(The garbage above this line is somebody else paying for my garbage below.)
"I'm still not sure this is such a good idea."
"Helluva time to mention it," drawled the long-limbed, gawky man crammed into the op's seat of the tiny cockpit. "What are you going to do, Jaffie, open the door and get out?"
The android, squeezed in behind the young scientist, attempted to swat him, a rather awkward maneuver to be doing in such close quarters. The gesture ended up as a helpless shrug. Jaffie, built by some tech with an attention to detail rivalled only by the designers of teenagers' model spacecraft kits, grimaced and tugged at the sleeve of his tunic, which was slipping off one shoulder again.
The human craned his neck around and smiled reassuringly. "Don't worry, pal, I've got plenty of faith in you. You look just fine-- all you need is a red cloak, and old Herod himself would probably salute. If there really are any gaps in your Latin file--which I don't believe for a nanosecond--just apologize politely and explain we're from Britain and don't know the lingo that well."
"I'm not merely concerned about my performance, sir, as well you know," the android said, giving a good approximation of nervous fidgeting with his hands. It was quite a feat. His designer had given Jaffie appealing looks, steady grey eyes, broad shoulders, curly black hair just a little too long and going grey, and a calm, pleasantly wrinkled face that looked like nothing short of a supernova would perturb him. Yet somehow Jaffie had managed to assume the agitated, glazed stare of a commuter who has just discovered his connection has lost hyperdrive a light-year out from spaceport. "I'm just reexamining the legal and ethical ramifictions of what we're about to do."
Logan gave a quiet sigh. How many times had they been through this? Jaffie would probably still be worrying about whether he had Done The Right Thing when he had become the first artificial lifeform to win a Nobel Prize. "Jaffie, Jaffie. Isn't it a little late for that? Look. You know the government would take years to approve this, even if my Prof didn't drop the proposal down the nearest black hole. And you know they'd pick somebody else, anyone but the ones who came up with the project. But you're the man for the job. You've got the eidetic memory. You've got every word of the ancient texts database right between your ears. You know more about what dead Greeks had for dinner than they did. So calm down and stop running around and around the same loop."
"I wish I'd never complained about that missing Ptolemy manuscript," the android grumbled.
"Look, pal, you're the boss here," the human said with forced diffidence, taking his hands off the cockpit panel. "If you really don't think we should go through with this, I'll turn the ship around. We can be back in Los Angeles before dinner... yesterday's dinner."
Jaffie's reply was delivered in that precise and slightly artificial tone that meant he was still calculating options and odds to the tenth decimal place. "No. You're right, sir, I'm the only one who can do it, and you're the only one capable of operating this ship who trusts me enough to let me try. They'd say an android couldn't blend in, that we're too unadaptable. I've dedicated my entire function to the study of my own creators' history, but I'd be forbidden to carry out the task I am best designed for."
Logan turned back to his console to key in a few adjustments, trying not to ignore the anxiety clearly visible in the reflection of his companion's face. Jaffie seemed so human that sometimes it was difficult to remember that all his mannerisms were merely the result of intelligent mimicking. He was a top-of-the-line simulation, born in the days just before androids began demanding the right to reproduce according to their own designs. Not so many years ago, Jaffie would have been a slave, probably drafted into an executive function. His status would have been no better than that of the freedmen of Rome, running the empire under the authority of the Caesars and owing everything to the Emperor who had given them their lives. The Articles of Artificial Intelligence had been in force for fifteen years now, but that did not mean humanity had learned to cope with or understand their brilliant, unpredictable, inhuman offspring. Certainly they would not permit an android, no matter how human in appearence, to use a top-secret experimental time machine to visit such a critical nexus in earth history. Only an unlikely friendship with a graduate student working for the machine's creator had earned Jaffie the ticket to his lifelong wish.
A panel in front of Logan's nose came to life, suffusing the cockpit of the timeship with a green glow. "And here we are," he declared, with about as much excitement as as shuttle intercom announcing stops. "Now let's see if I can keep us from materializing inside of a genuine Roman concrete wall."
The android had reevaluated their itinerary and timetable only about ten times before Logan lifted his hands and cracked his knuckles smugly. "Alexandria, Ides of January, 415 A.D. All passengers bound for the late Roman Empire, please wait until the craft has halted and the door has opened before standing to disembark."
Jaffie jumped to his feet with barely-restrained excitement and nearly banged his skull on a bulkhead. The brass fibula on his tunic popped loose, and he stopped, fumbling, to refasten it.
"Take it easy, pal," Logan said gently. "You've got all the time in the world."
Jaffie's silvery-grey eyes fastened on his friend. "How very true."
Logan, used to Jaffie's occasional odd epigrams, smiled lopsidedly and kicked the door control.
A cowled figure leaned against a marble wall, listening to the rare silence before dawn in the sleeping city of stone. A bright light flared momentarily from the alley beside him. He turned, gasped and crossed himself as the dim outline of a boxlike, shadowy shape appeared in the night air. Choosing the better part of valor, the monk secluded himself behind a column, and observed all with breath held back by fear.
A faint green light suddenly outlined what appeared to be a door. Two figures stepped forth from the eerie portal. Then the taller one intoned a strange phrase, and the mysterious box vanished.
"Phew!" Logan gasped, choking on the strange aromas of an ancient metropolis.
"Alexandria!" Jaffie said in hushed tones, launching into a rather credible imitation of a cheap tour guide. "Fabled city of the ancients, founded by Alexander the Great as the capital of his Egyptian empire; stronghold of the Greek Pharaohs; site of one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the lighthouse of Pharos; place where Caesar and Mark Antony were beguiled by Queen Cleopatra, asp of the Nile; Alexandria, home to holy man and scholar, Arian heretic, Jew, and Christian saint."
"Jaffie," Logan complained, "We're alone; there's no need to speak Greek now."
"We must act the part at all times," Jaffie said solemnly. "We are visitors from a far and distant land, come to study the Library and its secrets; remember that."
Logan nodded patiently. "All right, but drop the travelogue. Where's your precious Library?"
"We're standing next to it." Jaffie touched a column reverently, eyes shining. "Home." His gaze travelled across the painted pillars, black marble columns holding up numerous balconies, tiled roofs, and rounded arches that gleamed with a ghostly whiteness in the starlight. No streetlights were here, no hovercars or walls of flexiglass; instead, just cold, secretive marble. "Look up," he commanded.
