Limit

by Frank Schätzing

  ‘This detachment act of yours! Nothing affects you, right? Hat pulled down over your face, standing aside from the rest. That’s exactly what I meant before: Who is O’Keefe?’

  ‘He’s sitting right in front of you.’

  ‘Bullshit! You just have this vague notion of who O’Keefe is supposed be, if he wants to make everyone think he’s really cool. A rebel, whose problem is that he doesn’t actually have anything to rebel against, except boredom perhaps.’

  ‘Hey!’ He leaned forward. ‘What in God’s name gives you the idea I’m like that?’

  ‘This stupid attitude.’

  ‘You said yourself that—’

  ‘I said that I didn’t have any expectations, which means I’m open to everything. That’s quite a lot to be going on with. You, on the other hand, made out that it was nothing more than a job to you. That you’re just buying into the story that Julian’s lovely and the Moon is round, and then we’ll all hold hands until the cameras get turned off and we can finally go and get pissed. That’s lousy, Finn! Are you really that jaded? Do you really intend to tell me, in all seriousness, that you’re just in it for the money Julian’s throwing your way?’

  ‘Nonsense. I’m not getting paid for it.’

  ‘Okay then, last chance: What are you doing up here? What do you feel when you – well, when you look down at the Earth?’

  O’Keefe paused as he gave it some thought. He stared intently through the glass floor below. The problem was, he couldn’t think of a convincing answer. The Earth was the Earth.

  ‘Distance,’ he said finally.

  ‘Distance.’ She seemed to be tasting the word. ‘And? Good distance? Bad distance?’

  ‘Oh, Heidrun. Call it attitude if you really want to, but I just want to be left in peace. You think I’m some bored, arrogant type who’s lost any interest in getting into a debate. Maybe you’re right. Today I’m soft and compliant, the nice Finn. What are you expecting?’

  ‘I don’t know. What are you expecting?’

  ‘Why are you so interested? We hardly know each other.’

  ‘Because I was – still am – interested in you.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. All I know is that there are directors who make wonderful films on minuscule budgets, against all the odds. Other people play music no one wants to listen to, apart from a few crazy types perhaps, but they’re unwavering in what they do, they would die for it. Some people can barely afford the hooch that keeps them writing, but if you happen to stumble upon something of theirs online and download it, you’re strangely moved by how humanity and unmarketability seem to come together, and it makes you realise that great emotions always originate in the small, the intimate, the desperate. As soon as an orchestra gets involved, it turns to pathos. If you look at it that way, even the most beautiful woman would be no match for the lousiest hooker. No luxury can give you such a feeling of being alive as getting plastered with the right people, or touching your broken nose when you’ve picked a fight with the wrong ones. I stay in the best hotels in the world, but being in a mouldy back room with someone who has a dream, in some neighbourhood no sensible person would go of their own accord, well, that moves me much more than flying to the Moon.’

  Heidrun thought for a moment.

  ‘It’s lovely when you can afford to romanticise poverty,’ she commented.

  ‘I know what you mean. But that’s not what I’m doing. I don’t come from a poor background. I don’t have a message, I’m not fuelled by anger at society, I haven’t been sent up here by some political party or other. Perhaps that means I’m not committed enough, but it really doesn’t seem that way to me. We have a good time when we film Perry Rhodan, that’s for sure. I’m not about to turn down the money, either. And, recently, I’ve even started to enjoy being a nice guy, a rich nice guy who can fly to the Moon for free. I see all that and think, hey look, that’s little Finn. Then I meet women who want to be with me because they think I’m part of their life. Which is true, to some extent. I accompany them through this little, or, as far as I’m concerned, great life, I’m with them the whole time, in the cinema, in magazines, on the internet, in pictures. At night, when they lie awake, they entrust their secrets to me. During times of crisis in their lives, my films are important to them. They read interviews with me and after every second sentence they think: Wow, he understands me! He knows exactly what I’m about! Then when they meet me they’re convinced they’re standing there with a friend, a kindred spirit. They think they know me, but I don’t know them. I mean everything to them, but they don’t mean anything to me, not in the slightest. Just because my picture was hanging on their wall when they had their first orgasm, just because they may have been thinking about me, it doesn’t mean I was there. They’re not part of my life. There’s no connection between us.’ He paused. ‘And now tell me, what was it like when you first met Walo? What did you think? Oh, man, interesting, someone I don’t know. Who is he, I have to find out. Is that how it was?’

