Jericho sucked the last bit of foam from the bottle.
Curious race, humanity. Flew to the Moon and abused little children.
He turned off the television, gave the box a kick and went to bed in the hope of being able to sleep.
21 May 2025
THE LIFT
The Cave
‘The Stellar Dome was originally planned for the highest point of the island, where the crystal dome with the restaurant is now,’ Lynn Orley explained as she walked through the lounge ahead of the group. ‘Until, while we were exploring the place, we discovered something that led us to abandon our previous plans. The mountain provided us with an alternative that we could barely have imagined.’
On the evening of the third and last day of their stay on the Isla de las Estrellas the group was waiting for the prelude to their big adventure. Lynn led them to a wide, locked doorway set in the back wall of the lobby.
‘It can’t have escaped anyone that the Stellar Island Hotel looks like an ocean steamer stranded in the volcano. And officially that volcano is extinct.’ Here and there she registered unease. In Momoka Omura’s imagination in particular, streams of lava seemed to be flowing through the lounge and spoiling the evening once and for all. ‘At the summit and along the flank moderate temperatures prevail. Pleasantly cool, ideally suited for storing food and drink, for locating pumps, generators and processing plants, the laundry, janitor’s office and various other things. Just behind me’ – she turned her head towards the bulkheads – ‘offices were planned. We started drilling into the rock, but after only a few metres we found ourselves in a fault that extended into a cave, and at the end of that cave—’
Lynn rested the palm of her hand on a scanner, and the door slid open.
‘—lay the Stellar Dome.’
A steeply descending passageway with roughly carved walls stretched beyond the doorway, and turned a corner so that it was impossible to see where it went next. Lynn saw faces filled with curiosity, excitement and anticipation. Only Momoka Omura, once she had been reassured that she would not be burning up in liquid rock, seemed to have lost interest completely, and stared earnestly at the ceiling.
‘Any more questions?’ Lynn let a mysterious smile play around the corners of her mouth. ‘Then let’s go.’
A collage of sounds enveloped them, all apparently of natural origin. There were clicks, echoes, whispers and drips, and orchestral surfaces created a timeless atmosphere. Lynn’s idea of turning the emotional screw without slipping into the Disneyesque was taking effect: sounds on the boundary edge of perception, as a subtle way of creating moods, which had required the building of a complicated technical installation, but the result exceeded all expectations. The two sides of the door closed behind them, and cut them off from the airy, comfortable atmosphere of the lobby.
‘We laid out this section ourselves,’ Lynn explained. ‘The natural part begins just past the bend. The cave system extends through the whole of the eastern flank of the volcano. You could walk around in it for hours, but we preferred to close the passageways. Otherwise there might be a danger of you getting lost in the heart of the Isla de las Estrellas.’
Past the bend, the corridor stretched out considerably. It grew darker. Shadows flitted over pitted basalt, like the shadows of strange and startled animals escaping to safety from the horde of tourists. The echoes of their footsteps seemed to the group to precede and follow them at the same time.
‘How are caves like this formed?’ Bernard Tautou threw his head back. ‘I’ve seen a few, but every time I’ve forgotten to ask.’
‘They can have all kinds of possible causes. Tensions in the rock, pockets of water, landslips. Volcanoes are porous structures; when they cool down they often leave cavities. In this case it’s most probably lava drainage channels.’
‘Oh great,’ blustered Donoghue. ‘We’ve landed in the gutter.’
The corridor turned in a curve, narrowed and debouched into an almost circular room. The walls were lined with motifs from the dawn of humanity, some painted, some carved into the rock. Bizarre life-forms stared at the visitors from the penumbra, with fathomlessly dark eyes, horns and tails and helmets with aerial-shaped growths sprouting from them. Some of the clothes looked like spacesuits. They saw creatures that seemed to have merged with complicated machines. A huge, rectangular relief showed a humanoid creature in a foetal position operating levers and switches. The sound changed, becoming eerie.
