Chronica Read online

  Porter looked harried, Heron thought, as he joined him at their table near the window. "You heard what happened to Mary Anderson, I assume," was Porter's greeting.

  "Yes. A shame, but I understand her recovery is complete," Heron said. "One of the perils of too much alcohol too early in the day, I suppose."

  "She told me her doctor told her it was a lot stronger than alcohol," Porter said. "She was drugged."

  Heron nodded slowly. "Unfortunately, this is all too common throughout history – men administering drugs to women without their knowledge, to get what they want from them."

  "But this was apparently not done for sexual advantage," Porter said. "No sexual liberties were taken with her, thank God, according to the doctors. Who do you think did this?"

  "I do not know," Heron said. "The answer would depend on how much of the drug was given to her, how quickly it took effect, and when it was administered. But I do not believe medical science is yet sophisticated enough to provide those answers."

  "You were at Luchow's earlier in the day, as was she," Porter said, and summoned enough courage to look Heron in the eye.

  "You think I was the one who drugged her? Why?" Heron asked.

  "You don't trust her, you think she is compromising my work with you," Porter said.

  "There is someone else who may fit that description: your boss, Thomas Alva Edison," Heron said.

  "Edison?" Porter asked, skeptically. "He's on his high horse as far as morality, yes, but he's also nonviolent. I doubt he would disrespect a woman enough to introduce drugs to her body without her consent!"

  "But you think I would?" Heron countered.

  "I don't know you as well as I know Edison," Porter replied. "And as far as we know, he was nowhere near Mary on the day in question."

  Heron nodded. "That is a fair point, and I respect your honesty and courage in sharing your suspicions about me to my face. Can we turn to another, related point?"

  "Yes," Porter said, not completely satisfied with Heron's response by any means, but grateful to be off the subject of Mary drugged senseless, which Porter himself had raised.

  "Would you feel comfortable looking into whatever Edison may have concluded privately with William Appleton in the past few months?" Heron requested.

  ***

  The April sun was kind, Porter thought, as it shone on his face and he walked towards the Hudson River to catch a ferry to see Edison in New Jersey. But few people in this world were kind, certainly not Heron or Edison, both of whom Porter found himself in the uncomfortable position of being in the employ of right now.

  He didn't feel right spying on Edison, not for Heron or anyone. Edison had given Porter his start, and Porter was sure that in time he would become known as a great photographer of stories in motion, and that his moving pictures might even exceed the theater and the book as vehicles of narrative.

  But neither could he afford to offend Heron at this point. Porter was too deeply entwined in the plans of this bizarre man to cut himself loose. He smiled ruefully – now, there was a narrative fit for a photo-play, the story of what he knew about Heron and his activities, but it would take a photo-play a hundred times or more the length of the photo-plays Porter was now making, to tell this story – this insanely incredible story that Porter was now apparently inextricably a part of.

  ***

  Porter boarded the ferry and continued enjoying the sun as the boat made its way across the river. The Hudson Tubes were nearing completion. They would provide train service between New York and New Jersey, and would provide a difficult choice for Porter, who loved train travel but also the outdoors. He lived in a time of difficult choices, and they promised only to increase for him in the near future.

  The ferry docked. Porter bid goodbye to the river and boarded a train to West Orange and Edison's Black Maria. For Porter, the Black Maria was the center of the world. It was the first studio devoted not to still photography, but the production of moving photography, which was Porter's life's work. The Black Maria had been in operation only six years. William Dickson had produced his Fred Ott's Sneeze here, and now the mantel was passing to Porter. At least, he hoped so. Porter sighed. Edison was talking about building a new studio for the photo-play in New York City, and demolishing the Black Maria. Porter welcomed new production facilities, and they would be much more convenient for him in New York. But in his heart, he felt nothing could replace the Black Maria.

  He sighed again. Life used to be far simpler for him, when he was not yet working for Edison – that had only started this year – and the only contact he had had with Heron was in a book he had read with great interest as a boy, about ancient Greeks and Romans who were ahead of their time in their thinking and inventions. Porter never imagined in his wildest daydreams that a man from this book would tear free of its pages and meet him in person.

  He closed his eyes and let the train rock him to sleep. Time for him to stop worrying so much and attend to the matter at hand. If Edison had obtained the Chronica from Appleton, that was something that Porter would indeed like to know. The fate of the world could depend upon it. But what he would do about it – offer to work with Edison to build a time travel machine, or tell Heron that Edison indeed had Heron's cyclopedia for its construction, if that's what it was – well, that was something that Porter had yet to fully decide.

