by Ben Elton
Mrs Culboon and Walter had no such romantic distractions to block their view of the fascinating scene beneath them. Five rockets were already in place, towering out of their silos and jutting up towards the helicopter. The rockets were supported by the spindly latticework towers that the previous night Walter and Mrs Culboon had taken for cranes. The final rocket was still awaiting installation. It lay on its colossal transport, like a designer biro, silver and white shining in the terrible burning sun. It bore the legend ‘Star Ark’ and beneath that a stylized representation of the moon. Even at this desperate moment, the grey figures of Stark, whose lives had been ruled by obsessive marketing, had not been able to resist the temptation to imbue their final product with a logo, designer graphics and a corporate image.
With the exception of the final rocket that had not yet been stood on its end, the Stark edifice was pretty much complete. It was an awe-inspiring sight.
‘This really is vaguely out of sight,’ said Walter.
‘Sure is,’ said their pilot, ‘weirdest hotels I ever saw. Still, I guess the kids will like them and it’ll certainly bring a lot of money into the state.’
It’s quite difficult for an astonished silence to fall upon a group of people who are bursting out of an over-stuffed and roaring helicopter, especially when the group includes such gregarious individuals as CD and Mrs Culboon. None the less, an astonished silence is what descended in reaction to the pilot’s statement.
Walter recovered first. ‘Uhm, listen, forgive me man, but you do not need to be Dan Dare to work out that those are rockets down there,’ he said.
‘Rocket shaped hotels,’ replied the man.
Silence returned; a silence sufficiently imbued with awe to deaden the tumultuous thwaka thwaka of the blades spinning above them.
‘Rocket shaped hotels?’ inquired Walter.
‘Sure,’ said the pilot cheerfully, who did not seem to mind being abducted. ‘I guess it’s some kind of theme park, you know, like Disney. Reckon kids could get pretty excited about sleeping in a rocket. Yeah, it sure will bring a heap of money into the state.’
207: A FINE STATE
It is a strange feature of federated countries like the United States or Australia that there is often even more pig ignorant xenophobic tunnel vision regarding the rivalry between states than there is in the area of national patriotism. It is common to hear some brain-dead tub of lard politico, running for office, whose principal argument for being elected is that he was born in the same state as those whom he seeks to lead. The fact that his qualifications for being a leader of men extend no further than the fact that he is human, is less relevant than where his mother happened to drop him.
‘Intellectually he may be a vegetable but at least he’s a vegetable from Texas’ which of course makes him superior to an Einstein figure from any other state.
Likewise, in the field of economics, more can be excused if it can be proved to be of benefit to the state than would be acceptable if it were the business of the entire nation…
‘Slavery is clearly a grey area and certainly there must be a proper regulating body. None the less, it provides work and more than that it will bring money into the state.’
It is this parochial patriotism that explains Sly’s early popularity despite his selfish and destructive business practices. He may have been a bastard but he was a West Australian bastard. People would have liked to see any of those poofters in Sydney or Melbourne produce an entrepreneur with half his ability to create misery and unhappiness.
208: TOUCH-DOWN
None the less, localized xenophobia notwithstanding, it was still a deep shock to all in the helicopter, excluding the pilot of course, to discover that people were still happy to swallow the leisure story.
‘Yeah, I heard there’ll be planetariums and stuff and weightlessness and everything, I guess the parents’ll love it as much as the kids.’
They had crossed the site now and were heading for the wire. Walter seized the opportunity to try a little control experiment.
‘Yeah well, that’s shit man,’ he said, trying to sound sincere, ‘there ain’t going to be no hotels, and there ain’t going to be no money for WA. Those are real rockets man! The world’s dying and the fat cats are splitting.’
But of course it was no use, the man just laughed and said that he had guessed that his abductors were weird, but they were really weird.
Walter gave up. Zimmerman asked Mrs Culboon to point to where they had left the wheels.
The helicopter put down with a bump and the squashed occupants burst out. As they unloaded the weaponry that they had taken plus that which was in the helicopter, the pilot spoke up rather nervously.
