The Disestablishment of Paradise

by Phillip Mann

  Many of the wounds had bled, but the dressings that Hera had applied had done their job and the flesh showed signs of healing. Hera’s neat clips had held and there was no sign of infection apart from in the knee.

  With the wounds treated and her body washed, Mack slipped his arms under her. She groaned briefly as he lifted her and laid her down on the towel on the floor. As quickly as he could he stripped the bed, rolling up the wet and soiled sheets. He turned the mattress over and remade the bed with the crisp clean sheets.

  Hera was so light he could have lifted her with one hand. He placed her carefully on the clean sheets and covered her with the towel, leaving the wounded leg exposed. Then he placed a pillow under the knee and packed more towels around the joint.

  What to do with the knee? His first inclination was to open the wound and let any poison out, but he was no surgeon and would have been cutting blind. He opted for the oldest treatment of all – a poultice. And he made one of those intuitive leaps, the kind of thing that either succeeds, and you are called a genius, or fails, and you are considered a fool or worse. He went outside into the sunshine. He found a weed flower that had recently opened and he pulled off its thick blue aromatic petals. Perhaps he was thinking of the drunkard’s cure, the hair of the dog that bit you.

  He placed the fresh petals on the wound and covered them with a towel soaked in hot salted water. Five minutes later, when the poultice had cooled, he checked and there seemed to be no rejection. If anything, the skin looked slightly pinker. He applied the poultice again, and then again. Finally, convinced that there was no anti-reaction, he found a hot water bottle and used this to keep the petals warm. By experiment he found that a petal would only last for three poultices before it lost its colour, and so he went outside with the ladder and little by little stripped the weed of all its petals.

  With the knee treated, Mack reheated the soup. He was able to spoon some of it into her mouth and saw her swallow. While he did this, he noticed that Hera’s one good eye was open, and that it stared up at him. When he moved round the room, the eye followed his movements. But there was no hint of recognition. She growled once, and he growled back. Anything to help.

  Hera slipped back and forth between worlds – like the salmon that becomes a princess and then a salmon again.

  While days passed in Mack’s busy world, for Hera there was no sense of time.

  Sometimes she saw the great brown bear shambling round her room. Sometimes she was aware of strong arms lifting her up, dragging her back from the lovely green meadows, of food being spooned into her mouth and of coughing. At other times her arms and legs were moved as though she was a limp manikin filled with damp sawdust. Sometimes the bear growled at her. And the knee . . . the bear was always fussing with the stupid knee. And sometimes the bear hurt her and she screamed and hit out at it – but then she would slip away.

  But the dreams were changing.

  Hera Everything was becoming more intense. There is a lot I don’t remember, but one occasion stands out clearly. Again I was on the shore. And again I was watching a Dendron swimming towards me. Only the tips of its twin trunks were visible, cutting through the water like blades, its pennants snapping back and forth, and I could hear the Venus tears sounding together like chimes.

  It came rearing up, with the water streaming off it and great waves lapping, heaving out of the sea towards me. It was urgent. But then, just when I thought it would crush me, it started shuffling. I stood absolutely still and it walked right over me. I was in the private space between its two high arching cathedral legs. The bulk of its body was over me!

  Olivia Go on.

  Hera Well, with an animal such as an elephant or a horse, I would have been aware of genitalia. But here there was just a great pulsing sac, the thing Sasha calls its codds. It is not a sexual organ of the kind we understand, but still I had the impression that the Dendron was exposing itself in some way. It was showing me its pain, which was also its need. And then, finally, I understood. It wanted to divide. That was its message. It wanted to divide. Its need was sexual on that level. It wanted to divide in the same way that you or I might want to have a baby. Does that make sense?

  Olivia Yes. Were you starting to think of it as female? That would be scientific heresy, would it not?

  Hera Indeed, but I was a bit beyond such niceties. And in any case I was dreaming. I responded as a woman. And I suppose if I am really honest, I did think of the Dendron at this moment as female, simply because it was the one that would become two from its own body. But that is not important. What is important is that this was the first time I began to understand that there might be a Dendron still alive on Paradise.

