Бери́сь дру́жно, не бу́дет гру́зно.

(If all of us take hold of it together, it won't feel heavy.)
- Russian proverb


„Two days after the birth of their daughter I went to visit Kunjana and Mowgli“, Mr Tuniak remembered. „Kunjana had to stay at the hospital for the night, but Mowgli went back to his park and I went with him.“
„Had the park already opened?“, I wanted to know.
„Yes. There were fewer animals than nowadays, but in general... yes, you could say that it was open“, Mr Tuniak said. „But I didn't go to see the park. Not that many things had changed since the last time I had visited it a few months before. No, I went, because Mowgli had gotten a letter for me.“
„Oh.“ I wanted to ask why a letter would have been sent to Mr Tuniak's friend instead of to himself, but the answer was obvious. He had no address where it could have been delivered to. He may count the Island Leviathan as his home, but it wasn't really a place where the post could easily get to. „Do you have all your letters sent to Mowgli?“, I asked.
„No, I never did that“, Mr Tuniak replied. „I was surprised myself. Today, I tell everyone to send me an email if they want something, because I can check my account wherever I am. And if someone really needs an address, I give them the address of this office here.“ He pointed at the office in which we were sitting.
„So, who had sent the letter?“

They had returned from the hospital and parked the car in front of the main building. Mowgli opened the entrance door and said: „I will give you your letter right now, otherwise I'm sure we will forget about it.“
„Do you know who sent it?“, Alexander asked.
„No, I don't. There's no other name or return address on the envelope“, Mowgli said. „Whom have you given this address?“
„No one.“
They went into the kitchen, where the letter was lying on a table. Alexander took it and immediately opened it. There was only one sheet inside, with only a few lines in handwriting on it. Alexander frowned as he read the message.
„And? Who is it from?“, Mowgli asked, as he opened the refrigerator and took out two bottles of beer. One of them he offered to Alexander.
„Yuuto“, Alexander answered and took the bottle. Then he told Mowgli about their meeting in Centralia.
„And what does he want now?“
„Planning to go to Moscow next year to proof the existence of the Metro-2 underground line. Interested?“, Alexander read loud. „Then there's the address of a hotel and a date.“
Mowgli took a sip from his beer. „Sounds strange. Have you ever heard about this Metro-2? What's special about it?“
Alexander shrugged. „I don't know.“

„The Metro-2 is not a single line in Moscow's underground system, but a whole separate secret underground network, hidden right below the city itself“, Mr Tuniak told me. „At least, that was the theory.“
„The theory? Didn't you find it?“, I wanted to know.
A smile played around Mr Tuniak's lips. „Let me tell you the story in the right order, ok? What I'm going to tell you know, is everything I found out about this Metro-2 before going to Moscow and meeting Yuuto. The story goes, that the Metro-2 was built not just so that Russian officials had their own subways, but also so that the government could secretly and quickly be evacuated during an emergency.“
„Are there similar underground lines in other cities as well? Washington, for instance?“
„It is possible, but I have never heard about it“, Mr Tuniak said. „There are probably plans for the evacuation of the government in all the capitals of the world, but the thing that makes the Metro-2 special is that supposedly it's bigger than the public underground lines.“

Alexander found the hotel at the border of the city. From the outside it looked old and non-descript and this first impression was confirmed in the entrance area. Some day soon several big repairs and renovation work was surely necessary. The woman at the reception was also the owner of the hotel and she led Alexander to Yuuto's room.
“Oh, great you could come”, Yuuto said, after letting Alexander enter and having closed the door behind him.
“A pleasure. But your letter was a surprise, I didn't expect it”, Alexander said.
“Well, we both know how important surprises are, don't we?” Yuuto winked. Alexander nooded slightly and showed thus that he was now remembering the visit to Centralia.
“I'm waiting for one other person”, Yuuto informed him and gestured for Alexander to sit down on the bed. The room was very small and apart from one chair, the bed was the only place where one could sit down. Alexander did so and saw an issue of Times lying next to him.
“I got the idea from an article in there”, Yuuto explained. “According to it, there's not only a secret underground system, but a whole secret city beneath Moscow. At the moment it's probably empty and uninhabited, but if there should ever be an emergency, like a nuclear attack on the city, over a hundred thousand people could live there. I've heard rumours about it before, but until now I've never had an opportunity to take a closer look.”
“Because of the Iron Curtain?”
“Partly because of it. But also because I couldn't think of a way to conduct my investigations secretly. Even if the Soviet Union doesn't exist any more, I'm pretty sure the Russian government would not be happy if it found out that someone was snooping around.”
“And what is your new secret way?”
As if it had been waiting for this cue, a knocking on the door started at this moment. Yuuto opened the door and a young woman with violet hair entered. She was surprised to see Alexander and quickly exchanged several words with Yuuto. She was talking too fast for Alexander to understand everything, but he caught a word here and there and judging by them and her gestures she had not expected him and was not happy about his presence. Yuuto managed to calm her down.
“May I introduce Tatjana?”, he said. “She can sense magnetic fields.”

