Vous interdisez les erreurs vous empêchez ainsi la victoire.

(If you can't accept your defeats, you can't accept your victories.)

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“Citadelle"

„After the meeting with my mothers in the desert, I had realised that I mustn't play around with history any longer“, Mr Tuniak told me.

„One meeting?“, I asked. „There was just this one meeting – and I still don't know what was really said there – and it was sufficient to make you change your mind completely?“ I looked through my notes. „All those change you did, all the things you mentioned... from your point of view several years must have passed, before your mothers found you. Years, during which you must have been absolutely convinced that you were doing the right thing. And you told me yourself and even invited Madame Debarou to one of our meetings to attest to it, that you were quite headstrong during that time and always sure that your opinions were the right ones. And now you are telling me that all it took to change your mind was this one meeting?“

„First: I could be very stubborn during that time, I know that. But I was never like that with my mothers or Juliette“, Mr Tuniak said. „Or Philip. Those four people were the only ones whom I trusted completely... and in the case of time, the nature of it and the course of history even more than myself.“

„And secondly?“

„And secondly, it wasn't that easy to simply stop“, Mr Tuniak said. „Especially Alice was not convinced so easily.“

„Do you believe everything they have said?“, Alice asked quietly.

„I don't have to believe it, I know it“, Alexander replied.

„Oh yes, the mysterious future“, Alice said. „Why is it that you have never shown me what's going to happen in three hundred years?“

Alexander shrugged. They were sitting on top of a sand dune and looking to the east, where the first rays of the sun were painting the sky a slight orange. Sun rise was not far. Behind them were the three time machines. Alice and Alexander had asked for a bit of space, so that they could talk privately with each other. Juliette had been against it, but Miriam and Helen had overruled her and granted it. Sarina had said nothing the whole time. She was just a quiet spectator and apparently satisfied with that role.

„I can show it to you, if you really want, but you might find it... scary“, he finally said

„After all the other journeys we have made?“, Alice asked.

„None of them went farther than the twentyfirst century“, Alexander reminded her. „My mothers are right. If we make a mistake... and we have already made several...“

„...all of which we were able to correct“, Alice interrupted him.

„Yes, but how long can we keep doing that?“, Alexander asked. „In case you didn't notice: We're not getting any younger. We may be able to travel throught time, but we can't stop it for ourselves.“

„Oh, I know, I have already discovered my first grey hair“, Alice joked, but neither of them was in the mood to laugh.

„One day we will be too old to travel any longer“, Alexander continued. „One day we will be too old to go back and correct our mistakes. And what then?“

„That still quite a long way off“, Alice said. „That's not really the reason, why you want to stop, is it?“

„My mothers could stop us any time they wanted to.“

„Even if that were true, it wouldn't really stop you. And I'm not convinced that it is. In fact, I'm sure that they couldn't even have found us, if you didn't want them to“, Alice said. „It's something else. Are you afraid of failure?“

„We have failed“, Alexander said. „We wanted to change the course of history and all we changed were a few small details.“

„But if you stop now, you can still claim... believe that you would have succeeded in the end, if your mothers hadn't stopped you“, Alice said.

„And what use would that believe be?“, Alexander asked. „Why would I want that?“

Alice looked at him. „Did I ever tell you about Sean Kingsleigh?“, she asked.

„Maybe... He was one of the secretaries for one of the audio play companies you worked for, wasn't he?“

„Yes. I didn't know him that well, really, but since we were working at the same place, I met him from time to time and we exchanged a few words. Once I'd asked him if he didn't want to write a book himself, what with him coming into contact with all the other writers and so. He answered that he had already done that. He had a completed manuscript in a drawer at home. But he had never shown it to anyone. I wanted to know why, of course. He said that as long as no one else had seen his writings, for all he knew it could be the best book that has ever been published. But the moment he shows it to someone, that possibility is erased, because – and there he got very serious – it was much more likely that it was just average. But as long as no one had read it, the possibility still existed.“

„Then why did he write it at all?“

„Maybe he hoped to become the next Kafka and be declared a genius after his death“, Alice said.

„A potential genius“, Alexander smiled. „That makes us potential...“ He couldn't think of a fitting word.

„Why only potential?“, Alice asked. „We still could...“

„We have tried it.“ Alexander put his hand on hers. „We have tried it and it didn't work. Even before my mothers found us. How often have we considered of taking glass to China, because we saw no other options? I agree with you, people often avoid taking risks, because they fear that they might be disappointed. But I don't think we are among those people. We did try it. And there comes a time when one has to admit defeat.“

She took his hand. „Ok“, she said after a while.