‘Horrible,’ Miranda Winter sighed with relish.
‘I hope so,’ grinned Lynn. ‘After all, we’ve brought together the most mysterious testimonies of human creativity. Reproductions, obviously. The figures in the striped suits, for example, were discovered in Australia, and according to tradition they represent the two lightning brothers Yagjagbula and Tabiringl. Some researchers think they are astronauts. Next to them, the so-called Martian God, originally a six-metre cave drawing from the Sahara. The creatures there on the left, the ones who seem to be holding their hands up in greeting, were found in Italy.’
‘And this one?’ Eva Borelius had stopped in front of the relief and was looking at it with interest.
‘The gem of our collection! A Mayan artefact. The gravestone of King Pakal of Palenque, an ancient pyramid city in Chiapas in Mexico. It’s supposed to depict the ruler’s descent to the underworld, symbolised by the open jaws of a giant snake.’ Lynn walked over to it. ‘What do you recognise?’
‘Hard to say, but it looks as if he’s sitting in a rocket.’
‘Exactly!’ cried Ögi, rushing over. ‘And you know what? It was a Swiss man who was responsible for that interpretation!’
‘Oh?’
‘You don’t know of Erich von Däniken?’
‘Wasn’t he a sort of fantasist?’ Borelius smiled coldly. ‘Someone who saw extraterrestrials everywhere?’
‘He was a visionary!’ Ögi corrected her. ‘A very great one!’
‘I’m sorry.’ Karla Kramp gave a little cough. ‘But your visionary has been regularly contradicted.’
‘So?’
‘In that case I’d just like to understand what makes him so great.’
‘How often do you think, my dear, that the Bible has been contradicted,’ Ögi bellowed again. ‘Without fantasists the world would be more boring, more average, more stale. Who cares whether he was right? Do you always have to be right to be great?’
‘I’m sorry, I’m a doctor. If I’m wrong, my patients don’t generally reach the conclusion that I’m great.’
‘Lynn, could you come over here for a moment?’ Evelyn Chambers called. ‘Where does that come from? It looks as if they’re flying.’
Conversations sprouted, a little knowledge blossomed. The motifs were admired and discussed. Lynn provided explanations and hypotheses. This was the first time that a group of visitors had been inside the cave. Her plan to use prehistoric drawings and sculptures to get people in the mood for the mystery to come was a success. At length she drummed the group together and led them from the cave-room to the next stretch of passageway, which grew even steeper, even darker—
And warmer.
‘What’s that noise?’ Miranda Winter wondered. ‘Voom, voom! Is that normal?’
And true enough, a dull rumble mingled with the soundtrack, coming from the depths of the mountain, and creating a menacing atmosphere. Reddish wisps of smoke drifted over the rock.
‘There’s something there,’ Aileen Donoghue whispered. ‘Some sort of light.’
‘God, Lynn,’ laughed Marc Edwards. ‘Where are you taking us?’
‘We must be quite deep already, aren’t we?’ It was the first time Rebecca Hsu had spoken. Since her arrival she had been constantly on the phone, and nobody had been able to engage her.
‘Just over eighty metres,’ said Lynn. She stepped briskly on, towards another turn, bathed in flickering firelight.
‘Exciting,’ O’Keefe observed.
‘Oh, come on, it’s just theatre,’ War
ren Locatelli announced from above. ‘We’re entering a strange world, is what they’re trying to suggest. The inside of the Earth, the interior of a strange planet, some waffle like that.’
‘Just wait,’ said Lynn.
‘What’s she got for us this time?’ Momoka Omura said, striving for disenchantment, while the tone of her voice revealed that streams of lava were starting to flow in her head again. ‘A cave, another cave. Brilliant.’
The rumbling and roaring rose in a crescendo.
‘So, I think it’s—’ Evelyn Chambers began, stopped in the middle of the sentence and said, ‘Oh, my!’
