This Other Eden (41 page)

‘Max,’
said Rosalie, ‘I’m a criminal wanted in Europe and

America.
If we get married it will have to be in total secrecy.

We
can’t have any press, we can’t bring anybody over from

America.’

‘No
one?’ Max asked, slightly stunned.

‘No
one, I’m afraid, unless you want to spend your wedding night visiting me in
jail.’

‘OK, so
no one it is. Just my agent and my publicist then. Gee, that’s weird.’

‘No
one, Max, not even your agent and your publicist. In fact, especially not
them.’

Max
chewed a ruminative mouthful of irradiated beef. The meat had been expertly
reflavoured using only the finest chemicals and yet he scarcely tasted it. He
was trying to get his head around the concept of doing something as big as
getting married without his agent or his publicist. Who would handle the press?
The fans? The cops? His mother? Then it dawned on him that none of these people
would be there.

‘You
actually want me to get married
alone,
don’t you?’ he asked.

‘Well,
not entirely. I need to be there.’

‘Is it
legal
if the press don’t witness it? I mean, I kind of thought they had to be
there.’

Rosalie
gave Max’s hand an encouraging squeeze.

‘It’ll
be all right, Max. No need to be nervous. People do things that haven’t been
arranged by their agents and publicists all the time. In fact, most people
don’t even
have
agents and publicists.’

Max was
vaguely aware that this was the case, but after eight years as a
super-celebrity he found it rather difficult to imagine. Eventually though, he
accepted Rosalie’s argument.

‘OK,
there’s a church in the square, let’s go knock up the padre.’

‘Are
you out of your mind, Max? This is
Provençe!’

‘So?’

‘Every
church within twenty miles of here is
Church of England!
Sure, I’d
rather get hitched in a witches’ coven.’

Nocturnal
nuptials.

They left the little
English carvery at about ten and headed north in their hire car. Rosalie drove,
Max having had most of both of the bottles of wine they had ordered.

‘It
isn’t always going to be me who drives, OK?’ she said. ‘I like a drink too, you
know.’

‘Fine,
sometimes we’ll take a taxi.’

After
passing through several villages that were quite nice, but only quite, they
came upon the perfect church in a little village called Donzère, about eight
miles south of Montélimar. Despite it being nearly midnight (country time) they
knocked up the priest.

‘Father.
We want to get married and we’d like to do it now if that’s all right with
you,’ Rosalie said in passable schoolgirl French.

‘Well,
it is not,’ the priest replied in English. ‘Are you mad, coming here at this
hour, I’ve a good mind to —’

‘Father,’
Rosalie interrupted him, ‘I’m a wanted terrorist and I can’t get married in the
normal way. Now I’ve got a gun, and my fiancé here has suitcases full of money.
Either one of these things is going to persuade you to marry us right now.
Which is it to be?’

‘There’s
nothing in the world wakes a man up like the sight of young love,’ said the
priest. ‘How much are you prepared to pay?’

The
deal done, the priest hastily put on his robes and led the expectant couple
through the churchyard to his darkened church.

‘You
know it won’t be a legal marriage, don’t you?’ he said. ‘Without the proper
papers it can only be symbolic.’

‘That’s
all we care about,’ Rosalie replied.

And so
the priest spoke the marriage service in the little church, lit only by a few
candles. Neither Rosalie nor Max were particularly religious people, but where
Rosalie came from you got married in a church and that was the end of it. She
could not imagine it any other way. Max sensibly neglected to mention his two
divorces.

The
road to Damascus.

Despite the fact that
Rosalie was still very much wanted by the FBI, they decided to return to the
USA. A new identity was a comparatively easy thing to obtain if you had Max’s
money and Rosalie’s contacts and she entered the country without trouble.

