Limit

by Frank Schätzing

  The airbike shot across the footbridge. Shots rang out loudly. Daxiong lost his grip and landed heavily in the grass of the central reservation. Jericho ran to the fallen man, who sat up and uttered a roar that easily drowned out the sound of the cars. To Jericho’s relief Daxiong wasn’t shouting with pain, but bawled a cascade of curses all of which concerned Kenny’s slow and painful demise.

  ‘Up with you,’ Jericho shouted at him.

  ‘I can’t!’

  ‘Yes, you can. I’m not particularly responsive to stranded whales.’

  Daxiong turned his narrow gaze on him.

  ‘I’ll tear his stomach out,’ he shouted. ‘And his guts! First his large intestine, then the small one—’

  ‘As you wish. On your feet now!’

  * * *

  Xin came around in a circle and took aim at Yoyo.

  A moment later they had disappeared under the lush foliage of the trees that surrounded the park. He brought the bike down and swept over the field towards the qigong group. Heads high, shoulders lowered, upper and lower body in harmony, the old people stretched their arms out, turned their palms and brought them slowly upwards, stretched their limbs, craned their arms until it looked as if they were keeping the sky from plummeting down on Siping Lu. He saw the fugitives appear between plane trees and weeping willows and fired, tearing gaping holes in the wood. The front members of the group fell out of sync with the rest. They forgot to clasp their fingers, missed the slow exhalation, turned their heads.

  A moment later they scattered, as the airbike swept through them.

  Xin slowed the bike and headed towards the little wood into which Yoyo and her father had disappeared. No sign of them. He pulled up the nose of the airbike and quickly gained height. Maybe they wanted to seize the right moment and run out on the other side, to get to their motorbikes. Jets hissing, he aimed for the two machines. Being powered by electricity, they wouldn’t explode, but after an intensive bombardment they would no longer be usable.

  He saw a movement in the central reservation. Ah! Jericho and the colossus who’d tried to throw him out of the window.

  So much the better.

  * * *

  ‘Here he comes!’

  Daxiong nodded feebly. They waited until the last moment, then fled between the pillars as the first shots ploughed through the grass and struck the concrete. The airbike dashed past them and then performed a quick turn.

  ‘To the other side.’

  They took cover again, hoping to keep Kenny at bay. They could always take shelter behind one of the columns. At least that was what Jericho hoped.

  Daxiong leaned next to him, drenched in sweat, breath rattling. His face was now worryingly pale.

  ‘I’m not going to be able to keep this up for much longer,’ he panted.

  ‘You won’t need to,’ said Jericho, but he was starting to worry that for some reason the last part of his plan mightn’t work quite as well as he had hoped. His eyes swept the sky. Vehicles roared past on either side at irregular intervals. The hiss of the turbine moved away. For a moment he allowed himself to believe that the hitman had given up. If he was high enough, the pillar wouldn’t be much use to them. They could circle the thing like rabbits, but sooner or later they would be hit.

  ‘—and his appendix, if he’s still got one,’ croaked Daxiong. ‘I’ll drag that out of him too. Or first the appendix and then—’

  Grass and soil sprayed up at their feet. Jericho circled the pillar. Daxiong came staggering after him, barely capable of keeping on his feet.

  ‘Are you okay?’ asked Jericho.

  ‘That son of a bitch hit me somewhere in the back,’ Daxiong murmured. He coughed and collapsed. ‘I think I’m going to—’

  ‘Daxiong! For God’s sake! You can’t give in now. Do you hear me? Don’t faint!’

  ‘I’m – I’m trying – I—’

  ‘There! Look!’

  Something had appeared in the sky in the distance, flat and silvery. It dived and came very quickly towards them.

  ‘Daxiong,’ yelled Jericho. ‘We’re saved!’

  The giant smiled. ‘That’s nice,’ he said dreamily and tipped sideways.

  * * *

  Xin had briefly shifted his attention to the little wood, so he didn’t see the shimmering flatfish until it was almost too late. Within a few seconds it grew menacingly large, but the pilot showed no sign of veering away from him. He gave a start, then realised that the new arrival planned to ram him into the ground. Startled, he raised his arm and fired off a few rounds that the vehicle dodged elegantly before immediately heading straight back towards him again.

