Chronica Page 8

  "Well there you go!" Dickson said, and ordered another two pints.

  ***

  Porter paid Mary Anderson a visit the next morning. She was staying in a small hotel north of 59th Street. He thought that Dickson's idea was brilliant. Mary would be a perfect entrée to Appleton. Not to mention that she was deliciously easy on the eyes. She was forty years old, but looked at least a decade younger.

  The carriage stopped across the street from Mary's hotel. Porter climbed down, walked up to the hotel, and announced himself to the doorman. Mary came down a few minutes later. "What a pleasant surprise!" she said, with a radiant smile.

  "Can I buy you a cup of coffee, or something stronger?" he asked.

  "It's a little too early for something stronger, but that never stopped me before," Mary said. "The café is very nice." She pointed to a little restaurant down the street.

  "How are the rehearsals proceeding?" Porter asked her, when they were seated, and had placed their orders for drinks.

  "Very well, thanks for asking," Mary said. "It's a wonderful part. Such a tragic story!"

  "Yes," Porter replied.

  "And how go your photo-plays?" Mary asked.

  "Quite well, too," Porter said. "And that is what I wanted to see you about."

  "I've never acted in a photo-play," Mary said, coyly. "I don't share the low opinion that many in the theater have of the photo-play. It's just that I have never been offered a suitable part. But they may well be the way of the future. They can be shown on the screen a myriad of times, and the actors and actresses never tire!"

  "I'm gratified you feel that way," Porter said. "I was thinking you might want to reprise your performance of Hypatia in a small photo-play I am contemplating making about her."

  "I've seen some of the Lumière Brothers' work – L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat is my favorite! Magical, wonderful, stunning! In addition, of course, to the work done by Mr. Edison's company!"

  "Yes, I hope to make some photo-plays for him, someday soon," Porter said, and bowed his head modestly.

  "But those photo-plays are quite short – less than a minute," Mary said. "How could you tell anything of poor Hypatia's story in that short a time?"

  "There is no reason the moving picture cannot be longer," Porter replied.

  ***

  The two made a plan to attempt a visit with William Henry Appleton at his Wave Hill home in Riverdale, if Porter could secure an appointment. He kissed Mary gallantly on the hand and decided to walk south on Fifth Avenue.

  He thought it was a good plan. Appleton was a patron of the arts, and would be flattered that Porter sought his advice for a moving picture about Hypatia. Who knows, Appleton might even provide a little funding. If Porter could develop a relationship with the publisher, he would be in a better position to find out about this Chronica .

  Appleton was reputed to have a weakness for the fair sex, so bringing Mary Anderson along should further soften the old man. Porter reflected that he himself had a weakness for women, as well. He was married, so he had to behave himself, but they couldn't stop a man from dreaming. He envisioned not leaving Mary at the door of her hotel, but accompanying her up to her room at her invitation. "Just a moment, please, let me change into something more comfortable," he heard her say, in his imagination, as she went behind a screen on the side of her room. She emerged in a diaphanous negligee, easily seen through. He saw her breasts, her nipples, and the luxurious hair between her legs. He wondered if that was what the original Hypatia looked like. She certainly had looked that way in the Charles William Mitchell portrait of her from the 1880s. He wondered who had posed for it. Mary Anderson would not have been too young.

  Now that would be a photo-play! A story of Hypatia, played by Mary Anderson, all in the nude!

  He knew that Edison, the prude, would have no part of it. Indeed, Porter had had to disguise his true nature and lustful leanings from the inventor, as no doubt Dickson had done before him. Porter pretended to be interested only in his work – more interested in machines than people, was the word about him. But he was actually quite the opposite, which was the one of the reasons he had allowed himself to be recruited by Heron.

  A mad man? A time traveler, as he claimed? Perhaps both, because Heron had told him things about the near future, a few years ago, which had become true.

  ***

  Porter met Mary two days later at Grand Central Terminal. Demolition of the main house had just begun – a stately new terminal was to be erected here – and the two could barely hear themselves talk until they were comfortably settled in their New York Central train, which they were taking to see William Henry Appleton in the Bronx.

  "I didn't know you knew J. P. Morgan, Edwin!" Mary gushed and touched his arm.

  Porter felt electricity. "I—"

  "I saw the two of you finishing a conversation when I arrived at Grand Central."

  "Yes, he could be a valuable patron," Porter said.

  "Indeed!" Mary said, and this time touched his shoulder. "I had no idea you had such friends in high places!"