Logan obeyed, and let out a low whistle. "And I thought we had whipped the pollution problem. Just look at the Milky Way-- it looks like paint instead of powder."
"Someday," Jaffie said wistfully, "we'll clean our air enough to see this again. See the Little Bear? The stars aren't even in the same place nowadays." He inhaled deeply, sampling the air of a city that had never known smog, weather control, or nuclear winter.
Logan picked absently at one of the painted wooden pillars with an exaggerated sneeze. "Whee, smell that smallpox; let's hope the immunoboosters hold. Shouldn't we be going to the portico you mentioned?"
Jaffie sighed. "Yes, you're right. The courtyard's this way. Let's find a place where you can rest; I'll stand guard until the Caesareum opens."
The cowled monk peered after them, still for a moment, then followed.
Logan, curled up in his toga and cloak, was awakened by Jaffie's strong hands shaking him. "What, morning already?" he groaned, rolling over onto the sun- warmed stones.
"Dawn has come and gone," Jaffie whispered, tugging at his own tunic in one final attempt to straighten the folds. "And someone approaches."
Through the gates of the courtyard came a clatter of hooves against cobblestone. Two horses trotted into view, pulling a squat wooden chariot, gaily painted, behind them. The horses halted at their driver's voice, that of a woman. Across the square from the colonnaded portico where Jaffie and Logan were hiding, a servant came forward from an outbuilding to hold the beasts while the lady stepped down. Politely thanking him as he turned to lead them away, she swept past the hidden spectators with regal stride and mounted the library steps. Jaffie and Logan caught a glimpse of wide- set, heavy- lidded black eyes, hair pinned up in tight black curls escaping in wisps around her oval face, a long but not unattractive nose, a thin mouth whose age wrinkles showed she smiled often, and a slender but imposing figure veiled in white linen. The woman's face held all the dignity of an elderly Siamese cat, and was reminiscent of an older version of the famous Nefertiti bust.
Jaffie drew in his breath.
"What do you know," Logan observed drily. "They really do wear mascara around their eyes, just like in the mummy portraits. I thought that just meant they were dead."
"Logos, you fool," Jaffie said sharply, using the Hellenized form of his friend's name, "that was she! I'm certain of it."
Logan looked at Jaffie's excited face. "Hypatia? Come on, there must be hundreds of women that look like that in this city; either that, or everybody got the same artist to paint their death mugshots.. Besides, you said Hypatia was about forty-five. This lady's too young. She's probably the cleaning lady or something."
"Then why the chariot? Follow me, sir: it's time." Jaffie stepped out into the morning sunlight, which glinted off the painted marble columns too brightly for comfort.
Logan followed him across the square and up the steps, trying to pretend he was a British tourist from an ex-Roman colony instead of a computer technician and chronophysicist from California.
"Sistite." ordered a deep male voice in Latin. "Qui venisti?"
"Artifex Javianos et Angeles Logos, inventuri Caesareum," Logan replied smoothly. "Vagavimus longe lateque ab Britannia cognoscendum mores vostrorum." He produced a scroll from the folds of his tunic.
The sentries stared at him suspiciously, apparently understanding little of what he had said. They peered, dumbfounded, at the scroll, much as if it had been a portable holographic projector. Jaffie explained gravely that the scroll was their letter of introduction from the Roman prefect.
Luckily, the sound of sandaled footsteps on cool, polished marble rescued him. The woman they had seen earlier appeared at the antechamber door, surveying the scene with a critical eye. The sentries instantly fell silent and snapped to attention. She addressed them in clear, flowing Latin, which even Logan had no trouble translating:
"Who are these strangers, guards?"
"Travellers," one replied. "From Britannia, I think. They have the aspect and disposition of barbarians. Shall I send them away, Lady?"
"Nay, let them enter," she commanded, studying Jaffie with a cool gaze. Her hooded eyes seemed to hold great wisdom, and a promise of humor, too, judging by the crinkles around them. Just now, however, she looked somewhat weary, and her tone matched her appearance. "The danger arises more from our own citizens than from foreigners. Come, barbarian, have you a tongue? Can you converse in the speech of the Hellenes with less difficulty than that of Rome?"
Jaffie nodded and bowed, switching to Greek. "A little, Lady. We seek learning. Science. Truth?"
She stared at him, amusement conveyed by a grave smile. "Ah. A worthy but elusive goal. I think, good man, that you require the services of a language instructor before you study here."
"We have little time," Jaffie explained. "And I have been taught to read well, although my master was not so skilled in rhetoric."
"I see." She shrugged. "Very well, then. Let it not be said that Theon's daughter discouraged fellow scholars from the pursuit of knowledge! I am Hypatia, student of mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy. I have the honor and burden of being the custodian of the Museum's Library, or what is left of it, now housed here in the old temple of the Caesars. Alas, much of the collection, and now the Museum itself, have been lost to fire and human greed, but much still remains."
Logan winked at his nervous companion. After their work here was finished, Jaffie hoped to make several further jumps back to collect data from missing volumes, but he had elected to begin with the final version of the somewhat depleted Library.
Hypatia did not notice the human's glance, but continued. "I can help you become acquainted with the Library, if you will but follow me. Do you understand?"
"Yes," Jaffie said, his accent becoming more clear. Just listening to a little of the spoken dialect helped him to correct the flaws in his databanks. "We would be honored, Lady."
He flashed Logan a rare smile as he followed Hypatia inside.
The monk was admitted by another black-robed brother into the small but elaborately decorated office of a high official. The finely-garbed man within waited expectantly on a raised chair, extending one ringed hand.
"Your Grace," the monk said, kissing it.
"What news, Brother, of the heathen slattern's doings today?" the seated man asked contemptuously.
"By our good Lord," the monk said, crossing himself devoutly, "I do swear upon the cross that last night I saw portents of a most infernal nature before the Caesareum's very walls."
"Portents?" the archbishop snapped, for so his robes and insignia showed him to be. "Or diabolical magic, I should not wonder, brewed by Hypatia, her scholarly associates, and her entire fawning horde."
