Frank Schätzing - Limit

Yoyo was hiding somewhere in those industrial ruins, he was sure of it.

He watched apprehensively as the bikes headed towards the blast furnace which, standing out against the light of dawn, looked like a launch pad for spaceships, as Jules Verne might have imagined it: a barrel-shaped cylinder, tapering towards the top, a good fifty metres high, encased in a steel girder construction that still gave an idea of the smelter. Levels of scaffolding, bridges and walkable platforms, connected by beams and stairways, overflowing with pumps, generators, floodlights, wiring and other equipment. A conveyor belt ran steeply up from the ground to the filling inlet of the furnace. Above it, a massive pipe stretched into the sky, bent abruptly and ended up in a kind of oversized cooking pot with three huge, upright tanks. Everything in this world seemed to have grown and tangled together. Everything that might have served the exchange of gases and fluids, cables, pipelines and tubes, created the impression of hopelessly tangled intestines, as if the innards of a colossal machine had turned inside out.

Right in front of the furnace a tower of girders grew from the ground, about half as high. As if put there by magic, a little house with a gabled roof and windows stood at the top of it, connected to the furnace construction by a platform. Clearly it had once served as a control room. Unlike the other buildings around it, its windows were intact. Jin and Maggie guided their bikes into an adjoining low-rise building, and a few moments later, swinging their Wong bags, reappeared and began climbing the zigzag stairways of the tower. Jericho slowed his pace, stopped and looked up at the former control room.

Was Yoyo up there?

At that moment he saw something approaching from the market and coming to a standstill on the vacant lot. He turned his head and saw a man sitting on a motorbike. No, not a motorbike. It looked more as though a running machine, a narwhal and a jet engine had been combined into something whose purpose wasn’t immediately apparent. Stocky, with a wide saddle, closed side panels and a flattened windscreen, and a gaping hole where its front wheel should have been. Silvery spokes flashed inside it, plainly a turbine. Pivoting jets emerged along the handlebars and the pillion. Apparently the thing slid along on its smooth belly and two tapering fins that pointed to the rear. It was only on closer inspection that you noticed that a nose-wheel grew from the belly, and the fins ended in enclosed spheres, which gave it a certain roadworthiness in spite of its flat bottom. But the actual purpose of the machine was quite different. Years ago, when the first models were ready for production, Jericho had applied for a permit, before baulking at the extortionate purchase price. Those things were expensive. Too expensive for Owen Jericho.

Far too expensive for someone from Quyu.

So what was Zhao doing sitting on that thing?

Zhao Bide, who was staring over at the blast furnace, watching Jin and Maggie climb the steps, without noticing Jericho in the shade of the building. Who hadn’t called in, in spite of everything they’d agreed, even though he was hot on the heels of two Guardians who would in all likelihood lead him to Yoyo. Whose number Grand Cherokee Wang had dialled the evening before he died, to talk to him for one minute, as Tu’s data revealed.

Wang had called Zhao.

Why?

Uneasy and electrified, Jericho was heading across to confront Zhao, who was leaning over right at that moment and wiping something from the dashboard – just as he had polished the display in Jericho’s car.

It all fitted.

Cherokee Wang’s murderer, just before he fled from the World Financial Center: in an elegant made-to-measure suit, with tinted glasses, a false moustache and wig, which temporarily transformed his even features into the face of Ryuichi Sakamoto, he leaned forward and wiped the controls of the Silver Dragon. But Jericho hadn’t been looking carefully enough, because suddenly he reminds him not of a Japanese pop star or a model, but all the time of—

Zhao Bide.

He’s the one who’s set the hitman on Yoyo’s trail.

Just as he puts his foot down on the accelerator, Zhao starts his airbike. A sound of turbines sweeps across the square. The machine swivels its jets into the upright position, balances for a moment on the tips of its fins and shoots steeply upwards, and Jericho realises that there is now hardly a chance of saving Yoyo.

How ridiculously easy everything had been.

And at the same time how excruciating.

Although he had barely been able to conquer his dread over the past few hours when fate had decreed that he go to Quyu, once more having the proof before his eyes that the superiority of the human race was the fevered hallucination of religiously infected Darwinists, a tragic error that called for correction. Sheer revulsion had driven him to speak to Jericho about the failure of creation, the unsuccessful part of the experiment – rashness! What Zhao had by the skin of his teeth managed to turn into sarcasm, now reflected Kenny Xin’s genuine outrage. The bulk of his species was a seething parasitic mass, a scandal for any creator, if there had ever been one. Only a few people who felt similarly had taken their insight to its conclusion, like that Roman who had burned his city down, even if he was said to have ruined the moment by singing. But Xin wished he could have seen the purifying fire in which the face of poverty blistered and charred; or even more than that:

He wished he could be the fire!

Objectively speaking, an eyesore like Quyu deserved to be reduced to ashes. Worldwide, one and a half billion people lived in slums. One and a half billion upon whom life had been squandered, who breathed in precious air and used up valuable resources, without producing anything but more poverty, still more hunger, still more progeny. One and a half billion who were suffocating the world. Still, Quyu would be a start.

But Xin had learned to rein in his feelings. To declare his independence of the dictates of the emotions. He had furiously set about re-creating, immunising and cleansing himself. So deeply that he would never again be forced to rub his skin off to rid himself of the dirt, the wire-pulling circumstances of his birth, the damp and sticky leavings of daily assaults, the scabs of despair. He had known that he would inevitably perish if he didn’t succeed in cleansing himself, and that his own death, the piss-stench of capitulation, would not bring redemption.

So he had acted.

Sometimes, at night, he experienced the day again, over and over. The tribunal of flames. He felt the heat on his cheeks, witnessed the burial of his own sticky corpse, felt the faint amazement of his wonderful, reborn body, his wild joy at the tremendous power that he would now have at his disposal. He was free. Free to do what he felt like. Free to slip into any skin he wished to, such as Zhao Bide’s.

How ridiculously simple it had been to latch on to Jericho, to take the man into his service. Grand Cherokee Wang might have been an idiot, but Xin owed him mute thanks for his detective card. Jericho had taken him to Quyu, to the Andromeda, where Xin had decided to take the game to its extreme. No wig this time, no false noses and beards, just appropriate clothing, based on the standard outfit that he carried with him at all times. Perhaps he hadn’t looked scruffy enough, he didn’t wear appliqués of any kind, but the roadies hadn’t minded, they’d just been grateful for someone to help them with the bulky Portakabins, and within a few minutes they’d given him all the information he needed in order to trick Jericho: Ass Metal. The Pink Asses. What could the detective have done but take Xin for one of them?