Stark (43 page)

213: ADAMS AND EVES

O
bviously the ‘partner’ business was fraught with indecision and embarrassment. There were those of course, indeed a surprising number, who had decided to take their spouses.

Since the whole project was a self-financed, self help group, rather than some noble scheme to perpetuate the human race, youth and fertility were not required. The object of the exercise was personal preservation, pure and simple, so people could take whom they liked. Anyway, the future had been taken care of in pre-packed and frozen form. Actually some of the crusty old couples, exhausted by a lifetime of hatred, violence and naked greed were rather looking forward to spending their old age peacefully on the moon, bringing up little test-tube space children.

These were the lucky ones, the people who had been able to make their decisions early and hence also their preparations; sharing the whole thing with their wives or boyfriends — eight of the conspirators being gay — and in three cases, husbands. There were only three female Stark conspirators — the upper echelons of international capitalism being still very much a male domain. The richest woman in the world, the Queen of Britain, had not been approached. It had been considered that on the whole she was likely to prefer to go down with the ship, and would probably have blown the gaff. Besides, it was one thing Sly selling off his brewing interests to raise his contribution, but alarm bells really would have started ringing if Balmoral had suddenly appeared on the market.

214: EVE WITH A STAPLE IN HER STOMACH

F
or the adulterers the process of departure was not so smooth. Ocker Tyron, for instance, had definitely decided not to take Dixie. Unfortunately he had also raised her suspicions. Obviously she did not suspect that he was about to leave her behind on a dying planet to face ecological oblivion alone. But she did suspect that he might be putting together a little illicit rumpy pumpy — which of course he was.

Tyron was playing a very dark hand; lying to his wife, and lying to the rumpy pumpy. He had not told the Playboy centrefold what it was he was taking her to the desert for. He could not trust her discretion. He had merely told her that it was a big adventure and a big surprise. Now she found herself stuck in the middle of a baking desert, with very few amenities indeed, amidst an ever-growing group of people she did not know, most of whom were in late middle-age. Understandably she wanted to know what the big surprise was going to be. But Tyron wasn’t there to tell her, he was back in Perth, about to leave his house for the last time, trying to deal with Dixie.

He was trying to grab a toothbrush whilst she was lying on a machine which wobbled her fat about…‘It’s not right that a girl should have to go so long without her man,’ Dixie whined. ‘What’s going on, Ocker? Come on out with it.’

‘Business,’ said Ocker, ‘now shut your face.’

His mother had followed Ocker into his and Dixie’s private bathroom — something which she felt perfectly at ease in doing. She leapt at the chance to have a shot at Dixie.

‘If you can’t keep a man in the marital home, Dixie,’ she spat, ‘it’s no good complaining to him when he’s gone.’

‘This isn’t a marital home!!’ shouted Dixie wobbling away, ‘it’s a damn old peoples’ home!! Run for the exclusive benefit of one resident!! And this is Ocker’s and my private en suite!’

‘I know that, Dixie dear, but he doesn’t have private things from his mother. Good Lord, I’ve seen a lot more than his bathroom in my time.’

Dixie, thighs flapping away, biting her lip with fury, turned to Ocker for support. But he was gone, they heard the door slam…

‘Ocker!! Ocker!!’ shrieked Dixie, jumping off the wobbler and running to the stairs, ‘don’t you dare just walk out like that…‘ But he was already in the car and could not hear her.

She went downstairs in fury, followed by her mother-inlaw. There was a moment’s silence. Then she noticed a blank space on Ocker’s desk.

‘He’s taken his picture,’ she said slowly, ‘…the picture of his school team, that’s his favourite thing…He doesn’t even let the maid dust it…Why would he pack that in an overnight bag?’

Dixie Tyron and old Mrs Tyron looked at each other, for a moment united in shared fear and suspicion.

‘Ocker!!’ Dixie shrieked, running to the window. But the car was at the end of the drive already. She sank back into her chair.

A picture of her had always stood beside the team picture on Ocker’s desk. ‘I notice he left your picture,’ said Mrs Tyron. Their moment of solidarity shattered.

215: FROZEN FOOD ON A HOT NIGHT

O
n day minus eight and day minus seven, Sly found himself with plenty to do. The three remaining rockets had to be erected in their silos, and then all six had to be loaded and made ready for blast off.

