Frank Schätzing - Limit

‘Do you have relatives in there?’ Jericho asked derisively.

‘No, but I do have taste buds. Would you mind driving me to my stake-out?’

Jericho started the car and had Zhao direct him to his Wong branch. On the way they passed tea-rooms and a Japanese noodle-bar, where the men were playing cards and Chinese chess, or gesticulating wildly as they talked at each other, many of them naked to the waist and with their heads close shaven.

‘These gentlemen are the Xaxus,’ Zhao said disparagingly. ‘They divide the day up between them.’

‘No ambition to saw a bit off for yourself?’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘What’s left for someone like you after they’ve divided the day up among themselves?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Zhao shrugged. ‘I help stoned idiots onto the stage and back down again. That’s a job too.’

‘Don’t get it.’

‘What’s not to get?’

‘I don’t understand what someone like you is doing in Quyu. You could live anywhere else.’

‘You think so?’ Zhao shook his head. ‘No one here can live anywhere else. No one wants us to live anywhere else.’

‘Quyu isn’t a prison.’

‘Quyu is a concept, Jericho. Two-thirds of humanity now lives in cities, the countryside’s been depopulated. Eventually all the cities will merge into one. They’re like carcinomas, sick, proliferating tissue, only the nuclei are healthy, nestling in deserts of despair. The nuclei are sanctuaries, temples of superior development. Human beings live there, real human beings. Guys like you. The rest are cattle, talking animals. Take a look around you. The people here are vegetating at the level of tree-dwellers, they procreate, demolish the planet’s resources, kill each other or die of various illnesses. They’re the rejects of creation. The failed part of the experiment.’

‘And you’re part of it too, aren’t you? Or have I misunderstood something?’

‘Oh, Jericho.’ Zhao smiled smugly. ‘The universe has its brightly lit centres, and why? Because darkness prevails in between. Have you ever heard that we must shed light on the darkness of the universe? It’s impossible. Any attempt to provide wealth for humanity as a whole is doomed to failure, it just means that everyone’s worse off. The superior can’t become like the inferior, it must separate itself off if it is to shine. There is no humanity, Jericho, not in the sense of a homogeneous species. There are winners and losers, the ones in the loop and the ones out of it, some on the bright side and most on the dark. The split is complete. No one wants to integrate the Xaxus of this world, break down their boundaries. Oh, and you’ve got to turn left here.’

Jericho said nothing. The Toyota clattered along a wide, badly paved road, lined with workshops and dirty brick houses. Where Wong’s World and the branch of Cyber Planet stood face to face, it opened up into a dusty square and revealed the grounds of the steelworks behind it. The huge blast furnace loomed up above the building.

‘You’re a mystery to me, Zhao. Who are you really?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I haven’t a clue.’ Jericho looked at him. ‘You seem to have a weakness for Yoyo, but when it comes to finding her, you let me pay you as if you were some kind of pimp. You live here and despise your own people. Somehow you don’t fit with Quyu.’

‘Very comforting,’ Zhao sneered. ‘Like telling a haemorrhoid it’s doing a power of good to the arsehole it’s grown in.’

‘Were you born in Quyu, or did you end up here?’

‘The latter.’

‘Which means you can leave again.’

‘Where to?’

‘Hmm.’ Jericho thought for a moment. ‘There are possibilities. Let’s see how our short-term partnership develops.’

Zhao tilted his head and raised an eyebrow.

‘Did I understand you correctly? Are you offering me a job?’

‘I don’t take on any regular employees, but I put teams together as the job requires. You’re definitely intelligent, Zhao. I was very impressed by your surprise attack in the Andromeda, you’re in good physical condition. I can’t exactly claim that I like you, but we don’t have to walk down the aisle together. It could be that I need you from time to time.’

Zhao’s eyes narrowed.

Then he smiled.

At that moment Jericho had a sudden déjà vu. He saw the familiar in the alien. It spread like a drop of dark ink in a clear liquid, quickly and in all directions, so that a moment later he couldn’t have said what the impression related to. Everything around him seemed to be striving for resolution, as in a film he’d once seen, although he couldn’t remember the ending. No, not a film, more of a dream, an illusion. A reflection in the water that you destroyed as you tried to capture it.

Quyu. The market. Zhao by his side.

‘Everything okay?’ Zhao asked again.

‘Yes.’ Jericho rubbed his eyes. ‘We shouldn’t waste any time. Let’s get started.’

‘Why don’t you do the job with one of your teams?’

‘Because the job consists in protecting a dissident whose identity no one knows, apart from a handful of initiates. The fewer people get involved with Yoyo, the better.’

‘Does that mean you haven’t talked about the girl to anyone but me?’

‘No. I’ve met her flatmates.’

‘And?’

‘They don’t give much away. Do you know them?’

‘I’ve seen them. Yoyo says they know nothing about her double life. One of them isn’t interested in her, the other’s pissed off that she isn’t interested in him. He’s inclined to throw his weight about.’

‘You mean Grand Cherokee Wang?’

‘I think that’s what he calls himself. Ludicrous name. Windbag. What have they told you?’

‘Nothing. Wang’s not in a position to tell anybody anything. He’s dead.’

‘Really?’ Zhao frowned. ‘Last time I saw him he looked very much alive. He was boasting about some kind of roller-coaster he owns.’

‘He didn’t own anything.’ Jericho stared out across the crowded market. ‘I won’t try to fool you, Zhao. What we’re doing here can get dangerous. For everyone involved. Yoyo seems to have crossed some people who walk over corpses. That was why Wang had to die. I thought you should know that.’

‘Hmm. Okay.’

‘Are you still up for it?’

Zhao let a moment pass. He suddenly looked embarrassed.

‘Listen, about the money—’

‘It’s fine.’

‘No, I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. I’d help you even if there was nothing in it for me. It’s just – I need the money, that’s all. I mean, you saw those guys at the edge of the street, right?’

‘Dividing up the day?’

‘It would be easy to join in with that. Something is always coming up. Most people live by licking those guys’ boots. You get me?’

‘I think so.’

‘And they don’t do any of that for nothing, do they?’

‘Listen, Zhao, you don’t have to apol—’

‘I’m not apologising. I’m just setting you straight on a few things.’ Zhao stuffed the specs and scanner in his rucksack. ‘How long do you plan to keep this stake-out going?’

‘As long as necessary. I once spent three weeks outside a single front door.’

‘What, and she didn’t invite you in?’ Zhao opened the car door. ‘Well, somehow that fits.’

‘What do you mean?’

Zhao shrugged. ‘Has anyone ever told you you look like the loneliest man in the world? They haven’t? Take care of yourself, first-born!’

A thousand answers collected on the tip of Jericho’s tongue, but unfortunately not one that would have made him look as if he was in charge. He watched Zhao strolling unhurriedly across to Wong’s World, then turned round and drove back to his branch, where he parked the Toyota so that the scanner below the rear-view mirror captured part of the market. Then he got out, walked around the square and decided on two houses whose positions struck him as right. Each one had plenty of possible locations for the additional scanners. He fixed one under a crumbling window ledge, another in a crack in a wall. The devices, black, gleaming, pea-sized spheres, automatically probed their surroundings, and extended tiny telescopic legs to wedge themselves into the stone.