Stark

by Ben Elton

  Before Tyron could speak, Durf, desperate to get moving, interjected. ‘We are having a shortfall of five Stark members, there will be no problem accommodating all of you,’ he said.

  Tyron could have killed him.

  He was heading for the moon to be a part of the phoenix human race, rising out of the polluted ashes of its dead self. However, he was to be accompanied by his wife, his mother and Aris-fucking-stos. Ocker Tyron could scarcely believe this appalling turn of events.

  As they awaited their final instructions his family huddled close around him, fearful that he would yet find a way of deserting them. But he had none.

  236: PRISONER ONCE AGAIN

  The site was eerily empty. All non-indoctrinated personnel were either on the perimeter or had been dismissed altogether. The actual conspirators were now milling about at the transporters awaiting the final trip out to the rocket silos which lay a few kilometres further on into the desert. Only Sly and Rachel were at large.

  ‘Please, Rachel, darling…uhm, love boat, honey bunch…For Christ’s sake they’ll be gone soon,’ he pleaded, ‘we’ll miss the fucking boat…Look we’ve got to go, there’s nothing left here on earth but hell…’

  ‘Nobody’s going anywhere, so shut up. We’re going to destroy the control centre,’ Rachel replied. ‘Your bloody friends can damn well try and save the world not run away from it.’

  ‘But it can’t be saved,’ Sly was desperate now. ‘Do you think if I really thought there was a chance I’d be going? God Almighty, Rachel, why the hell would I?’

  Even though Rachel was behind him, Sly could feel a moment of tension and doubt descend upon her.

  Just then, far away, on the perimeter, Zimmerman blew up the armoured truck. Sly knew that this was as distracted as Rachel was ever likely to get. He had to take his chance. He was fighting for his life, and hers. Besides, he didn’t think she’d shoot him.

  She didn’t. Rachel never knew if she would have done, he was too quick for her. In the split second of distraction following Zimm’s blast, Sly swung around and grappled with her for the gun. In an instant, the tables had turned.

  ‘Right, we’re going to get in the fucking rocket,’ said Sly viciously.

  ‘You maybe. I’ve told you, I’m not going.’

  Sly knew how little time he had. For a whole five minutes he tried to reason with Rachel, again explaining why the whole thing had to happen whether they liked it or not, telling her he loved her, but Rachel was adamant, she would not leave. Then, the final thirty minute count-down started. Zimmerman’s blast had also spooked Durf. He tried calling up the perimeter on the radio, but it had gone silent. Durf had no idea what the problem was and he had no wish to wait around to find out. He hit the button that activated the actual launch procedure.

  Inside the control room, outside which stood Sly and Rachel, a tape began to turn.

  ‘Attention, attention,’ the pre-programmed NASA equipment boomed. ‘Clear launch site, final count-down commencing, minus thirty minutes and counting,’ continued the long-since recorded voice.

  Sly grabbed Rachel roughly.

  ‘Listen you bitch, if you ain’t coming you picked a fine time to tell me. So I’m telling you! You are coming. I’m not going up there alone, without a companion, a woman, how can I? I wouldn’t be a man in the moon, I’d be a fucking nothing in the moon! You put me in this position, you’re what I’ve got and I’m taking you now. Move!’

  ‘I’m not going,’ screamed Rachel through her tears.

  ‘You are! Now move!’ replied Sly, brandishing the gun, ‘or else I swear I will knock you out and carry you onto the fucking rocket. Can’t you see girl!! Can’t you see! How could I go without you?…don’t even think about it, you’re coming.’ Rachel realized that unconscious she would be done for sure. She had to concentrate, there were after all thirty minutes left. Slowly, she turned, and got back into the car for the drive to the assembly point where Sly intended to force her, if necessary, onto the last transport out to the rockets.

  237: VOICE ACROSS THE SAND

  Out on the perimeter Zimm had just managed to tempt Walter Culboon back to where Mrs Culboon crouched in the desert. CD and Chrissy had assembled too. Having seen Zimm’s wild and ungainly charge away from the epicentre they all presumed, rightly, that things had fucked up somewhat and that they had got nowhere. ‘Don’t blame the camel man,’ said Zimmerman, ‘it’s not the camel’s fault.’

