Stark (9 page)

49: PARADISE LOST

S
ly was flying over Kalgoorkatta. They dug uranium there, Sly had a lot of money in it. It had been a hell of a battle to get the government to give the go-ahead. People were such a bunch of old women when it came to nuclear energy. It had cost the earth to prove how safe it was. Dinners, party donations, all expenses paid fact-finding luxury trips. Those high-minded political types did not sell themselves cheaply.

All Sly and his colleagues wanted was a tiny, tiny relaxation in the frankly impractical laws on how much uranium was produced. Also, it would be nice if there were less restrictions on who they were allowed to sell it to and, finally, it would make life easier if they did not have to ask so many embarrassing and impertinent questions as to what the buyer wanted it for. Just a small rationalization of these absurdly restrictive laws would net ten billion a year, which would of course generate some very juicy corporate tax, not to mention the jobs.

Besides this, the consortium argued, you can’t stop progress. If they didn’t do it someone else would. The Canadians were already doing it in fact. Yes, that had shocked those bastard greenies. Canada, land of the maple leaf and the acid rain protest was flogging uranium off the back of a barrow to just about any piss-poor, potential terrorist base of a country that could afford it.

Sly’s mining consortium hadn’t got everything it had wanted but they had got enough and Kalgoorkatta was by way of being a bit of a boom town. It was dangerous work and it certainly-screwed up the land a bit, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.

Lots of eggs. What a mess it was! Until he flew over it Sly had never realized just how hellish a few hundred hectares of virtually unrestricted mining could look. It was a couple of years since he and the other members of the consortium had stood on the pretty hillside with the champagne and photographers, bleating on about it being a great day for Australia. Since then a good approximation of Hades had been produced. The land was scarred and smashed and poisoned. Soon it would also be empty. When that happened Sly and his friends would fence it in and move on. Land was there to be used.

50: THE DESERT OAK

A
couple of hundred years before the mines were laid, an Aboriginal man had used the land himself. He was on walkabout and thirsty. Aboriginals were often thirsty. This came from living in an enormous desert. The fellow in question was thirsty but he was cool. He was cool because he knew that all he needed to do was find a desert oak tree. It wasn’t called a desert oak tree in those days of course, what the Aboriginal in question called it one can only guess at. Possibly, ‘Sir’ or perhaps ‘darling’, something appreciative certainly because this tree was going to save his life. You wouldn’t have thought of it as a life-saver, not to look at certainly. No one, not even its mother, could have called it an inspiring or handsome tree. The desert oak was, and in fact still is, as a breed, a hugely unimpressive scrappy, crappy little tree. Its best friends would say so.

‘Tree,’ they would say, realizing that you have to be cruel to be kind, ‘do not go entering yourself in any horticultural shows. You will only embarrass us all.’

But the desert oak can smile knowingly to itself, it has a secret. Because although on the surface it may be just a six- foot skinny streak of fibre with about ten leaves to its name, beneath the desert floor it is a very different story. For the desert oak can put down roots as deep as three hundred feet. In fact, as far as need be to reach water. Let there be no question about it, ugly as fuck though it is, root-wise the desert oak does not mess around. Still waters run deep and so do desert oaks. Other factors that make this tree remarkably together, as far as living in the desert goes, include its ability to ‘die’ at will. When times are hard, and let’s face it they almost always are, for a tree in a desert, the top bit of the tree just switches off. Drops its leaves, shrivels up and pretends to be dead.

You wouldn’t notice the change to look at it, of course. So unimpressive is the desert oak in full bloom that the difference between it stretching its branches and saying, ‘God it’s good to be alive and a tree today’ and it pretending to be dead, is not marked. In fact, the two states are almost identical. None the less, that is what it does, on the surface the tree ‘dies’. Underneath though, the search for water goes on and when that water is found, after what could be as much as fifteen or twenty years, the top bit comes back to life and blossoms into its full patheticness.

Possibly conscious of the trouble it has gone to to find water, once found, the desert oak makes the most of it. It stores it, sucking up as much as it can up through its three hundred foot roots, and storing a few pints in its horrid, spindly little trunk.

And this is where the thirsty Aborigine comes in. Because the Aborigines have always known about these trees. They had worked out a way to get at that water without the tedious necessity of having to put down three hundred foot roots and pretend to be dead for twenty years themselves. What they used to do was this. They would make a little hole in the bark of the tree and put a twig in. Then they would sit under the twig with their mouths open and wait for the water to drip in.

This is what our man did, hundreds of years ago, on the site of what was to become the over-mined, useless uranium plant. And once he had drunk enough, he didn’t just get up and piss off, leaving the tree to drip till it died. No, he removed the twig, got a bit of gum from the bark of a nearby eucalyptus, and bunged up the hole he’d made. This was the way it was done. You plugged up your hole.

The Aborigines were a Stone-Age society, one of the most primitive on earth. They had not even developed a simple television game show. But they knew that if you looked after the environment there was a good chance it would look after you.

