All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

- Thomas Carlyle

„Cailinn and I studied Babbage's house for several days, but in the end we really couldn't do much“, Mr Tuniak told me. „Cailinn decided to travel back to England, but she wanted to return as soon as possible.“

“You did not go with her back to England?”, I asked.

“No, I claimed that I had other things to do somewhere else, business deals, and we parted in Italy”, Mr Tuniak said.

“What kind of business deals?”, I wondered. “What did you say you had to do?”

“I can't remember any more”, Mr Tuniak admitted. “But whatever it was, Cailinn accepted it without further questions. She had already guessed a lot about where I came from, a lot more than I suspected. Maybe that was the reason, why she didn't ask any questions... Whatever the reason, we agreed to meet in London again, a few months later. At that time Cailinn was sure that she would have managed to go a second time to Babbage's house and return.”

“Where did she get the money for the second journey?”, I asked. “I know you payed for the first one...”

“I payed for the second one as well”, Mr Tuniak said. “Or, to be more accurate, the money came from Philip both times. And Cailinn's second journey was quite a disappointement.”

They hadn't agreed to a certain date, but when Alexander returned to London, a telegram was already waiting for him. He had given her the address of a friend and that friend told him that the telegram had arrived a few days before. Alexander read it quickly. Cailinn had written that she was staying in a small hotel for a few days, before returning to Scotland. She didn't mention anything about her second journey.

Alexander went to the hotel the very next day. It was really quite small, run by a family, but Cailinn couldn't afford a room in one of the bigger hotels in the city. He knocked at her door, which was opened a few moments later.

“Miss Noneach”, Alexander greeted her.

“I did tell you to call me Cailinn, didn't I?”, she returned, before stepping aside to let him enter.

Alexander immediately saw that he had pretty much come at the last possible moment. Two full suitcases were lying on the bed, a train ticket on the table. A few hours later and she would have been gone.

“You took your time”, Cailinn said, closed the door and sat down on the bed. Alexander remained standing in the middle of the room. He felt that something had happened and whatever it was it had changed Cailinn's opinion of him.

“How was it in Massa di Somma?”, he asked.

“What do you think?”, Cailinn said angrily. But when she saw that Alexander had no idea what she was referring to, her mood changed immediately. “Oh, you really don't know what happened.”

“What did happen?”, Alexander asked confused.

“Mount Vesuvius erupted”, Cailinn told him. “Three weeks after we left there. The whole town got destroyed and there is nothing left of Babbage's house. I went there, in spite of that, but I couldn't do anything.”

“I'm sorry”, Alexander said and sat down on one of the chairs at the table.

“Ah, well, it isn't your fault”, Cailinn said. “You couldn't know what would happen, now, could you?” She laughed, but Alexander wasn't sure if the last question had really been just a joke or if there were more serious implications behind it.

“What are you going to do next?”, he asked, to change the subject.

“For now, I will return to my grandfather”, Cailinn said. “I will write you down, where he lives, you should come and visit us some time. I think I will take some time to write everything down I can remember about Babbage's place... I have a few sketches... After that...” She looked out of the window as if she could look into the future. “I don't want something like that to happen again. But I don't know how it could have been prevented. Do you have any ideas?”

“I decided to let two years pass, before I went to visit her again”, Mr Tuniak said.

“Two years from her point of you, right?” I wanted to be sure.

“Yes, for me it was only a few weeks or maybe months”, Mr Tuniak said. “I had to make sure of course that Cailinn would be at her grandfather's, so I did not go there directly, but went to Edinburgh. There I asked around, until someone told me that she had gone to the south of England. So I went back to my time machine, travelled a few weeks into the future and asked again. This time, people assured me that she was at home, so I could finally visit her.”

There were a lot of open fields around Cailinn's grandfather's house. Because of that Alexander judged it to be too risky to land the time machine close to the building. Instead he hid it in a nearby forest and rented a carriage.

As he knocked on the door of the big mansion, it took several minutes, before a servant came and opened it.

“Whom may I announce?”, the servant asked, after having greeted Alexander as if he belonged to the high aristocracy.

“Alexander Tuniak, I'm here to see Miss Noneach”, Alexander said.

“She hast just left to meet someone at the train station, but...” The servant hesitated a moment, before he continued. “I'm sure she would want you to wait for her in the library.”

Alexander thanked him and agreed that he would wait there. An old man was sitting in the library, as old as Alexander himself, but with less hair on his head. He was reading a newspaper. He stood up to greet Alexander and introduced himself as Lord Noneach, Cailinn's grandfather. They talked with each other, until Cailinn returned. During their talk, Alexander noticed that Lord Noneach often looked to the door and was obviously relieved when his granddaughter returned.

