Frank Schätzing - Limit

‘They’re also very beautiful creatures,’ she added.

They were both orbiting a four-metre-tall holographic model of OSS, projected into the centre of Picard. Drifting in their wake through the virtual space came Walo Ögi, Aileen and Chuck Donoghue, Evelyn Chambers, Tim and some recently arrived French scientists. The Picard had a different design from the Kirk, which was closer to classical restaurant style. Here floating islands of conviviality were arranged on different levels, bathed in muted light and overlooked by a long bar that cried out to be populated by Barbarellas with heavy eyeliner. At the touch of a button, everything could be reconfigured, so that tables and seats grouped themselves into an atrium.

‘Jellyfish, table or parasol, such associations are due to the vertical construction and symmetry of the station,’ said Haskin. ‘We mustn’t forget that space stations aren’t buildings with fixed foundations. In fact they don’t actually need foundations at all, but they are exposed to the constant redistribution of mass and all kinds of possible impact, from joggers on treadmills to moon shuttles attaching themselves to the outer ring. All of these things set the structure vibrating independently, and a symmetrical construction is ideally suited to the redistribution of vibration energies. The vertical alignment contributes to the stabilisation, and matches the principle of the space elevator. As you can see, the smallest moment of inertia is directed towards the Earth.’

Right at the bottom the torus with the hotel in it could be seen, with its outrigger suites, and Kirk and Picard protruding above them. Along the lattice masts, modules containing fitness centres, staff accommodation, storerooms and offices were stacked all the way up to Torus-2, at the centre of which the space elevator came to a halt. Retractable gangways linked the bagel-shaped module with the cabins.

‘This is where we arrived yesterday,’ Lynn explained. ‘Torus-2 serves as the reception area for the OSS Grand, and also as a terminal for passengers and freight. As you see, corridors radiate in a spoke arrangement from there to a larger, surrounding ring.’ Her hand passed through a lattice structure that stretched generously around the torus. ‘Our spaceport. Those things that look like aeroplanes are evacuation pods, the little tins are moon shuttles. In one of them, the Charon, we’ll be heading for the satellite tomorrow.’

‘I should have gone on a diet,’ Aileen said excitedly to Chuck. ‘How am I going to fit in one of those? My bum’s the size of Halley’s Comet.’

Lynn laughed.

‘Oh, no, they’re very spacious. Very comfortable. The Charon is over thirty metres long.’

‘And that thing there?’ Ögi had spotted crane-like structures on the top side of the ring and along the mast. He floated over to them, passed through the projection beam for a moment and looked like a huge cosmic monster attacking the OSS.

‘Manipulators,’ said Haskin. ‘Robot arms on tracks. They unload the arriving cargo shuttles, take out the tanks of condensed helium-3, bring them inside the torus and anchor them to the lifts.’

‘What happens exactly when one of those shuttles docks?’

‘There’s a big bang,’ said Haskin.

‘But doesn’t that mean that the station has too much weight on one side? There isn’t always the same number of ships at anchor.’

‘That isn’t a problem. All the docking sites are transferable, we can always right the balance. Well spotted, by the way.’ Haskin looked impressed. ‘Are you an architect?’

‘An investor. But I’ve built various things. Residential modules for cities: you click them into already existing structures or put them on high-rise roofs, and when you move, your little house simply goes with you. The Chinese love it. Flood-resistant estates on the North Sea. You know that Holland’s being flooded; are they all supposed to move to Belgium? The houses are fixed to jetties and float when the water rises.’

‘He’s also building a second Monaco,’ said Evelyn.

‘Why do we need a second Monaco?’ asked Tim.

‘Because the first one’s filled to bursting,’ Ögi explained. ‘The Monégasques are stacking up like the Alps, so Albert and I flicked through our Jules Verne. Have you heard of Propeller Island?’

‘Isn’t that the story of the mad captain in that weird underwater boat?’ Donoghue asked.

‘No, no!’ One of the Frenchmen dismissed the idea. ‘That was the Nautilus ! Captain Nemo.’

‘Rubbish! I’ve seen that one. It’s by Walt Disney.’

‘No! Not Walt Disney! Mon Dieu! ’

‘Propeller Island is a mobile city state,’ Ögi explained. ‘A floating island. You can’t extend Monaco indefinitely, not even with offshore islands, so we hit on the idea of building a second one that will cruise the South Sea.’

‘A second Monaco?’ Haskin scratched his head. ‘You mean a ship?’

‘Not a ship. An island. With mountains and coasts, a pretty capital city and a wine cellar for old Prince Ernst August. But artificial.’

‘And it works?’

‘ You of all people are asking me that?’ Ögi laughed and spread his arms out as if to press the OSS to his heart. ‘Where’s the problem?’

‘There isn’t one,’ Lynn laughed. ‘Or do we look as if we’ve got problems?’

Her eye rested on Tim. Was he actually aware of what was wrong with her? His unease touched and shamed her in equal measure, as he had had every reason to be uneasy since that day, that terrible moment five years before, that was to change their lives, just before six in the evening…

… Lynn is in the middle of the traffic jam, ten lanes of pumping, overheated metal chugging its way along the M25 to Heathrow with the pace of a glacier, under a ruthless, cold February sun gleaming down from a yellowish, cloudy Chernobyl sky, and suddenly it happens. She has to go to Paris for a meeting, she’s always going to some sort of meeting or other, but all of a sudden someone turns off the light in her head, just like that, and everything sinks into a morass of hopelessness. Profound grief sweeps over her, followed by 10,000 volts of pure panic. Later she’s unable to say how she got to the airport, but she isn’t flying, she’s just sitting in the terminal, robbed of all certainties but one, which is that she will not be able to bear her own existence for a second longer, because she doesn’t want to go on living with so much sadness and anxiety. But at that point her memory stops till the morning, when she finds herself fully dressed on the floor of her penthouse flat in Notting Hill, mailbox, email and answering machine spilling over with other people’s excitement. She walks out onto the terrace, into the icy rain that has started falling diagonally, and wonders whether the twelve storeys will be enough. Then she changes her mind and calls Tim, thus sparing the sensibilities of anyone who might have been passing by.

Henceforth, whenever the topic turns to her illness, Julian invokes various baleful viruses and protracted colds as a way of explaining to himself and others what it is that is so terribly afflicting his daughter, his shining light; Tim, on the other hand, is always talking in terms of therapies and psychiatrists. Her condition is a mystery to Julian, and he represses what he perhaps guesses at, just as he has repressed the memory of Crystal’s death. It is ten years since Lynn’s and Tim’s mother died in a state of mental derangement, but Julian develops a remarkable capacity for denial. Not because he is traumatised, but because he is actually incapable of making a connection between the two.

It’s Tim and Amber who come to her rescue. When she feels nothing but naked terror at the loss of all sensation, Tim walks around the block with her, in sunshine and in pouring rain, for hours, he forces her mind back into the present until she is able once again at least to feel the cold and wet, and to become aware of the metallic taste of her fear on her tongue. When she thinks she’ll never be able to sleep again, or keep down a bite of food, when seconds stretch into infinities and everything around her – light, colours, smells, music – emits shock-waves of menace, when every house-roof, every parapet, every bridge invites her to leap, when she fears going mad as Crystal did, running amok, killing people, he makes it clear to her that no demon has taken possession of her, that no monsters are after her, that she wouldn’t hurt anyone, not even herself, and very gradually she starts to believe him.