Frank Schätzing - Limit

The journalists and activists that he had been dealing with over the past few hours – and who reproached him now for having got involved in the extractions in the first place – certainly weren’t representing public opinion when they cheered the end of the oil economy. In fact helium-3 had met with a very muted response in Alaska, just as enthusiasm on the Persian Gulf was notably low-key. The sheikhs imagined themselves being thrown back on the bleak desert existence of former years, their territory returning to the scorpions and sand-beetles. The spectre of impoverishment stripped the potentates of Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar of their sleep. Hardly anyone seriously wanted to go to Dubai now. Beijing had abandoned its support of the Saudi Arabian Islamists; the USA seemed to have forgotten all about North Africa; in Iraq Sunnis and Shi’ites went on slaughtering each other in time-honoured fashion; Iran provoked unease with its nuclear programmes, bared its teeth in all directions and tried to get close to China, which apart from America was the only nation in the world mining helium-3, albeit in vanishingly small quantities. The Chinese didn’t have a space elevator, and didn’t know how to build one either. No one apart from the Americans had such a thing, and Julian Orley sat on the patents like a broody hen, which was why China had fallen back entirely on traditional rocket technology, at devastating expense.

Palstein looked at his watch. He had to get over to the EMCO building, a meeting was about to start. It would go on till late as usual. He phoned the business centre and asked to be put through to the Stellar Island Hotel on the Isla de las Estrellas. It was three hours later there, and a good twenty degrees warmer. A better place than Anchorage. Palstein would rather have been anywhere else than Anchorage.

He wanted at least to wish Julian a pleasant journey.

Going inside the volcano might have been spectacular, but coming out was a big disappointment. Once the lights had come on, they left the cave via a straight and well-lit corridor which aroused the suspicion that the whole mountain was actually made of scaffolding and papier mâché. It was wide enough to allow a hundred panicking, trampling and thrashing people to escape. After about 150 metres it led to a side wing of the Stellar Island Hotel.

Chuck Donoghue pushed his way through to stand next to Julian.

‘My respect,’ he bellowed. ‘Not bad.’

‘Thanks.’

‘And this is how you found the cave? Come on! You didn’t help a bit? No demolition charges anywhere?’

‘Just for the evacuation routes.’

‘Incredibly lucky. Of course you realise, my boy, that I’ll have to steal this one! Haha! No, don’t worry, I still have enough ideas of my own. My God, how many hotels have I built in my life? How many hotels!’

‘Thirty-two.’

‘You’re right,’ Donoghue mumbled in amazement.

‘Yes, and maybe one day you might be building another one on the Moon.’ Julian grinned. ‘That’s why you’re here, old man.’

‘I see!’ Donoghue laughed even louder. ‘And I thought you’d invited me because you liked me.’

At sixty-five the hotel mogul was the oldest member of the group, five years older than Julian, although Julian looked ten years younger. The insignificant age difference didn’t keep Donoghue from jovially addressing the richest man in the world as ‘my boy’.

‘Of course I like you,’ Julian said cheerfully as they followed Lynn to the lifts. ‘But more than anything else I want to show you my hotels so that you’ll put your money into them. Oh, and by the way, do you know the one about the man doing the survey?’

‘Tell me!’

‘A guy gets asked, what would you do if you had two possibilities? A: You spend all night having sex with your wife. B:— B, says the man, B!’

It was a crap little joke, and thus exactly right for Chucky, who stayed behind laughing to tell Aileen. Julian didn’t have to turn round to see her face, as if she’d just sucked on a lemon. The Donoghues ruled over thirty of the most imposing, expensive and trashy hotels of all time, they had built various casinos, ran an international booking agency through which global stars passed with great regularity – artistes, singers, dancers and animal trainers, and of course you could, if you wished, also book shows in which nothing was left to the imagination. But Aileen, good, fat, cake-baking Aileen, opted for good old southern prudery, as if dozens of showgirls weren’t dancing across the stages of Las Vegas every night, breasts bouncing, girls who had contracts that bore her signature. She placed great emphasis on piety, gun ownership, good food, good deeds and the death penalty if all else failed, and sometimes when it didn’t. She put morality before everything else. Nonetheless, she would appear for dinner crammed into a little dress so tight it was embarrassing, to collect compliments from the younger men for her laser-firmed cleavage. She would launch her usual nannying campaign and pass on the silly joke with lots of tittering and snorting, before getting drinks for everyone, and her other side would fight its way through, marked by a genuinely felt concern for the welfare of all God’s creatures, which made it possible not only to put up with Aileen Donoghue, but even somehow to like her.

The glass lift cabins filled up with people and chatter. After a short trip they discharged the group onto the viewing terrace, beneath a starry sky worthy of a Hollywood movie. With regal dignity an old and beautiful lady in evening dress was directing half a dozen waiters to the guests. Champagne and cocktails were handed out, binoculars distributed. A jazz quartet played ‘Fly Me to the Moon’.

‘Everyone over here,’ Lynn called cheerfully. ‘To me! Look to the east.’

The guests happily followed her instructions. Out on the platform yet more lights had been lit, glowing fingers reaching into the night sky. As tiny as ants, people were seen walking around among the structures. A big ship, apparently a freighter, lay massively on a calm sea.

‘Dear friends.’ Julian stepped forward, a glass in his hand. ‘I didn’t let you see the whole show earlier. In another version you would also have met the OSS and Gaia, but that one is intended for visitors without the advantage of what you will experience. Relatives of travellers, spending a few days on the island before going back home. To you, however, I wanted to demonstrate the lift. For the rest you won’t need films, because you will see it with your own eyes ! You will never forget the two weeks ahead of you, I promise you that!’

Julian showed his perfect teeth. There was applause, scattered at first, then everyone clapped enthusiastically. Miranda Winter yelled, ‘Oh, yeah!’ Glowing with pride, Lynn went and joined her father.

‘Before we invite everyone to join us for dinner, we have a little taster of your imminent trip.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘In the next few minutes the two cabins are expected back from orbit. Both will be bringing back to Earth, amongst other things, compressed helium-3 that was loaded onto them on OSS. I think it might be an idea to throw your heads back now, and not just to drink—’

‘Although I advise you do that too,’ said Julian, raising his glass to everyone.

‘Of course,’ Lynn laughed. ‘What he hasn’t yet told you, in fact, is that on OSS we will drastically reduce alcohol consumption.’

‘How regrettable.’ Bernard Tautou pulled a face, drank his glass down in one and beamed at her. ‘So we should make provision.’

‘I thought your passion was water?’ teased Mukesh Nair.

‘ Mais oui! Particularly if it’s topped up with alcohol.’