This Other Eden (6 page)

And
then there was Shackleton’s endless references to Mother Earth funding. Of
course, everybody would love to know who was putting up the cash, but it had
been a secret for thirty years and was certain to remain so. Rosalie herself
had been an activist since leaving college. She was moderately well-advanced in
the Movement, yet completely ignorant about the greater part of Mother Earth’s
financial affairs. The FBI and indeed every other law enforcement agency in the
world were endlessly probing and investigating, trying to get to the heart of
it. But they never would. It was the big secret and, had Shackleton been the
experienced fighter he pretended to be, he would have known not to mention it.

The
clincher came when Shackleton got on to the subject of Jurgen Thor. He
professed to worship the man, quoting that old chestnut about him being called
the last sane person on Earth. That did it for Rosalie. Nobody who had been
around Mother Earth long thought Jurgen Thor was sane, and nobody worshipped
him. The people who dodged the bullets did not have much time for a personality
cult egomaniac who would try to screw a tree if it had a dress on. Jurgen Thor
was immensely talented, hugely charismatic and absolutely crucial as a
spokesperson to the wider world. At the sharp end, however, the general
impression was that he was a bit of a big hairy git.

Rosalie
began to investigate the history of the man who called himself Shackleton.

On the
surface it all looked fine. An American named Shackleton had been assigned to
join her active service unit after seeing action under cover in Argentina. But
anyone could switch a body, Rosalie thought. She had the Mother Earth database
modem her up a photo of the real Shackleton. That checked out too, but since,
if you had the money, you could get a temporary cosmetic rebuild done in an
afternoon, that was also non-conclusive. Eventually Rosalie took a scroll of
the man’s fingerprints from an organic carrot juice container that he was
carrying around until he could find somewhere to recycle it.

The
result was great news. Shackleton was a spook. Nobody would have to listen to
him whine on about the environment ever again.

Rosalie
continued to hold the gun to his head.

‘What
did you do with our man?’ she inquired. ‘The real Shackleton.’

‘We’ve
got him, that’s all, he isn’t hurt,’ replied Cruise. ‘How did you see through
me?’

‘You
just didn’t talk about the environment enough,’ replied Rosalie, ‘it just didn’t
seem like you cared at all.’

Cruise
was mortified. He had studied so hard, he had felt he could spout green crap in
his sleep. He had got the majority of his environmental bilge from that asshole
nerd Judy Schwartz. Cruise made a mental note to kill Judy at the next reunion.

‘Where’s
your tracer implant?’ asked Rosalie. The spy glanced down at his arm. ‘Do you
want us to cut it out or do you want to do it yourself?’

‘Hey,
listen…’ Cruise protested nervously. No matter how tough you are, you still
don’t relish having a hole cut in your arm.

‘Oh,
come on! You know all about today’s hit,’ snapped Rosalie impatiently. ‘If we
leave you wired up you’ll send out an alarm. Your pals will come and get you,
you’ll tell them where we are and we’ll be blown out of the sky. Now you know
very well that we either have to shoot you or cut out your tracer, so which is
it to be?’

Reluctantly
the FBI man offered his forearm. Rosalie drew her Swiss Army Knife. There was a
brief hiatus while she tried to find a blade. She searched through the
scissors, the toothpick, the digital video camera, the miniaturised two-way
communications system, the BioShield umbrella, the thing for getting stones out
of horses’ hooves . .

‘Christmas
present,’ Rosalie said apologetically. ‘Stupid, really. I never use any of
these things.’ Finally she found the knife, only the little one, but it would
do. She advanced upon a rather scared Cruise.

‘Now
you might feel a bit of a prick,’ said Rosalie. And she was right, he did.

Chapter
Six

When two stars collide

Fortune’s
child.

It was still the same
morning. Nathan was negotiating with the thugs at the Beverly Hills Fortified
Village. Plastic was in his kitchen, watching Judy and Jackson get winched off
the stricken tanker on fifteen different screens. Rosalie was in a helicopter
with the Mother Earth direct action team, heading for a spot of terrorism and,
back in the desert, Cruise, who has little further to do with this story, was
nursing a bleeding arm.