Time seemed almost as stodgy and untraversable as the weather in those final, baking days. It was almost as if it had to be waded through, like a swamp. As Sly stood watching the rocket-moving transport crawl along at its top speed of three miles an hour, he felt as if the actual moment was destined to never actually arrive and that they would all be locked in the process of last minute preparation for ever.

‘Don’t rush it, it’s nearly a vintage machine, Mr Moorcock,’ Nagasyu had remarked, commenting on the fact that the transporter had been purchased from NASA nearly twenty years earlier and was actually the same rocket-mover that had brought the Apollo moon shot, Saturn V, to its pad. Nagasyu considered this a good omen.

Stark had purchased the thing in the late seventies and held it in storage ever since. They had got it for peanuts because the American love affair with space was over and, with its budgets cut, NASA had no need for such machines. They moved into shuttle research and the concept of a re-usable rocket. Stark, of course, did not have the same problems since they were only taking a one way trip.

216: BREAD AND LASAGNE

O
n the fifth night before the blast off, Sly visited Rachel. They had not seen each other since shortly after leaving Zimmerman et al in the security complex. Rachel had spent her time walking about the site, making an effort to take it all in, talking to whom she could and trying to understand and come to terms with the enormity of the thing that she was involved in.

Now it was evening and Rachel stood alone in the same room that Sly had first brought her to, watching for the fifth to last time as the hazy red furnace that used to be the sun sank through the sweaty, gaseous quagmire that used to be the sky.

Rachel was, by nature, of a fairly buoyant personality, but standing alone amongst strangers, watching the world die, would depress anyone. When Sly strode in she was pleased to see him.

‘So, shall we have that dinner then?’ he asked.

‘What dinner?’ Rachel replied.

‘The one I asked you to about a century ago.’

Sly was astonished to discover that he was nervous. This was a very new sensation for him. Normally he didn’t care enough for the women he found himself alone with to be ill at ease in their presence. What’s more, their acquiescence was so utterly guaranteed that there was never any question of fear of rejection. This time things were as different as they could be. He did care what Rachel thought of him and he was by no means certain that she desired him in the same way he did her. He had, after all, persuaded her to hang around with him by telling her that she would die a reeking, steaming, panic- stricken death if she didn’t. Many a girl might have responded to a chat-up line like that.

‘Don’t mind. Why not,’ replied Rachel, regarding the dinner. And so Sly prepared it. Peripheral Stark personnel had been cut to a minimum and there were no cooks or serving staff in those last days. Each cabin had a microwave and a huge stock of frozen food…

‘Pretty shithouse tucker, I’m afraid,’ said Sly, bunging a couple of lasagnes in the oven, ‘still guess it’s kind of better than what we can expect for the next few years, until the greenhouses get going and the frozen foetuses turn into lamb chops.’

Actually, as far as Rachel was concerned, the food she had eaten since joining Stark had been superb. Compared to toast and vegamite, which was what she normally had for supper, gourmet frozen lasagne was a pretty good feast. She didn’t say though, Sly liked to talk and Rachel liked to let him.

‘One thing about them,’ he said as the oven went ping, ‘this stuff was packaged a good three years ago, I own the factory actually. No Total Toxic Overload in this. Christ, Durf’s got me so spooked on the food chain business I look at the sell-by date and hope the damn thing’s past it.’

They drank some wine and ate the lasagne, no bread, the last thing you want to risk before embarking on a trip to the moon is food poisoning…

‘I guess the shits would be pretty unpleasant if you’re stuck in a space-suit,’ Sly said, and he laughed.

217: MOULDY OLD DOUGH

I
t wasn’t that the grain itself was massively toxic, but the intense heat and humidity (caused by the flooding, caused by the deforestation), had created an atmosphere that had been a perfect breeding environment for all sorts of microscopic organisms. Therefore, what crop had grown in that last, famine-struck summer of Stark, was mouldier than the washing up in a student residence. Unfortunately, because it was all that there was, it still got ground into bread and, what’s more, because there was so little of it, the stuff actually doubled in price. Mouldy bread was one of the few healthy items on the stricken stock market…

‘Get into food,’ the arrogant twenty-one-year-olds in bow ties and pink glasses had said to each other. ‘Food is very big right now.’