  [West Orange, New Jersey, April, 1899 AD]

  Edison was in good spirits on this day, sitting behind his desk, running his hands across several manuscripts, talking with gusto about the future.

  "I'm glad you came out here today," Edison said. "I had something I wanted to discuss with you."

  "Yes?" This was just like Edison. Porter had called him, telling his boss he had something he wanted to talk to him about, and Edison from the moment Porter walked into his room started talking about something on Edison's mind. But Porter had learned to respect that mind, and usually welcomed hearing what was on it.

  "I know you follow the theater," Edison said.

  "Yes, I do," Porter agreed.

  "Of course you do. Your lady friend Mary Anderson has the made the theater her canvas," Edison said.

  Porter tried not to wince. Was his boss baiting him? Maybe Heron was right. "Yes," was all Porter said.

  Edison's hand stopped on one of the manuscripts. He picked it up off the desk, and almost caressed it.

  Was this the Chronica? Porter wondered. Did Edison first mention Mary because she was indeed somehow connected to its acquisition by Edison, which in turn was connected to why she was drugged? No, it couldn't be that easy.

  Edison slowly leafed through the manuscript and smiled. "Are you familiar with The Great Train Robbery?"

  "The melodrama by Scott Marble? It was on stage a few years ago, but I did not get a chance to see it," Porter said.

  "This is the script," Edison said and hefted the manuscript. Then he handed it to be Porter. "Read it, please. Then tell me your impressions – and if you think it could be made into a photo-play. I have in mind something much longer than what I have been doing here – perhaps as long as ten minutes. Is making a photo-play like that something that might appeal to you? It would be a big step up from the wax museum where I found you, and the exhibitions of photo-plays you've begun to assemble for me. If it worked, it could make you nearly as famous as me!" Edison chuckled.

  Porter was speechless. He finally said, "Yes, it indeed appeals, and very much," and took the script.

  "So please do let me know what you think of it," Edison said.

  Porter nodded.

  "And what did you come to see me about?" Edison asked him.

  ***

  Porter never did tell Edison the real purpose of his visit, and instead talked to Edison about some ideas Porter had for the new studio in New York City. Porter loved the Marble script – he would have made sure he loved it, in any case, given the path it provided for Porter to make a moving picture from it – but he did indeed love it. His head popped with ideas t
he first time he read it in Edison's office, with Edison looking right at him. He came back two days later with a new script that he had written, appropriate for a photo-play, photographed in the outdoors. Edison had already worked out arrangements with Scott Marble, who had agreed to split the writing credits with whomever Edison had hired to write the photo-play.

  Porter came out to the Black Maria several days a week, much more time than he had spent there before, to discuss the moving picture. He also made time to see Heron when so requested, and told him that in order to find out what Edison knew about the Chronica, Porter would have to gradually build up his relationship with Edison, do more work for him in New Jersey. Whether Heron believed it was not clear, but he didn't tell Porter to stop.

  On one rainy day at the beginning of May, Porter was in Edison's office when the inventor was called away – some sort of problem in the garden at his home, also in West Orange, in Llewellyn Park, that Edison had to attend to personally. Porter was engrossed in The Great Train Robbery manuscript. "Keep working," Edison told him, "I'll be back soon."

  But Porter couldn't help looking at Edison's desk after he left. It was a magnet for his eyes. He needed a brief respite from The Great Train Robbery anyway. Feeling like a thief, but unable to resist, Porter walked over to Edison's desk, and looked as quickly as he could at the many manuscripts upon it. He stopped, and he thought his heart stopped, too, when he saw one written in Greek.

  He couldn't read a word of the language. This could be any manuscript written in Greek. But he picked it up. He looked over his shoulder, to make sure Edison hadn't returned, though he knew he would have heard him open the door if he had returned. Porter went through a few pages, hoping for a glimpse of something he could understand. He cursed silently at his ignorance of the language, then realized that a letter had been stapled on the inside of the back cover. The paper the letter was written upon was very thin, and smaller than the manuscript pages, so Porter hadn't noticed it before.

  He again looked over his shoulder and read quickly through the letter, which was written in English. He saw "time travel" and his heart nearly burst out of his white shirt. The letter was signed "Henry Ford".

  Porter had heard of Ford. His specialty was motorized vehicles, not moving pictures. But that made sense – a motorized vehicle had much more in common with a time travel machine than did a moving picture, even though photography captured images and saved them through time. But a motorized vehicle and a time travel machine would both move people, not images.

  Porter heard someone at the door and almost dropped the manuscript on the floor. He regained his composure, put the manuscript back on the desk in what he hoped was the exact place he had found it, and walked to his chair to greet Edison.

