by Ben Elton
It can happen. Especially to a man like Sly whose life-style meant that his experience of real people — straight, unaffected people — was minimal. Coupled with all this was the fact that Sly wanted to fall in love. For the first time in his life he was desperate to find someone, and quickly. He fancied Rachel; he thought her different and interesting; she was in the right place at the right time. Sly, a man used to making decisions, decided to fall in love. Of course at the time, Sly would probably have denied that the emotions he was nurturing were anything like that intense. He would have admitted to lust; he might even have conceded an objective interest in her strange personality, but he would not have admitted that he was falling for her.
None the less, he was.
177: SMALL TALK
What did that long-haired guy who talks through a time warp call your group?’ Sly asked, breaking the silence.
‘EcoAction,’ replied Rachel defiantly.
‘And what’s that supposed to signify then,’ Sly asked with a slightly mocking tone.
‘It’s supposed to signify, mate,’ said Rachel, bridling at his attitude, ‘that if something isn’t done soon, the world is going to die, that’s what. It will die, you arrogant, smug, complacent…rich bastard.’ Rachel was, of course, a born again Ecofreak; a convert, and in any system of belief it is the converts who are the real zealots. If there was one thing that Rachel couldn’t handle it was people taking the piss out of the stuff she was into.
‘You’re wrong,’ said Sly quietly. ‘The earth isn’t going to die unless you stop it.’
‘Oh yeah well you would say that wouldn’t you,’ Rachel sneered. ‘You’ve got a vested interest in carrying on fucking it up.’
‘You’re wrong,’ continued Sly, ‘because it’s going to die anyway. It’s virtually dead already, and there is absolutely nothing that you or I or anyone else can do about it. The earth is going to die.’
‘Well that’s a bit sodding cheerful I must say,’ said Rachel, sarcastically. But none the less she was shaken by the cold certainty in his voice.
Sly gulped down his gin and tonic, poured himself another, even stiffer, and decided to go for it.
‘Rachel,’ he said, ‘do you know the story of Adam and Eve?’
He stopped himself, realizing that he was about to embark on the most monumentally naff tack he could possibly take. He decided to start again. ‘Forget that,’ he said. ‘Hot isn’t it? Let’s talk about the greenhouse effect.’
178: COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN
By morning Tyron was getting impatient. He had never much liked the idea of waiting for the miraculous Moorcock powers of persuasion to convince the captives to divulge all that they knew. Now Tyron felt that his cynicism had been amply justified since many hours had passed and he had not heard a thing from Sly. He felt, as he did about everything in life, that he would probably do a much better job of interrogation himself. Besides, it was very difficult to sit still and do nothing, it was so bloody hot for a start. The night had brought a little relief but now it was morning again and he felt like he was sitting in a grill pan. It was definitely the worst summer Tyron could remember. The whole world seemed to be having it at once. He’d heard that there was no skiing at all in the USA and you had to be an eagle to try it even in the Alps.
Everything was getting so depressingly hellish. Everything seemed to be stinking and rotten. You couldn’t trust the water any more because unseasonal flooding had contaminated the supplies. What’s more, there were millions more bugs than usual, probably because of all the rank water that was lying around, steaming up into the clouds and then pissing down again almost immediately in torrential poisoned deluges. It was hot and horrible, and now besides that, Tyron had this smelly crew of blacks and hippies to deal with.
There was still no sign of the fugitive Zimmerman. Tyron was forced to accept the possibility that he was now outside the wire. Even more reason then for discovering where it was that this irritating little group had based themselves and hence where Zimmerman would be heading. Tyron decided to have a go at the prisoners.
179: POWERS OF PERSUASION
Mindful of the time honoured techniques of interrogation, where it is considered important to establish both a hard option and a soft option, he decided that his first approach would be to exercise his charm.
