The Disestablishment of Paradise

by Phillip Mann

  That evening they sailed a few miles round the lake, to a place where a flat rock jutted out into the still water. It was surrounded by a floating flower not unlike a lotus. These plants, sometimes known as shyris or occasionally shut up shop, rose to the surface with the first light of dawn. Then they opened, their leaves flat on the water. Finally, when the sun touched the buds, the flowers opened and fluttered like fans in a breeze. They stayed open for a few minutes only, and then shut up shop and dived again, only to reappear an hour or so later and repeat their performance.

  Hera was lying back enjoying the last of the sun. ‘Shall I cut my hair?’ she asked suddenly.

  Mack did not look up. ‘Why do you want to cut your hair?’

  ‘I’m asking you a question, not telling you.’

  ‘It’s nice the way it is.’ They lapsed into silence. Finally, still without looking at her, Mack said, ‘How long have you had your hair long?’

  ‘Most of my life .’

  ‘Well then—’

  ‘But I’ve not worn it long, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘Well, wear it long now and see how it feels. If you don’t like it you can chop it off. But it’s nice hair.’ There was a pause.

  Then Hera asked, shyly, ‘Will you brush it for me?’ Mack made to move and then stopped. ‘No, you can brush it yourself,’ he said. ‘It’ll be good exercise.’

  Hera was so surprised by this reply, so uncharacteristic of Mack, that she sat up and looked at him. ‘Are you all right, Mack? Are you still brooding on yesterday? Do you want us to sort things out? We got things the wrong way round.’ She was surprised to see that his jaw was set in a way that made him look strained and angry. He looked straight at her.

  ‘I think you can cope now, don’t you? I’ll be leaving tomorrow.’

  ‘Leaving?’

  ‘Yep. Tomorrow. I’ll take your SAS back to New Syracuse, if that’s all right. I’m sure Alan’s clever enough to find his way back here.’

  ‘But why? Surely not because of—’

  ‘Like I say, you can cope now. And I think you’ve found what you wanted down here, and there’s not much need of me now. Maybe you’ll meet your Dendron and . . .’ He reached down and picked up the radio.

  ‘And what?’

  ‘And I hope you’re both very happy.’

  ‘Mack!’ He did not look up. ‘Mack, please. You can’t leave now.’ He still did not look up. ‘Mack. Please. Look at me.’ He did look at her then, and for the first time she really saw the hurt on his face. ‘Mack, you can’t leave. Not now.’

  ‘I can. I will.’

  ‘But Mack, there’s so much I want to tell you. When I’ve got things sorted out in my head, I thought we might work together. Might work like . . .’ She was lost for words. ‘Like a team.’

  ‘Aye. Well I have a team, thank you, and they are waiting for me right now, up there. They put themselves on the line for me, so I could come down here. Come to help you. Well, I’ve done my bit, so now I’m off back. If you’re getting fed up with this place you can contact Captain Whatserface up top and she’ll come and get you. Me? I’ll make my own way. Alone.’ It was the longest speech he had made for a long time. And when he had finished, he stood up, extended the short aerial and switched the radio on. Distinctly they could hear it tracking and then locking onto its wavelength.

  They heard Polka’s voice respond, small and distant. ‘Hello, Mack, is that you? Come in, please.’

  All he had to do was open the transmission.

  PART THREE

  Saving the Dendron

  18

  A Team

  They travelled back from the long flat rock in silence. Both were left with their thoughts.

  Mack retired early to the SAS. Hera went for a walk in the woods.

  I saw it then. Alone under the trees. I had let myself be so besotted by the Dendron. I had not seen what was there before me. I had taken Mack for granted. I don’t think I had even thanked him properly for all that he did. And of course he never told me. Well how could he? That I had kissed him when I was swept away by the Dendron’s . . . whatever. What a fool! How could I have been so blind? And now I had lost him.

  That really left me with only one choice.

