Limit

by Frank Schätzing

  ‘So who says we have to concentrate on the complex? The police are doing that. I want us to concentrate on the crowd in the square.’

  ‘You mean the guy who did it went from there into the building?’

  ‘I mean that you’re a bit of a male chauvinist. It could have been a girl, couldn’t it?’

  ‘A killer chick, huh?’ giggled the intern.

  ‘Carry on like that and you’ll meet one in person. Look at every individual figure in the square. I want to know if anyone filmed the building before, during and after the attack.’

  ‘Oh, God! This is slave labour!’

  ‘Stop whining. Jump to it. I’ll take care of Youtube, Facebook, Smallworld and so on.’

  After the intern had started viewing the material, she had set about compiling a list of all significant decisions that Palstein had made or advocated over the past six months. She also recorded his resistance to the interests of others. She logged on to forums and blogs, followed the internet debate about closures, acquiescence on the one hand, helpless rage on the other, along with the desire to give the oilmen a good kicking, ideally to put them up against the wall right away, but none of these entries raised a suspicion that its author was in any way connected with the attack. The people involved in open-cast mining were bitter about it, but glad that it was coming to an end, particularly in the Indian communities. It struck her that the Chinese had been taking a great interest in Canadian oil sand over the past two decades, and had put a lot of money into open-cast mining, which they were now losing, and that regardless of the helium-3 revolution they were still, albeit to a waning degree, dependent on oil and gas. On the other hand there was now so much cheap oil available that anything else seemed more sensible than extracting it in the most unprofitable way imaginable. When, in the early hours of the morning, she finally found no more press information and no more postings, she compiled a file about Orley Enterprises, or more precisely about Palstein’s attempts to become involved with Orley Energy and Orley Space.

  And suddenly she had an idea.

  Dog-tired, she set about backing up her newly fledged theory with arguments. They weren’t particularly new: someone was trying to undermine Palstein’s involvement with Orley. Except that she suddenly realised, clear as day, that the purpose of the attack had been to keep Palstein from travelling to the Moon.

  If that was so—

  But why? What would Palstein have had to discuss with Julian Orley on the Moon that they couldn’t have sorted out on Earth? Or did it have something to do with other people he was supposed to meet there?

  She needed the list of participants.

  Her eyes stung. Palstein wasn’t supposed to fly to the Moon. The thought stayed with her. It continued in confused dreams, the kind you get when you fall asleep in office chairs, it produced visions in her alarmingly cracked brain, of people in spacesuits shooting at each other from designer buildings, with her caught in the middle.

  ‘Hey, Loreena.’

  ‘Mies is very popular on the Moon,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Meeces? Love ’em to pieces.’ Someone laughed. She’d been talking nonsense. Blinking and stiff-limbed, she came to. The intern was leaning on the edge of the desk and looked as pleased as punch.

  ‘Shit,’ she murmured. ‘I dozed off.’

  ‘Yeah, you look like a slaughtered animal. All that’s missing is the knife-handle sticking out of your chest. Come on, Pocahontas, get a cup of coffee down you. We’ve got something! I think we’ve really got something!’

  28 May 2025

  ENEMY CONTACT

  Quyu, Shanghai, China

  At around one o’clock, Jericho had had his fourth phone conversation with Zhao, who was at that instant watching a mass brawl and assured him that he was enjoying himself enormously.

  Net-junkies came and went. Some made the move to the honeycomb sleeping modules. Almost the entire population of the Cyber Planet was male – women were a vanishingly small minority and most of them were pretty long in the tooth. For Jericho, the only halfway healthy-looking people were the users of the full-motion suits and the treadmills, who were forced to take a bit of exercise as they explored virtual universes. Many of them spent their time in parallel worlds like Second Life and Future Earth, or in the Evolutionarium, where they could pretend to be animals, from dinosaurs all the way down to bacteria. Some of the reclining figures moved their sensor-covered hands, drew cryptic patterns in the empty air, a clue that they were attempting to play an active part in something or other. The overwhelming majority didn’t lift a finger. They had reached the terminal stage, reduced to being observers of their own extended agonies.

