Limit

by Frank Schätzing

‘Hongbing has turned worrying into an art form. But he trusts you.’

  Behind Tu, a big bird of prey flapped into the air. A giraffe came quite close.

  ‘Tell me, where are you?’

  ‘Where do you think?’ Tu grinned. ‘In my office, of course.’

  ‘And where are you pretending to be?’

  ‘In South Africa. Pretty, isn’t it? It’s from the autumn collection. We’re offering twelve environments. The software places your image in the background as soon as you make your call, and adapts you to the environment. Have you noticed that the sun’s shining on my bald head?’

  ‘And the other environments?’

  ‘The Moon’s really brilliant!’ Tu beamed. ‘In the background the American moon base and spaceships landing. The program gives you a spacesuit. One can see your face through the visor of the helmet. Your voice is a bit distorted, like in the moon landings last century.’

  ‘One giant step for mankind,’ Jericho teased.

  ‘Let me know if anything new comes up.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Jericho took a sip of his coffee. Thin and bitter. He urgently needed fresh air. As he crossed the foyer, Diane told him she had received a data packet from Tu, and passed it on to him. He stepped out into the street, with his eye on the display. Numbers, days and times became visible. Wang’s phone traffic. Diane compared the relevant data with information they had already. Of course Jericho didn’t expect any matches.

  But she told him there was one.

  He frowned. The evening before his death, Grand Cherokee Wang had dialled a number that also appeared among Jericho’s contacts. Diane had correlated names and numbers, so that there was no doubt about who the student had phoned on the afternoon of 26 May.

  Jericho stared at the name.

  Suddenly he realised that he’d made a terrible mistake.

  Steelworks

  He had gone for direct confrontation, which temporarily forced him out of his location. After setting up another scanner near the front door of Cyber Planet, Jericho set off. If the scouts caught one of their target people, he could be back within a few minutes.

  The streets were still empty, which meant that he made good headway. He parked the Toyota behind a soot-black building, straightened his hologoggles and approached Wong’s World on foot. The glass façade of this Cyber Planet showed that the market was on the way up. This branch of Wong was decidedly less run down than the other one. As Zhao had described it, it lacked the booths for prostitutes and people running gambling games; everything seemed to be entirely devoted to the preparation of food and the sale of groceries. Vegetables, herbs and spices were displayed in baskets and containers. For one customer, a woman reached into a basket with a grabber and pulled out a snake that went into violent convulsions when the saleswoman routinely cut open its body and pulled off the skin. Jericho turned away and inhaled the smell of fresh wontons and baozis. The stand was busy. Two young men with damply glistening torsos, swathed in the steam that rose from huge pots, swung their ladles, passed bowls of broth and crunchy crab and pork dumplings over the counter. Jericho walked on, ignoring the protests of his stomach. He could eat later. He crossed the street, stepped into Cyber Planet and glanced around. There was no sign of Zhao. There were no sleeping pods, but he might have gone to the toilet. Jericho waited for ten minutes, but Zhao didn’t appear.

  He stepped outside again.

  And suddenly he saw them.

  There were two of them. They were both strolling towards the wonton stall and inadvertently looked in his direction as they did so. Their outlines glowed red on the glass of the hologoggles. The boy was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, the girl a mini-skirt for which she was a stone too heavy and a biker’s jacket with a massive City Demons logo. They were laden down with Wong’s World paper bags. They asked the sweaty wonton cooks to put generous portions of soup in sealable plastic bowls, which they received, chatting and laughing, and put in the bags. Both looked carefree and generally cheerful. They talked to other customers for a while and walked on.

  They bought enough breakfast to feed a whole gang.

  Jericho followed them while the computer supplied him with details taken from Tu’s database: the girl’s name was Xiao Meiqi, known as Maggie, a computer science student. The boy was called Jin Jia Wei, on an electronic technology course. According to Tu, they were part of Yoyo’s inner circle. With Daxiong, that meant that Jericho now knew by sight four of the six dissidents. And those two certainly weren’t going to be demolishing the contents of those bags all by themselves.

