Past the temple was a huge oval structure that she recognized as the hippodrome, and beyond that a city wall and the Canopian Gate. Two guards stood on either side of the gate.
“Open your bags, please,” one of them said. “Did you bring any books?”
They confiscated books from travelers and then copied them, she knew, and returned the copies instead of the originals. Because of that the agents had not packed any books, not wanting to draw attention to them.
The guards looked inside their bags and motioned them through. A street stretched out before them, straight and smooth as a table, lined with columns made of red granite. They passed churches and temples, gardens and obelisks and statues, everything a strange combination of the light classicism of Greece and the ponderous weight of Egypt, so that they saw temples with painted columns in front and carvings of Osiris and Isis on the massive red-brick walls. Other streets crossed theirs at right angles, and she thought that no matter how much she had loved Knossos she was glad to have come to a tace you could map out on a grid. All of it spread out, open, displayed before them like goods for sale.
People passed them too, Roman soldiers on horses and camels, monks in black robes, citizens walking or carried on sedan-chairs, wearing cloaks and chitons and togas. Fortune-tellers sat next to cages filled with birds, offering to cut the birds open and read the entrails. Philosophers stood on the corners, calling out their wares like fruit-sellers: “You there—do you know what the perfect number is?” “What’s the size of the world—have any idea?”
Zach was looking around him, trying not to stare, not to be too obvious. “I know,” Ann said in English. “Isn’t it great?”
A man in front of them stopped abruptly and bowed solemnly to a cat on a doorstep. Zach nodded, seeming too amazed to say anything.
The company liked to get their agents to a tace in late afternoon, giving them time to look around, eat a meal, and have a good night’s sleep before they started on their assignment. They stopped at a restaurant and Ann had a surprisingly good dinner of fish and beer, with figs and melons and raisins on the side.
Elias led them to their inn. Ann was certain she wouldn’t be able to sleep that night, but when she woke up it was morning, the sun shining through their window.
“All right,” Da Silva said at breakfast. They were back at the same restaurant, eating rolls stuffed with fruit and drinking more beer. She was speaking English, though there was no one around to overhear them. “We’re going to give you your assignments. Very simple this time. All you have to do is move some oil lamps in the library from one place to another. We’re going to head over there today, show you where the lamps are and where we want them, and then we’ll go back tomorrow, early in the morning. The disturbances will start tomorrow and spread to the library about an hour later, so we’ll want to be well away by then.”
“What disturbances?” Zach asked.
“I was getting to that. The Christian patriarch here, The-ophilus, is taking over all the pagan temples, turning them into churches. Tomorrow he’s closing the Serapeum, the most important temple in Alexandria, and a group of pagans has vowed to keep it open. They’re going to barricade themselves inside it and fight the patriarch’s forces. And then the fighting spreads to the library, and the patriarch’s mob burns it down.”
“The library’s destroyed tomorrow?” Ann asked. “Isn’t that cutting it a little close?”
“We try to spend as little time in a tace as possible, to minimize errors. You had more time in Crete because we didn’t know how long it would take to gain the Minos’s confidence. This tace, as I said, they’ve given you an easier assignment.”
“When am I going to talk to Meret?” Ann asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t know if there’ll be time. We’ll have to play everything by ear.”
They went out into the streets again. Alexandria was tiny, Ann remembered, only about two miles from east to west and one mile north to south, though it was one of the most important cities in the world.
They turned at the intersection of two main streets, marked by high red columns at the corners, then Elias took them through an outdoor market. She looked for evidence that something was about to happen, for displays of tension or temper, but everyone seemed to be going about their business. People all around them were stopping at booths and chatting to the proprietors, buying olives, lapis lazuli, cinnamon, ivory statues and golden charms in the shapes of gods and goddesses. And of course books—one section of the market was devoted entirely to venders selling scrolls.
How would she know what a normal day in the city looked like, though? Those people over there, whispering to each other, were they pagans discussing their tactics for tomorrow? Would that monk in the black robe take part in the fighting?
They came out on the other side of the market, into a garden the size of a city block. A group of people walked past them along the flowerbeds, talking loudly.
There was something eerily familiar about the scene, like the worst case of déjà vu she had ever had. The people were all leaning in toward the center, listening intently. Then the crowd parted briefly, and she saw a small woman with raised eyebrows.
Hypatia, Ann thought. Not only that, but this was the exact moment she had seen on the video in class. A ribbon came loose from Hypatia’s hair, and as she watched it fell to the ground, forgotten.
She looked around for the camera, found it as it buzzed past them, the camera’s wings glassy in the sunlight. If she watched the video again would she see herself on it this time?
Another woman stood at the outskirts of the group. Ann didn’t remember her from the video; the camera hadn’t photographed that part of the crowd. A black woman, with long black braids mixed with gray …
“Meret!” she said without thinking.
The woman turned toward her. “I’m sorry,” she said in Greek. “Do I know you?”
God, that was stupid, Ann thought. Da Silva and Elias were both staring at her, looking shocked and angry. “I—I saw a video of you back at Transformations,” Ann said to Meret in English. “They told us to find you if we had any problems.”
