Frank Schätzing - Limit

‘Well, I’m certainly not going to let myself get roasted up here,’ she decided.

‘Roasted?’ Hsu’s eyes widened in horror. ‘Why? Do you mean that—’

‘Karla,’ whispered Eva. ‘Do you have to?’

‘What?’ Karla whispered back in German. ‘There’s nothing but stars above us. We can’t get to the viewing platform without spacesuits, and everything’s burning down below. Fire has a tendency to rise, you know. If Funaki doesn’t make contact with the control centre soon, we’ll all meet our maker up here, mark my words. I want to get out of here.’

‘We all want to get out of here, but—’

‘Michio!’ A distorted voice came out of the intercom in the bar. ‘Michio, can you hear me? It’s Tim. Tim Orley!’

Maybe he’d got his priorities wrong. He should have ignored Lynn’s misery and made contact with the others without delay, but in the face of her suffering that had seemed an unbearable prospect. The level of her sobbing seemed to indicate that the medication she had taken was helping a little. He had fetched the elevator at once, calling it down from the very top in order to go to her suite on the thirteenth floor with her. At first, only his subconscious registered the fact that it was unusually warm in the cabin. It was only once they reached the glass bridge that he had remembered the worrying noises from the neck of Gaia, the phantom of smoke in the dome of the atrium and how the architecture seemed, bizarrely, to be in motion. Then he had looked up at the ceiling.

A massive armour shield was stretched out above him.

Perplexed, he wondered where the steel panels and bulkheads had come from all of a sudden. They must have been stored between the floors, hidden from view.

What on earth had happened up there?

By the time they got to the bathroom, Lynn was shaking so much that he had to lay the green tablets and white capsules she asked for on her tongue, one after another, and hold the glass for her as she drank, panting, like a little child. The resulting coughing fit gave reason to fear that she might bring up the cocktail of medicine again in a projectile arc, but then it had begun to take effect. A quarter of an hour later, she had got a grip of herself; at least enough to allow them to leave the suite. They immediately ran into Heidrun and Walo Ögi.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked the Swiss man in a concerned voice as he looked around. ‘Where are the others?’

‘Up there,’ whispered Lynn. Based on the colour of her skin, she could have passed for Heidrun’s sister.

‘We’ve been up there,’ said Ögi. ‘We wanted to go to the meeting, but everything’s locked up and barricaded.’

‘Barricaded?’

‘I think you’d better come with us,’ said Heidrun.

It was only as they went further up that Tim realised just how extensive the armour plating really was. A solid steel wall without even the slightest hint of a gap had descended diagonally over the gallery. The doors of E2, one of the two guest elevators, had disappeared behind it, as had the left-hand side entrance to the neck. The one accessible spiral staircase ended in a closed bulkhead. It was only now that he realised his vision was imperceptibly impaired, as if some wafer-thin film had been pulled over his retina. Here and there, black bits of fluff were spinning through the air. He reached out to catch some and they crumbled into grease between his fingers.

‘Soot,’ he said.

‘Do you smell that?’ Ögi was snuffling all around, his moustache twitching. ‘Like something’s burnt.’

Horror crept over him. If the bulkheads were closed, then that could only mean it was still burning! Filled with dread, they rode down and could already hear Funaki’s urgent calls by the time they reached the lobby. Lynn shuffled over to the controls, activated the speech function, waved her brother over wearily and sank down into one of the rolling chairs.

‘Michio!’ called Tim breathlessly. ‘Michio, can you hear me? Tim here! Tim Orley!’

‘Mr Orley!’ Funaki’s relief was palpable. ‘We thought no one would ever answer. I’ve been trying to reach someone for half an hour.’

‘I’m sorry, we had to – we had a few problems to solve.’

‘Where’s Miss Dana?’

‘Not here.’

‘Sophie?’

‘She’s not here either, none of the staff are. Just the Ögis, my sister and I.’

Funaki fell silent for a moment. ‘Then I fear you’ll have even more problems to solve, Tim. We’re stuck up here.’

‘What happened—’

‘Control centre!’ Dana’s voice. ‘Please respond.’

‘Excuse me a moment, Michio.’ Wrinkling his brow, he tried to orientate between the two flashing indicators. ‘I’ll be back in just a moment – I have Dana Lawrence – just a moment, for God’s sake, how do I switch over?’

His sister heaved herself up from the chair with a blank expression, pushed him aside and tapped a flashing section of the controls.

‘Dana? It’s Lynn here.’

‘Lynn! Finally. I’ve been trying for half an hour—’

‘You can save the speech, Funaki already did it. Where are you?’

‘Locked in. In the right shoulder.’

‘Fine, we’ll be in touch. Stand by.’

‘But I have to—’

‘Shut your mouth, Dana. Just wait until someone’s ready to play with you.’

‘What did you say?’ Dana exploded.

‘Oh yes, and you’re fired. Michio?’ Lynn put the enraged hotel director on hold. ‘This is Lynn Orley. Can you tell me your location?’

‘Okay, yes. The Mama Quilla Club, the Luna Bar and the Selene are accessible, but the Chang’e is sealed off. According to the computer the conditions beneath are life-threatening. A fire in the neck of the automatic system must have caused the area to be sealed off. Miss Miranda saw a jet of flame—’

‘ Saw one?’ They heard Miranda’s penetrating voice in the background. ‘I was practically barbecued by it.’

‘—and only just managed to get away.’

Lynn leaned heavily against the control console. To Tim, she looked like a zombie trying to do something its body was no longer capable of.

‘Who was in the neck when the fire broke out?’ she asked, her voice flat.

‘We’re not entirely sure. It seems like there was an argument there. The Donoghues left the bar to find out, and we heard Miss Dana’s voice, and—’ He hesitated. ‘And yours, Miss Orley. Sumimasen , but you probably know better yourself who was there.’

Lynn fell silent for a few seconds.

‘Yes, I know,’ she said softly. ‘At least for the time before I – left. Your observations are correct. Just after Tim and I left, it must have—’ She cleared her throat. ‘Who’s with you right now?’

Funaki said nine names and assured her that, apart from Miranda’s minor burns, they were all uninjured. Tim shuddered at the thought of the neck, now completely sealed off. He didn’t dare imagine what fate had befallen Chuck, Aileen and the chef.

‘Thanks, Michio.’ Lynn’s fingers wandered over the touchscreen, altering controls, changing parameters.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Tim.

‘I’m stopping the convection in the elevator section and in the ventilation shafts.’

‘Convection?’ echoed Ögi.

‘The air circulation. There could be massive amounts of smoke forming up there. We have to stop the ventilators from distributing it and encouraging the fire to spread. Dana?’

‘Lynn, damn it! You can’t do this to me, I—’

‘Are you alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happened?’

‘I – listen, I’m sorry if I accused you of being in the wrong, but everything indicated that you were the one we were looking for. I’m responsible for the safety of the hotel, so that’s why—’