Rosalie
had decided to resign her commission in Mother Earth. Plastic Tolstoy could pay
somebody else to alert the world to the need to buy more Claustrospheres. She
was fed up with it. She had been fighting almost continually for five and a
half years and had achieved nothing. You couldn’t breathe the air anymore, you
couldn’t drink the water, walk in the sunshine or enjoy the rain on your face,
and Rosalie had no energy left to be bothered about it.

She had
made the decision whilst flying the sub-orbital to LA with Max. Having got over
the excitement that her first-class seat actually had an arm-rest on
both
sides,
she had tuned into the news channel. She had been looking for an update on the
situation in Belgium, but discovered to her astonishment that the disaster had
already been dropped from the bulletins. Three days down the track and the
poisoning of an entire country was old news.

Rosalie
was not on the road to Damascus, she was on a flight to LA, but at that moment
she saw the truth as clearly as the apostle Paul had, on his journey.

People
had got used to the planet dying.

They
didn’t care any more, it had been lingering on for too long. The Earth was like
some aged and slightly disgusting relative that just got sicker and sicker and
yet refused to die. Requiring more and more attention, growing bigger tumours,
bursting nastier sores and soiling its sheets ever more often. An embarrassment
and an inconvenience, a constant reminder of family guilt. It was almost as if,
now that people had their Claustrospheres, they
wanted
the world to die.
To get it over with. Everyone had lived with the imminence of planet death for
so long that they really could not get excited about it any more.

A young
man was coming down the corridor from the toilets. He was wearing the famous
Claustrophobe sweatshirt, slightly sanitised for general display. A picture of
a slimy, dead Earth and the legend ‘Well, f*** that then’ embossed beneath it.

Rosalie
looked at the shirt, unconsciously quoting the slogan.

‘Well,
fuck that then,’ she said to herself.

Except,
in fact, she said it to at least the ten people closest to her. Rosalie was
wearing earphones in order to hear the news. She had forgotten, as so many
people do, that you lose control of the volume of your voice when wearing
earphones. The stewardess approached and leant across to Max.

‘Would
you mind asking your companion to moderate her language, please, sir. There are
children on board.’

The
lull before the storm.

Few people are immune to
the seduction of luxury and Rosalie was under no illusions about her own
delight in a bit of pampering. She did rather surprise even herself however,
when she moved into a house that had a Claustrophere attached to it. A
Claustrosphere, what’s more, that was the size of four or five tennis courts.

‘Do you
like it?’ Max had asked with genuine pride. ‘It has a pool, you know.’

‘Max,
I’ve spent five years blowing these things up.’

‘Well,
don’t blow this one up or I’ll divorce you. It has state-of-the-art leisure
facilities and its fish cycle includes caviar. Come on, Ba … I mean, uhm… darling, we’re on honeymoon.

Max
could see that Rosalie was torn, it was all very well leaving Mother Earth, but
frolicking in a Claustrophere was a big leap.

‘Listen,’
he said, ‘husbands and wives are supposed to share each other’s interests,
right? Well, I’ve tried to get involved in your whole green thing, haven’t I? Now
you have to get into my stuff.’

‘Which
is?’

‘Partying,
girl. You
know
it makes sense.’

And
suddenly she did. A huge weight seemed to lift from Rosalie’s shoulders. It
dawned on her that if she wanted to pack it all in for a while and have a good
time, then she could. It was up to her.

‘You’re
right,’ she said. ‘Bugger it, it isn’t
my
fault the bloody Earth’s
knackered. I didn’t do it. I’m on holiday.’

And to
her astonishment, on the very first morning that she moved in with Max, Rosalie
found herself lying by the Claustrosphere pool, wearing a bikini and
sunbathing, something it had been impossible to do outside for over thirty
years. Max suggested that since they were married and entirely alone in a
hermetically sealed private world, Rosalie might like to dispense with the
swimming costume.

‘Maybe
in a while,’ Rosalie said. She was readjusting fast, but there were limits.
Being inside a Claustrosphere was one thing, wandering around it starkers was
another.