  Whoever was steering the skymobile was a master of navigation.

  He let the airbike drop like a stone and caught it again right above the traffic. The silver discus went into a nosedive. Xin turned, passed over the woods and the artificial lake, twisted and dodged, and still couldn’t shake off his pursuer. The silver discus chased him across the park and back to the road, then suddenly turned off and rose steeply into the sky. Xin watched after him in confusion, slowed his bike down and held it hovering above the flow of traffic.

  The strange machine disappeared.

  Cursing, he remembered what he had to do. It was humiliating! Yoyo and old Chen were hiding somewhere in the bushes watching everything, an idea that made him boil with fury. He would use the grenade launcher and set the woods ablaze – but first Jericho and Daxiong had to go. No police had turned up yet. Gun at the ready, he was heading towards the pillar with the two idiots hiding behind it, when he saw the silver discus coming back and heading straight for him.

  He hid his gun. Below him, antediluvian cars impregnated the air with exhaust and street dust. He was seething with rage. He wouldn’t allow himself to be hunted again. He would bring that guy down from the sky. His fingers closed around the butt of the rocket-launcher, but it was stuck. He rattled at it frantically, looked down and lost his concentration for a moment.

  There was a loud honking noise.

  Louder, closer.

  Irritated, Xin raised his head.

  The front of a roaring heavy goods vehicle, growing, vast. The airbike had dropped while he was battling with the launcher. With horror, he saw the driver shouting and gesticulating behind the windscreen, pulled the bike back up and missed the roof of the driver’s cab by inches, only to see the discus shooting away above him, so close that its shock-wave gripped the airbike and whirled it around like a leaf. He flew from the saddle in a high arc and landed on his back. The impact left him breathless. He instinctively reached his arms up, but nothing drove over him. He was lying on something that was solid yet yielding. Battling for breath, he pulled himself upright and saw rusty planks supporting the pile of whatever he was rolling in.

  No. Not planks. Bodywork. Xin reached into the mass and let it trickle through his fingers.

  Sand.

  He had fallen into a heap of sand.

  With a cry of rage he got to his feet, saw houses, masts and traffic-lights drifting past him, lost his balance and landed back in the sand as the huge truck he was lying on turned off, accelerated and drove him out of Hongkou, away from Daxiong, Jericho, Yoyo, Chen and Siping Lu.

  * * *

  On the inside of the four westbound lanes, the traffic started to back up. The airbike had fallen on the central reservation, scattering parts of its shell over the carriageway and forcing some drivers into bold braking manoeuvres. If there were no collisions, this was due only to the compulsory introduction of pre-safe sensors, which even old models had had to adopt. Radar systems with CMOS cameras constantly analysed distance and automatically braked the car if the driver in front came to an abrupt standstill. Only flying objects obviously created problems for the sensors.

  Meanwhile the Silver Surfer had landed in the park. Jericho peered between the cars and saw the vehicle’s side doors lifting and a familiar, fleshy figure climbing out. Then he saw someone else, and his heart thumped with joy.r />
  Yoyo and Chen came running out of the wood.

  ‘Daxiong!’ He bent down to the giant and patted his cheek. ‘Get up. Come on.’ Daxiong murmured something unfriendly. Jericho brought his hand back and gave him two loud slaps, and jumped backwards just in case he had underestimated the giant’s reflexes. But Daxiong just sat up, sighed and looked as if he were about to sink back again. Jericho took his arm and gripped it tightly for a few seconds, before the massive body slipped away from him.

  ‘Damn it, Daxiong!’

  He couldn’t let the wounded man fall into a coma. Not here. Further slaps were needed. This time he was more successful.

  ‘Have you lost your mind?’ Daxiong yelled.

  Jericho pointed at the prongs in the pillar that led up to the footbridge. ‘You can go to sleep in a minute. First we’ve got to get up there.’

  Daxiong tried to support himself on his left arm, collapsed, tried again and got to his feet. Jericho felt terribly sorry for him. In the movies people with bullet wounds went on charging around the place doing heroic things, but the reality was very different. The wound on Daxiong’s back might just have been a graze, but the very shock of it, caused by the velocity of the dart bullets, was enough to send a person out of his mind. Daxiong had lost a lot of blood, and the wound must be very painful.

