest disciple of Socrates, said to have walked daily from Piraeus to Athens to hear him speak. Identified in Plato's Phaedo as being present on the last day of Socrates's life. Antisthenes wrote a dialog about Alcibiades; just a few fragments survive.
Appleton, William Henry, 1814-189
9. Became head of the publishing company, D. Appleton & Co, when his father Daniel retired in 1844. Published Lewis Carroll, Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and leading nineteenth-century scientists and philosophers in America. Offices in Manhattan. Owned the Wave Hill house in Riverdale, overlooking the Hudson River and the Palisades, 1866-1899. Huxley was among his guests at the house. Theodore Roosevelt's family rented Wave Hill (when he was a boy in the summers of 1870 and 1871), as did Mark Twain (1901-1903).
Aristotle, 384-322 BC. Plato's student, Alexander the Great's teacher, one of the two titans (along with Plato) of Western philosophy. He emphasized the importance of observation and empirical evidence (in contrast to Plato's focus on ideas), and is therein one of the founders of scientific method. Influential essays attributed to Aristotle span dozens of seminal topics including politics, biology, logic, education, poetry, and ethics in as many as 140 works, some or all of which are thought be lecture notes compiled by his students. Only a third to a half of these survive. We know about the lost works because they are mentioned elsewhere.
Arsinoe IV, 68/56?- 41 BC. Cleopatra's younger half-sister, political rival, controversially executed by Marc Antony on the steps of a sanctuary temple in Rome.
Augustine of Hippo (St. Augustine), 354-430 AD. Arguably the greatest Christian thinker and philosopher, responsible for much of the Church's fundamental theology, which he presented at a time – the decline of the Roman empire - crucial for the Church's survival and growth into the future. Combined ancient pagan philosophy with Christian teaching, in particular Plato's realm of ideal forms – the ultimate source of truth and beauty, never fully perceivable by humans - with the holy "City of God". He failed to prevent the execution of his friend Marcellinus (see below) and dedicated the first books of The City of God to him. The only Christian philosopher of perhaps comparable import would be St. Thomas Aquinas (1224-1275 AD).
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