  In the morning Hera made sure she was up first. When Mack climbed out of the SAS he found a table spread in the clearing above the lake. Breakfast was waiting and coffee was fresh and steaming. Hera was sitting, her hair pinned back tightly and wearing a lightweight unisex meshlite overall. ‘I thought we ought to talk before you went,’ she said without turning, and poured him a coffee.

  Mack sighed. He had half-expected this, and feared it. ‘You’re too clever for me,’ he said finally. ‘Too clever with words. I don’t know what to do or what to think when you get talking. It’s best I go. But I wish you well. I’m not angry now. It just . . .’ He shrugged. ‘Take care of yourself, Hera. Don’t go waltzing with no Tattersalls. OK?’ He ignored the coffee, turned and walked towards the SAS.

  ‘Mack,’ called Hera, ‘could you just do one thing before you go? There’s a box I want down from the supply room. It’s one of the blue vacuum cases. It’s got some seed boxes and incubators I need. It’s too high for me, and too heavy. Could you get it down before you go, and bring it out here?’

  Mack stopped, looked at her, shrugged and then nodded. He headed into the shilo.

  Minutes later when he came out with the box, which was indeed heavy, he found Hera sitting where he had left her. She still had her back to him and was gazing out across Big Fella Lake. The sun was making the surface steam and, round the shore, the lake was turning purple where the shut up shop were just opening.

  ‘See you,’ called Mack, and he headed for the SAS.

  A few moments later she heard him speak to the machine asking the doors to open. Then she heard the sound of his fist hitting the side of the SAS. Five minutes drifted past, and she heard him approach and come round the table to face her.

  ‘The door is locked. Alan’s not answering.’

  ‘I know. I’ve told him not to answer you. And I have hidden the override control where you will never find it. It’s the only thing I could do to stop you. And now I want you to sit down and listen to me. There are things I need to explain. Things I didn’t understand myself until last night. So, please sit down, and when I have finished, you will be free to go. I promise.’ Mack paused and closed his eyes for a few seconds, as though strengthening his resolve or counting to ten to keep his temper in check. Then he eased himself into the chair facing her. He put his hands flat down on the table in front of him in the manner of a card player who does not want to be accused of cheating and looked directly at her.

  ‘There is one other thing,’ added Hera. ‘I do not want you to interrupt. No questions, just listen. Agreed?’

  Mack nodded, a short jerk of the head.

  ‘I think last night . . . yesterday . . .’ There was a long pause, and then Hera took a deep breath, and said quietly, ‘I think I have grown up a bit, Mack. I’m experiencing things I’ve never known before so . . . so, please forgive me if I get things wrong. I’m feeling my way and trying just to let my heart speak – the way you do. Sometimes, you know, I’m too clever. I’ve always been clever. Clever at maths. Clever in debate. Top of the class. I think I learned to use being clever as a protection – I can see that now – but being too clever is the same as getting things wrong, isn’t it? It is not allowing someone else to be right. So, now I’m down there, Mack, where all ladders start, in the foul— Sorry. I’m being clever again. Just listen and don’t judge Hera too quickly. Now I want to start with a drawing.’ Hera placed a piece of paper between them. On it she drew a circle and then within it another circle which just touched the inside of the outer one. ‘This was something my dad used to do. When he had something he found difficult to explain, he used to do drawings – he often used circles. Just look at it while I’m talking.

  ‘There are a lot of things I can’t explain,
a lot of things I do not know, but I have to start somewhere. And I am going to start with that wonderful, brilliant, courageous hunch of yours which brought you down here and which saved my life. No one does something like that without a strong reason, and the strong reason you did that is because you had fallen in love with me. No, no, no. Please don’t get up. We have an agreement and if you do not like my choice of words I can’t help that. I’m not playing games. The stakes are too high for me. I can’t find a better word, and I have tried. And it is as difficult for me to say as it is for you to hear. You are the lucky one, believe it or not. Anyway, what was it that triggered that love into action? It was when I was hurt, wasn’t it? That was the moment. And you knew it. And, because you are the man you are, you didn’t just take a pill and go back to sleep or go out and get drunk or something. You acted out of the goodness—’

