Limit

by Frank Schätzing

  * * *

  One day, Mukesh Nair told them, back when he was still a boy in the small village of Loni Kalbhor, they had cut his uncle down from the roof beam of his hut, where he had hanged himself. Suicides amongst farmers were a part of daily life back then, the bitter harvest of the Indian agricultural crisis. Mukesh had wandered through the fallow sugarcane fields, wondering what could be done to stem the flood of cheap imports from the so-called developed nations, whose agriculture lounged around in a feather bed of generous subsidies as it deluged the world with dirt-cheap fruit and vegetables, while Indian farmers saw no other way out of their debt than to take their own life.

  He had realised back then that you couldn’t misinterpret globalisation as a process which politicians and companies initiated, accelerated and controlled as they pleased. It wasn’t something that could be turned off and on, not a cause, but the symptom of an idea that was as old as humanity itself: the exchange of culture and wares. Rejecting that would have been as naïve as suing the weather for crop failures. From the day human beings had first ventured into other humans’ territories to trade or make war, it had always been about doing it in such a way that they could participate and profit from it as much as possible. Nair realised that the farmers’ misery couldn’t be blamed on some sinister pact between the First World states, but came down to the failure of the rulers in New Delhi to play to India’s strengths. And one of those strengths – even though, historically, the country had always been synonymous with hunger – was nourishing the world.

  Back then, Nair and a group of others had led the Green Revolution. He went to the villages, encouraging the farmers to switch from sugarcane to chilli, tomatoes, aubergines and courgettes. He provided them with seeds and fertiliser, introduced them to new technologies, secured them cheap credit to relieve their debt, pledged minimum purchases and gave them shares in the profit of his supermarket chain, which he built from scratch by utilising modern refrigeration technology, naming it Tomato after his favourite vegetable. Thanks to sophisticated logistics, the perishable goods found their way so quickly from the fields to the counters of the Tomato supermarkets that all the imported products looked old and rotten in comparison. Desperate farmers, who until recently had been faced with the choice of either going into the city as day labourers or stringing themselves up in the attic, became entrepreneurs. Tomato boomed. More and more branches opened, more and more farmers joined forces with Nair’s entourage in the new, emerging India.

  ‘The inhabitants of our hot, microbe-contaminated metropolises loved our air-conditioned, clean fresh-food markets from the word go,’ said Nair. ‘We had competitors pursuing similar concepts, of course, partly with the support of foreign multi-corporate giants. But I only ever saw my competitors as allies. When it mattered most, we were a hair’s breadth ahead of the rest.’

  By now, there were branches of Tomato all over the world. Nair had swallowed up most of his competitors. While India’s agricultural products were now being exported to the most remote corners of the world, Nair had long since gone on to explore a new field of activity, branching out into genetics and blessing the flood-prone coastal areas of his country with a saltwater-resistant rice.

  ‘And that,’ said Julian, ‘is the very thing that unites us.’

  They watched a small harvest robot plucking cherry tomatoes from the vines with its intricate claws, sucking them up inside itself before they had the chance to roll away.

  ‘We will occupy outer space, colonise the Moon and Mars. Perhaps a little less quickly than we imagined, but it will happen, if only because there are a number of sound reasons why we should. We are standing on the threshold of an era in which the Earth will be only one of the many places where we can live and develop industries.’

  Julian paused.

  ‘But you won’t be able to make a fortune with fruit and vegetables beyond the Earth just yet, Mukesh. The journey towards establishing Tomato branches on the Moon will be a long one! Bernard, you could supply the Moon with water of course – it’s vital for any new development – but you’ll barely make a cent in the process. And as far as your work is concerned, Eva: long-term stays in outer space, on the Moon and on the surface of other planets, will all confront medicine with totally new challenges. And yet research will remain a loss-making business initially, just as I subsidise America’s space travel to help promote the most important resource for a clean and lasting energy supply, and the way I subsidised the development of the necessary reactors. If you want to change the world and be a pioneer the first thing you need to do is spend money. Carl, you made your fortune through clever investments in oil and gas, then switched sides to solar technology, but in space these new technologies wouldn’t yet make any decent turnover. So why should you invest in Orley Enterprises?’

