The Cusanus Game

  “But what they don’t give us are weapons,” he said, nodding emphatically. “And in weapons technology they are unsurpassed. That’s why this border is impregnable and deadly. Those many old people who don’t want to die and perhaps cannot die spend their wealth to have ever more perfect weapons developed. For they are haunted by the fear that something might change, after all. That something from outside might infiltrate. That time might start flowing again and disaster would take its course.”

  With his coarse boot he kicked a smoldering branch back into the fire and made an all-embracing gesture with his hand toward the north and the west.

  “Even though you see no one anywhere, you can be sure that we are under constant observation. Not one of our steps escapes them, not one movement. You can trust no dragonfly, no fly, for it could be an MAV, a mini-drone.”

  Some of the men laughed uneasily.

  “Don’t laugh!” snapped Bakhtir, the head of the drivers, who was stuffing his waterpipe. “Emilio is right. Not even your crab lice can be trusted.”

  Hakim, his son, who crouched beside him and filled the glass container of the pipe with fresh water, giggled. His father gave him a kick. “I said not to laugh.”

  “You have no idea,” the caravan leader went on, “what battlefield holos are, and I won’t even try to explain it to you. Only this: If you see a house, there is not necessarily a house far and wide, but you can be sure that very nearby a deadly trap lies in wait, a meat grinder that will snap at you with steel teeth or a bone breaker that will crush you to a pulp.”

  Bakhtir nodded in agreement as he lit his pipe.

  “The same goes for trees and bushes,” declared Emilio, handing his tin cup to a driver, who filled it with tea from a large sooty pot. “There’s not necessarily a tree or bush growing far and wide, but you can be sure that very nearby a laser is pointed at you, which will burn you to ashes. So be warned!”

  When the brass sky had lost its last glow and night had fallen, a colored cluster of lights could be seen rising in the northwest and striving toward the zenith. A beam of light stabbed down to Earth, to which the shape seemed fastened like a dragon to a tight leash. When it had reached the zenith, the leash tore and faded, and the cluster of lights drifted away across the sky toward the southeast, until it disappeared in the Earth’s shadow. It was a solar satellite of the ESA, which had unloaded its yield at one of the European tracking stations. Sixteen such energy farms were operated by the ESA at that time in medium Earth orbit in order to satisfy the insatiable voracity of the old continent for electric power—which was needed for the operation of its electronic heart, its complicated network of internal organs, and its deadly periphery.

  The drivers, who had watched the spectacle with a mixture of curiosity and awe, now wrapped themselves in their djellabas against the emerging cold. They sat by the fire and smoked. The caravan leader stood up, walked a few steps into the darkness, and sat down on a stone. He took a small device, which was secured with a chain, out of the breast pocket of his jacket and activated it by pushing a button on the side. At a distance of a couple miles, a tiny but incredibly bright blue light shone. Additional light signals in red and yellow flashed here and there on the plain. The LED display of the device brightened. He pushed on it with his thumb. A bright white dot appeared far in the north, rose rapidly into the sky, suddenly stood still and burned for a few seconds in a glaring light, then went out.

  “Hello, Emilio,” said a voice from the device. “You’ve returned. Welcome to the border. How are you doing?”

  “I’m doing well, André. I have sixty-seven heavily laden animals with me. I was able to procure almost everything that was requested. But you’ve long since known that.”

  André laughed. “We’ll load your freight in the morning. The exchange will take place at the usual time, two hours after sunrise. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  They had set out from Reggio di Calabria along the old Via Francigena, the medieval road of the Franks, later highway A12—by way of Civitavecchia, Tarquinia, Grosseto, Livorno, Pisa, Viareggio, Massa, and Carrara, because on the coastal plain watering places could still be found and the terrain was more surveyable. Near Aulla they had turned northward, heading up the Magra Valley into the mountains, past Pontrémoli and Berceto, then through the Passo della Cisa and following the course of the Baganza to Marzolara, where the valley opened into the Po Plain and shortly before Parma the old road was blocked by the border. The journey had taken them twenty-two days.

  “This time we again chose the safe route through the coastal plain.”

