Limit

by Frank Schätzing

  ‘What time is it?’ he asked.

  She rolled reluctantly onto her back and glanced at the digital display above the door.

  ‘Four minutes before half past eight. We could still try to be on time.’

  ‘What, are you crazy?’

  ‘It’s what people generally expect of the Swiss.’

  ‘Time to demolish some clichés, perhaps?’ Ögi picked up a strand of her hair. Unpigmented keratin, but in it he saw white moonlight melting between his fingers. ‘Okay, maybe you’re right, we shouldn’t dawdle. People will be getting worried.’

  ‘About Ganymede?’

  ‘About whatever. It isn’t very comforting to be invited to this kind of meeting.’

  ‘Motormouth told us not to worry.’

  ‘And you couldn’t really say we had, could you?’ He grinned and sat up. ‘Come on, mein Schatz. Let’s get into social contract mode.’

  * * *

  With silent, sweating Kokoschka by her side, Dana was going up. The lift stopped at the fifteenth floor. Lynn joined them. She looked dreadful, as if she’d aged several years, hardly able to focus, her eyes darting unsteadily around. A curiously distant, sly-looking smile played around the corners of her mouth.

  ‘What’s all this?’ she said to Dana without looking at her. She ignored Kokoschka completely.

  ‘What’s all what?’

  ‘What’s the meeting for?’

  The lift doors closed.

  ‘We’re evacuating,’ Dana said bluntly. ‘Where have you been, Lynn? Have you seen Sophie?’

  ‘Sophie?’ Lynn looked at her as if she’d never heard the name before but thought it was very interesting.

  ‘Yes. You remember Sophie Thiel.’

  ‘We can’t evacuate,’ Lynn said, almost cheerfully. ‘Julian wouldn’t want that.’

  ‘Your father isn’t here.’

  ‘Call it off.’

  ‘Excuse me, but I think it’s exactly what he would want.’

  ‘No! No, no, no, no, no.’

  ‘Yes, Lynn.’

  ‘You’re messing up the whole trip.’

  Kokoschka hunched his shoulders and stuck his hand in his pocket. Dana noticed and gave a start. Was he holding something in his hand?

  ‘You stupid bitch,’ Lynn said brightly, and the lift doors opened again.

  Chuck Donoghue was waiting in the neck. He was quivering with rage. Aileen came hurrying down the stairs wearing a concerned expression. Dana came out of the lift, with Lynn and Kokoschka hot on her heels.

  ‘What can I do for you, Chuck?’

  ‘You’re taking us for idiots, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m here to inform you about the state of developments.’ Dana faked a smile. ‘So could we go upstairs, please?’

  ‘No, we couldn’t.’

  ‘Please, Chucky.’ Aileen fiddled with Donoghue’s sleeve. The lift doors slid shut. ‘Listen to what she has to say.’

  ‘I’ll listen to it here.’

  ‘There’s nothing to say,’ Lynn twittered. ‘Everything’s hunky-dory. Shall we go and eat?’

  ‘I want to know what’s going on right now!’ snapped Donoghue. He came closer, entered her personal space. ‘Where’s Julian? Where are the others? You’ve known what’s happening for ages, why can’t we talk to anybody? You’ve known all along.’

  ‘Are you threatening me, Chuck?’

  ‘Come on. Say it.’

  Dana Lawrence didn’t budge from the spot. She stared calmly into the big man’s eyes. To do so, she had to throw her head back, but inside it was as if she was looking down at Donoghue.

  ‘ When I’ve told you, shall we go up?’

  Donoghue clearly hadn’t expected her to give in so easily. He took a step back.

  ‘Of course,’ Aileen hurried to reassure her in his place.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Donoghue repeated lamely.

  ‘No!’ screamed Lynn.

  * * *

  Tim heard her in the Mama Quilla Club, even though the Chang’e, the Selene and the Luna Bar were in between. He heard her fear, her rage, her madness. All at once he leapt to his feet and dived down the stairs taking four at a time. Dana’s authoritarian alto joined in, counterpointed by arpeggios of high, frightened, Aileen wails, over Donoghue’s rumbling bass. He plunged down into Gaia’s throat.

  Strange. His sister had pulled one of the oxygen candles from its mounting and was swinging the steel cylinder like a club, while Dana, Chuck, Aileen and Kokoschka circled her like a pack of wolves.

