The Disestablishment of Paradise

by Phillip Mann

  Several of the prisoners just got up and walked out. They thought he was playing mind-fuck games and they knew all about that. Finally he said, ‘Well, now we know one another a bit. I am here so we can help one another.’ And that was all. He went back to sitting and looking at them. At last one of the prisoners said, ‘Do we get to go on a trip?’ He was being clever. And the monk says to him, ‘Where do you want to go?’ and he was being clever too, because the way he said it made it seem like a special question.

  After half an hour the session ended. The monk got up, thanked them for their attention, said he would see them next week, bowed to them with his hands together in front, said a short prayer and went out. They all looked at one another, shrugged and went back to playing ping-pong or whatever they did in their spare time.

  The next week there were only four volunteers, and the same thing happened. And the week after that there were only two volunteers, Mack and another fellow who was also very much a loner.

  Finally Mack said, ‘Is this what we do? Just sit and look at one another?’ And the monk said, ‘That’s quite an achievement. But is there something else you’d like to do?’ And Mack said. ‘Yes. I’d like you to talk to us. Like, tell me how you are able just to sit there and look at us and not do anything.’ And the little monk looked away, thought for a moment as if he was weighing up the question, and then he looked back and said, ‘I think it is because I’m not worried about anything.’ The other prisoner said, ‘Aren’t you worried about us? Most of the religious people who come here are worried about us.’ And the little monk said, ‘No, I’m not worried about you. You’ll find your own way, now or later.’ ‘So what do we do now?’ asked Mack. ‘What do you want to do?’ said the little monk. And so it went on.

  Mack was fascinated. He noticed that if they asked a question such as ‘How do you manage to sit like that? Don’t you get pins and needles in your bum?’ the little monk would answer them. But if they asked him a question which wanted him to initiate something, he would always turn the question back on them. He would never take the lead. And these questions went round and round and round. For Mack, it was the first time anyone had asked him what he wanted, and it was so difficult to come up with an answer – but that didn’t mean there wasn’t an answer. But he started to ask himself the question and eventually, eventually, eventually he started to get some answers.

  He said to himself, What do I want to do when I get out of here? and there were lots of answers – find a woman, have a beer, get a job. But the biggest answer of all was, Be of some use. When he found that answer it really surprised him. And that very day word arrived that the UN was looking for drivers to take food into Sichuan. It was dangerous work, but there were people starving, and he signed up because he was a good driver and knew all about big trucks.

  At the last session, before he left, he told the monk what he had decided and started to thank him. The monk stopped him and said, ‘You did all the work. Good luck.’

  So, no conversion. No sudden light of understanding. But a calmer mind, and I think finally that was Mack’s greatest strength. He drove relief trucks for six years, wherever he was needed. He was shot twice and came down with various fevers. But he survived.

  He had lots of adventures. Lots of hunches. Lots of lovers. Lots of heartache. Lots of risks. After that he went into space. He helped build the Hercules space station in the shadow of Mercury and the stories he can tell you about that would make your hair curl.

  He travelled out through the fractal to Proxima Talleyrand and worked on the shuttle platform there, and then, when the Outlander Dome colony was disestablished on Regit, he went into the demolition trade and that became his speciality. The people he worked with on that first job became the nucleus of his team. And they had been together ever since. So, when the Space Council decided to disestablish Paradise, Mack and his team signed up. And the rest, my dear Olivia, is history. One thing you learn about Mack – and it takes a while to realize it – is that he will never do something he doesn’t want to do. Interesting, eh? The things he does are the things he wants to do. He could be a bastard. But he’s the most unselfish man I’ve ever known. He cuts his own cloth – and still does, probably. And that is why he is still out there on Paradise, and why I am here.

  Forgive me, Olivia. I don’t want to talk about it any more.

  So, we return to the story of Hera and Mack as they stumble about in their wet clothes, making camp inland from the small bay where The Courtesy of MINADEC sank. Tomorrow they will climb into the Staniforth Mountains.

