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But not decades away.

The mere fact that the so-called aneutronic fusion of helium-3 with deuterium worked in reactors had sent already sickly oil prices through the floor. At the end of the first decade it had turned out that people were
not
in fact prepared to pay just any sum for oil; if it became too expensive, their ecological conscience sprang to life, they saved electricity and encouraged the development of alternative energies. The notion popular among speculators that the barrel price might be driven up by panic
buying had not become reality. There was also the fact that most countries had set aside strategic reserves, and had not had to make any new purchases, that new generations of cars had batteries with generous storage capacities and filled up at sockets on environmentally friendly electricity which, thanks to helium-3, would soon be available in ample quantities. The United States of America, which had turned a deep dark green in the years after Barack Obama’s terms as president, was urging an international agreement on emission reduction, and had discovered the devil in CO
₂
. A few years after the first helium-3-fuelled fusion reactor had gone live, it was also clear that astronomically high profits could be achieved with environmental-oriented thinking. In the course of these developments, EMCO had slipped in the ranking of the world’s biggest mineral-oil companies from first place to third, while the entire sector was threatening to shrink to a microverse. Atrophied by ignorance, EMCO increasingly found itself stumbling, like King Kong just before the fall and, dimly aware that it was doomed to failure, clutching around for something to hold on to, and grasping only air.

Now they’d lost Alaska too.

The drilling plans won through years spent battling against the environmental lobby had to be abandoned because no one was interested in the huge natural gas deposits there any longer. This press conference was barely different from the one they had had to hold in Alberta, Canada a few weeks before, where the exploitation of oil sand was coming to an end, an expensive and environmentally harmful procedure that had given the conservationists nightmares for ages, but which had been feasible as long as the world was still crying out for oil like a baby for milk. What use was it that certain representatives of the Canadian government shared EMCO’s concerns, when two-thirds of the world’s oil resources were stored in this sand, 180 million barrels on Canadian soil alone? The overwhelming majority of Canadians were glad that it would soon be all over. In Alberta, mining had permanently destroyed rivers and marshes, the northern forest, the complete ecosystem. In view of this, Canada had not been able to stick to its international obligations. Greenhouse emissions had risen, the signed protocols were so much waste paper.

‘It can be repaired,’ said Palstein firmly. ‘We’re about to conclude negotiations with Orley Enterprises. I promise you, we will be the first oil company to be involved in the helium-3 business, and we are also in discussion about possible alliances with strategists from other companies.’

‘What concrete offers do Orley Enterprises have to make to you?’

‘There are a few things.’

The man wouldn’t let go. ‘The problem with the multinationals is that they haven’t a clue about the fusion business. I mean, some of the companies have
pounced on photovoltaics, on wind and water power, bioethanol and all that stuff, but fusion technology and space travel – you’ll forgive me, but that’s not exactly your area of expertise.’

Palstein smiled.

‘I can tell you that at present Julian Orley is looking for investors for a second space elevator, not least to develop the infrastructure for the transport of helium-3. Of course we’re talking about vast amounts of money here. But we’ve got that money. The question is how we want to use it. My sector is in a state of shock at the moment. Should have seen it coming, you might say, so what do you think we should do? Go down in flames, feeling sorry for ourselves? EMCO isn’t going to achieve supremacy in solar energy, however much we might try to get a foothold in it. Other people are historically ahead of us there. So either we can watch one market after another breaking away until our funds are devoured by social programmes. Or we put the money into a second elevator and organise logistical processes on the Earth. As I have said, discussions are almost concluded, the contracts are about to be signed.’

‘When’s that due?’

‘At the moment Orley is staying with a group of potential investors on the Isla de las Estrellas. From there he will go on to OSS and the opening of Gaia. Yeah.’ Palstein shrugged in a gesture somewhere between melancholy and fatalism. ‘I was supposed to be there. Julian Orley isn’t just our future business partner, he’s also a personal friend. I’m sorry not to be able to take this journey with him, but I don’t need to remind you what happened in Canada.’

With these words he had rung the bell for round two. Everyone began talking at the same time.

