This Other Eden (43 page)

‘Yeah,
I like to do that,’ Plastic replied, without batting an eyelid.

Max’s
whole body relaxed. The drug was working; it had to be working. Emboldened, he
gave it another test.

‘So how
the hell do you manage it? I mean, do you get them to bend over you or what?’

‘I lie
under that glass table and they squat on top of it.’

Tolstoy
nodded towards the coffee table upon which Max’s drink was standing. Max
decided that he was no longer thirsty. He wanted to get the job over with, and
get out. Very casually he asked his last and most dangerous test question.

‘So, I
guess you knew that Nathan would have to die the minute he worked out that
you’re the guy who pays for the green terrorists.’

Baby’s
mouth.

Max was smiling his
gentlest, friendliest smile. Baby’s Mouth was a subtle drug and it worked
better if the recipient was relaxed and unaware that it had been administered.
It had been originally developed by psychoanalysts after their profession had
been reduced to a laughing stock by day-time chat shows. These were the daily
confessionals in which every possible type of sad-act was encouraged and indeed
cajoled into describing in the most lurid detail just exactly how completely
and utterly screwed up they were. The sad-acts would then be confronted with
other sad-acts, who either had similar problems, had caused the problems, were
the victims of the problems, or, as became increasingly common, were hoping to
develop the problem. An expert psychiatrist would then tell the whole lot of
them that they were not to worry because the thing was far more common than
they imagined, and the studio audience gave everyone a great big round of
applause for ‘sharing’ the whole horrid business with thirty or forty million
complete strangers. Now this type of TV had been fine for a while, whilst there
were still some legitimate skeletons left in society’s cupboard. Unfortunately,
gloating over other people’s private misfortune made such good television that
the search for new problems and new victims very quickly became a network
necessity.

‘I’m
not interested in decent ideas for comedy and drama,’ the network chiefs would
shout. ‘Bring me more sad-acts.’

Teams
of researchers scoured the countryside, encouraging people to think of
something, anything, that might have rendered them dysfunctional. Large
sections of the public racked its collective brain attempting to conjure up
ever more interesting ways to glamorise their boring lives. The researcher’s
job was also to ensure that, no matter what problem people came up with, there
was always an ‘expert’ ready to assure the world that this was just the tip of
the iceberg. The inevitable development was of course that those watching the
shows began to feel a little inadequate. They began to wonder, since all these
desperate family situations were apparently so common, what was wrong with
them. Why were they not attempting to divorce their pets, blaming their mothers
for making them fat or trying to trace the parents who
would
have
adopted them
if
their natural parents had chosen to give them up.
Eventually, of course, these people also found their way on to the shows, in
order to confess how dysfunctional they felt about not having anything to feel
dysfunctional about. The resident psychiatrist soon put them right by assuring
them that they were doubtless suppressing something absolutely fascinating, and
they went away happy, promising to return the moment they had discovered what
their problem was, and so the dreadful cycle continued.

One of
the few desirable side-effects of this broadcast voyeurism was that it temporarily
popped the bubble of the analyst industry. An industry that had been growing
unchecked for decades and was out of control. At one point, the prevalence of
people seeing analysts, particularly amongst the middle class, had grown to
such an extent that society was in danger of grinding to a halt because
everybody was sitting in small rooms talking about themselves. All this changed
with the introduction of saturation afternoon discussion TV, which rendered
the analyst redundant. People began to ask themselves why they should spend
enormous sums talking about themselves to just one person, when they could
actually be paid an appearance fee to talk about themselves to millions of
people. Eventually, however, the analysts rebuilt their fortunes by playing the
snob card. Enticing people back to their couches by pointing out that important
people had important problems, and should not be used merely as a source of
entertainment for the masses. Unfortunately, when people did begin to drift
back to their analysts, they found they had become so utterly immersed in the
combined problems of just about everybody else that they had lost track of
what, if anything, had happened to them that would be worth talking about in
the first place.