218: TOO GUILTY TO PARTY

A
s he attacked his lasagne, Sly pondered the contradictions of life.

‘Funny to think that I own bakeries that are making bread that I’m too scared to eat, and yet the same stuff is turning in a straight 200 per cent profit and curving skywards. Not that major profit strikes are any use to me now. Still, it’s funny,’ he was in a philosophical mood.

‘Please, Silvester,’ said Rachel, ‘try not to be such a ruthless pig. I’m trying to persuade myself that I don’t dislike you.’

‘Well, it is weird,’ he replied defensively. Sly had not realized he was being a ruthless pig, nor had he been spoken to by a woman this cool in years. Not surprisingly he found it exciting. ‘That bakery was my first ever corporate takeover. I only kept the bread bit, sold the rest off and now the bread’s poisoned, and more profitable than it’s ever been. I call that weird. Don’t you call that weird?’

If Rachel was a different experience for Sly, well the opposite was also the case. Rachel had never met a man with so little remorse, so little guilt, he simply did not bother to anguish over the terrible repercussions of his horrible life. This sublime peace of mind was entirely alien to Rachel. Those like her, who aspire to a social conscience, spend their lives consumed with guilt. They can never take full pleasure out of the nice things that come their way because they cannot escape the gnawing conviction that their happiness is unfair.

Sly, on the other hand, knew that life isn’t fair, and what’s more, the bastard didn’t seem to mind. It was a new experience for Rachel, who generally hung around with worried liberals like herself, to be talking to someone who could make a statement like the one Sly had made about the bread, without feeling the need to conclude it by adding, ‘I mean, God I know it’s terrible, but I really don’t know what I can do about it, you know? I mean it’s so difficult.’

It wasn’t that Rachel condoned his callousness, nor did she wish that she could emulate it (not much anyway). It was just strangely refreshing to be talking to a person who had conquered the guilt that oppresses us all. Perhaps this is why rogues are such popular figures of fiction; they have the ability to be bastards and not worry about it — they give us a chance to escape the ever oppressive conscience.

219: THE MOON SHINES BRIGHTER

A
nyway, for whatever reason, Rachel decided to go to bed with Sly. He was pretty despicable but also exciting, like a Dirty Harry movie. Rachel had always had a penchant for big, strong men. The perfect combination for her would have been new man politics combined with a macho man body. In this case she was prepared to settle for the latter on its own. It had, after all, been quite a long time for Rachel, she was a pretty choosy girl. Also the condoms she carried in her bag were in danger of slipping past their sell-by date. Going without gets frustrating in the end.

The last thing Rachel expected with a man like Sly was that they would have to go through the lengthy and gruelling familiar rigmarole of coffee and more coffee and edging towards each other that precedes most first bonks. But to her amazement, they did.

Sly could not be his usual, forceful, demanding self with Rachel, he found her too confusing, worrying even. Rachel was also inhibited because despite her politics she had never been one for making the first move. It still sounded weird to Rachel, a woman asking a man to go to bed; she knew it shouldn’t but it did. Language and convention remain great barriers to enlightenment.

And so, with the earth on the brink of extinction, and the conspiracy of cowardice and betrayal lumbering towards its thunderous climax, Rachel and Sly nervously chatted, drank more coffee, played some music, drank even more coffee and finally got close enough to go for it. It was more like two students at the end of term rather than two conspirators at the end of the world.

Well the moon held no more fears for Sly, suddenly it shone bright and friendly in the sky because now he knew how he wanted to spend his time on it. He wanted to spend his time rooting Rachel. It had been a revelation! Sly hadn’t really liked sex up until that point. Now he loved it. Suddenly he felt as if he had been completely wasting his time since his balls dropped. He realized that all the sex he had had in the past had just been elaborate wanking; he had finally discovered the real thing. This was not the case for Rachel of course. She had enjoyed it, certainly, but that was all. Not being obsessed with power and money she had not found it necessary to put in a sixteen-hour day, seven days a week all her life, acquiring things that she could not possibly use, therefore, despite being many years younger than Sly she had found much more time in her life to develop satisfactory relationships.

But Sly was ecstatic; and as he lay there in the dark wondering whether Rachel fancied another bash and if so could he coax a magnificent third erection out of his frankly startled penis, and deciding that he probably could if Rachel helped — he was looking forward to going to the moon.