"Verily," the monk said, trembling slightly. "For I saw a dark portal appear beside the north wall, fully the height and breadth of two men standing side by side. A green fire burned within it, and from it, two creatures stepped forth. The first spoke with the voice of an animal, and he was tall with pale hair and aspect; the second looked to be of Italian stock, but told him they must maintain a deception by speaking only Greek. He said that they must pretend to be strangers from a far land, and that they had come to see the Library. He even had the effrontery to speak of the Arian heresy in a reverent tone! To be sure, his talk of stars and sky, as if they were something to be controlled, sounded of Hypatia's wicked astronomy. Yet his voice was peculiar; he could not hide the diabolical accent of Evil's earthly minions from his tongue."
"What then happened?"
"The portal vanished, and they went to the portico: to wait, so they said. I watched, your Grace, until an hour after dawn, when Hypatia arrived in her customary manner-- driving herself without chaperone, knees and head bare to the world, like any Egyptian harlot-- and entered the propylaea. The two sorcerers followed hard on her footsteps. When the sentries questioned these two, it was she who commanded the guards to allow them to pass, and she took it upon herself to lead them inside."
"So now she consorts openly with demons." The archbishop looked down with grave, bleak eyes. "The time of testing is at hand, and we must all trust in God. At such an hour, our convictions must stand firm against their primitive blasphemies, lest her kind in their ignorance plunge us all into a second Dark Age. Watch. Watch everything, my Brother. Speak with the guards; ask them what she does with these two, and report to me, that I may know how best to proceed."
"It shall be done, your Grace." The monk bowed, and departed.
The two unlikely visitors were stunned by the sheer size of the library through which Hypatia guided them. Rack after rack of scrolls, each carefully stored on its own shelf or in a strongbox, filled chamber after chamber. Hypatia patiently explained how they were arranged, using simple words which her guests could comprehend. Her face glowed as she removed a manuscript from time to time for their inspection. She was impressed by Jaffie's extensive knowledge of certain authors, though surprised about others which he had not heard of at all.
"Your literary world is far from Britain," Jaffie explained, "So I am lucky to have read as much as I have. But my experience is limited to those books which the brothers in the monastery happened to have possessed."
"Monastery?" she said sharply, the corners of her lips turning downwards. "You come from such a place?"
"Nay, Lady, we merely trained in letters there; otherwise, we have had little to do with the church." Jaffie, well aware of the danger of such a remark, spoke softly.
"I am envious of you, then," she said. "I have had no small difficulty with the clergy, who claim that the concepts which I teach are heresy or magic. If you intend to study science here at all, you would do well to avoid the Patriarch Cyril and his army of monks."
"We will keep that in mind."
"I must say," she added, "your accent has shown marked improvement, even in so brief a space of time."
"I am a fast learner, with so fine a teacher."
She shrugged with the air of one used to, or at least resigned to, such flattery. "And how fares your silent comrade?" She nodded in the human's direction. "Logos seems an odd name for one who has never a word to say. Is anything amiss?"
Logan shook his head. "No, I am fine. I do not speak Greek as well as my friend."
She frowned again, perhaps at his terrible accent, or at the idea that two such unschooled barbarians would bother to come all the way to Alexandria for the purpose of examining erudite texts. "Yes, both of you would profit by practice. Tell me, pray, do you have lodgings? If not, then come to my afternoon symposium; the city prefect will be among those present, and he can help provide you with apartments fitting for visiting scholars. He's a man of outstanding virtue, Orestes; one of the few rational minds in Alexandria not swayed or cowed by the Patriarch's mob of fanatics."
"Why, we owe you thanks," Jaffie said congenially, looking forward with thinly-disguised euphoria to hearing the famed Hypatia teach. He had hardly dared hope, when they planned this expedition, to meet her, let alone to attend one of her lectures.
"Well, then, I shall expect you this afternoon," she said with a commanding nod. "I must now attend to my work. Ask one of the students if you have need of anything." With that, she left them to explore on their own.
Explore they did. Days went by, each spent in much the same leisurely fashion. They would walk to the Caesareum with Orestes, the harried Roman prefect, who took time away from his laborious duties to attend Hypatia's seminar on heavenly bodies. Sometimes Jaffie would detour through the forum to sample the sights, sounds, and smells of the Emporeum, where goods were shipped in from all over the empire and where tight-fisted customs officials could be heard arguing loudly with merchants all day long. In the mornings, Jaffie and Logan would examine the remnants of the old Library in the Caesareum, compiled from seven hundred years of Alexandrian scholarship and amassed by several successive temples and institutions of higher learning. In the afternoons, Jaffie and Logan would go to Hypatia's lectures or to the amphitheaters to watch the circuses and plays. Jaffie never strayed from Logan's side, for in the crime-ridden streets of fifth century Alexandria, one was as likely to be robbed by a thief or stoned to death by a roving mob as to reach home intact. Evenings were spent once more at the Library, until the guards closed up the Caesareum and sent them home.
It was almost noon. Logan sat on a wooden chair carved more for beauty than comfort; the wooden papyrus fronds were chafing his bare legs. His painful slouch gave silent witness to generations of students who had perfected the pose. The sweat ran down his back and dampened his white tunic as he hunched over a scroll. It required the patience of a Prometheus to look like he understood or cared about the wildly erroneous descriptions of India by some ancient historian named Ctesius, who obviously had the same scholarly training as those writing in journals featuring such articles as "Spacecraft Successfully Navigates Black Hole Using Psychic Computer". The hapless computer tech had been expecting daring accounts of distant lands and wars, philosophical treatises on the nature of the universe, fascinating legends and myths, epics, poetry, and maybe even a good book on Roman orgies like the Satyricon. So far, however, he had been less than thrilled; in fact, he was starting desperately to wish that the Romans had invented air conditioning instead of indoor plumbing, or at the very least air fresheners. Not only that, but the Roman idea of underwear was uncomfortable, to put it delicately, in this heat. Stars only knew what it was like in the summer.
Jaffie, meanwhile, was silently tearing through a twenty-volume text on astronomy by an author unheard of in their time. As Logan skimmed a paragraph about skylax worms and stones that would not sink in water and small pygmies with black semen, he was beginning to wonder if it was really worth preserving the Library for posterity after all. Maybe it was a mercy that most of this stuff had been burned.
"Jaffie?" he said.
"Remember not to call me that. What is it, Logos?" the android replied absently, eyes plastered on the scroll he was zooming through.
"I hate to mention this, but do you realize you are filling your precious databanks with total bunk?"
"Logos," the android said sternly, setting down the dowels carefully to keep the scroll from rolling off the table, "these manuscripts contain the beginnings of every field of human thought and knowledge. Just look at this!"
