‘Please excuse me.’
She had to act. Bumble, hum, buzz, bzzzz. A swarm of hornets, she ran down the stairs to the lift.
Chuck watched her open-mouthed.
‘What’s up with her?’
‘No idea,’ said Dana.
‘I didn’t mean to insult her,’ he stammered. ‘I really didn’t. I just wanted to—’
‘Do me a favour, okay? Go and join the others.’
Chuck rubbed his chin.
‘Please, Chuck,’ she said. ‘It’s all okay. I’ll keep you posted, I promise.’
She left him standing there and went after Lynn.
It wasn’t that Axel Kokoschka thought he was overweight, or not really. On the other hand his art represented the compatibility of genuine gourmet cuisine with the requirements of a fitness society fixated on the burning of calories. And in those terms he was overweight. Firmly resolved to reduce the fifteen kilos that he weighed up here at least to fourteen, he hardly ever used the lifts. Here again he leapt from bridge to bridge, forcing his burly body up one floor after another, and then took the flight of stairs to the neck. The area between Gaia’s shoulders and head was little more than a mezzanine where the passenger lifts stopped, and only the freight elevators and the staff lift continued to the kitchen. Where the side neck muscles would have been in a human being, stairs led to the suite wing below, swinging into the head with its restaurants and bars. The neck was also a storage area for spherical tanks of liquid oxygen to make up for any leakage. The tanks were hidden behind the walls and took up a considerable amount of room, so that only Gaia’s throat was glazed. A number of oxygen candles hung in wall holders.
Kokoschka snorted. Without resorting to the scales, he knew he had in fact put on some weight over the past few days. No wonder Sophie had been a bit stand-offish with him. He would have to work out more often, go to the gym, on the treadmill, or else his fleshly contact would be restricted to fillets, schnitzels and mince.
There was no one in Chang’e. Selene, a floor up, was also contenting itself with its own company, and so was the Luna Bar. To judge by the voices, the gang was right up at the top. Strangely, Kokoschka barely felt frightened, in spite of the possible risk of death. He couldn’t imagine an atom bomb, or an atom bomb exploding. And besides, they hadn’t found anything, and wouldn’t such a thing give off radiation? He was far more concerned about Sophie. Something had startled her. All of a sudden she had seemed absolutely terrified, and then there was that scribbled note that she had given him to give to Tim.
But Tim Orley wasn’t there. Only the Donoghues, Rebecca Hsu, Miranda Winter, and the Russian’s sad wife sat hunched over their drinks, looking dazed. Funaki said Tim had been there just before he arrived, and had asked after Lynn, while as for her, she had lost her head a few moments before.
‘And I hadn’t done anything,’ Donoghue mumbled to nobody in particular. ‘I really hadn’t.’
‘Yeah.’ Aileen looked sagely around. ‘She’s looked stressed lately, don’t you think?’
‘Lynn’s okay.’
‘Well that’s how it seemed to me. Not you? Even in the space station.’
‘Lynn’s okay,’ Chuck repeated. ‘It’s this hotel manager I can’t stand.’
‘Why not?’ Rebecca raised her eyebrows. ‘She’s just doing her job.’
‘She’s hiding something.’
‘Yes, then—’ Kokoschka made as if to leave the Mama Quilla Club. ‘Then—’
‘My experience tells me so!’ Chuck slammed his hand down on the table. ‘And my prostate. Where experience fails, my prostate knows. I’m telling you, she’s shitting the lot of us. I wouldn’t be surprised if we found out that she was pulling the wool over all our eyes.’
‘Then I need to—’
‘And what are you going to surprise us with this evening, young man?’ Aileen asked in a saccharine voice.
Kokoschka ran his hand over his bald head. Amazing, just a few millimetres of scalp. How it kept producing more sweat. Layer after layer, as if he were sweating out his brain.
‘Ossobucco with risotto milanese,’ he murmured.
‘Oooh!’ said Winter. ‘I love risotto!’
‘I make it the Venetian way,’ Aileen told Kokoschka. ‘You know you constantly have to keep stirring? Never stop stirring.’
‘He’s a chef, darling,’ said Chuck.
‘I know that. May I ask where you learned your craft?’
‘Erm…’ Kokoschka squirmed, like a bug on flypaper. ‘Sylt – among other places.’
‘Oh, Sylt, wait, that’s, that’s, don’t tell me, it’s that city in northern Norway, right? Up at the top.’
‘No.’
‘It isn’t?’
‘No.’ He had to get away, find Tim. ‘An island.’
‘And who did you learn from, Alex?’ Aileen twinkled intimately at him. ‘I can say Alex, can’t I?’
‘Axel. From Johannes King. Sorry, I’ve really got to—’
‘Do you use beef marrow in your risotto?’
Kokoschka looked nervously at the stairs, a fox in a trap, a fish in a net.
‘Come on, tell us your secrets.’ Aileen smiled. ‘Sit down, Alex, Axel, sit down.’
The deeper Sophie Thiel dug into the recordings, the stranger it all seemed. Via cleverly disguised cross-connections, you reached lists of unofficial hot keys, some of them cryptic, others designed to control the hotel’s communication system. Among other things, they also blocked the laser connection between Gaia and the moon base, or more precisely they directed the signal to a mobile phone connection. By now she also thought she knew what the mysterious menu was for. It wasn’t the LPCS itself that was coming under attack, it was more that an impulse was sent to the Earth, and as far as she could tell that impulse had prompted a block that didn’t just affect lunar satellites. A lot of work had been done here; the Moon had been completely cut off from the Earth.
And suddenly she doubted that all that effort had been devoted only to the purpose of destroying the hotel.
Who were they?
Tim! She desperately hoped Tim would appear at last. Hadn’t Axel found him? She didn’t know enough to lift the block, particularly since she didn’t know what it had actually unleashed. On the other hand she was confident that she could undo the interference with the laser connection to Peary Base. She would make contact with the astronauts there and ask for help, even if it might put her life in danger, because somebody might be listening in on her, but in that case she would just lock herself away somewhere.
Lock herself away, what nonsense! Childish idea. Where are you going to lock yourself away when the bomb goes off?
She had to get out of here! They all had to get out of here!
Her fingers darted over the touchscreen, barely touching the smooth, cool surface. After a few seconds she heard footsteps, and the familiar shadow settled on her again. The lamb cutlets were going cold beside her, in silent reproach.
‘Did you find him?’ she asked, without looking up, as she corrected a command. She had to rewrite that one sequence, but perhaps it wasn’t even Axel, it was Tim.
No reply.
Sophie looked up.
As she leapt up and recoiled, sending her chair flying, she realised that she had made a crucial blunder. She should have stayed calm. She shouldn’t have turned a hair. Instead her eyes were wide with horror, revealing all her deadly knowledge.
‘You,’ Sophie whispered. ‘It’s you.’
Again, no answer. At least not in words.