Frank Schätzing - Limit

‘I didn’t care about your guests, Julian,’ sighed Palstein. ‘It was the first opportunity that offered itself since Thorn’s failure. When would the next trip have taken place? Only after the official opening. This year? Next year? How long would we have had to wait?’

‘Perhaps you also factored in the possibility of Julian’s death,’ said Jericho.

‘Nonsense.’

‘His death would have strengthened the conservative forces at Orley. The people opposed to the idea of selling off technologies. The smaller the number of countries that can build a space lift, the smaller the chance that a second—’

‘You’re fantasising, Jericho. If you hadn’t spoiled everything, Julian would have been back on Earth ages before the explosions took place. And his son and daughter too.’

The muffled chugging and thudding of the boats reached them from outside. Right below their window someone was singing ‘O Sole Mio’ with businesslike ardour.

‘But we weren’t on Earth,’ said Julian.

‘That wasn’t the plan.’

‘Fuck your plan. You went beyond the limit, Gerald. In every respect.’

Palstein looked up.

‘And you? You and your American friends? How is what you’re doing any different from what we’ve been doing for decades? You extract something from the ground until it’s all gone and you find you’ve destroyed a planet in the process. What limit do you lot go beyond? What limit do you in particular go beyond when you run your company like a state that dictates the rules of play to real states? Do you think you’re being public-spirited? At least the oil companies served their countries. Who are you serving, apart from your own vanity? There are no social states without state organisations, but you’re behaving like a modern Captain Nemo and spitting on the world as it happens to work. We merely played the game that the circumstances required. Only look at mankind, their clean, just wars, the cyclical collapse of their financial systems, the cynicism of their profiteers, the unscrupulousness and stupidity of their politicians, the perversion of their religious leaders, and don’t talk to me about limits.’

Julian stroked his beard.

‘You could be right, Gerald.’ He nodded and got to his feet. ‘But it doesn’t change anything. Owen, thanks for giving up your time. We’re going.’

‘Take care, Gerald,’ said Jericho. ‘Or not.’

The picture on the screen went out. Julian snapped the laptop shut and put it back in its bag.

‘A little while ago,’ he said, ‘when I was stepping inside your lovely residence, I noticed a little plaque: in the mezzanine of a building across the courtyard from this palazzo, Richard Wagner died. You know what? I liked that. I like the idea of great men dying in great houses.’ He reached into his jacket, took out a pistol and set it down on the table in front of Palstein. His clear blue eyes had a penetrating expression, almost friendly and encouraging. ‘It’s loaded. One shot is generally enough, but you’re a big man, Gerald. A very big man. You might take two.’

He turned round and crossed the room at a leisurely pace. Palstein watched after him, until Julian’s grey-blond ponytail had disappeared beyond the landing. As if of their own accord, his fingers found their way to his phone and keyed in a number.

‘Hydra,’ he said mechanically.

‘What can I do?’

‘Get me out of here. I’ve been unmasked.’

‘Unma—’ Xin fell silent for a moment. ‘You know, Gerald, I think my contract’s just run out.’

‘You’re walking out on me?’

‘I wouldn’t put it like that. You know me, I’m loyal and I’m not afraid to take risks, but in hopeless cases – and your case is unfortunately completely hopeless…’

‘What—’ Palstein gulped. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘Hmm.’ Xin seemed to think for a moment. ‘Quite honestly, it’s been rather tiring lately. I think I need a bit of a holiday. You take care.’

Take care. The second person who’d said that to him.

Palstein froze. He slowly lowered his phone. Voices rose to him from below.

His eyes wandered to the gun.

The people from Interpol and MI6 were waiting for him in the stairwell. Shaw looked at him quizzically.

‘Give him a minute,’ said Julian.

‘Well, I’m not sure.’ One of the agents frowned. ‘He could do something to himself.’

‘Yes, exactly.’ Julian pushed past him. ‘Jennifer, let’s go. I have to look after my daughter.

Stars like dust.

She had been lost in sleep, and the dream had put her back into the stillness of the spaceship dashing through the sparkling night, carrying her and the bomb. She had lived through everything all over again. Again she had come up with the plan to stow the mini-nuke in the living module, uncouple it and come back to the OSS with the landing unit. Back to Tim and Amber and Julian, who had cried so hard when he called her name. In her mind she had promised him never to leave him alone again, but her thoughts had been all that she was able to mobilise, and that wasn’t much.

Then the moment when the spinning bomb, lit by the flickering of her dying consciousness, had revealed the truth, that there were still hours to go until detonation, not minutes or seconds as she had thought. That she would have had a chance.

She had gone to sleep in the pearly rain of her blood.

I’m coming. I’m coming, Daddy.

I’m there.

Clunk!

One of those noises that feel like a nuisance, even if they mean the salvation of really having made your peace. In the absence of choice, of course. But she had made her peace before the shuttle on which Julian, Nina, Tim and Amber had followed her docked to the Charon – her lonely spaceship that had not had the chance of filling its tanks on the OSS, which was why it had finally run out of fuel. Even before it reached its top speed.

But she hadn’t known anything about any of that.

Voices around her. People in spacesuits.

‘Lynn? Lynn!’

Impotence. Scraps of words. As if through cotton wool.

‘How long now?’

‘Just over five hours. Enough time to bring both shuttles back.’

‘I think Lynn’s stable.’ Nina. ‘She’s lost a lot of blood, but it seems to me—’

Silence again. Then a voice on an endless loop:

‘And now get the thing out of here!’

Thing out of here, thing out of here, thing out of here, thingoutof here, thingoutof herethingout—

‘Lynn.’

She blinked. The hospital room. Back in the present. Hang on, wasn’t there a film called—

Doesn’t matter, what a film!

‘How are you?’ said Julian.

‘Been dreaming.’ She sat up. Her left side hurt, but she was feeling better every day. Lawrence, the bitch, had missed taking her life by inches. ‘We were back in the spaceship.’ Christ, she was hungry. Incredibly hungry! She could have eaten the bed. ‘A nightmare, to be honest. Always the same nightmare.’

‘It’s over.’

‘Hey, no big deal. It wasn’t all that bad, either.’ She yawned. ‘Hopefully I’ll dream something else eventually.’

‘No. It’s over , Lynn.’ Julian took her hand and smiled, very much the magician of her childhood. ‘The nightmare is over.’

‘Yoyo could really give us a call,’ Jericho complained.

Tu pulled a sticky strand of noodle from the cardboard box that stood in for his lunch plate.

‘And you could drop by again,’ he said, chewing. ‘Instead of only ever phoning. Burying yourself away in your stupid loft.’