Unburning Alexandria (Sierra Waters) Read online

  Unburning

  Alexandria

  Also by Paul Levinson:

  FICTION

  Borrowed Tides (2001)

  The Plot to Save Socrates (2006, eBook 2012)

  Dr. Phil D'Amato series

  The Silk Code (1999, eBook 2012)

  The Consciousness Plague (2002)

  The Pixel Eye (2003)

  NON-FICTION

  Mind at Large: Knowing in the Technological Age (1988)

  Electronic Chronicles (1992)

  Learning Cyberspace (1995)

  The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution (1997)

  Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium (1999)

  Realspace: The Fate of Physical Presence in the Digital Age, On and Off Planet (2003)

  Cellphone: The World's Most Mobile Medium, and How It Has Transformed Everything (2004)

  New New Media (2009, 2012)

  Unburning

  Alexandria

  by

  Paul Levinson

  JoSara MeDia

  Unburning Alexandria

  Copyright © 2013 by Paul Levinson

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  1st ebook edition published May 2013 by JoSara MeDia

  An earlier version of Chapter 0 and Chapter 1 was published as “Unburning Alexandria” in Analog Magazine, November 2008

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover illustration by Joel Iskowitz

  Table of Contents

  A Note to Readers

  Previously in The Plot to Save Socrates

  Chapter 0

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Appendix

  Copyright

  Also By Paul Levinson

  Other Titles by JoSara MeDia

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Tina Vozick, Simon Vozick-Levinson, Molly Vozick-Levinson, Larry Ketchersid, and Audrey Ketchersid who helped with proofreading the manuscript. Thanks to Stan Schmidt and Trevor Quachri for helping with the publication of the “Unburning Alexandria” novelette in Analog in 2008, and thanks to Joel Iskowitz for his cover illustration for this novel. And last but not least, thanks to the biggest group of all: the many readers and reviewers who have been asking since 2006 for a sequel to The Plot to Save Socrates.

  Dedication

  To Tina, who frequently seeks to rescue me from the flames.

  Previously in The Plot to Save Socrates

  Sierra Waters, a graduate student in 2042 New York City, is given an unusual manuscript by her mentor Thomas O'Leary, who soon after disappears. The manuscript is a previously unknown dialogue in which Socrates receives a visitor after Crito on the eve of Socrates's death - a man who claims to be from the future and offers Socrates a chance to escape the hemlock that won't change history: a clone of Socrates will be given the hemlock, so Socrates can escape to the future. Sierra is not sure what to think of this manuscript, but she and her boyfriend Max go off to London in search of Thomas. There they discover a room with chairs which can travel through time, as explained to them by William Henry Appleton, the great 19th-century American publisher, who has used such a chair to travel to the future. Sierra and Max travel to Londinium 150 AD, where Sierra to her horror sees Max attacked and killed by Roman legionaries. She goes to Alexandria, where she meets Heron, the enigmatic ancient inventor, and his student Jonah. Sierra is now attempting to save Socrates - in the way indicated in the manuscript - as much as she is looking for Thomas, and her travels take her to Phrygia (later Asia Minor) in 404 BC, and the bed of Alcibiades, Socrates's beloved student. Alcibiades, who in our history is killed by Spartan mercenaries when in bed with a concubine, is saved from this fate when Heron arrives with legionaries minutes before the mercenaries arrive, and awakens Alcibiades and Sierra. In the ensuing escape and aftermath, Sierra and Alcibiades fall in love, and Heron enlists them in the plot to save Socrates which he is now traveling through time to set in motion. But Sierra and Alcibiades gradually come to realize that Heron - or some future version of himself - is trying to kill them. In the end, Sierra not Heron rescues Socrates and takes him to 2042, where Socrates meets with Thomas, who has reappeared and is thrilled to see the philosopher. But Alcibiades is injured in the rescue and he and Sierra are separated. Desperate to find him, Sierra goes to Alexandria, 410 AD, where she has reason to think Alcibiades may have gone, and where she takes on the identity of Hypatia, who in our history was killed by fanatics in 415 AD.

  A Note to Readers

  Chapter 0 of Unburning Alexandria was published as Chapter 11 of The Plot to Save Socrates "author's cut" ebook in December 2012, but was not published in the original hardcover (2006) and paperback (2007) editions of The Plot to Save Socrates. I included it as Chapter 0 in this novel so that readers of the printed editions of The Plot to Save Socrates would have the entire continuing story before them in this novel. Slightly different versions of Chapters 0 and 1 of this novel were also previously published as a novelette in Analog: Science Fiction and Fact magazine in November 2008.

  This novel contains a mix of real and fictional characters. An "Appendix" has been included at end of the novel, with brief biographies of real people in history who either appear or are significantly mentioned in the novel.

  "The Library of Alexandria's destruction was one of the greatest intellectual catastrophes in history." - W. C. Dampier, A History of Science, 1929/1942

  Chapter 0

  [Alexandria, 413 AD]

  Sierra walked quickly past the Library in Alexandria, sandals slapping on stones.

