The Cusanus Game

  But I saw nothing at all. In the simulation the rushes had been far from as high. Here I couldn’t see beyond them; no building or church tower could be made out far and wide.

  The sun descended and spun itself deeper into its cocoon. Fog spread. It got colder. It smelled of mold, of peat, of rotting vegetation. Had the smell grown stronger? The surf louder? The air tasted of salt. Was the sea getting closer? Would the land on which I stood be flooded when darkness fell? No, said the botanist in me. The vegetation testified against that. But the roar of the sea was damn close.

  I didn’t dare to take even one step, stood as if rooted to the spot where I had been dropped off and trembled more with fear than with cold. Someone would be on site to take care of me on my arrival, Dr. Coen had promised me, but I saw no one far and wide. Had something malfunctioned? Had they misplaced me somewhere in time and were now having trouble finding me? Had Dr. Coen, as nice as he was, perhaps lacked the competence he so casually flaunted? Did I have to brace myself to spend a night, several days, or even weeks here, before they tracked me down again?

  In the southeast there would be a mighty ash tree, easy to spot, he had assured me. There I would—only in the event that, contrary to expectations, something really went awry—come upon a log road. It would lead to a hut, where our man on site resided. But I saw no ash tree. Had it since been chopped down? I saw only Cyperaceae, which towered over me by more than a head. Should I simply march off toward the southeast? But then would I be able to find this spot here again, from which I could be brought back? The landscape was certainly rather uniform; there were undoubtedly other clearings of this sort, which would be hard for me to tell apart. Here, where I stood, I was in the safety of the area that was simulated in the studio. If I were to move outside it, I would be in another world. Six or eight paces away began the wild. I shuddered at the thought of wading in unknown terrain through bog and cold water. I cursed the tunnel builders of the CIA, who were unable to choose a drier location for their outposts. But perhaps there was no such thing in the Netherlands of the fifteenth century.

  Was it already getting dark? The fog had definitely thickened. Were predators to be expected here? Probably not. But damn it, I was cold. How long would I have to stretch my legs here before a soliton picked me up and carried me back to the warm, comfortable world of Amsterdam in the summer of 2053?

  Which way was southeast? In February—if it was February—the sun in these latitudes described only a shallow arc over the horizon. So it was rather low in the sky all day. On top of that, it was barely visible, almost completely obscured by fog. Indecisively, I grabbed my woven suitcase—and despondently put it back down. My feet seemed to have turned to lead, my knees to jelly. In the meantime I was trembling all over.

  “Is anyone there?” I called out, startled by my thin, squeaky voice, which got lost hopelessly in the expanse.

  Suddenly I heard the whinnying of a horse and the dull clatter of hooves on a log road. A large white horse appeared among the rushes and stopped. Two boys sat on its unsaddled back, the one in front perhaps twelve, the other ten years old. They stared at me. They couldn’t possibly be from the tunnel outpost. The older boy shouted something. I didn’t understand him and took a few steps toward him. The horse shook its head and snorted.

  “Did you come from the heavens?” the older boy called in Dutch.

  “I feel that way!” I shouted back. “Could you help me?”

  He turned the horse. The smaller boy clasped the bigger one with both arms and looked back anxiously over his shoulder. The bigger boy kicked his bare heels into the animal’s flanks and the next instant they had vanished in the fog.

  “Damn it!” I cried, running after them, but tripped after a few steps and fell flat in the grass, which felt surprisingly supple.

  Sobbing, I didn’t get up.

  “You’re back already!” Dr. Coen exclaimed, parting the rushes with his long arms. In one hand a paper cup of coffee, in the other a poffertje, he hurried over to me.

  “Did you hurt yourself?” he asked, shoving the poffertje in his mouth, licking off his fingers, and helping me to my feet.

  “No,” I said, brushing my hair and my tears from my face. “Help me find my suitcase. It must be lying around here somewhere if it came with me.”