  He pushed his way towards them, while at the same time keeping an eye out for Zhao. Maggie Xiao and Jin Jia Wei had their Thermos flasks filled with tea, they bought cigarettes and little cakes with a paste of nuts, honey and red beans that Yoyo loved – so Jericho recalled – then they crossed the street. As soon as he saw their parked e-bikes on the other side, he knew there was no point going on following them on foot. He turned back to his Toyota, started it up and steered it between passers-by and cyclists. The street was too wide for washing-lines, there was nothing to obstruct his view, so he could see the looming silhouette of the blast furnace a few kilometres away. Jin and Maggie dashed towards it on their bikes. Seconds later Jericho too had left the commotion of the market behind him, and now saw a dusty patch of waste ground, with the old steelworks stretching beyond. The bikes raised clouds of dust. He avoided following the two of them in a straight line, instead driving the Toyota into the shadow of a row of low Portakabins.

  Yoyo was hiding somewhere in those industrial ruins, he was sure of it.

  He watched apprehensively as the bikes headed towards the blast furnace which, standing out against the light of dawn, looked like a launch pad for spaceships, as Jules Verne might have imagined it: a barrel-shaped cylinder, tapering towards the top, a good fifty metres high, encased in a steel girder construction that still gave an idea of the smelter. Levels of scaffolding, bridges and walkable platforms, connected by beams and stairways, overflowing with pumps, generators, floodlights, wiring and other equipment. A conveyor belt ran steeply up from the ground to the filling inlet of the furnace. Above it, a massive pipe stretched into the sky, bent abruptly and ended up in a kind of oversized cooking pot with three huge, upright tanks. Everything in this world seemed to have grown and tangled together. Everything that might have served the exchange of gases and fluids, cables, pipelines and tubes, created the impression of hopelessly tangled intestines, as if the innards of a colossal machine had turned inside out.

  Right in front of the furnace a tower of girders grew from the ground, about half as high. As if put there by magic, a little house with a gabled roof and windows stood at the top of it, connected to the furnace construction by a platform. Clearly it had once served as a control room. Unlike the other buildings around it, its windows were intact. Jin and Maggie guided their bikes into an adjoining low-rise building, and a few moments later, swinging their Wong bags, reappeared and began climbing the zigzag stairways of the tower. Jericho slowed his pace, stopped and looked up at the former control room.

  Was Yoyo up there?

  At that moment he saw something approaching from the market and coming to a standstill on the vacant lot. He turned his head and saw a man sitting on a motorbike. No, not a motorbike. It looked more as though a running machine, a narwhal and a jet engine had been combined into something whose purpose wasn’t immediately apparent. Stocky, with a wide saddle, closed side panels and a flattened windscreen, and a gaping hole where its front wheel should have been. Silvery spokes flashed inside it, plainly a turbine. Pivoting jets emerged along the handlebars and the pillion. Apparently the thing slid along on its smooth belly and two tapering fins that pointed to the rear. It was only on closer inspection that you noticed that a nose-wheel grew from the belly, and the fins ended in enclosed spheres, which gave it a certain roadworthiness in spite of its flat bottom. But the actual purpose of the machine was quite different. Years ago, wh
en the first models were ready for production, Jericho had applied for a permit, before baulking at the extortionate purchase price. Those things were expensive. Too expensive for Owen Jericho.

  Far too expensive for someone from Quyu.

  So what was Zhao doing sitting on that thing?

  Zhao Bide, who was staring over at the blast furnace, watching Jin and Maggie climb the steps, without noticing Jericho in the shade of the building. Who hadn’t called in, in spite of everything they’d agreed, even though he was hot on the heels of two Guardians who would in all likelihood lead him to Yoyo. Whose number Grand Cherokee Wang had dialled the evening before he died, to talk to him for one minute, as Tu’s data revealed.

  Wang had called Zhao.

  Why?

  Uneasy and electrified, Jericho was heading across to confront Zhao, who was leaning over right at that moment and wiping something from the dashboard – just as he had polished the display in Jericho’s car.

  It all fitted.