  Tim pushed his way between the Donoghues, saw Lynn stepping back and roared, ‘What’s going on? What are you doing to her?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask her what she’s doing to us,’ growled Chuck.

  ‘Lynn—’

  ‘Leave me alone! Don’t get too close!’

  Tim held his hand out to her. She recoiled still further, raised the candle and stared at him, eyes darting from side to side.

  ‘Tell me what’s going on.’

  ‘She wants to evacuate Gaia,’ Lynn panted. ‘That’s what’s going on. The bitch wants to evacuate Gaia.’

  * * *

  Kokoschka was so confused that he didn’t even try to understand what was going on. Clearly the business manager of Orley Travel was going mad. His thoughts had turned entirely to Tim and the end of his personal odyssey. He drew Sophie’s note from his pocket. ‘Mr Orley, I’ve got—’

  Tim ignored him. ‘Lynn, come to your senses.’

  ‘She wants to evacuate the hotel.’ The woman’s voice was reduced to a whisper. ‘But I won’t let her, under any circumstances.’

  ‘Of course, we’ve got to talk about it. But first give me the candle.’

  ‘Evacuate?’ Chuck echoed, eyes rolling.

  ‘You should listen to your brother.’ Dana pointed at Lynn’s makeshift club. ‘You’re putting us all in danger.’

  Tim knew what she meant. The cylinder contained large quantities of compressed oxygen, and Lynn’s fingers were dangerously close to the detonator. As soon as she set the exothermic reaction in motion, the contents would spread slowly into the environment, a pointless waste, along with the danger that the partial pressure of the oxygen would exceed permitted levels. The cartridges were meant for emergencies, when breathable air was in short supply.

  ‘Mr Orley!’ Kokoschka was waving a piece of paper.

  ‘What do you mean, evacuate?’ Donoghue snapped.

  ‘Dana’s right,’ said Tim. ‘Please, Lynn. Give me the candle.’

  ‘Julian doesn’t want us to evacuate,’ Lynn explained dreamily to an imaginary audience. For a second she seemed completely absent. Then her gaze settled on her brother. ‘You know that, don’t you? We mustn’t frighten Daddy’s guests, so we’ll all stay here like good boys and girls.’

  ‘That would suit you, wouldn’t it?’ Dana snorted.

  Lynn’s dreamy expression made way for seething fury. She swung the cartridge again.

  ‘Tim, tell her to shut up!’

  ‘Oh, so I’m supposed to shut up, am I?’ Dana took a step forward. ‘What about, Lynn? Everybody here has known for ages.’

  Tim looked at her in confusion. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘About how your sister manipulated the tapes. That she’s been used by Hanna. That she’s losing her marbles. Isn’t that true, Miss Orley?’

  Lynn ducked down. A sly spark appeared in her eyes, then she suddenly jumped forwards and swung a blow at Dana, who effortlessly dodged it.

  ‘You were the one who let Hanna take his trip on the Lunar Express. Why, Lynn? Was he supposed to bring something back? To us in the hotel?’

  ‘Stop!’

  ‘You blocked the satellites. You’re paranoid, Lynn. You’re in cahoots with a criminal.’

  ‘What do you mean, evacuate?’ roared Chuck. He gripped Dana roughly by the shoulder. ‘I said, what do you mean, evacuate?’

  The manager whirled around and knocked his hand away.

  ‘You s
hut your mouth!’

  Donoghue’s massive head turned crimson. ‘You – you jumped-up chambermaid, I’ll—’

  ‘Chuck, no!’ pleaded Aileen.

  ‘Miss Orley—’ Dana repeated.

  With a tormented expression on her face, Lynn shook her head. Tears were collecting on her eyelids.

  ‘What have you done with Sophie Thiel, Lynn?’ Dana insisted. ‘You were in the control centre not long ago.’

  ‘That’s not true. I’ve been—’

  ‘Of course you were there!’

  ‘Dana, that’s enough,’ hissed Tim.

  ‘You bet.’ Dana glared at him. ‘I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough of this circus. Give up, Lynn. Tell us the truth about this bomb.’

  ‘Bomb?’ roared Chuck. He charged forwards like a water buffalo, pushed Lynn against the wall, stretched out his big hands and pulled the cartridge from her fingers. ‘Has everybody here gone mad?’

  Lynn’s fingers bent into claws. She lashed out, drawing a bloody trail across Donoghue’s cheek. Before Chuck could recover from his amazement, she was at the stairs, jumped down and disappeared into the floor below.