  He looked at each of them in turn.

  ‘I’ll tell you why. Because we’re united by something more than just what we produce, finance and research, and that’s our concern for the wellbeing of mankind. Take Eva for example, who has successfully cultivated synthetic skin, nerves and cardiac muscle cells. Incredibly significant work, reliable, highly lucrative, but that’s only the half of it, because above all it provides hope for coronary-risk patients, cancer patients and burn victims! And Bernard, a man who has provided the poorest of the poor around the globe with access to clean water. Or Mukesh, who opened up a new way of life for India’s farmers and fed the world. Carl, whose investment in renewable energies helps to make its actual use possible. And what’s my dream? You already know. You know why we’re here. Ever since experts began to think about clean, risk-free fusion technology, about how the fuel of the future, helium-3, can be transported from the Moon to Earth, I’ve been obsessed with the idea of providing our planet with this new, inexhaustible source of energy. I’ve gone through many years of deficit to develop reactors until they were ready for production and to build the first functioning space elevator so we could give mankind a springboard into outer space. And do you know what?’

  He smiled contentedly and paused for several seconds.

  ‘All that idealism has paid off. Now I want to and I will make money from it! And you should all join me in doing so! In Orley Enterprises, the most important technology experts in the world. It’s people like us who move or stop this wonderful planet thirty-six thousand kilometres beneath us. It’s down to us. It may not increase your sales of vegetables, water or medication if we join forces, but you’ll be part of the biggest conglomerate in the world. Tomorrow, Orley Energy will become world market leader in the energy sector with its fusion reactors and environmentally friendly power. With the help of more space elevators and space stations, Orley Space will accelerate the conquest of the solar system for mankind’s use, and, together with Orley Travel, expand space tourism too. Believe me, all of that put together will pay off! Everyone wants to go into orbit, everyone wants to go to the Moon, to Mars and beyond, both humans and nations. At the beginning of the century we thought the dream was over, but it’s only just begun, my friends! And yet only very few countries possess the technologies the whole world needs, and Orley Technologies are way ahead of the game on this one. And everyone, everyone without exception, will pay the price!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nair in awe. ‘Yes!’

  Hanna smiled and nodded.

  Everyone will pay the price—

  Everything Julian had said, with his usual eloquence and persuasiveness, reduced down to this last sentence in his ears. He had voiced what had been left behind by rulers retreating from the globalisation process, the attempt for economy to become independent, the privatisation of politics: a vacuum that had been filled with businessmen. He defined the future as a product. Even the days ahead wouldn’t change that, quite the opposite in fact. The world would be sold yet again.

  Just very differently to how Julian Orley imagined.

  * * *

  I’m back,’ chirped Heidrun.

  ‘Oh, my darling!’ Ögi’s
moustache bristled with delight. ‘Safely and in one piece too, I see. How was it?’

  ‘Great! Locatelli threw up when he saw his solar panels.’

  She floated over and gave him a kiss. The action led to repulsion. She slowly retreated again, reached out to grasp the back of a chair and made her way back, hand over hand.

  ‘Did Warren get space sick or something?’ asked Lynn.

  ‘Yes, it was great!’ Heidrun beamed. ‘Nina took him off with her, and after that it was all really nice.’

  ‘I’m not so sure.’ Donoghue pursed his lips. Red-cheeked and bloated, he rested grandly back against an imaginary throne like Falstaff, his hair so bouffant it looked as though an animal had died on his scalp. ‘It sounds dangerous to me, someone throwing up in their helmet.’

  ‘Well, you don’t have to go out there,’ said Aileen sharply.

  ‘Poppycock! I wasn’t saying that …’

  ‘You’re sixty-five, Chucky. You don’t have to join in on everything.’

  ‘I said, it sounds dangerous!’ blustered Donoghue. ‘I didn’t say I was scared. I’d still go out there even if I were a hundred. And on the subject of age, have you heard the one about the really old couple and the divorce judge?’