  Olivia Can we just go back a bit? What did you mean when you said, ‘I responded as a woman’?

  Hera Resonance. I translated its yearning into terms which I, a human woman, could experience – and, yes, I responded physically, wildly. And I am not going to explain that, Olivia. Just use your imagination. Like the old poem says, Salt and honey. Fire and ice.

  Hera woke up slowly. She was truly herself again and she was seeing in colour – the sun streaming in, her lying back, and her bare leg held firm . . . and . . .

  The brown bear was sitting on her bed, its hunched back towards her, crouched over her knee, doing something. She struggled up onto her elbows, and for the first time she saw him clearly and knew who he was and what he was doing. ‘What the hell . . .’

  But let us not get ahead of ourselves.

  Mack, the nurse, knew nothing of Hera’s visionary adventures.

  After a few days he could tell that the poultices were working and whatever was lodged in the knee was being brought to the surface. Hera seemed more at rest too, though she never seemed to regain proper consciousness.

  Mack established a rhythm. Every morning, after he had fed Hera soup, he would tease open the wound on her knee so that the skin did not close and trap whatever was within. That done, he applied new poultices in the morning, at midday and in the evening.

  One night, the very night which Hera has described, he was woken up by her groaning. When he switched on the light he saw that she had pushed off the light covers and was rolling her head back and forth on the pillow. She began to breathe in gasps, calling something, and she was running her hands up and down her body. Mack thought that she might be reliving the crisis when she was injured and was up from his bed on the floor in a moment.

  He touched her lightly and Hera became calm but was still breathing deeply, and then suddenly she stretched out her legs and twisted her body violently as though some demon had seized her. She was crying out now as she twisted round on the bed. All Mack could think of to do was to hold her down by the arms, and when that did not work, he lay on her, not totally, not flat, but so that she could not injure herself.

  And we must just imagine his astonishment when she kissed him fiercely in the sensitive place behind his ear.

  Mack was not a fool – he could read what was happening and was shaken by it. When Hera was again resting quietly, half turned on her side, her hair spread out on the pillow, he noticed there were none of the flickering eye movements that had so characterized her earlier trance states. Nor was there any fever.

  If someone had told Mack that in those wild moments Hera was not responding, as it were, to a man, but that like a weather vane, she was simply caught up and buffeted by the mighty sexual gale of the Dendron, well, he wouldn’t have believed it. Would you? I wouldn’t. But that was the truth.

  The next morning, Mack went through his usual routine, opening the skylight, letting the sunlight in at the windows, putting water on for the poultice and for coffee. Hera was breathing easily and so he did not try to wake her. He drew back the sheet, folding it neatly over her thighs and tucking it between her legs for modesty’s sake. He sat on the bed to inspect her knee, placing a pillow under it as he usually did. As he feared, the exertions in the night had had their effect. The wound had split open and bled a bit. I
t was a red gash, and something, like a black hair, was lodged inside. He looked more closely. Within the wound but pointing up were two small jagged points. Mack squeezed the wound slightly to see how tender it was, and Hera sighed. Quickly he selected tweezers from the medicine cabinet. He sterilized them and then, very calmly, he set to work.

  Hera moved but he held her leg firm under his arm. He could not stop now. He felt her struggle up onto her elbows.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Then she must have reached down to the sheet and discovered that she was more or less naked from the waist down. She screamed and tried to wrench herself free, but Mack held her leg as in a vice. ‘Let me go! Get your hands off me!’ With her good leg she kicked him, jarring his elbow.

  Mack exploded. ‘Stupid woman. LIE STILL!’

  She was so surprised, she did.

  Moments later, Mack blew out his breath in a long sigh, released her and stood up.

  Hera immediately pulled the sheet down.

  Mack turned and looked at her. ‘Well, I suppose I didn’t expect gratitude,’ he said and extended his hand. ‘Here, these are yours.’