  Strangely, the atmosphere had a cathartic effect on Jericho, in which Zhao’s defamations melted away to nothing. The net zombies seemed to stir themselves, letting him know it just took an insignificant effort of will to end the status of his loneliness; they pointed at him with desiccated fingers, accused him of flirting with sadness, of having walled himself up in the past and brought about his own misery; they sent him back to life which, so far, hadn’t been nearly as bad as he thought. He made a thousand resolutions, soap-bubbles on whose surfaces the future iridesced. In a strange way the Cyber Planet brought him comfort. Then, as if on cue, Zhao called, claiming he just wanted to know how Jericho was getting on.

  He was getting on just fine, Jericho replied.

  And again he waited. Even though he had plenty of experience of staring stoically at a single spot, the comings and goings in the market were starting to bore him. People ate and drank, haggled, hung around, hooked up, laughed or got into arguments. The night belonged to the gangsters, it was here that they brought the day’s bounty back into the cycle of greed, albeit quite peacefully. He started to envy Zhao his punch-up, decided to rely entirely on the scanners for a while, connected the hologoggles up to his phone and logged in to Second Life. The market vanished, making way for a boulevard with bistros, shops and a cinema. Using his phone’s touchscreen, Jericho guided his avatar down the street. In this world he was dark-skinned, he had long, black hair and he was called Juan Narciso Ucañan, a name he’d read years ago in some disaster novel or other. Three good-looking young women were sitting at a table in the sun, all with transparent wings and filigree antennae above their eyes.

  ‘Hi,’ he said to one of them.

  She looked up and beamed at him. Jericho’s avatar was a masterpiece of programming, and even by the high standards of Second Life, unusually attractive.

  ‘My name’s Juan,’ he said. ‘I’m new here.’

  ‘Inara,’ she said. ‘Inara Gold.’

  ‘You’re looking great, Inara. Do you fancy a totally awesome experience?’

  The avatar that called itself Inara hesitated. That hesitation was typical of the woman hiding behind it. ‘I’m here with my girlfriends,’ she said evasively.

  ‘Well, I’d love to,’ said one of them.

  ‘Me too,’ laughed the other one.

  ‘Okay, let’s the four of us all do something.’ Jericho Juan put on a wide smile. ‘But first I need to discuss something with the most beautiful one. Inara.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Because I’ve got a surprise for you.’ He pointed to an empty chair. ‘Can I sit down here?’

  She nodded. Her big, golden eyes looked at him steadily. He leaned forward and lowered his voice.

  ‘Could we be undisturbed for a moment, beautiful Inara? Just the two of us?’

  ‘It’s not up to me, sweetie.’

  ‘We’re just going anyway,’ one of the girlfriends said and got to her feet. The other sent a snake-tongue darting from between her teeth, fished an insect out of the air, swallowed it and gave an offended hiss. They both spread their wings and disappeared behind a puff of pink clouds. Inara struck a pose and stretched her ribcage. The fabric of the tight top she was wearing started to become transparent.

  ‘I love surprises,’ she purred.

  ‘And this is one – Emma.’r />
  Emma Deng was so surprised that she momentarily lost control of her clothes. Her top disappeared completely, revealing perfectly formed breasts. A moment later her torso turned black.

  ‘Don’t go, Emma,’ Jericho said quickly. ‘It would be a mistake.’

  ‘Who are you?’ hissed the woman who called herself Inara.

  ‘That doesn’t matter.’ His avatar crossed his legs. ‘You’ve embezzled two million yuan and passed on company secrets to Microsoft. You can’t cope with more problems than that all at once.’

  ‘How – how did you find me?’

  ‘It wasn’t hard. Your preferences, your semantics—’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Forget it. My speciality is hunting down people on the net, that’s all. You’ve been transmitting for so long now that it was easy to locate you.’

  Not true, but Jericho knew that Emma Deng didn’t have the knowledge to see through his lie. A refined little girl, who had used the fact of her intimate relationship with the senior partner in the company she worked for in order to cheat it for years on end.

