SHE SAT AGAINST the wall of the church, her legs drawn up and her head on her knees. Tears ran down her face. Why had she thought she could save Hypatia, could overcome all the forces of history that had brought them to this point? She was an idiot even to have come to see her execution.
She had to stand up, get going. And do what? There was nothing she wanted from this place, nothing at all.
Those men might come out at any minute, though. She thought of their shards of pottery, their hands red and slippery with blood. She shuddered and forced herself to her feet.
She wandered through the city, the afternoon a blur. She passed a canal somewhere, and a harbor, where lines of men were hauling cargo from one of the ships to a warehouse. She found herself at the market again and she turned back resolutely, having no desire to see the ruins of the library again.
I am Seshat, she thought once, goddess of time and measurement. I know the lengths of people’s lives, the times of their deaths. And I can’t do anything about it.
She went out into the streets again the next day, and the day after that. She searched for cameras, for temples to the goddess. But she could find no cameras in the streets, and all the temples and synagogues seemed to have been converted into churches, the gold and silver and ivory stripped from their walls.
A few times she had the feeling that something else should have happened to her, that she was living in a timeline that did not exist. In her timeline, the real timeline, she hadn’t escaped from the rock-throwers at the library; something else had happened to her, something she couldn’t remember. Had she blocked it out because it was so terrible?
It was only on her third day that she remembered the key Elias had buried outside the city. She went through the Canopian Gate and came to a spot that looked familiar, but when she dug there she found only sand.
Well, of course, she thought, feeling stupid once again. Walker had taken the key with her when they’d left Kaphtor, and Elias had probably done the same thing here.
But she’d been moved ahead in time without a key. Did that mean she could return on her own somehow?
On the way back to the city she passed the temple to Ceres and Proserpina. She’d forgotten all about it, and now she hurried toward it, feeling excited. But it too had been plundered, and the statues smashed.
She sold more jewelry, and spent the money she got on food and lodging. She thought about Da Silva and Elias, wondering what they were doing, if they were searching for her. Elias would visit the famous lighthouse if he were here, and the tomb of Alexander. It wasn’t a bad idea, and every morning when she set out she resolved to go to the lighthouse at least, but every night when she returned to the inn she realized she had spent yet another day wandering mindlessly through the streets.
A few days later she passed a word scribbled on a wall: “Kore.” It was a sign, she thought, a message from Core. She looked around for a temple or some place where people might gather, but she saw only burned-out buildings, their rooms open to the streets. Goddess show me my path, she thought, her mind filled with confusion.
There were people staring back at her, monks in black and men and women wearing crosses at their breasts. It was dangerous even to be here, standing next to such an incendiary word. She hurried back to the inn.
The next day she realized that she had been in the city for a week, and that she had only one ring left to sell. Fear shot like lightning through the fog around her, and she tried to concentrate, to come up with a plan. It didn’t seem to matter, though. She would stay here for the rest of her life, and Hypatia was dead.
She started off through the city, choosing a direction at random. “You’re here!” a woman behind her said. “Finally!”
Ann turned quickly. Was it Da Silva? Meret? But saw only a slender woman wearing a tribon, no one she knew. “What? Who are you?”
“She told me to keep looking for you,” the woman went on. “But she didn’t say it would take over twenty years to find you, and that you’d still look the same.”
“What on earth are you talking about? Who said what?”
“Teacher Meret.”
“Meret? Wait a minute. Do you know Meret? Is she here?”
“She left a long time ago. But she told me I might see you again, and she gave me something to give you.”
Of course—Meret was in Crete. Ann looked closer at the woman. She was in her mid-thirties, her nose and ears slightly too big for her face, and she had red hair, a strange color for this tace.
Red hair. Wait. Ann tried to get her sluggish brain to work. Twenty years ago. “You’re—you were Hypatia’s student. Olympia.”
“That’s right. But why are you the same age as when I saw you last? Are you—are you a god?”
Ann tried to laugh. “No, of course not. I just look young, that’s all.”
Olympia looked unconvinced.
“You said you have something for me?” Ann went on. “Something from Meret?”
“I do. It’s at my house, though. Can you come with me?”
Meret had wanted to give her something, Ann remembered. Probably she had gone to the inn on that horrible day, but Ann hadn’t been there. Or maybe Meret had gotten caught up in the chaos in the city, had been unable to reach her. Whatever it was, she’d handed it over to Olympia for safekeeping.
Olympia headed through the streets, and Ann followed. “You—do you know what happened to Hypatia?” Ann asked.
Olympia nodded. “She knew it was going to happen, knew that Cyril hated her. She said she was ready to die, that she would meet her death philosophically.”
Ann remembered the screams, the sharp pieces of pottery. No one could think about philosophy under those circumstances. She couldn’t say that to Olympia, though.
“She was a wonderful woman,” she said instead.
“She was. Teacher Meret said—Teacher Meret seemed to know all manner of things, like an oracle. She said that Teacher Hypatia would be remembered for generations.”
“I’m sure she was right.”