  The big man’s gaze wandered up the ladder. By now his face was ashen.

  ‘I won’t get up there, Owen,’ he whispered.

  Jericho breathed out. Daxiong was right. He didn’t even feel all that steady on his feet himself. He estimated the width of the central reservation – just wide enough, he thought, and took out his mobile. Two beeps later he had Tu on the line. Jericho could see him over in the park, while Yoyo and Chen were climbing into the skymobile.

  ‘Tian?’

  His voice was suddenly trembling. All of him, and everything around him, had suddenly started trembling.

  ‘My God, Owen!’ trumpeted Tu. ‘What’s up? We’re waiting for you.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He gulped. ‘You were great, but I’m afraid the big challenge still lies ahead of you.’

  ‘What? Which one do you mean?’

  ‘Precision landing. Central reservation. See you soon, old friend.’

  * * *

  Tu’s Silver Surfer had been designed as a two-seater with an ejector seat. Under the combined weight of five people, two of them massively obese, it shed some of its agility. It also became horribly cramped. They shifted Daxiong to the passenger seat and squashed in together behind him. Hopelessly overladen, the Silver Surfer took off with all the elegance of an arthritic duck. Jericho was surprised it could fly at all. Tu guided the machine over the uniform red-brown roofs of the residential complexes of Hongkou, crossed the Huangpu and headed for the northern shore of the financial district. Within view of the Yangpu Bridge lay the park-like gardens of the Pudong International Medical Center, a collection of weightless-looking glass cocoons, nestling in spruce gardens with artificial lakes, bamboo glades and secret pavilions. The renowned private clinic had been built only a few years previously. It represented the new, ‘natural’ Shanghai, based on plans which demonstrated that if you built something shaped like the neck of a brachiosaurus it might provide lovely views, but otherwise it created nothing but problems. (The ultimate example of architectural phallic delusion, the Nakheel Tower, also loomed half-finished above the now bankrupt city of Dubai, as if to confirm the platitude that the biggest guy isn’t the one with the longest. The monster had been planned to reach a height of 1400 metres. After just over a kilometre the work had been suspended; the architects, in their bid to climb to heaven, had been defeated by the banality of their concept; the casa erecta was ripe for inclusion in the book of heroic failures.) Structures like the interlocking cells of the Pudong International Medical Center came much closer to the demands of a metropolis that saw itself as a gigantic urban protozoon; its metabolism was based on neuronal interconnections rather than unfeasibly vast dimensions.

  ‘I know someone here.’

  As ever when anything new happened in Shanghai, Tu was on intimate terms with people at the top, in this instance the head of surgery. After they had handed over Daxiong, the men had had a quiet chat. It ended with the assurance that Daxiong’s injury would be treated, with no questions asked. The giant had to be stitched up, and would have to get used to the idea of a nice smart scar. And he would be in pain for a while.

  ‘But there are things we can do about that,’ the surgeon said as he left, smiling reassuringly at everyone. ‘There are things we can do about everything these days.’

  In private clinics, his expression added.

  Jericho would have liked to ask what he planned to do about Yoyo’s pain over the loss of her friends, about Chen Hongbing’s emotional torment, and his own inner movies, but instead he just shook Daxiong’s hand and wished him all the best. The giant looked at him expressionlessly. Then he let go of his hand, stretched out his right arm and drew him to him. Jericho groaned. If Daxiong could hug you with a gaping wound in his back, he preferred not to know what declarations of love he was capable of in a state of perfect physical health.

  ‘You’re not so bad!’ said Daxiong.

  ‘My pleasure,’ Jericho grinned. ‘Be nice to the nurses.’

  ‘And you look after Yoyo till I’m out.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘So, see you tonight.’

  Jericho thought he had misheard. Daxiong turned his head to one side as if any further discussion about his release were a simple waste of time.

  ‘Leave it,’ said Yoyo as she left. ‘I’m just glad he didn’t want to come with us straight away.’

  ‘And now?’ asked Chen Hongbing as they trotted back to the Silver Surfer. It was the first time he had said anything at all since they had left the park. His blank face, whatever hell had caused it, made him seem strangely uninvolved, almost uninterested.