  ‘Divorce judge!’ Haskin was starting to laugh already. ‘Let’s hear it.’

  ‘So they go to the divorce judge, and he looks at the woman and says: “My dear, how old are you?” “Let’s see,” says the woman, “I’m ninety-five.” “Okay, and you?” The man thinks for a second: ninety-eight! “God almighty,” says the judge, “I don’t believe it. Why on earth would you want to get divorced at your age?” “Well, it’s like this, your honour …”’

  Tim snarled. It was hardly bearable. Chucky had been relentlessly setting off comedy firecrackers, one after the other, for the past two hours.

  ‘“… we wanted to wait until the children had passed away.”’

  Haskin did a somersault. Everyone laughed, of course. The joke wasn’t that bad, at least not bad enough for Tim to blame Donoghue alone for his apocalyptic mood. But at that moment he noticed Lynn sitting there as if she’d been turned to stone, as if she were somewhere else entirely. She was gazing straight ahead and was clearly clueless of what was going on around her. Then, all of a sudden, she laughed too.

  I could be wrong, he thought. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s starting all over again.

  ‘So what did you get up to while we were gone?’ Heidrun looked around curiously. ‘Have you been to look around the model station?’

  ‘Yes, I could re-create it right now from memory,’ bragged Ögi. ‘Amazing building. To tell you the truth I was surprised by the safety standards.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Lynn.

  ‘Well, the privatisation of space travel adds to the fear that it’s all been cobbled together too quickly.’

  ‘But would you be here if you were seriously concerned about that?’

  ‘That’s true.’ Ögi laughed. ‘But in any case, it was quick. Extraordinarily quick. Aileen and Chuck here could certainly tell you a thing or two about building regulations, surveys and restrictions.’

  ‘Just one or two?’ growled Chucky. ‘I could go on for days.’

  ‘When we were designing the Red Planet, they thought the project would be impossible to complete,’ Aileen confirmed. ‘What a bunch of cowards! It took a decade to get from the initial design stage to the start of the construction, and even after that they never left us in peace.’

  The Red Planet was Donoghue’s pièce de résistance, a luxury resort in Hanoi modelled on the landscape of Mars.

  ‘It’s now known as the pièce de résistance of structural engineering,’ she added triumphantly. ‘There’s never been an incident with any of our hotels! But what happens? Whenever you start planning something new, they swarm over you like zombies and try to eat you alive, your enthusiasm, your ideas, even the creative power given to you by the almighty Creator himself. You might think that building up a good record over the years would earn you some credit, but it’s like they take no notice whatsoever of what you’ve achieved so far. Their eyes are dead, their skulls stuffed with regulations.’

  Oh man, thought Tim.

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Ögi rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘I know exactly what you mean. In this respect, my dear Lynn, I can’t help but water down all this adulation with a bit of scepticism. As I said, you made the station into a reality extremely quickly. You might even say suspiciously quickly compared to the ISS, which is smaller yet took a lot longer.’

  ‘Would you like to hear an explanation for that?’

  ‘At the risk of annoying you …’

  ‘You’re not annoying me in the slightest, Walo. Pressure from competition has always encouraged sloppiness in the race to be first. But Orley Space doesn’t have any competitors. So we never needed to be quicker than anyone else.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘The reason we were quick was perfect planning, which ultimately meant the OSS built itself. We didn’t need to accommodate dozens of notoriously hard-up space authorities, nor wade through bureaucratic quicksand. We only had one partner, the United States of America, and they would even have sold the Lincoln Memorial to break out of the commodity trap. Our agreement fitted on the back of a petrol receipt. America builds up its moon base and supplies technology for mining helium-3, while we bring in marketable reactors, an inexpensive, quick transport system to the Moon and, last but not least, a great deal of money! Getting authorisation from Congress was a walk in the park! It was a win-win situation! One gets to monopolise the reactor trade, the other returns to the peak of space-travelling nations and gets the solution to all their energy problems. Believe me, Walo, with prospects like those on the table, any other option but quickly is completely out of the question.’