Unfortunately, Ocker Tyron possessed all the charm of a job at Kentucky Fried Chicken and so he had little chance of getting very far. Tyron was a shouter. He was under the impression that it was possible to persuade people that you had almost instantaneously become their bosom buddy simply by assuming a kind of rugged, good-humoured bonhomie. He had learnt to communicate at the ‘Adverts for Furniture Warehouse School of Sincerity’. A place in which the sad figures who own carpet and furniture warehouses, or secondhand TV emporiums are taught to star in their own television adverts. Desperate, desperate men in loud, slightly comical sports jackets, standing superimposed in front of a photograph of their place of business, shouting at the camera, possibly playing on a slight speech impediment, to single them out as individuals.
‘Why pay those fancy prices!!! Get the family down to BudgetPriceMart! Bring the kids. If you can find anything cheaper, Honest Bob’ll refundya! OK!!’
These people are under the impression that a rough and ready display of overblown pig-ignorant philistinism will somehow endear them to the general public as straight talking, good blokes. In fact, everybody wonders why this stupid wanker keeps shouting at them.
Ocker Tyron had himself, in his early days, appeared in one or two of his own ads. He had been trying to shift a warehouse full of dodgy nylon ‘fur’ coats and had appeared on TV with a bevvy of West Australian lovelies, all wearing the ‘fur’ coats, and nothing else. ‘Tyron’s bargains,’ he had screamed at the camera, at the top of his voice. ‘These terrific, low budget, family, fur substitute, luxury style winter warmer, garment, casual wear designer durables are so like the real fox, sable and mink, retailing at thousands of dollars…Ha ha, you’ll think they’re going to bite ya!!!!!’
And then had come the obligatory sting, where Tyron put his arm around a lovely, and there was a taped lion roar, cut to freeze-frame close up of Tyron’s honest, comically shocked face.
Tyron’s mum ended up giving all the coats to a Methodist mission. But he did not learn his lesson and Tyron still shouted when he was trying to be ingratiating and convincing.
180: IRON HAND AND VELVET GLOVE
Aw, come on guys,’ Ocker roared at CD and Walter with a big smile — he ignored Mrs Culboon. ‘Just tell us what you know and you can piss off. No hard feelings, wadaya say?’ He held a cup of water to CD’s lips.
‘We don’t know anything, mate. We were coming to find out,’ he replied, with a fair degree of honesty.
‘Now look here,’ Tyron continued, ‘I reckon you and I see eye to eye. Similar breed, straight talking if you follow me. I guess we’re just a couple of OK West Australian blokes. Am I right?’
‘Well not really,’ CD replied politely. ‘I’m British.’
‘Well, even better,’ said Tyron, delighted. ‘You can’t get more Aussie than that. After all, the poms were the very first Australians.’
‘Ha bloody ha mate,’ snorted Mrs Culboon contemptuously.
‘A Stone Age fucking culture is not what I call being Australian,’ snapped Tyron. ‘I call it dumb. Christ you lot had the place for forty thousand years, you never even invented cricket, ha ha ha!’ Tyron had more in common with Gordon Gordon than he would have liked to think. ‘Listen you,’ said Mrs Culboon, ‘we don’t know nothing and we ain’t done nothing, and that’s the truth I reckon.’
‘You shot down one of my helicopters, Mrs,’ said Tyron.
‘Look, that was a very heavy trip for us, too, you know,’ Walter chipped in with a hint of reproach in his voice. ‘Each of us is trying to come to terms with it in their own private space, and I have to say that it would help if you didn’t keep dragging it up all the time.’
&nbs
p; ‘Anyway, mate,’ added Mrs Culboon, ‘I reckon he would have shot us. Oh yes, I reckon he would, that’s for sure. What should we have done? Stood there in the light and said come on and shoot us? Ha! I don’t reckon so…’
‘Shut the boong up,’ snapped Tyron; and Du Pont stuffed a rag in her mouth.
‘Hey listen, man!’ protested Walter. ‘Like, can we keep the heaviness down, OK? I mean can we just cool the heaviness. You know heaviness never solved anything right, like.’
‘Right!’ shouted Tyron, giving up on the charm-school effort and making his decision to break his deal with Sly and get rough. ‘What do you know? How many more of you are there? And where are Zimmerman and the American journalist?’