  He finished his cup of coffee, crushed it, and stuck it in the pocket of his lab coat, looked around and lifted my suitcase out of the grass.

  “I didn’t expect you back yet at all. You must have only just arrived in the destination area when the next soliton seized you from below. Did you have any contact with our man on site?”

  “I only saw two boys passing on a white horse. I stood around for hours and—”

  “For hours?” he repeated, stopping his chewing. “Hm. Yes. Here not even ten minutes have passed since you—”

  “I stood around for hours and froze my feet off!” I replied indignantly. “I saw neither an Oude Kerk nor a Nieuwe, burned down or not burned down, Dr. Coen. And no ash tree, because the Cyperaceae—”

  “The what?”

  “The rushes! They were so tall that I couldn’t see beyond them,” I declared angrily.

  “The rushes too tall,” he murmured thoughtfully, nodded, and looked down at me with concern.

  He was two heads taller than I was. His prominent Adam’s apple rose nervously and sank again. He looked up and gazed into the distance.

  “I see the problem,” he said.

  * * *

  PHYSICISTS ASSERTED THAT it was impossible to sense the approach of a soliton. The positive or negative gravitational waves—depending on the direction of the passage—accompanying the phenomenon could, in their view, be registered only with highly sensitive laser interferometers like VIRGO in Pisa, GEO in Hannover, LIGO in Hanford and Livingston, or the LISA satellites in orbit. The human organism, they said, could not perceive those minimal fluctuations of gravitation passing through our membrane. Nonetheless, many travelers claimed to have sensed the approach of the wave. Grit said she had always felt it as an inner tension, which built up for several minutes beforehand and peaked in a feeling of liberation when the transition occurred.

  “I know that the physicists scoff at our feelings, but I’m more inclined to think they’re at a loss and have no explanation for it. They claim that it’s a physical phenomenon, a stress symptom. I don’t think so. We travelers have to possess that sensitivity. Sometimes your life depends on that intuition, when you’re in the area of the reference point that corresponds to the simulation. When you’re in danger, you have to know whether a way home is going to open up or whether you’d better get to safety in the terrain by hiding or fleeing.”

  * * *

  THE FIRST TIME I sensed nothing. But I was also much too excited to pay attention to my inner state. So I listened inwardly when the second trial transition was approaching. Of course, the tension grew during the countdown, but I didn’t feel the wave itself coming closer. Only when I caught the soliton did it seem to me as if an irresistible but gentle force had touched me, seized my body, and lifted it up imperceptibly—as if I had stumbled unawares into emptiness.

  I found myself in the same clearing as last time, but, at odds with the simulation, it was a clear, cold winter day. The sky was cloudless; a pale, weak sun shone low over the horizon, even though it seemed to be late morning. “Memorize every detail at the reference point, so that you can identify it later, when you arrive for the return,” Dr. Coen had impressed on me. Easier said than done in this monotonous landscape. “Above all, keep in mind the cardinal directions.” Yes, the churches and the ash tree. This time I could orient myself, for the reeds ducked whisperingly under an icy easterly wind, revealing the view. “Turn slowly around your axis and take in your immediate surroundings like the illuminated area in the beam of a flashlight. That’s the entrance to the tunnel for you. Should it be inaccessible due to unfortunate circumstances, stay nearby and keep calm. Someone will come and help you.” Would I m
eet the man on site this time? “Leave the reference area this time, so that the next ascending soliton doesn’t wash you back again right away.”

  And again that unease seized me and constricted my throat—the fear of leaving the familiar terrain from the simulation. It was as if I had to slide over the edge of a life raft into the water and swim out into a boundless ocean.