  * * *

  ‘Lynn!’ cried Tim.

  ‘No, wait! Please wait!’

  Kokoschka watched in horror as young Orley dashed after his crazed sister. Stay here, he thought. Not again, I’ve got to give you—

  ‘Sophie told me to give you …’

  Too late. Run after him? But the general madness required its tribute, so that he had to look on helplessly as Chuck raged at the hotel manager and stormed after her, holding the oxygen candle menacingly aloft. Storms raged inside his head, down-draughts, plunging temperatures, tornadoes, accumulated fear. Something terrible would happen. His thoughts danced around like faded leaves, blown in all directions by gusts of confusion. Every time he tried to catch them, they whirled away, while he impotently turned and turned. What was he to do? At last he caught one of those leaves, it flapped and fluttered, trying desperately to escape: that whatever Sophie had written on that piece of paper would explain the escalation that was going on in front of his eyes, that the piece of paper would tell him what he needed to do, that perhaps, seeing as how he hadn’t managed to carry out his mission, he ought to read it.

  Fingers trembling, he unfolded the piece of paper.

  * * *

  At that moment, Dana sensed the change. Her whole body reacted. All the hairs on her forearms registered the disaster. Voices reached her from the restaurant. The tumult must have reached the upper floors, and some people were coming down to see what had happened, while Axel’s statue-like face sent out waves of disbelief and fury.

  Dana slowly turned her head towards him.

  The chef stared at her, a piece of paper in his left hand. His right hand slowly rose, an index finger raised in accusation. Dana took the paper from him and glanced at the words scribbled on it.

  ‘Rubbish,’ she said.

  ‘No.’ Kokoschka came closer. ‘No, not rubbish. She found out. She found out!’

  ‘Who found out what?’ barked Donoghue.

  ‘Sophie.’ Kokoschka’s finger twitched; an eyeless, sniffing creature, it swung around and rested on Dana. ‘She’s the one. Not Lynn. It’s her!’

  ‘You’ve been spending too much time at the oven.’ Dana stepped back. ‘Your brain’s overcooked, you great idiot.’

  ‘No.’ Kokoschka’s massive form started moving, a Frankenstein’s monster taking its first steps. ‘She paralysed the communications. She wants to blow us all up! She’s the one! Dana Lawrence!’

  ‘You’re mad!’

  ‘Oh, really?’ Donoghue’s eyes narrowed to slits. ‘I think we can find that one out pretty quickly.’ He picked up the oxygen cartridge and approached her from the other side. ‘I remember this great joke where—’

  Dana reached into her hip pocket, drew a gun and pointed it at Donoghue’s head.

  ‘Here comes the punchline,’ she said, and squeezed the trigger.

  Donoghue stopped dead. Brain matter spilled from the hole in his forehead, a trickle of blood ran between his eyebrows and along the bridge of his nose. The candle slipped from his hands. Aileen’s mouth gaped, and an unearthly wail issued from it. Dana was just swinging the gun around, when the doors of E2 opened and Ashwini Anand stepped out, impelled into the lion’s den by her fear of being late. The bullet struck the Indian woman before she had a chance to grasp the situation. She slumped to the ground, blocking the lift door, but her unexpected arrival had lost Dana valuable seconds, which Kokoschka exploited to go on the attack. She took aim at him and at the same moment she was attacked by Aileen, who leapt at her, grabbed her hair and pulled her head back. Aileen was still uninterruptedly wailing, a ghostly funeral lament. Dana reached behind her, trying to shake Aileen off and Kokoschka grabbed her wrist and she managed to knee him in the testicles, before firing off two shots. The chef bent double, but he managed to knock the gun from Dana’s fingers. She struck him in the throat with the edge of her hand, and shook the Fury from her back with a roll of her shoulders. Almost gracefully, Aileen sailed against her husband, who was still standing, and dragged him down with her. Kokoschka was crawling along the floor on all fours. Dana kicked him in the chest, just as she heard a metallic hiss that didn’t bode well.

  The bulkheads were closing.

  She stared at the holes in the wall, where the two stray bullets had struck.

  The tanks! They must have hit one of the hidden tanks. Compressed oxygen was bursting out, raising the partial pressure and causing the sensors to close off access to the levels above and below. It wasn’t impossible that the external cooling pipe had been hit, releasing toxic, inflammable ammonia.

