Frank Schätzing - Limit

‘I still don’t quite understand who would want to kill you. Your sector’s running out of puff. No one’s going to change that by shooting oil managers.’

‘People don’t think rationally.’ Palstein smiled. ‘Otherwise they’d have shot you . You basically invented helium-3 transport. Your lift finished off my sector.’

‘You could shoot me a thousand times, the world would still switch to helium-3.’

‘Quite. Actions like that aren’t calculated, they’re the product of despair. Of blind hatred.’

‘Exactly. Hatred has never been used to make things better.’

‘But it’s created more victims than anything else.’

‘Hmm, yes.’ Julian fell silent and rubbed his chin. ‘I’m not a hater. Hatred is alien to me. I can lose my temper. I can wish someone in hell and send him there, but only if there’s a point to it. Hatred is completely pointless.’

‘So we’re not going to find the murderer by looking for a motive.’ Palstein straightened the sling that held his arm. ‘Anyway. I just phoned you to wish you a pleasant journey.’

‘Next time you’ll be there too! Soon as you’re better.’

‘I’d love to see all that.’

‘You will see it!’ Julian grinned. ‘You’ll go walking on the Moon.’

‘Good luck, then. Squeeze that cash out of them.’

‘Take care, Gerald. I’ll call you. From up at the top.’

Palstein smiled. ‘You are up at the top.’

Julian thoughtfully studied the empty screen. More than a decade ago, while the oil sector had still kept the Monopolies and Mergers Commission busy with their yields and price rises, Palstein had turned up in his London office one day, curious to see what sort of work went on there. The realisation of the lift had just suffered a sharp setback, because the optimistic new material from which the cable was to be made had apparently irreparable crystal structure flaws. The world already knew that moon dust contained huge quantities of an element that could solve all the world’s energy problems. But without a plan for mining the stuff and getting it to Earth, along with the lack of appropriate reactors, helium-3 seemed like an irrelevance. Even so, Julian had gone on researching on all fronts, ignored by the oil sector, which had its hands full fighting for alternative trends like wind power and photovoltaics. Hardly anyone really took Julian’s efforts seriously. It simply seemed too unlikely that he would be successful.

Palstein, on the other hand, had listened carefully to everything, and recommended to the board of his company – which had just changed its name to EMCO after its marriage to ExxonMobil – that they buy shares in Orley Energy and Orley Space. Notoriously, the company’s directors hadn’t got on board, but Palstein stayed in contact with Orley Enterprises, and Julian came to like and esteem this melancholy character, who was always gazing into the future. Even though they had barely spent three whole weeks together, usually at spontaneous lunches, now and again at events, rarely in a private context, they were bound together by something like friendship, even though the stubbornness of the one had finally consigned the other to oblivion. Lately Palstein had been forced with increasing frequency to announce the abandonment or limitation of mining projects, as he was doing currently in Alaska and as he had done three weeks previously in Alberta, where he had had to face hundreds of furious people and had promptly been shot.

Julian knew that the manager would prove to be right. A partnership with Orley Enterprises wouldn’t save EMCO, but it might be useful to Gerald Palstein. He stood up, left the room behind the bar and returned to his guests.

‘—so back here for dinner in three-quarters of an hour,’ Lynn was saying. ‘You can stay and enjoy the drinks and the view, or freshen up and change. You could even do some work, if that’s your drug, conditions here are ideal for that too.’

‘And for that you should thank my fantastic daughter,’ said Julian, putting his arm around her shoulder. ‘She’s stunning. She did all this. She’s the greatest as far as I’m concerned.’ Lynn lowered her head with a smile.

‘No false modesty,’ Julian whispered to her. ‘I’m very proud of you. You can do anything. You’re perfect.’

A little later Tim was walking along the corridor on the fourth floor. Everything was antiseptically clean. On the way he met two security men and a cleaning robot insistently searching for the nonexistent leftovers of a world only partially inhabited. There was something profoundly disheartening about the way the machine, buzzing busily, pursued the purpose of its existence. A Sisyphus that had rolled the stone up the mountain and now had nothing left to do.

He stopped in front of her room and rang the bell. A camera transmitted his picture inside, then Lynn’s voice said:

‘Tim! Come in.’

The door slid open. He entered the suite and saw Lynn, wearing an attractive evening dress, standing at the panoramic window with her back to him. Her hair was loose, and fell in soft waves to her shoulders. When she smiled at him over her shoulder, her pale blue eyes gleamed like aquamarines. With sudden brio she swung round and displayed her cleavage. Tim ignored it, while his sister stared so closely past him that her smile bordered on the idiotic. He walked to a spherical chair, bent down and gave the woman who was lolling in it – scantily clothed in a silk kimono, legs bent and head thrown back – a kiss on the cheek.

‘I’m impressed,’ he said. ‘Really.’

‘Thanks.’ The thing in the evening dress went on strutting around, twisted and turned, wallowed in its transfigured ego, while the real Lynn’s smile started sagging at the corners.

Tim sat down on a stool and pointed at her holographic alter ego.

‘Are you planning to wear that tonight?’

‘I don’t know yet.’ Lynn frowned. ‘It’s a bit too formal, don’t you think? I mean, for a Pacific island.’

‘Odd idea. You’ve already thrown the rules of South Sea romanticism to the four winds. It looks great, put it on. Or are there alternatives?’

Lynn’s thumbs slid over the remote control. Her avatar’s appearance changed without transition. Hologram-Lynn was now wearing an apricot-coloured catsuit, bare at the arms and shoulders, which she presented with the same empty grace as she had the evening dress. Her gaze was directed at imaginary admirers.

‘Can you program her to look at you?’

‘Absolutely not! Do you think I want to stare at myself the whole time?’

Tim laughed. His own avatar was a character from the days of two-dimensional animations, WALL-E, a battered-looking robot whose winning qualities bore no relation to his external appearance. Tim had seen the film as a child and immediately fallen in love with the character. Perhaps because he himself felt battered in Julian’s world of shifting mountains and fetching stars down from the sky.

The avatar’s magnificent flowing locks were replaced by a chignon.

‘Better,’ said Tim.

‘Really?’ Lynn let her shoulders droop. ‘Damn, I’ve already had it up all day. But you’re right. Unless—’

The avatar presented a tight, turquoise blouse with champagne-coloured trousers.

‘And this?’

‘What on earth kind of clothes are those?’ Tim asked.

‘Mimi Kri. Mimi Parker’s new collection. She brought her entire range with her after I had to promise to wear some of it. Her catalogue is compatible with most of the avatar programs.’

‘So mine could wear them too?’

‘If they could be restitched to fit caterpillar tracks and bulldozer hands, then sure. Afraid not, Tim, it only works with human avatars. And by the way, the program is ruthless. If you’re too fat or too small for Mimi’s creation, it won’t recalculate. The problem is that most people improve their images so much for the avatar that everything fits the calculator and they look like shit afterwards anyway.’