  Just as the others were about to protest that they had no intention of blaming the camel, they saw a truck from another perimeter post approaching; the one that they had been attacking. Clearly their dash for the centre was now completely cut off. What’s more, it was obvious to the meanest intelligence that their enemies were not going to take the indignities inflicted upon them lying down.

  EcoAction had exposed itself as the weakened force that it was. Now, yet again, it was they who were the hunted. ‘We’ll have to pull back,’ said Zimmerman, ‘but I don’t think those guys are going to make it easy for us.’

  ‘We can’t pull back,’ said CD in panic, ‘we haven’t got Rachel.’

  ‘Listen, man, will you just stop thinking about sex all the time,’ shouted Zimm ‘…I find it just totally insensitive. The chick made her choice man. Now listen, this place is blown. We have to move further up the wire. You people make for the station wagon. I’ll cover you, then I’ll follow on Walter Culboon.’

  Walter Culboon could not speak English but she knew a worrying tone of voice when she heard one. More and more her keen camel instincts with their delicate sensitivity to the biorhythms of life were shouting at her, ‘You got a looney on your back!! You got a looney on your back! Buck the bastard into a dune and run like fuck.’

  Walter Culboon was about to do exactly this when, like everybody else, she was distracted by the voice across the sands.

  For just as Zimmerman was giving his orders, and just as the commander of the security unit that had lost its truck was about to commandeer the second truck, with the intention of ‘killing the fucking jerk on the camel’. Just as that morning’s biggest earth disaster was about to hit the first editions — flash flooding in Bangladesh put three-quarters of the country under water.

  Just then, Durf pushed the button and the count-down started. The voice that Sly and Rachel had heard was clear as day across the desert — it was probably heard in Bullens Creek where, no doubt, they thought that the Moorcock leisure park was installing the sound-track for a new ride.

  ‘Attention attention,’ the recorded American voice spoke from the sky. ‘Clear launch site, final count-down commencing. Minus thirty minutes and counting.’

  Everybody turned and looked. Attackers and defenders alike, turned and stared as one person towards the centre of Stark, all forgetting their differences and the battle which they had been fighting in response to this eerie voice.

  In the clear light of the morning, ten, maybe fifteen kilometres away, the six rockets pointed upwards from their silos, supported by the spindly towers. It seemed impossible to comprehend, but the voice was referring to the rockets and it was being serious. The jaws of the security guards dropped lower and lower. The rockets had, after all, only been visible for a few days, and of course, being security guards they had seen it as a matter of professional pride that they had never questioned what it was that they were guarding. Now they had no choice…

  ‘Count-down has commenced. Final loading must be carried out immediately. Repeat immediately.’

  ‘Jesus,’ whispered Zimmerman. ‘They’re going to blow all six at once. Shit I guess I’m glad we didn’t get any closer man. I mean, we would have been fried man! Fried, as old Walter would have said, with a capital ‘F’. And that’s fucking fried.’

  Zimmerman gave Walter Culboon a friendly pat, which nearly stunned her.

  ‘Man, if Walter Culboon hadn’t gone the wrong way I’d have been riding into that man, finding out what it feels like to be a meat pie looking at a microwave.�
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  ‘Aren’t we safe, then?’ asked Chrissy more out of abstract interest than anything else. ‘I reckon we’re probably safe where we are,’ said Zimm, ‘but, oh boy, when those mothers blow you’re going to see a burning cloud roll across the desert like surf from Hades. It’s going to look like they dropped the big one right in our laps.’

  Everyone, guards, officers, Eco-terrorists, had turned to stare across the desert at Stark. Mrs Culboon had fished out the high-powered field glasses taken from the helicopter ride and had wandered up to the top of the ridge behind which they had been sheltering. She felt no fear at exposing herself in this way. In a matter of seconds, the whole situation had changed. The launch count-down, floating across the desert, had made them all comrades in wonderment.

  She steadied the glasses on a rock and peered.

  ‘Christ,’ yelled Mrs Culboon, ‘I can see the buggers queueing for seats, there’s funny kind of trucks taking them out towards the rockets. Jesus, God, Lord, Almighty, there’s that bastard Tyron.’

  One by one, they all took a look, as the voice counted off the last thirty minutes to the blast. CD was last to get hold of the glasses. By the time he looked most of the passengers were heading for the rockets. There was only one bus left…the departure point was almost empty.