The
drug Baby’s Mouth had been developed in order to enable people whose brains had
been filled with crap to discover some genuine thoughts and emotions. It was a
truth drug. It made the person who took it say, not what they thought others
wanted to hear, nor indeed what they themselves thought they wanted to say,
but the truth. The basic effect of Baby’s Mouth was to suppress that part of
the brain which is in charge of bullshit. This of course meant that some people
were rendered completely dumb by the drug. Many politicians, game-show hosts, a
surprising number of poets, all had the disconcerting experience of being
rendered absolutely speechless after so much as a sniff of it. For most people,
however, Baby’s Mouth simply gave them the unusual sensation of genuinely
expressing their true feelings, of actually saying what they thought.

The
drug had of course been quickly banned. Its capacity to create mischief was far
too great. People need their secrets, and in the brief period that Baby’s Mouth
was available, dinner parties ended in gunfights, marriages foundered and even
the most saintly politicians were found occasionally to harbour uncharitable
thoughts about their constituents. No society can exist without some bullshit.
It was soon recognised that if everybody told the whole truth, the whole time,
we would all be at each other’s throats.

Lines
of communication.

Baby’s Mouth had been
suppressed, but it remained a valuable weapon in the world of the secret
service, and it was Judy who had supplied Max with the dose with which he had
spiked Plastic Tolstoy’s wine. Tolstoy had only taken a sip, but a sip was all
that was required, and by the easy way Tolstoy had offered details of his
sexual preferences it seemed to be working. Max repeated his question about
Nathan’s death, this time a little more firmly. Judy had told him that those
under the influence of the drug responded well to a firm hand.

‘Like I
said, I suppose you decided to have Nathan Hoddy killed, once he’d come up with
the idea that you’re the person who pays for Mother Earth?’

‘It’s
an interesting question’, said Tolstoy. ‘Now let me ask you this. Where the
hell do you get off coming in here and trying to hit me with a shot of Baby’s
Mouth, huh? Is that nice, Max? Is that fair?’

In
another part of the Beverly Hills Fortified Village, Judy and Rosalie exchanged
nervous glances. They were in Max’s lounge room, listening to the conversation
taking place between Max and Tolstoy via the tiny radio transmitter that was
hidden inside one of Max’s buttons. The reception was excellent and they could
hear only too clearly that Judy’s plan was not going well.

‘You
think when some guy asks me to taste their stupid wine right out of the blue, I
don’t smell a rat?’ Judy and Rosalie heard Tolstoy saying. ‘What am I? An
idiot? Like you, Max? Is that it? Am I as
stupid
as you? I only
pretended to drink your wine, and now I wanna know just what you tried to stick
me with. It was Baby’s Mouth, wasn’t it?’

‘Yeah,’
said Max, rather weakly. Denial seemed futile. ‘Should I leave?’

‘Leave?
No way, Max, not until you’ve told me why you came.’

‘Because
I want to know if the Claustrosphere Corporation is in the business of creating
environmental catastrophe… You bastard!’

As the
word ‘bastard’ barked out of their earphones, Judy and Rosalie could hear a
sudden rush of movement. Max had intended to grab the drugged wine and force it
down Plastic Tolstoy’s throat. Instead, he found himself facing a gun.

‘Max,
please. No physical stuff. I hate that,’ said Tolstoy calmly. ‘You know what I
ought to do? I ought to have you drink that wine yourself, then I could find
out who’s put you up to all this. But I’m not going to. Guess why?’

‘Because
your re a nice man?’

‘No,
not that, not even my best friends, were I to have any, which I don’t, would
call me a nice man. No, I’m not going to force you to take the Baby’s Mouth
because I don’t need to, that’s why.’ Suddenly Plastic Tolstoy raised his
voice. ‘Do I,
Mr Schwartz!
You hear that, do you,
Judy?
I
know
who’s pulling this dick’s strings!’ and Tolstoy laughed a loud, unpleasant,
triumphant laugh.

