The Cusanus Game

by Wolfgang Jeschke

  “Oh, what point could all that have had?”

  “You should have asked Don Fernando,” Renata broke in.

  “Yes. If it hadn’t been for him … I don’t know whether I would have made it through the winter in the dungeon.”

  “They’ll find a job for you,” said Grit. “The institute needs travelers with experience.”

  “Experience!”

  “Didn’t Falcotti ask you during the job interview what you would like to do if you could turn back time?” asked Renata.

  “Yes. I had said I would go back to September 2039 to prevent my father from boarding the ill-fated train in Naples. He died in the attack. Do you seriously think…?”

  “Perhaps your wish will be granted.”

  “You mean an octopus operation?” Grit asked, sipping her mulled wine.

  “No. It’s enough for Domenica to go up to her father and say, ‘For heaven’s sake, do not board that train,’” Renata suggested.

  “How do you imagine that, Renata? Tell me, how do you imagine that? I step in front of him on the platform and say, ‘Listen, Papa, I have a strange feeling. Please don’t get on that train. Something might happen.’ He sees a twenty-eight-year-old woman in front of him, puts his hand to his forehead, and says, ‘Signora, are you all right?’ After all, I was only twelve at the time, Renata!”

  “A bomb threat,” Grit mused. “You could spread the news that a bombing is planned. Call the police.”

  “Oh, that can be damn dangerous. I know that from experience,” said Renata. “They’ll find out like lightning who you are. And if the train is then actually stopped, if they search it and find a bomb, then you’re in for it.”

  “But you would have saved not only your father’s life, but also the lives of hundreds of people. If it’s a constitutive event, however, you’ll never reach the year 2039,” Grit pointed out. “But the commission has to decide on that anyhow.”

  “I would have a different suggestion, Domenica,” Renata interjected with a smug smile. “You make a pass at your father in the hotel before he goes to the train station. You make eyes at him, let him treat you to a drink at the hotel bar, go with him to his room, and see to it that he misses the train.”

  “With my own father? You’re indecent!” I replied indignantly.

  “You don’t have to go all the way, sweetie,” Renata went on teasingly. “You can ask him for a favor. My goodness, you’ll think of something! You can always lock yourself in the bathroom if things get too dicey for you.”

  Grit laughed out loud and slapped the table with her palm. With a loud crack the carafe shattered on the warmer; the wine extinguished the candle and spread in a red pool across the table. Grit jumped up in shock, hurried into the kitchen, and came back with a roll of paper towels.

  “How could that happen?” she asked. We helped her wipe up.

  “When are you leaving for Genoa?” Grit asked me.

  “Nothing came of that,” I sighed. “Of the wedding, I mean. Chalid, the splendid groom, eloped with a younger woman.”

  “So you’re not going.”

  “Am I supposed to spend the holidays listening to my forsaken mother’s laments? Not after this year! Her call was enough for me.”

  “Ah, wonderful,” said Grit. “Then the three of us will celebrate Christmas together—as planned. The goose has been ordered. I’m going to stuff it—”

  “—with apples and chestnuts,” I said. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  * * *

  “THIS IS INDEED puzzling,” said van Waalen.

  He worriedly puffed out his cheeks and furrowed his brow. The jacket of his dark blue double-breasted suit stretched over his belly and there were white hairs stuck to the lapels and the sleeves. Angora? He loved cats, I recalled. Next to him stood Jörn Auerbach; his mouse-gray suit, which would have fit a man fifty pounds heavier, hung loosely on his emaciated figure. He sucked in his hollow cheeks even more and pursed his lips skeptically.

  “But please, sit down, Ms. Ligrina,” said van Waalen, gesturing with his plump hand to a chair opposite the table at which both directors now took their seats. Suddenly I felt as if I were at an oral exam. Dr. Coen hurried in with an open lab coat, took a seat, and placed his documents and his Palmtop on the table in front of him. He gave me a friendly nod.

  Just come right out and say it, I thought. I failed across the board. You have no more use for me. I’m fired.