  ‘Yes, pretty much.’

  ‘And he thought the same. You see. The magic of the first impression. I, on the other hand, meet strangers labouring under the delusion that they know me. In order to completely let go of this life I would have to stop taking part in it, but it’s just too much fun. So I sing and dance along but I keep my distance.’

  ‘Well, that’s fame,’ said Heidrun. It didn’t sound mocking this time, more as if she was surprised by his list of banalities. But that’s exactly how things were. Banal. On the whole, there was nothing more banal than fame.

  ‘Yes’ he said. ‘It sure is.’

  ‘So we haven’t managed to come up with anything more original than what the doctor just said. Everyone’s looking for themselves in the unknown.’

  He hesitated. Then he smiled his famous, shy smile.

  ‘Perhaps we’re looking for our soulmates.’

  Heidrun’s violet eyes lingered on his, but she didn’t answer. They looked at each other, entangled in a strange, cocoon-like mood which excited O’Keefe as much as it unsettled him. He felt a twinge of awkwardness. It looked as though he was about to fall head over heels for a cumulative lack of melanin.

  He jumped, almost relieved, as Julian clapped his hands.

  ‘Dear friends, I didn’t dare hope.’

  Silence fell.

  ‘And I swear I didn’t ask him to. I merely suggested keeping a guitar handy, just in case! And now he’s even brought his own along.’

  Julian smiled around at them. His gaze wandered over to the man with the multicoloured eyes.

  ‘Back in ’69, when I had just turned three years old, he went to the movies and saw A Space Odyssey, which would later become my favourite film, and paid immediate tribute to its maker. Almost a quarter of a century later I had my own opportunity to honour Kubrick, modelling my first restaurant on the design of his space station, and I called it Oddity, in honour of the great artist we have with us here. Kubrick lived in Childwickbury Manor at the time, the estate near London that he hardly ever left. He also hated aeroplanes. I suspect that once he moved to the United Kingdom from New York he never put any more than a hop, skip and a jump between himself and English soil. And he was said to be very shy, so I never expected to see him in Oddity. But to my surprise, he turned up there one evening, when David was sitting at the bar too. We all talked, and I ended up blurting out the fact that I wanted to take them both to the Moon with me, that all they had to do was say yes and we’d be on our way. Kubrick laughed and said the lack of comfort alone would horrify him. He thought the whole thing was a joke of course. I had the presumption to claim that, by the turn of the millennium, I would have built a spaceship with all comforts and mod cons, of course without the slightest idea of how I would go about achieving such a thing. I had just turned twenty-six, was producing films, more bad ones than good, and was trying my hand at being an actor. I’d brought a new production of Fritz Lang’s Woman in the Moon to the big screen with David in the lead role
, was winning favour with the critics and public alike, and was also just starting to feel my way in the field of gastronomy. Orley Enterprises was still very much in the distant future. I was, however, a passionate flyer and dreamed of the space travel that also fascinated Kubrick. So I finally managed to talk him and David into a bet: if I succeeded in building the promised spaceship by the year 2000, the two of them had to come on the flight. If not, I would finance one hundred per cent of Kubrick’s next film and David’s forthcoming album.’

  Julian ran his fingers through his beard, transported back to the past.

