The Cusanus Game

  “You had promised not to tamper with my brain.”

  “There can be no question of that,” he said, looking at me ingenuously with his gentle, sad eyes. “We have merely mobilized your own defenses. Your memories, which you acquired naturally at some point and which were slumbering in you, were invoked and intensified.”

  “Hm. You can say that again.” I looked at him thoughtfully. “A sort of blocking?”

  “More of a conditioning. It is unfortunately necessary.”

  “Does everyone receive it?”

  “Of course. It’s required if you work here at the institute.”

  I put on my anorak. He hastened to help me into it.

  “Well, then, see you tomorrow. Without bees, Doctor. I’ll take you at your word. Because I hate those creatures.”

  “I might have guessed as much,” replied Dr. Mondoloni, smiling sadly.

  * * *

  “THEN THE IDIOT knocks over the bottle of gasoline. It immediately ignited, of course. In the blink of an eye everything was in flames, and pounds of explosives were lying around on the table. ‘Get out of here!’ I shouted. ‘Get out!’ But he just gawked at me in terror, with a totally blank stare. I grabbed him by the shoulder, pushed him out of the tent, and flung myself to the ground. At that moment there was a bang. The tent was torn to pieces. Burning shreds flew across the whole square and landed on the market stalls all around and on the cobblestones … Phew!”

  Renata gazed at her mutilated hand as if she had to check whether she had suffered new injuries.

  “Really shrewd, that old fox,” she said.

  “Ishida? You can bet your life on it,” I agreed.

  Renata nodded. “Deep-seated fears. For you, it’s bees; for me, fire, explosions. That rascal brainwashed us.”

  “Mondoloni spoke of necessary conditioning.”

  “That’s just another way of saying it. But what were we being conditioned for?”

  “I’m sure we’ll find out soon.”

  III

  The Executioner at the Ponte del Paradiso

  As the visible is in truth, it is not seen by you; the same is true of hearing and the other senses … Therefore, he is irrational who thinks that he knows something in truth but is ignorant of truth.

  NICOLAUS CUSANUS

  From my balcony I had a magnificent view toward the northwest. In the foreground was the Isola di San Michele, which had run aground forever in the shallow water of the lagoon. Beyond it, in the distance, rose the pale summits of the Carnic Alps; they floated above the haze of the plain like a fleet in full sail.

  The walk from the institute, through narrow streets and across small squares, to Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo, on which the massive brick church and the Ospedale stood, took seven or eight minutes; from there it was another twelve to fifteen minutes to San Marco.

  Marcello and Kazuichi had come along. We trotted up and down steps, across little bridges, left, right—Kazuichi leading the way with almost somnambulistic certainty.

  “Piped in?” I asked him. “The city map, I mean.”

  He stopped and raised his pinky. It looked greasy, as if he had dipped it in oil. Kazuichi turned his body to the right—the finger splayed toward the left. He turned his body to the left—the finger maintained its direction and crept under the ring finger.

  “Does it function as a compass?” I asked.

  Kazuichi shook his head with a laugh. “No, it’s my pilot. My pathfinder. It knows its way around any city if I retrieve the data from a satellite.”

  He gestured vaguely up at the southern sky.

  “Nanotechnology?”

  “Yes, vibrotactile induction,” he confirmed.

  “May I touch it?”

  Kazuichi’s finger did not feel greasy at all. More like it was glazed—and hot, as if intense activities were under way in the coating on the skin.

  “Smartdust?” asked Renata.

  Kazuichi nodded.

  Marcello inspected the finger warily. His freshly washed black ringlets shone. He shook his head. “Well, I’ll be.”

  “That’s nothing,” said Kazuichi. “You’ll become familiar with all sorts of things here. You’ll be extremely well equipped when you head off on your excursions.”

  “And where will we be heading?” I tried to fish for information.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “You’ll be told in Amsterdam. All botanical activities proceed from there. Here in Venice there’s nothing on that scale. Our work here is, as it were, only on a local scale.”

