Limit

by Frank Schätzing

Lawrence

  She went up to the top level of Igloo 1 in the lift, then took the connecting walkway between the two domes. Beneath her the road ran off to the factories behind. There were a few small windows here, with views out to the edge of the crater, the industrial plant and the spaceport. The sun cast a panorama of shadow like a painting by Giorgio de Chirico, but Dana had no eyes for the surreal beauty of the landscape under the billions of stars. Intent on her task, she crossed to Igloo 2 and took the lift down to the lounge, where she put on the armoured plates and backpack of her spacesuit. She picked up her helmet and then took the lift on down, past the fitness studios and the sickbay, through a layer of rock into the winding labyrinthine caves and pathways of the underground level. She had memorised every detail of Peary Base from Thorn’s maps and descriptions, so that without ever having been here before, she knew what lay ahead of her, knew which way to turn once the lift doors glided apart.

  She stepped out onto a seabed.

  At least that was how it looked. The glass walls of fishtanks stretched up, metres high, all around her. Flickering pools of light chased one another like will-o-the-wisps across the floor, reflected from the water when the ruffled surface was stirred up by salmon and trout and perch as they darted about, by the schools of fish flitting back and forth. A little while later the cave divided, most branches leading off into the darkness, only a few passages shimmering with blue-green or white light, and beyond them the greenhouses, the genetic laboratories and production facilities which kept the moon base stocked with fruit and vegetables. She crossed a passageway, walked along a short corridor and emerged into a vast, almost round stone hall. She could have taken a lift down here directly from Igloo 1, but Wachowski had to believe that she was in the fitness studio. Her eyes swept around the place, looking for cameras. There hadn’t been any here back in Thorn’s day, nor could she see any now. Even if there was any such thing down here, Wachowski would have enough on his hands – short-staffed as the moon base was – watching the external cameras. The fishtanks and kitchen gardens were the last thing that he would be looking at.

  Several passageways led off from the hall, leading to the laboratories, storehouses and residential blocks. Only one passage had an airlock, that gave onto hundreds of kilometres of unexplored caves, unused, branching endlessly in the vacuum. Most of the lava tubes petered out in the cliff-like rim of Peary Crater, while others burrowed downward, some of them opening out into the canyon fault that ran through the whole site. She put on her helmet, stepped into the airlock and pumped out the air. After a minute, the outer door opened. She switched on her helmet lamp and went into an unhewn rocky passageway which led her onward into the darkness, black as night. The torchbeam skittered nervously over vitrified basalt. After about a hundred metres, she saw a gap open up in the wall to her left, just as Hanna had said. It was narrow, unnervingly so. She squirmed through, pulled her shoulders in, got down on all fours when the roof suddenly dipped down towards her, and crawled through the last part of the cleft on her belly. It had almost become too narrow to bear when the walls suddenly swept apart and she could see a pile of rubble that had obviously been heaped up by the hand of man; she stretched out both hands and moved the rocks aside.

  She could see something low, flat and shimmering. Something with a blinking display, and an arming panel.

  Hanna had positioned it neatly, she had to admit.

  All of a sudden she realised that her cloud had a silver lining here. If all had gone according to plan, the package would have reached the base of the canyon under its own power, and lain there undisturbed until the last day of the trip. Only then, during the official visit to the base just before they all returned to the OSS, would Hanna have left the group, retrieved the contents and taken the bomb up into the caves. Charon would have left the Moon that same evening, and then the payload would have blown twenty-four hours later. But the package’s mechanisms had failed, so Hanna had had to take the contents up to the base ahead of schedule, to hide the mini-nuke here in the bowels of the caves. In hindsight, since his cover had been blown and everything thrown into disarray, it was a blessing that he had been forced to do that.

  She opened the catch, lifted the cover to the keypad, and hesitated.

  When should she set the detonator for? By now everybody knew that there was an attack planned. They still believed that it was aimed at Gaia, and she had done all she could to encourage that. But perhaps the search parties up on Aristarchus might realise what was going on. What if they came back, knowing that the base itself was in danger, and then started to search here at the Pole?