Meret frowned. “They never said anything to me about being a Preparer,” she said. She caught sight of Elias and grinned. “Yaniel! I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“No, this assignment was planned after you left,” Elias said. “Good to see you.”
“You too,” Meret said. “Hey, what happened to your mustache?”
Elias scowled. “I had to shave it off. It hasn’t grown back yet.”
Meret looked around for Hypatia and her followers, but they had already gone past the obelisk at the center of the garden. “Well, I have my own assignment hern. Where are you staying?”
Elias told her, and she hurried away.
“What were you thinking?” Da Silva asked Ann after Meret had gone. “Didn’t they tell you that she’s never seen you before? That you have to be careful, very careful? The last thing you want is for her to become suspicious.”
It was hard hearing Da Silva criticize her, worse than if it had been anyone else. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It won’t happen again.”
“All right,” Da Silva said, sounding mollified. “You recovered well, at least.”
They headed across the garden toward a cluster of buildings. Excitement began to fill her, a different and more intense excitement than what she’d felt at the palace in Knossos. Here was an entire city that understood the importance of books, of knowledge and ideas and philosophy. And she would see it soon, the largest and greatest library in the world.
They came to the porch and walked between the two statues, Thoth and Seshat. “God of wisdom, and of writing,” Elias murmured, indicating Thoth. “Goddess of time and measurement”—and now Ann saw that what she had thought was Seshat’s staff was some kind of recording instrument, marked with a series of notches. It was topped with a star enclosed in a sort of upside-down bowl, or a crescent moon facing do
wnwards.
The bronze doors stood open. A guard asked them for their proof of membership, and Elias showed him the papers the company had forged. Then Elias led them through an antechamber and into an open courtyard surrounded by columned passageways. They headed down one passage, past people talking, arguing, hurrying from one place to another with buckets of scrolls. Some of the people were head-down in their scrolls, and Ann and the others had to dodge out of their way as they approached.
Doors opened off the colonnade. She glanced through one and then stopped, her breath caught in wonder. The room was enormous. Tall marble columns held up a frieze along the walls, with bookcases in the niches between them. A statue of Minerva stood at the front, the drapes of her clothes swirling as though she had just arrived and planted her spear against the pedestal. Two rows of desks ran down the room, with people sitting at them and reading quietly. Marble of every color paved the floor, shining out where the sun hit it from the high windows and open door: blood red, sea green, fiery yellow-orange.
She took a step inside. The place smelled sour, organic, probably because of all the papyrus scrolls crowded together; it reminded her of a health-food store. She looked up and saw another story above the frieze, with more niches, more bookcases, another statue. And this was just one section of the library, with more rooms elsewhere.
“Ann!” Elias called. “Come on.”
She hurried after them. They passed a large amphitheater, probably an empty classroom, and then a smaller classroom, with young men and a few women sitting on the stone steps and taking notes. Boys and girls sat in the next room, ranging from about five to ten years old, and at the head of the class, pointing to some Roman numbers written on papyrus, was Hypatia, with Meret standing next to her.
Was Meret supposed to be there? What if she refused to follow orders again, what if she was teaching them calculus or Arabic numbers, things that hadn’t even been invented yet?
“Is that what she’s here to do?” Ann whispered to Elias, not wanting Meret to look up and see them. “Teach the kids?”
Elias peered into the classroom. “I don’t know,” he said. “We’d better let her get on with it, whatever it is.”
The line of columns ended and they walked through another garden, this one with a reflecting pool at the center. Then they came to another colonnade, and another row of doors.
Elias consulted a piece of papyrus and went into one of the rooms. This room was small, about a third the size of the first one, but it was arranged along the same plan, with bookshelves and columns and another statue at the front. He pointed to an oil lamp on one of the tables and said, “That lamp there—that has to go on this table here, closer to the bookshelves. Like I said, we’ll do that early in the morning, when the place is nearly empty. We want as few people seeing us as possible.”
He studied them a moment. “Let’s say—Ann, you’re in charge of this one. Now come on and we’ll find the rest of them.”
He looked at the papyrus and headed down the passageway, and they followed. Ann thought of Meret again, wondering what it would be like to work with Hypatia. She felt a dull prick of jealousy at the idea of the two of them becoming friends, especially when her own assignment was so boring in comparison.
And then, perhaps because she was remembering Meret from the graveyard in Knossos, she had a terrible thought. She saw the lamps knocked over, the flames leaping eagerly for the papyrus scrolls. “Why are we doing this?” she asked. “Are we trying to make sure the library gets burned down, or burn down more of it?”
Two clerks hurried by, arguing about where to shelve some scrolls. “Hush,” Elias said, though she had been speaking English. “The librarians get very nervous when people talk about fire. Understandably so.”
“But why do we want to move those lamps?”
“You know we can’t tell you that,” Elias said. “And to be honest, I couldn’t tell you even if I wanted to—they don’t explain things to the Facilitators anymore.”
