Weighing Shadows

by Lisa Goldstein

  “I’ve been pretty careful. The only close call was when you yelled out my name. I looked at you just as that camera came by.”

  “God, I’m sorry! I was just so startled to see you. But don’t worry—I actually watched that video before I left, and you weren’t in it.”

  “Really? That’s a relief.”

  A man put his head into the classroom. “What in Isis’s name are you still doing here?” he asked. “The library is closed. Outside, both of you.”

  Ann waited until the man left and said quickly, “I wanted to ask—how do I join Core?”

  “We don’t really have membership, or regular meetings,” Meret said. “We have to be very careful, because the company can send cameras to any location and find out what we’re up to. I only know a few members, and they only know a few, and so on.”

  “And there’s the password too.”

  “It’s more than a password, really. We’ve been working on—well, on a kind of underground, something to help the time-bound resist what the company is doing to them. We start with their religion, their worship of Kore or whatever goddess they believe in—as far as we can tell the company nearly always backs gods or a god, taces with men in charge. Then we add other teachings, esoteric knowledge about the company and how to deal with them … So even if the cameras notice us, if they see us going into a temple or something, the company has no idea what’s going on—they think it’s just another local religion.”

  She mentioned a few names, the members of Kore she knew, but Ann had never heard of any of them.

  The footsteps came back down the colonnade, and they stood quickly and left the room, passing the librarian on their way out. “Do you want to meet Hypatia?” Meret asked.

  “I’d love to,” Ann said, surprising herself with her enthusiasm. “Who was that kid with the red hair?”

  Meret laughed. “She’s amazing, isn’t she? That was Olympia. I can’t believe she isn’t in any of the history books—she’s as smart as Hypatia, or smarter. But of course the library burns down, so history doesn’t find out a lot of things.”

  It had been easy getting into the library, but the guard wanted to search them thoroughly when they left, to make sure they weren’t smuggling books. To her relief, he called for a woman to pat them down. “I never heard that Hypatia taught kids,” Ann said, as they headed back across the garden.

  “No. That’s another thing the histories don’t mention. But she thinks it’s more important to teach children than adults—after all, they’re the ones who are going to create the future.”

  They came out to the street, and Meret turned right. They walked in silence for a while, Ann glancing around her at the crowds. Everyone seemed to be speaking a different language, though the only ones she recognized were Greek and Latin.

  “They all look so calm,” she said, choosing her words carefully in case the cameras heard them. “Considering what’ll happen tomorrow.”

  “That’s how it goes, in a lot of taces,” Meret said. “People want to believe that everything’s fine, that things will go on the way they’ve been.”

  “I wish we could do something for Hypatia, though. That we could save her somehow. It was horrible, the way she died.”

  Meret looked at her for a long moment but said nothing. Was she silent because of the cameras, or because what Ann was saying was so impractical, a novice’s wild idea?

  They stopped at a house and Meret knocked on the door. A servant took them inside and led them to a room with a few reclining couches. There was a mosaic on the floor, pictures of birds surrounded by a frame of geometrical shapes, but otherwise the room seemed bare, austere, suitable for a philosopher. Though, Ann thought, she still had servants, or at least one. A door opposite them opened out into a courtyard, and when she looked through it she saw a bronze armillary sphere, showing the circles of the heavens.

  Hypatia came into the room and went toward them. “This is my friend Ann, the woman I met in the library,” Meret said.

  Hypatia smiled and held out her hands. “They say that two things that are equal to a third thing are equal to each other,” she said. “If Ann is your friend, and you’re mine, then I’m sure Ann and I will become great friends.”

  Ann took her hands. Hypatia led them to the couches and called for her servant to bring them some food.

  For the rest of her life, she knew, she would remember the conversation that afternoon. They talked about philosophy, and somehow Hypatia managed to make it seem interesting, even essential. But they discussed other subjects as well, politics, religion, all the things that people had warned her never to bring up in conversation.

  “What religion do you believe in?” Hypatia asked her.

  She remembered the foster parents that had taken her to church every Sunday, and said a blessing before every meal. But they hadn’t seemed to live their life according to the Bible, the book they claimed was so important; instead they spent a lot of their time warning the kids about the dangers of homosexuality and abortion.

  “None of them, really,” she said.

  “None?” Hypatia laughed. “But someone has to have created all this, don’t you think? The world, and the animals, and the people?

  She had a sudden urge to tell Hypatia about the Big Bang Theory, about evolution. “Well, then, what do you believe in?” she asked.

  “In number. Mathematics leads to understanding, and on to higher wisdom. It’s in mathematics that you discover the perfection of creation.”

  Ann nodded. It was an attractive theory, one she thought she could believe in too. But then she remembered the goddess in Kaphtor, and how she had been drawn to her as well. So what was her religion then?

  “I have to keep these ideas secret, though,” Hypatia went on. “Most people wouldn’t understand, and some Christians would call me a heretic—especially now, with the city so uncertain. So I tell everyone that my subject is mathematics, and I teach my students to say the same thing.”

  “What are you going to do when Theophilus closes the Serapeum?” Ann asked.