‘Hey, listen you people, I want to thank you,’ said the pilot, whose name, it turned out, was Eugene.
They were all a bit surprised at this, they had after all abducted him at gunpoint which hardly seemed like grounds for gratitude. None the less, Eugene seemed quite happy. In fact he had been surprisingly cheerful throughout the whole experience.
‘It’s just that I’ve never flown before,’ Eugene explained.
This was worse than Zimmerman, at least he had admitted that he didn’t know how to fly before they took off. Mrs Culboon, Walter, and CD all shouted in their own shocked and individual ways that Eugene had said he could fly.
‘I can fly,’ protested Eugene, ‘and I did didn’t I? We’re here aren’t we? Of course I can fly. But I’m just a mechanic,’ he added bitterly.
‘Just a mechanic, ha!! I’d like to know how long they’d stay in the air without us mechanics. But do we get any thanks? Do we hell…Excuse my language Ma’am,’ he directed this at Mrs Culboon.
‘I don’t give a fuck what you say, Eugene,’ she replied.
‘They just strut around and insult you,’ continued Eugene, who had clearly hit a pet subject, ‘they say it’s not clean enough or it’s missing on a cylinder when you know that it’s as sweet as a nut and it’s just that the big-headed twerps can’t fly properly. But will they give you a go? No way ha! They just —’
‘Yeah, OK Eugene, we get it,’ said Zimmerman.
‘They just tell you it takes training and that you have to have a degree. Oh yeah? Well I’ve been trained mate, yes, in the school of life, I’ve got a degree in hard knocks.’
‘Yeah, fine, Eugene…‘ Zimmerman interrupted again.
‘They always say that we don’t have a class thing in this country, but we do, we’re worse than the pom’s. I couldn’t train as a pilot, oh no, not poncey enough, I had to be a mechanic because my dad was only a door-to-door trouser salesman…’
‘Eugene! Shut the fuck up!!!’ screamed Zimmerman. ‘No, but really, I mean, really, you don’t have to be a daddy’s boy to…‘ They left him and headed for the car.
‘So, what next?’ Mrs Culboon asked as she drove them all towards the holiday home. ‘I can’t think of a single thing we can do.’
‘Well all that stuff we discovered,’ protested CD, ‘the launch silos and everything. I mean it must be illegal…’
‘Hey man, it’s a wicked world you know?’ said Walter. ‘Like, if a couple of bread-heads want to dig holes, they can.’
‘And that’s just the point isn’t it?’ whined Zimmerman. ‘The whole system of values is just so screwed. Like they bust me for having maybe one tiny toot on a mild and tension relieving doobie for my own personal private use. The world gets protected from me lying on the carpet for twelve hours giggling and then eating fifteen Mars Bars. I get hassled by the pigs for destroying nothing more than what’s left of my own brain, man, and you’re saying that some freaked out, off- the-planet world domination mind-fuck can launch rockets to the moon and everything is cool?’
‘I’m just saying, man, that a dude can dig a hole. OK? I mean — ’
‘Oh shut up will you fellahs?’ said Mrs Culboon. ‘First Eugene, now you, going on and on, I’d rather listen to a didgereedoo, and that’s saying something.’
They drove on in silence feeling awful about everything.
209: COUNCIL OF WAR
Mr Culboon and Chrissy were very relieved to see their friends again. It had been both a wearisome and a frightening wait in the parched desert with the temperature some five degrees hotter than usual. The physical discomfort had been complemented by a fair degree of the mental kind. It is a strange and disconcerting experience to sit in what should have been the still of the desert while Hades appears to be under construction not far away. They were very relieved that whatever happened next, at least the waiting was over. After the initial greetings, Mr Culboon noticed that not the whole party was present.
‘Where’s Rachel?’ he asked. ‘She’s gone over to them, man, and for kind of a depressing reason,’ answered Walter. ‘Who is them?’ asked Chrissy, eager to discover at last the nature of the beast she had been stalking.
