by Ben Elton
Jurgen was distracted from his sombre musings by the distant sound of an approaching helicopter. He was at once on guard. He had invited no other guests and as the world’s premier greenie, he had many enemies. Jurgen suggested that Scout get dressed and, calling to his servants to arm themselves, he took his gun and climbed up the spiral staircase that led to the heli-pad.
The sound of the helicopter grew louder.
An old lover was returning.
From Galway to the Alps.
After leaving the little village in Galway where they had had so much excitement, Rosalie and Max had rejoined Rosalie’s unit in the mountains, where they were preparing for their next action, an assault on the toxic waste convoys that converged in Belgium on their way to Britain.
Saunders, Rosalie’s bag-headed colleague, was his usual inhospitable self.
‘So now we’ve got a bloody poncey actor to add to our FBI man,’ he had sneered through the hole in the front of his bag.
‘This man saved my bacon in that village raid,’ Rosalie snapped. ‘We lost Hilary down in the street and without Max here, I’d have been caught as well for sure.’
‘Oh, so he saved your bacon, did he? So now we have to cart around two Yanks who’ve saved your bacon, do we?’ Saunders said, referring to poor Judy who was sitting under a tree, wrapped in a blanket. Judy looked miserable, which he was. He was not well-suited to the life of a guerrilla fighter and was missing his duvet and hot malted chocolate. The sneer which Saunders directed at Judy’s bedraggled form could be felt even through his bag. ‘Jesus Christ, Rosalie, if we have to take on every bastard that saves your bloody bacon it looks like we’re going to end up quite a crowd.’
But Saunders did not really mind. He was actually quite impressed to have someone as famous as Max Maximus join them for a spell. He had long thought that The Man With No Face would make a terrific subject for a movie and here was just the person to talk it over with.
‘What I was thinking, right,’ the scouser said, buttonholing Max, ‘was that you could play me before I got contaminated and I could play me after. That way we could save money on make-up. What do you think?’ and with that, Saunders whipped his bag off.
‘Potentially, it’s huge. I’d suggest we did lunch but I don’t think I could keep it down.’ Max looked around, hoping that Rosalie would come and save him from the Liverpudlian lunatic. Rosalie, however, was nowhere to be seen. She had asked Judy to accompany her on a little stroll and they had wandered off together out of earshot. They were now sitting on some rocks, deep in conversation. At least Rosalie was sitting on the rocks. Judy, who suffered occasionally from piles, was trying to avoid sitting on any cold damp surfaces, which is rather a difficult thing to do if you happen to be living on the side of a mountain.
Rosalie was questioning Judy about Mother Earth funding.
‘Surely the FBI must have investigated it?’ she asked.
‘I’m sure they did, but either they drew a blank or else they covered up their findings, because I asked many times. Not one of my superiors admitted to having any idea whatsoever about where your cash came from.’
‘What about you, did you try to find out? Did no hint ever come out in all the files you had to work on?’
‘I never saw the slightest thing. It’s too well-laundered. Sometimes I wonder whether even Jurgen Thor himself knows who pays.’
But Rosalie felt that he did know. The memory of Jurgen’s tired cynicism on that night in his sex den all those years ago kept returning. Rosalie knew that Jurgen Thor held the only key to the mystery.
Sad reflections.
Despite the absence of snow and ice the Swiss Alps still presented an awesome sight when viewed from the air, and as she and Max approached Jurgen’s lair in the helicopter Max had hired, Rosalie was remembering the last time she had flown over those mountains. On that occasion she had been filled with excitement, nervously anticipating the adventure which she had let herself in for. Now she felt a strange sense of foreboding. She could not explain it, but the mountains which had appeared so inspiring before, with their glittering peaks, now seemed sombre and unforgiving. Of course the sun was setting and the great craggy shadows which blackened the landscape would surely have dampened the lightest of spirits, but it was more than that. Rosalie could not shake a strange sensation of defeat and sorrow. Her spirits were sinking with the sun.
Perhaps it was because it had been amongst these mountains that she had first begun to lose her innocence. Not sexual innocence, although she had lost that here too; Rosalie attached no great significance to virginity. She knew that there was a first time in life for all things, and a last. Rather it was her spiritual innocence which had been so sadly eroded since she had last left these mountains. Since then she had seen so much horror. Horror which she had never dreamt of as an idealistic girl. Dead forests, dead lakes, dead species, dead communities. Everything she ever saw or touched was dead or dying. Rosalie was a naturally spiritual person and the planet’s agony was her agony. She honestly believed that she felt it, just as some people’s bones ache when the weather changes.
As Max piloted the helicopter through the gloomy sunset (he had starred in the fourth remake of Apocalypse Now) it dawned upon Rosalie that it was here that she had first begun to understand how unutterably and indescribably sad humankind was. Jurgen Thor’s little lesson in compromise had proved horribly prophetic. She was a terrorist in a terrible world and, like a black crow struggling in a stormy sky, she could not be distinguished from the environment in which she did battle. The passion which had brought her to the struggle against planet death had been replaced by what was merely a grim refusal to take the inevitable lying down. Only a fool could have seen the things which Rosalie had seen and remain an idealist. She had long since given up any thought of fighting for a better, more beautiful world. All her life meant now was struggle, to prevent the most gruesome excesses of a situation which was, and always would be, disastrous.
‘Anything wrong?’ Max asked.
‘People are shit, the world’s dead and everything is pointless.’