  32

  The Watcher on the Heights of Staniforth

  Soaked and cold from their boat journey, they made a fire under some trees inland from the shore and declared the rest of the day a day of rest. Hera put the tent up while Mack prepared a simple meal. Then she climbed into the tent before the food was served, intending just to change her clothes. But she fell asleep, on her face, where she lay. All Mack did, for fear of waking her, was to remove her boots and tip the water out. Later she stirred herself, pushed her damp clothes off and burrowed into him. He, flat on his back, didn’t even notice.

  Morning found them stiff and hungry but more optimistic. Their plan was getting simpler.

  Hera knew pretty well where they had put ashore. Mack, in a rare oversight, had forgotten to pack the charts, but it didn’t matter. She knew that if they climbed from the bay they would reach the foothills of the Staniforth Mountains. They would then have to follow one of the valleys until they approached the snowline, where they would be able to see the Organs. Once there, they could cross over a high valley which divided the peaks and then drop down on the other side to the Kithaeron Hills, below which was Redman Lake and old Pietr Z’s umbrella tree plantation. It would seem, almost, like home. From there they would have half a day’s walk to the coast where old Pietr Z had his lifeboat. Hera was certain it would still be there, remembering her first day alone on the planet when she flew over it. Then they would sail across Dead Tree Bay, just as Hera and Pietr Z had done many years earlier. They would round Dead Tree Spit and head directly for the shores of Hammer. The journey should take them no more than a day or two, depending on the weather. She knew that coast well and was confident she could navigate their way to New Syracuse. Then they would contact the shuttle. It would come down, they’d step aboard and within the hour they would be at the shuttle platform over Paradise and enjoying warm showers, drinks with friends, a telling of adventures, soft beds followed by a quick skedaddle through the fractal and . . . They neither knew nor cared what came next.

  It sounded a long way, but Hera knew it was not. Her ORBE people would do a trek like that and not really think much of it. The only thing they had to do was avoid the Michelangelos, and she already had some plans for that.

  By mid-morning of the next day they had made good progress. They followed a stream inland and then struck an old MINADEC bulldozer track, which led directly up towards the Staniforth Mountains. They could see the peaks, towering white and menacing in the distance, when the clouds lifted. The track was heavily overgrown, but only with dimple and hyssop flag and trefil wanderer, and these they could push through easily. The path led them back and forth around the hills but always upwards. By late afternoon they could see the Organs clearly and the first scatterings of snow which surrounded them.

  The Organs were just that, big pipes. They were the mineral exoskeletons of plants called tuyau – so named by the French mineralogist who discovered them. These plants – which when living resembled thick, probing, green worms – had grown up from the valleys below. They burrowed underground. They split rock. They sent out side shoots which started new plants, and these in turn burrowed over and under, and sometimes through their parents. Those tuyau which had grown right up to the high plateau, snaking through the valleys and thrusting across ravines, died when they encountered the permafrost.

  From studies of the growth patterns, such a journey might have taken a tuyau 5000 ye
ars, and in the case of the larger plants considerably longer. At the top they clustered like hundreds of broken mouths. It was the wind playing over these pipes which gave them their popular name. When the wind blew from a certain direction, they sounded alto, diapason, swell to choir, basso profundo and treble. It was mighty music, strange and spectral – and no two tunes were ever the same.

  Mack and Hera climbed until evening. They reached a small shelf which had once been a turning place for the half-track grubbers, and here they pitched camp. Mack stood for a while shading his eyes and peering up towards the Organs. The setting sun caught them obliquely, making them look like gun barrels. Then he looked closer, squinting. ‘Hera,’ he called. ‘Come here, sweetheart. Look. Up there. Doesn’t that look like a man looking down at us? There. Near the big open pipe. Just in front. It looks as though he’s sitting on something and has his hand raised.’

  Hera looked, her eyes no better than Mack’s in the fading light. And yes, she saw it now. It did look like a man. And yes, his hand was raised as though in greeting. But when she waved in reply, he did not move. ‘Probably just a trick of the light,’ she said. ‘The frost can make strange shapes of the rocks.’