  Onto the bed he dropped two thin pieces of what might have been dark seashell, but smeared with red blood. One was about an inch and a half long and curved like a blade. The other was a pointed hook with a nasty twist in it. He shrugged, for he had no more words, and went outside.

  Hera tried to feel outraged, but that didn’t work. She tried to feel indignant and that was better, but it begged too many questions. She looked at the two splinters of the weed and, like Shapiro before her contemplating the seeds of a Paradise plum, realized that they were still alive. Thus it followed that inside her knee had taken place the most implacable battle of all: the instinctive and absolute rejection of the alien by her human tissues, and the desperate struggle of the alien to survive. Between them, they would have torn her apart – and nearly did. She knew that if the thorns had died inside her and deliquesced, her blood would have been fatally tainted. So perhaps, in a strange way, she had been lucky. It was all so complicated! And then there was the poor Dendron out there somewhere, aching. It too had taken up residence in her mind, demanding attention to its needs. Ah, how she would like to serve them all. And Mack . . .

  She looked round the tidy room. She smelled the soup warming on the stove and the coffee that he had not yet drunk. She saw the clean towels laid out, the bedding freshly aired, the open windows. All the evidence of care.

  So little made sense. She saw the sheet that covered her and realized it had been used more to conceal than reveal.

  Hera worked her way to the edge of the bed and stood up on her good leg. When she put weight on her other leg it hurt, but not in that piercing way. She knew it would heal and she would run again. Her crutches were nowhere to be seen and so she hopped to the door. Mack was not in the clearing. ‘Mack,’ she called, and heard a shout from down near the lake.

  Moments later Mack appeared at the top of the steps, puffing.

  ‘You get back into bed, Hera,’ he shouted. ‘I haven’t wasted days and nights looking after you so you can throw it all away.’

  Hera didn’t move. ‘I wanted to say I was sorry.’ It was not what she meant to say, but those were the words that came out.

  ‘OK. Well, you’ve said it. Now get back into bed.’

  ‘Hmgh! Men!’ If Hera could have stamped, she might have. But instead she hopped back to the bed and flopped down.

  Minutes later Mack arrived at the shilo. ‘I suppose you’ll be telling me next that you want some coffee?’

  ‘If there’s some going, or some soup. But I’m so sorry, I’m far too weak to get it for myself. Would you be so kind . . . please?’

  ‘Hmgh!’ It was Mack’s turn to growl. But it was a funny sort of growl because he was smiling.

  17

  Things Fall Apart

  During the rest of the day they started to get to know one another.

  Mack explained how be came to be there.

  ‘You mean you stole a shuttle, flew a half-powered Demo Bus halfway round this world, came here, crash-landed – and all on a hunch?’

  ‘A pretty good hunch, eh?’

  Hera did not reply. She was too surprised. What Mack had just told her, in such a simple way, was the most extraordinary thing anyone had ever revealed to her – and yet he seemed unaware of it. Men – by which she meant the men she knew – didn’t just go taking risks and chancing everything on a hunch . . . and now here was Mack, one of the least fey and otherworldly of all the men she could ever have imagined, and he had. So, what was going on? Why had he brought her back from the brink of death? Was he too obeying the will of Paradise? She sat and stared at him with her quick little intellect buzzing.

  And that was the problem. Her questions so preoccupied her that she didn’t really see him, not Mack the man, himself, the bear, the grunt, the lover, loyal to death. What she saw was a piece in a pattern. Her educated mind still hid too easily in abstractions, not yet being developed enough to be earthy.

  She stared until Mack became uncomfortable. Finally she said, ‘I want to tell you something. It is very important, and very exciting. It happened when I was in a dream world.’

  Mack looked interested. ‘Go on.’

  Hera took a deep breath. ‘I think there is a Dendron alive on Paradise.’

  Mack did not move. From his expression it was impossible to tell what he was thinking or what revelation he had expected: certainly not anything to do with a Dendron, we can be sure.

