The Disestablishment of Paradise

by Phillip Mann

  They stood gazing for a few more minutes. Mack seemed to be looking for something and then, satisfied, he nodded. ‘Time to go, Hera,’ he said. ‘You’ll have plenty of time to walk down memory lane when you’re back on the shuttle off planet.’

  And that remark, too, bothered Hera. She brought the engine alive and took The Courtesy of MINADEC on a circuit of the bay, and then headed out through the narrow channel and into the open sea.

  They were about half a mile down the coast when Mack looked back and pointed excitedly. ‘Look. Hera, look. There’s a message for you.’ Rising up into the air above the hills was a cloud of Valentine poppies. There were millions of them, and as they caught the wind they flowed with it like a red carpet and passed high over Hera and Mack. And still they came. Hera cut the power and they turned in the swell and watched in silence as the balloons flew before the breeze and spread out.

  ‘So what was the message, Mack?’

  ‘Just saying hello, I think.’

  She knew he was lying.

  In the afternoon the wind slackened and for a time the sun came out. But it was a silver disc at best, and Hera watched as the high cloud gathered about it. Gradually the sky became heavy and leaden. They felt the temperature drop. When Mack asked what she thought the weather would be, she told him that the indications were inconclusive. ‘Somewhere between bad and dreadful.’

  That evening they reached the place where the southern tip of the big island called Lennon approached the coast of Horse, creating a channel between them. This, at its nearest approach, became the notorious Royal Straits where our story began.

  Apart from the weather, Hera had been observing the tides and the moons. Without an almanac it was difficult for her to be certain, but she was pretty sure that sometime soon they would reach one of the periodic tides for which this channel was famous. She did not want to be bobbing about in mid-channel when the great waves came flooding through. The choice was simple – either to make a dash now while the tides were big but not too dangerous, or find a nice safe anchorage for fourteen days.

  She explained this to Mack.

  ‘It’s too long, Hera.’

  ‘Blame Paradise.’

  ‘I say we make a run for it.’

  ‘OK. I think so too. We’ll rest the night here and make a start at first light. I don’t want to navigate through here in the dark. Reefs.’

  That night they lay together quietly, listening to the boat creak and the waves slap. Hera tried to sound casual. ‘You seem quiet, Mack. Is something worrying you? Is the swell making you feel sick? Tell me.’ She stroked his brow where worry lines had formed. ‘Are you a bit frightened? I know you don’t like the sea. Or have I done something wrong?’

  ‘It’s not the sea. And it’s not you either. It’s just . . .’ His voice trailed away.

  ‘Tell me. You can tell me anything. I love you so much.’

  ‘It’s just . . . it’s just this place. It’s got a hold on me. I don’t want it to.’ There was a long pause and then he began again. ‘I’ve never been happier in my life. I never believed I could be so happy. Since I met you my life has opened up and got some daylight in it. God knows it needed it. For the first time since I don’t know when, I began to look forward to the future. And now this.’ He sighed. ‘You do know. Don’t you?’

  ‘I know you love me. For the rest you’ll have to tell me. I’m afraid I’ve become wonderfully ordinary since we saved the Dendron.’

  ‘Why did it have to happen here? Meeting you. Why not somewhere else? Somewhere normal.’

  ‘Like Birmingham?’

  He laughed. ‘Yeah, like Birmingham.’

  ‘So what’s normal, Mack?’

  ‘I mean the kind of place where people can just rub along, get on with their lives, squabble a bit, make love a lot and grow old easily.’

  ‘Perhaps it could only happen here.’

  ‘I don’t want to believe that. I want it to happen in the world I know, not here. I don’t want magic; I want a wife. I want a place in the sun with people I know. I want to build memories. I want to be “young and easy under the apple boughs”. Like my granny used to say.’

  ‘Are you afraid that when we leave here, we’ll come apart? Is that it? That the love won’t last?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of our love not lasting. I hadn’t got that far. Oh, I’d thought you might get bored with me. I mean I’m not— Ow!’

