The Disestablishment of Paradise

by Phillip Mann

  ‘There’s a spare berth.’

  ‘I’m OK where I am. Now I know something you won’t have thought of.’ He ran back to the shilo and emerged moments later carrying his tool belt. ‘If you want to make a demolition man feel naked, take his tool belt off him.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll remember that.’

  The SAS came to power and Hera took them spiralling up into the sky.

  High above the monkey trees, she looked down. The last of the smoke from the pyre was curling above the trees. The SAS flew in a circle. ‘So which way?’ asked Mack.

  Hera looked at him blankly. Then she looked out of the windows as though for inspiration. ‘I . . . I don’t know.’ She looked at him. ‘Mack, this is silly.’

  ‘Well try. Just relax and do whatever it is you do.’

  Hera leaned back and closed her eyes. She thought of the Dendron arching above her. With the image came emotion but it was everywhere, and nowhere, and shapeless. She opened her eyes. ‘I can’t, Mack. I get no sense of direction.’

  He looked at her a bit hesitantly and then said, ‘Can I try?’

  ‘A hunch? Why not?’

  ‘Some people don’t like this,’ said Mack. ‘Especially scientists. Can I have a couple of long hairs?’ That surprised Hera, but she loosened her hair, combed her fingers through it and held up several hairs. ‘Here, take your pick.’ Mack took two and twisted them together and laid them on the control panel. He had a ring on his little finger – Hera had meant to ask him about that sometime – and he worked it off and tied it to one end of the hairs. ‘Now don’t ask any questions. I don’t mind if you watch, but if you want to ask questions go down below and make a sandwich or something.

  ‘I’ll watch.’

  ‘OK. But no questions.’ He took the hairs between the finger and thumb of his right hand and let the ring dangle. Almost immediately, it started to swing, oscillating back and forth, towards him and away. His lips moved. He seemed to be talking to it and moments later the swing of the pendulum changed and it began to describe a circle, swinging clockwise. ‘OK,’ she heard Mack whisper. ‘Thank you.’ Hera thought of her father, who used to talk to his plants the same way. ‘Now,’ continued Mack, still concentrating, speaking each word carefully, ‘show me the direction in which we must fly to find the Dendron that is hurting so much.’ Immediately the pendulum slowed, its movements became random, and then it began to oscillate in a straight line but at a diagonal. Mack took a compass reading. West by north, say 283 degrees. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Amazing,’ whispered Hera. ‘I don’t believe it. How do you—’

  ‘Sh . . .’ But the pendulum movement had lost its authority. ‘I hadn’t finished. You had to open your big— Well, at least we now know in which direction to go. But please, Hera, the next time I ask you to be quiet, please shut up.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Just get flying, will you? Two eight three degrees west by north.’

  ‘Is it far?’

  ‘That was exactly what I was going to find out.’

  ‘But how do you know that’s right? It could have swung anywhere.’

  Mack groaned. How often had be been through this? ‘OK. Do you have a better idea?’ Hera said nothing. ‘Well, do you? This is my science, see. Old science. Your lot haven’t caught up with it yet. Now fly before the bloody Dendron starts ringing its bells again.’

  Hera adjusted the course and the SAS swung round and headed west by north. She took them up to 1000 metres and concentrated on getting a direct map alignment. ‘This will take us over Paraffin Island and then on to Horse. And beyond Horse we’ll be into the Largo Archipelago.’

  The engine settled into a steady distant hum.

  Hera switched on the view screen linked to the camera under the SAS. She entered instructions and drew simple Dendron shapes on the screen.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m setting up a pattern recognition programme. If it detects anything moving, or sees a repeated pattern or certain shapes, it will notify us and then we can decide whether to go down and investigate. It’ll see things we don’t. OK. That’s it set and working.’ She spun her chair round to face him. ‘So how did you learn that trick?’

  ‘Old fellow I used to work with. He could find where wires were broken under a floor or which rivets might spring loose or whether a weld was sound or not. He had fancy electronic diagnostic gear he could have used, but he was a little fellow, not much taller than you, and he hated carrying heavy stuff about, so he used a key tied to a bit of cord.’