  ‘If I want,’ Jericho went on, ‘the cops will be at your door in ten minutes. You can run away, but they’ll find you just like I did. We’ll get you sooner or later, so I advise you to listen.’

  The woman froze. Outwardly she had as little in common with the real Emma Deng as Owen Jericho had with Juan Narciso Ucañan. If you examined her psychological profile, it was very likely that Emma would opt for a body like Inara Gold’s, almost one hundred per cent. Jericho was definitely pleased with himself.

  ‘I’m listening,’ she muttered.

  ‘Okay, the honourable Li Shiling is willing to forgive you. That’s the information that I’m supposed to pass on to you.’

  Emma laughed loudly.

  ‘You’re taking the piss.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Christ, I might be stupid, but I’m not as stupid as that. Shiling wants me to rot in hell.’

  ‘That’s not unthinkable.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘On the other hand Mr Li seems to be missing the delights of your company. Particularly in the genital region, he’s been finding life a little dull since you left.’

  Inara Gold’s beautiful face reflected unconcealed hatred. Jericho assumed that Emma was sitting in front of a full-body scanner that transferred her gestures and facial expressions to her avatar in real time.

  ‘What else did the old fucker have to say for himself?’ she hissed.

  ‘You don’t want to hear.’

  ‘I do. I want to know what I’m letting myself in for.’

  ‘A refreshing dip in the Huangpu, with your feet encased in lead? I mean, he’s furious! Your second-best option is that he’ll hand you over to the authorities. But according to his own personal testimony what he’d really like is for you to go on giving him blowjobs.’

  ‘Shiling’s disgusting.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem to have been that bad.’

  ‘He forced me!’

  ‘To do what? Relieve him of two million? Flog building plans to the competition? Come on to him, to win his trust?’

  Emma looked askance. ‘And what does he want?’

  ‘Nothing special. He wants you to marry him.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Could be,’ Jericho said casually. ‘The Huangpu’s shit too. The quality of the water has declined dramatically. Mr Li is waiting for your call at the number you know, and he wants to hear a loud, audibly articulated Yes. What do you think, could you do that? What shall I tell him?’

  ‘Shit. Shit!’

  ‘That’s not what he wants to hear.’

  By now Diane had passed on Emma’s location via the relevant server. She was in her apartment in Hong Kong. Far away, but not far enough. Nowhere would be far enough, unless she left the solar system.

  ‘He might buy you an apartment in Hong Kong,’ he added in a conciliatory tone.

  Emma gave up.

  ‘Okay,’ she squeaked.

  ‘Mr Li is always available to speak to. I’d like to get a cheerful call from him in an hour at the most, otherwise I’ll consider myself forced to blow your cover.’ Jericho paused. ‘Don’t take it personally, Emma. This is how I make my living.’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘We’re all whores.’

  ‘You said it.’

  He logged out of Second Life. The viewing window of the specs brightened. At the market, the last punters were on their feet. Most of the stands had closed. Jericho keyed in the time.

  Four in the morning.

  ‘Diane,’ he said into his phone.

  ‘Hi, Owen. You’re still awake?’

  Jericho smiled. Sympathy from a computer had something going for it if it spoke with Diane’s voice. He looked around. Most of the couches were abandoned. Cleaning systems were operating here and there. Even junkies had a vague sense of the time.

  ‘Wake me at seven, Diane.’

  ‘Sure, Owen. Oh, Owen?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m just receiving a message for you.’

  ‘Can you read it out?’

  ‘Zhao Bide writes: Don’t want to wake you in case you’ve dozed off under the burden of responsibility. Pleasant dreams. When it’s all over, let’s go and raise a glass.’

  Jericho smiled.

  ‘Write back and tell him – no, don’t write anything. I’m going to hit the hay.’

  ‘Can I do anything else for you?’

  ‘No thanks, Diane.’

  ‘See you later, Owen. Sleep well.’

  * * *

  See you later, Owen.

  Later, Owen.