And so between them Walter, CD and Mrs Culboon explained all that they had learnt. Chrissy was completely astonished by their extraordinary story; it far outdistanced any of the possible scenarios that she had conjured up herself to explain what was going on. In comparison to trying to recreate the story of the Ark, the idea of holding the world to nuclear ransom seemed fairly mild.
‘You are saying that they are convinced that there is no hope for the world. It really is dying?’ asked Chrissy. ‘Yeah, and they’re splitting man. The rats are leaving the sinking ship,’ said Walter.
‘Well we have to try and stop them!’ Chrissy replied.
‘Oh yeah, how?’ enquired Walter, ‘and also for that matter, why? Who gives a fuck? Let them go. If I have to die I don’t need pigs like that at the funeral.’
‘And what about Rachel?’ snapped CD who died a little every time he thought of Rachel’s decision. ‘Is she a pig?’
‘She had a chance, she made her choice,’ said Walter. ‘I have no problem with that. Personally I wouldn’t have decided to go. Like, for me, eternity with a bunch of bread- heads would not be a viable option.’
210: THE GREEN EYED MONSTER
CD was at the end of his emotional tether, suddenly he found himself so hemmed in by unhappiness that it left him gasping for breath. He lit a cigarette without even trying to look cool. He was too far gone even to manage to construct some romantic fantasy out of the character of betrayed friends. An emotion had burrowed its way into his stomach and his soul, an emotion of such intensity that no matter how many times it washed over him, he remained surprised at its strength. He had become a jealous guy.
On the trip back to the cave, CD had tried to persuade himself that the anger and frustration, and deep deep sickness that he felt to his stomach, were to do with whom Rachel had chosen. He told himself that it was the fact that it was Moorcock that really hurt, the fact that she had defected to the very world which she and he had been trying to fight. This, he tried to believe, was the root of his despair, and an understandable and righteous root it would have been.
But it was not the case, this was not why CD felt the way he did. He would have felt the same way if Rachel had opted to go with St Francis of Assisi or the Mahatma Gandhi. CD was not seething over some betrayed principle. He was not sinking into chasmic despair because of the discovery that Rachel had feet of clay. He was in the state he was in through pure, unadulterated jealousy. He was discovering that beyond love, beyond unrequited love, perhaps beyond any other passion known to humanity, deep deep in the depths of the turgid, clinging, swamplike pit of despair that lies dormant, within every soul, lurks jealousy. Jealousy, that most demeaning and debilitating of emotions. Jealousy, which doubles the strength of the love upon which it is based but whilst doubling it, warps and perverts it, demeans it, until it is no longer recognizable as the thing of beauty it once was and nothing is left of love but lies, doubts and bitter self-loathing. Jealous love is no more like true love than Mr Hyde was like Dr Jekyll or a stagnant swamp is like a freshwater lake. CD could not be said to be feeling his best.
211: WHAT NEXT?
Still, if CD was feeling down, at least it kept him from dwelling on the imminent death of the earth, which was the cheerful subject that the others were mulling over.
‘I still don’t believe their story,’ said Mr Culboon. ‘The world ain’t dying. I reckon they’re fixing to kill it, I still reckon they’re going to nuke the world and make us all slaves.’
‘Oh shut up, you old fool,’ said Mrs Culboon. ‘You weren’t there. I heard it from Rachel. They’re fixing to go all right and damn soon.’
‘Well for God’s sake we have to do something then!’ shouted Chrissy. ‘I mean we’re still alive aren’t we? The world isn’t dead yet is it? What are we going to do?’
‘Well, personally I was thinking of selling my pad,’ said Walter, ‘scoring the best grade shit I can and smoking my way to hell.’
‘Nice,’ said Zimmerman. But Chrissy did not think so.
‘Look, these people must know something, they must know a hell of a lot if they’ve made the decision they have. Maybe they know something that could help!’ Chrissy almost pleaded.