  ‘And it worked?’

  ‘As well as the scientific equipment did, and more specific.’

  ‘Why doesn’t it like questions?’

  Mack scratched his head. ‘Well it’s not so much the questions as the mind behind them. There are some minds that simply stop things happening.’

  ‘And you think I’m one of them?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. But it’s not a party trick.’

  ‘No, Mack. I know.’ And then she laughed. ‘I was just thinking, if Galileo had studied Earth magic as well as maths and optics – well, there’s no telling where we would be now. It would be a different world, Mack. Less prejudiced? Less afraid of the dark?’

  Mack sighed. ‘I wouldn’t know. I’m not a very educated man.’

  ‘Don’t be sad, Mack. We’re both going into the unknown.’

  ‘There’s a lot of life I’ve missed out on. The only thing I know about is work. I pull down buildings. That’s what I’m good at. Like you’re good at sewing overalls and such . . . But I’ve got this too.’ He held up the pendulum. ‘And I know what I know. And no fucker can take that away. Now why don’t you have a go?’ He handed her the ring dangling from the hair. ‘Just play about with it. Don’t be afraid and don’t be clever. Just be interested and don’t judge. Remember you talked about another Hera that hides inside you? Well, let her have a go. Ask it if we’re travelling in the right direction to find your mate the Dendron. See what happens.’

  Hera took the ring and weighed it in her hand. It was surprisingly heavy. Warm too, from where Mack had been holding it. ‘It’s a nice ring,’ she said.

  ‘One of a pair. My brother got the other. Given us by our granny. She said, “A man without a ring on his finger will always find trouble.” ’

  ‘I see,’ said Hera. ‘So I’m trouble now, am I? Well, I’ll give it a go.’

  But before she could, the PR screen began clamouring for attention. It had found something and the SAS was now hovering, the tri-vid plate that showed the scene below focusing down.

  There was a pattern on the ground. At first it looked like a spider’s web made of strands of blue wool spread out over the trees and hills. But as they zoomed closer they could see that the blue colour came from the flowers of young Tattersall weeds, some in their first blooming.

  Hera recognized the pattern – not quite a labyrinth but close. She was not surprised to see, at the centre of the web, a deep dark valley with a stream running through it. She took the SAS in a wide arc over the hills. They could see the web in its entirety, stretched out, blue strands over the green hills.

  ‘Well if that’s a spider’s web, I wouldn’t like to meet the thing that made it,’ said Mack.

  ‘It isn’t a spider at the middle, Mack, it’s a Michelangelo. When I was injured, the Michelangelo I saw was just a little one. The one down there must be huge and old. It must have kept itself well hidden, but now . . .’

  ‘Did yours have a web like this?’

  ‘Not really. Mine was more like a whirlpool, but it didn’t look like a trap. If I had seen something like this, I might not have gone blundering in. Whatever is in there is no baby. It will be big and strong – dangerous too. Some were called Dark Angelos, or simply Reapers.’

  ‘They’re probably all dangerous. Anything that can make the bloody Tattersall weeds stand up straight deserves resp— Hey, look. Look there. In the middle . . . There’s something moving.’
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br />   At the very centre of the web, at the dark hole, something was emerging. At first it was like the white snout of an animal, but then it rose on a thin stem until it was high above the forest trees. As they watched, it unfurled slowly. In shape it was like a feather, but so white as to be almost silver. And as it opened more, so it spread out flat and began to shine with an inner light, like the filament in a light bulb. Finally, they could hardly bear to look at it directly. Then, when it was like a mirror reflecting the sun, it became suddenly transparent – but still with a hint of violet. In size it now covered half the area of the web.

  ‘Take us lower,’ said Mack. ‘Let me see that.’

  ‘No,’ said Hera. ‘I don’t trust it.’

  ‘Oh, look at that . . . It’s still opening and growing.’

  Hera did not look but steered them away, rejoining their course. Mack didn’t try to stop her, but he stood watching the vast pale shape as they flew away from it. Finally, when they were some distance away, he saw it begin to spin, like a whirlpool of light, gradually getting smaller, until all that was left was a silver ribbon, twirling at immense speed.