  She was in a bomb.

  She had to get out of here!

  The invisible gas settled on the wildly flailing Aileen, on Chuck’s corpse, streamed into the open lift, whose doors were blocked by Anand’s dead body. Kokoschka’s eyes widened. Gurgling, he got to his feet and stretched out both arms towards Dana. She paid him no attention and ran off. The doors were closing at worrying speed. With one bound she reached the entrance to the suites, jumped and just managed to get past the bulkhead from Gaia’s neck, somersaulted down the stairs and landed on her back.

  * * *

  Kokoschka came after her. Properly trained, he knew the potentially disastrous effect of an uncontrolled release of oxygen. Desperate to get out in time, he followed Dana to the bulkhead, but didn’t get all the way through. He was trapped.

  ‘No, no, no, no, no …’ he whimpered.

  Now he could hear the faint hiss of the escaping oxygen. Terrified, he tried to brace himself against the approaching metal plate. His breath was forced out of him, his organs crushed. He heard one of his lower ribs breaking, saw Aileen kneeling over Chuck’s corpse and burying her face in the crook of his neck. A metallic taste spread through his mouth, and his eyes bulged. He tried to shout, but all he managed was a dying croak.

  ‘Chuck,’ Aileen whimpered.

  There was a not especially loud puffing sound as the oxygen went up. Two glowing spears of fire suddenly thrust from the wall where the bullets had hit, striking Aileen, Chuck’s corpse and Ashwini Anand’s bent body, the walls and the floor. The flames quickly swept along the lift doors, forced their way into the open cabin of the staff lift, like living creatures, fire spirits in orgiastic exuberance. A moment later half of the mezzanine was alight. Kokoschka had never seen a fire raging like that. People said that fires spread more slowly in reduced gravity, but this—

  He spewed a stream of blood. The bulkhead pressed relentlessly against his tortured body, and as if the fire had only just noticed him, it reared up to new heights and seemed to pause uncertainly for a moment.

  Then it leapt at him hungrily.

  * * *

  Miranda Winter had, with Sushma Nair, set off for the lower floors, once it could no longer be ignored that there were noisy arguments going on down there. On the stairs
from Selene to Chang’e, they heard two muffled bangs in quick succession, which anyone who had ever been to the movies would have recognised as pistol shots from a silenced weapon, followed by Aileen’s bloodcurdling howl, then some bell-like chimes, as if a hammer were being struck against metal. Sushma’s expression turned to one of naked fear; Winter, however, was made of sterner stuff, so she beckoned Sushma to wait and approached the passageway through the neck.

  What the—?

  ‘The bulkhead is closing,’ she cried. ‘Hey, they’re locking us in!’

  Baffled, she stepped closer to get a glimpse through the crack of what lay below.

  A figure of flame came flying at her. The demon hissed and roared at her, reached for her with sparks flying from its finger, singed her eyelids, brows and hair. She stumbled, fell and pushed herself up as she tried to get away from the raging flames.

  ‘Oh, shit!’ she cried. ‘Get out, Sushma, get out!’

  The demon tumbled and licked its way around, multiplied, giving birth to new, twitching creatures that darted around gleefully setting ablaze anything that stood in their way. With uncanny speed they covered the glass façade, found little of interest there and concentrated their campaign on the floor, the pillars and the furniture. Miranda leapt to her feet, hurried up the stairs, driving the distraught Sushma ahead of her with a series of loud shrieks. The bulkheads to Selene were closing right above them. A wall of heat was surging at them from behind. Sushma stumbled. Miranda slapped her on the backside, and Sushma pushed her way past the bulkhead to the next floor up.

  Close! Christ, that was close!

  Like a gymnast, she grabbed the edge of the bulkhead and pulled herself up on it. For a moment she was afraid her ankle would get stuck in the lock, but then, by a hair, she got into Selene, and the bulkhead closed with a dull thud and saved them from the wave of fire.

  ‘The others,’ she panted. ‘God alive! The others!’

  * * *

  Dana was lying on her back, Kokoschka’s legs pedalling wildly above her, hammering the steps of the spiral staircase. The roar of the fire reached her from the neck, followed by the flames themselves, greedily creeping up Kokoschka’s jacket and trousers. They looked as if they were feeling, searching for something. They flowed in waves over the ceiling, the structure and its coverings in its quest for food.