The Disestablishment of Paradise

by Phillip Mann

  He must have dozed, because the next time he started awake the sky was brightening with dawn and the stars overhead were fading. Moving very carefully, he lifted Hera’s hand from his chest and slipped out from under it. He replaced it carefully under the covers and drew them up. The wet grass outside the bed was cold on his legs and buttocks. Much as he was tempted to crawl back in, duty was a stern taskmaster in one such as Mack. Hera muttered something in her sleep, turned and snuggled down into the warm place where he had lain.

  He relaxed. The covers were wet with dew and dew also sparkled on her tousled hair. Mack hoped she would sleep on, and, let it be said, he wished this more for his sake than hers. He wanted to dwell for a while in the memory of the lovemaking. He wanted to savour the tumult he now felt inside himself. No matter how much you love someone, such things are best done alone.

  Naked, he walked down to the stream to a place where the water ran deep. He sat with his feet in the water while the air lightened about him. Though he shivered for a moment, he did not want to get dressed. It was a pristine moment. Never to be repeated. He reasoned that now, if ever, a man should be naked! What a romantic!

  Everything was very still. The grumbling in the hills had ceased. Away to his right towered the bulk of the Dendron, its colours and scarred, damaged back beginning to emerge from the dark of night. He was able to count the cherries, and none had fallen in the night. A good sign. While he could not pretend that the twin trunks had changed in a dramatic way, they were at least holding their own. By evening he hoped to see two trunks growing gracefully apart, and a dead stump. Then, job done, there would be time for Mack and his lady to explore themselves: ‘Merry as thieves, eating stolen honey’, another line from his granny’s store. Sitting there by the stream, he heard the first flute-like calls as plants released the night air and drew in the morning. The patient Dendron gulped several times. A short time later a dribble of liquid bubbled from its sides, but it lacked urgency. The Dendron was dying.

  Time to start. Mack would think about breakfast when Hera woke up. On impulse, he plunged forward into the cold buffeting stream and came up blowing hard. The cold shocked the romance out of him, and he climbed out of the stream quickly and jogged to the SAS for towels and clothes.

  The camera moved, following him as he passed. Dickinson was on duty, unshaven and red of eye. He was missing nothing, and having talked about the stars he was now describing dawn on Paradise to an audience who, whether it was day or night where they were, kept watch with him. In the night he had heard the Dendron labouring. He had also heard the high sharp ringing of its Venus tears, and as he told the millions listening, ‘How could that not be a hopeful sound?’

  Dry now, and wearing fresh shorts and a T-shirt, Mack climbed up onto the Dendron. First he inspected a deep channel he had carved while Hera dangled above. The cut was close to the critical place in the creature’s anatomy. Following the logic of the separation, cutting here had already brought some relief to the Dendron. He had dug down until he could actually see the top of the wide plaited straps of fibre which held the Dendron together. When he cut through these, the main body should fall away, leaving the two trees still attached to one another but free to grow on their own. He had also cut up from below and had reached the place where the giant arteries carrying the green sap from the codds to the twin horns and the two front legs divided. He could see where the pliant wishbone thickened before joining the great arch formed by the creature’s legs. It was here he would make the day’s first big cut, severing the young from the old.

  During the night the black joint line he had noticed the previous evening had begun to open. It was under pressure, the two young front trees already trying to pull away. And when they did, the old body would then need to be killed, and quickly too, before its pain could infect the two young trees.

  Mack, having now some experience of working with the wishbone fibre, considered that he would not have too much trouble cutting at this place as the wound would be opening and so the blade should not bind.

  Satisfied that all was well, Mack turned and moved down the back of the Dendron. Under his feet its fibres were soft but without resilience – a sodden mattress. He reached the deep trench which he and Hera had cut first of all. Here, the ubiquitous wishbone was exposed. It took the form of small segmented pipes which wove together like basket cane. When the creature was running, Mack could imagine how these pipes slipped over one another, stretching and compressing, sending fluid coursing through the entire beast.