"Automata, by some bloke named Heron. And?"
"It's a manual on robotics. Before now, classical scholars only knew it as a name. Now, it can take its rightful place beside Plato's Republic, Lucretius' De Rerum Natura, Lao Tzu's Tao, Darwin's Origin of the Species, Einstein's Relativity, and all the other classical texts of the ancient scholars!"
"And all of them ninety percent spacer's breath. I could write a textbook twenty times that size on the subject, and far more accurate."
"Of course you could. So could I. But for their time, these works were great advances in the fields of philosophy and science."
A female voice interrupted their heated discussion. "Here again today, I see. So you two are enjoying our modest collection?"
Logan glanced up to see Hypatia leaning gracefully against a fluted column like a statue of Athene. "Yes, Lady, it's... fascinating."
"Yes, truly amazing," Jaffie enthused. "I only wish I could grasp all I read, but most of the mathematics, the dialectics are simply beyond me."
"Oh, that I doubt, if the way you've been racing through Diophontes is indicative of your mental prowess."
How long had she been watching them? Jaffie made a mental note to listen more carefully. "Only skimming, Lady, for passages I could comprehend."
She smiled, sphinxlike. "I see. Well, if it pleases you, I am about to give a lecture on the application of Euclidean geometry to the motions of planetary bodies."
"Well, actually--" Logan began desperately.
"We'd love to! If only to have the honor of listening to you speak, Lady. Perhaps my friend and I may gain some verbal polish of our own."
"Jaffie?" Logan said one evening, "Are you sure it's a good idea to be attending her lectures? I mean, I realize how valuable her teaching is; I've learned a great deal myself. Honestly. But our silence is awfully suspicious when everyone else is always talking, and we can't exactly interfere in the discussion."
"I am recording her every word in my databank," Jaffie said. "I have a chance not only to read the polished, written prose of distinguished ancient scholars, but to hear a group of Neo- platonist philosophers debating, discussing, and developing their views day by day. The experience is priceless."
"I don't know. She keeps staring at us, as if she suspects something. And that bloke in brown who keeps insisting that the theory of heliocentrism is blasphemy, well, he's got his beady eyes on us too."
"You are too suspicious, Logos. If she had any questions about us, she would already have asked. But she has not."
"Which is odd enough in itself; these people would interrogate a Denubian fungus just because it forms perfect circles. I've never seen such talkers."
"Speech is an artform in this age which is still prized by the literate," the android chided gently. "But don't worry. I'll be careful."
As they reached the door of the apartment in which they were staying, a hooded monk scuttled away under the cover of twilight.
Hypatia paced her study, black hair tumbling down her shoulders. Orestes lounged patiently on a Roman couch, refraining from disturbing her reverie. Concern and curiosity vied for dominance of his classically Roman face, the former finally winning out.
"What do you make of them, Orestes?" she asked at last, halting with the suddenness of a cat overhearing a mouse.
"You ask what opinion I have of my guests?" He spoke carefully, deliberately, with the air of one used to dictation and legal dispatches. "They are... peculiar. You will already have noted how this Javianos seems to know all of one author or, usually, an odd selection of one man's works. On the other hand, he will be acquainted with none of an equally important contemporary. Logos, or so he would have us believe he is named, seems at least consistent: he knows little Latin, less Greek, and has a fine mind if only he could be trained to speak correctly. They study the classics with an air of urgency, as if embarked upon some great enterprise, yet they claim to be merely travellers. What travellers, though, would find greater contentment in deciphering works that they can barely understandthan in touring the city?"
"Given such a choice," Hypatia laughed, "I would certainly choose the former." Her tone grew more serious. "Indeed, while their scholarship is laudable, their intentions are enigmatic and their demeanor misleading. They have barely spoken of their own nation or country. In fact, Logos has professed ignorance when I once questioned him on the subject, claiming he could not understand my words enough to answer me. At first, I thought they might be more spies of Cyril, but, to our misfortune, that intolerant old tyrant seems to be taking a more direct approach."
"He hounds you still?"
Her proud posture weakened a little as her shoulders slumped; for a moment, the intense and brilliant teacher let vulnerability show through the veneer of self-assurance. "Always, good Orestes. Have you not seen how one of Cyril's lackeys is always present at my lectures now, attacking me with verbal claws lent by his overzealous master? Why must they be so close- minded? Why cannot learning exist side by side with faith? Is God so limited that the wonders of the universe which we study here are quite beyond His art? And it is not as if we force our teachings upon the masses. Nay, we do not even claim to have facts, only logical conjecture. We have never claimed to be right. And, if it is not too crass of me to say so, it seems to me that we have committed fewer acts that would offend God than the good archbishop himself."
"Any good philosophy or religion may be perverted to other ends by the cruel or the closed-minded," Orestes sighed, "as a scholar such as yourself should know all too well. Cyril is only a man, a man who like many people fears what he does not understand. The thought that anyone besides his own church would dare to offer answers to questions of life, and the thought that some might abide by other gods or none: each undermine his authority. In such troubled times as these, the powerful see dissenting ideas as a danger, and, therefore, such views are doubly so for the weak who harbor them."
"All of which I well know! But Cyril's hatred of me surpasses mere reason, and he breeds such hatred carefully in his followers. He raises anew that blood- stained standard that has plagued Alexandria since her ancient foundation: the people's loathing of foreigners; for such, he says, am I. But do not all our citizens mingle the blood of Greek and Egyptian, Jew and Roman? What fault then can he find with me?"
"Perhaps," Orestes said with a melancholy smile, "it is because you are a woman."
She laughed helplessly. "Aristotle would happily concur with that criticism, I am certain: proof, I say, that even the wisest of us may sometimes err. Does the shape of the body truly determine the quality of the soul? And yet, many of my own pupils would not dispute Cyril upon this one issue. Am I so mad, Orestes, to think myself as worthy a scholar as any man?"
"No more mad than any lover of wisdom, my dear."
She sighed and glanced upward at the solitary marble bust of a young man. "You give me such comfort, Orestes, especially now that poor Synesius is gone. I only wish he had not lived long enough to foresee the black abyss into which our whole world seems to be sinking, like some latter-day Atlantis plunging headlong into a new dark age. Yet I am glad that you, Orestes, stand by me, when Cyril is trying to do his worst, when his monks fill the streets with lies and men's hearts with hate, and when the mindless mob rages through the city searching for scapegoats. I thank you for being so brave."