  “I know. We had you under satellite surveillance the whole time, of course. If we had detected signs of an ambush, support would have been on its way immediately. Along the southern border, we have supersonic drones in the air all the time; they could be in Rome in ten minutes, in Naples in fifteen, and in Reggio in twenty.”

  “I know, André, but on my side of the world time flows more slowly. So much speed would only unnecessarily frighten my men. Besides, I need watering places and campsites; I have to secure the favor and the goodwill of the local rulers. We journey under the protection of the Emir of Perugia. He is a powerful man, and he is feared for his punitive expeditions.”

  “He offers his protection at a high price.”

  “In return his soldiers are reliable. He recruits his troops from among the Muslim Bosniaks. That way he can take it for granted that they will not make common cause with the Serbs and Croats or the Albanian warlords lurking in the Abruzzo region.”

  “I understand, Emilio. You know that better than I. You know your world. All right, see you tomorrow.”

  “Good night, André.”

  “Good night.”

  Emilio turned off the device.

  “He’s back,” Bakhtir, who had come up beside him, said softly, pointing with a nod to the hill in the southeast.

  Emilio raised the binoculars to his eyes. In the dwindling light, he could make out the figure standing motionless on the summit and observing them.

  “For whom might he be spying?” asked Bakhtir.

  “No idea,” replied Emilio. “He has his mascot with him again too. What sort of animal might that be?”

  “Looks like a rat,” said Bakhtir.

  Emilio shook his head doubtingly. “It’s too big for that.”

  He lowered the binoculars. When he looked up again, the figure was gone.

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT EMILIO was woken by the wopp-wopp of the weak repellers. Perhaps animals had stumbled into the border surveillance. When he heard the hum and rumble of heavy repellers and the howl of the vortex launchers, he stood up and stepped outside the tent. The moon shone in the west.

  Suddenly he heard a cry in the camp, then loud, vehement words. Bakhtir came marching toward him, beside himself with anger; with kicks and punches he drove two young men in front of him. They seemed dazed and did not even try to evade the head driver’s blows. Ghamal and Pietro; they were in shock. Emilio grabbed an armful of branches and threw them into the embers to kindle a fire. Both of the boys had bloody noses and bruises on their faces and arms—marks of the repellers.

  “At least they got such a scare that they turned around,” Bakhtir exclaimed with a voice as if his throat were constricted, “but Ibrahim and Hakim…”

  He broke off and tried in vain to suppress a sob.

  “Your son?” asked Emilio.

  Bakhtir nodded silently. Emilio grasped him by the shoulder. “You go into your tent!” he shouted at the two young men, who cowered before him and held their heads in pain. “We’ll speak about this tomorrow.”

  They struggled to their feet and staggered away.

  “That crazy Ibrahim!” cried Bakhtir; it sounded like a wail. “He persuaded Hakim and the two others to come with him. I should have put that fellow in chains.”

  Furiously, he kicked a stone into the fire.

  “Try to calm down, Bakhtir,” said Emilio. “W
e will find out what happened.”

  “Do you think there’s still hope?”

  The caravan leader shrugged silently and looked down at the ground.

  “Hakim!” Bakhtir cried out into the plain. There the fog had spread like a milky lake out of which the treetops rose. “Hakim!”

  No answer. The lights had gone out. The howling of the wolves and the rumbling of the repellers had fallen silent. The newly kindled fire blazed, illuminating the faces of the men. Bakhtir wept.

  * * *

  AN HOUR AND a half after sunrise, the airship appeared. When it was floating over the campsite, the whine of the jets died away and it descended. Shortly before landing, they once again briefly hissed, and the supple, light gray plastic body of the zeppelin, which was covered with a glistening film on its back and flanks, broke open at the bottom like a soft pod and released containers that arranged themselves into two rows.

  The drivers began emptying the containers. They were filled with packaged loads, cocooned in silvery plastic threads. These were now exchanged for the goods brought by the caravan. Emilio checked the electronic identification of the packages with his device. On the LED appeared numbers, quantities of items and descriptions of goods, as well as names and addresses of the respective recipients.

