Stark (34 page)

163: IMPRISONMENT AND INTERROGATION

164: THE CENTRE OF CREATION

Sly and Tyron were in the project control building when they got the news regarding the capture of four intruders. At first Sly thought that this might wrap the problem up. If necessary they would simply hold the fugitives until after Domesday.

Unfortunately, he quickly discovered, to his extreme frustration, the original fugitive, the highly dangerous nose- biting hippy had not been recaptured.

For the first time Sly began to feel a twinge of doubt about the whole bloody business in which he was involved. These little human intrusions on their vast and inhuman project made him vaguely aware of how small he was himself. That, coupled with the continuing and irritating presence of Ocker Tyron, a genuinely small man, despite his size, made Sly feel uncomfortably impotent in the midst of all his power.

The project control building was a depressing place in which to experience doubt and humility, containing, as it did, an awe inspiring array of high-tech equipment, most of which was going blip blip blip in what seemed to Sly to be an unnecessarily irritating manner. The stuff had been assembled by Nagasyu at various collation points all over the Far East and so efficient had his administration been that when all the gear arrived, there was little more to do than to plug it in. Incredibly it had even had a plug on it.

The whole thing certainly looked cool; a quarter of an acre of chrome, plastic, glass and brushed stainless steel, all bleeping, spinning and flashing. Almost as complex as the dashboard on a BMW. Yard after yard of console covered in monitors and buttons, walls of tapes, sometimes spinning one way, then, no doubt for some reason, spinning another. It was an exhilarating and terrifying sight. And so it should have been. There was, after all, only slightly less equipment in the room than it takes to record a Pink Floyd album.

Twenty-five or so white-coated technicians bustled about flicking switches and looking intelligent. Tyron had been impressed, despite himself.

‘Now all it needs is something to shoot,’ he had said.

‘What’s your hurry, mate! Anyone would think you’re looking forward to this bloody awful thing…this…‘ Sly searched for a word, ‘…Apocalypse. Christ Almighty, let’s enjoy what time is left.’

‘I just don’t want any fuck-ups when the time is right, we’re only going to get one chance at this, Moorcock, one chance at life or death, right! I want us to be ready.’

In fact in a strange way Ocker Tyron was looking forward to it. Utterly horrible though the prospect was, its hugeness still gave him a strange exhilaration. He had had the power of life and death over virtually everybody in his life for so many years that Tyron was definitely a hard man to thrill. Stark, however, made his very trousers tingle. Despite its irreversible horror, Tyron still felt a pretty considerable buzz at the prospect of playing God, even if it was a multi-headed corporate God. He relished the prospect of being one of the chosen ones, one of those chosen to survive. Besides this, there was the eerie potency he felt about his part in choosing who should die. In a way it’s not surprising he was a little excited, it is quite something to be a father of creation. Only God had made a world before.

165: MINOR IRRITATIONS

T
yron’s delicious little fantasies were cut short when one of Du Pont’s security men entered and announced the capture of the prisoners. Suddenly Sly found himself wondering about the girl.

‘Look, Ocker,’ said Sly. ‘I can handle this, all right? Why don’t you just sod off back to Perth, eh? It’s just a minor irritation, some hippies who think we’re destroying precious natural flora. I’ll talk to them.’

The security man knew he had a chance to make a big impact and he grabbed it.

‘They shot down a helicopter,’ he said.

There was a pretty stunned silence, apart from all the blipping going on that is.

‘Shot down a fucking helicopter!’ said Tyron incredulously. ‘What the hell is going on? Christ first a guy disarms our security chief with his teeth, then one of our choppers get shot down.’

‘Look, will you cool it, Tyron,’ said Sly, not really knowing what to say. ‘We have to think.’

‘Too fucking right, mate!’ Someone’s found out what we’re up to and they want in. This is only the beginning.’ Tyron was pretty badly shaken. It always gives a person cause for thought when he’s just been having a God fantasy and somebody shoots down his helicopter.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Sly replied. ‘These people are just dumb meddlers. It’s an ecological thing, we know that from the hippy who bit Du Pont.’ Sly was still thinking about the girl. ‘Mind you, they certainly know how to meddle…We won’t tell Durf about this, or the others, it’s not necessary. I intend to deal with this situation right now.’