"Many an Alexandrian prefect before me," Orestes sighed, "has dealt with such as this. Wherefore, Alexandria, most beautiful city on earth; wherefore this incessant turmoil? Why do my own people thwart my best efforts to keep the peace and bring prosperity to all? Instead of trying for the good life in this world, Cyril leads them only to have thoughts for the next. I would wish them all well, to be sure, if they could succeed without darkening the lives of those who choose also to enjoy God's blessings in this one."
She nodded. "Precisely my sentiment. Your words give me strength, although they are bleak."
"Could I do anything less for one such as you, Lady?"
She shook her head. "Now, that sounds too much like my beloved Synesius," she said gently. "Kind words are merely that: words. Well, if ever you have found my advice to be sound, Orestes, or if you wish to aid me at all, then mark my words. Watch our visitors like Thoth the Seeker. Both their questions and their silence have only aroused Cyril's suspicions the more, for his agents have interrogated me about our guests. I must know more of these two strangers before I dare rebuke Cyril's spies. But now, Prefect, I must keep you no longer from your work."
He rose and bowed. "I would gladly give up that labor if I could spend my time in peaceful contemplation here." Without further ado, he took his leave of her.
Alone once more, Hypatia faced the small bust upon the shelf with somber mien. The painted eyes of the portrait were already beginning to flake, yet the piercing gaze of her late admirer seemed to watch her still. "Oh, Synesius, that all our work should come to this! The Museum is dust; the last of it burned in the time of our grandparents. The Serapeum is an empty hulk; its altars are broken, its shelves empty, its voices of many cultures stilled. So fall the old gods, the old masks of the divine, worshipped together under the holy name of Serapis the One God, in whom the Christians must find fault because his worship encompassed some quaint customs of the old religions. Yet is it so sinful of us to think of the pagan Serapis and the Holy Trinity to be but human views of God Who is All Things? You did not think it so, my beloved Synesius, and yourself a bishop consecrated by Cyril's predecessor. Now you are gone, and I stand alone in this last bastion of philosophy. How long before the shadows overgrow me too as the weeds of an untended garden assault a statue? Oh Synesius, where are you now? Do you still wait for your old teacher, my dear?"
In her mind, she could almost hear his habitual, "I am your obedient servant, my lady."
Even in death, Synesius troubled her with his unflagging hero- worship. Hypatia remembered the stern reply she had given.
"Servants," she had said, "I have no use for; they are too much like Cyril's slaves. Husbands are little better. The moment I marry a man, all shall expect him to be my master, even if he himself is more considerate. I am sorry, sweet Synesius, but I must ask you only to be my friend, no more, no less."
Memories of brighter years than these did little to warm her weary heart. Hypatia kissed the marble lips of one whose only fault was that he had loved her too well, and left her study.
"Report!"
The monk drew near to his master and knelt. "She teaches more lies, more heresies, concerning the sun and moon and stars. She has the gall to assert that stars may be other suns and have other worlds. Why, her dog Orestes even suggested that other men might have been created in the very heavens who profane the firmament with their mortal existence. And she keeps company now with those two sorcerers. She even asked the prefect to maintain them at the city's expense, and he, sycophant that he is, was nothing loath."
The Patriarch scowled. "What of the sorcerers?"
"She refused to answer my questions, even when I told her we knew that they were practitioners of the Black Arts. She said that they were her guests and pupils, but that she was not responsible for their activities. She, too, claimed that they were merely British travellers."
"Such obvious falsehoods," Cyril said in wonder. "Who could believe them? Do they think we do not know that few men save good Christians can travel to or from that distant island? Only one with God's blessing could hope to make that perilous journey without being beset by men who in spirit are no more than beasts. Why, it is said that the entire isle of Britannia fairly swarms with druids, painted savages, and pagan sorcerers. That is the only grounds upon which I can believe these sorcerers' claim for British roots at all, and it only condemns them the more." He stroked his chin. "How is it with Orestes?"
"We have intercepted requests from the Imperial Prefect to Constantinople asking for more soldiers to end civil strife and keep the peace. He has also ordered us in the strongest of terms not to harass the `citizens', including in that number both Jews and the enclave of sorcerers in the Caesareum."
Cyril snarled. "So, he wishes for war? Well, we are ready, aren't we, Brother? We must move quickly, before he receives reinforcements. Orestes shall feel the wrath of God indeed. If he does not forego his sinful ways but instead continues to obstruct God's church, he will of necessity have to be dealt with."
The monk waited in respectful silence while his master brooded.
"As for that witch his councillor, I will send her an ultimatum," the archbishop concluded. "Hypatia will cease to teach her pagan heresies, and she will hand over her guests for questioning. If she does not comply, her precious Library will suffer the same fate as the Serapeum. Nor shall we allow her to snatch her devil's bag of ancient and occult writings from the flames, not this time." He raised his voice. "Fetch me parchment and stylus, Brother; you will scribe the message and deliver it into her hands."
The monk bowed and swiftly obeyed.
Hypatia, after perusing the letter which she had just received, threatened Cyril's servant with arrest if he did not leave immediately. Just then, she saw Logan pass by, walking alone to the atrium, presumably to catch some fresh air. She abandoned the terrified monk with a scowl and set off in the opposite direction, into the heart of the Library's stacks.
It was just as she had thought. He had left the other Briton alone, examining a scroll spread out on a tabletop. As if on cue, he stood, stretching, and started to walk away, even as her footsteps silently closed the distance between them.
Hypatia frowned, not in the mood for games. Her voice echoed on stone. "Stop."
Her slender fingers brushing his elbow were enough to arrest Jaffie's movement, although the android's sturdy frame could easily have pushed her aside.
"Answer my question. Who... what... are you?" Hypatia stepped in front of him to block his way, moving with the grace and purposeful stride of a prowling cat. "Not some British barbarian, no. And do you still claim not to know our language? Your pronunciation was strange at first, to be sure-- stranger still that you spoke the Greek of Ptolemy and Euclid, not that taught by a provincial master. How can you profess such ignorance, when your mastery of Aristotle, of Plato himself, rivals that of the best scholars in the world? Or it would have done, if there had not been peculiar, inexplicable gaps in your knowledge, ever so quickly filled as you devoured our entire Library like a one-man plague of locusts. Yes, I have been watching you, listening, even when you did not speak at all. I have noticed how quickly your pronunciation has improved, even as your spoken vocabulary has simplified to match that of those around you. You tried your best to blend in, but in fact, you have blended in far too quickly. Not so your friend. He, at least, makes the mistakes you did at fist; he sleeps and eats like a regular man. Demon you may be, as Cyril accuses, or perhaps Socrates' Daimon, but a most peculiar one to spend his magical powers studying what mere humans have deduced."