“Really? Why?”
“I don’t know. It started when we got back from Crete.”
“So they thought the problem was that Meret knew we were supporting the Minos? That if she didn’t know she would have completed her assignment?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
But doesn’t that mean they have something to hide? she thought. That if they told us the results of our actions we wouldn’t do them? She said nothing, though. Clearly Elias and Da Silva didn’t want to hear her speculations about the company.
They headed toward other parts of the library. Twice Elias went into rooms and pointed out oil lamps to Zach and Da Silva. Finally he found a lamp for himself, in a part of the library that seemed to be devoted to mending scrolls, and they headed back to the entrance.
The library was starting to close by then; people in Alexandria only worked from morning to early afternoon. It seemed like a good idea to Ann, and she wondered what Sam at the computer shop would have said if she’d told him she wanted to work Alexandrian hours.
“We have the rest of the day off, like the Alexandrians,” Elias said as they went back through the first courtyard. “Unfortunately we’ll have to spend it indoors—the cameras didn’t pick up any fighting today, but they might have missed something.”
Ann had had her fill of waiting at inns. “What about Meret? When am I supposed to talk to her?”
Elias thought a moment. “I suppose you can go look for her now. But be careful, and come back as soon as you can.”
THEY HAD REACHED THE antechamber by then. Ann turned and hurried back to the colonnade. Past the large room filled with books, past the lecture room, running now toward the classroom where she had seen Meret and Hypatia. She went inside—
It was empty, the teachers and students gone. She stopped abruptly and then ran through the door on the other side and looked up and down the corridor. Empty, like the classroom.
A girl of about ten came toward her. “Do you know where the teachers are?” Ann asked. “Hypatia and—and the other woman?” Agents usually kept their names for their assignments but not always; Meret might have changed hers.
“Teacher Meret,” the girl said. “Of course—she’s in the Great Room.”
“Which one is that? The room near the entrance?”
“I’ll show you.”
The girl was tall for her age, and more self-assured than most ten-year-olds Ann had seen. She was slender, her legs as about as thin as Ann’s arms, and her nose and ears were slightly too big, as though she still needed to grow into them; she looked a bit like a gentle, friendly giraffe. She had long copper hair, an unusual color for her tace.
They headed back to the high marble room. Hypatia and Meret sat at one of the tables, rolling up their scrolls, but otherwise the room was empty. The girl ran inside, hair flying, sandals clicking against the marble.
“Teacher Hypatia,” she said. “This woman wants to talk to you.”
Hypatia looked at Ann. “No, not you,” Ann said, flustered at coming close to someone she admired. Great—now the woman would think she was horribly rude. “I’m sorry—I mean, I’m delighted to meet you, but I have to talk to Meret.”
Meret turned toward her. “All right,” she said.
“Not here,” Ann said.
Meret nodded and followed her out the door. Two men hurried down the passageway, nearly colliding with them. “Why don’t we go to one of the gardens?” Meret said in Greek.
“I want to stay indoors,” Ann said, answering her in English.
“Why? Is something wrong?”
“Not really. I just want to get away from the cameras.”
Meret looked at her shrewdly but said nothing.
They went into one of the empty classrooms, and Ann studied the other woman. She seemed younger and more relaxed in this tace, the lines on her face not as deep. Her hair had grown out, and had been twined into dozens of braids. No, of course she hadn’t grown it out—she’d cut it sometime between
now and her assignment in Kaphtor.
She studied Ann with a focused, attentive expression, as though she expected to learn something interesting. She looked, in fact, a bit like Hypatia herself, as if she had picked up some of the other woman’s attitudes while studying with her.
Ann had given some thought to her assignment, about how to start. She drew a deep breath. “My last assignment was in Knossos, in the Bronze Age.”
“Oh, man, I’d love to go thern. I put in a request for it, but no one’s said anything yet.”
“I liked it a lot. I liked the way the women were in charge, and all the goddesses, Kore, Potnia—”
Meret stopped and stared at her. “Are you—” she whispered.
“In Core?” Ann said. She felt exultant. She had guessed right, it was a password. “No, but I think I want to be.” “Why? What happened?”
Ann took another breath. “They gave us our assignments hern,” she said. “We have to go to the library, move some lamps from one place to another. I think they want to make sure the place goes up in flames. And I can’t do that, I can’t help burn it down. I’d never forgive myself.”
Meret sighed. “That’s not something I’d know, unfortunately. I don’t even know a lot about my own assignment.”
“What did they tell you?”
“Just that I’m supposed to keep an eye on a certain book, make sure it doesn’t disappear. Some weird retelling of Genesis.”
“Genesis? Why on earth?”
“I have no idea. Anyway, I already put a tracer on it, so I can follow it wherever it goes. Which means I can spend the rest of my time here doing stuff the company probably wouldn’t approve of, like teaching Hypatia’s students.”
Ann grinned. She was liking this version of Meret more than the last one; teaching children seemed a better use of her time than digging up dead people. “What if they see you in the cameras?”
Weighing Shadows Page 13