  She had nipped him, hard. ‘And I’ll do that again, and really hard, and in a place where it really hurts, if you start that talk again.’

  He sat up. ‘That really hurt.’

  ‘Good. Now you were saying that you’d never thought about our love not lasting. Go on.’

  ‘That’s grounds for divorce, for a start.’

  ‘Shut up. Or I’ll do it again. Now get on with your story.’

  He lay back. ‘Well what I meant was that I knew, deep inside me, that no matter what happened – apart from nipping – I’d still love you. I just couldn’t help it. That’s the way I am. But I’m afraid I’ll never leave here. And I feel that this place is driving us both now. I can’t explain it any better. Like the other day, after we’d talked to the people up top, I felt this great urgency to run. To get moving before it was too late. It was as though someone had said, “OK, Mack, you’ve had your holiday, now get back to it.” Do you know what I mean?’

  She did know what he meant, about the compulsion to move. She’d felt it too. The golden time had ended. ‘That was because we both felt guilty,’ she said. ‘Here we were enjoying Paradise the way it ought to be enjoyed, and they were sweating it up top.’ But it was his other words that had chilled her. She said, ‘Why do you feel you’ll never leave here?’

  There was a long pause during which Hera did her best to keep perfectly still. Finally Mack said, ‘Will you stroke my face, like you did that time before?’ Hera propped herself up, adjusted his arm so that she was not leaning on it too heavily, and rested against his chest. She began to stroke from the centre of his forehead, moving out to the sides.

  ‘I’m going to tell you a little story,’ he began. ‘When I was a kid, just three or four, I used to have dreams, terrible dreams that frightened me, and my granny used to stroke my forehead like that, and it always calmed me down. You’ve got the same gift she had. And then I’d find a way to tell her the dreams and she’d listen and sometimes she’d explain what she thought they meant. And sometimes she didn’t, and that worried me. Anyway, I often used to dream there was something trying to smother me, not like with a pillow on the face or anything, but something within, something that grew up inside me. And it stopped my eyes so that I saw differently, and my mouth so I tasted strange tastes, and I used to hear this sound like a great rushing black wind. I suppose something happened to my nose too but I can’t remember that. Probably just as well. And then this thing, whatever it was, crept out of me through my eyes and ears and out of the place just where your finger are now, right in the middle of my forehead. And that was when I used to wake up. And I knew that if I hadn’t woken up, I wouldn’t have woken up or I would have woken up different. And the funny thing is, sometimes I wanted to let that thing come out, but I was very, very afraid. And I still am.’ He paused and said quietly, ‘You can stop rubbing now. I’m OK.’

  Hera stopped, kissed him very lightly, and then snuggled down with her arm across his chest. ‘So how does this affect you now?’

  ‘Several things have happened. A lifetime ago you asked me whether I thought the future could cast shadows. Well that shook me, because that was something I’d realized when I was a boy, and I had passed them off as hunches. I could feel things before they happened. I could, but my brother couldn’t. And I know that because I’d ask him. It wasn’t knowing the future, like picking winners, but personal things, and even though they might be bad, I couldn’t always prevent them, but I could feel them coming. As I grew up the dreams became less frequent and so did the hunches. But when they did come, they
were irresistible, like a command. Like when you’re taking down a dangerous building and your mate says, “Stop!” you stop. You don’t think about it because thinking about it takes too long. You stop, or you jump or you hold steady or whatever. That was what it was like when I was coming down to save you. It was like someone had said, “Run!” and boy did I run. You think I had a choice? I didn’t have a choice. It was you I was responding to, your pain, your need. You talked to me once about resonance. You don’t need to talk to me about resonance. My bells and cherries were ringing for you from the first time I saw you all bandaged and full of fight on the shuttle down to Paradise.