Now Sly and his friends had taken what they wanted from the land just as the Aboriginal had done. But they had no intention of bunging up their hole. Too expensive, too much trouble.

The term ‘primitive’ is clearly a highly subjective one.

51: PROTEST AND SURVIVE

C
D had intended to change his entire policy regarding his pursuit of Rachel but he was not in a position to do so. Rachel liked the things they had been doing together just the way they were. The peace and ecology bit had really got in amongst her and she wanted to get more involved. As far as she was concerned, CD was inexorably linked with all this growing interest. That was what their relationship was based on and she liked it that way. After all, she knew plenty of blokes to drink and play pool with but there weren’t many who’d schlepp 20K to a meeting about how much raw sewage was getting pumped into Perth’s swimming waters.

52: AUSSIE ADS

T
oday’s schlepp was to a kind of protest bazaar at the naval installation thirty kilometres north of Carlton. For the previous six years there had been a permanent women’s protest encamped close to the public jetty and this was a day of support. The U S South Pacific fleet was coming in, which was always an occasion for excitement, horror or indifference, according to individual attitudes to U S fleets.

CD and Rachel arrived a little late and the party was in full swing. The hippies were painting their children’s faces, the police were pretending to be friendly and a small group of strippers and hostesses were waving their boobs about.

This was because the arrival of the fleet was a very special time for the clubs and strip joints of Perth. The owners would send down their dancing girls to hang adverts off the quay and bare their breasts as the ships came in. ‘Come to the 301 Club and see bonza Aussie tits’ the signs would say. The girls jumped up and down, jiggling their bonza Aussie tits as a kind of foretaste of what the lucky sailors could expect if they visited one of the clubs.

This, incidentally, is an example of classic Australian advertising. It tends to be abrupt and to the point. For instance, if a manufacturer has produced a sausage that he (or she) considers to be long and meaty, he will call the produce ‘Long ‘N’ Meaty Saussies’ and advertise it thus: ‘ ‘Long ‘N’ Meaty Saussies’, they’re long and meaty (and they’re saussies).’

Half-way to the printers with the advertising copy, the manufacturer will realize that he has not pointed out that the saussies are Australian. He will immediately rename them ‘Long ‘N’ Meaty Aussie Saussies’ and proudly boast: ‘ ‘Long ‘N’ Meaty Aussie Saussies’, they’re long and meaty, and they’re saussies, pure Aussie…’

After some thought he might add, ‘eat ‘em!’ just to make the situation absolutely clear. It makes a change from the sort of ad where a picture of a lizard on a pyramid, basking in the sun, is supposed to make you desperate for a fag.

53: THE ONE WORLD FESTIVAL

A
nyway, the poor cold girls jiggled and the poor cold US sailors whooped and hollered from the decks of their ships, no doubt thinking that if the girls did this at the docks, what fabulous and exotic pleasures could be expected on paying twenty bucks to get into a club. None, sadly. Just more tit jiggling, minus the goose-pimples.

CD and Rachel arrived rather late.

‘Look at those girls,’ said CD, looking. ‘Pretty gross, eh?’ he added looking some more. ‘I mean, just totally out of order,’ he said as he took another long, hard look just to make sure it really was as offensive as he thought it was.

Rachel wasn’t interested in the girls, gross or not. She was taking in the scene as a whole and experiencing a gutful of frustration and doubt. There, floating out on the high seas, was the U S South Pacific fleet, looking, it had to be admitted, pretty hard. On the dock in opposition to this bay full of death-tech, stood the protesters, looking (it could not be denied) rather pathetic. Balloons, painted children’s faces, acoustic guitars…‘I mean, for God’s sake,’ thought Rachel.

Anyone faced by a battle fleet is going to feel a sharp sense of scale. It can only add to the inadequacy to be surrounded by street theatre and kids with T-shirts saying ‘I want to grow up, not blow up.’

‘I hate the way people always feel they have to justify their principles by linking them to their snotty kids,’ she said.

Rachel didn’t like most kids very much. She found them selfish and demanding and socially inept. She certainly did not feel any need to lend substance to her hopes for a better world by harping mawkishly on the fate of the poor innocent kiddies. As far as she was concerned she was a poor innocent kiddie herself and would be till the day she died.

‘It’s so utterly yuk, bunging your own ideas on the chest of some revolting little sprog…We don’t know what a kid wants anyway,’ she moaned to CD, who was eating a vegetable samosa from a stall.

‘Any one of these kids could be in the navy itself in fifteen years,’ she continued, warming to her theme. ‘I’m at this protest because I don’t want to blow up. At least we know I haven’t grown up to be an axe murderer. This lot might. They’re probably more likely to actually. They reckon kids react against their parents’ beliefs, and I’m not surprised,’ said Rachel, staring around at the hippy throng. ‘Wouldn’t you turn into an axe murderer if your mother’s idea of sweets was carrot cake?’