“Alexander, you should have written that you planned to visit us”, Cailinn said, after having greeted and hugged him. “May I introduce: Hugo Delake.” The young man, who had accompanied her, shook his head. He was a detective for the police and it turned out that Cailinn had been able to help him solve two strange cases, which everybody else had declared unsolvable.

“In the first case, it turned out that a huge mirror had been used to set fire to warehouses”, Cailinn said. “You know the story of Archimedes and the siege? Well, what we found was that...”

She was interrupted by a servant who entered the library and announced that dinner had been prepared.

“I turned out to be a long night”, Alexander remembered. “Her... grandfather was the first to go to bed. He excused himself, claimed that he was not feeling well and that he would go to his room. But he urged us to stay as long as we liked. Hugo had go leave shortly after that, because he had to catch an early train the next day to get back to London. So, in the end only Cailinn and I remained in the library.”

“What are you thinking about?”, Cailinn asked. “And I want an honest answer.”

Alexander looked over to her. They had spent several minutes in comfortable silence. The servants had already gone to bed. “An honest answer?”, Alexander repeated the request. “All right. I was wondering who the man who introduced himself as your grandfather really was. I know that he is not your grandfather, but I can't figure out who he really is and why he didn't tell me his real name.”

“Why do you think I know?”, Cailinn answered with a smile. “But yes, I was curious how long it would take you to ask that question... What tipped you off?”

“When he told me his name, he said that he was Lord Noneach”, Alexander said. “But I know that that is not your real name. So, why should it be the name of your grandfather?”

“My real grandfather died several years ago”, Cailinn said. “Before he died, he wanted his servants to take over the estate. That's of course impossible, so we kept his death quiet. The man who claimed to be my grandfather is really the butler. He impersonates him whenever guests are expected. If friends of my grandfather show up or people who might have known him – which is thankfully not that often – then I am greeting them and tell them that my grandfather is unfortunately not here at the moment and we are not sure when he will be back.” She looked back at Alexander. “You owe me a secret now.”

“I do?”, Alexander asked amused. “What do you want to know.”

“Who are you? You were not born in this society. I noticed that the first time we met, the very first instance, but...”

“How?”, Alexander wanted to know.

“You never seemed surprised by the fact that I am wearing trousers”, she said. “A woman wearing trousers seems to be common for you. Even Hugo... I like him a lot and he is thankfully a lot more modern than most men I know... but even he can't help it and sometimes has to say something about the way I dress. Or that I like to travel alone.” She pointed at Alexander. “Or be in a room alone with a strange man. For you it seems to be quite normal. And you were not surprised by Babbage's house. Fascinated, yes, but not surprised. I had a theory about who you are and were you come from, but then you didn't know about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. And according to my theory, you should have know, which reminds me...” She stood up and went over to the desk that was standing in one corner of the library. There was a thin pile of papers lying on the desk. She took it and gave it to Alexander. He saw that the sheets were pages of a manuscript. There were also sketches, tables and charts. Alexander read several of those pages and found a description of Babbage's house. “Those are all things I have seen and experienced in the last few years. I hope to write several such books in the future. About things that should not be forgotten.”

“I am sure you will write a whole bunch of those”, Alexander assured her. He remembered the books Sean had shown him in this very library, about a hundred years in the future. Cailinn had written dozens such books and their existence and the idea that had born them was what had led to the creation of Gemini.

“Are you?”, Cailinn asked. “But why didn't you know about Mount Vesuvius?”

“Because I didn't think about it”, Alexander admitted. “I forgot to check when the next eruption would be.” And thus, without actually saying it, he had admitted that he had come from her future. But it was no surprise for Cailinn, it was just the confirmation of something she had suspected for quite some time.

“Then I'll take it, that this will not be our last meeting”, she said.

“Definitely not”, Alexander promised.

“But if Cailinn knew that you came from the future and that you had a time machine, why didn't you take her back to Babbage's house before it was destroyed, so that she could take pictures and so preserve it for the future?”, I wanted to know.

“I did take pictures”, Mr Tuniak said. He showed them to me. There were two kinds of them: Those that were taken with a camera from the nineteenth century and those that were taken with a modern camera. “I offered the old photos to her, but she refused to take them. She said that she was glad that I had them, but that she didn't want them for herself, because this way she would always be reminded of the fact, that things can get easily lost, if we are not careful.”

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