166: FANCYING THE ENEMY

S
ly could not kid himself, he was pleased to see her. There was no doubt about it. As he walked towards the room where the captives were being kept he had been hoping that she would be there and when it turned out that she was, he was pleased. This was an entirely new experience for Sly. Occasionally in the past he had developed ‘things’ about girls, but never on so short an acquaintance and certainly never with such immediate force. After all, he knew nothing about the girl apart from the fact that she seemed to be firmly against absolutely everything that he stood for. There was no getting round it though, he was pleased to see her. She seemed even more pretty than when they had met in his office. Action and adventure had lent a highly attractive flush to her cheek and her eyes sparkled with defiance and fear. She was also firmly tied to a chair, which was something that normally took Sly ages to persuade his girlfriends to put up with.

167: QUESTION AND ANSWER

S
ly pulled himself together. This was a time for masterly self- assurance. He stood before the sorry gang of renegades and addressed them with what he hoped would be an icy and intimidating tone.

‘What in the name of fuck do you think you’re doing?’ he blurted.

Walter looked at him defiantly.

‘Trying to find out what you’re up to, man,’ he said. ‘Just like last time, you know, like, still trying to suss out what goes down.’

‘What goes down, you filthy bastard,’ shouted ‘Tyron, ‘is one of my helicopters!!’

Sly tried to calm himself. They couldn’t both stand there screaming at a bunch of hippies. It was so unreal. Here he was, a colossus in the world of power and money and he was standing shouting and screaming at a Carlton drop-out. That’s the trouble with spending all your time on the twenty fifth floor, when you come down there’s a hell of a bump.

‘Why are you so interested in what I’m doing?’ he asked.

‘We, we won’t know that until we find out what it is, will we man?’ replied Walter. ‘But we have a pretty good idea that whatever it is, it’s heavy. Now where’s my man Zimmerman? If you’ve harmed him I swear…I swear, I’ll lay some very bad Karma on your head. Dig?’

Walter’s three comrades felt slightly embarrassed at this. Having Walter lay some very bad Karma on your head sounded something akin to being savaged by Bambi.

Sly did not even realize that he had been threatened.

‘Who are you talking about?’ he asked.

‘My man Zimmerman, a kind of hippy dude, he ate your hamburger at Facefulls.’

Sly was about to add that since then he had eaten his security chief’s nose as well, but he decided to be more circumspect. ‘We have him safe, don’t trouble about that,’ Sly lied.

‘You’d better start worrying about yourselves,’ Tyron chipped in. ‘Now what the fuck do you know? All of it, everything. What do you know and where’s the Yank bitch? Come on, out with it. Now!!’

There was a sullen silence. Tyron grabbed a gun from one of the guards and pointed it at them. Sly tensed up and watched Tyron carefully.

‘You answer me right now or you’re dead, you hear,’ Tyron barked. ‘I don’t suppose there’ll be anybody much mourning any of you, we’ll just leave you for the dingos. Now come on, answer me.’

Walter’s reply was a shrewd one.

‘You ain’t going to shoot us man. No way,’ he said. ‘Because you don’t know what we know and…and…you don’t know what the Yank chick knows. And you don’t know who we’ve told…and you don’t know, uhm…‘ Walter seemed about to flag, but then he got his second wind, he always did love to bullshit, ‘…and you don’t know how many of us are out there. Yeah, that’s right, you have no idea of the hugeness of our network, yeah, you have no concept of its almost cosmic enormity. You don’t know how many heavily armed and totally dedicated hippies are out there just waiting to come in here and…and…‘ endless late nights watching American cop shows came to his aid, ‘…come in here and cream your arse, yeah, that’s it, cream your arse…and uhm…expose all the things that we know to the world.’ He finished and then added ‘man’ as a kind of full stop.

It was a good performance. CD nearly spoilt it by applauding. Luckily his hands were tied behind his back. Unfortunately for Walter, Sly was not stupid, he simply smiled and said, ‘Oh yeah, if you’re all so heavily armed mate, how come you came in carrying only the guns you pinched off us in the first place?’

There was a pause. ‘Uhm…irony, man,’ said Walter. ‘Yeah, that’s it, we have a keen sense of irony.’

‘These people don’t know shit,’ said Sly, ‘they’re shooting in the dark.’

‘And bringing down helicopters,’ added Du Pont, who saw no reason why he should be the only person to feel a dickhead that day.

Tyron was not satisfied with Sly’s confidence.

‘I agree there’s no way they can know much,’ he said, ‘but we have to find out what little it is. Besides that, we’ve got to find the American girl. Du Pont, can you make them talk?’