"I do not understand you," Jaffie said faintly, backing away. "What do you mean by such flattery? I've learned much from your lectures, true; and my speech, I should hope, has improved by now. But I've hardly read the whole Library; I can barely read some of those you mentioned."
"You are a bad liar, Javianos," she said softly, dangerously. "On the one hand, I have watched your face as you listen to my lectures. You understand them, every one, better than any of my dedicated pupils, be they ever so learned. Here I saw your face as you smiled or shook your head, a silent commentary on my teachings, and there, when I questioned you, you tried to lie to hide your understanding, and your feigned foolishness was too ill- formed to cover your true knowledge. On the other hand, I have seen you here daily, speeding through the scrolls with movements no eye could follow, as if the merest glance were enough for one to read and remember everything before him. What madness is it that drives you to snatch a scroll from a shelf, unfurl it in a bare instant before your face, then roll and replace it with the speed of magic, proceeding instantly to the next? And why, of all the volumes here, is this the only one you have ever touched a second time?"
Her hand fell upon the scroll that lay on the table, edges curling upwards now that no one was leaning upon them. The legend across the top read simply, "Heron's Automata." Hypatia continued her tirade with measured sternness and a certain fear. "Is this what you are, a machine, built to serve your creator, Logos, by learning all that is known? But nay, why would one who could put Daidalos' craft to shame bother with studies that to him would be the riddle-games of children? I saw your face when Orestes suggested that Hipparchus' shining orbs might be other worlds where gods or men might dwell. You smiled, and nodded, and almost spoke, and caught your tongue between your teeth. Is this your riddle? Is that what you are, a god or a man from a star, come to learn of we earthly mortals?"
Jaffie faltered. Skilled lying was a human habit he had never quite mastered. Few humans bothered to deceive an android, which they expected somehow to know fact from falsehood. Thus, he had never had a wide enough exposure to that particular human faculty to exploit it fully. "I am of earth, Lady, and as alive as you or he. You must believe that."
"I did not say I doubted the latter," she said quietly. "How can something contemplate the nature of the soul without itself possessing one? But in lying you show less wisdom than is your habit. Or shall I report to the Christians that a demon has invaded my home, that it is he who makes me do wrong and proclaim strange teachings, that if he is destroyed, I shall be healed? Turning you over to my enemies could buy me much-needed time while Cyril and his lackeys tried to deal with you. A scapegoat would provide an easy outlet for the city's unrest, which will surely erupt in violence sooner rather than later."
"Then I would die, and Logos, and perhaps you also," he said, knowing what would happen if they tried to kill him. They could do no more than burn away his artificial skin, and what would they do to him when his true form was laid bare?
"Perhaps it would be for the best." She lowered her head a fraction, betraying weariness. "They'll kill me soon enough anyway. At least that would help Orestes, whose continued association with me endangers him as well. And I cannot stop pursuing what I see as truth, even if worthy Christians see such pursuit as heresy. I put my faith in knowing, not blind believing. Yet perhaps, now, such knowledge is more dangerous than mere faith. Perhaps it is we, Jaffie, the thinkers and the knowers, who do not belong here."
He winced, hearing her speak his name aloud. She had overheard Logan call him that, and probably the rest of the conversation. "No," he said quickly. "What I am does not matter; I am a stranger, and to my foreign land I must return, and I will plague you no longer with my presence. But to your people, you matter. You preserve knowledge; you dare to pursue it when the price is so very high; you are a true child of Prometheus, with the wings of Sophia. Even if they chain you, torture you, or kill you, yet people will remember you and what you taught. Even if the time for your teachings is not now, even if you lose all, something yet will remain. You have planted a seed among a whole bed of sleeping plants, all those whose works are stored here. And though some of those seeds may be lost, or fail to bear fruit, some will survive, and some of the knowledge stored here will, in its proper time, be allowed to blossom."
"You speak as an oracle of old to one who seldom puts her trust in oracles." She studied his tired, so very human face, complete with circles under the eyes. "To some, you would seem a madman. But I think not. So, you will just go away, taking my questions with you, but not answering them to my face? And shall I live on, wondering always if you had some of those answers but would not give them? There is no knowledge, no learning without sharing."
"I must go," he insisted, taking her hand in his with the desperate eyes of a suppliant to a priestess of old. "Please. I would stay if I could. Why, I could stay forever if I--" he caught himself. "But that would defeat my purpose in coming here, to learn what I could and bring your science back to my people."
"Your people, or his?" she said quietly. "For you and he are not the same."
"His," he whispered more softly still, "and yours."
She looked from him to the scroll. "So you do serve him and his people, even against your own wish, which is to stay and learn. A more peculiar form of slavery I have never seen, but it is such. And you may yet be killed in this service. Why? Ask yourself this question: `To what purpose should I trouble myself in searching out the secrets of the stars, having death and slavery continually before my eyes?'[1]"
"Anaximenes, addressing Pythagoras," he added sharply. "You scholars should learn to quote your sources more often."
She looked away. "You truly have mastered every scroll kept in this place. I've spent my life here, and yet I will never know more than a fraction of it. You, now, are the living Library. And you bring it back to my people, you said, as well as his? How can that be? He is a foreigner, or his ways are, but I suppose he is still a man. Do you two take my Library to those who will use wisely what you now know, even if the Library is lost?"
"Use wisely?" The android chuckled, a talent which he was proud to have developed. "Well, you know what men are. Only time will tell how the knowledge is used. But your Library will not be forgotten, Hypatia, if I leave, and you will not be forgotten either."
"Forget Hypatia?" The sphinx-like smile graced her lips. "No man does."