“Could she really do that?” I had interrupted Mr Tuniak's recounting. “Is that even possible for a human to do?”
“As far as I can tell, yes”, he answered. “And why shouldn't it be possible? Countless animals can sense the magnetic field of the Earth, maybe some kind of atavism had awakened in Tatjana and given her this ability. I've met people who claimed to be able to sense even stranger things.”
“But it does sound like something straight out of a comic book.”
“I've once read an article about a girl who claimed to have x-ray vision”, Mr Tuniak said. “I've met a man who could eat metal and another one who saw the world like a bee.”
“Like a bee?”
“He was able to see infra-red. The spectrum of light he could see was shifted in comparison to most other people. He couldn't see blue or violet, but he could see a bit into the infra-red spectrum”, Mr Tuniak said. “So, I had no trouble believing that Tatjana could sense magnetic fields.”

The first few days they spent wandering around Moscow and visiting all the places where supposedly the secret entrances to the underground were located.
“But we won't use any of those”, Yuuto claimed.
“Why not?”, Alexander asked.
“Because they are probably being watched.”
They were talking in Russian, which Alexander could only do very slowly and with a lot of errors, but otherwise Tatjana would have become suspicious of him again.
After looking for all the entrances, they made a map where they marked the places where they were supposed to be. Having done that, they tried to guess where the lines were actually running between them. Yuuto also produced several sketches, which he had found in old archives and which he claimed had been used during the construction of the Metro-2.
“Tomorrow we are entering the canalisation”, Yuuto announced one evening, as all three were sitting in his room and eating dinner.
“Why?”, Alexander asked.
“Because there are so many electric wires and lines in the normal underground stations, that I wouldn't be able to sense anything else”, Tatjana explained. “But if I sense something in the canalisation, it should be relatively easy for us to decide whether it's just part of the public infrastructure or something else.
“Why is she doing this?”, Alexander asked later that same evening after Tatjana had left.
“She belong to a student groupt”, Yuuto said, as if that was all the explanation needed.
“And?”
“They want to uncover the secrets of the government or something like that”, Yuuto continued. “Although I'm not really sure what they plan to do, if we should really find the Metro-2. I can't imagine that it would create the big scandal they are so desperately hoping for.”

It took another four days before they found something. But it wasn't what they had expected.
“Something is in front of us”, Tatjana whispered suddenly. They were again walking through the canalisation. Close to them dirty water was flowing through the dark and from time to time rats crossed their path. Alexander was always looking closely at them, hoping to see another rat king. But he had no such luck this time.
“I can see it too”, Yuuto said after a while. Alexander too could now see what Tatjana had sensed. Some way in front of them there was a light. They switched off their electric torches and carefully continued forward.
The light grew stronger and stronger and finally they entered an open space.
“Wow”, Yuuto exclaimed and Alexander had to agree with him.
This subterranean space was like a big hall. Light bulbs were hanging from the ceiling, light bulbs that were plugged directly into the electric circuits, without any socket or fitting. On the floor there were dozens of beds in various sizes and shapes and between them boxes, chests, shopping carts and anything else that could be used for storage.
Several people were looking back at them. There were men and women, old and young,... excepting their choice of living space, they had nothing in common.
Tatjana immediately started talking to them and forgot all about Alexander and Yuuto.

“We had found a group of people who could no longer afford their apartments and homes”, Mr Tuniak explained. “They had moved into the canalisation, because there they were protected from the weather and it didn't get that cold there during the winter. Several of them still had their jobs. It was interesting to see some men putting on their best suits and leaving.”
“Did you stop looking for Metro-2 after this?”, I asked.
“Yes”, Mr Tuniak said. “Tatjana was no longer interested in it and instead preferred to publish articles in several journals about the fate of these people. And Yuuto had already found another project.”
I was disappointed. I had expected more. “Why did Yuuto ask you to join them? He needed Tatjana to find the underground lines and he organised everything. But I don't understand your role in his plans?”
“I was there for their safety”, Mr Tuniak explained. “If something had gone wrong... if the government or some secret service had tried to put a stop to our activities.”
“I don't understand.”
“I would have taken Tatjana into the past for her protection. Maybe even Yuuto.”
“You would have taken them to a time before any government or other department would have a reason to look for them. You truly were a safeguard.”
“And I still am.” But he didn't explain that comment any further.