  ‘I wouldn’t call—’

  ‘Shh. Please listen. Look at the diagram. This inner circle is your life.’ Hera put a dot on it. ‘Let us call this dot the moment when I was hurt.’ She traced round the inner circle. ‘Now all this is you stealing the shuttle, finding that body in the water, getting the old Demo Bus going, flying over here, crashing it, running up the path and finding me dead.’ The pencil stopped at exactly the point where the inner circle touched the outer circle. ‘Now we could continue round the small circle past this point. Let’s say you clean the shilo, wash me, call the authorities and so on . . . but all that doesn’t mean anything now, because that isn’t what happened. At the moment you found me dead – as you thought – you jumped circles. It was because of your love for me. And the action which began way back here because of your love for me suddenly gained a new dimension. You are now on the outer circle.

  ‘OK? Now, what was happening to me?’ She drew two new circles, one inside the other and touching at one point as before. She put a dot on the inner circle. ‘Now here’s me. Off I go, flying to the Isle of Thom, but I decide to investigate a strange phenomenon, something that drew me like fish to bait, and here I am in the labyrinth approaching the little Michelangelo, and bang! Catastrophe! A Tattersall weed grabs me, punctures me and I scream for help. I didn’t scream for you, Mack, but you heard me. I screamed for whatever would hear me – anyone, anything – and the call was answered both by you and by some creature I believed extinct. A telepathic link had been forming for some time, and my cry for help formed a kind of bridge of some kind. I don’t know quite how it happened, but that does not matter any more. All that matters is that it happened.’

  She placed her finger on the circle. ‘We are here now, approaching the place where the two circles meet. I get back to the shilo somehow, am overwhelmed by what has happened and drift into dream time. I am dying, there is no question of that. The light is fading, and then a bear arrives, kicks down my door and comes striding in full of love, faith and courage. At that moment I jump circles. I choose life. And now I am on the big circle too. Look at the two drawings, Mack. They are almost identical, no?’ Hera slid the two pieces of paper together so that they were mirror images. ‘Both involve a shift onto a new level. New meaning. It is a beautiful figure of symmetry. And it will express itself in other dimensions too. Because that is what this world does. Finds correspondence. And we are joined, Mack, you and I, whether you leave or depart.

  ‘But for the moment let us stay with my adventure. What is happening to me at the moment you arrive? I am drifting, Mack. I may be on the point of death. But I am now linked to the planet in a way I had never imagined possible. And I am in contact with the most powerful psychic energy you or I can imagine. You asked me what I saw. We see what we can imagine, Mack. But the truth is something we know. The real Hera, the woman I keep hidden down here, in my dry heart, she knows the truth of the Dendron. She recognizes a kinship and shares its passion, and relishes it too, and wants it – because she has never really known it in her life.’

  Hera stopped suddenly and turned away. ‘I’ve got something in my eye,’ she said. ‘Please don’t get up. I can manage.’ Moments later she turned back. ‘That moment, that moment of lovemaking . . . It wasn’t physical lovemaking of the type we know about, even if it looked like it. We humans don’t have many ways of expressing ecstasy, you know. We can’t think like a Dendron, but we can be sure it was not intending me harm. It was just being what it is . . . . and more than being. It was crying in pain. And you are right, I might have been injured if you hadn’t restrained me in the only way you could . . . so again you were the right man in the right place.

  ‘That moment, we can think of it in many ways. Think of me as having no more will than a limpet on the side of a boat, Mack. I had to go where the boat went. That’s not how I saw it, but it is true. To me, I felt suddenly free in a way that I can only dream of. Every part of me was carried up on that great surge, that wave, that energy that was simply the Dendron’s joy in living. And the only way my body could give expression to that feeling was in the most intimate and primitive and precious act of love. That is all. Pain and ecstasy can be surprisingly close. Salt and honey. And I do not need to go there again. It was a threshold that I passed through, or over or . . . and it was you who made that possible, Mack, because it was you who saved me and it was you who was taking care of me.