Max had
problems too. Problems, that is, in addition to his usual one, which was that
of being a screw-up. Admittedly, at present he was a rich and famous screw-up,
a colossally popular screw-up. The screw-up, in fact, of the moment. But
Hollywood is a place where the distance between being a celebrated screw-up and
a despised, pitied casualty doing underwear ads is a short one. Something in
the very back of Max’s addled brain was telling him that the time was coming to
pull himself together. At twenty-six he had been a very big star for over eight
years. A celebrated ‘brat’, to be found drinking, partying and getting into
fights all over town. What’s more, he was the real thing, a genuinely naughty
boy. Not one of the amorphous mass of pouting pretty things who got puke drunk
once on their eighteenth birthday and spent the next five years telling
People
magazine how they kicked their booze hell. Max was adored not only for the
wild, confused characters that he played on screen and inside Virtual Reality
helmets, but also for the wild, confused character that he clearly was.

The
Good Fairies that had attended Max’s birth were many and generous. They gave
him great charm, tremendous acting talent and a fine, powerful, if rather
small, physique. They gave him wonderful looks, which included ice-blue eyes
set against dark Mediterranean colouring. Also, and perhaps most importantly of
all, they gave him James Dean eyebrows which slanted upwards in a sad,
little-boy-lost manner whenever he frowned. All this did the Good Fairies give
to the baby Max, who laughed and gurgled as befitted the carefree,
devil-may-care, sunny personality which was also their bequest to him. The Bad
Fairy, on the other hand, gave Max only one gift, but it nearly killed him. For
the Bad Fairy decreed that at the age of seventeen, Max would, without any
warning or preparation, become hugely famous as the super-cool teenager in a
Levi’s ad.

Some
high school kids, faced with suddenly becoming the most celebrated and
drooled-over adolescent on the planet, might have handled it with calm
detachment and genteel reserve. Max was not such a kid.

‘Max,
last week you were shooting hoops with your pals in Burbank, now you’re on the
cover of every magazine in the store. Do you worry about what you will do when
the adoration ends?’ a motherly chat-show host had asked Max in one of his very
first celebrity interviews.

‘No
way, little lady dude, babe,’ young Max had replied. ‘For I hereby vow to party
myself to death before the dumper beckons me.’

The
advert that shot Max to superstardom was a co-sponsorship deal between Levi
and Claustrosphere. It was set in the future, on the day of the Rat Run.
Eco-death had ostensibly arrived and everyone was fleeing in terror for their
Claustrospheres. Max’s character, the cool teen, refuses to join his fleeing,
terrified family until his jeans come out of the tumble dryer. The memorable
caption being: ‘Without your Levis, eternity will seem like a very long time.’

Ever
since that famous last shot, when Max had set a billion hearts fluttering as he
rushed towards the Claustrosphere’s closing door, pulling on his faded jeans
whilst his mother screamed, Max had been front-page news. He still was, but
behaviour which is cute in a lad of twenty is a bit pathetic in a man of
thirty. Max was twenty-six and getting rather bored with himself. It would not
be long, he reasoned in his occasional lucid moments, before he began to bore
everyone else. Someday soon, he kept promising himself, maybe not today, but
someday soon, he would get himself together.

Morning
head.

There were, however, more
immediate things to consider. Where was he and what time was it?

It was,
in fact, nearly time to meet Rosalie and for his life to change for ever, but
of course he did not know this. What he did know was that he had a mouthful of
carpet. By this he deduced that it must be morning. He always started a day
like that. Of course, it wasn’t always carpet; sometimes it was tarmac, or
paving stone, garbage, quite often, occasionally even a pillow. Max slept face
down and breathed through his mouth, so whatever he collapsed into the night
before was what he would find his tongue stuck to when he woke up in the
morning. He could generally tell where he was without opening his eyes.

