This Other Eden

by Ben Elton

  ‘Almost,’ Krystal breathed. ‘Down a bit, that’s it, nearly, no, up a bit, yes, a bit more, nearly … No! Not there! Get out of there!’

  Max jerked back like a startled rabbit.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry!’ he gasped.

  The misunderstanding over, Krystal guided Max to the correct orifice and they began, finally, to make love. And it was good. She gasped, he gasped, they both gasped. Then they squelched.

  It was the old problem. When a man is on top of a woman and the sweat begins to flow, the woman’s cleavage will often start to blow rasberries. It never happened in movies, of course. Max had pumped his body up and down on top of countless gorgeous actresses, Krystal had gasped and sweated beneath numerous bits of thespian beefcake. Yet never once had a single cleavage so much as squeaked. In the real world, however, it was a noise that had intruded on many an ecstatic moment. It’s always a difficult decision, whether to refer to it or not. Krystal always did.

  ‘Your chest is making my tits fart,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ replied Max.

  ‘I could let some air out of them, maybe.’

  ‘No, that wouldn’t work, it happens with little ones too. Try to forget it, OK?’

  ‘Yeah, OK.’

  So they returned again to the matter in hand. Soon their passion began to take control again. The gasping returned. He grunted, she squeaked. She squeaked, he grunted. She arched her back, he plunged his hands under her buttocks.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, yes, yes!’

  ‘Oh!’ he said. ‘Mh! Ah! Oooh!’

  Krystal’s body was dissolving, making ready to orgasm. As she got warmer and wetter, Max thrust with ever greater passion. The inevitable happened. There was a squelch that made Krystal’s cleavage sound positively polite.

  ‘Damn! I hate it when my crotch makes that noise,’ said Krystal. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s me, too, I’m creating the vacuum,’ Max observed reasonably and nuzzled up to Krystal’s ear. ‘Try not to think about it. It’s beautiful.’

  ‘Beautiful! My crotch is blowing reveille and you’re saying it’s beautiful!’

  ‘Well, it is.’

  Krystal liked Max’s attitude. She held him tighter, and gasping and squelching away, they rushed towards climax and astonishingly it looked as if they were going to reach the tape together. Nearly. Nearly. Gasp, squelch, squelch, gasp. Sadly, at the last moment, as Krystal began to come and Max drew back for a last glorious plunge … it came out and he banged it into her thigh, bending it double and making him screech in pain.

  ‘Yes!’ said Krystal.

  ‘Ouch,’ said Max.

  And so the brief marriage ended, amicably, painfully and messily. Afterwards they had a cup of coffee and discussed the upcoming divorce.

  ‘Who shall we sell the story to?’ Krystal asked

  ‘Well, I’m having lunch with my agent at the studio. I’ll have a talk with her about it, she’ll get us a good price.’

  So Max headed into Hollywood for lunch at the DigiMac Studio commissary. Which was, as it happens, where Rosalie and her team of Eco-terrorists were heading in their helicopter.

  Meanwhile, far away in Europe, where the morning was early evening, the man often celebrated as the last sane person on Earth was addressing the European parliament on the subject of environmental destruction. To emphasise his arguments, live footage of the Alaskan oil tanker disaster was playing on screens hung about the Grand Chamber. The same disaster which Plastic Tolstoy was watching in his kitchen and above which Judy Schwartz was hanging on a winch, still puzzling over the surprising nature and extent of the ruptures in the tanker’s sides.

  Chapter Seven

  A gunpowder plot

  The House that Jacques built.

  Jurgen Thor stood, massive and imposing, behind the marble podium inside the magnificent European Federation Parliament building in Brussels.

  The place had only been open a week. It had been scheduled to open fifteen years ago but, having been designed by a committee of architects from all thirty-six Federal States, it had overrun somewhat. Also, and for the same reason, there were no toilets. No country was prepared to take responsibility for so mundane an area. No proud Euro Head of State was going to be the one who had to stand before that great, imposing repulsive marble palace and say, ‘Our man did the bogs.’