His tone was very threatening and there was a sullen silence — from Walter and CD that is. Mrs Culboon was grunting unintelligibly through the rag. Which just goes to show what a small barrier to communication a lack of language can be, because it was quite clear to everyone that Mrs Culboon was saying, ‘Get the fuck this rag out of my mouth.’ Tyron was about to turn up the heat on the proceedings considerably when his three hostages were granted a last minute reprieve. A messenger arrived to announce that Professor Durf had arrived and would be obliged if he could see Tyron urgently.
181: TO BE OFFERED THE WORLD
In the long hours of the night, whilst Tyron had lain cursing the heat and slapping the bugs, Sly had indoctrinated Rachel into Stark.
It had been a shocker, no doubt about that. Certainly the most surprising thing anybody had ever told her; more astonishing even than her youthful discovery that Daddy had a seed which he put in Mummy’s tummy because they loved each other very much.
182: VANISHING POINT
First of all Sly had given Rachel a run-down of the apocalyptical doom scenario that he had first been fully made a party to at the dinner in Los Angeles. He explained the theory of the approaching vanishing point. ‘The world does not know the half, a quarter even, of the shit it is in, Rachel. All your wildest fears; your conspiracy paranoias; your worst predictions about the state of the world, it’s already happened ten times over. Words cannot describe the vandalism that has been perpetrated on this planet.’
Rachel did not know where this could be leading to. The last thing she had expected Sly to be was a green activist. He continued in the same dry tones.
‘There are virtually no forests left. There are no longer any effective atmospheric barriers. Soon there will be no polar icecaps. Coupled with this, every single thing on this planet has been subjected, to a greater or lesser extent, to toxification. It is a fact that nothing on earth can be said to be clean. Not one drop of water, not one gulp of air, not one mouthful of food. It is all irreversibly filthy. Without the forests, deserts will very soon take over the majority of land remaining above sea-level. Which will not be much because once the ice has melted all low lying land will be submerged under a filthy sea.’
Sly always did love to hold the floor and on this occasion he was particularly anxious to make an impression on his audience. He assumed an almost schoolmasterly air, pacing about with his hands behind his back. He near as damn it put on an English accent, which is how the Australian advertising industry implies weightiness. If they want to impress upon people that a particular box of cereals has dignity, they get a pom actor to do the voice-over. Sly was trying to sound weighty.
‘The degradation of the soil through salination, chemical imbalance and intense over-farming is set to make almost all agriculture untenable worldwide. When that happens, billions of people are going to turn on each other in starving fury. If it hasn’t already died of skin cancer or toxic shock, the human race will commit bloody self-murder…’
This was one of Durf’s phrases and Sly felt it sounded rather good. He continued, ‘This combination of various ecological disasters, any one of which alone could see us off, we call the Vanishing Point and we are satisfied that it will occur within the next two or three years. It is a straw that broke the camel’s back situation really. Things will stagger on just about getting by, until one day a crack appears that shatters the entire structure and everything comes tumbling down at once.’
Sly spoke of the end of everything without any great emotion. Of course he had been living with the facts and the figures for many months, but he was still pretty cool about it.
The reason he was so cool was, of course, that he knew that it wasn’t quite the end of everything.
183: WASTED TIME
Oh come on, this is out of it,’ said Rachel, understandably shocked. ‘I’m sure something can be done.’
‘Something could have been done a long time ago but we didn’t do it, did we chum?’ said Sly.
‘Who’s we?’ asked Rachel, wondering why the hell Sly was going on about ecology. Surely he wasn’t hoping that somehow he could persuade her that her principles were futile and hence she should leave whatever evil stuff he was up to alone?
‘Well everybody, of course,’ said Sly in answer to her question. ‘But mainly myself and the other big players. Ever since the first industrial revolution when James Watt boiled a kettle and invented acid rain, or whatever the hell happened, the natural, life-forming parameters of our world have been like an hour glass, getting thinner and thinner. The question being, would we squeeze past the middle and break on through to the other side. Now, if we had acted earlier, when it first got obvious that we were really screwing up home sweet home, then maybe it would have been OK and we could have started looking after the old world and the chances of life on earth might have expanded again. But we didn’t do it did we? We opted for instant profit and comfort; beer and skittles at the expense of the whole of future history. Anyway, now the gap in the glass is plugged, it’s a vanishing point, there isn’t a way through any more.’