  As a man with more than a passing interest in engineering, Mack intended, when the separation was complete, to cut one of the pipes open to see what kinds of valves were involved.

  The trench was draining well, but the deep hole they had cut above the codds was half full of green slush. The previous night, just before the light failed, Mack had bored into the side of the Dendron and fitted a drainage pipe. He supposed it must have blocked. Using a stick he poked about in the hole, feeling for the opening to the tube. In so doing he stirred up some pale fibres, small tubes like pieces of straw or small segments of bamboo. He did not remember seeing these before. Finding the opening to the tube, he plunged the stick deep into it. Moments later he heard a slopping sound on the outside of the Dendron and the level started to drop.

  Reaching down into the hole Mack scooped up some of the fibres. They were all of different lengths and diameters. Some were as thick as his finger and some no thicker than hairs. But all had one feature in common – the ends of the tubes were covered by a membrane. Spreading out from this he saw small yellow lips. He remembered Hera mentioning something like this once. The tubes moved in his hand, not like worms but like individual mouths, and he could see the ends opening and closing.

  After a few moments exposure to the air, all movement stopped and the tubes became limp. The first stage of their liquefaction had already begun. He threw them over the side of the Dendron.

  Most of the liquid had now drained away and Mack could see the bottom of the hole. This was the place where Hera had stood. He could see the ridges which signified the top of the codds. On cue the Dendron gulped once and the ridges opened and closed like a concertina, stretching the fibre between them. One touch of the chainsaw, and the fabric would fold and tear. He would also attack it from beneath – and while it would be messy, he had every confidence that he could rip his way right through to the ‘brain’ of the Dendron and put it out of its misery. The ‘brain’? That was another enigma.

  In the bottom of the hole, below the outflow tube, more of the small tubes had appeared. When their tiny mouths closed they ejected drips of dark green liquid. What were these, then? Some kind of parasite? Some kind of fluke? But why just here? Why not in other parts? Why had he not seen them before? He’d seen enough of the inside of a Dendron and of its fluid, and anything flopping about in there would have been obvious.

  Sap flowed into the hole and the level began to rise. Blocked again, and by these little tubes. The pool was in turmoil, with tubes bobbing up, gulping and diving. He saw some of the tubes join up to make a chain, which pulsed as a unit for a few moments and then broke up again. So they could organize themselves. Smaller ones could slide into bigger. Chains of different lengths could be made.

  It occurred to Mack that what he was seeing had a sense of purpose. These were not parasites. These creatures – if that was what they were – had an important function in the life of the Dendron. They seemed to be emerging from the sides at the bottom of the hole. That meant they could be coming from very deep, from the space behind the codds, from the stump itself, even. He climbed down into the hole, being careful not to put his full weight on the codds’ membrane. He plunged his hand in among the small fibres. Immediately they attached themselves to him and he felt small pinpricks where their mouths nibbled. There might even have been tiny electric shocks. He could not be sure. He held his hand there for a few moments and then lifted it slowly, dragging up the small tubular creatures that had
a ached themselves to him. He tried to shake them off, but they were persistent and finally he had to pull them off and throw them into the stream. In the place where they had been a ached were small round sucker marks, and the larger ones had actually managed to prick him open and draw blood. He examined one of the tiny mouths, and crushed it under his finger. It felt gritty. Silica, perhaps, the same as the Venus tears. Now why . . .?