  Suddenly I heard a shot, then a shout and a dog barking. Minutes later a rider burst from the reeds. He wore a white sheepskin jacket and on his head a wool cap like a ski mask, which covered his nose and chin. He had three bloody birds hanging from his saddle, black-tailed godwits with long pointy beaks. There was a primitive shotgun in a holster next to the saddle. A large, light gray dog appeared. A wolf? Another shorebird hung between his bloody jowls. He put the bird down next to the horse’s hooves and moved slowly toward me. My heart stood still. He sniffed at my cloak. Did he smell the rabbits that made up the lining? He scrutinized me with eyes like glacial ice, intelligent and alert. I felt as if at any moment he would say something to me, but he was obviously not a modified animal. In the fur on the top of his head and on his throat were no visible scars.

  The rider dismounted, picked up the bird, and pulled the wool cap off his head.

  “Give me the suitcase,” he said, and fastened it to the back of the saddle.

  Then he swung himself back up and held out his hand to me.

  “Mount!” he commanded curtly.

  “How do you suggest I do that with the cloak?” I replied uncertainly.

  The rider leaned down, I grabbed his hand, and he pulled me up with a strength I wouldn’t have expected even from a fellow of his size. The horse snorted and made agitated movements, but he held it in a viselike grip with his thighs. I ended up sitting crosswise in front of the saddle, the heels of my boots resting against the shot-down birds. I held on to the light brown mane with one hand and to his jacket with the other. It smelled of wood smoke and damp sheepskin.

  “First trip?” asked the man.

  “Second.”

  He nodded.

  “On my first you seem not to have been home.”

  The man laughed. He was younger than he had seemed at first glance due to the short gray hair and the stubble on his face—maybe in his mid-forties. He spurred the horse on with his heels. We trotted across a dead straight embankment made of thin birch trunks; the gaps between them were filled with peat and rushes. We passed a tall, leafless ash tree and reached a reed-thatched hut, built in the style of a log cabin and caulked with grass, peat, and clay.

  The man dismounted and lifted me off.

  “I’m Wouter,” he said.

  “Domenica Ligrina.”

  “Welcome, Domenica,” he replied, handing me my suitcase.

  Wouter threw the birds to the ground. Coagulating blood hung like little rubies in the mane and the fur of the brown horse. He tethered it to a pole next to the door. The dog lay down next to its forelegs and scrutinized me alertly with his glacial eyes. Again I had the feeling he would say something to me at any moment.

  “What’s his name?” I asked.

  “That’s Sir Whitefang.”

  The hut was more spacious than it had appeared from outside. And it was pleasantly warm inside. In the brick fireplace glowed a fire of heaped-up peat bales. At the table sat the two boys I had encountered on the first transition. The older boy fished greasy chunks out of a bowl with his fingers and chewed them noisily. It was probably eel—that must have been available here in abundance. The younger boy drank milk from a dark wooden bowl. Two trickles ran out of the corners of his mouth, because the vessel was too big for him; they had converged into a drop on his chin and fell into his lap when he turned to me.

  I greeted the two of them, but they had eyes only for the third person at the table. He was apparently visiting, a dark-skinned young man who wore a loose white shirt in an Oriental cut with an embroidered collar. He had stuck a hand into the open shirt and was stroking his chest. Or was he carrying an animal around with him that he was petting?

  “This is Wim and Joop,” said Wouter, gesturing with a nod to the two boys. “They’re time-natives. Their parents drowned in the last flood. They live with me and lend me a hand.”

  The two boys stared with fascination at the visitor, who returned their gazes with a smile.

  “And this is…” Wouter began, raising his chin toward the man. “Who are you anyway?” he asked him.

  The young man turned to us. The dull winter light falling through the parchment-covered small windows illuminated his handsome profile. He had medium-length black hair; a round, well-nourished face; strikingly long, dark eyelashes; and jet-black eyes, which flashed with amusement as he drew his hand from his shirt and spread his arms as if in apology.

  “Some call me the angel,” he said with a shrug.

  “Angel,” the smaller of the two boys whispered, awestruck, raising the milk bowl, which he had put down, back to his lips.

  Oh God, a madman, I thought.

  “If you’re really an angel, then you must have wings,” said the older boy.