  No clocks were on its walls. But if there had been an hour hand and a minute hand, in alabaster or some other white mineral that matched the walls, she knew the minute would be pressing the hour, and the hour would be twelve. The Library was at its end–

  "Hypatia!"

  She turned around. "Synesius, an unexpected pleasure! You should have sent word. Ptolemais to Alexandria is a long way to travel for a surprise visit." She knew he was desperately in love with her, in need of her, especially after the grievous loss of his wife and two boys. She cared about him, but was in love with no one likely alive in this ancient world.

  "The winds were kind. I boarded the ship four mornings ago, and here I am."

  The sun had just set behind him. Synesius was about the same age as Sierra – he would have been about ten years younger than the original Hypatia. He had been Sierra's student for an intense year, shortly after she had first replaced Hypatia, who had died of a swift fever. Today, Synesius looked older than both of them put together. Dark pouches anchored his eyes, deep creases mapped his forehead.

  "What is wrong?" she asked him, though she could think of a dozen things.

  "People of my faith are angrier than ever about you and your pagans. I am concerned about your safety."

  Sierra scoffed. "Why, if you have such confidence that yours is the one, true, inevitable faith, do you have such anger towards others? Surely, if you
r faith is right, all others including mine will fade of their own accord."

  "Not all of us want to kill you," Synesius replied. "I certainly do not." He blushed, slightly. "Most of us indeed believe that in time the whole world will be Christian. But there are fanatics among us – Nitrian young men – who see their mission as cleansing the world of all impurities, immediately, and these include the purveyors of impure thoughts. Your beauty and intelligence make you the most dangerous purveyor of all. They burn with hatred – I have seen it."

  Sierra turned from Synesius and the colors behind him and looked again at the Library. It was bronzed and dignified in this light. "My father did his best to stave off the bloodshed, to contest with ideas not knives, but he lost that battle." She was talking about Theon, who was Hypatia's biological father, not hers. Theon had succumbed to the same fever as Hypatia, which had cut short Sierra's attempt to locate the cure for Socrates's illness. But when Hypatia's death was imminent, Sierra had taken some of Hypatia's DNA, travelled to Athens and the future, and reconstructed her face and vocal chords so that she looked and sounded like Hypatia. Sierra returned and took Hypatia's place.

  For the Alexandrian world of 410 AD and all subsequent history, Hypatia had recovered. If she looked slightly different, if her voice sounded off, that was ascribed to grief over the loss of her father and her own close encounter with death. . . .

  Unfortunately, that same history had Hypatia dying by vicious assassination in 415 AD. But that was still nearly two years away. Sierra had crucial work to do, but no intention of staying in Alexandria that long. But what, then, was the cause of this visit from Synesius today? Some cloaked danger that her reading of history had not disclosed?

  "Your father was a wise man, as you his daughter are wise," Synesius said. "Indeed, you are wiser still – you have an understanding, a perspective, that speaks of centuries, not just years."

  "Thank you," Sierra replied. "A high compliment from the Bishop of Ptolemais."

  "Yes, a compliment," Synesius said, "but a warning, too. In return for your wisdom and the awe you evoke in people, you court death from the Christian fanatics."

  "What would you have me do?"

  "Leave with me," Synesius said. "Come with me to Ptolemais. There is nothing here for you now, just scrolls and memories. You can take the memories with you. And the scrolls are dwindling."

  "I am devoted to saving them, and to stemming the exodus of scholars from Alexandria," Sierra said. And finding the cure for Socrates, if it exists. She had deliberately come back here near the end of Theon's life, in case he had not learned about the cure until his last years. But she had not counted on Hypatia dying at the same time, and now she was obliged to pursue this phantom cure without their assistance.

  "Come with me," Synesius repeated. "You will be safe in Ptolemais. Under my protection. I will care for you."

  Sierra reminded herself that, in this age, bishops were not celibate. "No," she said. "The Library requires – and deserves – my attention." But it wasn't just Synesius's desire that she wished to avoid, nor the dwindling holdings of the Alexandrian library that she yearned to protect, nor the possible cure for Socrates that she wanted to find. Alcibiades was long overdue in Alexandria.

  "Very well." Synesius lowered his head in acceptance of Sierra's decision. "I will spend the night with my brothers – at quarters generously provided by Marcellinus – and leave for Ptolemais in the morning."

  "Marcellinus of Carthage? Your importance has grown since the last time we met. That makes me happy." Marcellinus was not only Proconsul of Africa but speaker for the Emperor himself. But she also knew that Honorius ruled only over half an Empire now, and the weaker, crumbling half at that–

  "If only my importance were enough to convince you." Synesius reached into his robe, and extracted a small bundle of scrolls. "These were recently recovered in a house that the Nitrians set on fire. They were written by your father."

  * * *

  Sierra looked up at the pastel ceiling of her bedroom in the Library late that night, and shook her head, slowly. . . . But if Alcibiades was coming here, why wasn't he here already?