They had passed the bend. Monstrous heat came roaring at them. The passageway widened, suffused with a pulsating glow. Some of the guests came to an abrupt standstill, others ventured hesitantly forwards. On the right-hand side the rock opened up, providing a glimpse into a huge, adjacent vault, from which the thundering and roaring emanated, drowning out their conversation. A glowing lake half filled the chamber, boiling and bubbling, spitting red and yellow fountains. Basalt spikes jutted from the sluggish surge towards the domed ceiling, which flickered spectrally in the glow. With quiet delight, Lynn studied fear, fascination, astonishment; she saw Heidrun Ögi shielding herself against the heat with her raised hands. Her white hair, her skin seemed to be blazing. As she uncertainly approached, she looked for a moment as if she had just emerged from some inferno.
‘What on earth is that?’ she asked in disbelief.
‘A magma chamber,’ Lynn explained calmly. ‘A store that keeps the volcano fed with lava and gases. Such chambers form when liquid rock rises from a great depth to the weak areas of the Earth’s crust. As soon as pressure in the chamber gets out of control, the lava forces its way up, and the eruption occurs.’
‘But didn’t you say the volcano was extinct?’ Mukesh Nair said in amazement.
‘Officially extinct, yes.’
Suddenly everyone was talking at the same time. O’Keefe was the first to voice some suspicion. During the whole excursion he had been strolling thoughtfully along the passageway, absorbed, keeping his distance; now he walked right up to the seething cauldron.
‘Hé, mon ami!’ called Tautou. ‘Don’t singe your hair.’
‘Pas de problème,’ O’Keefe turned round and grinned. ‘I hardly think there’s anything to be afraid of. Isn’t that right, Lynn?’
He held out his right hand. His fingers touched a surface. Warm, but not hot. Entirely smooth. He pressed the palm of his hand against it and smiled appreciatively.
‘When was the last time it looked like this inside the mountain?’
Lynn smiled.
‘According to the geologists, about a hundred thousand years ago. But not as far up. Magma chambers usually lie at a depth of twenty-five to thirty kilometres, and they’re much bigger than this one.’
‘Anyway, it’s the best hologram I’ve seen in ages.’
‘We do our best to please.’
‘A hologram?’ echoed Sushma.
‘More precisely, an interplay of holographic projections with sound, coloured light and thermal panels.’
Sushma stepped up beside O’Keefe and tapped her finger against the surface of the screen, as if there might still be a chance that he was mistaken. ‘But it looks perfectly real!’
‘Of course. We don’t want to bore you, after all.’
Everybody touched the screen now, stepped respectfully back and yielded once more to the illusion. Chuck Donoghue forgot to wisecrack, Locatelli to prattle condescendingly. Even Momoka Omura stared into the digital lava lake and looked almost impressed.
‘We’re practically at our destination,’ said Lynn. ‘In a few seconds we’ll be able to enter that chamber, only then it will look completely different. You will be travelling from the distant past to the future of our planet, the future of mankind.’
She tapped a switch hidden in the rock. At the end of the passageway a tall, vertical crack appeared. Faint light seeped from it. The music swelled, powerful and mystical, the crack widened and provided a glimpse of the vault beyond. It really did, in appearance and dimensions, look very much like the holographic depiction, except that there was no lava sloshing about. Instead, there was a kind of theatrical arena suspended above the bottomless pit. Steel walkways led to banked rows of comfortable-looking seats, which hovered freely above the abyss. At the centre there arched a transparent surface measuring at least a thousand square metres in area. Its bottom end was lost in the lightless depths, the top reached to just below the domed ceiling, its sides stretched far beyond the rows of seats.
Standing on the gallery was a lone man.
He was of medium height, slightly squat, and youthful in appearance, although his beard and his long, collar-length hair were grey, and the ash-blond colour of earlier years was a thing of the distant past. He wore a T-shirt and jacket, jeans and cowboy boots. There were rings on his fingers. His eyes flashed jauntily, his grin was like a lighthouse beam.