‘Listen, Chrissy, it’s exactly what they do know that’s made them make the decision they have. I mean, these guys have everything, they’re not likely to give it up unless they have no choice. I mean that’s why Rachel made the decision she did,’ said Walter. Chrissy was astonished at his fatalism but of course she had not heard what he had heard, and she wasn’t a hippy…
‘It can’t be too late,’ she continued. ‘Nobody’s even tried to stop the rot yet. But I’ll tell you something, if the world knew that men like nice old Slampacker’s hamburgers were doing this terrible thing, then they might wake up. We might still be able to patch things up on earth. This whole terrible plan could be the very motivation people need to get their act together!’
‘I think Chrissy has a point,’ said Mrs Culboon, ‘and also there’s another thing. If that bastard Moorcock is right, and it really is the very end of everything. And what goes up in those rockets really is going to be all that’s left of the human race…Well I reckon I’d die easier if I thought some decent folks were watching down on us from on high, instead of a bunch of men, selfish, grasping…‘ she was, for once, lost for words ‘…I’ll tell you one thing, I bet no black people have tickets on that flight at present.’
But she had struck a chord. CD spoke up, he was anxious that they should decide to do something, he could not stand just sitting around feeling the way he did. His guts were so heavy he felt that he was in danger of sinking into the ground.
‘Mrs Culboon’s right,’ he said, ‘I mean if we could stop them, I don’t know, get them arrested or something…then somebody else could escape instead…’
‘Like who?’ asked Mr Culboon. ‘Well, I don’t know, they could have a competition. Artists or something, I don’t know…’
‘Man all you’ll see is another set of fat cats standing in line,’ said Zimmerman cynically. ‘Politicians, soldiers, all that shit.’
‘I’m telling you, the thing to do is to stop the thing altogether,’ pleaded Chrissy, ‘…use it as a shrine, a monument, something to galvanize the human race into action…Christ even if we all have to go back to living in shacks and being penniless there must be a way to stop the rot.’
‘What do you mean, go back?’ asked Mrs Culboon, her humour returning. ‘Besides that,’ added Chrissy, ‘if anything is to be done to save the world we may actually need these people.’
‘Oh yeah, like a freak needs a drug squad,’ said Zimmerman. ‘I mean, shit Chrissy, these people have fucked absolutely everything right up. What the hell do we need them for?’
‘Look,’ said Chrissy, trying to martial her thoughts and not to sound patronizing, ‘it is possible, in fact it is pretty likely, that only those who have the power to destroy things so effectively have the power to create…The way the world is run, the way things get done, are incredibly complex…The means of production are owned by individuals; the raw materials of c
hange are owned by individuals…’
‘Oh come on man,’ interjected Walter, ‘don’t give me any of that commie shit, like that’s all the same trip man you know? Like two sides of the same coin, ‘if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow’,’ he said, quoting from the classics.
‘Listen meat-head,’ said Chrissy, whose long wait had not improved her temper, ‘it’s got nothing to do with commie shit, I’m a Roosevelt Democrat like my daddy before me, OK? I am talking economics,’ she continued. ‘If these bastards actually think that time is so short for the earth that they’re leaving, well then hell, time must be that short, right?…’
‘Now I reckon we’d better listen to this here Yanky woman, yes I do,’ said Mrs Culboon. ‘After all, we got to do something that’s for sure, and I guess she’s thinking a whole lot clearer than the rest of us sun-fried bunch of no hopers. Ain’t that right, Mr Culboon?’
‘You speak for yourself, woman,’ replied Mr Culboon. ‘I’m as sharp today as I ever was.’
‘Which is sharp as shit I reckon, old man,’ replied Mrs Culboon, ‘and that’s blunt. Go on, Chrissy. What’s the plan?’
‘I don’t have a plan, godammit, I just know,’ said Chrissy, ‘that these people represent a workable economic structure within which things get done. A structure which, in an emergency, could react quickly. It may be a shithouse structure but it’s there, it’s in place, it’s controlled and it takes orders. Now, if every damn boss in the world high-tails it, there will be complete economic chaos…’