"Not even that which is not a man," Jaffie muttered, and did not regret it. "The knowledge that survived from this place, Hypatia, is a part of the art which men and women much like you will someday use to create machines, automata, that can learn and think and may even possess a soul--" he grinned slightly-- "to the consternation of their creators. But it will be a long, long time, from your era to theirs. Much knowledge will have been lost forever, for scrolls burn, monuments crumble, people die, and memories blur. But even then, people will hear distorted echoes of the lost wisdom of their ancestors, of you, of a legendary Library, and they will yearn to devise some way to go backwards and find that which was forgotten. And if ever they find a way, no matter how dangerous, you may be sure they will try. Seekers of knowledge in any age are bold. Isn't that so? For, is not all this--" he gestured expansively, caught up in his words, having long since thrown caution and prudence to the winds-- "worth the risk?"
"I would like to think you do not lie," she said guardedly, "although it means I am mad to believe such ravings. But this fantastic tale does resound with truth, at least to my deranged mind. Perhaps I will accept it, although I dare not speak of it to my friends, lest they think me truly bewitched. Very well then, I shall be your tacit accomplice in this venture, whether it is inspired by madness or vision."
Jaffie sighed in relief. "Thank you so much. I knew I was right to trust you, from the moment I recognized who you were."
Hypatia's mouth twitched slightly. His reverence reminded her of Synesius and her many other suitors. She was touched, but this conversation was too surreal for her to take such compliments seriously. "So," she said lightly, "my name is in your histories? How am I remembered?"
"Better than many," he said, "and as the remarkable woman which you are. I cannot say more. Fare well." His voice caught on the last two words, for he knew with a horrible certainty what the next few days would have in store for her.
Her eyebrows raised. "What, do you leave upon the instant?"
"Yes, I've finished my work here. Logan is just summoning our... mode of transportation, and then we may make our discreet departure."
A commotion of many loud voices burst over them, as they heard the boom of the main doors being flung open.
"What," she said, eyes flashing, "is that noise? I will not have my scholars' studies disturbed with such a racket." Fearlessly, she stormed towards the source of the shouting.
"Wait!" Jaffie cried miserably, grabbing her shoulder without thinking. "It's too dangerous. Let me go."
She gasped at the strength of his grip. "Let me go, Javianos, or whatever you are! By the gods, your hand is made of iron. Damn you, let me be!"
Reluctantly, Jaffie opened his hand finger by finger, desire to protect life, and, especially, her, warring with his knowledge of what must happen. He sprinted after as she ran for the main entrance. They nearly collided with Logan, pelting towards them.
Jaffie caught him by the shoulder of his tunic, popping the fibula. "Logos, what is happening?"
"The mob!" Logan panted in a mangled hybrid of Greek, Latin, and Terran. "I'd just recalled the ship and was checking it over in the portico, out of sight of the watch, when this crowd of maniacs burst into the courtyard carrying torches. One of the guards ordered them back and said that any man who took a step further would stand trial before Orestes himself. Then one of the monks jeered and held up the head of some poor mutilated soul, asking if it was their precious Prefect; I couldn't tell for sure and didn't stay to find out."
"They have murdered the Imperial Prefect," said Hypatia, voice remarkably level. "Cyril's monks have the city. We are quite doomed."
"It's happening already," Jaffie said, tight-lipped.
Logan waited until it was obvious that any brilliant suggestions from the android were not forthcoming, then tugged at his elbow. "I'm sorry, Jaffie; we've got to leave now if we're going to stand a chance."
The android hesitated, deliberately speaking in Greek. "We can't leave her here."
Logan was still wavering between three languages at once. "Then give me options. You can't operate the ship, and I'm not the one with the whole damn Library in his skull. It's cramped enough already. Do you want to risk altering history?"
"I cannot come with you?" Hypatia asked quickly.
Jaffie winced. "No, our vessel holds only two, and he is the pilot."
She nodded. "Then go, and take my Library with you."
"How are we to reach the ship?" Logan said. "I left it in that portico across from the main entrance."
Jaffie looked at him bleakly. "I could get through the mob, but they might take my skin off in the process, and you'd never make it anyway."
Hypatia grimaced at them. "I am not certain I am leaving my Library with the most competent of custodians. Come, I will help you reach your craft, if it is not already destroyed by our vehement friends."
Logan shot Jaffie an accusatory glance as they followed the unruffled philosopher towards the propylaea. Sounds of destruction clattered on all sides of them, but Hypatia skillfully threaded a safe path through the labyrinth of colonnades and capacious atriums.
"Wait here," she instructed, gesturing at the shadows behind a set of stout double columns within sight of the main doors. "The mob lies is ravaging the inner chambers of the temple behind us but is returning swiftly. I shall create a distraction which will divert their attention from you."
There was no time for goodbyes. Hypatia strode urgently through the smashed doors as the angry din grew louder. Shortly, from outside, came the ringing clatter of many hoofbeats.
Logan and Jaffie ducked into cover just as the screaming mob rounded the corner like an anthill boiling over.
"Catch her, she's getting away!"
The sound of hoofbeats ceased, and a single word of command echoed from the courtyard beyond.
"Stop."
Only a woman of Hypatia's force of will could make herself audible over the tumult. They halted, a wall of hostile faces, glaring eyes.
"There she is!" a black-robed monk shouted, rising above his fellows to gesture like an animated scarecrow. "The witch! She calls upon two demons to serve her needs and spread her evil ways far and wide!" The mob surged outside, wrath focussed on the woman in the chariot, standing tall and unmoved, a steel-eyed Athene in a sea of seething humanity. One of the horses screamed, struck by a flying stone, as the chanting crowd engulfed the vehicle.
Jaffie and Logan, overlooked in the confusion, slipped into the back of the crowd and threaded their way around the courtyard's perimeter. Logan had to grip Jaffie's elbow fiercely as they picked their route with agonizing slowness, afraid to rush for fear of being seen, loath to remain a second longer for fear of seeing.
As flaming brands and gaping hands and clubs closed in upon the lonely woman, Hypatia saw, out of the corner of her eye, a brilliant flash to her left. A gleaming black shape, as geometrically perfect as one of Plato's ideal solids, peeked half-hidden from between the columns of the portico. Two forms separated from the crowd, mounting the two steps up to the platform on which stood the rectangular portal. The not-man paused at the threshold of the void, eyes turned towards her. She shook her head, and the not-man disappeared from view, whether obscured by smoke or magic or her own blood, she did not have time to speculate. Her vision faded as she was dragged downwards, pummelled by fist, potsherd, and firebrand.
"We did it!" Logan breathed in disbelief, as the door closed on the android's heels.
