This Other Eden (35 page)

‘Buy a
Claustrosphere,’ said Max. ‘I know I did.’

‘Exactly.
Buy a Claustrosphere. Of course you did,’ said Jurgen. ‘It would be madness not
to. If the dear conscientious, idealistic old greenies are right and planet
death is upon us,
which it is,
what else can one possibly do?’

‘Yes,
but …’ Rosalie blurted, but for the time being she could do no better than
that. Her mind was reeling.

‘Exactly,’
said Thor. ‘Yes, but … what? Yes, but nothing, darling, OK! I have spent
half a lifetime searching for that elusive “yes, but” and not one sniff of it
have I had. We are trapped by our own beliefs. Prisoners of the truth that we
must tell. We say that to own a Claustrosphere is in itself the greatest act of
planet treason one can commit, because by owning a Claustrosphere, a person
accepts that the death of the Earth is survivable. How, then, are we to stop
people taking this terrible step? We must warn them of the consequences of
their actions! So we shout that buying a Claustrosphere will hasten the demise
of the Earth. And what does that warning make people do?’

‘Buy a
Claustrosphere,’ said Max.

‘Exactly.’
And for a moment Jurgen Thor even seemed to smile. ‘Everything that we do sells
Claustrospheres. We are their greatest advert. No wonder they fund us.’

Rosalie
spoke as if in a dream. ‘But what you’re saying is that it would be better for
us to do nothing, to say nothing.’

‘Believe
me, I have often considered it,’ Jurgen continued. ‘Because if every environmentalist
on Earth shut up then Claustrosphere sales would plummet. But if we did that
then planet death would surely occur without even a protest, without even a
small effort to stop it. That must never happen, we will not die on our knees!
And so we are caught, Rosalie, caught between the devil and two hard places,
you dig? If we are silent the Earth will probably die, if we are the shouters
the Earth will probably die. I am a man of action and so I prefer to be a
shouter.’

‘But
that Claustrosphere should pay for it!’ Rosalie was struggling not to give way
to despair.

‘Who
else would support us so generously? Who else would supply us immediately and
without question with everything we need? Once I have decided to fight I would
be a fool to deny myself the best weapons simply because I did not like the
arms dealer. I don’t like any arms dealer. Would you like me to turn them down,
to say, no, I will blow up this waste ship with a poorer, cheaper but somehow
cleaner bomb?’

‘You
don’t have to have such a nice bloody house.

Suddenly
Rosalie was furious. It was the calm logical way he described it, and he did
seem to do so damn well out of it.

‘Why
the hell should I not have a bloody nice house, God damn!’ Jurgen too was angry
all of a sudden. ‘I’m happy to spend as much of their money as they care to
give me. I once told you, Rosalie, pragmatism in all things. Would one less
Claustrosphere be built if I denied myself beautiful things? Will one more
flower grow? No, of course not, I would be cutting off my nose just so I could
have some spite on my face.’

‘That
is a totally corrupting argument.’

‘I
am
corrupt, Rosalie. The nature of leadership requires that I be corrupt. If I
were not corrupt you would have no guns! The nice ladies who send out our
mailshots would have no envelopes. My corruption pays your wages.’

‘No, I
don’t believe it, we have subscriptions, fund-raisers.’

‘Jam
and bazaars while the enemy has the combined wealth of total world
exploitation. Would you have our people face a lion with the shooter of peas?’

It was
an unfortunate image. There was a lion, or at least a part of one, silent
witness to their debate. Rosalie felt an overwhelming sense of revulsion,
against Jurgen, against herself, against the mere fact of being alive.

‘I’m
going to blow the whistle. This is wrong, it can’t go on.

