Chronica by Paul Levinson Page A

 

    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