  Auerbach, who sat in the middle, cast a questioning glance to his left and right, then brought his terribly scrawny freckled hands together into a gable and rasped in a harsh Baltic accent, “There’s probably no rule of self-consistency that you haven’t violated, Ms. Ligrina. I have to assume that someone familiarized you before the start of your mission with the ten laws to which a traveler must adhere.”

  He cast a sidelong glance at Dr. Coen, who seemed not to notice it, because he was consulting his Palmtop with the utmost concentration.

  “Of course I was instructed to that effect, director. I’m sorry I failed to exercise the necessary care. I’m aware that I’ve made big mistakes.”

  “Catastrophic ones,” said Auerbach.

  “Still,” van Waalen broke in, nodding at me benevolently, “the transition to the past went off according to plan and without a hitch. That’s the astonishing thing. You seem to have powerful supporters.”

  “Supporters?” I asked, perplexed. “Where?”

  He shrugged his massive round shoulders and pointed with his thumb to the ceiling. “Maybe up there,” he said.

  Auerbach let out a brief laugh that sounded like a stifled sneeze. Then he laid both hands flat on the table and stared sternly ahead as if he urgently had to demand scientific discipline. Dr. Coen turned with a smirk to face the window and looked out at the IJ and the silhouette of Java, behind which the Amsterdam skyline rose in the pale January light. Always the same amusing little games between the two factions of the CIA, he seemed to be thinking.

  “Ms. Ligrina,” Auerbach said in a matter-of-fact tone, “the self-repair program of the multiverse is evolutionary—that means it has the inherent tendency to revise itself constantly and optimize its objective. It is therefore always trying out different possibilities. If no improvements arise, those alternatives are rejected and erased. The problem is that the virtual universes are indistinguishable from the real ones. Quantum cosmology grants equal rights to both—and theoretically infinite—variations.”

  “Only according to your theory, my esteemed colleague,” van Waalen broke in, smugly brushing his mop of white hair from his forehead.

  “According to the Advanced General Brane Theory of Hla Thilawuntha,” Auerbach corrected him with a withering sidelong glance.

  “According to your interpretation of that theory,” van Waalen replied with a self-satisfied smile. “There are others.”

  “As for the case of Ms. Ligrina…” Dr. Coen ventured to interject, but fell silent when he saw the reproving looks directed at him by the two professors.

  Auerbach cleared his throat and adopted a formal tone: “As for the case of Ms. Ligrina, it is to be feared that her activities have caused drastic fractures in the historical texture. That applies in particular to the letters to the cardinal Nicolaus Cusanus—an incredibly reckless act, a catastrophic intervention in the source material, the consequences of which cannot even be estimated. A contamination of unprecedented magnitude.”

  “I feared for my life, Director. I saw it as the only chance to save…”

  He gave me a look of consternation as if a mouse he was about to dissect had cried “Mercy!”

  “I’m sorry, but we’re talking here about the existence or nonexistence of universes, young woman,” he said.

  “Every human being is a universe,” van Waalen interjected in a solemn tone, folding his hands in front of his chin to conceal his faint smile, as if he had only been waiting until his rival ventured so far out onto thin ice that he could enjoy watching him fall through.r />
  “Yes, yes, my esteemed colleague,” Auerbach snorted, throwing up his scrawny arms. “Not a single sparrow will fall to the ground without … and so on. Only you know as well as I do that the same person is present in countless universes.”

  “But that doesn’t make the person a negligible quantity,” countered van Waalen. “In each of those universes the individual is a vulnerable creature, afflicted with pain and mortal fear. It’s about the human beings—in every single one of those universes.”

  Auerbach sank back in his chair, drummed his fingers on the table, and looked up to the ceiling.

  “As for the case of Ms. Ligrina…” Dr. Coen made a renewed attempt.