  Cherokee Wang’s murderer, just before he fled from the World Financial Center: in an elegant made-to-measure suit, with tinted glasses, a false moustache and wig, which temporarily transformed his even features into the face of Ryuichi Sakamoto, he leaned forward and wiped the controls of the Silver Dragon. But Jericho hadn’t been looking carefully enough, because suddenly he reminds him not of a Japanese pop star or a model, but all the time of—

  Zhao Bide.

  He’s the one who’s set the hitman on Yoyo’s trail.

  Just as he puts his foot down on the accelerator, Zhao starts his airbike. A sound of turbines sweeps across the square. The machine swivels its jets into the upright position, balances for a moment on the tips of its fins and shoots steeply upwards, and Jericho realises that there is now hardly a chance of saving Yoyo.

  * * *

  How ridiculously easy everything had been.

  And at the same time how excruciating.

  Although he had barely been able to conquer his dread over the past few hours when fate had decreed that he go to Quyu, once more having the proof before his eyes that the superiority of the human race was the fevered hallucination of religiously infected Darwinists, a tragic error that called for correction. Sheer revulsion had driven him to speak to Jericho about the failure of creation, the unsuccessful part of the experiment – rashness! What Zhao had by the skin of his teeth managed to turn into sarcasm, now reflected Kenny Xin’s genuine outrage. The bulk of his species was a seething parasitic mass, a scandal for any creator, if there had ever been one. Only a few people who felt similarly had taken their insight to its conclusion, like that Roman who had burned his city down, even if he was said to have ruined the moment by singing. But Xin wished he could have seen the purifying fire in which the face of poverty blistered and charred; or even more than that:

  He wished he could be the fire!

  Objectively speaking, an eyesore like Quyu deserved to be reduced to ashes. Worldwide, one and a half billion people lived in slums. One and a half billion upon whom life had been squandered, who breathed in precious air and used up valuable resources, without producing anything but more poverty, still more hunger, still more progeny. One and a half billion who were suffocating the world. Still, Quyu would be a start.

  But Xin had learned to rein in his feelings. To declare his independence of the dictates of the emotions. He had furiously set about re-creating, immunising and cleansing himself. So deeply that he would never again be forced to rub his skin off to rid himself of the dirt, the wire-pulling circumstances of his birth, the damp and sticky leavings of daily assaults, the scabs of despair. He had known that he would inevitably perish if he didn’t succeed in cleansing himself, and that his own death, the piss-stench of capitulation, would not bring redemption.

  So he had acted.

  Sometimes, at night, he experienced the day again, over and over. The tribunal of flames. He felt the heat on his cheeks, witnessed the burial of his own sticky corpse, felt the faint amazement of his wonderful, reborn body, his wild joy at the tremendous power that he would now have at his disposal. He was free. Free to do what he felt like. Free to slip into any skin he wished to, such as Zhao Bide’s.

  How ridiculously simple it had been to latch on to Jericho, to take the man into his service. Grand Cherokee Wang might have been an idiot, but Xin owed him mute thanks for his detective card. Jericho had taken him to Quyu, to the Andromeda, where Xin had decided to take the game to its extreme. No wig this time, no false noses and beards, just appropriate clothing, based on the standard outfit that he carried with him at all times. Perhaps he hadn’t looked scruffy enough, he didn’t wear appliqués of any kind, but the roadies hadn’t minded, they’d just been grateful for someone to help them with the bulky Portakabins, and within a few minutes they’d given him all the information he needed in order to trick Jericho: Ass Metal. The Pink Asses. What could the detective have done but take Xin for one of them?

  Jericho had been the mouse, he was the cat. He had come up with his own makeshift plan. Assault, ceasefire, two beers, a pact. Provided by Hydra with sufficient knowledge about the girl to impress the detective. There were some answers he hadn’t been able to give. Jericho’s question, for example, about whether he was a City Demon had been a complete curve-ball. He had known nothing about any organisation by that name. There was so much he hadn’t known that the unsuspecting detective had kindly told him, like where Yoyo and her Guardians liked to go shopping. It had taken him a quarter of an hour to find out the location of the Wong markets. Zhao Bide was a loyal partner, he made every effort to help, which also involved alerting Jericho’s attention to his pursuer – Zhao himself.

