Frank Schätzing - Limit

‘Hmm.’

‘You know what?’ She gripped Olympiada’s upper arm and lowered her voice. ‘Now I’ll tell you a real secret: men only make women feel they’re shit because they feel shit themselves. You get it? They try to break our confidence, they try to steal it from us because they have none themselves. Don’t do that! Don’t let them do that to you! You have to fly your own flag, honey. You’re not what he wants you to be.’ Complicated sentence structure, but it worked. She was getting better and better.

‘He might never come back,’ Olympiada murmured, apparently spotting a path opening up into sunnier climes.

‘Exactly. Fuck him.’

Olympiada sighed. ‘Okay.’

‘Michio, my darling,’ Winter crowed, and waved her empty glass. ‘One of these for my friend!’

Sophie Thiel was stumbling around in betrayal and deception when Tim came into the control centre. A dozen windows on the big multimedia wall reanimated the past.

‘Totally fake,’ said Sophie listlessly.

He watched people crossing the lobby, entering the control centre, going about their work, leaving it. Then the rooms lay there again, gloomy and desperate, lit only by the harsh reflection of the sunlight on the edge of the gorge and the controls of the tireless machinery that kept the hotel alive. Sophie pointed to one of the shots. The camera angle was arranged in such a way that you could make out the far side of the Vallis Alpina, with mountains and monorail through the panoramic window.

‘The control centre, deserted. That night when Hanna went out on the Lunar Express.’

Tim narrowed his eyes and leaned forward.

‘Don’t try just yet, you won’t get to see him. Your sister would say it’s because no one went anywhere. In fact, someone’s hoodwinking us with the oldest trick in the book. You see that thing blinking on the right-hand edge of the video wall?’

‘Yes.’

‘At almost exactly the same time something lights up down here, and there, a bit further on, an indicator light comes on. You see? Trivial things that no one would normally notice, but I’ve taken the trouble to look for matches. Take a look at the timecode.’

05.53, Tim read.

‘You’ll find exactly the same sequence at ten past five.’

‘Coincidence?’

‘Not if close analysis reveals a tiny jump in the shadow on the Moon’s surface. The sequence was copied and added to hide an event that lasted just two minutes.’

‘The arrival of the Lunar Express,’ whispered Tim.

‘Yes, and that’s exactly how it goes on. Hanna in the corridor, edited out, just like your father said. The control centre, apparently empty. But there was someone there. Someone who sat here and changed these videos; he’s just cut himself out. Perfectly done, the whole thing. The lobby, a different perspective that would show you Mr X coming into the control centre, but also faked, unfortunately.’

‘Someone must have spent an endless amount of time over it,’ Tim said, amazed.

‘No, it’s pretty fast if you know what needs to be done.’

‘Astounding!’

‘Frustrating above all, because it doesn’t get us anywhere. Now we know that it was done. But not who did it.’

Tim pursed his lips. Suddenly he had an idea.

‘Sophie, if we can trace back when the work on the videos was done – if we could take a look at the records – I mean, can you manipulate the records as well?’

She frowned. ‘Only if you take a lot of trouble.’

‘But it could be done?’

‘Basically it couldn’t. The intervention would be recorded as well. Hmm. I see.’

‘If we knew the exact times of the interventions, we could match them with the presence and absence of the guests and the staff. Who was where at the time in question? Who saw who? Our mystery person can’t possibly have changed all the data in the hotel system in the time available to him. So as soon as we see the records—’

‘We’ll have him.’ Sophie nodded. ‘But to do that we’d need an authorisation program.’

‘I’ve got one.’

‘What?’ She looked at him in surprise. ‘An authorisation program for this system?’

‘No, a common or garden little mole that I downloaded from the net last winter to look at a colleague’s data. With his permission,’ he added quickly. ‘His system did a screen shot every sixty seconds, and I had to get at those shots, but I didn’t have authorisation. So I resorted to the knowledge of some of my students. One of them recommended Gravedigger, an, erm, a not entirely legal reconstruction program, but one that’s quite easy to get hold of and compatible with almost every system. I kept it. It’s on my computer, and my computer—’

‘—is here in Gaia.’

‘Bingo.’ Tim grinned. ‘In my room.’

Sophie smiled broadly. ‘Right, Mr Orley, so if you don’t mind—’

‘I’m on my way.’

It was only when he was on the way to the suite that it occurred to him that there might be another reason why Sophie found nothing but manipulated videos:

She herself had recut the material.

Mukesh Nair pulled himself snorting out of the crater pool. A little further off Sushma was towelling herself dry, in conversation with Eva Borelius and Karla Kramp, while Heidrun Ögi and Finn O’Keefe played childish competitions, to see who could stay underwater longest. The Earth shone in through the panoramic window, like a reliable old friend. Nair picked a towel off the pile and rubbed the water out of his hair.

‘Do you feel like this?’ he said. ‘When I see our home, it’s curious: it looks entirely unimpressed.’

‘Unimpressed by what?’ asked Karla, and disappeared into her dressing gown.

‘By us.’ Mukesh Nair lowered the towel and looked up to the sky. ‘By the consequences of our actions. It’s got hotter everywhere. Previously inhabited areas are underwater, others are turning into deserts. Whole tribes of people are on the move, hungry, thirsty, unemployed, homeless, we’re seeing the biggest migrations in centuries, but there’s no sign of it at all. Not from this distance.’

‘Looking at the old lady from this distance, you wouldn’t know if we were bombing each other flat,’ said Karla. ‘Means nothing.’

Nair shook his head, fascinated.

‘The deserts must have got bigger, don’t you think? Whole coastlines have changed. But if you’re far enough away – it doesn’t change her beauty in the slightest.’

‘If you’re far enough away,’ Sushma smiled, ‘even I’m beautiful.’

‘Oh, Sushma!’ Her husband tilted his head and laughed, showing perfectly restored teeth. ‘You will always be the most beautiful woman in the world to me, near or far. You’re my most beautiful vegetable of all!’

‘There’s a compliment,’ said Heidrun to Finn, water in one ear, Nair’s flattering baritone in the other. ‘Why do I never get to hear things like that?’

‘Because I’m not Walo.’

‘Lousy explanation.’

‘Comparing people to foodstuffs is his department.’

‘Is it just me, or have you stopped making much of an effort lately?’

‘Vegetables don’t spring to mind when I look at you. Asparagus, perhaps.’

‘Finn, I really have to say, that’s going to get you nowhere.’ She hurried to the edge of the pool, straightened and sent a great spray of water in Nair’s direction. ‘Hey! What are you talking about?’

‘The beauty of the Earth,’ smiled Sushma Nair. ‘And a bit about the beauty of women.’

‘Same thing,’ said Heidrun. ‘The Earth is female.’

Eva tied the belt of her kimono. ‘You see beauty out there?’