  “And from Amsterdam—we will be heading all over the world?”

  “Yes, that too. But beforehand you have to learn to move in the terrain that we create for you. That’s our job.”

  I thought of Sarah. She had been able to survey the terrain like no one else—the natural terrain.

  “Holographic terrain?”

  “Yes, yes.” He nodded emphatically. “We work on real reality, universal reality. And you have to be able to move with absolute certainty in it, so that we don’t lose you. With absolute certainty.”

  “Like your finger here in the city.”

  “Ha! In any city,” he replied with a chuckle.

  Marcello stared, pale and somewhat disgusted, at the iridescent finger, which seemed to be leading a mysterious life of its own.

  * * *

  RENATA HAD WARNED me. “San Marco will overpower you,” she had said. “You have to contemplate the details. Wherever you look, you see beauty, perfect craftsmanship, everything lovingly fashioned and imaginatively composed.”

  We strolled through the Merceria Orologio and suddenly it was before us.

  It stunned me with its ornate magnificence, as can be mustered only by vast riches. An overflowing treasure chest, brimming with the spoils of countless plunders, a done-up pirate bride showered with jewelry, in whose décolletage four horses had been stuck for fun.

  I stopped and caught my breath. The presence of that basilica was overwhelming.

  Renata, who had stopped as well, nodded to me with a smile.

  “I warned you,” she said.

  Kazuichi had led the way and was heading toward a café called Chioggia on the piazzale opposite the Palazzo Ducale, where two Japanese men and three Western Europeans sat, engaged in conversation. A tall red-haired man—probably in his mid to late thirties—seemed to be leading the discussion.

  Kazuichi approached the table and was about to introduce us, when the redhead turned around, stood up, rushed over to me, and embraced me as if we were old friends.

  “Hello, Domenica. How are you doing?”

  I stiffened.

  “Hey. Hold on,” I said somewhat crossly, because I could never stand such intimacies. “Do we even know each other?”

  “Oh,” he said self-consciously with an unmistakably Dutch accent, rubbing the red stubble on his chin. “Things can change.”

  Oh, so you’re that type, I thought. No, my dear, we’ve never met. I would remember that. I almost would have fallen for it, it had sounded so genuine.

  He held out his large, slender hand to me. For a moment, I hesitated, and then I grasped it.

  “Apparently, you already know my name. What’s yours?”

  “This is Frans van Hooft,” said Kazuichi.

  “Just Frans,” he said, grinning at me.

  He was still acting as if we were old friends.

  “Frans works at our institute too,” Kazuichi went on. “When he finds time for it.”

  He then introduced the others at the table. The other two Europeans were Dutch as well, one of them from the Christiaan Huygens Institute in The Hague, the other from the “CIA” Ernesto had mentioned. The two Japanese men at the table seemed to be from the local NNTR.

  “Sometimes I’m … uh … a bit rash,” Frans said apologetically, pushing over another table and some chairs so that we could sit down with the others.

  “We’ve never met, right?” I asked, making sure.

  “Who k
nows?” he said. “It’s often strange. Maybe it comes with the times.”

  “The times?”

  He shook his head. “Forgive me, Domenica. Just joking. Okay?”

  “We can remain on a first-name basis, I have nothing against that,” I said. “All of us here are, if I’ve understood that correctly. But permit me a question: Is that always your way?”

  “Always,” he assured me.

  “But that doesn’t suit you. Honestly.”

  “I thought nothing of it. You know, Holland is small. Everyone knows everyone there,” he said, obviously straining for a plausible explanation.

  I eyed him as he turned his attention to the others at the table. Frans was really good-looking. He was more than a head taller than I, perhaps six-two. He stooped somewhat, as is often the case with people who already stand out as children due to their above-average height. He was lean, almost bony, with gray-green eyes and medium-length reddish blond hair. His handshake had felt good—warm and strong, somehow confidence-inspiring. I didn’t find him unpleasant—on the contrary—but something was off about him. His greeting had been genuine and spontaneous. Still … I was completely certain that I’d never seen him before, and yet he seemed somehow familiar to me. How was that possible? I was overcome with a feeling of uncertainty. Damn it, I said to myself, the guy actually succeeded in making me think about him.

