Frank Schätzing - Limit

‘Yes,’ said Nair in awe. ‘Yes!’

Hanna smiled and nodded.

Everyone will pay the price—

Everything Julian had said, with his usual eloquence and persuasiveness, reduced down to this last sentence in his ears. He had voiced what had been left behind by rulers retreating from the globalisation process, the attempt for economy to become independent, the privatisation of politics: a vacuum that had been filled with businessmen. He defined the future as a product. Even the days ahead wouldn’t change that, quite the opposite in fact. The world would be sold yet again.

Just very differently to how Julian Orley imagined.

I’m back,’ chirped Heidrun.

‘Oh, my darling!’ Ögi’s moustache bristled with delight. ‘Safely and in one piece too, I see. How was it?’

‘Great! Locatelli threw up when he saw his solar panels.’

She floated over and gave him a kiss. The action led to repulsion. She slowly retreated again, reached out to grasp the back of a chair and made her way back, hand over hand.

‘Did Warren get space sick or something?’ asked Lynn.

‘Yes, it was great!’ Heidrun beamed. ‘Nina took him off with her, and after that it was all really nice.’

‘I’m not so sure.’ Donoghue pursed his lips. Red-cheeked and bloated, he rested grandly back against an imaginary throne like Falstaff, his hair so bouffant it looked as though an animal had died on his scalp. ‘It sounds dangerous to me, someone throwing up in their helmet.’

‘Well, you don’t have to go out there,’ said Aileen sharply.

‘Poppycock! I wasn’t saying that…’

‘You’re sixty-five, Chucky. You don’t have to join in on everything.’

‘I said, it sounds dangerous!’ blustered Donoghue. ‘I didn’t say I was scared. I’d still go out there even if I were a hundred. And on the subject of age, have you heard the one about the really old couple and the divorce judge?’

‘Divorce judge!’ Haskin was starting to laugh already. ‘Let’s hear it.’

‘So they go to the divorce judge, and he looks at the woman and says: “My dear, how old are you?” “Let’s see,” says the woman, “I’m ninety-five.” “Okay, and you?” The man thinks for a second: ninety-eight! “God almighty,” says the judge, “I don’t believe it. Why on earth would you want to get divorced at your age?” “Well, it’s like this, your honour…”’

Tim snarled. It was hardly bearable. Chucky had been relentlessly setting off comedy firecrackers, one after the other, for the past two hours.

‘“…we wanted to wait until the children had passed away.”’

Haskin did a somersault. Everyone laughed, of course. The joke wasn’t that bad, at least not bad enough for Tim to blame Donoghue alone for his apocalyptic mood. But at that moment he noticed Lynn sitting there as if she’d been turned to stone, as if she were somewhere else entirely. She was gazing straight ahead and was clearly clueless of what was going on around her. Then, all of a sudden, she laughed too.

I could be wrong, he thought. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s starting all over again.

‘So what did you get up to while we were gone?’ Heidrun looked around curiously. ‘Have you been to look around the model station?’

‘Yes, I could re-create it right now from memory,’ bragged Ögi. ‘Amazing building. To tell you the truth I was surprised by the safety standards.’

‘Why?’ asked Lynn.

‘Well, the privatisation of space travel adds to the fear that it’s all been cobbled together too quickly.’

‘But would you be here if you were seriously concerned about that?’

‘That’s true.’ Ögi laughed. ‘But in any case, it was quick. Extraordinarily quick. Aileen and Chuck here could certainly tell you a thing or two about building regulations, surveys and restrictions.’

‘Just one or two?’ growled Chucky. ‘I could go on for days.’

‘When we were designing the Red Planet, they thought the project would be impossible to complete,’ Aileen confirmed. ‘What a bunch of cowards! It took a decade to get from the initial design stage to the start of the construction, and even after that they never left us in peace.’

The Red Planet was Donoghue’s pièce de résistance, a luxury resort in Hanoi modelled on the landscape of Mars.

‘It’s now known as the pièce de résistance of structural engineering,’ she added triumphantly. ‘There’s never been an incident with any of our hotels! But what happens? Whenever you start planning something new, they swarm over you like zombies and try to eat you alive, your enthusiasm, your ideas, even the creative power given to you by the almighty Creator himself. You might think that building up a good record over the years would earn you some credit, but it’s like they take no notice whatsoever of what you’ve achieved so far. Their eyes are dead, their skulls stuffed with regulations.’

Oh man, thought Tim.

‘Yes, yes.’ Ögi rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘I know exactly what you mean. In this respect, my dear Lynn, I can’t help but water down all this adulation with a bit of scepticism. As I said, you made the station into a reality extremely quickly. You might even say suspiciously quickly compared to the ISS, which is smaller yet took a lot longer.’

‘Would you like to hear an explanation for that?’

‘At the risk of annoying you…’

‘You’re not annoying me in the slightest, Walo. Pressure from competition has always encouraged sloppiness in the race to be first. But Orley Space doesn’t have any competitors. So we never needed to be quicker than anyone else.’

‘Hmm.’

‘The reason we were quick was perfect planning, which ultimately meant the OSS built itself. We didn’t need to accommodate dozens of notoriously hard-up space authorities, nor wade through bureaucratic quicksand. We only had one partner, the United States of America, and they would even have sold the Lincoln Memorial to break out of the commodity trap. Our agreement fitted on the back of a petrol receipt. America builds up its moon base and supplies technology for mining helium-3, while we bring in marketable reactors, an inexpensive, quick transport system to the Moon and, last but not least, a great deal of money! Getting authorisation from Congress was a walk in the park! It was a win-win situation! One gets to monopolise the reactor trade, the other returns to the peak of space-travelling nations and gets the solution to all their energy problems. Believe me, Walo, with prospects like those on the table, any other option but quickly is completely out of the question.’

‘Well, she’s certainly right about that!’ said Donoghue, his voice like thunder. ‘When has it ever been about whether someone can build something or not? Nowadays it’s always about the damn money.’

‘And the zombies,’ nodded Aileen vigorously. ‘The zombies are everywhere.’

‘Sorry.’ Evelyn Chambers raised her hand. ‘I’m sure you’re right, but on the other hand we’re not here to inflate each other’s egos. This is about investment. And my investment in you is very much linked to trust, so we should put all our cards on the table, don’t you think?’

Tim looked at his sister. She looked open and interested, clearly unaware of what Evelyn Chambers was alluding to.

‘Of course. What’s on your mind?’

‘Slip-ups.’

‘Such as?’

‘Vic Thorn.’

‘Of course. That’s on the agenda.’ Lynn winced, but without batting an eyelid. ‘I was planning to talk about him later, but we can bring it forward.’

‘Thorn?’ Donoghue wrinkled his forehead. ‘Who’s he?’