  Owen—

  Later and later and later, and she doesn’t come back. He lies on his bed and waits. On the bed in the dingy room that he hopes so ardently to be able to leave with her.

  But Joanna doesn’t come back.

  Instead, fat caterpillar-like creatures start creeping up the bed-covers – claws clutching the cotton fibres – the click of segmented legs – alarm-bells – groping feelers brushing the soles of his feet – alarm – alarm—

  Wake up, Owen!

  Wake up!

  * * *

  ‘Owen?’

  He started awake, his body one big heartbeat.

  ‘Owen?’

  The early daylight stung his eyes.

  ‘What time?’ he murmured.

  ‘It’s only twenty-five past six,’ said Diane. ‘Sorry if I woke you prematurely. I have a Priority A call for you.’

  Yoyo. the idea darted through his head.

  No, the scanners were working independently of Diane, they could have woken him with an unnerving noise that was impossible to ignore. And he would have seen red. But among the people who were slowly repopulating the market, there wasn’t a single Guardian to be seen.

  ‘Put them through,’ he said bluntly.

  ‘What’s up? Are you still asleep?’

  Tu’s square head grinned at him. Behind him, the Serengeti was springing to life. Or something like it: at any rate giraffes and elephants were walking around the landscape. A glowing orange sky hung over pastel-coloured mountains. Jericho pulled himself up. Individual snores rang out through Cyber Planet. Only a young woman sat cross-legged on her stool, with a coffee in her right hand. Plainly not a junkie. Jericho assumed she’d just popped in to see the breakfast news.

  ‘I’m in Quyu,’ he said, suppressing a yawn.

  ‘I just thought. Because of your receptionist. A pretty voice, but normally you pick up yourself.’

  ‘Diane is—’

  ‘You call your computer Diane?’ Tu asked, interested.

  ‘I’m short-staffed, Tian. You’ve got Naomi. There was a TV series a long time ago where an FBI agent was always conferring with his secretary, although you never got to see her in person—’

  ‘And her name was Diane?’

  ‘Mm-hm.’

  ‘Nice,’ said Tu. ‘What’s wrong with a real secretary?
’

  ‘And where would she stay?’

  ‘If she was pretty, your bed. You’ve made it now, son. You live in a loft in Xintiandi. It’s time for you to arrive in your new life.’

  ‘Thanks. I’m there.’

  ‘You’re dealing with people who don’t quite get long-term incomers.’

  ‘Anything else, Reverend?’ Jericho swung himself off his couch, walked to the bar and chose a cappuccino. ‘Don’t you want to know how our search is going?’

  ‘You haven’t got anything.’

  ‘How do you work that out?’

  ‘If you had anything, you’d have been rubbing my nose in it for ages.’

  ‘Your call is Priority A. Why’s that?’

  ‘So that I can boast about being your best member of staff.’ Tu giggled. ‘You wanted to know who what’s-his-name Wang phoned before he died.’

  The coffee gurgled into the cardboard cup.

  ‘You mean—?’

  ‘Yes, I do. I’ll send you over his telephone traffic. All the conversations he’s had since 26 May. You can fall at my feet if you like.’

  ‘How did you manage that?’

  ‘Certainly not by rummaging through his remains. As luck would have it, I play golf with the CEOs of two service providers. The guy was registered with one of them. My acquaintance was kind enough to pass the data on to me, no questions asked.’

  ‘Christ, Tian!’ Jericho blew on his coffee. ‘Now you owe him all the favours in the world, right?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Tu said in a bored voice. ‘He owes me something.’

  ‘Good. Very good.’

  ‘Where do we go from here?’

  ‘Diane is constantly checking the net for suspicious texts, Zhao and I are keeping an eye on the markets. If no one appears in the course of the next few hours, I’ll have to consider extending the circle of investigators and showing photographs around. I’d rather avoid that if we can.’ Jericho paused. ‘How did your conversation with Chen Hongbing go?’

  ‘So-so. He’s worried.’

  ‘Isn’t he at least reassured that she’s at liberty?’