  As much as Porter loved trains, he regretted that he and Mary were on one now, given this wonderful touching. But the journey should be worthwhile – Appleton had agreed to see them.

  He contented himself with a pat of Mary's hand. He looked out the window as their train exited a tunnel. He did love trains – they were exhilarating, the perfect place for adventure, the exciting things in life.

  He looked as the trees sped by outside, newly green with the early Spring. The fabric of motion fascinated him. He had come to realize that Heron was attempting to do with history and the future what he was seeking to do with images, arranging them to tell his story. He had always believed his own work was of momentous import, but one of the things that attracted him to Heron was the greater portent of his strange work. If Porter were a religious man, he could believe that Heron was the Devil. Surely nothing could compete with that.

  Porter became aware of Mary's hand, lightly resting on his. Well, perhaps there were some things that could compete.

  ***

  Their train pulled into the Riverdale station in the Bronx. It would be a stiff hike up to Wave Hill.

  He started walking with Mary to the horse-drawn carriages assembled by the station.

  "I can make the walk up to see Mr. Appleton – can't you?" she said with a smile.

  "Absolutely," Porter replied.

  The walk up the hill was invigorating. The two stopped right outside the entrance to Wave Hill and looked out at the Hudson. "They just opened an amusement park on the other side of the river," Porter said and pointed south. "The palisades are just as striking from that view, too – as if an ancient civilization cut them out whole with some kind of powerful blade."

  "You have a potent imagination," Mary said, "as a maker of photo-plays should."

  The two walked up to the front door of Appleton's splendid residence and knocked.

  A man with a pinched face, not Appleton, answered.

  "We are here to see Mr. Appleton," Porter announced, "as per our appointment."

  The face grew more pinched. "My name is Geoffreys," he said quietly. "I am afraid Mr. Appleton will not be receiving any visitors today. But you may enter if you like, and I can provide some libation for your walk back to the train."

  "But, as I told you, we have an appointment," Porter objected.

  Mary took Porter's arm, and made to enter. "Is Mr. Appleton here now?" she asked, softly.

  Geoffreys nodded. "He took suddenly ill, just an hour ago." Geoffreys pulled a pocket watch out of his woolen vest. "The doctor will be here any moment. I thought he was you when you knocked on the door."

  The two entered and sat in the vestibule. Geoffreys returned a few minutes later with tea service for two. There was a loud knock on the door.

  "Dr. Stanley, thank you so much for coming." Geoffreys ushered the doctor in, who indeed looked like a doctor, Porter thought, replete with the black
medical case and all. Geoffreys and the doctor nodded at Porter and Mary, and walked off into the house.

  "This looks like it isn't the day for us to talk to Mr. Appleton about making a photo-play," Mary said to Porter.

  "You're right, of course," Porter said. "Should I find Geoffreys and tell him we're leaving?"

  "I think not," Mary said, and the two finished their tea, left the Appleton residence, and walked back down to the Riverdale station on the Hudson.

  "Fortunately not as tiring as the walk up," Mary said with a smile, clutching Porter's arm, as they reached the station.

  ***

  Porter explained it all to Heron, still looking like J. P. Morgan, in the seafood restaurant in Grand Central the next day.

  "It's my fault," Heron said. "I know Appleton is supposed to die in October, 1899, but I should have checked on his health earlier in the year – with a doctor attending him, as you said, there might well have been a record of this somewhere. Assuming Appleton wasn't feigning it."

  Porter suppressed a shudder for the revulsion he felt for this man's cold-blooded ghoulishness, but it was a mixed shudder, because he also felt a deep, inchoate admiration for Heron, too. To take on one's shoulders the burden of changing the world, literally, or keeping it safe from those who would change it! "What will you do now?" Porter asked.

  "I am not sure," Heron replied. "I could travel back to a time a little earlier, of course – before Appleton grew ill – even as close as last week or a few days ago. But that could create other problems."

  "Such as, if you contacted me last week, why do I not recall that now?" Porter asked.

  Heron nodded. "You're a quick study – they say that in the theater, yes?"

  Porter nodded. "You could enlist someone other than me."

  "Yes," Heron replied. "Or I could try to contact Appleton myself, a week ago as J. P. Morgan."

  "But would that not lead to complications for you, in your own mind?" Porter asked.

  "Yes, it could indeed," Heron replied. "But I have considerable experience accommodating these complications and contradictions in my mind . . . . Did you bed her?"

  Porter was taken aback. "Who? Mary Anderson? You ask a lot of questions!"

  "I give far more in return," Heron said.