  It wasn't Edison. It was a man Edison had sent to his office with refreshments for Porter. But the interruption was enough to keep Porter in his seat, reading The Great Train Robbery photo-play script, until Edison returned about 20 minutes later.

  [New York City, May, 1899 AD]

  Porter had some serious thinking to do. The Great Train Robbery photo-play was on its way. Edison had approved the new script, and was beginning to talk about production. It would still be a year or two before the moving picture was actually made – actors had to be hired, a suitable location had to be found – the making of moving pictures moved slowly, and that was to the good, as Edison liked to say. He was a perfectionist in everything, and Porter thought that was one of Edison's best qualities.

  But that left Heron, and the manuscript Porter had seen on Edison's desk. Porter mostly wished he had never seen it. But he had, and the urge to tell Heron about it during their now weekly meetings weighed on Porter like a poorly consumed meal that demanded expulsion.

  Porter finally gave into it.

  Heron's face blanched and his eyes burned with some kind of emotion. "What did the letter from Henry Ford say," he asked, when Porter had gotten to that part of his brief story.

  "I didn't have time to fully comprehend it," Porter replied. "I believe it was talking about the extreme difficulties of constructing a time travel engine."

  Heron laughed, cruelly. "Yes, indeed." He didn't believe that Henry Ford or Thomas Edison or anyone from this era could construct a Chair even with a blueprint far more explicit than what Heron had foolishly laid out in the Chronica – and it would take years, decades, of work to situate the Chairs in suitable places like the Millennium and Parthenon clubs, and the coffee house or bar or whatever it now was in Athens. But that wasn't the point – which was, that bringing someone like Henry Ford into this was a big step worse than merely having the Chronica in hand. It was as if the cancer of knowledge about time travel had metastasized to a far more worrisome organ, a big step closer to being fatal to the entirety of human history, or at least Heron's plans for it. Henry Ford was not an inventor. He was an engineer – much like Heron in his original training – which made Ford far more dangerous. He was a practical man who knew how to make things work.

  "Thank you," Heron said, sincerely, to Porter. "Stick with your moving pictures. Your Great Train Robbery will be remembered as one of the great pioneering works in the history of cinema, as I believe the Lumière brothers in France are now calling what you do."

  And Heron pushed back his seat, stood, and left the seafood restaurant near Grand Central Terminal.

  Porter looked after him, immensely moved by the compliment, despite everything that had happened, because it had been made by someone Porter had read about when he was 12 years old, someone whose work with ancient zoetrope devices made Heron the ultimate pioneer in the craft Porter was devoting his life to. The incomprehensibility of admiring a pioneer who likely became a pioneer because he had traveled back in time with knowledge from the future did not bother Porter. Nor did he realize for a moment that Heron had played upon his role as an ancient filmmaker to assemble around him his chosen filmmakers to do his bidding at the end of the 19th century.

  ***

  Heron preferred his own company, at least at first, when faced with impending crisis. He walked slowly up Fifth Avenue, and hoped no one said hello to him as J. P. Morgan.

  His work here in the 1890s had mostly failed. His assistants had proved unreliable and worse, as they often had in history. Dickson, Flannery, Edison either had been unable to accomplish what he'd needed, or had turned outright against him. Only Edwin Porter, probably the dimmest of the bunch, at least of the inventors, had shown some loyalty – though that, too, was belated.

  Time to make some drastic changes, especially in his alliances. Sierra Waters had every right to kill him on sight, as Flannery might say, but she and Heron did now have a coincidence of interest. Heron believed she would not want time travel in common use in the world any more than would Heron.

  What would be the best way to approach her, with the equivalent of a white flag or palms open to the sky? Heron needed to think about how he could convince Sierra Waters to help him extricate this perilous knowledge of time travel that she had brought to the doorstep of the 20th century via Appleton.

  Conversely, if she refused to help him, but was within striking distance when she rebuffed his offer, that would not be a bad place her to be for his purposes, either.

  Chapter 14

  [New York City, May, 1899 AD]

  Sierra, Max, Astor, and Mary Anderson were seated around a table in one of the offices in Astor's hotel. He had hastily called the meeting, at Mary Anderson's request.

  "I believe Thomas Edison is in some way connected to the Chronica," Mary repeated what she had earlier told Astor. "Edwin Porter wears his heart on his sleeve, the dear man. He would never tell me outright what his boss Edison was doing, but when I asked him about the Chronica, his face turned beet red. And when I asked him about his work with Edison a little later, he chirped like a bird about a new photo-play he was producing, a Western based on a play, but when I mentioned the Chronica again, he looked like the cat that swallowed the canary, and the bird
was still flying around inside him."