Frank Schätzing - Limit

But she would have to deal with that when it happened. She had been trained to deal with that sort of thing.

Her fingers twitched, indecisive.

Then she punched in a timecode, piled the rocks up in front of the bomb again and squirmed hastily backwards. The inferno was set. Time to get out of here.

Wachowski was visibly startled.

‘What are you doing here?’

Lynn looked down at him, mildly surprised to see herself in his eyes as he so clearly saw her, a pale phantom with wild hair, looming up silently as though driven into the room by a gust of wind, an apparition: Lady Madeline Usher, Elsa Lanchester as the Bride of Frankenstein, the very image of a B-movie. Quite astonishing, how clearly she could see all these pictures shining out in the darkness of her thoughts, now that her sanity had fled the scene – although it had obviously left a breadcrumb trail to guide the little girl lost back into the waking world.

Follow your thoughts, astral voices whispered to her. Go into the light, into the light, star-child, they muttered, higher intelligences without need of physical bodies but with a twisted sense of humour, who lured unsuspecting astronauts into monoliths, dumping them into bad copies of Louis XIV bedrooms, just as had happened to poor Bowman, who—

Bowman? Lady Madeline?

This is my mind, she screamed. My mind, Julian!

And her scream, that brave little scream, set out, bold little fellow, dragged itself the whole long way out to the event horizon, then lost its strength, lost its courage, tottered over backwards and died.

‘Are you all right?’

Wachowski cocked his head. Interesting. The way the snaking arteries at his temples busily pumped blood showed he was on edge, alert. Lynn could see the tiny submarines sailing through the flow.

‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

Submarines in the blood. Dennis Quaid in Innerspace . No. Raquel Welch and Donald Pleasence, Fantastic Voyage . The o-o-o-o-riginal!

Oh, yes. Sorry, Daddy.

She was contaminated ground. Poisoned by Julian. No mistake, there he was, teasing her, making a fool of her with his movie mania. Whenever she thought she had reached her real self, there she was in one of his worlds, Alice in Orley-Land, eternal heroine in his invention, his original creation.

You’re mad, Lynn, she thought. You’ve ended up like Crystal. First depressive, then mad.

Or had Julian written this role for her as well?

His flashing eyes, his floating hands, whenever he took her and Tim into his private cinema, where they had to watch every metre of celluloid or digital drama that ever a science-fiction author or director had dreamed up: Georges Méliès’ Le voyage dans la lune , Fritz Lang’s Girl in the Moon , Nathan Juran’s First Men in the Moon , This Island Earth with Jeff Morrow and Faith Domergue and the mutant – oh my word, that mutant! – Star Trek , The Man Who Fell to Earth , 2001: A Space Odyssey , Star Wars , Alien , Independence Day , War of the Worlds , Perry Rhodan with Finn O’Keefe, hey, Finn O’Keefe, wasn’t he somewhere hereabouts, and always – fanfare! – Lynn Orley, the lead role in—

‘You really gave me a shock.’

Wachowski. All alone in the twilit control room, surrounded by screens and consoles. Shouldn’t make such a fuss, the bastard. He looked a fright himself.

‘That’s good,’ Lynn whispered.

She leaned down to him, put her hand to the back of his neck and pressed her lips to his. Mm-hm, warm, that was good. She was Grace Kelly. Wasn’t she? And he—

‘Miss Orley, Lynn—’ Cary Grant stiffened.

Sorry, is this the right set for To Catch a Thief ?

Funny. That wasn’t even a science-fiction film. Julian liked it, though.

Click, hssss, verify.

You lost the hotel.

Another of those lit-up signposts. What was she doing here? What the hell was she doing in the control room, with her nose full of Wachowski’s greasy smell? She pushed him away, started back and wiped her lips in disgust.

‘Are you okay?’ he whispered, in fascinated horror.

‘Never better!’ she snarled at him. ‘Do you have anything to drink?’

He jumped to his feet, nodding.

Glug, glug, and her thoughts were draining away once more, whirled down the plug. When he put the glass of water in her hand, she couldn’t even remember having asked for it.

He had given the residential towers a wide berth, trudging past them in an arc along the edge of the chasm. The canyon was a collapsed lava channel, and not all of its walls were sheer drops; rather they formed staircases and steps, so that Hanna could make his way down easily. To the west, the canyon opened out into a steep valley that cut through Peary Crater’s flank, while to his right, towards the base, the chasm grew narrower. Standing on its floor, Hanna could just about see the tops of two residential towers, shining in the sunlight, and two bridges, not far apart, that spanned the canyon above. It was dark down here, and the canyon floor was strewn with rubble. He picked his way through under the first bridge, following a groove in the rock that led him like a path over the gently sloping ground, as far as the second bridge. Then he twisted to look upwards.

About ten metres above him, a hole yawned in the cliff-face.

Several such holes dotted the rock where lava tubes opened up into the canyon, but this one in particular interested him. He clambered up, reached the opening, then switched on his helmet lamp and made his way into the twisting cave. The cave mouth was steep for a moment, and then levelled off. His headlamp caught the ragged gap through to where the bomb lay slumbering. For a moment he considered skipping the visit to the control room and programming the thing straight away, but he had to speak to Dana first. A lot could have happened in the past few hours that would force them to make a whole new plan, and on top of that he urgently needed information to help him see where he stood personally. If all was going according to plan, the laser link between the base and Gaia would be functioning, but Dana would have fixed it so that all signals went straight through to her mobile phone.

He ignored the crack and went to the airlock instead, stepped into it. There was light coming through the tiny viewport. On the other side of the airlock was the room they called the Great Hall, a large natural cave leading off to the laboratories, greenhouses and fishtanks. A lift from the Hall up to Igloo 1 led straight to the control room. Hanna glanced at his watch. Almost half past four. Could be that the control room wasn’t even occupied. Nevertheless he drew his gun as he went into the Hall, scanned all around for threats and then tapped the sensor that would bring the lift down.

Lawrence

She was determined not to spend a second longer in the base than she had to. She’d glanced through the sickbay door in Igloo 2, heard the roomful of snoring sleepers like an orchestra playing softly, with Mukesh Nair taking the solo lead as far as she could tell. Minnie DeLucas, an African-American woman with dreadlocks, was working at a computer.

‘How are they?’ Dana asked, concern in her voice.

‘They’re as well as they can be.’ The medic put a finger to her lips and glanced over to the beds. ‘The smoke inhalation isn’t so bad, but the tall German lady seems pretty traumatised, I’d say. She was telling me what happened in the lift-shafts at the hotel. How she couldn’t save that woman.’

‘Yes,’ Dana whispered. ‘We saw some dreadful things. How is Miss Orley, though?’