‘If you
do that you will sell another 10,000 Claustrospheres in an hour. If once the
dreadful truth emerges, that the human race is so utterly damned that its only
defence must be financed by those who seek to destroy it, then surely there
will be a panic of the soul. Even those who still hope, who still harbour some
small semblance of responsibility to themselves and others, will give it up.
They will say, if even Mother Earth is part of the process of planet death then
it is over, the planet
will
die. I saw it in your own face a moment ago.
It’s hopeless, you thought! What is the damn point, you thought! Well if that
is your reaction to the truth, to the natural logic of human madness, then how
will the less concerned react, the less
pure?
What do you think they
will do the day you tell them that Mother Earth sups with the devil?’

‘Buy a
Claustrosphere,’ said Max.

‘Stop
saying
that!’
Rosalie shouted at him. Her eyes were filling with tears for she
knew that Jurgen Thor was right. On learning the truth, a terrible dark fiend
of despair had taken her by the throat and brought her to the ground. She had
been utterly overwhelmed by the hopelessness of hope. Anything other than
bitter cynicism seemed completely naive. Others would feel the same, and worse.
The truth would provide the ultimate justification for cynicism. That must
never be. She could not tell. In order to continue to fight for the truth, she
and Mother Earth must continue to live a lie.

‘Why
doesn’t the Claustrosphere Company itself blow the whistle,’ asked Max
thoughtfully, ‘if it would shift so many units?’

‘In the
short-term it would, but the shock would wear off. People would learn to live
with this revelation of human frailty as they have with all the others. With us
green fools gone, Claustrosphere would lose their greatest propaganda tool.
They would have destroyed us, but in doing so they would cripple themselves,
and the Earth would stagger towards death with neither defenders nor
exploiters. For without environmental protest how can they market the end of
the world? We are the shit against which they must kick.’

‘Market
the end of the world!
My God, listen to yourself!
You sound like Plastic Tolstoy.’ Rosalie could not bear the way Jurgen Thor
seemed to glory in his pragmatism.

‘You
pay me a handsome compliment.’ Jurgen smiled. ‘For Plastic Tolstoy is a genius.
It was he who first understood what a splendid marketing tool we are for
Claustrosphere. It was he who approached me with the offer to fund us. Believe
me, if we could market ourselves with the skill with which he has marketed
Claustrosphere, the planet would be healthy indeed.’

‘You
can’t market responsibility! It’s not a packet of fish fingers.’

‘Exactly.
What we offer is painful truth and difficult decisions, both of which are
bloody difficult to sell, you dig? Which is why I take Tolstoy’s coin. No one
but he would support such a hopeless cause with such generous commitment.’

Rosalie
sank into a chair made out of stag antlers. She was drained and weary.

‘So
what am I supposed to do?’ she asked eventually. ‘Do? Why, nothing. You
continue as before. You go back to your unit and organise the raid on the toxic
waste convoy. Very few people know what you know. Myself, some senior figures
in the movement and of course our opposite numbers in the Claustrosphere
Company. If you ever did decide to break the confidences I have shared with
you, I would of course deny them utterly. If necessary, I would have you
silenced permanently, because if you were believed then Mother Earth and Natura
would be finished and the last barrier between us and the Rat Run would be
gone.’

‘I
won’t tell,’ said Rosalie in a hollow monotone. ‘As you say, it would do more
harm than good.’

‘Remember
what I once told you, Rosalie,’ said Jurgen. ‘Be careful what you ask, tiny
girl. You might get the answers that you don’t want to hear.’

There
was nothing more to say.

‘Come
on, Max, let’s go,’ said Rosalie wearily. ‘Thanks for being so honest with us,
Jurgen.’

‘It was
nothing, baby, OK?’ Jurgen replied. ‘My congratulations at having discovered
the truth for yourselves. Every day I expect the whole world to wake up and
figure it out, but they never do.’

Jurgen
offered them dinner but they declined politely. Rosalie didn’t want to talk any
more, she just wanted to leave. One thing was still bothering her, though.

‘If the
Claustrosphere Company are your friends, how come they tried to blow you up in
Brussels?’ she asked as they made their way up to the heli-pad.

Suddenly
all Jurgen’s masterly charm deserted him. His face flashed with fury. Rosalie
thought that he would hit her.