  That part of Mack which enabled him to look at a building and work out how it was put together, his ‘demolition imagination’ as Hera called it, took over. He imagined the great bellows of the codds opening and closing, creating a siphon, sucking water in from the sea or a river or a lake, and then driving it up through this chamber of tubes, of flukes, of suckers, whatever . . . Imagined billions of them, many billions maybe, some so small they could only contain a molecule of water, others big enough to draw blood with their teeth. All of these, individually or forming chains, would take the water in and pass it on. Then others would suck that water in and eject it. The water would in effect pass through a tremendous network of pipes, being energized at each transition. If each tube was in some way unique, like having its own charge or nutrient, then every molecule of water would have its own experience – call it knowledge – which it could perhaps transmit. This surely was significant. Is that not what a brain is? Millions of little connections being made and broken. Perhaps, too, the fibres in the Dendron, drenched as they were at all times, contributed their own energy. Mack had no idea what all this activity might mean on the local level. But on the big level, the macro-level let us say, it became a Dendron, alive and conscious in every fibre. A great siphoning ball of psychic energy. Mad with energy and lust. He thought of the pictures Hera had drawn; he thought of Sasha’s intuition regarding the Dendron’s sensibility; he remembered Hera’s description of her dream time in which she had drifted with the Dendron. Perhaps that was the Dendron waking up, starting to move and becoming aware of its needs – and it had captured her, for it would broadcast indiscriminately and she was the only prepared mind, ready to receive.

  It made sense! He had to tell Hera. He had to wake her up. Quickly he bent down, scooped up two of the flukes and climbed out of the hole. ‘Hera. Hera.’

  ‘Good morning, Mack.’ She was there, at the table by the SAS. Preparing breakfast. He had been so busy that he hadn’t seen her and she had kept quiet because she wanted to surprise him.

  ‘You’ve got to see this. I’ve got an idea about the Dendron . . . about its brain.’ And without waiting he climbed down the ladder and hurried over to the table. He put the two small creatures down on a plate on the table, where they twisted lethargically. ‘What you are looking at is part of the brain of the Dendron. I’m sure of it. There are billions like these.’

  ‘Mack. Mack. I don’t want to depress your enthusiasm, but have you noticed we’ve got company?’ She nodded behind him.

  Mack turned, and the sight that met his eyes stopped him in his tracks. The hills were now covered with Tattersall weeds, their blue faces staring down like spectators at a games. They had come in the night. Mack now knew what had wakened and troubled him. It was the sound of thousands of Tattersall weeds crawling close and then setting down their roots and bedding in. He pointed to the far hillside, where the Tattersalls had formed up in rows, creating a pattern like a whirlpool which stretched over the hills. ‘I see there’s a Reaper advertising his presence too.’

  Hera took his hand, slipping her palm into his. ‘I saw the Tattersalls when I got up. I know you don’t like them, but on balance I think it’s a good sign they are here. They always seem to gather where something needs healing.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad there’s Reaper on hand to keep them in order. So. What now?’

  ‘We eat. You tell me what you’ve discovered. We make a plan. Then we make an end of it, and quickly too. We don’t have long. I’m so happy, but I feel so heavy too, Mack. I can feel the Dendron dying slowly within me. Last night, up there –’ she nodded to the two trunks ‘– it was a two-way exchange. You were right. The Dendron is at war with itself, Mack. It wants to divide, but it doesn’t want to die either. It has never had a life. Never made a carving. And now it’s grieving. That is what has brought the Tattersalls near.’

  Breakfast was an urgent affair. Mack explained quickly how he thought the Dendron functioned: ‘We use nerves to carry messages to our brains, well perhaps the Dendron uses its fluid to send messages throughout its body. It doesn’t feel physical pain like we do – other pain, psychic pain, perhaps. So the fluid has something like memory. It says, “I want to move,” and seconds later the legs move. It’s not such a daft idea, because it is also the fluid that makes the legs move. Anyway, here’s what I plan. First up, I’m going to take down the ropes we used last night. Then I’ll build a platform across the stream under the codds so I can get in to cut. Then, when we’re ready, I’ll cut the front joint. The main body will collapse and I’ll carve the codds up.’

  ‘And what do I do?’

  ‘You’ll be up on the Dendron with the high-pressure hose. I want you to flush away everything I cut, all of these flukes. We have to get rid of all of them, into the stream. We do it as quickly as we can, because the time between when I sever the two trees from the old one, and when the old one dies and stops transmitting its pain or sadness or whatever, is critical. Its pain could become their guilt – or kill them, even.’

  While Mack stripped out the rigging and built a platform and set up the high pressure pump, Hera took the opportunity to talk to Tania.

  Following a request from Dickinson, she unhitched the camera and gave them a tour of the Dendron, explaining in detail what they planned.