  Where was he? She asked herself this question every night, as she lay tossing and turning, waiting for sleep. She could put it out of her mind, barely, sometimes, during the day, but not in the night. She looked at the little digi-locket she had picked up in the future and now kept by her bed. It was a painting – by Jean-Baptiste Regnault from 1791, "Socrates Dragging Alcibiades from the Embrace of Sensual Pleasure". A stern Socrates dragged a young fair-haired man from a blonde woman. Nothing about the picture was right. Socrates of course looked nothing like Socrates, Alcibiades bore no resemblance to the real man, and she in all her disguises had never been blonde. But someone, something, had dragged him away from her. . . .

  Was he waiting for the time closest to her advertised death – the time of Hypatia's murder as recorded in history – so that he could show up at the last minute, and be sure she, Sierra playing Hypatia, was here?

  A very dangerous game, but she was playing it, too. Attracted like some fluttering insect to this hot Venus flytrap of a place and time. And why?

  For Alcibiades? Yes.

  For finding the elusive cure for Socrates, if it ever existed – even though Theon, its reported author, was gone? Yes. Even though the biblia Synesius had given her today had proved to be another dead end, containing nothing new, at least on her first, heart-thumping read.

  She thought about those scrolls – and then about all the scrolls still left in this Library. She picked up a scroll she had left near the side of her bed. It was by Alcman of Sardis, a seventh century BC Spartan. He and his poetry were known in her future age, but this work was not. It would not survive the final destruction of the Library by the Caliph Omar some two hundred years from this past.

  But Alcman and his world of potential readers were the lucky ones – at least some of his work had endured. Most books that survived into the age of the printing press in the West – the world of Gutenberg in the 1450s and the mass copies it would produce – were home free. Certainly everything that had made it into her digital age in the twenty-first century would likely be available to please and inform and infuriate readers for as long as there were humans on Earth and other planets.

  But what of those ancient authors whose very names became soot in the burnings of Alexandria? She had encountered many of their scrolls back here. She thought of another poem – Thomas Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" from the 1700s – and its paean to the "mute, inglorious Miltons" who were buried in the graveyard, great poets and thinkers whose works had never made it to the light of day and publication. How many mute, inglorious Homers and Platos lay in the halls outside her room, not mute and unknown now, but soon and irrevocably to be?

  No . . . nothing was irrevocable when it came to time travel. . . .

  * * *

  She heard familiar footsteps in the hall as she perused an unknown variant of Aristotle's Politics early the next morning – who knows, it could have been a copy of one of the scrolls from Aristotle's famed personal library itself, said to be the seed of this great Library of Alexandria.

  The steps were too slow to belong to Synesius. She carefully re-wound and returned the scroll to its compartment.

  "Hello," a kind voice said to her. William Henry Appleton looked worn. This was the third trip the great publisher had taken back to Alexandria. But he was here, Sierra knew, on behalf of friendship, not business or scholarship. He was probably the best friend she had, in this or any time.

  "When you go back to your family and home on the Hudson this time, you should stay with them," she told him, tenderly.

  "I wish I had better news for you, my dear. There is no sign of Alcibiades anywhere. It is as if he entered a realm of invisibility when he left the Hippocrates Medical Center that morning in the future."

  Sierra nodded. The unhappy news was not unexpected. "Have you eaten?"

 
"Yes," Appleton replied. "One of the Library staff was good enough to fetch cheese and fruit for me." He patted his stomach. "I think your staff are getting to know me! The food was quite good!"

  "I'm glad," Sierra said. "Why don't you rest?" She gestured to her suite of rooms, which included a sleeping chamber for guests, which Appleton used on his visits. "We can talk more, later."

  "Yes, I could do with a little nap." Appleton kissed her on the cheek. "It's funny how I feel so at home with you, even with your new face," he said softly. "Spirit does triumph over flesh, I guess." He retired to her room.

  Sierra returned to her scrolls. She looked again at several of the papyri Synesius had provided. Nothing about a cure for any illness of the brain, just scholia by Theon on mathematics.

  This cure was like Alcibiades. Neither seemed to exist in this Alexandria.

  Where he was now? Dead somewhere in a time that was not his?

  The world, of course, still thought that Alcibiades had been murdered in Phrygia, a few years before the death of Socrates. Little did the world know the infinity of alternatives that time travel afforded. . . . Alternities, she thought that some science fiction writer in the future had called them.

  The complexities of time travel still taunted her, as always. Mr. Appleton here three times, Alcibiades none – could that have been just another accident of an imprecise time-traveling chair that Alcibiades had attempted to take back here to some time in the past three years? Would he arrive instead a week, a month, a year from now?

  She had become accustomed to this world. As Hypatia, she had developed quite a reputation as a logician, a mathematician, a neo-Platonic philosopher. That part had been easy. She had after all already conversed with Socrates and with Plato. She already had had an interest in Pythagoras, Euclid, and the ancient theorists of numbers, inherited from her mother, a professor of mathematics. She already had read many of the relevant ancient treatises and commentaries in her younger days in the distant future. The mathematics were child's play to her, just as the realities of time travel so exquisitely were not.