  He had spent the afternoon in the Hyatt, where he had had a long and thorough shower to get rid of the stench of Xaxu at least for a few hours. There had been a message to the effect that the experts had arrived, and that three airbikes were ready, just as he had demanded. He had sent the two men on ahead, and had followed them at a leisurely pace, back into the dirt where he was to meet Jericho.

  Owen Jericho and he had been a good team.

  Meanwhile, since the scanners had revealed the reappearance of Maggie Xiao Meiqi and Jin Jia Wei, it was time to give up that partnership. Jericho might waste away in Cyber Planet. The airbike rose into the air until Kenny could see the steelworks in all its massive dereliction. Only a few scattered people were in evidence, homeless people and gangs who had found refuge in the factory halls. A little group of bikers crossed the savannahs of the slag-fields, came closer. Meanwhile Xiao Meiqi and Jin Jia Wei had worked their way up the system of steps and climbed the platform on which the former control room of the blast furnace rested. The girl disappeared inside, while Jia Wei turned round and looked out onto the square.

  His gaze wandered to the sky.

  Kenny spoke into the microphone, issued instructions. Then he swivelled the jets of the airbike to horizontal.

  * * *

  Jin Jia Wei had a reputation for being lazy and truculent, and showed little interest in his studies. On the other hand he was a gifted hacker. No more and no less. He didn’t share Yoyo’s lofty plans but neither did he challenge them, because they actually didn’t interest him. She wanted to improve the world? Fine. More fun, at any rate, than mouldering away in lecture halls, and anyway Jia Wei was head over heels in love with her, as was everybody, in fact. As ideologist in chief, Yoyo found nicely idiotic reasons to break into alien networks, preferably those of the Party, and besides, she supplied the equipment too. For Jia Wei she was a magic toyshop owner, with him as the lucky boy who was allowed to try out all the lovely things she brought along. She had the ideas, and he had the ploys up his sleeve. What did you call that kind of relationship? Symbiosis?

  Something like that.

  On the positive side, it was worth noting that he would never have betrayed Yoyo. Not least out of self-interest – after all, the group stood and fell with her and her box of tricks filled by Tu Technologies. In return h
e was even prepared to make her problems his own, particularly because he felt a little responsible for the tense situation. After all, he had advised her on this surefire, super-refined matter, and in that he had been successful, unfortunately too successful. Now Yoyo was troubled by worries that robbed her of sleep, so Jia Wei had spent the past two days trying to find out what had actually gone wrong on the night in question. And found something, an incredible coincidence of events. Now, enveloped in a cloud of wonton fragrances rising from Wong’s bags, as he looked across the square, he decided to talk to Yoyo about it right after breakfast. Maggie’s jabbering emerged from the control centre that they had been using as their headquarters since Andromeda had ceased to be safe; she was chattering cheerfully away into her phone, rounding up the rest of the group.

  ‘Breakfast,’ she crowed.

  Breakfast, exactly. That was what he needed now.

  But all of a sudden his feet felt frozen to the spot. From his elevated observation-point he could see all the way to the far-away coke plant, whose quenching tower loomed sadly into the dawn sky. The factory grounds were enormous, and included the old steel complex. He wondered where the new sound was coming from, the one that he hadn’t heard around here for ages, a distant hiss, as if the air over Wong’s World were burning.

  He narrowed his eyes.

  To the left of the quenching tower, something was hanging in the sky.

  It took Jin Jia Wei a second to work out that it was the source of the hiss. A moment later he recognised what it was. And although he had never heard anyone say that intuition was one of his outstanding qualities, he felt the danger emanating from it as if in waves.

  No one in Quyu had an airbike.

  He recoiled. Between Wong’s World and Cyber Planet, he saw two more of the beefy machines appearing and gliding along not far from the ground. At the same time a car came careening out from behind the surrounding Portakabins and stopped by the blast furnace. The airbike seemed to inflate, a sensory illusion caused by the high speed of its approach.