Frank Schätzing - Limit

‘They could buy you,’ Evelyn Chambers cut in. She was following several conversations at once. ‘Which is why Zheng Pang-Wang drinks tea with you.’

‘If there were a Chinese dinner guest at the table tonight, he certainly wouldn’t be here intending to invest. Washington would conclude that I was taking offers for a transfer of know-how.’

‘Don’t they already think that, given that you meet with Zheng?’ asked Nair.

‘People meet all the time in this industry. At congresses, symposia. So what? Zheng’s an entertaining old rogue, I like him.’

‘But your friends are getting nervous anyway, aren’t they?’

‘They’re always nervous.’

‘They’re right to be. Anybody who gets up here will start digging.’ Ögi wiped his bristling moustache and threw the napkin down by his plate. ‘Why don’t you do it though, Julian?’

‘What? Switch sides?’

‘No, no. Nobody’s talking about switching sides. I mean, why don’t you just sell the space elevator technology to any country that wants to buy, and then you’d be rolling in gold? There’d be healthy competition up here on the Moon, and that would be a real boost to your reactor business. You could secure shares in the extraction side of things worldwide, you could negotiate exclusive contracts for the electricity supply, just as our absent friend Tautou controls fresh water. They sign him over whole aquifers in exchange for treatment plants and supply chain.’

‘Meaning that you would not switch from one dependent position to another,’ said Rogachev, taking up the idea, ‘but everybody would depend on you .’ He raised his glass to Julian, slightly mocking. ‘A true philanthropist.’

‘And how is that supposed to work?’ Rebecca Hsu broke in.

‘Why not?’ asked Ögi.

‘You want to let China, Japan, Russia, India, Germany, France and who knows else all have access to the elevator technology?’

‘Pay for access,’ Rogachev corrected her.

‘It’s a bad plan, Oleg. It wouldn’t take long for all of them to be knocking heads up here.’

‘It’s a big moon.’

‘No, it’s a small moon. So small that my neighbours in Red China and your American friend, Julian, have nothing better to do with their time than make for the same place to mine in, am I right? It only needed two nations,’ she said, holding up index finger and middle finger, ‘to start a squabble which is euphemistically described as the Moon crisis. The world was on the brink of armed superpower confrontation, and that wasn’t much fun.’

‘Why did the two of them go to the same place?’ Miranda asked ingenuously. ‘Accidentally?’

‘No.’ Julian shook his head. ‘Because measurements suggest that the border region between the Oceanus Procellarum and the Mare Imbrium has unusually high concentrations of helium-3, the type you’d usually find only on the dark side of the Moon. There’s a bay, the Sinus Iridum, next door and east of the Montes Jura, which seems to be similarly rich in deposits. So obviously everybody claims the right to mine there.’

Rebecca furrowed her brow. ‘And how’s that going to be any different with more nations?’

‘It should be. If we can divide the Moon up before the gold rush starts. But you’re right of course, Rebecca. You’re all right. I have to admit that I applaud the idea that space travel should be the concern of the whole human race.’

‘Perfectly understandable.’ Nair smiled. ‘You will only profit from the good cause.’

‘And us too, of course,’ Ögi said emphatically.

‘Yes, it’s a noble ideal.’ Rogachev put down his cutlery. ‘There’s only one problem, Julian.’

‘Which is?’

‘How to survive such a shift of opinion.’

Small chocolate cakes, served lukewarm, released a gush of heavy, dark sauce when cut open, flooding out into the colourful fruit purees surrounding them. At about ten o’clock a leaden tiredness descended over the table. Julian announced that the next morning was free time, after which everybody could enjoy the hotel facilities to their heart’s content or take a look around the lunar surface nearby. There would be no longer excursions until the day after. Dana Lawrence enquired as to whether everything was to their satisfaction. They all had words of praise, Hanna included.

‘And I still don’t think that Cobain would mean anything to the kids today if we hadn’t made that film,’ O’Keefe insisted in the lift. ‘Just look where grunge has ended up. On the “lousy music” shelves. Nobody’s interested in guys like him any more. The kids prefer to listen to the artificial stuff, The Week That Was, Ipanema Party, Overload—’

‘You used to play grunge with your own band though,’ said Hanna.

‘Yes, and I gave up. My God, I think I was ten years old when Cobain died. I wonder what the hell he meant to me.’

‘Don’t give me that! You played the guy.’

‘I could play Napoleon as well, you know, doesn’t mean I’m going to try to rule all Europe. It’s always been like that, people think that whoever their heroes are at the time, they must be important. Important! There are always important albums in pop music, then twenty years later not a living soul has heard of them.’

‘Great music stays alive.’

‘Bullshit. Who knows Prince these days? Who knows Axl Rose? Keith Richards, the only thing we know about him is that he was a mediocre guitar player for a beer-hall band whose songs all sounded the same. Believe you me, the gods of pop are overrated. All stars are overrated. No two ways. We don’t go down in history, we just go down to the grave. Unless of course you commit suicide or get shot.’

‘And why does everyone these days draw on the works of the seventies and eighties? If what you say is true, then—’

‘Okay, it just happens to be in fashion.’

‘Has been for a while.’

‘And what does that prove? In ten years’ time there’ll be another nine days’ wonder. Nucleosis, for instance, that kind of thing keeps coming around again, two women and a computer, and the computer composes about half their stuff.’

‘There’s always been computers.’

‘Not always as the composer though. I’m telling you, day after tomorrow, all the stars will be machines.’

‘Codswallop. They used to say that twenty-five years ago. What came back? Singer-songwriting. Handmade music will never die.’

‘Could be. Could be we’re just too old. Good night.’

‘G’night, Finn.’

Hanna crossed the bridge to his suite and went in. He’d dutifully followed all the conversations as the evening went on, without getting caught up in knotty discussions. For a while he’d tried to share Eva Borelius’ passion for horses, and then had steered her towards music, only to find himself bogged down in German Romanticism, about which he knew less than nothing. O’Keefe saved him with a few remarks about the comatose condition of Britpop at the end of the Nineties, about Mando-prog and psychobilly, just the thing to talk about when your thoughts were elsewhere, and Hanna’s thoughts really were. Everyone would go off to sleep soon, that much was clear. Back on board the spaceship they had been warned that there’d be a price to pay for the days in zero gravity, the exertions of landing, their bodies adjusting and the flood of new experiences. The bedroom was clad with a mooncrete slab at bed height, so that in an hour at latest, nobody would be looking outside at all, and the staff lived below ground anyway.

Time to wait.

He lay down on the comically thin mattress that was nevertheless enough to support him comfortably here, weighing only sixteen kilos as he did; he put his hands behind his head and shut his eyes for a moment. If he stayed lying here, he’d fall asleep, besides which he still had plenty to do before he set out. Whistling gently, he went back into the living room and stroked his guitar-case. He strummed a brief flamenco, then turned his instrument over on his knees, felt around the edges, pressed here and there, removed the clasp where the strap clipped on and lifted up the whole back.