Free Stark by Ben Elton Page B

national symbol.’ That was the way, play it soft for a moment…but just a moment, just long enough for them to register that you’re being conciliatory — then hit them. ‘But frankly, I find the implications of your outburst deeply offensive. I can only presume you feel that we on the U S team are a bunch of dumb and unprincipled ecological vandals.’ He continued quickly, before Le Conte could agree with this. ‘Well, let me tell you Mister, you’re barking up the wrong damn maple tree! Do you think we don’t have maples in Ontario? New England? US kids got a sweet-tooth too! If we can verify for certain what’s killing the damn things, well you may rest assured, Sir, that the United States government will pursue it to hell and beyond and nail it to the wall, by crikey! But before I start closing factories; before I start putting men out of work and forcing their families onto welfare, by Heaven, I’m going to be as sure of my ground as an old pig and that’s hog sure!!’
    He had just made up the ‘old pig’ metaphor. Strongman liked inventing pretend colloquialisms, it confused foreigners.
    ‘Mr Strongman,’ said Le Conte, badly wanting to kill him. ‘82 per cent of the trees in the Beauce-Megantic region are showing signs of pollution. It’s sulphur dioxide from your factories. Ten years from now we will have no trees left. This is a world emergency…Quebec produces over two-thirds of the world’s maple syrup. We’ve cut our acid rain, you’ve got to cut yours.’
    ‘We can’t be sure. The connection isn’t proven,’ said Strongman, reasonable again. ‘Believe me, our top men, the best, are on this thing. We’re chasing it Henri, oh yeah, we’re chasing it like a pan-fried Tennessee whore with the clap, and that’s finger licking chasing.’ That was a good one, thought Strongman, they’d laugh about that tonight. He couldn’t help but notice the secretary’s admiring glance. Who knows, maybe…Anyway he’d certainly waffled that dumb French kayak’s maple syrup right up his sweet backside, you bet he had.
    Le Conte, a native of Quebec, wanted to cry. With great sadness he called upon his science officer to present the Canadian argument yet again.
    The negotiation machine would continue to produce bullshit at a comparable rate to the industrial production of acid rain. The U S/Canadian dialogue had been going on for so long it would certainly outlive the trees. It takes a maple tree about five years to perish from a phenomenon known as ‘die back’. They die from the top down. Like a balding man, their branches recede. The syrup farmer taps his trees each year and watches them die by inches, becoming poor, sad, shabby shadows of their once mighty selves. This disaster is, of course, not confined to maple trees but is beginning to affect the majority of all the trees in the world.

40: THE FHAGWASH
    T he waffles had gone cold and CD’s shoulders were numb. Finally, Karen released him.
    ‘Anyway, I really have got to get my act together,’ said Karen, turning down a non-existent invitation to hang around. ‘Boogaloo and Rhumtitty are probably coming round for supper tonight or some other time. It’s so difficult to cook for Yanyaroos.’ Karen had a habit common to many people who pride themselves on possessing approachable and open personalities. She referred to people that she knew as if everyone knew them. Ostensibly this was because Karen believed that the world is actually full of love and that there are quite enough artificial barriers created between people without constructing extra ones.
    ‘Karen, I don’t know any of the people you’re talking about,’ CD had remarked on their one night together.
    ‘Just because you don’t know someone,’ Karen replied, ‘doesn’t mean you can’t be a friend of theirs.’ She spoke with the same tone of happy confidence that Einstein must have used the first time he said E = MC2. In actual fact, her habit of trumpeting the names