  ‘Anyway, I’ve wandered off what I wanted to say. Today I had a bad turn. Bad in one way, not in another. It was when we visited the Valentines in that round bay. When I looked at them, I had this vision of such beauty that it hurt. It did. It hurt me here in the throat. Not like when you pinch me but another type of hurt. And it was just like the dreams – it was something taking me over. I could feel it rise in me and start to smother me. And I asked you about their minder and suddenly realized you didn’t know what I meant. And then when I looked, really looked, I could see it, the Michelangelo, right there amid the great dancing globes, and it was so merry. There were patterns there, but they kept changing, and that’s why you couldn’t see them. Great rippling waves of colour. Like a red sheet in the breeze. It was chasing the wind, you see, and then bucking the wind. And it was glad we saw it. It wanted me to go ashore. “That siren voice was sweet.” It spoke with your voice, Hera, and I almost said yes when it asked me, but I made myself say no, and you sailed us out.’

  They lay still. Hera did not know what to say because a chasm had opened before her. She had seen nothing that he had seen – patterns or merriment. There was suddenly so much she did not understand.

  Mack suddenly pulled her close with the arm that was under her, half lifting her on top of him as if she were a blanket.‘Another thing when I was a boy, my granny used to do the tarot cards. I used to ask her to tell our fortunes, but she never would. Said she couldn’t do it because we were too close. But one day she’d been fiddling with this deck of cards – I think she’d made them herself – and out of the blue she said, “Your brother’ll be the rich one, but you’ll have the adventures, and the big one’ll be your last.” Well, she was right about my brother. Got more money than he knows what to do with. And me? I’ve had lots of adventures – I’ve done nothing but talk about them for the past week. And I hoped, hope, that meeting you would be my last and greatest adventure. But what do you think she meant, “and the big one’ll be your last”? If I asked you, out of the blue, what you thought the last, biggest adventure in life was, what would you say?’

  ‘I’d say . . . I’d say it was death.’

  ‘That’s what I think too. But there are different types of death, Hera. You could die being spiked by a mad bloody Tattersall or chopped in half by a Dendron like that poor bugger Redman or . . .’13

  ‘Or?’

  ‘Or you could be taken by a Reaper.’

  ‘And is that what you are afraid of?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can’t you block it out?’

  ‘I can. A bit. But like I say, part of me doesn’t want to, and that’s what frightens me most. I could slip away. Oh hold me. I know you can’t fight off death. But we might fight off the agent of death.’

  ‘Was that the message you saw in the flowers, Mack? The real message, when all those balloons were released at once? Was it a message of death, Mack?’

  He took a deep breath. ‘Hold me, Hera. Hold me. Hold me. Hold me as tight as you can. Crush me into you.’ And he held her tight too, his arms as strong as any Tattersall weed, so that she could hardly breathe. ‘What it said was – it was a choir of voices singing, every flower had its part – and what it said was, “All of these, and more, are yours. Such is my love for you.” And it was your voice, Hera, because yours is the only voice of love I know, but it wasn’t you speaking. So you have to get me off this planet. You must not let me out of your sight. Can you do that? Is your love strong enough?’

  ‘It is. If you want me. It is.’

  That night they never let go of each other, as though afraid that some beast might come clambering up out of the dark water to take them.

  But it was a different kind of beast came. A few hours before dawn Hera felt The Courtesy of MINADEC turn on her anchor and the waves slap hard against her. The wind was picking up. It came from the east, and that was good for it would push them through the Royal Straits, but The Courtesy was a toy boat really, good for cruising in calm seas. Hera had no idea how it would fare in a real storm.

  Before dawn she was up on deck, dressed in heavy-weather gear and life jacket, disentangling the anchor chain, which had managed to get caught up with a rope that had blown overboard in the night. The sky was grey and already the wind was lifting the tops off the small waves and sending them scudding across the sea. Water which had been clear yesterday was now milky grey with bubbles and the small boat danced and skittered on the surface in the way that light craft do in a broadside wind. The sooner Hera could begin to make headway the better. Finally, frustrated by the tangle, she cut the offending rope and threw the tail end over the side. She set the winch to slow and the chain began to clink aboard and run noisily down into its hold in the bows. As the anchor chain tightened, so The Courtesy of MINADEC was pulled round until the anchor lifted from the seabed, at which point the boat leaped. Hera set the speed to slow, and when the anchor finally came on board, she went to neutral, took one last look round, and then engaged forward and upped the revs. The Courtesy surged ahead.