  ‘What was all that about?’ he asked.

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘How the hell could a stem as slim as that support something so huge?’

  ‘Welcome to Paradise.’

  ‘You’re not impressed?’

  ‘I’m thinking of the Dendron.’

  ‘I think that was a good omen,’ said Mack after a few moments. ‘I mean, a white shape like a feather. That’s what you thought you were when you were in dream time, wasn’t it? And if we had been on the wrong track, something like that could have stopped us. Don’t you think so?’

  ‘Either that, or make us forget what we were here for.’ They flew on in silence and by nightfall had come to the sea.

  ‘I think you need to teach me about the Dendron,’ said Mack suddenly. ‘Everything you know.’

  ‘I don’t want to disappoint you, Mack. There’s a lot we don’t know.’

  ‘Could they swim?’

  ‘I’m not sure. We know that often when they crossed the sea or a lake, they walked along the bed. Sometimes all that was seen was the tips of their twin trunks with the cherries and Venus tears bobbing about. But I feel sure they could swim too, although they weren’t very buoyant. They were heavy, Mack, heavy. They carried a lot of fluid. They used to get toppled if they were far out at sea when the tides were strong.’

  ‘So how did they find their way about?’

  ‘No one knows how they navigated, if that’s what you mean. That’s one of the big questions we would have liked to answer.’

  ‘What about those black ball things, the “cherries” that Sasha wrote about? Weren’t they eyes?’

  ‘Evidently not. Quite a number of species on Paradise have growths like that – well, similar. The plums for instance. Shapiro believed they were some kind of organ of sense. But not like eyes.’

  ‘So if they couldn’t see what did they do? They didn’t just blunder about. How did they find one another?

  ‘Sasha suggests telepathy.’

  Mack nodded slowly. ‘No wonder it knocked you silly.’

  ‘Yes. But telepathy presumes a brain, Mack.’

  ‘So? Perhaps it was all brain. What about the black balls? Perhaps it kept its brains in its balls, like Polka used to say about Dickinson.’

  ‘That’s as good an idea as any.’ Hera smiled.

  Mack sat looking at her for a while, thinking, his brow wrinkled. ‘The point is . . .’ he said finally, ‘we don’t know enough, do we? That’s the problem.’

  Hera nodded. ‘That’s the problem. It always has been. If only we’d had a live Dendron to work with. But the last recorded sight of a Dendron was long before the ORBE project got going. After the MINADEC onslaught, there must have been one or two left wandering about, but they were never recorded and probably killed.’

  ‘But they divided, right. Fission. They split. One becomes two.’

  ‘Right. Parthenogenesis, we call it. Virgin birth. There is always one that cuts and one that divides. The one that does the cutting is a kind of midwife.’

  ‘I’m getting the picture. What was the one in Sasha’s story?’

  ‘Sasha called her “she”, so I reckon the one that wrecked their camp was looking to divide. Looking for another Dendron to do the carving. But every Dendron fulfilled both functions. They did the chopping when needed, and then got the chop themselves when they wanted to divide.’

  Mack shook his head. ‘I thought some of the fellas in my team were a bit rough with their women, but these Dendron could teach them a thing or two.’

  ‘I know you’re joking, Mack, but beware of thinking of them as men and women. They would all split at some time and become two. And they would all do the cutting, perhaps many times as they hoofed round their planet. Their function depended entirely on what part of their sexual cycle they were in. Most of their life they were roving cutters, but then, when the time was right, they settled down to divide.’

  Mack looked at her. ‘And our Dendron. She wants to divide, right?’

  ‘I’m sure it does.’

  ‘Great. Can you do me some drawings?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  So for the next hour they stayed head to head, Hera making drawings and Mack asking questions. Hera explained what she knew of the anatomy of the Dendron. They discussed technical points in the story ‘Shunting a Rex’. She watched as Mack tried to replicate a Dendron’s movements using his thumb as the stump and the two index fingers as the front legs. It was surprisingly realistic. She saw his eyes smile when she explained about the coloured crest which rose and unfurled like a fan, and which could slice down whole trees with one sweep. Finally she told him the story ‘One Friday Morning at Wishbone Bay’.5 In this article Marie Newton, one of the early aggies, described an encounter she and her daughters and son Tycho had with a pair of Dendron performing severance.