NEXT WEEK
Só percebemos o milagre da vida quando deixamos que o inesperado aconteça.

Time is the school in which we learn, Time is the fire in which we burn.

- Delmore Schwartz

"Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day"

„Yuuto was very different from Philip“, Mr Tuniak told me today. „Throughout his whole life, Philip has always tried to stay in the background and not be noticed. Yuuto didn't care about that. He was completely indifferent to the fact that people might notice that he didn't age or die.“

„Do you know how old he is?“, I asked.

„Not exactly“, Mr Tuniak replied. „But he has made remarks from time to time that suggest he is about two thousand years old.“

„He never mentioned the mammoths of his youth?“

Mr Tuniak laughed. „Even if he was born during the Stone Age, I'm not sure there were any mammoths in Japan.“ He became more serious. „There is another difference between Philip and Yuuto. Philip has always looked for other immortals and thus built his own kind of family. People, who wouldn't die within eighty or ninety years. Yuuto has never made any close friends. At least that's what he is claiming. And apart from his room in the Hoshi Ryokan he never had a place he could his home. He travelled the world and did this, whenever possible, by walking. He has learned to ride and probably also how to drive a car, but he seldom does it.“

„Even if he is going to another country?“

„Even then“, Mr Tuniak emphasised. „He says that he has all the time in world, so why should he hurry? He has hurried a lot in his youth, but when he turned three hundred he realised that he would never have to again. Even he couldn't visit some place in one year, he would go there the next.“

„What about the Oceans? Did he swim from Japan to the mainland?“

„Of course not, he travelled on ships and, rarely, planes.“

„I was wondering about another thing last week“, I said. „The way Yuuto talked to you in the mountains... Did he know you before that? I know that you didn't, but was the same true for him?“

„You are starting to think like a time traveller“, Mr Tuniak said. „But yes, he had seen me before.“

„In the eight century when you were visiting his hotel?“

„No, I only saw him there, I didn't talk to him or anyone. He didn't see me“, Mr Tuniak said. „No, we had... a little adventure in the 80s together.“

„How did that happen?“

„By... a slip of the tongue“, Mr Tuniak explained. „Although I think Yuuto did it on purpose. As we were climbing through the National Park in Madagascar, Mowgli and I were talking about how dangerous it all was and he interrupted us and said that at least this time the air was breathable. I asked him what he had meant when he had said this time. He said that it wasn't like in Centralia, but I told him that I didn't know any city with that name. I could see in his face that he wasn't believing me.“

„All right, so you knew where you would meet him. But not when. Did you ask him?“

Alexander took Mowgli back to India with his time machine and then returned to Madagascar. For Yuuto, who had stayed behind, five minutes had passed.

“You were quick”, he said with a smile.

“And I'm pretty sure that you know why”, Alexander replied. “We have met before, haven't we?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Honestly? I got suspicious the first time you talked to me in the mountains”, Alexander told him. “And now this remark about the better air quality. Where have we met before? During the Great Fire of London?”

Yuuto looked at him for some time without answering. Then: “So you really are a time traveller? No, don't answer, I know everything I want to know. Centralia in Pennsylvania, on October the 22^nd, 1988. That's where I saw you for the first time.”

“I've never heard of that city.”

“It's the gate to Hell.”

“Do you have to be that cryptic?”

“Why? Do you want me to speak plain and take away all surprise? I am immortal and I have seen so very many things, nothing can really surprise me any more. You are a time traveller, you know what is going to happen tomorrow, so I think it's the same for you. But at the same time you look old enough to value a good surprise.”

Alexander looked at him critically.

“I'll tell you what you'll do. You'll go to San Francisco in 1987, the exact date doesn't matter. You will write a letter to this address here, the contents of which I will dictate to you in a moment. Then you will go to the access road to Centralia on the morning of October 22^nd, 1988. To find out where the city is located, only use a map, nothing else. Do not look it up in books, because... well, that would spoil the surprise.”

“Did you do it?”, I asked. “Did you follow his instructions?”

“After some deliberation, yes, I did”, Mr Tuniak answered. “Because he was right with one thing: It was difficult to surprise me.”

It was the morning of October 22^nd and Alexander was standing at the side of the road that led to Centralia. He had waited for over an hour already, when finally he saw a car approaching in the distance. He looked over his shoulder. The time machine was hidden a few hundred metres away and although he knew where to look, it was only with the greatest difficulty that he could make out its shape. So far, so good. He went to the middle of the road and waited.