  The men were about to heave the loads onto the animals’ backs and tie them down when the figure of a man in a Euro-blue protective suit appeared in the opening at the front of the zeppelin. His polarized helmet visor revealed no face. He raised his hand and exclaimed, “Hello, Emilio!” He pointed to Bakhtir. “Are you the father of the one boy?”

  “Yes,” Bakhtir said hoarsely.

  A spark of hope flickered in his eyes.

  “Both of you please come with me.”

  He climbed the aluminum ladder into the cockpit. Emilio and Bakhtir followed. Behind them servos hoisted the containers into the cargo area and fastened them in their foam troughs. Emilio could not believe his eyes; the cockpit was far more spacious than the external dimensions suggested. Along the longitudinal wall of the room was a wheeled stretcher. On it lay Hakim.

  “Baba!” he cried with a pitiful voice.

  “My boy,” said Bakhtir, who was about to rush over to him, but Emilio seized him by the shoulders and held him back.

  He saw that the boy had a broken spine. His body was motionless from the chest down. Only his head and arms were moving; on his elbows he tried to crawl off the stretcher, but wide elastic bands bound his paralyzed body to it.

  “Baba!” he whimpered.

  Bakhtir looked at him with growing horror.

  “Of the other one,” said the man in the protective suit, “unfortunately nothing remains. He ran straight into a laser fan. As for him”—he gestured with a head movement to Hakim—“a heavy repeller broke all his bones. The spine too.”

  “My son,” Bakhtir said tenderly, pulling his revolver from his belt and holding it to Hakim’s head.

  The boy stared at him in horror; his whimpering grew louder.

  “Stop this nonsense, man!” cried the pilot in the protective suit. “From where you’re standing, you could damage a lot of outrageously expensive electronics and trigger the self-defense, if you shoot. So put that thing away!”

  Bakhtir saw with horror that he had pushed the barrel of his weapon halfway into the boy’s head. Aghast, he drew it back, pointed it at the pilot, and fired two shots at the man’s chest. The double wreath of Euro-stars remained intact, but an alarm siren began to bleat, and somewhere the hiss of escaping gas could be heard.

  “Hold the man back, Emilio!” shouted the pilot, slapping with his glove at the large panel of switches on the left shoulder of his protective suit. “He seriously believes that we’re here in the flesh. And now get out of here as fast as you can, damn it! From here I have no control over the aircraft’s self-defense.”

  “Baba!” Hakim cried pitifully, desperately thrashing his head back and forth and staring through them as if they had suddenly become invisible.

  The next instant the wheeled stretcher was gone, as well as the man in the protective suit. The room had been reduced to a third of its length and was filling up with whitish smoke from the floor. Where the two shots had hit the wall there was crackling, and the alarm siren would not stop bleating. The smoke thickened. Bakhtir coughed and doubled up, causing even more gas to stream into his lungs.

  “Out! Out! Out!” shouted Emilio.

  He grasped Bakhtir by the shoulders, drove him to the hatch, pushed him out, and jumped after him. With a snap the hatch of the cockpit sealed shut behind him. They crawled out from under the airship—not a second too soon, for the engines were firing already and the aircraft took off. Emilio and Bakhtir threw sand at each other to stifle the flames licking at their djellabas; then they squatted down, vomited, and coughed their guts out.

  “We have brought the boy to the clinic in Mantua. He will stay there until he has healed. Then you can take him with you the next time you come,” said the voice of the man in the protective suit from the device on Emilio’s belt. “And one more thing, caravan leader: Impress upon your people that we are not running an adventure playground here. This is a border that nothing and no one can penetrate. It is the border between past and future.”

  Emilio spat to get rid of the acrid, burning taste in his mouth.

  “And on which side lies the future?” he asked.

  André laughed. “Here the clocks go faster, and have done so for more than five hundred years. Look at your calendar, Emilio. It shows the year 1425. Here we live in the middle of the twenty-first century.”

  “Then we still have a lot of time,” replied the caravan leader.

  The man on the other side of the border didn’t answer. And Emilio saw that the light had gone out. The connection had been broken.