‘Have they discovered who shot you?’

‘Given the state of your health, how will you get through the coming weeks? Did the injury—’

‘What are we to make of conjectures that the attack might have something to do with your decision to put EMCO and Orley Enterprises—’

‘Is it true that a furious oil worker—’

‘You’ve made loads of enemies with your criticism of abuses in your sector. Might any of them have—’

‘How are you generally, Gerald?’ asked Keowa.

‘Thanks, Loreena, not bad in the circumstances.’ Palstein raised his left hand until silence returned. His right arm had been in a sling for four weeks. ‘One at a time. I’ll answer all your questions, but I would ask you to show understanding if I avoid speculation. At the moment I can say nothing more except that I myself would love to know who did it. All I know for certain is that I was incredibly lucky. If I hadn’t
stumbled on the steps up to the podium, the bullet would have got me in the head. It wasn’t a warning, as some people thought, it was a botched execution. Without any doubt at all, they wanted to kill me.’

‘How are you protecting yourself at the moment?’

‘With optimism.’ Palstein smiled. ‘Optimism and a bullet-proof vest, to tell you the truth. But what use is that against shots to the head? Am I supposed to go into hiding? No! Was it Tschaikovsky who said you can’t tiptoe your way through life just because you’re afraid of death?’

‘To put it another way,’ said Keowa, ‘who would benefit if you disappeared from the scene?’

‘I don’t know. If anyone wanted to stop us merging with Orley Enterprises, he would destroy EMCO’s biggest and perhaps only chance of a quick recovery.’

‘Maybe that’s the plan,’ a voice called out. ‘Destroying EMCO.’

‘The market’s become too small for the oil companies,’ said someone else. ‘In fact the company’s death would make sense in terms of economic evolution. Someone eliminating the competition in order to—’

‘Or else someone wants to get at Orley through you. If EMCO—’

‘What’s the mood like in your own company? Whose toes did you tread on, Gerald?’

‘Nobody’s!’ Palstein shook his head firmly. ‘The board approved every aspect of my restructuring model, and top of the list is our commitment to Orley. You’re fumbling around in the dark with assumptions like that. Talk to the authorities. They’re following every lead.’

‘And what does your gut tell you?’

‘About the perpetrator?’

‘Yes. Any suspects in mind?’

Palstein was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘Personally I can only imagine it was an act of revenge. Someone who’s desperate, who’s lost his job, possibly lost everything, and is now projecting his hatred onto me. That I could understand. I’m fully aware of where we are right now. A lot of people are worried about their livelihoods, people who had confidence in us in better years.’ He paused. ‘But let’s be honest, the better times are only just beginning. Perhaps I’m the wrong man to say this, but a world that can satisfy its energy needs with environmentally friendly and renewable resources makes the oil economy look like a thing of the past. I can only stress again and again that we will really do everything we can to secure EMCO’s future. And thus the future of our workforce!’

* * *

An hour later Gerald Palstein was resting in his suite, his head cradled on his left arm, his legs stretched out as if it would have taken too much effort to cross them.
Dog-tired and raddled he lay on the bedspread and stared up at the canopy of the four-poster bed. His delegation was staying in the Sheraton Anchorage, one of the finer addresses in a city not exactly blessed with architectural masterpieces. Anything of any historical substance had fallen victim to the 1964 earthquake. The Good Friday earthquake, as it was known. The most violent hiccup that seismologists had ever recorded on American territory. Now there was just one really beautiful building, and that was the hospital.

After a while he got up, went into the bathroom, splashed cold water into his face with his free hand and looked at himself in the mirror. A droplet hung trembling on the tip of his nose. He flicked it away. Paris, his wife, liked to say she had fallen in love with his eyes, which were a mysterious earthy brown, big and doe-like, with thick eyelashes like a woman’s. His gaze was filled with perpetual melancholy. Too beautiful, too intense for his friendly but unremarkable face. His forehead was high and smooth, his hair cut short. Recently his slender body had developed a certain aesthetic quality, the consequence of a lack of sleep, irregular meals and the hospital stay in which the bullet had been removed from his shoulder four weeks previously. Palstein knew he should eat more, except that he barely had an appetite. Most of what was put in front of him he left. He was paralysed by an unsettlingly stubborn feeling of exhaustion, as if a virus had taken hold of him, one that occasional snoozes on the plane weren’t enough to shake.