  As Mack sat and listened, observing Hera’s enthusiasm and imagining every cut and thrust, in his heart he wondered if she had any real understanding of what she was hoping to accomplish. How could they understand the ritual of the carving? How could they butcher a creature that size?

  But Hera was sad too. ‘No fossil records – Paradise doesn’t do fossils. No live specimens. Just a few vid-cubes, a few wishbones in museums, a few stories and poems, and piles of carved earrings and knick-knacks. Ever since I’ve been here, the planet has been changing, but the change has been going on for years. The plum becoming toxic is just the most spectacular example. The early scientists wasted years trying to make this world conform to what we know from Earth and finally they packed it in. The planet functioned, but no one knew how. And then, when it was almost too late, ORBE started. You with your pendulum are probably closer to the Dendron than we ever were. You see, that’s why the ORBE project, was so important, Mack. We who worked here, we were among the pick of our kind. We were “smart fuckers”, as Sasha would say. But the one important thing about all of us was that we accepted that we didn’t understand Paradise, and so we tried to find out starting from base zero. That’s where Shapiro was so clever. He wanted the brightest and the most radical minds. And when he’d got them here, he relied on the enigma of Paradise to keep them hooked. No wonder we never got on with the aggies. We were everything the aggies were not. Look at us – pirates like old Pietr Z, hard-knuckle feminists like Tania, randy drug addicts like Shapiro . . .’

  ‘Bantamweight prizefighters.’

  ‘You’re getting the picture. Agriculture was the last thing on our minds. We were ready to create a new science if need be, a new botany, a new biology, a new taxonomy, a new way of thinking. A new physics was already coming in with the advent of the fractal, and God alone knows where that will lead us. We used what we could of Earth when it helped – I mean, if something has roots and it grows in what looks like soil, and it likes water and sunshine, well, there is a lot you ca
n do with it. And the exciting thing, Mack, was finding where Earth ended and Paradise began. And what happened? We were shot out of the water, Mack, like most of the Dendron. And so if I get upset from time to time, that’s why. And now there’s only you and me left – travelling the circle.’

  ‘The brawn and the brains.’

  ‘I’m not that strong, Mack!’

  Later, when the SAS announced they were in sight of the shallows of Paraffin Island, Hera ordered Alan to find a high place for a landing. ‘If a Dendron stamps within a hundred miles of us,’ she said, ‘we want to know.’

  Hera had gone beyond her strength and with a sleepy yawn retired to her cabin. Mack sat in the control room, wide awake, staring out through the windows. They had put down overlooking the seashore. In the pale golden light of Gin he could see the waves breaking.

  A long time ago his granny had told him that his brother would be the rich one, but he, Mack, would have the adventures and one great adventure to cap them all. Well, she was right so far.

  Glancing round the cabin, Mack saw that Hera had left the ring pendulum among the sketches of wishbones and tapering horns and strange dangling fruit.

  Idly he picked it up and let it swing.

  With the pendulum moving freely, he asked, ‘Will we find the Dendron tomorrow?’

  Immediately he received the answer: ‘Yes.’

  ‘And is the Dendron OK?’

  The pendulum swung on a diagonal. The answer was inconclusive. Yes. No. Maybe.

  Mack opened the chart of Paradise and moved his finger over it, tracing their course onward while all the time letting the pendulum swing in his other hand and asking for guidance as to where they would meet the Dendron. His finger had just crossed the Chingling desert, which filled the inner plateau of Horse, when the pendulum reacted. It was very specific.

  ‘And will we be safe?’ The pendulum again made the movement which told him that the outcome was inconclusive. Mack knew that words like safe were too vague for an instrument at precise as the pendulum, for they were not safe anywhere. He could have made the question more specific, but he chose to be content with what he already knew.