  There were no cloakrooms either, no kitchens, no committee rooms and no offices, just thirty-six Grand Chambers. Everybody had wanted to design the Grand Chamber and in the end everybody did. The Palace of Peace and Profit (for such was the Euro building’s name) was almost three square kilometres of Grand Chamber. Thirty-six Grand Chambers contained within an edifice of such striking horror that children ran crying in fear to their mothers’ arms after a single glance at it. If an infinite number of monkeys were given an infinite amount of graphic design equipment, never, in an infinite number of years, could they have designed such a stupid and repulsive building. But then that could have been said about most of the new buildings in the thrusting modern Europe.

  The Palace stood in the centre of what had been beautiful Brussels, mile upon mile of marble and precious hardwoods almost entirely obscured from view by the ring of Portaloos that surrounded it. As it happened, the Portaloos were not really necessary because there were so many statues, fountains and frescos symbolising the Euro ideals of peace, liberty and buggering the rest of the world’s trade, that it was a simple matter, even for female delegates, to find some large symbolic lump behind which to relieve themselves.

  Jurgen points the finger.

  The European Federation had invited Jurgen Thor to address the opening session of the Palace because it wanted to demonstrate to the world Europe’s continued commitment to defending the environment. It was, after all, a lot cheaper to give a platform to a green politico than to legislate against polluters.

  Jurgen was, as always, pulling no punches.

  ‘When you buy a private Claustrosphere!’ he thundered. ‘When your taxes help build a municipal Claustrosphere! By that very action you accept as fact the dreadful possibility that we are about to destroy the Earth! In essence you yourself destroy the Earth! You commit planetary treason!’

  The various delegates, lobbyists and Euro MPs listened in uncomfortable silence. They were uncomfortable, partly because the seats of the particular Grand Chamber in which they were sitting had been designed for purely aesthetic purposes. They looked all right. The architect (a Latvian) had attempted to create a prismatic effect, making all the seats out of perspex pyramids, and when the room was empty, light bounced from seat to seat, creating a dazzling effect. However, when the room was full of delegates (which was, after all, what it was there for) the effect was merely one of lots of people wincing because they had hard plastic points up their behinds. The Euro delegates were also uncomfortable, however, because of what Jurgen Thor was saying. It was horrid to be accused of planetary treason, particularly if secretly you felt the accusation to be a fair one. There was not a person in that huge chamber, with the probable exception of Jurgen Thor, who did not own a Claustrosphere. Everybody had of course agonised over buying one, but what could you do? Everybody knew that the Earth was half dead and that there was every possibility of it going the whole hog at any moment. A person would feel something of a fool standing outside some pal’s Claustrosphere, explaining with their last gasp that the pal had hastened the situation which was about to kill them. It was, when everything was said and done, all very well having principles, but no principle was worth sacrificing your children for, was it?

  ‘You tell me you have to protect your children!’ Jurgen Thor beat his mighty fist down upon the lectern. ‘Will your children thank you for bequeathing them a rat-hole in exchange for a paradise?’

  Jurgen Thor was, as he had done a thousand times in the previous twenty years, demanding immediate legislation against Claustrospheres. He might as well have gone to Texas and demanded immediate legislation
against a man’s right to buy a machine-gun in a service station.

  Jurgen was not stupid. He knew his argument was unwinnable; it was riddled with inherent contradictions. You could not, on the one hand, say, as Jurgen often did, that world eco-degradation was at the point of going critical, that we were all about to die horribly with bubbling flesh and phlegm-choked lungs, then on the other hand seek to deny people a small sealed, self-sustainable environment in which they might survive this unpleasant prospect. All the same, he kept plugging away. Endlessly pointing out that, by purchasing an alternative to Earth health, one gave up on tackling pollution.

  ‘Not so,’ the Euro delegates said. ‘If you buy a burglar alarm, does it mean you’ve given up on crime?’

