Frank Schätzing - Limit

‘I think you misunderstood,’ she said. ‘You’re the one getting tied up.’

‘Now just a minute! We need to talk about this first.’

‘Do you think he wants to talk about it?’ she asked, gesturing her head at his royal member. ‘I think he wants to do something else, and very quickly too.’

One after the other, she knotted the rubber bands around his wrists and, giggling and snorting, made her way down to fasten his feet, until he was hung in the middle of the room with his extremities stretched out. He wriggled his knees and elbows with curiosity, noticing that the bands were highly elasticated. He could move around, and generously too. It was just stopping him from flying away.

‘Do you think this was Julian’s idea?’ he asked.

‘I’d be willing to bet on it.’ Amber hovered towards him as if she were on a control beam, clasped his shoulders and slung her legs around his hips. For a moment, her sex balanced on his, like a trapeze artist on the nose of a sea lion.

‘In my opinion, sexual positions are the most demanding manoeuvres in the world,’ she whispered as she pressed herself against him, lowered herself and drew him inside her.

Seemingly quite a few people had the same idea, but only a few managed to put it into action. Eva Borelius and Karla Kramp also found the straps and figured out what to do with them, as did Mimi Parker and Marc Edwards. However, Edwards found the redistribution of over half a litre of blood from the lower to upper bodily regions a little harder to handle than Tim had, whilst Paulette Tautou would most likely have held Bernard’s head down the now-so-familiar toilet bowl if he had come near her with any intentions of that sort.

Wisely, Tautou did no such thing. Instead, in consideration of Paulette’s miserable condition, he decided that they should embark on the journey home.

Suite 12 was the scene of similar suffering, the only difference being that Locatelli would never have capitulated to something as mundane as space sickness. Peaceful silence reigned in Suite 38, where the Ögis lay snuggled up to one another like field-mice in winter. One floor above, Sushma and Mukesh Nair were peacefully enjoying the sight of night falling over the Isla de las Estrellas. In Suite 17, Aileen Donoghue had put in her earplugs, allowing Chuck to snore at the top of his lungs.

On the opposite side of the torus, Oleg Rogachev was staring out of the window while Olympiada Rogacheva stared straight ahead.

‘Do you know what I’d like to know?’ she murmured after a while.

He shook his head.

‘How someone ends up like Miranda Winter.’

‘You don’t end up like that,’ he said, without turning round. ‘You’re born like it.’

‘I don’t mean the way she looks,’ snorted Olympiada. ‘I’m not stupid. I just want to know how someone gets to be so impregnable. So completely pain-free. It’s as if she’s a walking immune system against every kind of problem, she’s like nonchalance personified – I mean, seriously, she’s even given names to her breasts!’

Rogachev turned his head slowly.

‘No one’s stopping you from doing the same.’

‘Perhaps a certain amount of it is down to stupidity,’ ruminated Olympiada, as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘You know, I really do believe that Miranda is quite dumb. Oh, what am I saying, she hasn’t got two brain cells to rub together. I have no doubt that she’s lacking any kind of education, but perhaps that’s an advantage. Perhaps it’s good to be stupid, desirable even. Dumb and naïve and a little bit calculating. You feel less that way. Miranda loves only herself, whereas it seems to me that every single day I’m pouring all my feelings, all my strength into a vase that’s full of holes. Your meanness would be wasted on someone like Miranda, Oleg, like a pinprick in blubber.’

‘I’m not mean to you.’

‘Oh, no?’

‘No. I’m just uninterested. You can’t hurt someone you have no interest in.’

‘And you suppose that’s not mean?’

‘It’s the truth.’ Rogachev glanced at her for a second. Olympiada had burrowed into her sleeping bag and was now belted in and safely out of reach. For a moment he wondered what it might be like if the sack burst open the next morning to reveal a butterfly, an astonishing feat for his rather retarded imagination. But Olympiada wasn’t a caterpillar, and he had no intention of weaving her into a cocoon. ‘Our marriage was a strategic move. I knew it, your father knew it, and you knew it too. So please stop torturing yourself.’

‘One day you’ll fall, Oleg,’ she hissed. ‘You’ll end up like a rat. A damn rat in the gutter.’

Rogachev turned to gaze again out of the window, strangely unmoved by the planet darkening below him.

‘Just get on with it and take a lover,’ he said tonelessly.

Miranda Winter had no intention of heading off to bed any time soon, much to the joy of Rebecca Hsu, who suffered from her inability to cope with being alone. Except that she was alone. A poor, rich woman, as she went to great pains to convince herself, twice divorced, with three daughters of whom she saw shamefully little. A woman who hung around in the company of others until even the last few closed their eyes, after which she would make calls across all the time zones thanks to the world-spanning structure of her group of companies, until even she lost the fight against tiredness. The whole day through, whenever their strictly organised schedule allowed, she had been discussing marketing plans by phone, debating campaign strategies, deliberating purchases, sales and shares. Keeping an eye on her empire: a control freak who was tormented by the thought that she’d driven husbands and daughters away with her manic working habits.

At least she could discuss the lack of husbands with Miranda without falling head first into melancholy afterwards. Besides, some of the beakers of Moët et Chandon had miraculously turned up in Miranda’s cabin, which particularly pleased Rebecca, since she had owned the brand for some time now.

Finn O’Keefe didn’t know what to think or feel, so he listened to music for a while then fell asleep.

Evelyn Chambers lay awake – if it could be called lying, that is.

She didn’t feel the slightest inclination to buckle herself onto the bed like some raving lunatic. She had discovered the rubber bands by chance and anchored herself to the handles near the front of the window, hoping to enjoy the sensation of zero gravity in her sleep too. But when she closed her eyes her body seemed to speed up as if it were on a roller-coaster, trying to loop the loop, and she started to feel sick.

She reached up to free her shackled ankles from the bands, which was no easy task. It was only then that she noticed the inscription: Love Belt . Suddenly realising what they were really intended for, a wave of regret washed over her at not being able to appropriately crown the extravagant experience of zero gravity. Intrigued, she wondered whether the others were doing it, and then – rather boldly – whom she might be able to do it with! Her thoughts darted from Miranda Winter to Heidrun Ögi and then back again, based on the fact that Heidrun wasn’t available, although admittedly neither was Miranda, if only due to lack of inclination.

Rebecca Hsu? Oh, for heaven’s sake!

Her desire subsided as quickly as it had risen. And yet she had been so adamant, after her bisexuality had cost her the role of governor, that she was going to enjoy herself properly now. She was still America’s most popular and influential chat-show host. In the wake of her political Waterloo she no longer felt bound to any conservative code. What had remained of her marriage barely justified professing monogamy, especially as her so-called husband was pouring their joint money into his constantly changing acquaintances. Not that that bothered her. Their love had gone down the drain years ago, but she didn’t want to go to bed with anyone and everyone, even if she was consumed by lust.