  “Try to stay out of it. I don’t bother with buildings, places built out of brick and marble. As long as they leave my mind alone I’m fine.” She frowned. “My father wants to fight, though. He’s one of the old pagans, he believes in giving the gods their due. I have to say I’m worried about him.”

  Theon, Hypatia’s father, had died—would die—defending the Serapeum. And all of that would happen tomorrow. Ann looked away, feeling a sudden sadness for Hypatia, and a vague guilt for knowing what would happen. Would Hypatia be able to keep her philosopher’s objectivity when she heard the news?

  The courtyard had begun to fill with shadows, and she remembered, startled, that she had get back to the inn. “I have to go,” she said. “The others are expecting me.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Meret said. She turned to Hypatia. “Goodbye—I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  They headed toward the door. There was a silence behind them, and Ann had a horrible feeling she had forgotten something, something to do with those foster parents who had taken her to church.

  Manners, that was it. That foster mother had tried to teach her politeness, accompanying her lessons with slaps and punishments. She still didn’t completely understand manners, but she turned back and said, “Thank you for a wonderful afternoon.”

  “You’re welcome,” Hypatia said. “I hope we’ll see each other again.”

  Ann and Meret began to walk. “That was incredible,” Ann said.

  “You don’t get to meet famous people very often,” Meret said. “I thought I would, when I started, but there are more ordinary people than famous ones, after all. Though they aren’t so ordinary once you get to know them.”

  Meret stopped at a corner. “I’m going this way,” she said. “Where are you headed?”

  This was probably the last time Ann would see her—and all at once she made her decision. It wasn’t anything the other woman had said; it was more t
he way she had acted, the compassion she had felt for the timebound. And the contrast between her and Walker, and even Da Silva, her behavior compared to the callous disregard of rest of the company.

  She put her hand out to Meret’s arm to hold her back. She looked around for a camera, but didn’t see one. “Listen,” she said. “I’m not supposed to say anything about this, but I think I have to. I met you before. In Knossos.”

  “You met—oh. You mean I’m going thern after all?”

  Ann nodded. She told Meret everything that had happened, starting with Gregory’s death. As she spoke she suddenly understood Meret’s expression at the graveyard and afterward, her half smile, as if she and Ann were sharing a joke. Meret had been told everything she was about to do, she knew exactly what was going to happen, and on some level she expected Ann to know it too.

  And now it was Ann’s turn to feel as if she was acting, performing a role in a play that was familiar to both of them. It seemed impossible that Meret didn’t know any of this; after all, they had experienced it together.

  “And then you rescued us, at the palace,” Ann said. “And—oh my God—that’s how you knew where we were, because I told you, I’m telling you now. And how you knew what our assignment was, that we were supposed to drug those guards, and so you were able to go to the queen and tell her where we’d be, and she could arrest us. And I guess I was supposed to tell you all of this, because if I hadn’t we’d never have been rescued, we’d still be thern today.”

  She spoke the last sentence in the time traveler’s argot, using the tense for events that should have happened but had been erased. “Oh God, you’re going to have to remember all of this, and say it all just the way it happened,” she said. “I think I can recite it, maybe not word for word—”

  Meret held up her hand. “It’s okay, you don’t have to. Things have a way of working out the way they’ve already happened—it’s one of the weird rules of time travel. We call it the Law of Conservation of History. I’ll just start talking when I see you, and probably I’ll end up saying everything I’m supposed to say.”

  There was one more piece of information Ann had to give her, but she didn’t know how to say it. Best just to get it over with, she thought.

  “And then, well, you stayed in Kaphtor. In Crete. You said you didn’t want to go back if the company knew you were in Core.”

  “I stay …” Ann had expected Meret to look apprehensive, but she had a dreamy, pleased expression on her face. “I’ve been thinking about that, actually, about hiding in the timelines, on this assignment or another one … And Kaphtor would be perfect, because whatever I started thern would be very early, would only get stronger as time went on.”

  Ann nodded. She liked the thought of an idea catching hold, becoming weightier and more momentous over the centuries, until finally, unstoppable, it appeared in some far distant time … “It’s like you have your own time machine,” she said, “only it takes a long time to work, and it only goes one way.”

  Meret laughed. “Exactly! Anyway, if you’re ever in trouble and there’s a temple to a goddess, whatever her name is, go there and see if they can help you. We’ve only influenced a handful of taces so far so it’s a very long shot, but you might as well try it.” She hesitated. “When are you leaving Alexandria?” she asked.

  “Tomorrow afternoon.”

  “I might have something for you. I’ll come find you at your inn.”

  “My assignment’s in the morning.”

  “Well, I’ll look for you in the afternoon, see if you’re still around.”

  They said goodbye and Ann went on to her inn. The sun had not set yet; she still had time to make something up about Meret. She sat on the lip of a fountain; a cooling spray of water brushed over her like a consoling hand.

  ELIAS AND DA SILVA started asking questions as soon as she got back to the inn. She gave them the story she had come up with, that she and Meret had discussed the impending riots and then gone to visit Hypatia. “Wait,” Elias said. “You—you met Hypatia?”