‘Of course I can make them talk,’ said Du Pont and his tone was not pleasant, especially if you happened to be his prisoner.

‘Now, what the hell do you two think you’re talking about?’ Sly shouted. In a way he was going through a similar learning process to that which CD and the others were going through. They had never been involved in gun battles before and he had never heard colleagues casually hint at torturing total strangers. It was being brought home to all of them just how high the stakes were getting.

‘What I am talking about,’ Tyron shouted back, ‘is the Stark project and the countless billions that we have all invested in our future. I have no intention of letting a few adventurous idiots like this ruin everything. Ruin the biggest thing in the world…’

There was a moment’s embarrassed silence as everybody realized that Tyron had been about to reveal all. He turned to the four captives. ‘Now you can either tell us peaceably what you know, or Colonel Du Pont here can force it out of you. What do you know?’

‘We don’t know shit, man. But you sure are making it all sound interesting,’ said Walter. ‘Why don’t you tell us?’

‘Right, Du Pont, which will be easiest?’ said Tyron.

‘The kid in glasses maybe, or the girl,’ he replied.

‘No!’ barked Sly.

Mrs Culboon decided to have her say. ‘Listen! My friend’s telling the truth, we don’t know nothing about your big stuff and your damn future. We’re here because I got beaten up on my own land by racists and that’s all we know. And if you don’t tell us no more, then we’ll still know nothing, and you can let us go.’

‘That’s right,’ said Sly and Rachel thought he was acting extremely reasonably considering that they had shot down his helicopter.

‘Like fuck they don’t know anything,’ asserted Tyron, heating up. ‘They have to know where the Yank is, maybe even where this hippy Zimmerman fellah got to.’

‘Oh yeah? Thought you said you had him safe,’ taunted CD. Tyron turned towards him with a look like granite. ‘Get on with it, Du Pont,’ he said. ‘Stay exactly where you are Du Pont,’ Sly countered. ‘Tyron, can we have a private word please?’

He ushered Tyron out of the room leaving Du Pont to guard the prisoners. Despite the fact that this time he had four guards with him, Du Pont was careful to keep his nose out of reach.

168: ORIGINAL SIN

O
utside the room there was yet another tense altercation between Sly and Tyron. ‘For God’s sake, Tyron, you were about to have those people tortured!’ said a rather disturbed Sly. ‘I still am, mate, if it’s necessary,’ Tyron replied.

And of course Sly could see his point. They had no way of knowing what these irritating people knew, and who, if anyone, they had told it to. Besides this there was the much bigger problem of the American journalist still being at large, they really did need to find her. On the other hand to discard any civilized behaviour so quickly, right at the very beginning of the great plan, did not bode at all well for the future. After all, the whole point of the Stark project was to reshape civilization and give it a new start; a fresh chance. Stark was to be a phoenix rising out of the dead ashes of a failed and disgraced civilization. If they started this way, they were bound to fail again. It was almost as if Sly was looking the Original Sin in the eye.

169: LOVE FINDS A WAY

O
f course, Sly did not consider all these thoughts so coherently in the few seconds that elapsed before he replied to Tyron. Mainly he was thinking about Rachel. His natural repugnance to Tyron’s casual acceptance of brutality as a viable course of action was multiplied ad infinitum by the thought that he intended to practise it upon the girl Rachel. He really did seem to have gone soft on her.

‘Listen,’ Sly replied, ‘I agree that the situation is touchy. But don’t forget that nothing we’re doing here is actually illegal. Totally shithouse morals-wise, perhaps, but not actually illegal. They can’t possibly have anything on us yet and if the American does try to make a move, well, let’s face it, we’ve got her. We control the police, the phones, the transport, the credit. We control everything.’

‘Yes I know, but they’ve still got this far,’ replied Tyron.

‘Look, just give me a day or two to sort this situation out my way, all right? Leave them alone for the time being, eh? I mean, the minute anyone makes a move anywhere in the world, let alone in Bullens Creek, Durf will know. So what’s the problem? Let me talk to them, I’ll find out what they’ve got and it will be nothing.’ Sly had already decided on the course of action he must take.

He and Tyron re-entered the room.

‘Don’t worry,’ Sly said. ‘We’re not going to hurt you. I will simply be questioning you one at a time. You first.’ He pointed at Rachel and motioned a guard to untie her and lead her out.

It nearly broke CD’s heart to see Rachel thus contemptuously ordered about. Luckily he was securely bound and so was not forced to try and do something about it. Better a broken heart than a broken neck.