  Almost empty that is. He could just make out two figures marching in single file — one of them had a gun.

  Month in, month out, CD had studied her walk, he had ogled her legs, stared at her every move and posture. He had devoured the shape of her bottom, tortured himself over the tilt and movement of her breasts. He had longed and ached for every part of her, the way she held her head, the tiny bulge of her tummy that only showed with tight skirts and which she hated but which he desperately wanted to sink his face into. With the unique passion of the unrequited, CD had stored up her every little shape, tilt and movement of use in his private fantasies — to conjure up again when he was alone in his bed.

  He had pictured her so many times, there was no way he could mistake her now, even over fifteen kilometres with the binoculars shaking with passionate anger. That was Rachel, and what’s more, she was being forced onto a rocket. ‘The bastard’ he screamed, ‘that bastard Moorcock is forcing her! Hang on Rachel, I’m coming!!’

  He ran for the station wagon…Zimmerman saw him and shouted, ‘It’s too late man!! You won’t get half-way there, it’s eighteen minutes, you’ll fry, you’ll burn! CD there is no time!!’

  But CD was in the car and away…

  238: A VICTORY FOR HUMANITY

  Moments after CD had thrown down the binoculars, Sly and Rachel arrived at the door of the final transport. Durf was in an agony to be off.

  ‘Come on, Mr Moorcock,’ he protested.

  ‘Get in,’ said Sly brandishing the gun.

  ‘No! Never!’ said Rachel. ‘It’s horrible, I won’t go!’

  ‘Please, Rachel,’ said Sly quietly.

  ‘Look if the girl won’t go voluntarily, knock the silly bitch out,’ said a sweating Durf. ‘You shut your foul mouth, Durf,’ shouted Sly, waving the gun, ‘or it’ll be you that won’t be going.’

  ‘But we have to leave now,’ pleaded Durf. ‘We are only sixteen minutes from ignition…’

  ‘Rachel, I’ll give you the moon!’ Sly shouted, turning her towards him, feeling tears start in his eyes — his first tears in decades. ‘No girl was ever offered that, please, for God’s sake come, I love you.’

  ‘Then stay here with me,’ said Rachel quietly, whilst Durf hopped from foot to foot on the step of the transport, desperate to hurry things along, but recognizing also that Sly was armed and in a highly volatile state. Sly no longer even knew Durf was there.

  ‘I can’t stay here,’ he said, ‘everyone’s going to die here. A whole race of losers, I can’t be a loser…‘ They stared at each other for a moment. Sly thought of pleading again, but he knew it would be useless. Perhaps that was the reason he loved her, she was strong.

  ‘Mr Moorcock,’ shouted Durf, ‘we’ve got to go! Either get this girl on the transport or I’ll drag the silly bitch on!’

  Durf made to grab Rachel and Sly grabbed him, banging his head against the door of the transport.

  ‘I told you to keep out of it you bastard, and you’d better or I’ll kill you, understand? I’m going to get her on!’

  ‘Then you’d better start running,’ said a triumphant Durf.

  Rachel had grabbed her chance. She was running for the car. The control bunker was only a minute away, she’d be safe in there — obviously it had been built to withstand the blast. She was presuming that Sly would not shoot her in the back. She was hoping that he would follow her. He did neither.

  ‘Rachel!!’ he screamed, raising his gun, but what was the point…

  ‘Wait here,’ he snapped at Durf.

  ‘If you go after her we will have to leave without you,’ said Durf icily, his hand on his gun, blood trickling from his injured head, ‘The count-down is irreversible, we have no choice.’

  Nor did Sly, he couldn’t make himself a loser for a girl, he just couldn’t do it.

  ‘Rachel,’ he shouted to her as she jumped into the car, ‘come back you stupid bitch! You’ll all be dead in a year…You stupid bitch…’

  But she drove away and Sly and Durf boarded the transport.

  ‘You should have dragged her on,’ said Durf, as they tore towards the rockets. ‘Now you’ll be alone, you will have to wait for one of the frozen embryos to grow up.’

  ‘Just one more word, Durf,’ hissed Sly. ‘One more fucking word, and I’ll snap your scrawny neck in two.’ Everybody seemed to be threatening Durf that day, he wished people would not be so emotional.