  ‘I have power, now, because of it, and knowledge. This Dendron, this creature which inspired young Estelle Richter, which inspires anyone with the wit to see it, which filled this world with its vitality, which was hunted to extinction for its wishbone, which had comic books for children written about it as well as some of the loveliest songs and meditations I have ever read. Well . . . there may be one such still alive. One. One only. One in the whole of the entire universe. One. Think of that. One. The last. The only. The never, ever, ever to be repeated. And you and I are here to help it. That is the circle we are both on. And we are there –’ she pointed at the paper ‘– and we are here, in this clearing above this lake, because of what we are and what we can do.’

  She paused. ‘It was an act of love which started your journey to save me. But love is indivisible, Mack. Once you start to love in the simple generous and innocent way you did, well, it just spreads out. It is such clean energy. It resonates. When you saved me, you jumped circles onto a bigger circle. The new adventure is just beginning. Can you feel the resonance of your first act?’ She paused. ‘Forgive me, Mack, and don’t be offended, but you know what resonance is?’

  Mack stirred himself and looked up from the two drawings. ‘It’s what happens when you hit a piece of pipe in one room and a glass next door answers in sympathy.’

  Hera smiled. ‘Too right. And you hit the pipe so bloody hard that every glass on Paradise is ringing! Think of that when I give you the keys.’

  There was a long pause, and Mack finally cleared his throat. But Hera spoke before he did.

  ‘I haven’t quite finished yet. I want to talk about you and me.’

  There was an even longer pause before Hera finally gathered herself. She began hesitantly. ‘I could not have done what you did in coming here. It’s not only that I do not trust my own heart well enough – I mean my feelings, my desires and all that kind of thing – it’s just that I am a bit of a coward, really, when it comes to loving. I am so abstract sometimes, so clever, and I hate myself for it. What I want to say is that you know more about love, about loving, about men and women in love, about being human in love – God, I’m making a balls-up of this – you know more about loving in your little finger than I do in the whole of my body. That is a terrible thing for a woman to admit, but it is true.’

  There was another long pause while Hera fidgeted a bit and made several false starts. Finally she got going again. ‘In view of what you said yesterday, and obviously the way I behaved when I was in the dream world, I feel I ought to tell you that I know little about the physical act of loving; it frightens me rather. I know so little about men that you’d think I’d spent my life in a convent. I think men frighten me, though I have no re
ason to feel that, as the men who have figured in my life so far, except for one, have been gentle and kind. I need to learn how— I’m sorry . . . I’m not saying all this very well. Perhaps what I mean is that I am frightened of loving, of how I might respond to . . . I mean, I don’t lack passion, but I don’t like to lose control. I know you can’t have both. Please look at me when I’m talking otherwise it’s like talking down a well.’

  Yet another pause, but not so long this time. ‘You see, Mack, I want to love, but I don’t quite know how. There aren’t any books about that, are there? I missed out, somehow, when I was young and all my friends were falling into love and out of love and getting messed up by boys, and messing boys up, and doing things on the sly and then being full of secrets afterwards – secrets I could not share in because I was such a dreamy girl. I was always lost in my dreams so I never got toughened, or tender. But yesterday . . . when you said you were going to leave, it was as though you had put a dagger in my heart. It hurt so. And I didn’t know what to say. I hurt, and hurting is easy – we do it all the time – but I didn’t know how to say the good words, the words to make it right. I wanted to say something but the words stuck in me. But I can learn. If there is one thing Hera Melhuish can do it is learn. Please just give me that chance. Let us enjoy the big circle, Mack, the Dendron circle, because that is what it is, and let us see where it leads us. Let’s be a team of two.’ She stopped, frowned. And took a deep breath.

  ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘I’ve said my piece. I’m sorry if I was rude or seemed ungrateful yesterday – I’m neither. Please think about everything I have said and make your decision.’ She pushed the two drawings in front of him and then turned over a plate revealing the override control to the SAS on the table. ‘There you are. You are free to go.’