  “As for the case of Ms. Ligrina,” van Waalen declared forcefully, “her violations of the rules of self-consistency—for which I, incidentally, have complete understanding—were not only permitted, but also might even have been provoked by the … um … self-repair program or whomever. There’s no other way to explain the course of her mission. It is not possible for us to extrapolate the historical ramifications she might have brought about. But I submit that they might have been desired. They were taken into consideration and—we’ll never know—ultimately accepted or rejected.”

  “Brushed out,” Auerbach sneered, baring his teeth.

  “Brushed out,” van Waalen replied emphatically, plucking a hair from his lapel.

  “But why, actually?” Auerbach objected, tracing a question mark in the air with his scrawny finger. “Theoretically, it’s entirely possible for such alternatives to coexist in the multiverse.”

  “But it could just as well be the case that a better variation was found and that the days of this our universe are numbered,” van Waalen countered.

  Suddenly I saw again the smoking seam beyond the abyss—the ashes of the chronicles of countless worlds that had squandered their chance.

  “Then it’s only right and proper,” said Dr. Coen, “that Ms. Ligrina be given the opportunity to improve the chances of this our universe in the cosmic contest of alternatives.”

  Frowning, Auerbach looked first at me, then at him. “Do you think she is capable of that?” he asked.

  “I do,” Dr. Coen said emphatically.

  “That’s not for us to determine,” declared van Waalen. “We can, as in every case, only make a preliminary decision and approve the mission or not. The ultimate decision lies in the hand—”

  “Please!” Auerbach said sharply. “The ultimate criterion is the question of whether the transition will open for this plan or not.”

  I was taken aback. Apparently I really did have powerful supporters—wherever.

  “Am I to understand,” I asked, “that I am being permitted…”

  The two directors exchanged a glance. Dr. Coen nodded.

  “Yes,” said Auerbach, clearing his throat. “The commission has agreed to approve the experiment and to allow you, Ms. Ligrina, to attempt to travel to the year 2039 and save your father from death in the train disaster near Naples. However, we make no secret of the fact that the majority of commission members do not endorse averting the train disaster, because it might be a constitutive historical event. I do not share this opinion; I regard the event as marginal.”

  How sensitive, I thought. For me it wasn’t marginal at all, no more than it was for the many other people who lost their family members in the horrible attack. In any case, I would try to save at least my father. That was my objective, because I would otherwise not reach the year 2039.

  * * *

  THERE WAS, OF course, an abundance of reference points stored in the CIA archive from the decades since the founding of the institute. I asked Dr. Coen to select for me a day in late August or early September. The construction of the simulation was a matter of a few minutes.

  Dr. Coen led me into a spartanly furnished office, which could have been anywhere in the institute; in it were two chairs and a desk, on which there was an old-fashioned push-button telephone with a small screen. Through the window I saw the silhouette of Amsterdam beyond the IJ in the simulation of 2039. Some of the prominent buildings were missing from the skyline; they had been erected only later.

  “We have to naturalize you appropriately,” he said, handing me a Europass, as had still been customary fifteen years earlier. My birthdate was indicated as May 25, 2014.

  “I look pretty old,” I said.

  “It’s unavoidable if you are to pass as a time-native,” replied Dr. Coen. “Those are difficult years. The Cattenom disaster is only a decade in the past. Europe is increasingly breaking up. The political situation is fraught; numerous refugees are on the move. The authorities are mistrustful and cracking down hard. We don’t want to lose you.”

  I pocketed the unfamiliar document.

  “I’m afraid you can’t use a credit card, but we’re giving you enough cash. And come back safely,” said Dr. Coen.

  “When will the soliton arrive?”

  He looked at his watch. “I think I’d better leave now. It can’t be much longer.”

  He hurried out of the room and closed the door, over which a little red lamp burned. I waited for the wave, but nothing happened. Had the transition failed? I tried to open the window to check, but it was sealed shut. When I turned around, I saw that the little lamp over the door had changed color.

  At that moment someone knocked, and a young woman stuck her head in. She had a friendly, open face with dimples in her cheeks. Her chestnut brown hair she had pulled back into a ponytail.