Judy
and Rosalie were nonplussed, particularly Judy. He was not an arrogant man but
he had taken some pride in the trail he had followed and the plans which he had
laid to bring that trail to a conclusion. Now the sound of cruel laughter
ringing in his earphones told him that somehow he had been completely trumped
by the object of his investigations. What was more, he was being taunted about
it over his own secret radio!

Tolstoy
continued to gloat.

‘Hey,
Schwartz, you think when some guy starts delving into my business I don’t
hear
about it? You think when some little punk Fed starts checking out where
I’ve
been placing
my
ads on
my
communications empire for the past
thirty years, I don’t
know!
How the hell do you think I got to
have
my
own communications empire? By being a prick? Like you? Huh?’

Max was
beginning to feel rather superfluous to requirements.

‘Look,
Plastic,’ he said, ‘you’ve clearly guessed I’m wired, so why don’t I just leave
you with the radio and you can talk to Judy without me standing around looking
stupid. Or maybe you could just phone him, you know who he is.’

‘You
stay where you are, Max,’ said Tolstoy. ‘I want to know what gives with you.
The FBI got something on you? Is that it? Is that why you did this for
Schwartz? Is that why you agreed to come in here and abuse my trust? Abuse the
privilege of my hospitality that I extend to so few?’

Max
found himself staring at the floor in embarrassment.

‘Why
did you do it, Max? Let me guess again. Hah! I got it! It’s a girl, isn’t it?
That’s the only time a guy would be so stupid as to try and get the better of
Plastic Tolstoy. For a girl! A
green
girl in this case, no doubt,
considering the outrageous nature of Schwartz’s libellous theories. The girl, I
would like to hazard a guess, who tried to kill me that time in my own
Claustrosphere. Am I right, Max? Yes, I think I’m right.’ Tolstoy called out
again, ‘You listening, girlie? I can’t remember your name, I’m afraid, but…
let me see, that’s it, you had red hair, I remember.’

Judy
and Rosalie were ready to sink through the floor by this time. The man was
positively clairvoyant.

‘I have
never felt so stupid in my entire life,’ Rosalie whispered.

‘There’s
no need to whisper,’ Judy replied, ‘he can’t hear us.’

‘He
doesn’t need to, does he?’ Rosalie said angrily. ‘He seems to be able to read
our minds.’

‘OK,’
they could hear Tolstoy saying. ‘Give me the transmitter, and anything else
metal you’ve got on you. This office carries a metal scanner so I shall know if
you try to cheat, and I won’t be happy.’

Back in
Tolstoy’s office Max handed over both the transmitters which Judy had supplied
him with.

‘Bye-bye,
G-man,’ Tolstoy sneered. ‘You look after yourself now, and you look after Max’s
cute little girlfriend too. Because you both may just be hearing from my
people.’

Tolstoy
smashed the little button-sized radios and Judy and Rosalie heard no more. They
looked at each other in despair.

‘Maybe
the phone will ring,’ said Judy.

They
could only sit and wait.

Back in
Tolstoy’s office, Max emptied out his pockets, a notebook, a wallet, some
cigarettes… a portable telephone.

‘Thank
you,’ said Tolstoy. ‘By the way, I don’t have no metal scanner, who do you
think I am, James Bond?’

Max
smiled weakly, scarcely daring to hope that the trick which Judy had suggested
he try if his transmitters were discovered would work. Tolstoy had been several
jumps ahead of Judy on every point so far. It seemed unlikely that such a
simple idea would fool him, but Max had to try.

‘Are
you going to kill me, Plastic?’ he asked as he put his phone down on the table
beside his other possessions. It was as dramatic an enquiry as he could muster,
and Max made it in the hope that Plastic would not notice that as he put the
phone down he had deftly pressed 1, the pre-set automatic dialling code for his
phone at home. Max used it occasionally when he was out and about in order to
leave messages on his answering machine. He was hoping to leave a message now.