He dried his face, came out of the bathroom and stepped to the window. A pale, cold summer sun glittered on the sea. To the north, the snow-covered peaks of the Alaska chain loomed into the distance. Not far from the hotel he could see the former ConocoPhillips office. Now it bore the EMCO logo, in defiance of the change that was already under way. There were still office spaces to let in the Peak Oilfield Service Company building. UK Energies had put a branch of their solar division in the former BP headquarters and rented out the rest to a travel company, and here too there were many empty spaces. Everything was going down the drain. Some logos had completely disappeared, such as Anadarko Oil, Doyon Drilling and Marathon Oil Company. The place was threatening to lose its position as the most economically successful state in the USA. Since the seventies, more than eighty per cent of all state income had flowed from the fossil fuels business into the Alaska Permanent Fund, which was supposed to benefit all the inhabitants. Support that they would soon have to do without. In the mid-term, the region was left only with metals, fishing, wood and a bit of fur-farming. Oil and gas too, of course, but only on a very limited scale, and at prices so low that the stuff would have been better off left in the ground.

The journalists and activists that he had been dealing with over the past few
hours – and who reproached him now for having got involved in the extractions in the first place – certainly weren’t representing public opinion when they cheered the end of the oil economy. In fact helium-3 had met with a very muted response in Alaska, just as enthusiasm on the Persian Gulf was notably low-key. The sheikhs imagined themselves being thrown back on the bleak desert existence of former years, their territory returning to the scorpions and sand-beetles. The spectre of impoverishment stripped the potentates of Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar of their sleep. Hardly anyone seriously wanted to go to Dubai now. Beijing had abandoned its support of the Saudi Arabian Islamists; the USA seemed to have forgotten all about North Africa; in Iraq Sunnis and Shi’ites went on slaughtering each other in time-honoured fashion; Iran provoked unease with its nuclear programmes, bared its teeth in all directions and tried to get close to China, which apart from America was the only nation in the world mining helium-3, albeit in vanishingly small quantities. The Chinese didn’t have a space elevator, and didn’t know how to build one either. No one apart from the Americans had such a thing, and Julian Orley sat on the patents like a broody hen, which was why China had fallen back entirely on traditional rocket technology, at devastating expense.

Palstein looked at his watch. He had to get over to the EMCO building, a meeting was about to start. It would go on till late as usual. He phoned the business centre and asked to be put through to the Stellar Island Hotel on the Isla de las Estrellas. It was three hours later there, and a good twenty degrees warmer. A better place than Anchorage. Palstein would rather have been anywhere else than Anchorage.

He wanted at least to wish Julian a pleasant journey.

Going inside the volcano might have been spectacular, but coming out was a big disappointment. Once the lights had come on, they left the cave via a straight and well-lit corridor which aroused the suspicion that the whole mountain was actually made of scaffolding and papier mâché. It was wide enough to allow a hundred panicking, trampling and thrashing people to escape. After about 150 metres it led to a side wing of the Stellar Island Hotel.

Chuck Donoghue pushed his way through to stand next to Julian.

‘My respect,’ he bellowed. ‘Not bad.’

‘Thanks.’

‘And this is how you found the cave? Come on! You didn’t help a bit? No demolition charges anywhere?’

‘Just for the evacuation routes.’

‘Incredibly lucky. Of course you realise, my boy, that I’ll have to steal this one! Haha! No, don’t worry, I still have enough ideas of my own. My God, how many hotels have I built in my life? How many hotels!’

‘Thirty-two.’

‘You’re right,’ Donoghue mumbled in amazement.

‘Yes, and maybe one day you might be building another one on the Moon.’ Julian grinned. ‘That’s why you’re here, old man.’