  Book

  TWO

  I

  The Toad in Castello

  And from this, the conclusion that the universe is finite and the world is unique no more follows than that therefore monkeys are born tailless, that owls see at night without glasses, that bats make wool. in addition, it is never possible to make the inference: the universe is infinite, there are infinite worlds.

  GIORDANO BRUNO

  I jumped up from an oppressive dream that dissolved within seconds into confusion and slipped away from me. Ashes, I thought. Ashes. I must have said it aloud, for Ernesto was looking at me strangely. His ICom, which he wore as an eyebrow piercing, glowed in the backlight like a fresh drop of blood on his temple.

  The plane was already in its final descent, gliding in over Mestre and following the northern shore of the lagoon. Venice, to our right—a mass of shelter-seeking tiled roofs packed around the silver question mark of the Canal Grande—was surrounded by a staggered ring of sausage-shaped rubber rafts, over which there was fog. Far east was the Lido Dam, which shielded the lagoon from the Adriatic like a long, thin arm.

  “My God, how ugly,” I said, pointing down to the floating off-white objects.

  Ernesto leaned forward and looked out. “But necessary,” he declared. “A cryobarrier.”

  “So that the muck from Mestre doesn’t slosh into the city?”

  “No, more likely so that the tiny nanomachines can’t get out and scatter all over the world. Damn tricky task they’re carrying out here for the first time on a grand scale. But it seems to be working. Part of the foundation has apparently already been restored.”

  We touched down close to the water. AEROPORTO MARCO POLO was written on the white facade of the airy new airport terminal.

  A stocky, cheerfully grinning Japanese man awaited us at the exit, holding up a sign with our names. He introduced himself as Kazuichi Inoue.

  “The subway to the arsenal still isn’t running,” he said apologetically. “We’ll have to take a detour.”

  We took the airport bus along the northern shore of the lagoon and across the Ponte della Libertà to the Ospedale Santa Chiara, where a motorboat pi
cked us up. It buzzed down the Canal Grande, turned left at Santa Geremia into the Canale di Cannaregio, and went through the ghetto, past small old houses, in which for many centuries there had been Jewish shops, kosher butchers, and secondhand dealers. Now antique shops, Internet cafés, and tiny restaurants had been established there. Then the motorboat went out into the lagoon. A fresh northeast wind blew toward us; it was cool, though the sun was shining. The air smelled damp and salty from the churned-up water. Gulls dipped and soared, squawking. We continued along the Sacca della Misericordia and the Fondamenta Nuove and past a light blue box at the end of a floating dock, which rolled in the waves. OSPEDALE was written in black letters on a yellow background over the windows. A bit farther on, we turned into the Rio di Santa Giustina, a canal at the other end of which a massive gloomy brick castle loomed over the houses. Its huge semicircular arched windows overlooked the city like the seemingly sleepy eyes of a monstrous lurking toad, which had wedged itself in between the old houses of Castello.

  “What is that?” I asked. “A church?”

  The sight of the building was oppressive.

  “That’s the dog run,” Renata explained, wrinkling her nose. “San Lorenzo. The Dominican monastery. The headquarters of the dogs of God. The Inquisition in this city once reigned here.”

  “Were heretics burned here too?”

  “No. The Signoria would not have tolerated the Inquisition usurping so much power. But they had their spies and lackeys here too. Scholars definitely did well to avoid the mainland. But even here in the city they weren’t safe. Giordano Bruno was imprisoned for almost a year in San Lorenzo. A local merchant had lured him into a trap and betrayed him to the Dominicans. Later he was handed over to the Vatican.”

  “I never understood that. He was a scholar known throughout Europe—”

  “—for his antiauthoritarian attitude and his unconventional views,” Renata interrupted me with a shrug. “But what was he to a Venetian merchant? That’s the question, Domenica. An apostate Dominican, and rebellious to boot, because he brazenly defied his order; a little monk who had the nerve to call Jesus an Oriental magician and who rambled on about inhabited worlds beyond the moon with which under the present circumstances it was undoubtedly impossible to carry on any dealings in the foreseeable future. Why should someone incur trouble with the Pope for such a dubious fellow? Away with him! Off to Rome! Let them do with him in the Vatican what they please. And that they did.”