  He was still there in the morning. In the clear light the shape was unmistakable. It was a man.

  With the rising sun behind, his face was in shadow, but he seemed to be leaning forward as though to get a better look at them. He was still waving, and his other arm was back behind him, resting as though pointing. It was a strange, open posture – a sculpted pose, full of expression and energy.

  Mack tried to guess what the white figure might be. Perhaps it was a statue, erected during the MINADEC days to honour some commercial baron – though why it should be placed in this remote place he could not explain. Alternatively, its very remoteness suggested a joke, perhaps played on a boss by disgruntled employees, like the grotesque drawings Mack had sometimes found on the wooden rafters of old buildings. Mack was sure that when he and Hera reached the figure they would find some crude and perhaps obscene effigy, and a scratched note referring to things long forgotten and people long since dead. Hera pointed out that, even at this distance, there was a fineness of composition and proportion, no hint of mockery, and Mack had to agree. His final suggestion was that what they were seeing were the frozen remains of some lonely wanderer who had got lost. Hera nodded at this, but she had her own ideas as to who it might be, and these, for the moment, she preferred to keep to herself. Neither could explain the pearly whiteness of the figure. It was not snow or frost, as the snow had melted and the frost had vanished with the coming of the sun. But the figure drew them to it, as much by its mystery as its friendly open welcome.

  The path they followed wound back and forth, and for long periods it was out of sight, but then the next time they saw the figure it was nearer – and it was definitely a carved chair or a throne of some kind it was sitting on. Finally, they scrambled up a slope and came out onto the bleak platform where the figure sat. They had reached the place where the Organs began. Here, and on the neighbouring hills, were the grey and white pipes of the tuyau, jutting up out of the ground and pointing to the sky or twisting like serpents across the valleys. They moaned to themselves in the light breeze.

  The view was magnificent. They could see right down to the sea, where the swell, still marching in from the storm in the east, formed great arcs in the water. Close to the shore the waves became foam-backed as they reared and broke. They could not see the bay where they had made landfall. That was hidden behind a hillside. Looking inland they saw the Staniforths magnificent against the blue sky. They were among the highest mountains on Paradise.

  The figure on its throne was seated very close to the edge of the stone platform. In front of it the cliff fell away steeply. Mack approached cautiously from behind until he was close enough to reach out and touch its back. It was smaller than Mack had expected, but there was now no doubt that it was a man and he had once been alive. Even the tangle of his beard was preserved. But everything, his body and even his clothes, had been turned to a creamy white as though made from wishbone. He was wearing an open shirt and shorts. The scuff marks on his hiking boots and the laces, double knotted, and even the fibres of the laces, could be seen. The hairs on his arms, the knees – knobbly with age – the wrinkles at the neck, the thick splayed fingers of a man who worked with his hands, everything was perfectly preserved. At his feet was a small backpack, the top undone and the strap lying across his boot. Inside was a cut-down pipe and some leaves which could only be from the calypso. All were white. And the face?

  Mack edged round in front of the figure and looked at the face. The man was smiling – a fierce kind of smile, but a smile none the less. One hand was raised, open-palmed – you could see the lines in the palm, and if you knew about such things you could have read his fortune. The other arm rested behind on the back of the throne, and seemed to be pointing to one of the large pipes. ‘Go that way,’ he seemed to be saying.

  Hera had hung back. She had recognized the figure. It was, of course, her old friend Pietr Z. So this was where he had run to after escaping from the umbrella tree plantation. She might have guessed. He had often talked about the music of the Organs, and he knew more paths and ways to get here than anyone. She looked round the stone platform. It was one of his lookouts, no doubt of that. She could see where he had cleared the ledge, piling up little cairns of stones, each of them serving as a memorial to someone. She saw where he had chiselled and carved the chair from slabs of tuyau and bedded them into the rock platform.