  “I had a feeling someone had arrived,” she said with a laugh. “Welcome to the year 2039! I hope that’s where you wanted to go. You’re looking at me with such dismay.”

  “The transition…” I stammered. “I didn’t feel anything.”

  The young woman shrugged and replied, “The physicists claim it’s impossible to feel them.”

  “Opinions are divided on that.”

  She looked at me sympathetically. “The journey seems to have taken a lot out of you. Why don’t you come to my office first and have a coffee with me?”

  My gaze fell on the identification she wore on her light gray blouse; I caught my breath. GRIT HAAS was written on it. Oh, God! How young she was! Dear Grit, how many long years you will have to spend in the past! She had never told me that! In a daze, I followed her into a room decorated with posters of art exhibitions. Stedelijk Museum. Rijksmuseum. Van Gogh Museum. Rembrandthuis.

  “You love art?” I asked.

  “I don’t know much about art history, if that’s what you mean. But I hate having bare walls around me,” she said. “We’re housed here only temporarily, until the new institute building is finished. We’re even supposed to get underwater offices, which I think is a harebrained idea.”

  I nodded and smiled at her.

  “You shouldn’t contaminate me,” she said, handing me a cup and pouring me hot coffee from a large thermos.

  “Contaminate?” It was meant to sound casual, but didn’t succeed.

  “You’re looking at me as if you knew me well. Since I’ve never seen you before, I have to conclude from that that we will get to know each other better at some point. I find that reassuring.”

  “Reassuring?”

  “Well, it proves to me that I have a future and will return safely from my travels, for which I’m currently being prepped. And as a result, I’m already contaminated. That’s what they call that, right?”

  A handsome young man entered the office. He was a robust, athletic-looking guy and wore his blond hair down to his shoulders. He greeted me with a nod and asked, “Are you coming along, Grit?”

  She looked at her wristwatch. “I’ll be off in half an hour, Leendert. Then we can head over, okay?”

  He nodded and left.

  Leendert de Hooghe. I clenched my teeth when I thought of the embittered man with the wounded eye I had met in the Waag, and of the painful fate of these two people who faced the future so nonchalantly.

  “Thanks for the coffee,�
� I said, and hurried out.

  * * *

  THE CITY ITSELF hadn’t changed much in the fifteen years. Some of the high-rises in the southwestern port area hadn’t been built yet. Around the Centraal Station bicycles still predominated; the Lectrics were in the minority.

  The flight offerings were, compared with those in the middle of the century, still abundant. But oil was already beginning to grow scarce. The first light-clippers were flying by then on the long-distance routes around the equator, and everywhere magnetic levitation catapults were being built for the hydrogen boosters—including in Schiphol.

  The fateful political developments in the Middle East still lay several years in the future: the Saudi Revolution; the Jahiliyah Massacre in Riyadh; the Hormuz disaster, in which the United States suffered a catastrophic defeat; the British-Italian North Africa adventure; the Caucasus War; and the Aegean War. Those conflicts would result in the final drying up of the crude oil streams and thus the end of unrestricted mobility, of private car traffic and traditional civil aviation. Not to mention the consequences of that development for the market economy: the collapse of the auto and aircraft industries. Relying on its military superiority, Western civilization would attempt to secure the extraterritorial basis of its existence by force, but would fail miserably. The terror organizations would deliver the beloved oil to their doorstep, hundreds of thousands of barrels in the harbors, on the beaches—burning. All later attempts, above all by the Americans, to avoid the consequences of their disastrous policies retroactively and undo them through octopus operations would come to nothing. Those historic events would prove to be constitutive and thus inexpungible facts of this universe like September 11, 2001, and the Cattenom nuclear disaster. They were the ugly dents that helped shape the face of recent history.

  * * *

  ROME IN 2039 was still a different city. It was the city of my childhood—full of life, full of people, full of cars and motor scooters—not the frontline city in which I would pursue my studies ten years later. I got a room in the Vatte, a small hotel on Via Cavour near the train station and the metro. San Pietro in Vincoli was only a few paces away.