  Out in the main channel the weather was fierce. The grey clouds streamed overhead, strained by the wind. Hera did not like the wind coming from behind, as the cutter had a low stern and could be swamped if a chasing wave broke over them. Hera would have to have eyes in the back of her head. But she was not really complaining. She had lain awake most of the night and was now glad to have something practical to do, to take her mind off the problems. She had left Mack sleeping. In repose there was something king-like about him, she had decided, his strong face and solid body, but the similarity came from the carved images she had seen on a sarcophagus. On balance she preferred the real man.

  Lying awake, glad that he slept but weary herself, she had realized that a man such as Mack was very vulnerable. The very intuitions that were his strength opened him to danger, for they were psychic channels. For a brief time she had been open, after the voice of Paradise had called her name – how long ago that seemed – and look what had happened to her! Mack had a lifetime of openness and so might be easy meat for a predator Reaper. For that was how she saw the situation. She would be a woman going into battle to save her man. How dare that Michelangelo – she could think of other names – how dare it send billets-doux, valentines no less, and offers of love to her man? In some ways it was comic, she could see that. Comic and absurd. But she wished that at this minute they were both on the way up to the shuttle platform to rejoin the quick-witted Dickinson, the up-front Annette and the people she had come to love and trust such as Inez Abhuradin and Tania Kowalski. She had done her bit for Paradise and so had Mack; could they not now have their peace? Apparently not. So they must take it.

  The Courtesy of MINADEC bucked as she entered the main channel. The water was lumpy and broken, and Hera could not cut through it without taking on waves and side hits. She adjusted speed in an attempt to match the speed of the waves which now chased the small boat.

  It was an hour or so later that Mack stumbled up on deck. He looked a bit green and dishevelled, but alive.

  ‘Put your life jacket on, Mack. Even if you lie down, keep it on.’ He nodded and stumbled back down into the cabin and the door slammed behind him. A wave took them from the stern and ran the length of the boat. The cutter was not well designed, Hera noted. The water did not drain away quickly, and in these conditions that was importan
t. Must remember to tell Mack to keep the cabin door shut at all times. One wave in there and we’ll be in trouble.

  Mack came on deck again, bulkier now, and he had seen the danger and closed the door firmly. Conversation was difficult, but by shouting close to her ear he could make himself understood. ‘Let me know if you want me to take a turn.’

  She nodded gave him the thumbs up, and went back to trying to read the sea.

  Hera had been in plenty of storms during her time on Paradise. It was here she had learned to sail, crewing on yachts out of New Syracuse or taking one of the ORBE cutters out on expeditions. She didn’t frighten easily, and being light and small but strong, she could scamper safely about a pitching boat where a bigger man would stumble.

  With every wave that hit them she was learning the tricks of The Courtesy of MINADEC. It was not the boat for these conditions, that was certain, but it was gutsy and pugnacious, she decided, and she liked that. It took the troughs and lifted easily and didn’t dive too deep.

  To Hera, every wave was an individual and to be treated as such, with constant adjustments of speed and line. She could detect patterns and sometime predict, but there were rogue waves too. These seemed to come from nowhere and were suddenly on you. One such took her broadside before she could react and the boat shuddered. And lifted. That was where The Courtesy was vulnerable. Like most boats, side on she could be rolled.

  They survived that broadside, and they survived others. Slowly, as the morning drew on, they made headway, and while the weather did not ease, at least it did not get worse.

  If there was a physical problem for Hera it was in her arms and back. The continual battle with the steering wheel was a strain which became an ache and finally she called Mack to the helm. Although he was not a natural sailor, he had an instinctive grasp of engines and how to coax the best out of them. Before she went down into the cabin, she watched to see how he was coping. He had observed her closely, learning how she reacted, seeing what she reacted to. Hera saw that he rode with the boat, spread-legged, and reacted quickly when the waves built up, leaning in to the wheel and not away from it. She gave him a thumbs up and went below.