  She mustn’t give them enough time to find the bomb.

  A short fuse, then.

  Dana shivered. Better if she wasn’t vaporised by the nuclear blast herself. Right now, her fingers were hovering over the control panel of a miracle of destructive technology which could turn Peary Crater into one of the circles of hell, sweeping away every trace of human presence as though it had never been. A good idea then to be as far away as possible, but when would the search parties return, when would the Charon set off? The safe option to make sure that she survived would be to set the detonator at twenty-four hours. But what if the communications jam failed prematurely, and they learned that the mini-nuke really was here at the Pole?

  There was no way they could find that out.

  But they could. The very fact that they knew that the bomb existed at all proved that they could find out anything. Callisto must have reached the Aristarchus Plateau by now. If they had found any survivors, then she could expect them back soon. If not, then they would keep searching for who knew how long. She couldn’t decide based on what she thought the shuttles might do. She had to arm this bomb, hijack the Charon and then fly to OSS. She’d have a lot of explaining to do once she got there; why she had flown off without the others, why she had flown off at all, how she could have known about the bomb. Especially if there were any survivors, who could bring all her carefully placed lies tumbling down.

  But she would have to deal with that when it happened. She had been trained to deal with that sort of thing.

  Her fingers twitched, indecisive.

  Then she punched in a timecode, piled the rocks up in front of the bomb again and squirmed hastily backwards. The inferno was set. Time to get out of here.

  Igloo 1

  Wachowski was visibly startled.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  Lynn looked down at him, mildly surprised to see herself in his eyes as he so clearly saw her, a pale phantom with wild hair, looming up silently as though driven into the room by a gust of wind, an apparition: Lady Madeline Usher, Elsa Lanchester as the Bride of Frankenstein, the very image of a B-movie. Quite astonishing, how clearly she could see all these pictures shining out in the darkness of her thoughts, now that her sanity had fled the scene – although it had obviously left a breadcrumb trail to guide the little girl lost back into the waking world.

  Follow your thoughts, astral voices whispered to her. Go into the light, into the light, star-child, they muttered, higher intelligences without need of physical bodies but with a twisted sense of humour, who lured unsuspecting astronauts into monoliths, dumping them into bad copies of Louis XIV bedrooms, just as had happened to poor Bowman, who—

  Bowman? Lady Madeline?

  This is my mind, she screamed. My mind, Julian!

  And her scream, that brave little scream, set out, bold little fellow, dragged itself the whole long way out to the event horizon, then lost its strength, lost its courage, tottered over backwards and died.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  Wachowski cocked his head. Interesting. The way the snaking arteries at his temples busily pumped blood showed he was on edge, alert. Lynn could see the tiny submarines sailing through the flow.

  ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

  Submarines in the blood. Dennis Quaid in Innerspace. No. Raquel Welch and Donald Pleasence, Fantastic Voyage. The o-o-o-o-rig
inal!

  Oh, yes. Sorry, Daddy.

  She was contaminated ground. Poisoned by Julian. No mistake, there he was, teasing her, making a fool of her with his movie mania. Whenever she thought she had reached her real self, there she was in one of his worlds, Alice in Orley-Land, eternal heroine in his invention, his original creation.

  You’re mad, Lynn, she thought. You’ve ended up like Crystal. First depressive, then mad.

  Or had Julian written this role for her as well?

  His flashing eyes, his floating hands, whenever he took her and Tim into his private cinema, where they had to watch every metre of celluloid or digital drama that ever a science-fiction author or director had dreamed up: Georges Méliès’ Le voyage dans la lune, Fritz Lang’s Girl in the Moon, Nathan Juran’s First Men in the Moon, This Island Earth with Jeff Morrow and Faith Domergue and the mutant – oh my word, that mutant! – Star Trek, The Man Who Fell to Earth, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, Alien, Independence Day, War of the Worlds, Perry Rhodan with Finn O’Keefe, hey, Finn O’Keefe, wasn’t he somewhere hereabouts, and always – fanfare! – Lynn Orley, the lead role in—

  ‘You really gave me a shock.’