  ‘Well, she’s certainly right about that!’ said Donoghue, his voice like thunder. ‘When has it ever been about whether someone can build something or not? Nowadays it’s always about the damn money.’

  ‘And the zombies,’ nodded Aileen vigorously. ‘The zombies are everywhere.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Evelyn Chambers raised her hand. ‘I’m sure you’re right, but on the other hand we’re not here to inflate each other’s egos. This is about investment. And my investment in you is very much linked to trust, so we should put all our cards on the table, don’t you think?’

  Tim looked at his sister. She looked open and interested, clearly unaware of what Evelyn Chambers was alluding to.

  ‘Of course. What’s on your mind?’

  ‘Slip-ups.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Vic Thorn.’

  ‘Of course. That’s on the agenda.’ Lynn winced, but without batting an eyelid. ‘I was planning to talk about him later, but we can bring it forward.’

  ‘Thorn?’ Donoghue wrinkled his forehead. ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘No idea.’ Ögi shrugged. ‘But I’m happy to hear about slip-ups. Even if only to make my peace with my own.’

  ‘We don’t have any secrets,’ said Haskin. ‘It was all over the news last year. Thorn was part of the first long-term crew on the American moon station. He did an excellent job, so he was recommended for a further six months, as well as being offered a leadership position. He agreed and travelled to the OSS to fly on to the base from there.’

  ‘That’s right, it rings a bell,’ said Heidrun.

  ‘Same here.’ Walo nodded. ‘Wasn’t there some kind of problem with an EVA?’

  ‘With one of the manipulators to be precise. It was blocking the hatch of the shuttle which was supposed to take Thorn’s people to the Moon. It was paralysed mid-movement after being hit by a piece of space debris. So we sent a Huros up …’

  ‘A what?’ asked Aileen.

  ‘A humanoid robot. It discovered a splinter in one of the joints, which had apparently caused the manipulator to shut itself down.’

  ‘Well, that sounds sensible.’

  ‘Machines don’t c
oncern themselves with concepts of reason.’ Haskin gave her a look as if she’d just suggested never sending robots outside without warm socks on. ‘We agreed to have the joint cleaned, which the Huros wasn’t able to do, so that’s why we sent Thorn and an astronaut up. Except that the manipulator hadn’t turned itself off after all. It had just temporarily fallen into a kind of electro-coma. Suddenly, it woke up and hurled Thorn into space, and it seems his life-support systems were damaged in the process. We lost contact with him.’

  ‘How awful,’ whispered Aileen, ashen.

  ‘Well.’ Haskin went silent for a moment. ‘He probably wouldn’t have suffered for long. It’s possible that his visor took a lot of the damage.’

  ‘Probably? So you didn’t manage to … ?’

  ‘Unfortunately not.’

  ‘I always thought you could just dash out after them.’ Aileen spread out the thumb and fingers on her right hand to make the shape of aeroplane wings and glided it through the air. ‘Like in the movies.’

  ‘Well sure, in the movies,’ said Haskin deprecatingly.

  ‘But we should also mention that the new generation of the Huros series would probably have been able to save him,’ said Lynn. ‘And the spacesuits’ remote control has been developed further too. With that, we could at least have got Thorn back.’

  ‘If I remember rightly,’ said Evelyn, ‘there was an investigation.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Lynn nodded. ‘Which resulted in a case being brought against a Japanese robotics company. They built the manipulator. Clearly it was a case of third-party negligence. Thorn’s death was a tragedy, but the operators of the OSS, that is to say, we, were cleared of any responsibility.’

  ‘Thanks, Lynn.’ Evelyn looked around at the others. ‘That’s enough of an explanation for me. Don’t you think?’

  ‘Pioneers have to make sacrifices,’ grumbled Donoghue. ‘The early bird catches the worm, but sometimes he gets eaten by it.’

  ‘Let’s look around a little more though,’ said Ögi.