The car stopped several metres in front of him and Yuuto exited. He was holding a letter in his hand and looked at Alexander, as if he was an extinct animal.

“Did you send me this letter?”, Yuuto asked.

“Yes”, Alexander confirmed. “I'm Alexander.”

“Yuuto, but you already know that”, Yuuto said and they shook hands. “How did you know about the graffiti?”

“You will find out in five years”, Alexander said.

A smile spread across Yuuto's face. “I like surprises.” The he pointed down the road. “Do you know what we will find over there?”

Alexander looked where he was pointing at. He had spent the whole morning wondering what made Centralia so special. From this distance he couldn't tell much, other than the fact that the town was mostly hidden by fog. “The gate to Hell?”, he said.

“You could call it that. Get in.”

They drove a few more kilometres, before stopping and parking the car at the side of the road. Alexander saw immediately why that was necessary. In front of him, the street had been torn apart, as if two giants had each taken hold of one side and pulled with all their might.

Yuuto opened the trunk of his car. “I hope you didn't lie about your height and weight”, he said.

Alexander went to him to see what he had brought. In the trunk there were two safety glasses, two oxygen masks and two oxygen tanks. He also took a backpack.

“They are not yet necessary”, Yuuto said, as he saw that Alexander had put on the safety glasses. “I'll tell you, when you should put them on.”

Even now, when they had nearly entered Centralia, Alexander couldn't tell what made it so interesting to Yuuto. Maybe it was the fact, that there seemed to be no inhabitants. But maybe they were all in their homes and didn't want to go out into the thick fog.

And then he smelled it. He wasn't surrounded just by fog. It was smoke Something really big had to be burning close by.

“Do you now know what makes this town different?”, Yuuto asked as he saw the look on Alexander's face. “Put your hand on the street.”

Alexander carefully knelt down and laid his hand on the ground. The street was warm, far warmer than it had any right to be.

“I think we should put on our masks now”, Yuuto suggested.

“It was in the 1960s that an accident happened in the mines of Centralia”, Mr Tuniak explained. “A fire was started, a fire that couldn't be extinguished. At first the people and authorities tried to play the accident down. They continued to live there. But when Yuuto and I visited there, it had practically become a ghost town.”

“And the fire is burning right under the city?”

“More or less. You can watch smoke rising up out of several manhole covers. You don't have to wear a mask if you are there, but in the long term it isn't healthy.”

“What did Yuuto want with this town?”

They had walked through the whole town and out the other side. They were closing in on the old entrance to the mine shaft. Yuuto had long branch with which he tested the ground in front of him before he put down a foot. Alexander was walking closely behind him.

They found a whole in the ground. The heat streaming out of it was so intense that neither of them could get close and look down.

“Did you know that scientist estimate that the fire will continue to burn for the next thousand years?”, Yuuto asked.

“No”, Alexander admitted. “What are we doing here?”

“I don't know what you are doing here, but as for me...” Yuuto put down his backpack, opened it and took a white box out of it. The box was not big, he could hold it in one hand, and Alexander was unable to tell what kind of material she was made out of. “Do you know what a time capsule is?”, Yuuto asked.

Alexander nodded. Time capsules were storage boxes where people put in photos, texts and other small things. The boxes were safely closed and buried in the ground. Only after a long time – usually at least fifty years or more – those capsules were dug out again and offered the people of the future a unique look into their past.

“I'm sure that in a thousand years, when the fire has gone out, people will be send down there”, Yuuto told Alexander. “And if they go down there, I want them to find my time capsule. Can you imagine what that will mean? It would be as if we found a time capsule form the Medieval Ages!”

“You'll probably be there too, then”, Alexander said.

“If I don't forget about it again”, Yuuto said. Then he dropped the box into the hole where it quickly disappeared.

“Again? Have you done this before?”

“Several times. Knowledge is so easily lost. I am very old, but I can't remember everything I have done and see in my life. I have forgotten a lot. And I think the same is true for humanity as a whole. My time capsules, if they are found, are supposed to be... cheat sheet. A memory of things, we once have known.” Yuuto turned around and started to go back the way they had come. “On the other hand: Maybe this is just one last foolery of an old man who has lived so very long and has so very little to show for it. There is nothing I can point to and say: I caused this.”

“I know what you mean”, Alexander added privately.

NEXT WEEK

Бери́сь дру́жно, не бу́дет гру́зно.

