Frank Schätzing - Limit

‘But didn’t you say the volcano was extinct?’ Mukesh Nair said in amazement.

‘Officially extinct, yes.’

Suddenly everyone was talking at the same time. O’Keefe was the first to voice some suspicion. During the whole excursion he had been strolling thoughtfully along the passageway, absorbed, keeping his distance; now he walked right up to the seething cauldron.

‘ Hé, mon ami! ’ called Tautou. ‘Don’t singe your hair.’

‘ Pas de problème ,’ O’Keefe turned round and grinned. ‘I hardly think there’s anything to be afraid of. Isn’t that right, Lynn?’

He held out his right hand. His fingers touched a surface. Warm, but not hot. Entirely smooth. He pressed the palm of his hand against it and smiled appreciatively.

‘When was the last time it looked like this inside the mountain?’

Lynn smiled.

‘According to the geologists, about a hundred thousand years ago. But not as far up. Magma chambers usually lie at a depth of twenty-five to thirty kilometres, and they’re much bigger than this one.’

‘Anyway, it’s the best hologram I’ve seen in ages.’

‘We do our best to please.’

‘A hologram?’ echoed Sushma.

‘More precisely, an interplay of holographic projections with sound, coloured light and thermal panels.’

Sushma stepped up beside O’Keefe and tapped her finger against the surface of the screen, as if there might still be a chance that he was mistaken. ‘But it looks perfectly real!’

‘Of course. We don’t want to bore you, after all.’

Everybody touched the screen now, stepped respectfully back and yielded once more to the illusion. Chuck Donoghue forgot to wisecrack, Locatelli to prattle condescendingly. Even Momoka Omura stared into the digital lava lake and looked almost impressed.

‘We’re practically at our destination,’ said Lynn. ‘In a few seconds we’ll be able to enter that chamber, only then it will look completely different. You will be travelling from the distant past to the future of our planet, the future of mankind.’

She tapped a switch hidden in the rock. At the end of the passageway a tall, vertical crack appeared. Faint light seeped from it. The music swelled, powerful and mystical, the crack widened and provided a glimpse of the vault beyond. It really did, in appearance and dimensions, look very much like the holographic depiction, except that there was no lava sloshing about. Instead, there was a kind of theatrical arena suspended above the bottomless pit. Steel walkways led to banked rows of comfortable-looking seats, which hovered freely above the abyss. At the centre there arched a transparent surface measuring at least a thousand square metres in area. Its bottom end was lost in the lightless depths, the top reached to just below the domed ceiling, its sides stretched far beyond the rows of seats.

Standing on the gallery was a lone man.

He was of medium height, slightly squat, and youthful in appearance, although his beard and his long, collar-length hair were grey, and the ash-blond colour of earlier years was a thing of the distant past. He wore a T-shirt and jacket, jeans and cowboy boots. There were rings on his fingers. His eyes flashed jauntily, his grin was like a lighthouse beam.

‘Here you are at last,’ said Julian Orley. ‘Okay, then: let’s rock ’n’ roll!’

Tim stood apart from the others, watching his father greet the guests with handshakes or hugs according to how well he knew them. Julian, the great communicator, laying friendly traps. So keen to meet people that he never doubted for a moment that those people wanted to meet him, and that was exactly what attracted them. The physics of meeting people is based on both attraction and repulsion, but it was practically impossible to escape Julian’s gravitational pull. You were introduced to him and you instantly felt warm familiarity. Two, three more times and you were lost in memories of old times together that had never existed. Julian didn’t do much, he came out with no quips, he didn’t practise speeches in front of the mirror, he just took it for granted that in Newton’s two-body system he was the planet and not the satellite.

‘Carl, old man! Lovely to have you here!’

‘Evelyn, you look fantastic. What idiot ever said the circle was the most perfect form?’

‘Momoka, Warren. Welcome. Oh, and thank you for last time, I’ve been meaning to call for ages. To be quite honest, I have no idea how I got home.’

‘Olympiada Rogacheva! Oleg Rogachev! Isn’t this fantastic? Here we are meeting right now for the first time, and tomorrow we’ll be travelling to the Moon together.’

‘Chucky, old man, I’ve got a great joke for you, but we’ll have to step aside for a minute if you’re to hear it.’

‘Where is my Fairy Queen? Heidrun! I’ve finally met your husband. Did you ever buy that Chagall? – Of course I know about that, I know about all your passions; your wife has been doing nothing but rave about you!’

‘Finn, young man, this is where it gets serious. You’ve got to go up there now. And this isn’t a movie!’

‘Eva Borelius, Karla Kramp. I’ve been particularly looking forward to…’

And so on, and so forth.

Julian found friendly words for everyone, then he came dashing over to Tim and Amber with a furtive grin.

‘So? How do you like it?’

‘Brilliant,’ said Amber, and put an arm around his shoulders. ‘The magma chamber’s amazing.’

‘Lynn’s idea.’ Julian beamed. He could barely utter his daughter’s name without adopting a sickly tone. ‘And this is nothing! Wait till you see the show.’

‘It’ll be perfect, as always,’ Tim stammered with barely concealed sarcasm.

‘Lynn and I came up with it together.’ As usual, Julian pretended not to have noticed Tim’s ironic tone. ‘The cave is a gift from heaven, I tell you. These rows of seats mightn’t look like much, but we can now screen this spectacle for five hundred paying guests, and if it’s more—’

‘I thought the hotel only had room for three hundred?’

‘Sure, but we can basically double our capacity. Put four or five decks on our ocean steamer, either that or Lynn will build a second one. Not a problem either way. The main thing is that we rustle up the cash for another lift.’

‘The main thing is that you don’t get into difficulties.’

Julian looked at Tim with his light blue eyes.

‘And I’m not. Will you excuse me? Enjoy yourselves, see you later. Oh, Madame Tautou!’

Julian darted back and forth between the visitors, a laugh here, a compliment there. Every now and again he drew Lynn to him and kissed her on the temples. Lynn smiled. She looked proud and happy. Amber sipped at her champagne.

‘You could be a bit friendlier to him,’ she said quietly.

‘To Julian?’ snorted Tim.

‘Who else?’

‘What difference does it make if I’m friendly to him? He only sees himself anyway.’

‘Perhaps it makes a difference to me .’

Tim stared at her uncomprehendingly.

‘What’s up?’ Amber raised her eyebrows. ‘Are you slow-witted all of a sudden?’

‘No, but—’

‘Clearly you are. Then I’ll put it a different way. I don’t feel like spending the next two weeks constantly staring into your gloomy face, okay? I want to enjoy this trip, and you should too.’

‘Amber—’

‘Leave your prejudices down here.’

‘It’s not a matter of prejudices! The thing is, that—’

‘It’s always something.’

‘But—’

‘No buts. Just be a good boy. I want to hear a yes. Just a simple yes. Do you think you can manage that?’