Slowly
though, throughout that first day she relaxed. They both did, it was a
honeymoon. They swam, they played tennis in the gamesuits, they got a little
drunk and they made love in the soft lush grass.

‘I
suppose this is what life must have been like in the real world, before it all
got spoilt,’ Rosalie said as she lay in the quiet meadow, her hair mingling
with the daisies and buttercups.

‘If you
were an outrageously overpaid movie star, yes. I believe it was tougher for the
little guys,’ Max replied.

They
did not return to the house that night, but stayed where they were, outdoors
but indoors, naked in a tiny meadow as the light cycle turned to velvet
darkness and the fireflies in the forest area began to glow.

There
was even dew in the morning when they awoke, a little chilly, at around five
a.m. and Max brought cushions and blankets from the living area. They made love
again and then watched the false dawn slowly turning their little private world
from darkness to cold grey. Rosalie felt a fine drizzle on her face.

‘It’s… it’s raining,’ she said, astonished.

‘It
does sometimes,’ said Max. ‘You never know when till it happens. Just like the
real thing, huh? The precipitation cycle is regulated according to seasons, but
apart from that it’s random. What do you think?’

‘It’s
beautiful, Max. I had no idea these things could be so beautiful.’

Of
course Rosalie knew that not all Claustrospheres were as luxurious as Max’s.
The vast dormitory-style municipal complexes of the English Home Counties, for
instance, or those in Long Island and New Jersey or underneath the
Mediterranean Sea could not boast quite such opulence, but they too had tennis
courts and swimming pools, albeit public ones. They too were, in their way,
beautiful.

‘But it
is obscene, you know that, don’t you?’ Rosalie said at last, trying to remember
how much she hated the very idea of Claustrospheres.

‘Yeah,
yeah, sure, we all know that, but what can I tell you? You have to allow
yourself some time off from yourself, you have to get out of your own way.’ And
with that, he gathered Rosalie up in his arms, carried her to the pool and
jumped in, kissing her all the while.

To
start the day with a dip in your own pool is a splendid thing, but to do so in
the knowledge that you have nothing whatsoever to do after breakfast is doubly
so. Rosalie shrieked with joy. She had not felt so light-hearted since she had
been a girl.

All
that day and the next, and the next until they lost count, Rosalie and Max swam
and played and made love, never once leaving the Claustrosphere. This was the
beginning of their lives together and they did not want the beginning to end.
Each afternoon Max worked out in his little gymnasium and watched videos,
whilst Rosalie spent lazy hours by the pool with the ElectroBook. The
ElectroBook was an extraordinary invention and a joy to behold. It placed all
the writings of the world in the palm of your hand. Of course, it had long been
possible to condense all literature on to a disc or two and read it on a
screen, but people had never really taken to this method of reading, because
curling up with a laptop computer was just not as nice as it was with a book.
The ElectroBook solved this problem of sensual aesthetics, for it was a real leather-bound
book with hundreds of pages made not of paper, but of wafer-thin, flexible,
fibre optically-fed screens. On to these screens, which could be folded, bent,
screwed up and read upside down in a hammock, would appear anything that had
ever been written at the simple touch of an index.

One
day, Rosalie and Max were lying in the meadow together. She was on her back,
while Max lay with his head resting on her stomach. She had put aside her
ElectroBook, upon which she had been reading
David Copperfield,
and was
staring up at the great geodesic dome above her. How splendid it looked, with
its soft light and the delicate mists that floated up towards the roof. Rosalie
was suffused with a wonderful, feeling of well-being. All her life she had
worried about the world, and now here she was in a perfect one. She had
achieved that which she had always most desired: she was living in a perfect
world. Outside its near-impregnable walls was the rest of the universe, filled
as it was with other planets, Mars, Neptune … Earth. Planets that were
nothing to do with her. Why should she worry any more about the dying Earth
than she did about the frozen corpse that was Mars? Neither planet was her
world. She had a Garden of Eden all of her own.