Das Bergsteigen wird durch die Existenz von Bergen sehr erschwert.

(Mountain climbing is made difficult by the existence of mountains.)

- Jan Rys

Alexander and Mowgli had stopped their journey through America for half an hour. Their car was parked at the side of the road. They had gotten out of it and started to jog back the way they had just driven. Neither of them could stand sitting in the car for the whole day and so they had decided to take a break several times a day, to “stretch their legs” as Mowgli put it.

“You see the mountain peaks over there?”, Mowgli asked and pointed to the snow topped summits of the Andes all around them. “From time to time I miss the snow. When my daughter is born, I'll have to take her to Europe some time. In winter.”

“Why Europe?”, Alexander asked. “Don't you have the Himalayas at least partly on your side of the border?”

“She'll still be a child, I can't go mountain climbing with her”, Mowgli said. “Besides: That's at the other end of India. Getting there is like getting to another continent, so why not just do that?”

“I've never been mountain climbing”, Alexander said. “Going up a mountain... I think it must be quite fun. Difficult as well, probably.”

“I don't think it's as difficult as people make it out to be”, Mowgli claimed.

“During the race through America along the Panamerica road we had hit upon the idea of going mountain climbing”, Mr Tuniak told me. “It wasn't difficult to convince Mowgli to join me. He thought that he could do anything regarding... regarding what he called 'pure nature'.”

“Because he had grown up in the jungle?”, I asked.

“Yes, exactly”, Mr Tuniak said. “But to his defence, it has to be said that most of the time he was right. He could move through a forest as quick as any other animal I've ever seen. Have you ever heard of Parkour?”

“That's some kind of street racing, isn't it?”, I guessed. “Where people run up the side of buildings as if they were Spider-Man?”

“And Mowgli was precisely like that when he was moving through a forest”, Mr Tuniak explained. “Which is also why he wanted us to start on a more difficult mountain and not an easy one. There is a French scale that defines how difficult it is to climb a mountain.”

“A scale from one to ten, with one being the easiest?”

“Not quite, there is no upper limit”, Mr Tuniak corrected me. “Back in the 90ies, it went up to seven or eight, if I remember it correctly. Nowadays I think they have some places they designated as eleven and twelve. We agreed to start on level four.” He shook his head. “Mowgli managed to get up the mountain, I stayed in the valley. I knew of course that Mowgli was far more capable than me regarding any kind of sport, but such a definite proof of that... It was a bit to simply let it rest for me.”

“So you went back into the past and learned to climb mountains there?”

“That I did”, Mr Tuniak agreed. “And then I went back to Mowgli and we planned several more of our mountain expeditions. All level four or higher.”

Alexander was sitting in front of his tent – part of the base camp – waiting for the flame of the camping stove to cook the soup. The other tents of the camp were blocking his view, but he could hear noise and voices and guessed that the group which had taken off in the morning to reach the peak of the mountain had returned. It had been their second try. They had already tried the climb unsuccessfully the day before. Alexander had been part of the group, but he was forced to admit that his abilities were simply not sufficient. But it didn't bother him this time. In the last few months he had climbed four other mountains and being defeated by the fifth was by far not as bad as being defeated by the first.

Mowgli came back, visibly exhausted and climbed into his tent.

“Don't you want any soup?”, Alexander asked.

“No, thanks, maybe later”, Mowgli answered from inside the tent. “I'm too tired to eat.”

Another man, Yuuto, the only Japanese of the group, was walking past Alexander at this moment, going to his own tent. “Well, it was not that bad”, he said.

“No?” Mowgli's head appeared in the opening of his tent. “I do remember seeing you nearly slipping and dropping down.”

Yuuto just shrugged. “It still wasn't that bad”, he repeated. “If you really want to climb dangerous mountains, give me a call.”

He gave Alexander his card and disappeared into his tent.

“I've still got his card”, Mr Tuniak said and handed it to me.

There was print on both sides of it. On one side there were Japanese signs, on the other side the same information was repeated, this time in English. It was the business card of a hotel called Hoshi Ryokan.

“Yuuto was living in a hotel?”, I asked.

“For one thousand and three hundred years”, Mr Tuniak answered.

“He is an immortal!”

“It was the first and only time that I introduced Philip to an immortal he hadn't known before”, Mr Tuniak remembered with a smile.

“How did you discover that he was an immortal?”

“By accident. At first Mowgli and I didn't want to take him up on his offer, but in the end we called on him. We visited him in this hotel, where the owner told us that... well, actually it's not really hotel, it's more like a... a restaurant with a few rooms. And it was founded in the eight century. I wanted to know, if that was true or just a local legend and travelled into the past.”