  Rachel had not a moment to lose. She raced the car back to the control area, screeched it down the ramp into the underground loading area, jumped out and rushed into the central control room, slamming the lead and concrete doors behind her.

  The voice informed her that there were thirteen minutes to go. She considered trying to carry out her plan of destroying the controls, but she had no weapon — where was all the modern furniture? Rachel had presumed the place would be full of glistening steel chairs. The sort of chairs that Sunday supplements inform you are the way furniture is going for the next decade — chairs that ought to come with their own osteopath.

  But there were no chairs, just rank upon rank of glistening console going bleep bleep bleep. Rachel would probably not have tried to destroy the place anyway, they were all aboard, she might kill them. Sly was aboard. Rachel collapsed in an orgy of self-recrimination. Because of her lies, Sly would have to face life alone, perhaps for ever more, without a woman. If she had not plotted against him, he would have taken someone, now he was alone. Then again, they were all alone, everyone in the world, just waiting to die.

  239: CHASE

  Something in Walter Culboon’s instincts urged her to obey Zimmerman. There was such genuine anguish in his tone as he jumped upon her back that she felt able to take courage and head back towards the scene of her previous terrors.

  ‘Shit man, he won’t get half-way there, and then man, bang! Poof! CD is part of the greenhouse effect,’ Zimm had shouted as he ran towards Walter Culboon.

  They charged off together, heading towards Stark in CD’s wake, and nearly ran smack into a little jeep picking its way along in the opposite direction. It was driven by a stunning looking girl and had the name ‘Suki’ written across the sunstrip.

  ‘Don’t worry, Walter Culboon,’ said Zimmerman, ‘it’s only another ‘woman driving across desert in car’ hallucination. I’m having a lot of those today.’ Luckily the camel did not think it was a hallucination and swerved to avoid it.

  They pressed on after CD. Zimm was armed and ready to fire should the security cordon have tried to stop him, but they had clearly decided that events had got bigger than their brief. Some were staring at the rockets; some were heading towards Bullens in terror. Either way, Zimmerman sailed right through
them, as CD had done moments before.

  Zimm reckoned he had a chance, CD was not making fantastic headway. The desert floor was extremely uneven and it was not possible to drive quickly, on the other hand he did have a start and Zimm was chasing him on a tired camel.

  Over the harsh scrub he thundered in the wake of CD’s dust cloud, every step taking them closer to being engulfed in a mega-cloud of burning rocket fuel and white hot fall-out.

  CD didn’t care, he was hunched manically over the wheel, conscious of only one thing — the need to rescue Rachel.

  As the minutes ticked away, Walter Culboon pushed herself to the limit whilst Zimmerman sat astride roaring at CD to stop. ‘Why don’t you listen you stupid bastard,’ he screamed.

  The terrible voice of the count-down boomed again across the desert, drowning Zimm’s puny efforts, informing all and sundry that they were now eight minutes from ignition, seven…now five.

  Five minutes to a sextuplet rocket launch and CD was trying to drive into it! Zimm knew that he himself was crazy but he thanked heaven that he wasn’t that crazy.

  ‘Stop, you insane arsehole,’ he screamed over Walter Culboon’s head, as they careered towards oblivion…

  ‘Four minutes and fifty seconds,’ said the voice.

  Then Zimm saw his chance. There was a little hillock ahead, only about ten feet at its peak, but it was the top of a long sand wave that CD would certainly have to traverse if he wanted to head on in.

  ‘I hope the bastard smashes straight into it,’ thought Zimm…But no, CD’s brain was still clear, except of course for the part that was telling him to commit a pointless and suicidal act.

  CD turned the car to travel along parallel to the ridge of sand, this gave Zimm his one chance to get ahead.

  As the voice informed him that he now had four minutes and forty seconds left to live, Zimm spurred Walter Culboon up to the top of the hillock. He unslung the shoulder-held launcher and attempted to judge the distance between himself and CD, the speed CD was travelling and any likely changes of direction. What he wanted to do was to put a shell in the ground about twenty metres ahead of CD’s car. This, Zimm hoped, would stop the car without killing CD, although why he was bothering with the stupid bastard was a mystery to Zimm. His own years of acting like a maniac had not made him any more sympathetic to when other people tried it. There was so little time, Zimm had to force himself to take aim carefully, he knew he would only get the one shot.