‘Here you are at last,’ said Julian Orley. ‘Okay, then: let’s rock ’n’ roll!’
* * *
Tim stood apart from the others, watching his father greet the guests with handshakes or hugs according to how well he knew them. Julian, the great communicator, laying friendly traps. So keen to meet people that he never doubted for a moment that those people wanted to meet him, and that was exactly what attracted them. The physics of meeting people is based on both attraction and repulsion, but it was practically impossible to escape Julian’s gravitational pull. You were introduced to him and you instantly felt warm familiarity. Two, three more times and you were lost in memories of old times together that had never existed. Julian didn’t do much, he came out with no quips, he didn’t practise speeches in front of the mirror, he just took it for granted that in Newton’s two-body system he was the planet and not the satellite.
‘Carl, old man! Lovely to have you here!’
‘Evelyn, you look fantastic. What idiot ever said the circle was the most perfect form?’
‘Momoka, Warren. Welcome. Oh, and thank you for last time, I’ve been meaning to call for ages. To be quite honest, I have no idea how I got home.’
‘Olympiada Rogacheva! Oleg Rogachev! Isn’t this fantastic? Here we are meeting right now for the first time, and tomorrow we’ll be travelling to the Moon together.’
‘Chucky, old man, I’ve got a great joke for you, but we’ll have to step aside for a minute if you’re to hear it.’
‘Where is my Fairy Queen? Heidrun! I’ve finally met your husband. Did you ever buy that Chagall? – Of course I know about that, I know about all your passions; your wife has been doing nothing but rave about you!’
‘Finn, young man, this is where it gets serious. You’ve got to go up there now. And this isn’t a movie!’
‘Eva Borelius, Karla Kramp. I’ve been particularly looking forward to …’
And so on, and so forth.
Julian found friendly words for everyone, then he came dashing over to Tim and Amber with a furtive grin.
‘So? How do you like it?’
‘Brilliant,’ said Amber, and put an arm around his shoulders. ‘The magma chamber’s amazing.’
‘Lynn’s idea.’ Julian beamed. He could barely utter his daughter’s name without adopting a sickly tone. ‘And this is nothing! Wait till you see the show.’
‘It’ll be perfect, as always,’ Tim stammered with barely concealed sarcasm.
‘Lynn and I came up with it together.’ As usual, Julian pretended not to have noticed Tim’s ironic tone. ‘The cave is a gift from heaven, I tell you. These rows of seats mightn’t look like much, but we can now screen this spectacle for five hundred paying guests, and if it’s more—’
‘I thought the hotel only had room for three hundred?’
‘Sure, but we can basically double our capacity. Put four or five decks on our ocean steamer, either that or Lynn will build a second one. Not a problem either way. The main thing is that
we rustle up the cash for another lift.’
‘The main thing is that you don’t get into difficulties.’
Julian looked at Tim with his light blue eyes.
‘And I’m not. Will you excuse me? Enjoy yourselves, see you later. Oh, Madame Tautou!’
Julian darted back and forth between the visitors, a laugh here, a compliment there. Every now and again he drew Lynn to him and kissed her on the temples. Lynn smiled. She looked proud and happy. Amber sipped at her champagne.
‘You could be a bit friendlier to him,’ she said quietly.
‘To Julian?’ snorted Tim.
‘Who else?’
‘What difference does it make if I’m friendly to him? He only sees himself anyway.’
‘Perhaps it makes a difference to me.’
Tim stared at her uncomprehendingly.
‘What’s up?’ Amber raised her eyebrows. ‘Are you slow-witted all of a sudden?’
‘No, but—’
‘Clearly you are. Then I’ll put it a different way. I don’t feel like spending the next two weeks constantly staring into your gloomy face, okay? I want to enjoy this trip, and you should too.’
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