Frank Schätzing - Limit

Things get better, and Tim bugs her. Forces her to take professional help at last, to lie down on the couch. Lynn refuses, plays down the nightmare. Examining the causes? What for? She isn’t even slightly willing to show respect to this miserable phase of her otherwise perfect life. Her nerves have been going haywire, exhaustion, crashing synapses, biochemical mayhem, whatever. Reason to be ashamed, but not to go rummaging for the source of her distress. Why should she? To find what? She is glad and grateful that the company has camouflaged her condition with a series of explanations – flu, very bad flu, bronchitis – now that she’s up and smiling and shaking hands again. The crisis has been survived, the broken doll repaired. Again she sees herself as Julian sees her, a perspective that she temporarily lost. Who cares whether she likes herself? Julian loves her! Seeing herself through his eyes solves all her problems. The stale familiarity of self-debasement, she could live with that.

‘—are the dining and common rooms for the scientific operations,’ she heard herself saying.

She worked her way further up the hologram, from Torus-3 to the sports facilities in Torus-4, to dozens of accommodation and laboratory modules, which Julian had rented out to private and state research establishments from all over the world: NASA, ESA and Roskosmos, his own subsidiaries Orley Space, Orley Travel and Orley Energy. Cheeks aglow, she talked about the vegetable gardens and animal breeding facilities in the domed biospheres above Torus-4, allowed a glimpse into the observatories, workshops, control and meeting rooms of the fifth and final Torus, from which the lift cable led back out and into infinity or what the temporary residents imagined infinity to be. She described the disc-shaped roof, hundreds of metres across, with its wharfs in which moon shuttles and interplanetary spaceships were built, robots dashed busily through the vacuum and solar panels inhaled sunlight, so that the station could feed on the homemade kind during its hours in the Earth’s shadow. Laughing on the brink of the abyss, she presented the OSS, the Orley Space Station, whose builder and owner NASA had so yearned to be. But such a proposition would have required political responsibility, and by their nature politicians were voluble, slippery creatures, and tended to criticise the decisions of their predecessors rather than anything else. Hence, in the end, a private investor had taken the dream of the settlement of space that bit further and, en passant , established the necessary conditions to set off a landslide in the energy sector, which threw up the question of…

‘…whose interests we are actually subsidising if we decide to join forces with Orley Enterprises.’

‘Well, ideally ours,’ said Locatelli. ‘Don’t you think?’

‘I completely agree,’ Rogachev replied. ‘I’d just like to know who else I’m benefiting.’

‘As long as Lightyears remains market leader, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about anyone else who might be getting anything out of it, if I may be so bold out here in geostationary isolation.’

‘ Ryba ishchet gde glubzhe, a chelovek gde luchshe .’ Rogachevo smiled thinly. ‘The fish seeks the deepest place, man the best. For my part, I’d prefer a bit more of an overview.’

Locatelli snorted. ‘You’re not going to get that by looking at everything from outside. Perspective comes from position.’

‘Which is?’

‘My company’s, in my case. I know you’re scared of indirectly benefiting Washington and NASA by giving Julian money. But so what? The main thing is that the figures add up at the end of the year.’

‘I’m not sure if you can really see it like that,’ said Marc Edwards, then realised the vacuousness of his observation and turned his attention to the pairs of boots that Nina was handing out.

‘ I can see it like that. He can’t.’ Locatelli pointed at the Russian with his thumbs outstretched and laughed broadly. ‘You see, he’s married to politics.’

Finn O’Keefe exchanged a glance with Heidrun Ögi. Rogachev and Locatelli were really getting on his nerves. They were having discussions which, in his opinion, really belonged at the end of the trip. And perhaps he just didn’t know enough about how the sector worked, but in any case, he planned to do nothing over the coming days but enjoy himself as best he could, and obediently shoot the little film clip that he had promised Julian he would do: Perry Rhodan on the real moon, singing the wonders of the real experience. Investor outpourings had no place, he thought, in ‘EVA’s wardrobe’, the dressing area for Extravehicular Activities.

‘And what about you?’ Locatelli stared at him. ‘What’s the view like from Hollywood?’

O’Keefe shrugged. ‘Relaxed.’

‘He wants your money too.’

‘No, he wants my face, so that I can tell moneybags like you that they’ve absolutely got to get to the Moon. You’re right to that extent.’ O’Keefe rubbed his index finger and thumb together. ‘I get hold of money for him. But not mine.’

‘Very clever,’ Locatelli observed to Rogachev. ‘He probably even gets some for himself as well.’

‘Not a cent.’

‘And what do you really think about it? Space tourism, private flights to the Moon?’

O’Keefe looked around. He had expected to see complete spacesuits hanging here, like limp and motionless astronauts, but the section, with its sterile lighting, felt more like a boutique. Folded overalls of all sizes, helmets, gloves and boots lined up side by side, sections of rigid armour.

‘No idea,’ he said. ‘Ask me again in a fortnight.’

Their little group – Rogachev, Locatelli, Edwards, Mimi, Heidrun Ögi and himself – had herded around Nina Hedegaard, trying not to spin chaotically away. O’Keefe was mastering the art of space ballet better by the hour, and so was Rogachev, who had allowed himself to be dragged along by the excitement of the evening conversation; in addition to football, his love of martial arts was now revealed to the world. The Russian now seemed to possess his body only to subject it to reptilian control. His feelings, in so far as he had any, lay hidden beneath the ice of his pale blue eyes. Marc Edwards and Mimi Parker, both passionate divers, held their position tolerably well, Heidrun strove for control, while Locatelli’s impetuosity had the potential to injure someone.

‘Could I ask you to come closer?’ called Nina.

‘So, between ourselves’ – Mimi Parker lowered her voice – ‘there are rumours going around. No idea if there’s anything to it, but some people are suggesting that Julian’s running out of puff.’

‘Meaning?’

‘He’s as good as broke.’

‘That’s nothing,’ Heidrun whispered. ‘You know who really is running out of puff?’

‘Sure.’ Mimi leaned forward. ‘Out with it.’

‘You lot, you bunch of chatterboxes. And you’ll be running out of puff out there if you don’t stop talking nonsense.’

Rogachev studied her with the amusement of a cat being growled at by mice.

‘There’s something refreshing about you, Mrs Ögi.’

She beamed at him as if he’d just crowned her Miss Moscow. The Russian twitched his eyebrows with amusement and floated closer to Nina. Heidrun followed him clumsily. Her limbs seemed to have grown even longer and more unwieldy in zero gravity. The Dane waited until they had all formed a semicircle around her, then clapped her hands and flashed her perfect teeth to the assembled group.

‘So!’ A hissed Scandinavian S. ‘You’re about to embark on your first space-walk. Everyone excited?’