Free This Other Eden by Ben Elton Page B

Jurgen Thor was rumoured to
treasure even more highly than an eco-friendly world.
    ‘Mr
Thor, who is funding Mother Earth?’ Carper demanded.
    ‘What
has this question to do with me, Mr Carper?’
    ‘Oh,
for God’s sake, Mr Thor, your attitude insults this house! The Mother Earth
direct action group has colossal resources. Its activities become ever grander
and more daring. It has an air arm, a small navy; it has been able to operate
effectively in space, destroying countless commercial launches. Anti-satellite
ballistics cost billions of dollars, Mr Thor. Who the hell is providing that
sort of cash! I say that it is you, Mr Thor! I contend that it is the saintly
Natura party which funds this murderous terrorism!’
    ‘Natura,
Mr Carper?’ Jurgen laughed. ‘We are a political party, not Fort Knox
Incorporated, OK, yes, you foolish dude. We exist by private donations and
membership fees. We have less money worldwide than either of the two main
parties hold in the US alone.
    Colin
Carper’s exasperation was getting the better of him.
    ‘Claustrosphere
factories have been attacked countless times, Mr Thor! Causing billions of
dollars in lost revenue! My constituents have a right to know who is funding
these outrages.
    It is a
particularly gruesome characteristic of parliamentarians worldwide that, in
order to legitimise their own prejudices and self-interest, they place them in
the mouth of some shadowy collective constituent. Thus they lobby the cause of
those who pay them in the guise of voicing the fears of those who vote for
them. Jurgen was in fact about to point this out, but at that moment an
enormous bomb went off.
     
     
     
    European
disunity.
     
    The marble cracked and the
chandeliers shattered. The blast was truly terrible. Repulsive sculptures and
meaningless murals were found hundreds of metres away. Metal shapes representing
the Euro ideals of peace, diversity and a strong currency were still landing in
the suburbs of Brussels minutes after the initial explosion. A vast silk
collage entitled ‘Vive La Différence’, which had been commissioned to represent
the twin Euro goals of cultural diversity and keeping out penniless refugees
from the East, could be seen flapping in the wind, skewered on the spire of the
secular chapel. Great blobby sculptures, which looked like huge, fat,
multi-cheeked bottoms, but were in fact symbolic of the smaller European
states, were sent rolling across the Euro Piazza and off down the busy shopping
streets of the capital. All was chaos and confusion, a nightmare of smashed
modern art mixed up with dead and dying delegates.
    There
were dismembered corpses everywhere. It was a harsh irony that only in death
could those earnest European representatives find the unity of body and soul
that had eluded them in life. The arms of staunch Flemish fundamentalists were
to be found embracing the torsos of die-hard Norman separatists. The brains of
Sicilian secessionists could be seen spread across the faces of Ulster
unionists. Bits of socialists from Schleswig embedded themselves in bits of
their sworn enemy, the socialists of Holstein. Christians were plastered over
Muslims. Communists blended with Fascists. Jews, or at least parts of them,
mingled freely and unchallenged throughout the chamber. For one shining moment,
all creeds and nationalities - both real and dreamt of — became one nation.
Croats, Serbs, Basques, Cornish separatists, Slovak nationalists, all puréed together
in one grand multi-limbed, multi-brained, amorphous delegate. In the short
period after the dust settled and before the finger pointing began, Europe was,
in a strange way, and for the first time, unified.
    When
the finger pointing did begin, the directions in which it pointed were as many
and varied as the special interest groups that were doing the pointing.
Everyone was convinced that the dreadful carnage had been caused by the secret
agents of those whom they most despised. But as it happened, the