  ‘Yes,’ cried Jurgen Thor, ‘yes, yes, yes! You stupid Euro delegates! Crime is a very pleasant and perfect metaphor! The world is staggering towards violence and anarchy and what do we do? We lock our doors! Employ guards! Buy guns and hide! We have given up on crime, and we’ve given up on the environment also! What is air, yes, if you can’t breath it, huh? What is food, I don’t think, if you can’t eat it?’

  Jurgen was a Viking. His first language was Norwegian and when much moved his English lapsed into the Euro-American MT V-speak of his youth, that strange language which seems to be a constant series of questions.

  ‘I’m going to save the world, yes?’ he had said in one of his first interviews, decades previously, before Natura, the world political party of which he was principal spokesperson, had even been formed. ‘I am the champion for all living things, OK? You dig it?’ he had said and, hopeless though his battle sometimes seemed, the world could not have had a more convincing champion.

  Green God.

  Jurgen Thor was almost too good to be true. From his great mane of shaggy golden hair to his enormous sixteen-hole, tan leather Timberland work boots he was more God than man. His gimlet-sharp clear grey eyes could puncture a politician across a hundred-metre conference room. They were more than just piercing, they were armour-piercing, and a thousand women had felt the prick.

  Jurgen was huge. It was as if when the Almighty was making him He (or She) had always intended to make two, perhaps even three, environmental activists, but had decided to save time by making one big one. Muscles coiled like serpents about his colossal frame. His chest was a giant’s chest, the nipples were in different time zones: this was a chest that exerted its own gravitational pull.

  Legends of Jurgen’s strength and physical powers rang around the world. Stories abounded of his days with the Mother Earth Direct Action Group, before he had renounced terrorism. It was said that he had once plugged a shallow water toxic outfall with his own body, withstanding the immense pressure for many desperate hours whilst a team of activists had made good the sabotage with steel and cement. People whispered in awe about how the great man had once personally dragged a stranded pilot whale from a polluted beach and swum it out to sea. His body was pockmarked with scars from numerous bullet wounds he had received during attacks on Claustrosphere factories in the early years. It was said that, on the occasional times when his vast consumption of chilled peach schnapps got the better of him, Jurgen’s party trick was to crack walnuts with his foreskin.

  Concerned constituents.

  ‘Mr Thor, what can you tell us about the activities of the terrorist group Mother Earth?’ Colin Carper, the MEP for Essex, England and a paid Claustrosphere lobbyist inquired.

  ‘As I have said many times, although I support their intentions, I do not support their methods,’ Jurgen answered.

  ‘But surely you were yourself once a terrorist, Mr Thor?’

  ‘I do not accept the term terrorist, sir. Yes, I have committed acts against local laws, you know? In pursuit of a wider justice, yes? However, in my capacity as principal spokesperson for Natura, I, of course, acknowledge that it is not acceptable to take the law into one’s own hands.’

  ‘Oh, come now, Mr Thor. Enough of this pious bunkum,’ Carper sneered.

  ‘Bunk up? What is this bunk up, please?’ Jurgen replied.

  ‘Bunkum, Mr Thor! Bunkum! It is common knowledge that you are still a Mother Earth activist and that Mother Earth itself is nothing less than the armed wing of Natura.’

  ‘Sir! If the European parliament is to be reduced to a forum for the perpetration of gossip, suspicion and innuendo, OK? Then let me say that you, matey boy, are internationally recognised as a place man and paid lackey of the Claustrophere conglomerate . .

  The odious Carper reddened visibly at this outrageous slur.

  ‘If I seek to make the case for Claustrosphere, Mr Thor, that is because ninety per cent of my constituents own them, and the others are protected by municipal arrangements! —‘

  ‘The majority of your constituents also have vermin and rat infestations. Do you see it as your duty to endlessly represent those interests too?’

  People occasionally noted, with some surprise, that Jurgen Thor’s English could be as articulate and perfectly formed as the King’s, when he wanted. Those in the know knew that he put the Norwegian inflections and stumbling, half -Americanised word formations into his speech for effect. He felt that it gave him a vulnerable air, which was useful in debate and also made women want to sleep with him. This latter was a goal that Jurgen Thor was rumoured to treasure even more highly than an eco-friendly world.