Carpet,
thought Max, not bad. Things were looking up already. Police cells did not have
carpets, nor did streets. Max reasoned from this that he was neither under
arrest nor in immediate danger of being so. The carpet was also clean, that was
a surprise. Max could not remember the last time he had tasted a clean carpet
but this seemed to be one. He could detect no booze nor vomit beyond that which
traditionally adorned his person when he awoke in the morning. Where was he?
They had carpets in brothels and low bars, but you tended to stick to those
carpets and this one was definitely non-adhesive. Max wondered whether maybe he
had made it home. It seemed unlikely, he had never made it home before. As a
matter of fact, Max was only vaguely aware of where his home was. On the
morning of his mother’s latest marriage he had woken up in the surf on Malibu.
He had had to buy a tourist map of where the stars lived, just so he could get
home for half an hour on his bathroom stomach pump and grab a change of
clothes. Max never went home unless he absolutely had to. Home was dull and Max
was wild.

Max
decided he did not care where he was. Whatever, wherever, it was OK by him. The
carpet tasted good. This would be a good day. Max could not see how being
crashed out in some place with a nice clean carpet could get him into trouble.
It was not worth a spread in the tabloids, it was unlikely to land him in court
and it would not give his mother an excuse to get back on the chat show circuit
claiming that she blamed herself.

Cautiously
he opened his eyes and raised his head a little. It took a moment or two to
focus, and maybe another half a moment for all the vague confidence he had been
feeling about the clean carpet to evaporate before his bloodshot eyes. He had
made an asshole of himself again. Stretched out on the carpet before him was a
naked woman. A gorgeous naked woman. The sort of woman who looked great on the
front of scandal magazines.

Even in
repose her natural instinct to adopt the position of a centrefold had not
deserted her. She lay on her back, slightly propped up against a few silk
pillows, one arm thrust gently behind her neck, supporting her head, the other
soft against her belly. A knee was slightly raised, exposing a firm, flawless
thigh, whilst the other leg stretched long across the floor, culminating in a
ballet dancer’s point, the delicate toes so close to Max’s head that it might
easily have been the foot rather than the carpet which he had found in his
mouth that morning.

What a
magnificent creature she was! Mother Nature and plastic surgeon working
together in perfect harmony! Her breasts stood out firm and separate against
her taut body. Despite their generous size and obvious weight, they still
pointed defiantly heavenwards, as if invisible threads tethered her nipples to
the ceiling. The woman’s crotch had been waxed by a fanatic. It was virtually
bald. Smooth and shiny as a car bonnet, almost as if it had been laminated.
There was one tiny fringe of pale soft hair hovering above the cleft. This was
a vagina with a mohican.

Max
felt depressed. How had he ever allowed his life to arrive at a point where
such a gorgeous woman could be a problem to him? Yet she was a problem. The
problem being that Max was married. Very publicly and very recently married to
a fellow movie star. Max was a man of certain principles. He valued his honour.
Certainly he fought and he drank, that was fine, what he did not do was
publicly humiliate his wife.

Irresponsible
use of drugs.

Fidelity, or at least a
decent pretence at such, was a major pose on the coast, it had been for years.
The place was stuffed with mega-stars assuring journos that they had found true
bliss in marriage and that their hell-raising days were over.

AIDS
was still around. There was still no cure and no vaccine, no vaccine available
to the public, that is. It had, in fact, been possible to immunise people
against the disease for many years but the drug had been suppressed. The reason
for this being that the vast chemical conglomerate that had isolated the
vaccine had found to their dismay that it was extremely easy to copy and
reproduce, a simple compound, made from the cheapest and most basic
ingredients. Ingredients that a child could reconstruct from a junior chemistry
kit and a bag of household groceries. The conglomerate concerned realised
that, were they to market their new drug, its secret would instantly be wrested
from it. That done, in defiance of copyright, the recipe would be published in
every scabrous, alternative publication in the world. Faced with this wholly
unacceptable prospect, the vast chemical conglomerate had taken the only course
open to it. This was, after all, business. There was no point in them
developing a drug from which it was impossible to profit. They had therefore
decided to withhold the drug until such time as their chemists had been able to
develop a sufficiently complex molecular disguise for it. They would secrete
their simple little miracle drug deep within some intricate atomic structure
that was fantastically difficult to break down, and near impossible to
reproduce. This way their patent would be protected and a reasonable price
could be charged.