  ‘It is true,’ she said, oblivious. ‘When I was out for the count, I had these visions – no, adventures – and most of them involved a Dendron.’

  ‘Really? And what happened?’

  ‘Oh, it used to come to me, and it was so real. I believed I was there, with it, and it was in pain and needed help. Of course it could have been an ideal Dendron because I’ve never seen a live one.’

  ‘What does an ideal Dendron look like?’

  ‘Well, you’ve seen the pictures of them. I suppose it is a composite made up of all of them. All the best bits.’

  ‘So it is something you made up in your mind?’

  Hera was uncertain. ‘Possibly. Hey, what is this? I start to tell you the most important thing on my mind and you seem to want to make me doubt it, or make me feel that you don’t believe me or something.’

  ‘No, it isn’t that. It is just that I saw you when you were unconscious, many times, and I listened to your cries. To me you were often afraid, though you did smile occasionally. The last time I had to hold you down or you might have really hurt yourself.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. You were out of control. Thrashing about. Getting in a . . . lather. I wondered what that was all about. If I had not seen you, if I’d just heard you, I’d have thought you were . . .’ He stopped. ‘Ahh, it makes no sense.’

  ‘Go on. You’d have thought I was what?’

  He looked straight at her. ‘Making love.’

  Hera’s face coloured. ‘Some things are hard to explain.’

  ‘So what did it do to you?’

  ‘Do? Nothing. It just stood there. Vulnerable, hurting, yearning . . .’ There was a long pause. Finally Hera said, ‘I don’t know what words to use. I was overwhelmed.’ She hesitated. ‘Why are you looking at me like that? Do you think I would make something like that up? I don’t know what happened. There was some brute force in the air and I responded.’ She looked at him. ‘Women respond to a lot of things and a powerful sensual feeling is one of them. Surely men are like that too.’

  ‘Can’t speak for other men,’ said Mack, ‘but for myself I respond to a woman who is real and flesh and blood and able to love with everything she’s got and be a bit crazy too. And who doesn’t have to imagine a monster tree to get her thrills.’

  They sat looking at one another, appalled at how bad the situation had suddenly become between them. Finally Hera said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ex
plained things very well. I wanted to tell you about something quite lovely, but you wouldn’t let me. Not everything makes sense the first time you meet it, Mack. Look at you. You knew I was in need and you followed a hunch and came to me. Does that make sense? Weren’t you carried away by a feeling? Why did you come to me? Why?’ Immediately she asked that, she wished she had bi en the words back. In the moment of asking she suddenly knew the reason – call it a woman’s hunch. The idea that he might have done this from love frightened her.

  ‘It seemed a good idea at the time,’ said Mack, standing up. He too was out of his depth. He had said more than he meant and revealed more than he wanted. He was angry and confused and felt a bit of a fool. ‘Perhaps now you are back on your feet, it’s time I got going.’

  That night he moved out of the sick room to sleep in the SAS.

  The next day they were polite to one another. The unfinished conversation was left unfinished. Hera walked to the terrace top and back to the shilo several times. Mack brought her sandwiches.

  Mack began to make plans to leave. Having repaired the cutter, he cruised out to where part of the crashed Demo Bus stuck up out of the water and recovered a few possessions – the small radio for one thing.

  It still worked. Sitting there in the boat, he contacted his team. He coped with their questions. Yes, he was OK. Yes, Hera had been in danger but now was fine. Yes, he would be back soon. Evidently the cover-up they had planned was working well and he had not been missed. Mack signed off before there could be too many questions.

  Hera, meanwhile, was preoccupied. She had found she could manage her ‘green’ times better. She discovered that, if she let her mind rest open and summoned up the image of the Dendron’s huge arch, she could immediately feel its living presence. But beyond that she was uncertain and worried. She felt something was about to break, something ominous, and she made the mistake of thinking that it was the Dendron. She knew there was something she needed to do, but what? What? Though the truth was staring her in the face, she was still not equipped to see it.