‘Don’t be so hard on everybody all the time,’ said CD, who was enjoying his samosa and feeling benign. ‘These people are cool. It’s not their fault they’ve got poor dress sense…’

‘Jesus, will you look at that fellah I just served,’ said Rick the samosa maker, ‘what does he look like!’ As it happened, CD believed himself to be effecting the casual elegance of an English gent abroad, strolling about on an early summer day. He was wearing a perfect linen suit and was the epitome of taste. Unfortunately he didn’t have a perfect linen suit and certainly the old cricket trousers and chef’s jacket were not an exact imitation.

Rick and his live-in friend, Judy, were convinced that CD must be drug squad.

‘It’s all so bloody pointless and dull’ Rachel moaned, ‘nobody’s doing anything.’

‘Well, what the hell are you doing?’ asked CD, who was vaguely experimenting with an idea that it might turn Rachel on if he was more butch and dominant. He toyed with the thought of adding, ‘bitch’, but mercifully reason prevailed.

‘Nothing,’ shouted Rachel, ‘that’s what makes me so angry. I’m not doing anything. I’m hanging around with a bunch of hippies, and hippies bore me shitless.’

‘Hippies bore everybody shitless, Rachel, it’s their job,’ replied CD. ‘Hippies even bore hippies shitless. That’s why they take so many drugs, just to avoid having to talk to each other. They say it’s to change their heads but it’s not.’

‘Well, it ought to be. If my head was as dull as that I’d want to change it,’ said Rachel.

CD and Rachel stood in silence. CD trying to think of something dominant to say and Rachel reading a huge sign on one of the dock walls that said ‘Perth Premium Gold -A regular drinking beer for a regular beer drinker’. Anyone who scorns Australian copywriting would scorn no further if they could have seen the effect that this advert was having on Rachel. Her whole soul cried out for a beer. Then somebody began to sing ‘Blowing in the Wind.’

‘Right, that’s it,’ she said. ‘I’m going to the pub.’

But, just then there was a stirring in the crowd. Something interesting was happening on one of the ships. Rachel stayed to watch.

54: THE USS ENORMOUS

T
he US Navy, in a monumentally optimistic bit of public relations, had opened up one of the warships to public inspection. The people of Carlo were to be allowed to take a look at the hardware to which they were hosts. What the thinking was behind the American decision is hard to say. Why people, nervous that their little town was being made into a prime nuclear target, should be less nervous for getting a closer look at the cause of their fears is a question not easily answered.

‘And what you are standing on here, folks, is a United States warship, yes sirree. It’s this little mother them Ruskis are going to be aiming at when they miss and hit your town.’

CD would have quite liked to have gone and had a look, although he wouldn’t have admitted it. Actually, if he had gone, he would have been rather bored. The U S Navy did not intend to give much away.

Second Lieutenant Kowalski was detailed to welcome the tourists aboard and escort them around those few sections of the ship that were not classified. He had been carefully chosen. Tall and splendid in his pure white uniform, he had an easy, open face and manner that made you just know he would defend democracy until his sabre broke. He dazzled his smitten audience of love-struck young women and death mad little boys, with a whirlwind of technology.

‘This here is a U S Naval 8.2 litre unload and distribution facility, manually operated by a single crewman.’

Moving on from the toilet the awestruck group were privileged to inspect an On-site Perimeter Confinement Safety Unit, or ship’s rail. It was here that the excitement Rachel had observed from the shore occurred.

Through CD’s second-hand binoculars she could see that two men had somehow managed to detach themselves from the group of sightseers and were scaling one of the sort of conning tower affairs that these ships seem to bristle with. One stopped only a few feet up but the other was tremendously nimble. He almost seemed to be running vertically. If he had been wearing a red and blue body stocking Rachel would have thought it was Spiderman. Having climbed as far as he could go — a good thirty feet above the shouting sailors — he attached himself to a satellite dish, managing to almost sit in it as if he was about to be stir- fried in an enormous wok. He raised his fist in a triumphant salute towards the protesters on the shore and then unfurled a twenty-five foot long banner that slashed about like a scythe in the strong wind. It was inscribed with the legend ‘Nuclear Target.’

That was by no means the end of the entertainment, for suddenly there was a flash and a bang and all the shouting sailors dived for cover. It took another three bangs before they realized that these were not S S20S but simply fireworks let off by the other man, who had not climbed so far, to draw attention to the protest. The sailors, furious for having been duped, soon hauled the firework fellow down but it took twenty minutes for them to reach the one with the banner and bring him and his banner back to the deck. The protest was sufficiently dramatic for it to be shown on the news that evening. It wasn’t much but it was something, and it was also undeniably exciting.

Watching from the shore, Rachel and CD did not know it but this was their first encounter with Walter and Zimmerman. They were soon to become comrades-in-arms against Stark.