  “What would you like to drink?” he asked us when the waiter appeared. “It’s on the city.”

  “Why is that?” I asked Kazuichi.

  “When Frans is not traveling for us, he works for the city. Our institute is helping Venice rise to new glory. Restauro e Risanamento Conservativo,” he declared loftily. “International funds are allocated for it. Venice has been broke for centuries. But life is good here.”

  I ordered a Campari soda with ice. On the table were half a dozen plastic bags with handwritten labels. Larix, I read, and Quercus ilex. In the bags were wood chips and small pieces of tree bark. One of the other two Japanese men at the table—polite, but rather taciturn—gathered them up and slipped them into his briefcase when he noticed my interest. He pretended to be quickly making room because the waiter was coming with our drinks. Then both of them gulped down their cups of coffee, stood up, nodded good-bye, and left. Kazuichi called something after them in Japanese.

  “Do those two also work at the institute?” I asked.

  Kazuichi shook his head. “No, they’re also part of the NNTR, but deal with applied nanotechnology and work on the foundations.”

  “The most important thing,” Frans was saying to his countrymen, “is to memorize well the relevant details—the most distinctive ones. Do you see the crenellations up there on the roof edge of the Palazzo Ducale?” he asked, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb. “How many are there?”

  “Thirty-six,” said one of the Dutch men, whom he had introduced as Kees.

  “Yes, thirty-six,” said the other—his name was Laurens—who had also looked up and counted silently.

  “Wrong!” Frans said triumphantly. “Anyone want to bet?”

  The two men gave each other bemused looks.

  “You both made two mistakes. You counted the crenellations on the left side up to the gable—eighteen—and then simply extrapolated and doubled that. But you should have counted all the crenellations. For there are thirty-seven and not thirty-six. There’s one more on the right side.”

  Everyone looked up and counted, including me. Indeed, he was right. On the left, between the dainty turret and the gable over the lion with its paw on an open book and a man kneeling before it: eighteen; to the right of it, nineteen.

  “Why two mistakes?” Kees asked, frowning.

  Frans turned to him and replied: “True mastery in architecture lies not in symmetry but in slight deviations from it. Some claim that that is what distinguishes human measure from that of mathematics and physics. But that’s not true. Symmetry breaking is among the constitutive fundamental conditions of the universe. Without it our cosmos would not even exist; a nanosecond after its emergence, it would have dispersed into energy and sunk back into the quantum ocean.”

  “How come?” Marcello murmured with surprise.

  “That’s true,” I said.

  Frans looked at me with a smile and nodded.

  “Not until the late twentieth century did physicists figure that out,” he said. “Artists, however, seem to have always known it. On the buildings of famous architects you will always find such subtle asymmetrical displays of individuality. You just have to look closely.” He leaned back. “I have no trouble with that. God—or my parents’ genes—endowed me with a photographic memory. That’s why I’m employed as a sort of traveling camera. And that will also be the job for which you will be trained,” he added, turning his attention to everyone. “You always have to memorize precisely your immediate surroundings. Your life can depend on it.”

  Renata looked at me and shook her head questioningly.

  “Falcotti said the same exact thing to me,” I said, turning to her. “It seems to be a requirement for our job. Orientation in the terrain, he said.”

  Kazuichi suddenly chuckled. Did he find that funny? Frans had a serious look on his face. If this fellow, I thought, with his trained eye and his photographic memory, really believed he had met me before, then … Nonsense, it had only been a charming come-on after all. A joke.

  “Are you familiar with Venice?” he asked me.

  “No, I’ve never been here before. Disgraceful, right?”

  “These days nothing is as easy as it was thirty years ago. Freedom of movement is obsolete in Europe. In the past—yes, that was wonderful.”