“I thought you never visited Japan in the past, because you would draw to much attention to yourself?”

“I just wanted to take a look. I didn't want to make contact with the people. And then I saw Yuuto there and knew immediately what he was. There is actually a whole legend about the founding of the Hoshi Ryokan and I'm pretty sure he is at least partly the inspiration for it.” His voice trailed off and then stopped completely. “But that's not what I wanted to talk about.”

“You wanted to talk about this dangerous mountain?”, I asked.

“Yes”, Mr Tuniak confirmed. “Although it is not a mountain, it's a landscape. A wide area on Madagascar.”

There were three of them: Alexander, Mowgli and Yuuto. They had rented a helicopter to reach the Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park. Before they landed, Yuuto circled a few times over the area, where they would be walking and climbing. They saw big stone formations, like teeth or enormous stalagmites that had forced their way out of the earth. In between them bushes and trees were growing.

“If we are lucky, you can get a species named after you”, Yuuto told his two companions, as he was guiding the helicopter down for a landing. “If you see an animal, you can be pretty sure that you are the first person who has seen it. That whole area is practically unexplored.”

“It doesn't look that dangerous”, Mowgli said. He pointed to the special equipment they had brought with them. Yuuto had taken care of that. Since it was his second visit to the park, he knew what to expect, what would be useful there and what useless. And normal climbing gear, he had declared, was useless.

“You can not tell from afar, you had to get closer to see that the edges of the stones were very sharp, like knives”, Mr Tuniak explained. “We had to wear special shoes and gloves the whole time we were there. And once we had started, we appreciated the gear Yuuto had made us take there. The stones would have cut a normal rope in two within seconds there.”

“And did you discover any new species there?”

“Possible, but frankly, we didn't pay that much attention to it. We were so focused on not getting cut in two or otherwise hurt, that we couldn't spare thoughts for anything else. Yuuto was always in front of us and looking for the easiest paths, but even those were still very difficult.”

They had finally found a place where they could rest for a moment. It was an empty space between two stones, not big enough to lie down, but at least one could sit down without having to call an ambulance afterwards. Even Mowgli had to admit that the place was exhausting him. Alexander was already wearing a bandage around his left arm where he had cut himself on a stone edge an hour earlier.

“Take a rest, I'll look for the best way to proceed from here”, Yuuto told them and climbed on alone.

“His thousand years of training do pay off”, Mowgli said, once they were alone. “He seems to have an unlimited amount of energy.”

“And I faint if I even think about the fact that we have to go back all the way we have just come to get to the helicopter”, Alexander said. “Can't you two go back without me and bring it here?”

“And land where?”, Mowgli asked. “I'm very sure those stones would even cut the helicopter into little pieces.” He leaned with his back on one of the few smooth surfaces that surrounded them. “Why are we here anyway?”

“Because we didn't believe him”, Alexander reminded him. “When we were talking to him in the Hoshi Ryokan we were sure he was showing off and exaggerating. We could barely suppress our laughter when he was talking about stones like razors.”

“It did sound pretty ridiculous”, Mowgli said. “We must introduce Yuuto to O'Jack. I'm sure they could talk and exchange stories with each other for longer than we can live.”

“At least I know for sure that I'm getting out of this here.”

“How's that?”

Alexander told Mowgli about the big family meeting with his mothers. He had talked to older versions of himself there and even if they didn't disclose any future developments of his life, their simple existence was proof enough that he would continue to life for a very long time.

“So, no matter what you do, you know for sure that you will make it out alive?”, Mowgli wanted to know. “If that was the case, I would do... well, quite a few things.”

“Just because I survive, doesn't mean I won't get hurt, maybe even badly”, Alexander explained. “And I don't have any real desire for pain or spending several months in a hospital bed. But why did you come here?”

Mowgli was silent for a few moments and when he talked again it was with an uncharacteristically serious voice. “Because this is probably the last chance for me to do something like this. I will become a father in one month. The park is finally starting to get the way I imagined it would be and there is all this... organisation, administration. It takes up a lot of time. This will most probably be our last big foolery we will do together.”

“He was right”, Mr Tuniak said. “It was the last time we went on... such a big expedition together, our last foolery. But not my last. Because I had met Yuuto.”

NEXT WEEK

Time is the school in which we learn,

Time is the fire in which we burn.

Sports is the toy department of human life.

- Howard Cosell

As agreed upon last week, we returned today to Mowgli's „zoo“ and this time the owner of the big estate was already waiting for us on the beach, accompanied by one of his ligers.