  Wachowski. All alone in the twilit control room, surrounded by screens and consoles. Shouldn’t make such a fuss, the bastard. He looked a fright himself.

  ‘That’s good,’ Lynn whispered.

  She leaned down to him, put her hand to the back of his neck and pressed her lips to his. Mm-hm, warm, that was good. She was Grace Kelly. Wasn’t she? And he—

  ‘Miss Orley, Lynn—’ Cary Grant stiffened.

  Sorry, is this the right set for To Catch a Thief?

  Funny. That wasn’t even a science-fiction film. Julian liked it, though.

  Click, hssss, verify.

  You lost the hotel.

  Another of those lit-up signposts. What was she doing here? What the hell was she doing in the control room, with her nose full of Wachowski’s greasy smell? She pushed him away, started back and wiped her lips in disgust.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he whispered, in fascinated horror.

  ‘Never better!’ she snarled at him. ‘Do you have anything to drink?’

  He jumped to his feet, nodding.

  Glug, glug, and her thoughts were draining away once more, whirled down the plug. When he put the glass of water in her hand, she couldn’t even remember having asked for it.

  Hanna

  He had given the residential towers a wide berth, trudging past them in an arc along the edge of the chasm. The canyon was a collapsed lava channel, and not all of its walls were sheer drops; rather they formed staircases and steps, so that Hanna could make his way down easily. To the west, the canyon opened out into a steep valley that cut through Peary Crater’s flank, while to his right, towards the base, the chasm grew narrower. Standing on its floor, Hanna could just about see the tops of two residential towers, shining in the sunlight, and two bridges, not far apart, that spanned the canyon above. It was dark down here, and the canyon floor was strewn with rubble. He picked his way through under the first bridge, following a groove in the rock that led him like a path over the gently sloping ground, as far as the second bridge. Then he twisted to look upwards.

  About ten metres above him, a hole yawned in the cliff-face.

  Several such holes dotted the rock where lava tubes opened up into the canyon, but this one in particular interested him. He clambered up, reached the opening, then switched on his helmet lamp and made his way into the twisting cave. The cave mouth was steep for a moment, and then levelled off. His headlamp caught the ragged gap through to where the bomb lay slumbering. For a moment he considered skipping the visit to the control room and programming the thing straight away, but he had to speak to Dana first. A lot could have happened in the past few hours that would force them to make a whole new plan, and on top of that he urgently needed information to help him see where he stood personally. If all was going according to plan, the laser link between the base and Gaia would be functioning, but Dana would have fixed it so that all signals went straight through to her mobile phone.

  He ignored the crack and went to the airlock instead, stepped into it. There was light coming through the tiny viewport. On the other side of the airlock was the room they called the Great Hall, a large natural cave leading off to the laboratories, greenhouses and fishtanks. A lift from the Hall up to Igloo 1 led straight to the control room. Hanna glanced at his watch. Almost half past four. Could be that the control room wasn’t even occupied. Nevertheless he drew his gun as he went into the Hall, scanned all around for threats and then tapped the sensor that would bring the lift down.

  Lawrence

  She was determined not to spend a second longer in the base than she had to. She’d glanced through the sickbay door in Igloo 2, heard the roomful of snoring sleepers like an orchestra playing softly, with Mukesh Nair taking the solo lead as far as she could tell. Minnie DeLucas, an African-American woman with dreadlocks, was working at a computer.

  ‘How are they?’ Dana asked, concern in her voice.

  ‘They’re as well as they can be.’ The medic put a finger to her lips and glanced over to the beds. ‘The smoke inhalation isn’t so bad, but the tall German lady seems pretty traumatised, I’d say. She was telling me what happened in the lift-shafts at the hotel. How she couldn’t save that woman.’

  ‘Yes,’ Dana whispered. ‘We saw some dreadful things. How is Miss Orley, though?’

  ‘I would have had to strap her down to keep her here.’

  ‘She’s gone then?’

  ‘Wandering around somewhere. She can’t sleep, or doesn’t want to. I think she went over to Tommy in the control room. And you? Are you coping?’