‘Oh, good, I was worried something was bothering you.
Rosalie smiled wearily.
‘I was just thinking, that if your theory about Claustrosphere and Mother Earth is correct, my entire adult life has had no point whatsoever.’
‘Well, you’re only twenty-five. Plenty of time to jack it in and do something else.’
‘Perhaps I should.’
She wanted to turn round. She was losing her nerve. All they had, after all, was the stupid hunch of one dead screenwriter, and an English one at that. On the strength of this they were preparing to invade the great man’s privacy, entirely uninvited, and confront him with the extraordinary suggestion that the forces of environmental protection were in fact in the pay of the planet’s number one enemy.
‘He’ll laugh at us,’ said Rosalie as Max manoeuvred the craft down on to the heli-pad.
‘Laughter would be fine,’ Max replied. He could see Jurgen and a couple of minions waiting on the deck, heavily armed and ready to shoot.
The pragmatist concludes his lesson.
‘We have to speak to you, it’s important,’ Rosalie said as the clatter of the helicopter blades began to subside.
‘Why not?’ Jurgen shrugged. ‘It must be pretty important, OK, for you to interrupt your preparations for the toxic convoy raid. Yes, babe?’
Jurgen loved to show how he was party to all Mother Earth actions. He knew Rosalie as an activist, he also recalled their previous intimacy. Max Maximus, he recognised, of course, but if he was surprised at the arrival of a famed media star, he did not show it. Jurgen of course mixed constantly with world leaders in every field, he was more than used to celebrity. Besides, he himself was a bigger star than any Hollywood actor.
Dismissing his servants, Jurgen led Max and Rosalie downstairs into the house. They descended through the bedroom which, as Rosalie recalled, covered the entire top floor
of the house and offered the only access to the heli-pad. Scout was still there as they passed through and Rosalie experienced a small sense of déjà vu. Pausing for a moment on the spiral stair, she took in the proud, slightly defiant face of the pretty young woman and glanced at the huge white bed and crumpled sheets.
Jurgen Thor made his excuses to Scout and led Max and Rosalie down into his study. There on the wall, they were astonished to find the mounted heads of animals belonging to several species which were basically extinct, except of course, for a few genetically recreated specimens in zoos. There was a tiger, a lion, even an elephant, its expression one of inconsolable sadness… as indeed it might have been, considering its head had been cut off and stuffed with straw, its natural habitat had been totally destroyed, and its race had disappeared from the face of the Earth. Jurgen noted the surprise and indeed revulsion that convulsed the faces of his guests as they took in his macabre interior decor.
‘They keep my anger alive,’ he said, by way of an explanation, although it fell a long way short of convincing either Max or Rosalie. They could not help feeling that there were perhaps more sensitive ways of maintaining one’s commitment to wildlife than displaying the severed heads of dead life-forms above your writing desk.
‘So what is it that is so important that you fly all the way to the highest mountain to talk to me about?’ Jurgen inquired.
Max had convinced Rosalie that, if Nathan’s idea was correct, the only hope of getting Jurgen to come clean about it was to catch him off-guard, to confront him directly and with confidence. It was a risky plan because if they were wrong, Rosalie, in particular, was going to look something of an idiot. She was, after all, an environmental activist and it was pretty big stuff to accuse the biggest green hero of all of sleeping with the enemy. Max, however, was confident that they were not wrong.
‘Mr Thor,’ he said. ‘We have come here because we know that the Claustrosphere Corporation funds Mother Earth and we want to know why.’
Jurgen could not prevent a flicker of shock from crossing his handsome, granite-like face. He had not expected this and for a moment it seemed that he would hurl their accusation back in their faces. Then he sighed. He had been feeling that events were beginning to approach their end. This surely was just one more symptom.
There was almost a hint of relief in his voice when he said, ‘You ask me why? I would have thought the answer was patently obvious.’
Despite his sombre mood, Jurgen enjoyed the effect he had on Rosalie. He might have failed to get it up Scout, but he was certainly still capable of making a beautiful woman gasp and roll her eyes.
‘How did you find out?’ he added, casually stroking the head of a monkey, whose jaw served as a tobacco pouch.
‘It isn’t true!’ Rosalie shouted. ‘Claustrosphere pays us! Pays me! It’s madness, they’re the enemy. They hate us .
‘Of course, they hate us, and we hate them. That doesn’t mean that we can’t do business, does it?’
Rosalie was speechless. She could not begin to imagine what Jurgen Thor was talking about. It was nonsense, it had to be. Except, of course, that it wasn’t, it was just business, as Jurgen went on to explain.
‘Think about it, Rosalie. Why do people buy Claustrospheres?’ Neither Max nor Rosalie offered an answer, which was fine by Jurgen, the floor was his and he was holding it. ‘Because they fear that the Earth is dying, of course. And who is it that tells them every single day that they are right? That the Earth is dying! Why, us, of course! It is Natura and Mother Earth whom people look to for the truth, and my God, do we give it to them. We tell them the truth. We show them the truth. You, Rosalie, personally risk your life most days to confront people with the truth. And the truth is that the planet is getting dangerously close to being incapable of supporting human life. We tell them this in the hope that people will wake up! That they will start to nurture their planet. That they will adjust their lifestyles. Boycott the products of polluters, lobby their politicians, save the Earth! That is why we tell them the truth. But what do most people actually do when confronted with the unanswerable evidence that we hurl before them every day?’
‘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 y
ou 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.’