  ‘Unfortunately, Stanley died before that could happen, and my life changed fundamentally after that evening. I only produce films as a sideline now. Orley Travel was born in a small travel bureau in Soho which I took over at the beginning of the nineties. I owned two airlines and bought an abandoned studio complex to work on the development of space vessels and space stations. With the foundation of Orley Space we pushed into the technology market. Some of the best brains from NASA and ESA worked for us, experts from Russia, Asia and India, engineers from Germany: because we paid higher salaries, created better research conditions, and were more enthusiastic, speedy and efficient than their old employers. By then, no one doubted that state space travel was in urgent need of some live-cell therapy from the private market, but I had set myself the goal of actually taking its place! I wanted to usher in the dawn of the true space era, without the hesitancy of the bureaucrats, the chronic lack of money and the dependence on political change. We offered prize money for young designers, had them develop rocket-propelled aircraft, and expanded our tourism range to sub-orbital flights. I’ve flown machines like that myself many times. And maybe it wasn’t yet a proper space flight, but it was a brilliant beginning. Everyone wanted to come! Space tourism promised astronomic yield, that is if we could succeed in reducing the start-up costs.’ He laughed softly. ‘Well, in spite of that I lost the bet initially. I didn’t make it by the year 2000. So I offered to settle my debt with David. But he didn’t want me to. All he said was: Keep your money and send me the ticket when it’s ready. The only thing I can say today is that his presence on the OSS is a great honour and makes me deeply happy. And whatever one could add about his greatness, his importance to our culture and the lease of life he has given to so many generations, his music can express that much better than I ever could. So now I’ll shut up and hand over to – Major Tom.’

  The silence that followed was almost sacred. A guitar was passed along. The lights had been dimmed further still during Julian’s speech and the Pacific was shimmering as if it had just been polished. Through the oval side window, scattered sugar glowed against a black backdrop.

  Looking back later, O’Keefe saw those seconds when David Bowie launched into the opening chords of ‘Space Oddity’ – alternating between Fmaj7 and Em, soft and muted at first, then swelling powerfully, as if one were nearing the bustle of activity around the launch pad from the indifferent silence of space, right up to the moment when ground control and Major Tom enter into their memorable dialogue – as what may have been the last, and perhaps the only really harmonious moment of their journey. In his naïve happiness he forgot what Orley’s venture was really about: catapulting people from the globe into a hostile environment, onto a satellite which, despite having spiritualised its previous visitors, had not yet made a single one of them want to return. He was keenly aware that every search for meaning which involved leaving the Earth would only culminate in his looking round at it at every opportunity, and he suddenly pictured himself getting so far away from it that it was completely out of sight, wretched and flooded with fear.

  And the stars look very different today—

  And when Tom’s ballad finally came to an end, and the unlucky Major had been lost to the void of his inflated expectations, he felt, instead of the enchantment he had hoped for, a strange kind of disillusionment, almost like homesickness, although they were only 36,000 kilometres away from home. The right-hand side of the planet had begun to darken. He saw Heidrun inhale the moment with her lips half open, her gaze alternating between Bowie and the sea of stars on the other side of the window, while his was drawn over to her as if by magic. He realised that the Swiss woman had arrived in herself a long time ago, that she would happily travel to the very edge of the universe, because she carried her home in and with her, that she had certainly reached a much higher level of freedom than him, and he found himself wishing he were upstairs above some Dublin pub, being held in someone’s arms on a threadbare mattress.

  * * *

  It seems quite a few people had the same idea that night.

  Perhaps it was the way Amber had comforted him as he’d cried on her shoulder about Julian’s ignorance that had stimulated Tim physically as well as emotionally; perhaps it was her kisses, the tautness in her arms, the springy elasticity she’d acquired in the gym; perhaps it was because, after so many years of mundane married life, his fantasies still revolved exclusively around his wife to the extent that he wanted to caress no other behind but hers, glide his hand into no other delta but hers – which meant he was about as suited to infidelity as a steam engine was to leaving the tracks – and even in those moments when he was pleasuring himself, he wanted to imagine no one but her; perhaps it was because her divine looks had not been tainted by the passing of the years – praise to the genes! – and because the buoyancy of zero gravity had returned her breasts to that legendary state which, at the beginning of their relationship, had made him feel as though he were grasping ripe melons; perhaps it was the way his attempt to fumble apart the clasps on her bathrobe had resulted in his being propelled into the opposite corner of the module, which had only turned him on all the more, as she lay there laughing amongst the swinging folds of the open robe, like an angel ready to sin – but whatever the reason was, his body was defying all the adversity of zero gravity, the low supply of blood to the lumbar region, the disorientation and light sense of nausea, by producing a true space rocket of an erection.