They reached a street crowded with wooden three and four story buildings. Olympia turned in at one of the doors and they came to a small courtyard littered with food and broken pottery. A dry fountain stood in the center, and rickety stairs climbed up to the landings. Young men stood out on one of the landings, talking and drinking and laughing loudly.
They went up a set of stairs and Olympia opened a door at the top. The room inside was small, with only a bed, a chair, and a wooden chest the size of a picnic basket. Ann remembered Hypatia’s house, the mosaic, the couches, the courtyard with the armillary sphere. It had been simple enough, but worlds brighter and more comfortable than this.
“Are you—are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” Olympia said. Her tribon had moth-holes, Ann saw, and was frayed at the hem. “A philosopher doesn’t need much, just a place to work.”
“Are you a teacher now?”
“The only people who study philosophy these days are Christians, to be honest. And they don’t want to read Pythagoras or Euclid, just their own philosophers. My father says he can’t support me any longer, and that if I don’t find work soon I’ll have to get married. But someone somewhere must need a mathematician or an engineer.”
She didn’t say that very few people these days would hire a woman, though Ann knew they both were thinking it. Could she help Olympia somehow? How, when she couldn’t even help herself?
Olympia went to the chest and opened it. “Anyway, here it is. A necklace, I think.”
Olympia took out something wrapped in cloth and gave it to her. She unwrapped it and saw a tarnished silver chain, with a matte-black thumb drive hanging from it like a charm.
“A strange-looking ornament,” Olympia said. “I don’t know where she got it.”
Ann nodded, trying to keep her amazement from showing. It had come through a quarter of a century in good condition, she saw, free of dust, though whether it would still work was
anyone’s guess.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Thank Teacher Meret,” Olympia said. “I was just her messenger.”
They said goodbye and Ann went back down the stairs, fastening the chain around her neck and tucking the drive beneath her chiton and tunic as she went. What on earth had Meret been thinking? There were no computers hern, no way to access whatever she had put on the drive.
But Meret, of course, had been sure she’d return to the twenty-first century. And she had to think that way as well, had to somehow break out of the hopelessness that had clung to her like a dark cloud.
She went out into the street. Perhaps, she thought, she had been sent here to get the thumb drive, and she would be returned to her own tace at any moment. But nothing happened, and she headed back to the inn.
She lost track of days, of time itself. Her only reminder that time was passing was when her hunger forced her to eat. But she had to ration her food now; she had sold her last piece of jewelry.
She was walking aimlessly in the street when she started to feel ill. Her headache, which had never left her, was growing worse, and she felt so dizzy she had to stop and grip one of the pillars to keep from falling.
The nausea intensified. The road in front of her doubled, became two, four, eight. “What is the perfect number?” someone asked, and then a high ringing noise drowned out every other sound. Her stomach wrung like a dishcloth, the cramps so bad she thought she might die, and she let go of the pillar and dropped to the ground.
The ringing stopped. She took a deep breath, got to her knees and then her feet and looked around.
The buildings were subtly different; they seemed newer, cleaner. Had she traveled again? Was she back where she had started, in 391? But how had she gotten hern?
She hurried to the inn, looking around her, hardly daring to hope. Other things had changed as well, she saw. The columns that had fallen to the street in 415, cracked and broken, were still standing hern, and buildings that had been churches had turned into temples again. She went around a corner and there, to her vast relief, were Da Silva and Elias and Zach, waiting for her at the front of the inn.
“Where have you been?” Elias asked. “We’ve been waiting here for hours.”
Hours? But when she’d returned from Kaphtor no time at all had passed.
What time was it? What day was it? She had to come up with something quickly, had to invent the best lie of her life. “I got caught up in the riots,” she said. “I was hit by a rock, here.” She touched the lump on her head.
“What happened to your clothes?” Da Silva asked.
Of course, she wearing something different now, a yellow chiton instead of a blue one. “They got torn in the fighting,” she said. “I couldn’t go on the streets like that, so I sold some jewelry and bought a new chiton.”
“Are you hurt? How do you feel?”
“I think I have a concussion. I’ve had a headache for— ever since that rock hit me.”
Elias and Da Silva turned to each other, looking worried. “What is it?” Ann asked.
“It’s dangerous to travel if you’re concussed,” Da Silva said. “Come on—let’s get to our room and I’ll examine you. We might have to stay hern for a few days.”
They went inside. The innkeeper’s son smiled at them, and for a brief moment, overlaid above his expression, Ann saw the scowling man he would become. They climbed the stairs to their room, and Elias shut the door.
“Sit on the bed, here,” Da Silva said. “Have you had any hallucinations?”
Ann sat. It felt good to be taken care of, to put herself in someone else’s hands. Somewhere a high thin alarm was sounding, telling her that she was treating Da Silva as a substitute mother again, but she was too tired to care.
“No,” she said.
“Are you sure? They could be auditory hallucinations as well as visual ones.”
“Oh. Well, I did hear someone ask me, ‘What is the perfect number?’”
“When was this?”
“Just before I got here.”