  ‘And what about last night?’ asked Tania.

  ‘Last night?’ said Hera in astonishment. ‘You know about last night?’

  ‘We could see you.’

  ‘What!!!’

  ‘Yes, up there in the funny chair that Mack rigged up.’

  ‘Oh, that . . .’ Hera recovered quickly. ‘Let’s just say I was trying to bring comfort to the twin creatures.’

  ‘It seems to have worked.’

  Dickinson coughed. ‘Well you certainly brought comfort to one creature,’ he said. This remark was swiftly followed by an interesting sound effect: a loud thump followed by the sound of Dickinson falling off his chair.

  Mack was ready. Stripped to the waist, chainsaw in hand, he stood in the channel he had cut between the two horns. Hera was at the other end of the Dendron, braced against the remains of the ball-and-socket joint where the crest had stood. She held the hose in both hands. The compressor at the pump was throbbing and would go to full power as soon as the trigger was engaged.

  After pleadings from Dickinson and Tania, Mack had repositioned the camera high on one of the trunks to give a better view of all that was happening on top of the Dendron.

  ‘One last thing,’ called Mack. ‘And I’m talking to Doc now, not Hera. Remember the golden rule?’

  ‘What golden ru—’

  ‘If I say jump, you?’

  ‘Jump.’

  ‘Over the side.’

  ‘Over the side. Gotcha. Good luck, Mack.’

  ‘OK. Here goes.’

  The saw whined and Mack began to ease the blade back and forth, cutting deep into the wishbone. Fragments of white fibre sprayed into the air, and Hera kept the wound clear of debris with a steady stream of water. The air should have smelled of carnage, but it smelled of flowers instead.

  As Mack cut deeper, he could see the wishbone curl as the pressure built. The cut was opening gradually of its own accord as the front legs of the Dendron strained forward. Mack had severed the first layer of fibre and was beginning to cut through the pipes. As he did so, a jet of liquid held under enormous pressure spurted up and knocked him back. Hera shouted something and pointed. One of the tall horns was wavering and beginning to wilt. Mack stopped the saw and crouched down and watched. The amount to which the trunk tilted was cr
itical – too far and it might tear, and that could be very serious because now, with the pipe cut, there was no way of replenishing the fluids. He had explained this danger to Hera but had also pointed out that the Dendron must have a solution of their own. In the Mayday woman’s story the Dendron which had done the cutting had been far more ruthless than he was now, and there had been no problem.

  As they watched, the drooping stopped, and the trunk hung steady and swayed. Mack’s guess was that somewhere within the front of the creature a valve had closed and the precious fluid was retained. He started the saw again, cutting steadily while the fluid poured over him.

  He severed the second pipe and watched the other trunk slump, but not as much as the first. Mack nodded in satisfaction.

  Now the cut became more difficult. Mack was deep inside the front of the Dendron. Sufficient of the dark fluid had drained away, helped by Hera’s directed flow of clear water, and he could see the place where he was cutting. He crouched down and, holding the saw vertically, began to ease the blade back and forth. He could hear it biting deep and steam rose – a tribute to the toughness of the wishbone fibre. But it was yielding. He changed sides and, after a few seconds of cutting, heard a snap and the part of the body on which he was standing lurched. One of the main fibres had broken before it had been cut. That was a warning. The stresses within the cut must now be immense. He again applied the blade. This time he both heard and felt the joint begin to break open of its own accord. He stepped back onto the main body of the Dendron and watched as, slowly, the section with the two front legs began to tear away. The separation was slow, but it was now being done by the Dendron.

  There came a moment when the movement stopped, and Mack could feel the pressures beneath his feet build . . . and then the Dendron broke with a tearing sound that ended with a loud snap and both parts of the Dendron lurched. Mack was almost shaken loose, but the twin trunks were now straightening and pulling away from the old parent. He could see the stream beneath him. As the separation widened, the full face of the cut he had made became visible. It was a wall of woven wishbone with a honeycomb of pipes at its centre.