Unburning Alexandria by Paul Levinson Read Free Book Online

BC – the three times of her visits, although visit was too insignificant a word for it. Even in those ancient times, the lands near the Aegean and the Mediterranean had been densely populated for millennia. Here in the Catskills of New York – anywhere in the New World – dense population was a matter of several centuries, at most. The air was fresh to her – or maybe it was just good to breathe in something close to her own time.
    Being here also had the dual effect of distancing her from Alcibiades, yet making her think more about Thomas her mentor . . . and Max. She somehow missed Alcibiades less in the 21st century, so far from where she had come to love him. Did that make her superficial? She knew enough to know that when it came to time travel, the usual standards in life and love did not apply. . . . But what had happened to Max was something she could make no real sense of, even with her first-hand experience of how travel through millennia could jumble the soul.
    How many times had she replayed it in her head, that nightmare on the shore of the Thames. . . . Max going down. . . . Why not just go back there, with the knowledge that Max would be slaughtered, and stop that from happening, stop him from going there? The answer was that she knew, even if she escaped from this prison in the pines, she could not just go back to London and stop herself and Max from walking down to that river on that morning in 150 AD. She knew that to stop that would be to prevent her being here right now, which would prevent her from going back there to prevent Max's death, and prevent everything else that had happened to her since. She knew that, but it didn't help the guilt. A painful breeze rustled through the trees and her pores. It whispered paradox, paradox, paradox. . . .
    She shuddered and sneered at the breeze. She had stayed away from it. But she would find a way, somehow, of saving Max, of blowing through that paradox. Just as she would save the books of Alexandria. All things were possible in time travel. All things, she had to keep reminding herself.
    She still needed to learn more, how to skate the loops without breaking the ice and the world around it. One thing she clearly understood about time travel is she had almost all the time that she needed. She could go back and save Max next year or the year after or the next decade. He could be saved whatever her age, whatever the time she came from. As long as she was alive, she could do that. It wouldn't matter to Max, he wouldn't suffer – he would be pulled away from the knives, and never know he had died, unless she or someone else told him. Sierra was the only one who would suffer the longer she waited to save Max.
    She breathed out, shakily. Her first job now was getting out of here. She looked carefully at the legionaries outside. They could have been twenty-first century Mafia soldiers. She smiled, sourly. She wondered how many Mafia wise guys in the past hundred years had really been Heron's men on some damn mission.
    She looked at each of the legionaries. This had to start with one – someone she could talk to, get him interested, get him started. . . . But who?
    She looked at one, two, three faces. None very promising. She looked at a fourth, and a fifth. Even worse. She looked at a sixth–
    He was standing by himself. She hadn't noticed him before. Something about this angle made him look very familiar. . . .
    * * *
    Jonah walked into her room about 15 minutes later. She ran to him, flung her arms around him, and kissed him on the lips – too passionately for a friend, she realized. She pulled away and looked at his face. "I'm just glad you're alive," she said and touched his cheek. Then– "It's probably not a good idea for us to stand here like this."
    Jonah smiled. "You mean Heron's butchers? They would just think I was taking advantage of a beautiful woman in need – more beautiful than ever, in Hypatia's face."
    "We're speaking English," Sierra said,