  “You’re talking as if you had experienced it.”

  He nodded.

  Above San Giorgio appeared the magnificent Archduke Leopold with its three horizontal bands of red, white, and red, flying over the lagoon on its way from Dubrovnik or Trieste to Madrid or Lisbon. The black double-eagle peered down threateningly. From the nose and the two passenger gondolas hung long, narrow pennants, which billowed in the wind. The turbines whined at full power.

  “Venice is a beautiful city,” Frans said with a sigh.

  “And it’s going to be even more beautiful, I’ve heard,” I interjected.

  He raised his shoulders and his hands as if he were fending off a compliment aimed at him personally. “We’re all doing our best.”

  He tilted his head and smiled at me. “Might I help you explore the city? It would be my pleasure, Domenica.”

  I gave him a carefully measured smile and replied: “That’s an offer I can’t resist.”

  “Then we’ll get started in the next few days, as soon as Professor Ishida allows us time for it.”

  “Frans knows the city like no other,” Kazuichi asserted. “He was involved from the beginning as … uh … adviser on historical matters…”

  He broke off when Frans cleared his throat, and gave a suddenly somewhat forced smile.

  “Did you study art history?” I asked.

  Frans cast a help-seeking glance at Laurens and Kees. “Actually not so much,” he replied. “More … hm … technical history. History of architecture … along those lines.”

  “Frans specialized in wood,” explained Kees, the young man from the CIA. “Underneath us are millions upon millions of tree trunks. Wood from an area of more than a thousand miles—from the Venetian Alps, Slovenia, Istria, Croatia, Dalmatia, Albania, down the whole coast as far as Greece. Even from the Taurus Mountains and Lebanon. A restoration of the foundations can be successful only if we know exactly what wood was used in the construction of a palazzo or a house, so that the nanos can be programmed accordingly.”

  “Hey, that interests me,” I interjected. “I’m a botanist. How do you determine that? The trunks have been stuck in the mud for centuries.”

  “More like silt and sand. Caranto they call it here.”

  “Fine. But they must be in stages of increasing decay. They m
ust be petrified or reduced to rotten, salt-infused tissue.”

  Frans ran his hand uneasily across his forehead and puffed out his cheeks. “Samples are … uh … brought to the surface and analyzed.”

  “Like the samples your colleagues took with them?”

  Frans nodded.

  “Are you pulling our legs, or what?” I snapped. “That was fresh wood. Larch and holly oak.”

  Frans shrugged, but did not give a reply.

  “No, no,” Laurens, the other young Dutch man, reassured me. “Those are samples of the same wood that was used back then. The molecular structure is being investigated, the genome decoded. Then the Japanese construct their smart little nanos, which they set loose on the foundations to restore them cell by cell.”

  “I see,” said Marcello.

  Kazuichi raised his pathfinder finger and gazed at it. Frans stared at the table.

  “All this will be explained to you in detail,” he said. “But we don’t want to preempt Professor Ishida. You have to understand that.”

  * * *

  “I HAVE A feeling they’re keeping something important from us. That makes me really edgy. I keep coming across strange incongruities. And they’re feeding us hints, evasive answers, and lies.”

  Renata pushed the last of her linguine with mussels in lemon sauce back and forth and wound it around her fork. “They have instructions not to preempt their guru. Frans said so clearly. Professor Ishida insists on introducing us personally to the scope of our duties, cocky as he is. He’ll make a show out of it, you’ll see.”

  “My God, we signed a contract! Why won’t anyone finally come clean with us?”

  Renata shrugged. “I have a feeling we’re still being tested. And as long as they’re already paying our salary, I can wait and see what happens.”

  “Still…”

  I looked up at the sky. It was already dark, even though it was still early evening. In the distance rumbled thunder; wind stirred. Somewhere a loose shutter clattered. A sheet, torn from a high clothesline between the windows, sailed over Campo San Lio like a harpooned ray and got caught, flapping, between wires.