  ‘I think there are some things I should explain to you.’ Yoyo lowered her head. ‘Except – perhaps not right now.’

  Chen raised his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘I don’t understand all this.’ His gaze wandered to Jericho. ‘But you’d—’

  ‘I found her,’ Jericho nodded. ‘Just like you wanted.’

  ‘Yes,’ Chen said slowly. He seemed to be wondering whether this was really what he had wanted.

  ‘I’m sorry about what happened.’

  ‘No, no. I’m the one who should be thanking you!’

  That sounded exactly like the man who, two days ago – had it really only been two days ago? – had come into his office, conspicuous for his excessive formality. But lurking in the background there was also the question of how someone might seriously expect thanks for having set off on a simple missing-person job and come back with the Horsemen of the Apocalypse in hot pursuit.

  Jericho said nothing. Chen said nothing back. Yoyo had discovered something fascinating in the sky. Tu paced about for a while among ferns, bamboo and black pines, and issued a stream of instructions into his phone.

  ‘So,’ he announced when he came back.

  ‘So what?’ asked Jericho.

  ‘So someone’s going to the Westin to collect your computer and the rest of your stuff and bring them to my place, where you’ll be living for the next little while.’

  ‘Oh. Fine.’

  ‘And I’ve organised two people to keep an eye on your loft in Xintiandi. Two more are on their way to Siping Lu. To clean up and stand watch.’ He cleared his throat and put his arm around Chen’s shoulders. ‘Of course we’ll have to ask ourselves, my dear Hongbing, what we will tell the police when they come to examine the state of your sitting room.’

  ‘That means we’re flying to your place?’ Yoyo concluded.

  Tu looked at them all. ‘Does anyone have a better idea.’

  Silence.

  ‘Anyone rather spend the night at home? No? Then excuse me.’

  With a quiet hum, the Silver Surfer lifted its
wing doors.

  ‘The highest are the wise,’ Jericho whispered as he climbed into the back seat.

  Tu glared at him.

  ‘Those who are born wise,’ he said. ‘Get Confucius out of your head. I can do it better than you. Longnose!’

  Without Daxiong, who counted as two, the flying machine swiftly gained altitude. Tu lived in a villa in a gated area, a fortress-like guarded compound in the hinterland of Pudong, surrounded by park-like areas of green. They landed right in front of the main building, peeled themselves from their upholstered seats and climbed a flight of steps leading to a porch with double doors.

  One of the doors opened. An attractive Chinese woman with red-dyed hair appeared in the doorway. She was the complete opposite of Yoyo. Less beautiful, but more elegant in her appearance and, strangely, more sensual. A person with no gaps in her CV, who was used to having the world rotate around her. Tu greeted her with a hug and marched inside. Jericho followed him. The woman smiled and kissed him fleetingly on both cheeks.

  ‘Hi, Owen,’ she said in a sonorous voice.

  Jericho returned her smile. ‘Hi, Joanna.’

  Pudong

  Tu had instructed Joanna to focus all her care and attention on Chen as soon as they got back. What he really wanted was for her to distract him for a while, a task which Joanna dedicated herself to fully. Steering the confused Chen into her palatial kitchen with the same uncompromising attitude as someone pushing a shopping trolley in front of them, she demanded to know what tea he preferred, asked whether he would like a sauna, a bath or a hot shower, where it hurt, what had happened, whether he would like some cold chicken from the fridge. He didn’t know how it had all ended up like that, the guy just suddenly appeared in the room with the gun, and oh God, how did he even get in, and oh, you’ve got scratches all over you, they could get inflamed, hold still, don’t argue, and so on and so forth. She didn’t have a clue what was going on, of course. But Joanna wouldn’t have been Joanna if that had been a problem. She exuded the bountiful aromas of her optimism, bathing Chen in confidence until he was ready to believe that everything would be okay, purely because she said so. Jericho had never met any other person with such powers of conviction that things would turn out fine, without having the faintest idea how. Joanna bluffed for all she was worth. In her world, the tail wagged the dog. Presumably Chen was convinced that he was having a conversation, or even that he had started it. Joanna had a way of driving a man in front of her in such a manner that he would swear it was her following him.