  Pietr Z often used to disappear on his ‘sabbaticals’, as he called them, for two or three days at a time and always alone. This was one of the places he would come to. Well, he had found a fine place to die. And he had no doubt planned it for some time. But it was very strange too. How had he managed to die with his hand up like that? And what kept it in position now? How come his body had not slumped? It was as though he had been frozen instantly.

  She edged round to the front and reached forward and touched him, stroking his grizzled cheek. He was as hard as rock but with a hint of warmth from the morning sun. His body seemed to have fused with the slabs of tuyau that made up his seat. This was, Hera guessed, a more advanced form of the ‘lacquering’ that had so interested Shapiro.14 Here, if Shapiro was right, the mind-matter of Paradise had done more than interfuse with human cells; it had taken them over completely, transforming them molecule by molecule into the material of Paradise itself. It would never weather. It would always retain this sharp and detailed clarity, for it was, in a way, alive, and would remain so as long as Paradise remained alive. ‘Was this your reward, old man?’ she murmured. ‘Was this what you wanted?’ She guessed that the answer to both questions was yes.

  ‘So you knew him?’ said Mack.

  ‘One of the originals. In every way. Pietr Z. He came up here to escape. I’ll tell you about him later.’

  Mack sensed that Hera wanted a few minutes alone. He wandered off to explore. The gaping mouths of the tuyau especially interested him.

  Hera sat for a while with her back against the old man’s knees, staring out. She looked in the direction he was looking. It was exactly the direction from which they had come. If you partly closed your eyes, you could believe you were floating. She found herself wondering if any of the red Valentine balloons had come drifting by this way. That would have been a sight!

  ‘Well, old Pietr Z,’ she said finally. ‘I took your Tales of Paradise. Thought you wouldn’t be reading it for a while. And you’ll be glad to know that the last time I was at the plantation everything was doing well. And the bloody Tattersall weeds – remember how we used to curse them and chop them back? Well, they have proved to be a friend.’ It was ‘friend’ which triggered her tears. Not heavy, and not causing sniffing. Just emotion coming out through the eyes. Tears for memory, and tears of gladness too, that she had had the good fortune to find him and say her last farewell. She suspected, though,
that there might be more to this than just good fortune. In many ways her path seemed shaped. ‘Did you hope I would find you, old friend? I think you did.’

  Hera stood up and wished she had something to leave, some little token to mark her presence, and then she remembered how Pietr Z had always wanted her to wear her hair down. Men of his generation always liked women with long hair. Well, now she was wearing it long, and had got used to the pony tail bobbing at her back. She pulled a few strands loose, ran her tongue along them, twisted them, and tied them round the thumb of his upraised hand. ‘There you are, Pietr Z. That’s for you. You’ll be glad to know I’m finding long hair very useful these days.’ And as she released the hair, it turned white and stiffened and stopped blowing in the wind. When she touched it, it was hard and sharp, and although she did not try, she knew it would not break or bend, no matter how hard she twisted.

  It was done, and it was good. With a last affectionate pat on his back, Hera turned away and set out to find Mack. As she did so, the wind blew across the stone ledge and several of the pipes moaned, their pitch rising and falling. It was a thrilling sound. An eerie sound. The true voice of the wind, but a gale was needed to get them really singing.

  The weather, she noticed, was changing. The bright dawn was giving way to mist. Already the tops of the High Staniforths were lost in dark clouds, and she heard the rumble of distant thunder. This was the mountains, as ruthless as the sea. Here you kept one eye on the sky and the other on where you were treading. And when the mist came down, you stopped.

  Mack was standing at the back of the platform of rock, hands on hips, staring down. Hera joined him and then stepped back hurriedly. At his feet was a precipice. ‘Come back from the edge, Mack. I know you’ve got a head for heights, but a sudden gust and you’ll be over.’

  He stepped back and joined her. ‘It’s the same the other side,’ he said. ‘Steeper, if anything. These tuyau, or whatever you call them, seem to have burrowed up through the rock. Now how the hell did they do that? They must have come creeping up the valley, then up behind the hill over there, right through it maybe, and come out here. Bloody incredible. Anyway, do you want the bad news or the really bad news?’