  ‘Oh yes. I’ve breathed in so much oxygen these past few hours that I don’t think the smoke inhalation can touch me.’

  ‘I mean mentally.’

  ‘I cope.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I try my best to do without mental traumas, I find they’re something of a luxury.’

  ‘You should see a psychologist, in any case,’ DeLucas advised.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I’m serious, Dana. Don’t try burying it. There’s no shame in asking for help.’

  ‘What makes you think I might be ashamed?’

  ‘You just give the impression that you—’ DeLucas hesitated. ‘That you’re very hard on yourself. Yourself, and others.’

  ‘Oh.’ Dana raised her eyebrows, interested. ‘Do I?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with putting yourself on the couch,’ DeLucas smiled.

  ‘Oh, there are some people who reckon I belong on the couch.’ She winked confidingly. ‘See you later. I’m going to run for a bit.’

  Igloo 1

  In a lucid interval, Lynn had sought out the control room’s coffee nook to put down her empty glass. It was a small space, half screened off from the rest of the room by a sheet of sand-blasted glass. Something inside her said that it was important to put things back where they belonged, after she’d spent weeks and months torturing herself with wild terrors, visions of destruction. Gaia was in ruins. She had wrecked it so often in her dreams that she felt a gnawing suspicion that she truly had destroyed it herself, but she wasn’t really sure.

  At the very moment that she put the glass down, suddenly all the pieces fell into place, and she remembered.

  The rescue mission up on the crown of Gaia’s head. Miranda’s death.

  She tried to cry. Turned down the corners of her mouth. Made a tearful face. But her tear ducts wouldn’t do their job, and until she could cry she would wander onward through the maze of her own soul, without hope of redemption. Undecided, she was staring dumbly at the glass when she heard the lift humming.

  Somebody was coming up here.

  Her face twisted into a mask of rage. She didn’t want anybody up here. She didn’t want Tommy Wachowski anywhere near her. He’d kissed her, the pig! Hadn’t he? How could he do a thing like that? As though she
were some cheap tart! A slut in a spacesuit. There for anyone to fuck, a toy, an avatar, a plaything for other people’s fantasies!

  You can all go fuck yourselves, she thought.

  Fuck you, Julian!

  She leaned back a little, so that she could see past the edge of the frosted glass – and into the control room. The lift-shaft passed through the middle of the igloo like an axis. Somebody in a spacesuit came out of the lift, helmet in one hand, gun in the other. It was quite obviously a gun, since he was pointing it at Wachowski, who jumped up and scurried backwards in surprise.

  ‘Who else is here?’ the new arrival asked in a low voice.

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Wachowski somehow managed not to glance towards the coffee nook.

  ‘Just me,’ he said hoarsely.

  ‘Anybody who might turn up anytime soon?’

  Wachowski hesitated. He had been left as base commander. He hunched a little. He seemed to be considering whether to attack the other man, who was much bigger than him. Lynn was staring, paralysed, at the shaven back of the big man’s head, unable to move even a finger or turn away her gaze.

  Carl Hanna!

  ‘You never know who may just turn up,’ Wachowski said, playing for time. ‘It wouldn’t be too smart to—’

  There was a soft pop. The base commander dropped to the ground and didn’t move.

  Hanna turned round.

  * * *

  Nothing. Just the big, softly lit space of the control room. Deserted, save for the dead man at his feet.

  Hanna put his helmet down on the console, kept his gun at the ready and walked once around the lift-shaft. None of the other workstations was occupied. Faint light glowed from behind a frosted-glass screen, where he could see part of a shelf, full of packs of coffee, filters and mugs.

  He stopped dead, moved closer.

  He heard a faint shuffling sound from where he had shot the other man. He spun around in an instant, trained the gun on the motionless body and then dropped the muzzle at the same moment when he realised that the man was dead as dead could be. It had just been his arm, slipping down to the side. He holstered his weapon and leaned over the console, studying its controls. His fingers scurried over the touch-screen, called up a connection with Gaia – or what ought to have been a connection, but there was no answer.