"Yes, sir, we certainly have," Jaffie said, leaning on the inside of the smooth, cold door. His voice was hardly triumphant.
Logan rapidly keyed in a series of commands, sending the ship back to its next temporal destination. "The learning of the entire ancient world locked inside your skull. How does it feel?"
"Terrible." Jaffie would have sat down in utter despair, had he been human and had the cubicle been equipped with a second chair. Instead, his face lost all expression, smoothing into a glassy stare at nothing in particular while his mental functions attempted to digest what had just happened.
Logan concentrated on the readouts, trying to calm himself with the sight of the sleek panels and glowing screens, so comfortingly familiar after the alien architecture and barbaric technology of Alexandria. "By tomorrow night, you'll be a legend."
"And she's already just a memory." Jaffie slumped into his seat.
"Hey," Logan gently, straining to turn in his chair. "Anyone who says androids have no feelings is just blind. I'm sorry about Hypatia. But her murder was fixed before we came; you said so yourself. There was no way we could change that."
"In case you didn't notice, Logan," Jaffie said bitterly, "her death was partly our fault. Maybe the Library would still be intact, if our presence hadn't provided the last bit of fuel Cyril needed to start a bonfire."
"Now, you know that's not true. There's no way that Library could have survived through the Middle Ages. Orestes said they'd already tried to destroy it two years before, and that it was only a matter of time before they tried again."
"But Hypatia?" Jaffie said wretchedly. "She didn't have to die, not then, not that way. Do you know what they did to her? They flogged her, flayed her alive with broken potsherds, and dragged her through the forum before burning what was left of her in the ashes of her own Library."
"Don't think about it."
"Telling a computer not to think?" Jaffie groaned. "I can't stop remembering."
"Then remember the good you're doing. What was more important to Hypatia, her body or her soul? And what was her soul, if not her precious Library? She's not really dead, not completely. She lives in you."
"That, my friend," Jaffie murmured, "Is a question to be settled by the philosophers. May they have joy of it."
Author's Notes
This story was inspired in part by Carl Sagan, who presented a brief account of the Library of Alexandria in his TV series Cosmos.[2] He mentioned the vast research carried out there, and the tragic murder of Hypatia at the hands of Cyril's mob when she was driving back from a lecture. Wanting to know more, I was led to Bryn Mawr College's extensive classical and archaeological libraries for further research, which I summarize here for the curious reader. For the most accurate information on Hypatia, I would suggest going to David Fidelner's site, as he is a more experienced scholar than I am!
Alexandria was always a city torn by ethnic, religious, and political strife. Founded by Alexander the Great and ruled over by his successors, the Ptolemies, it was first the capital of Hellenistic Egypt and later the wealthy breadbasket of the Roman Empire. The Museum, established by Ptolemy II in 283 B.C., was originally located in the Royal Palace, and contained living quarters, a mess hall, laboratories, observatories, a zoo, and an extensive library. A daughter library was established at an unknown later date in the nearby temple of Serapis, and was one of the world's first lending libraries. The collections were built up and damaged by disaster repeatedly over many centuries. A third major library was established by Hadrian in 130 A.D. at the new Caesareum, a temple erected for the worship of the deified emperors.
Persecutions of Jews, Egyptians, Greeks, Christians, and finally, all pagans, ripped the city from Greek times through the city's eventual capture by the Arabs in the late seventh century. Synesius, Hypatia, Orestes and Cyril were a few more well-known figures embroiled in the turmoil of the fifth century. Synesius, Hypatia's prized student of philosophy, died two years before his teacher, having formally converted to Christianity and become a respected bishop in neighboring Cyrene. Orestes was the besieged Roman prefect, enemy of Cyril, who was trying to preserve some semblance of governmental control over the city. He opposed the Patriarch Cyril and the church, which advocated expulsion of Jews from Alexandria. He was harassed by the mob and Cyril's zealous army of black-robed monks, who were the local church's means of control, and who sometimes used methods that would prove embarrassing for the church in later centuries. They also went after his friend and sometime advisor Hypatia, who was not only a woman of authority but a teacher of mathematics and Neo-platonist philosophy, equated in those days with witchcraft. She was killed by a mob of monks and the general populus; a Christian historian by the name of Socrates chronicled this event several years later. I have since learned from more accurate sources than those below that Orestes was NOT killed, but merely fled the city, and probably not until after (and probably because of) her assassination.
Details about the Library itself are almost nonexistent, beyond the names of well-known works and scholars; sources invariably pass over it as does the Hellenistic Athenaius: "Concerning the number of books, the establishment of libraries, and the collection in the Hall of the the Muses, why need I even speak, since they are all in men's memories?" Thus it is difficult to reconstruct the actual procedures or physical holdings of the Libraries at any one time, and it is not even known when the original Museum, Serapeum, and Caesareum finally ceased to exist. The few sources do agree that the Serapeum was vandalized in about 412, but the collection had apparently been moved prior to that time. Socrates' account does, however, suggest that Hypatia was burned in the Caesareum, so I suspect that sixth century and Renaissance scholars are right in dating the final dissolution of the Library with her death, although a few volumes seemed to have survived long enough to have been burned as fuel for the bath-houses in 686.
References:
Canfora, Luciano. [note 3/99: this book is NOT SOUND RESEARCH. It is good speculative fiction presented as fact. Too much of my Alexandria research, unfortunately, was based on it!!!] The Vanished Library. trans. Martin Ryle. University of California Press. Berkeley: 1989.
Forster, E.M. Alexandria: A History and A Guide. Doubleday & Co., Inc. Garden City: 1961.
Fraser, P. M. Ptolemaic Alexandria. Volume I of III. Oxford University Press. Oxford: 1972.
Johnson, Emer D. History of Libraries in the Western World. Scarecrow Press, Inc. Metuchen: 1970.
Kamil, Jill. Upper Egypt: Historical Outline and Descriptive Guide to the Ancient Sites. Longman. New York: 1983.
Milne, J. Grafton. A History of Egypt Under Roman Rule. Methuen & Co., Ltd. London: 1924.
Parsons, Edward Alexander. The Alexandrian Library: Glory of the Hellenic World. Elsevier Press. New York: 1952.
Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. Ballantine Books Edition. New York: 1980.
Westermann, William Linn. The Library of Ancient Alexandria. lecture given at University of Alexandria's reception hall. University of Alexandria Press. Alexandria: 1954.