‘They
are not my damn
friends,
you stupid fucking bitch!!

Haven’t
you been listening to anything? I take their money because I hate them! I take
their money because I want to fight them with the best weapons I have. I take
their money because if I do not stop them they will destroy the Earth. They pay
me, and I try to kill them. It’s a simple business transaction.’

‘And
they try to kill you.’

‘Of
course they do. At the moment, I am the leader of our movement but there are
others, there will always be others. Perhaps one day you, Rosalie; you are very
highly thought of in our movement. I am valuable, but expendable. That is why
they tried to kill me. Why they try to kill me now.’

‘Why
now?’ Now Max was curious.

‘Because
Claustrosphere is in a mini-slump. Everybody already owns one. Tolstoy must
mount a new marketing drive. He wants to institute a massive and completely
pointless upgrade of existing technology. My death would be a tremendous boost
for him. Can you see the headlines? Green God Dead! Last Sane Man On Earth
Murdered! Environmental Movement In Turmoil! It would sell ten million units.
Tolstoy has been saving me up for this.’

Rosalie
was about to enter the helicopter. She turned and looked at Jurgen.

‘So
they pay us, we work for them, our goals are diametrically opposite and we want
each other dead.’

‘Of
course, isn’t it obvious?’

Dominant
fantasy.

Jurgen Thor watched as the
helicopter containing Max and Rosalie disappeared into the distance. They had
been lucky, he thought. Really, he should probably have killed them for what
they had discovered. But somehow, he preferred to let Rosalie stew in it. He
knew she would not tell and Jurgen rather enjoyed the knowledge that beautiful,
dedicated little Rosalie, one of the prides of Mother Earth, should have been
tainted by the terrible truth. Or at least a part of the terrible truth. Jurgen
could not really explain it to himself, but he felt that by sharing at least
some of his dark secrets with Rosalie, he had somehow
soiled
her, and
that made him feel good. It made him feel strong and bad. He had forced that
sweet, pure little girl to descend partway into the mess of compromise and
deceit that he lived in every day. She was dirty now, like him, and he had made
it so.

One
day, perhaps he would tell her the whole truth, then she really would have
something to cry about.

Within
his loins Jurgen felt the stirrings of the erection that had eluded him earlier
in the evening.

‘How do
you feel now, little virgin?!’ he shouted after the lights of the distant
helicopter. ‘Now that you’re in Jurgen Thor’s world? Do you feel good, huh? I
said, do you feel good?’ But Jurgen knew that she didn’t feel good, he knew
that she felt sad, and compromised. He could picture her, sitting in the
passenger seat of the helicopter, miserable, small, confused and … dirty.
That made Jurgen happy. It filled him up and satisfied him. Except it didn’t,
because now he wanted to screw her. If only she hadn’t brought that shitty
little movie star, he told himself, he would have screwed her too.

Then he
remembered that Scout was still in his bedroom. Now there was a treat indeed
with which to end his sad, dark day. Why not? he had earned it. He would go
downstairs and fuck that young idealistic little idiot’s brains out … what
brains she had, anyway. There would be no collapse of manhood this time, Jurgen
told himself. For he was Jurgen Thor and he was standing on top of the world.
The chill wind of the night whipped at his long blonde hair as he glared
angrily into the darkness. His chest thrust out, his legs four square and his
face set with ugly defiance. It was if he was challenging whatever God watched
over him to damn him for the things he had done. For the things he had still to
do.

Before
retreating to the bedroom for his reward he watched until the lights of the
helicopter disappeared completely.

Yes,
one day he might give himself the pleasure of telling sweet little Rosalie the
whole truth and she could come with him to hell.

Fatal
idealism.

Jurgen Thor turned and
went back down the staircase into his bedroom. There would be no protracted
foreplay this time, no gentle pursuit of the female orgasm. Jurgen Thor
intended to tear the clothes off young Scout and bang her till he was finished,
that was all. Then he would drink all night and bang her again as the dawn came
up.