„Did you really want your mothers to find you?“, I asked.

Mr Tuniak tried to evade the question. „I don't remember any more. I did know that the time machine was recording every journey it ever made, but I don't think I thought any further than that.“

“Did you have to go back and undo all the changes you've made?”

“No, no, time itself took care of most of our changes”, Mr Tuniak explained. “Many things just, well, got lost with time, became forgotten and insignificant. There were things, we had to do ourselves. Like, for instance, all the companies we had founded.”

“Couldn't you just dissolve them? Fake bankruptcy or something like that?”, I asked. But then I realised what he actually did. “No, you didn't, otherwise we wouldn't have been able to visit them in Alaska. You hid them.”

“You can put it that way, yes”, Mr Tuniak agreed. “We didn't want to simply dissolve them. Many people were working for us and we thought it would be unfair to them, if we just fired them although they had done nothing wrong. So we offered them to stay with the company under one condition: Everything they did or invented had to stay secret. It was not an ideal solution, I know that, but I think it was the best we could do under the circumstances. But not everything was as easy.”

The archive was completely cleaned up. The cabinets and cupboards were empty and there were no papers left in the drawers and shelves. Apart from the furniture, the whole building was empty.

Mme Debarou was waiting at the main entrance and looked one final time up the wooden staircase she had gone up and down so many times. But now, no traces was left of her work or even of herself. It was as if she had never been here.

“I wonder if it will ever be known what happened in this building”, she said to Alexander who was standing next to her. “What I did here...”

“Like all secrets, I'm sure it will be revealed some day”, Alexander said. They left the house and he locked the door behind them.

“One more thing”, Mme Debarou said. “You wanted me to check on all the people you came into contact with during your travels. I've found this.” She gave him several sheets of paper. “It's about Henry Cavendish.”

“He became crazy?”, Alexander asked. “Because of us?” There was only one way to find out.

The time machine had landed not far from Cavendish's house. It was the eighteenth century, a late summer's evening and Alexander knew that he would find the inventor in his working room. He entered the house through a door at the back of the building which Cavendish had built for precisely that purpose.

“Henry, how are you?”, Alexander asked anxiously.

Cavendish, who had been reading a book, greeted him friendly and shook his hand. “Very well, thank you”, he said. “Why do you look so worried?”

Alexander was glad to hear that and also that Cavendish was one of the few people who knew about his true identity and where he came from. It made talking to him a lot easier. “I've read you biography”, he said. “It said that you were crazy.”

“Oh, that”, Cavendish laughed. “I'm just pretending.”

“You are pretending to be crazy? Why?”

“I thought it was the simplest way to make people forget about me and what I discovered”, Cavendish explained. “They won't take a closer look at my work know, because they will think it's just the mad rumblings of a crazy mind. And thus, history remains unchanged.”

Alexander felt as if he had been struck by lightning. “I don't know... what to say...”, he stammered. “I'm sorry. I'm terribly sorry. If it wasn't for me, you could have become the greatest genius of this century...”

“Maybe, and maybe not”, Cavendish said. “Fact is that, thanks to you, I've seen things I wouldn't have thought possible otherwise. Why should I care what people think about me in a hundred years time. I'll be dead anyway.”

Alexander still didn't know what to say. “If I can do anything for you...”, he offered.

“Come and visit me”, Cavendish suggested.

“As often as possible”, Alexander promised.

“What happened to Mme Debarou”, I asked. “What did she do, once you closed your archives?”

“I offered her to stay in the present – the time she was in at that moment – but she wanted to go back to the past – to her time”, Mr Tuniak said. “She had aged a few years, but she told all her friends and her family that she had been working and living in the United States. At the beginning of the 30ies she moved to London. Luckily.”

“She lived through the Second World War? She didn't want to skip it?”, I asked.

“Quite the opposite in fact”, Mr Tuniak explained. “She was actively involved in it, although she had to keep secret about it for several decades. She was working at Bletchley Park. Have you heard about it?”

“No.”

“The British secret service had a base there”, Mr Tuniak said. “She was one of several code breakers who managed to break the code of the Enigma machine.”

“Are you still meeting her from time to time?”, I asked.

Mr Tuniak nodded. “Yes. I check up on everyone whose life I'd tried to change. It's the least I can do.”

NEXT WEEK

You can't go home again.