  "No, not yet," Porter replied, evenly. "On the matter at hand, what about just waiting a few days or a few weeks, and seeing if Appleton recovers, or least improves enough for me to see him? That would engender no complications, right?"

  A waiter approached to take their order.

  Heron rose and put coins on the table. "Order whatever pleases you," he said to Porter. "You have more than earned it. I'm off to untangle this mess. I will try to alert you to what I do, if it is not already apparent."

  Chapter 5

  [Foster Square Facility, Brewster, Massachusetts, 2096 AD]

  A woman sat at a console. Actually, she wasn't a human woman, she was a female android, but few humans could tell the difference.

  Sierra Waters had left her very specific instructions. But she was not bound by them. She had free will. Still, the ethics of her situation required her, as much as an ethical dictate could, to certainly be guided by Sierra's instructions. After all, Sierra was in large part responsible for her very existence.

  Whom should she save? She had reversed the death of Synesius several times, but maybe this was the time to let him rest in peace. She had reversed Max's death in 150 AD on the shore of the Thames, and in 2042 AD in the Parthenon Club in London, along with Synesius then, too. Everyone agreed that reversals or re-sets, every single one of them, risked tearing apart the immensely complex tapestry of time. She had an obligation on that score, too – if not to Sierra Waters, then to humanity, or even existence itself.

  One thing she was sure of: an android's death almost never warranted a re-set. Many humans believed androids were not fully alive. Ironically, many androids agreed with them. She did not, mainly because she felt truly alive inside. But she agreed completely that re-sets should be few and far between, and if ruling out an android's death for a reversal limited the number of re-sets, she was all in favor of that.

  Her thoughts returned to Sierra Waters. She thought she understood this human woman – not surprising, since she had known all along that so much of her own mental architecture, her patterns and penchants of thinking, were based on Sierra.

  Sierra Waters had tried to improve human existence by literally saving some vital parts which been lost in original history – assuming, of course, that the world and the history which Sierra had grown up with was the original, and not the creation of another time traveler such as Heron. Sierra had attempted to save Socrates from the hemlock and the philosopher's own stubborn nature. She had attempted to save some volumes from the flames that at three times different times in history had engulfed parts of the magnificent, ancient Library of Alexandria. Ironically, the ancient Library burned was the very history Sierra had grown up with, but she had come to believe that the conflagrations were the work of Heron.

  And Sierra Waters had achieved something of both lofty goals, after a fashion, for Socrates and the Library -- though the life of Socrates, after she had saved him, did not amount to very much for the world, and she had managed to save just a fraction of the ancient Library's immense holdings.

  But one of the scrolls Sierra Waters had saved was Heron's Chronica, which he had wanted burned, and now Sierra Waters was out to save the process of time travel itself -- or its recipe, contained in the Chronica -- lest Heron keep it from everyone but himself. Heron wanted to keep the instructions and equations of the Chronica and its usage suggestions about time travel from the world at large, which Sierra might agree was a good thing. But keeping them from Sierra herself was something Sierra would not think was good.

  Why had Sierra entrusted so much responsibility in this quest of hers, this fight to keep humanity on the best course, to an android? Debates raged as to whether the androids were more or less than human, but all agreed, including Sierra Waters, that they were not human. So why did Sierra trust her?

  The answer was that it was not so much that Sierra trusted an android, the android realized, it was that Sierra did not trust humanity.

  But androids were not completely trustworthy. Heron had some access to them, too. And he had constructed androids with faces and bodies that looked like those loyal to Sierra. One had killed Synesius and Max and many others in the Parthenon in 2042, probably the most horrible event which Sierra had requested her to re-set.

  How could Sierra be sure that she, this android sitting at a console with a true-view of Cape Cod Bay right now, was not true to Heron?

  The answer was Sierra could not know that for sure. But in her android brain, she believed with every ounce of her being that she was trying to do the best for Sierra and humanity, just as her sister androids had done. They had sacrificed their lives for Sierra, whatever that meant, and she knew, or believed she knew, that she would do the same if necessary.

  She got little reassurance from the fact that, if she was now in existence, and Sierra Waters had created her, then that meant Sierra Waters had survived. Time travel had a way of leaving the most logical reasoning in tatters and shreds.

  Chapter 6

  [New York City, 1896 AD]

  Max and Sierra joined John Jacob Astor IV and Nikola Tesla in front row seats at the National Conservatory of Music. Astor had reserved the seats for them at the Dvořák concert.

  "The music will be beautiful," Tesla said to Sierra and Max, "but I keep telling Jack that we best repair to 1899."