„You should really try to call, before you visit someone“, Mowgli said to Mr Tuniak.

„I would, if I knew myself in advance where I was going to end up“, Mr Tuniak replied. „And as I remember it, you were a lot more spontaneous yourself.“

„You can't use that excuse, if you own a time machine, you know“, Mowgli said. „And back then I didn't own this park. Or have a family.“

His remark reminded me of a question I had had since last week, but which I had forgotten to ask then. Taking this opportunity, I said: “What is this 'park' exactly? I noticed no one here calls it a zoo or anything similar.”

“It's my private garden”, Mowgli told me without hesitation. “And from time to time I invite people here to show them around. By pure chance, these people usually donate some money afterwards, so I can afford to buy food for all the animals, pay for maintenance and so on.”

“But why don't you officially call it a zoo?”

“Because then there would be countless rules and safety standards I'd have to adhere to”, Mowgli explained. “I probably wouldn't be allowed to let the animals roam free.” He caressed the liger, who was walking right by his side, as he said this. “I have several... private agreements with the government here. I am not allowed to make too much of a profit and have to take on animals from time to time who can't find a place anywhere else”- he pointed to a zorse (the offspring of a male zebra and a female horse) which was feeding on the border of the forest - “and in return, they don't come here and do safety checks and similar stuff. Of course... this only works as long as no accidents are happening here, which so far, they haven't. I shudder to thin what would happen, if someone gets hurt while visiting here.” He shook his head as if even thinking about such a misfortune could cause it to occur. “But you are not here to talk about the future, you are here because of the past, isn't that right?”

We entered the main building and went to the enormous library. We sat down in big chair, so that we were looking out a tall window. We saw a part of the park surrounding the villa and the animals going about their business there.

“So, what do you want to hear from me?”, Mowgli wanted to know from me.

“Last week, I told him about my first visit here”, Mr Tuniak informed him.

Mowgli leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and smiled. “Oh yes, those were the times”, he said and looked at me. “I was in my thirties back then, closer to forty than thirty actually, and Lex was a bit older than me. We both had our midlife-crisis then.” He laughed out loud. “No, we didn't, but you would think so, judging by all the stupid stuff we did.”

Alexander fell down backwards and landed in high grass. Mowgli sat carefully down right next to him. They both felt every fibre of their body and all of them seemed to hurt.

“Why did I let you talk me into this?”, Alexander wondered.

“Because it was fun, wasn't it?”, Mowgli asked. “But I won't be able to sit down properly for the next week, I'm afraid.”

“How did you find these people anyway?”, Alexander wanted to know. He sat up and looked over to the men who were now giving the ostriches their food.

When Alexander had come to a visit to his park, Mowgli had immediately convinced him to join him in a race he was going to participate in. He hadn't told him, that they wouldn't be sitting on horses, but on ostriches. Alexander had spent a whole week learning how not to fall off such a big bird while it was running faster than any human could ever hope to. His trials had finally ended with the race they had just finished.

“I'm actually surprised that you did this”, Alexander said.

“I need the exposure and the money for my park”, Mowgli explained. “All the other riders were very influential and very rich business men. I've managed to get a meeting with three of them next week. The day therefore was a complete success.”

“You are only saying that because you won”, Alexander teased him. “Can you call one of your elephants now to carry me home.”

“Sorry, the elephant racing is only next week. Don't look so shocked! I was just kidding.”

“Lex has probably told you already that it was quite difficult to get this whole park here up and running”, Mowgli said. “Money was of course a problem, but it wasn't the biggest one. I had to get into contact with a lot of people and keep them friendly towards my park.”

“And the only way to do this was strangely enough by participating in some crazy races”, Mr Tuniak said. “I'm still not convinced that you didn't invent at least half of them yourself, just so you could torture me some more.”

It was interesting to observe how Mr Tuniak acted and reacted differently, depending on who else was in the room. With Mowgli he appeared younger and full of youthful energy. Quite a contrast to the old man he had been in the underwater station.

“You could have stopped any time you wanted”, Mowgli reminded him.

“I needed the distraction”, Mr Tuniak admitted. “I didn't want to think about what I had been doing in the years before. Every time I had a quiet minute to myself, my thoughts turned to...”

“When did I ever let you have a quiet minute?”, Mowgli interrupted him.

Alexander was lying on a bench in the park and eating the nuts an ape has brought him as a token of his friendship.

“How do you feel?”, Mowgli asked.

“Older than I actually am”, Alexander answered. “One month spent with you and already I'm feeling as if I was sixty. And I still have another twenty years before I really get there.”