Da Silva took her face in her hands and looked closely into her eyes. “Yes, well,” she said, sighing. “Your pupils are different sizes—it doesn’t look good.” She told Ann to bend her head, and then parted her hair and touched the spot the rock had hit her. “That’s strange,” she said.
“What?” Ann said, trying to rouse herself.
“It looks like it’s mostly healed. When did you say you got this?”
“After I left the library. This mob came, and one of them threw a rock at me.”
“Hmmm. You must have wandered around for a bit, lost some time. What do you think?”
You have no idea, Ann thought. She nodded. “Yeah, you might be right.
Da Silva still looked puzzled, but Ann didn’t offer any more explanations. The first rule of lying well was to keep your lies simple.
“Well, the best thing for you would be to go to sleep,” Da Silva said. “I’ll come back every few hours and wake you, so you don’t go into a coma. And the rest of us …”
“I’m going to visit the lighthouse,” Elias said.
Ann nearly laughed, she had predicted him so exactly. She was too tired, though. She turned over and went to sleep. Sometime after they had gone she made a tremendous effort and stood up, found her bag, and hid the thumb drive deep within it.
ANN SLEPT THROUGH THE next few days. Da Silva woke her every few hours, studied her pupils, and asked her questions, though fortunately they weren’t about Ann’s time in Alexandria but designed to see if she was growing confused again. What is your name? Where are you? Who’s the president in your tace?
Once Ann asked Da Silva what would happen if she traveled while she was concussed. “You’ve experienced time sickness, right?” Da Silva asked.
Ann nodded.
“Well, unfortunately it gets worse the more you travel. Finally it gets so bad that we can’t send you out on any more assignments.”
“What?” Zach asked. “What happens to us then?”
“Don’t worry, you’ll still be working for the company. You’ll be teachers or computer modelers or recruiters, whatever fits the skills you have. That’s why we keep hiring new people, why we need new blood. And why we need young people—it turns out they don’t feel time sickness as badly.”
“How many trips can we make?”
“It’s different for everyone. The average is …” Da Silva turned to Elias. “What did that last study say?”
“Four to eight,” Elias said.
“That’s all?” Ann asked.
“Well, that’s the average,” Elias said. “This is my seventh trip, and I think I can do a few more before I have to stop.”
“So if you’re good at traveling they make you a Facilitator?” Zach asked.
“Well, there’s more to it than that, but that’s certainly part of it.”
“Anyway, a concussion can make it worse,” Da Silva said. “People have traveled with concussions, and sometimes they have to retire afterward.”
Retire, Ann thought. It wasn’t fair—she had only just started. And she wouldn’t even be able to tell the company that she had traveled while she was concussed, and they would probably wonder why her time sickness was so bad.
Three days later Da Silva decided Ann was ready to travel, and they packed up and left the city. Elias dug up the key and they stood with him while he manipulated the circles back and forth. The sand and sky grew brighter, became a white that seared her eyes. A high keening sounded, and she had a terrible fear that the noises would become words, that she would hallucinate again.
Her legs buckled. She fell, hitting her knees against the platform. Men and women came forward to lift her up. “We felt the timequake,” someone said. “How did it go?”
“A success, I’m happy to say,” Elias said.
People cheered, called out “Congratulations!” Then someone led her to the infirmary, and she slept for a long time.
&
nbsp; 09152014
108825
Preliminary Assessment of Assignment 105, With Some Recommendations Emra Walker
… Ann Decker’s disappearance of five hours, after the burning of the library, remains problematic. It is especially suspicious because this is not the first time she has done such a thing. As “Final Assessment of Assignment 87” states, Decker and Francine Craig disobeyed instructions and went to the cemetery to visit the grave of Gregory Nichols, another company employee, and in that time they met Meret Haas, a former employee now known to be a member of Core. (See “Final Assessment of Assignment 87,” attached.)
One unauthorized absence, especially during a first mission, may be innocent, but two are almost certainly not. And there are several other grounds for suspicion—Decker claims that she cannot remember where she went during those five hours, she returned with nearly all her jewelry missing, and, of course, she met with Haas before she disappeared. According to the report “Goals and Aims of Assignment 105,” attached, one of the reasons Decker was instructed to meet with Haas was to allow the company to spy on them, to see whether Decker had been convinced to join Core by the other woman. But most of the conversation between the two of them happened indoors, away from our cameras, and so we could not tell if any meetings with Core took place. It is of course quite possible that this avoidance of the cameras was deliberate.
I would therefore recommend that Decker be questioned closely, and watched carefully in future assignments, especially since this surveillance may lead us to other Core members. It is even possible that, despite her obvious intelligence and her ability to learn, she will have to leave the company …
“AND AFTER THE ROCK hit you—what did you do then?” Da Silva asked.
They were in one of the debriefing rooms, and Ann was recounting what had happened for the third time. She had managed to tell her story the same way to her first two interrogators, but Da Silva still seemed suspicious.
She had not been able to shake her fatigue, and she was starting to wonder why she couldn’t just tell Da Silva the whole story. The company had not acted badly this time; it had saved several books from the fire, books that would otherwise have been lost forever. Sometimes it seemed that she stuck to her story out of nothing more than stubbornness.
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