  ‘Mr Thor, who is funding Mother Earth?’ Carper demanded.

  ‘What has this question to do with me, Mr Carper?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Mr Thor, your attitude insults this house! The Mother Earth direct action group has colossal resources. Its activities become ever grander and more daring. It has an air arm, a small navy; it has been able to operate effectively in space, destroying countless commercial launches. Anti-satellite ballistics cost billions of dollars, Mr Thor. Who the hell is providing that sort of cash! I say that it is you, Mr Thor! I contend that it is the saintly Natura party which funds this murderous terrorism!’

  ‘Natura, Mr Carper?’ Jurgen laughed. ‘We are a political party, not Fort Knox Incorporated, OK, yes, you foolish dude. We exist by private donations and membership fees. We have less money worldwide than either of the two main parties hold in the US alone.

  Colin Carper’s exasperation was getting the better of him.

  ‘Claustrosphere factories have been attacked countless times, Mr Thor! Causing billions of dollars in lost revenue! My constituents have a right to know who is funding these outrages.

  It is a particularly gruesome characteristic of parliamentarians worldwide that, in order to legitimise their own prejudices and self-interest, they place them in the mouth of some shadowy collective constituent. Thus they lobby the cause of those who pay them in the guise of voicing the fears of those who vote for them. Jurgen was in fact about to point this out, but at that moment an enormous bomb went off.

  European disunity.

  The marble cracked and the chandeliers shattered. The blast was truly terrible. Repulsive sculptures and meaningless murals were found hundreds of metres away. Metal shapes representing the Euro ideals of peace, diversity and a strong currency were still landing in the suburbs of Brussels minutes after the initial explosion. A vast silk collage entitled ‘Vive La Différence’, which had been commissioned to represent the twin Euro goals of cultural diversity and keeping out penniless refugees from the East, could be seen flapping in the wind, skewered on the spire of the secular chapel. Great blobby sculptures, which looked like huge, fat, multi-cheeked bottoms, but were in fact symbolic of the smaller European states, were sent rolling across the Euro Piazza and off down the busy shopping streets of the capital. All was chaos and confusion, a nightmare of smashed modern art mixed up with dead and dying delegates.

  There were dismembered corpses everywhere. It was a harsh irony that only in death could those earnest European representatives find the unity of body and soul that had eluded them in life. The arms of staunch Flemish fundamentalists were to be found em
bracing the torsos of die-hard Norman separatists. The brains of Sicilian secessionists could be seen spread across the faces of Ulster unionists. Bits of socialists from Schleswig embedded themselves in bits of their sworn enemy, the socialists of Holstein. Christians were plastered over Muslims. Communists blended with Fascists. Jews, or at least parts of them, mingled freely and unchallenged throughout the chamber. For one shining moment, all creeds and nationalities - both real and dreamt of — became one nation. Croats, Serbs, Basques, Cornish separatists, Slovak nationalists, all puréed together in one grand multi-limbed, multi-brained, amorphous delegate. In the short period after the dust settled and before the finger pointing began, Europe was, in a strange way, and for the first time, unified.

  When the finger pointing did begin, the directions in which it pointed were as many and varied as the special interest groups that were doing the pointing. Everyone was convinced that the dreadful carnage had been caused by the secret agents of those whom they most despised. But as it happened, the bomb was not in fact planted by a secret agent at all. It was planted by an advertising agent. The bomb was a marketing ploy.

  Chapter Eight

  Dangerous investigations,

  a broken heart and

  a terrorist attack

  Getting your head round the news.

  Plastic could almost feel the great black glutinous movement of the sea as it beat against the ruined shore. He had forsaken conventional screen-fed communication for Virtual Reality television. From inside the helmet he was able to accompany the news teams as the full horrors were revealed. It was not a type of broadcasting that appealed to everybody. The three-dimensional images which surrounded the viewer tended to induce a certain degree of motion sickness. However, it suited Plastic’s purposes. He wanted to get a feel of the disaster.