The way Mowgli looked at him made it clear that he doubted the accuracy of that claim.

“All right, maybe only fifteen years”, Alexander corrected himself. “What new craziness has your brain thought up now?”

“Another race”, Mowgli said. “And I have good news and bad news regarding it. The good news is that we will be using a car this time. The bad news is that the... race track is over twenty-five thousand kilometres long.”

“What?”, Alexander cried out in surprise. “Where did you find such a long street?”

“In America”, Mowgli told him. “It's a road that gets you from the most northern point of North America to the most southern point in South America. It's the longest continuous road in the world.”

“It will take us at least two weeks to make that trip”, Alexander said. “Why do you want me to join you there? Why don't you ask your fiancée?”

“Because one of us has to stay here and take care of the animals”, Mowgli explained. “And... didn't you know that she was pregnant?”

Alexander shook his head. “I'll happily come with you, but I have to tell you know that I have never driven a car before.”

“Never?”

“Nope. I've never needed it until now”, Alexander said. “For most of history one rides on horses. You have to remember that cars were only invented about a hundred years ago.”

“Yes, of course”, Mowgli said. “Well, you have about a month to learn it.”

“He had of course more time than that, since he owned a time machine”, Mowgli. “He travelled a hundred years into the past and learned how to drive with the first auto mobiles ever invented.”

“And you declared me insane for doing this”, Mr Tuniak remembered. “But afterwards you had to admit that it was a good thing.”

“Yes, it definitely was”, Mowgli admitted. Turning to me, he explained: “We had several accidents and... misfortunes along the road, which you were able to fix. The Panamerica road is not a road in the conventional sense of the word. There are hundreds of kilometres where it is nothing more than a dirt path right through the jungle. And while we were in South America I remember two days were it rained and rained as if a second flood was coming. We were no longer driving but basically swimming on the road which the motor of our car really didn't like.” He stood up and went to one of the shelves containing an endless number of books. “There were also disadvantages, of course.”

“So, how is it going?”, Mowgli inquired. “Are you ready for the longest race you'll ever do?”

“Yes, and I also know everything there is to know about cars”, Alexander said. “Did you know, for instance, that the first electric cars where invented in 1881 and that...”

“Do you also have practical knowledge or only theoretical stuff?”, Mowgli interrupted him impatiently. “Show me your driving license.”

“My driving license?”, Alexander repeated. “I don't have one.”

“But you do have a pass port, don't you?”, Mowgli asked.

Alexander shook his head. “Not, since I was a child”, he said.

“And how do you think will you get over the borders along the road?”, Mowgli wanted to know. “And that's ignoring the fact that no one will let you drive a car without a driver's licence.” He walking up and down. “You may have lived through the whole of history, but you have no idea about everyday life.”

“Calm down. When do we have to be in Prudhoe Bay?”, Alexander asked.

“Next week.”

“More than enough time. I'll call Philip.”

“Philip, as usual, was our saviour”, Mr Tuniak said. “With his help I managed to get the documents I needed. Well, I say get... we faked all of them. For several of those fakes I had to travel a few years into the past, because it was easier then.”

“Ah, here it is”, Mowgli announced and took a photo album from one of the shelves. “All the pictures we have taken during the race.”

The photos they showed me were impressive in the variety of landscapes they showed. They started with the frozen seas and snowed in valleys of Alaska, but every time I turned a page, the climate grew visible warmer. I saw more and more plant life, first only small bushes, but then solitary trees, which became forests. They had passed over mountains and under them, along lakes and through cities. Parts of the road were built right through the dry desert. A starker contrast to the first pictures taken can not be imagined. They had passed through the deepest jungles of South America, along its coast lines and climbed the passes of the Andes.

“I remember that stop very well”, Mowgli told me, as we were looking at a photo that showed snow capped mountain tops. “It was the first time since we were children that we ate ice from a glacier.”

“Yes”, Mr Tuniak. “We stayed there for so long, it cost us not only the lead, but also the second place, but it was absolutely worth it.”

“Definitely. But winning was never the most important thing anyway.”

“But why did you join the race then?”, I asked. “Just to meet new people, who might support your... park?”

“That too, but I have to admit I could have managed this through other means as well”, Mowgli said. “But you are mistaken, if you think that you should only do a sport, if you want to win. If you thought like that, you would go home very disappointed most of the time, because only one person can win and all the others loose.”

“So why do you do sports then?”

“To have fun, of course.”

NEXT WEEK

Das Bergsteigen wird durch die Existenz von Bergen sehr erschwert.