  “I have wings,” asserted the visitor.

  “Then let’s see them,” the boy demanded boldly, wiping his greasy fingers off on his jacket.

  The visitor opened his shirt and pushed it back over his left shoulder. I couldn’t believe my eyes: He exposed the edge of an immaculately white wing.

  The little one dropped the bowl. It clattered on the table; milk sprayed in his face and on his chest. Both boys stared at the angel with a mixture of awe and horror.

  “How did you do that?” I asked him incredulously.

  The visitor turned to me and in the dull winter light his eyes suddenly seemed to light up honey-colored from within, the way the eyes of aliens in silly Hollywood movies sometimes do. Was he wearing tinted contact lenses?

  “I have to continue on my way,” he said.

  Casually he buttoned his shirt; then he rose and put on his cloak, which had lain beside him on the bench—a white traveling cloak, which he wrapped around his shoulders. He raised his hand in parting and went out. Hesitantly, the dog took a few steps toward the door and then let out a growl. Outside someone then uttered a shrill laugh.

  Wim and Joop had hurried out to watch the stranger. As I stepped outside with Wouter, they had untied the horse and the older boy had already mounted. The embankment was empty.

  “Where’d he go?” I asked.

  “Into the heavens,” said the boy on the horse, leaning down to help his brother up.

  “That’s the best explanation,” Wouter murmured behind me. “Anything else would only confuse the time-natives. They don’t understand what the future means, let alone that it already exists.”

  I turned to him. “Is he a traveler?”

  Wouter nodded vaguely. “He comes here often.”

  “From what time?”

  Wouter shrugged. “Once he mentioned Highgate. Wherever that may be.”

  He raised his head as if he were picking up a scent and grabbed my suitcase. “We have to go,” he said. “I’d better bring you back now. The boys took the horse. Can you walk there?”

  “It’s not far.”

  Sir Whitefang got up to accompany us.

  “Didn’t you have a white horse too?” I asked Wouter, as we walked down the log road.

  Wouter gave me a sidelong glance.

  “No, but I’m planning to buy one at the horse market on St. Valentine’s Day. I’ve already looked at the animal. It’s for the boys, to pick up our visitors. And I’ll take the brown for hunting.”

  “You enjoy hunting.”

  “Yes. It’s the only variety—apart from the visitors.”

  “It’s boring here, isn’t it?”

  “Not at all. I love this life. I couldn’t stand it anymore where you come from.”

  “What’s the date today?” I asked him.

  “Candlemas.”

  “And what year?”

  �
�1449.”

  “Then I’ll be back soon,” I said with certainty.

  * * *

  I SENSED NOTHING of the approach of the soliton, but Wouter seemed to know that an ascending wave was nearing, for no sooner had I entered the reference area than it was as if the cold wind had been cut off, and Dr. Coen was clearing a way through the rushes.

  “With this one you took your time,” he said.

  “I was there for less than two hours,” I replied.

  “We sent you off two months ago. Today is October 26,” he replied.

  I looked at him in amazement. “You see, Dr. Coen, I still can’t get my head around the thing with the divergent courses of time, even though I should have gotten used to it a long time ago, God knows.”

  He furrowed his brow with concern. “Did you injure yourself?” he asked. “You have blood on your cloak and boots.”

  “Shorebirds,” I said. “Our man on site seems to be an avid hunter.”

  “We’ve got some strange ones.”

  “Last time you greeted me, you had a coffee. I could use one. It was terribly cold.”

  “Did we inadvertently send you into winter?”

  “February 2…”

  “My goodness! Come with me!”

  * * *

  “IS RENATA NOT back yet?” I asked Grit.

  She sat in her office at the institute. She was rarely to be found there, because she hated the “aquarium,” as she called it.

  “No. When do they send you on your mission?”

  “On November 19, if all goes according to plan.”

  “I hope both of you are back by Christmas so we can celebrate together. I’ll get a goose in time.”