  “Yeah,” Ann said.

  “Well, I have to say I envy you. You didn’t tell her what happens to her father tomorrow, did you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  The questions continued over dinner at the restaurant and after they got back to the inn, until Elias and Da Silva seemed satisfied that Meret hadn’t mentioned Core. They went to bed early, to be rested for the day ahead.

  They woke in the dark the next morning and headed out. Da Silva and Elias were talking quietly, but Ann said nothing as they walked through the streets. Should she complete her mission? Why did they have to move the lamps? What would Hypatia do?

  A man called out something in the distance. Another man shouted back, and a horse neighed. This was it, she thought. It was starting. Was Theon already at the Serapeum, building barricades with his friends?

  Only librarians and clerks and guards had come to the library that day, as if the patrons had known something was up and had kept away. Elias led them into the courtyard.

  “We have an hour before the riot spreads to this part of the city,” he said. “So get away as quickly as you can, just do your assignment and go. We’ll meet back at the inn.”

  They separated, each of them going to their assigned spot. Ann went into her room, picked up the lamp, and moved it to the table Elias had shown her. Then she sat down at a table in the far corner and waited.

  She heard more shouts from outside, then the sound of horns blowing. A troop of horses galloped past, and someone screamed.

  Her heart had started to pound like the beat of the hooves. What was she doing here? It was getting more dangerous by the minute, and Elias or Da Silva might come looking for her … She fidgeted, desperate to stand up, to hurry away, but she forced herself to stay.

  It seemed as though an hour had passed, longer, when a man rushed into the room and looked around. He grabbed the lamp she had moved and ran over to the nearest bookshelf, then played the light over the scrolls, studying the tags on the end with the titles. He took two of the scrolls and turned to go, stopped, seized two more, and stuffed all four of them into his toga.

  He stopped again when he saw her. “What are you doing here?” he said. “They’re heading for the library—come on, we have to go.”

  She said nothing. He mistook her silence for disapproval. “I’m saving them,” he said defiantly. “The patriarch’s told them to burn the library, but people can’t live without these books.”

  She saw now that he was younger than she had thought, eighteen or twenty, someone for whom books were still a matter of life or death. “Good for you,” she said.

  They hurried out of the room together. The library seemed empty, all the clerks and librarians gone. Suddenly a group of men burst out from the garden and clattered along the marble colonnade. Some of them were waving drawn swords, and a few of them carried torches. A man rushed into one of the rooms and out again, shouting gleefully.

  “There’s some more books no one will ever read!” he said. Threads of smoke twined out the open door.

  “Praise God!” another man shouted.

  Ann ran in the opposite direction. A high marble wall stood in the distance, enclosing all the buildings and gardens. She turned back and ducked quickly into an empty room.

  “Hey, I just saw one of them!” someone shouted.

  “Where?”

  “That room, over there.”

  Ann hurried out the other side. There was a hallway there, lined with closed doors, the light fading as she headed away from the room.

  Finally she stood in complete darkness. The sounds of the men were growing louder. She put her hand out and felt a door, pushed on it. It didn’t open.

  She went as quickly as she could down the hallway, running her hand along the wall, trying each door as she came to it. To her relief one of them opened, and she hurried through.

  She was in another room lined with books. Fire bloomed like an exotic fl
ower from one of the bookcases, and as she watched another case went up with a strong “Woomf!”

  She rushed for the opposite door. The air seemed thinner, scorched, and she held her breath against the smoke. She ran through the door and back into the corridor. The men were past her now, she saw, their backs to her.

  She jumped off the marble passageway, trying to make as little noise as possible, and headed for the garden with the reflecting pool. Suddenly a voice called out, “There he is!”

  She looked back. The mob had turned and was running after her. “Look—it’s a woman!” someone called out.

  “Praise God!” another man said.

  She reached the garden and ran past the pool. She forced herself not to turn around, but she could hear them coming closer, shouting, laughing.

  “What does a good-looking woman like you want with books?” one of them called out.

  “Come here—we’ll show you what a woman’s good for.”

  “We’ll show you what those scrolls are good for.”

  “God, she’s a fast one, isn’t she?”

  “I hope so!” someone said, and they all laughed.

  Their voices sounded louder. She looked back quickly and saw that they were nearly upon her. There was a colonnade in front of her, fire flying out from a few doors, and after that the antechamber and the entrance. Her breath came fast and harsh in her throat, and she knew she would never make it.

  “I’m going to kill that whore,” one of the men said, panting. “After all the trouble she’s put us through.”

  “Let me have her first, though.”

  Something hit her head, a thrown rock. Her vision starred, and she stumbled. She forced herself to stand upright, to keep going. The passageway ahead of her was blurred now. She stumbled again.

  The passageway skittered, bounced, branched off into half a dozen paths. The light grew sharper, like a bank of strong bulbs, and then painfully bright. She felt a hideous pain in her stomach and doubled over.

  She straightened as quickly as she could and looked around her. They men were gone. She was standing amid ruins, a fallen column at her feet. The men were gone, but so was everyone else. She was alone, with no idea of where or when she was.