  He paddled over and grasped hold of her shoulders. Peeling her out of her bathrobe was one thing, but Amber’s attempt to free him from his trousers and T-shirt failed as they drifted apart, which they did again and again until he ended up wriggling naked above the bed, heading helplessly for the ceiling. She looked at his galactic erection with visible interest, as helpless as she was amused.

  ‘So what do we do with that now?’ she laughed.

  ‘There must be a way.’ He was determined. ‘People must have thought about this.’

  ‘Hopefully. It’d be a shame if they hadn’t.’

  Tim did a handstand and ploughed over to her. This time, he managed to get a grip on her hips and buried his head between her legs, which she spread and then immediately closed again to keep his head in place. As a result, the blood rushed to his ears. Circling his tongue, he pressed ahead, capturing the tiny mound beneath the small forest, the density of which threatened to take his breath away as he pressed his nose inside her out of fear of ending up at the other end of the room again, becoming intoxicated by the blend of their lust and countering her first, blissful sighs – provided that his ears, packed tightly between her thighs, weren’t deceiving him – with muffled agreement. An overdose of oxygen seemed to mingle with the cabin air – or was it the lack of oxygen that suddenly made him feel as high as a schoolboy? Who cared! Joyfully exhilarated, he made his way deeper inside, panting, grunting, the tip of his tongue flying dedicatedly around. At the moment when the tropical dampness of deep-lying realms opened up to him, believing he heard a declaration of love burst forth, he couldn’t hold back and mumbled a ‘Me too, oh, me too’, but got a puzzling response.

  ‘Ow! Ouch!’

  Something had clearly gone wrong. Tim looked up. In doing so, he made the mistake of loosening his grip. Amber flailed around as if she were drowning, kicking him from her. Pushed away, he saw that she was rubbing her head, and that it was in the immediate vicinity of
the edge of the desk. Aha. He should have thought of that, that they would drift away in the heat of the moment. Lesson number one: it wasn’t enough to clasp on to each other, they needed to fix themselves within the room too. He couldn’t help but laugh. Amber wrinkled her nose and frowned, then his gaze fell on something that could offer a solution.

  ‘Look!’

  ‘What?’ She dug the fingers of her right hand into his hair and tried to bite his nose, which resulted in her doing a somersault. Tim hopped over to the bed like a frog, pulling Amber, still head over heels, along with him.

  ‘Buckling ourselves in?’ she snorted mockingly. ‘How unerotic. It’d be like doing it in a car. We’ll hardly be able to move—’

  ‘No, silly, not with the sleeping belt. Look!’

  Amber’s expression brightened. Above the bed were some handles, mounted a little distance apart from one another.

  ‘Wait. I think I saw something that might go with them.’

  She hurried over to the cupboard, opened it, rummaged around and unearthed several long bands made from a rubber-like material. They had a red, yellow and green pattern and were adorned with a slogan.

  ‘Love Belt,’ she read.

  ‘So there you go,’ grinned Tim. ‘People did think about it.’ For the first time since they’d set off on the journey, he felt carefree and playful, a sensation which just an hour ago he had thought was gone for good. Lynn didn’t become entirely insignificant, of course, but just retreated to an insignificant province of his cortex, one that wasn’t attending to Amber’s scent and the throbbing desire to fuck her. ‘It looks like we have to fasten you by the wrists, my darling. No, by the hands and feet. Like in the torture chambers of the Holy Inquisition.’

  She started to thread the bands through the handles.

  ‘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.’