‘So how can you be sure?’ demanded Rachel.
‘Rachel, it’s happening, now, we don’t need to speculate, the facts are all around us. All you have to do is make a little graph of the deterioration in the various life forces; the toxic overload being forced into the air; the food; the very dirt we walk on! Expand the curves just a brief moment into the future and you have complete Eco-breakdown.’
184: GUILT AND REDEMPTION
Understandably Rachel was extremely shaken by his conviction, and, of course, rather scared. ‘What was that about you and the other big players then?’ she asked. ‘Who are you?’
‘The super-rich; those of us who own the means of production; the people who make everything that fucks everything up. Now listen, don’t get me wrong. I ain’t absolving the little guys from guilt, they bought the stuff we made, they wanted the stupid little things that we swapped the planet for. Nobody objected. A quick look at the litter on the Carlton beaches makes me pretty doubtful that things would be much different if ‘the people’ had been in control…But it’s still mainly my fault, mine and my colleagues. I mean, is the man who buys pornography as guilty as the man who makes it and sells it? I reckon not, after all, the poor wanker on the receiving end would not have thought to even want it if it wasn’t stuffed under his nose.’
Sly was enjoying getting all this off his chest. He had kept his own counsel for so long that it was an immense relief to talk about it, wallow in his guilt. Especially to Rachel, a greeno who he had developed such a desire for. He was like the adulterer who confesses all to his faithful wife in order to absolve his own guilt; laying it on the least deserving recipient. This was confession and absolution for Sly, he needed it. And, of course, he would pay Rachel back for her patience a billion fold. After all, he had the whole of creation to offer her.
‘You know I was once the major backer for the development of a kind of instant French fry in a tube,’ Sly said, continuing his strange confession. ‘What you did was heated up some oil in a frying pan and pumped the tube into the fat, out came a chemically expanded string of reconstituted potato. Voila! No need for deep-fat chip pans and peeling spuds and all that. What’s more, it was terrific fun,
you could have chips as long or short as you liked them. You could have them in whirls, tie them in knots, write messages with them. As crap products go this one was actually kind of nice.’
‘Sounds good, I’d have bought it, once, just to see what it was like,’ said Rachel, fascinated to find out what all this was leading to. ‘Yeah, a lot of people did. We only put it out in the States but it made a packet. I was real sorry when we had to take it off the market,’ said Sly.
Rachel did not ask why he had to take it off the market, reckoning that he was going to tell her anyway, which of course he did.
‘Damn thing finally got banned. It was a kind of aerosol, see. The potato mixture was expanded by Chlorofluorocarbons, CFCs, you know the ozone eaters.’
‘I’m an environmental commando, Mr Moorcock,’ said Rachel, wishing to assert herself but actually sounding pretty dumb, ‘Of course I know what a Chlorofluorocarbon is.’
‘Yeah well I knew too, right from when I started marketing the stuff. It didn’t stop me backing an aerosol that made chips though. What’s more, I used every damn bit of political clout I had to lobby the politicos to stop them legislating against CFCs.’
‘Well you’re a bastard, aren’t you?’ said Rachel.
‘Well, I suppose I am. It didn’t seem that way at the time but I suppose I was and I suppose I still am, because I knew what that damn can was doing to the sky and yet I still put it on the shelves. People trust things on shelves, they think if there was anything wrong the government would do something. I mean, let’s face it, nobody asked for an aerosol that sprayed chips…’
Rachel was getting tired now.
‘Look, what the hell is going on?’ she snapped suddenly, ‘what are you doing here? What’s all this shit about the end of the world? And what do you want with me? Come on, give me an answer…or…‘ There is nothing more demeaning than getting half-way through a threat and realizing that you don’t have a punch line.