The Disestablishment of Paradise

by Phillip Mann

  Olivia And then he took you underground?

  Hera And then he took me underground. Except it wasn’t like underground, like under the soil, at all. I was apprehensive though. I still remembered Mack’s comment about the Tattersall weed being like an old man having a pee in a bucket or something like that when it put its root down, and that had sort of conditioned my attitude. I didn’t like the idea of grubbing about in an old man’s urinal. Don’t look like that, Olivia!

  But of course it wasn’t like that. First of all, Mack talked to the tree somehow, and then he said we had its permission. I think that was all done for my benefit. The Reaper and the Tattersall weed would have a much more direct way of dealing with things. All I know is that moments later all the blue flowers on the Tattersall weed opened, and the one near me was very large – or I was smaller or something. Mack stepped up to one of the flowers and it closed round him. So I did the same. The next thing I knew I was like a small ball of light and I was travelling very fast. Whether it was down or up I had no idea. Then another ball of light joined me and fused with me and it was Mack. We travelled together. At first it was like . . . Have you ever swum in a strong river, and felt the current buffet you and throw you about, and when you try to swim against it, your arms are like blades because they just slip through the water, and you end up going backwards, so you just go with it, and let it take you where it will?

  And then it changed. It was like . . . Have you taken a bath when you are very tired and you get the water just right and you lie down and just relax? Well, it was like that. But when I relaxed I saw moments from my life, happy moments by and large. I have a theory that since I can not experience what a plant feels, my mind, or whatever part deals with such things, goes hunting for analogies. So a talking jenny full of seeds ‘burps’ in contentment and that reminds me of one of Shapiro’s famous post-graduation suppers where we were all full of wine and food. Or the wind blows through one of the beautiful girl-in-a-trance trees and I remember the fear and excitement of going up to the top of the Eiffel Tower with my mother and the wind in my hair. That kind of thing.

  But later on, when Mack and I got right down, really deep, in the place Mack talks about where there is nothing but the energy of the root, I could not take any of it in. I was just there, and all about me was delicious fire and blazing energy. Ah yes, Olivia. I have used that language before, haven’t I? I didn’t have any precise analogy for that, just the lovely feeling of being stirred. I was experiencing a planet just getting on with its life. ‘An ordinary day at the office’, as Mack would say. But then things began to change. We reached a place where Mack became more remote. I could still recognize him, but he was edged with energy, like an aura, I suppose, and it pulsed very slowly. ‘Be careful now,’ he said.

  Suddenly everything changed. I was on a road, and there were people throwing stones at me. I was running away hoping to hide in a stand of Crispin lily, but I only had one shoe on and my feet were cut. A stone hit my arm and I started to bleed. The people were catching me. Suddenly others were in front of me. I knew they were going to kill me. The people came very close. They formed a ring around me and one pushed me down to the ground. They were chanting, ‘Whore. Whore.’ There were men and women and children who pelted me with stones from close quarters. A child, a little boy, he couldn’t have been more than three, ran up and threw his handful of pebbles in my face and then scampered back to his mummy and daddy for praise. And then, when I cried out for mercy, Mack stepped in and they became still, frozen like they were in an old tri-vid that had jammed. I could see the hatred in the faces, the raised arms, the spit in the air, the lust in cruelty, delight in injury and righteous indignation. One by one they softened like candles by a fire, but they turned into water, dark water, like tincture of nettle, and that water drained into the earth quickly, as it does on Paradise. I felt my terror and pain, and my anger too. How I wanted to kill them all. What emotions! So fierce! They took me over. But I too dissolved and drained away into the soil of Paradise. And finally I was me again. I remembered there had been a stoning, in the early days, over some infidelity or accusation of witchcraft. It was a community in Northern Chain. It had been hushed up . . . but it had happened.

  The world turned about me. I was in a new place. I was young and very excited and I was holding my boyfriend’s arm as he climbed down out of my window. It was dawn, and I was in my bedroom leaning out. My thick dark hair tumbled down. He’d stayed longer than he should. We’d both slept in. We were getting too confident. The danger was my dad might wake up, and then there would be trouble. My boyfriend jumped down into the garden and turned to wave, but my father reared up from behind a hybla and aimed his rifle and shot the boy at point-blank range right in the face. There, in front of me. I saw his head explode, like a melon. The blood reached to my face. Christ Lord love us, I had bits of his skull in my hair. If the shot had not woken the neighbours then my screams surely would. Again Mack was there and the scene froze. The angry father dissolved, the boy dissolved and I did too. We ran like blood in the gutter. And I was Hera again.

  This story was one I knew. This was Sasha’s story, wasn’t it, about Valentine and Francesca?17 Sasha made it a song of love, but I knew the truth. The real Francesca ran away from home that morning, and they found her next day hanging in the ravine at the bottom of the garden. Two months after the shooting Mr O’Dwyer, the father of the young man, poured kerosene under the Pescatti house and burned it down, killing them all. That was how the love story ended in the real world.

  But we had not finished. Next I was a young woman up a ladder and I was picking Paradise plums in an orchard. My basket was half full. I paused to wipe my brow because I was sweating and my shirt was damp and clung to me, and I was suddenly aware of a man in the shadows. He had come from behind and was looking up under the tree, looking up where I was.’

  ‘No, Mack. This I don’t need. This I don’t want. Stop it.’

  Instantly he was there. ‘Shall we get away from this place?’

  I nodded and leaned against him and closed my eyes. ‘I have seen enough to understand. Take me somewhere clean.’

  I was not aware of motion, but I was aware of leaving that place. It was like a fly must feel as it pulls free of the spider’s web.

  Then suddenly there was water around me. Warm and slightly salty. I had swum in it often. We were out in a bay, Mack on his back doing his imitation of a whale. Me? I stopped in the water. I didn’t want to swim. I wanted to make for shore and look for my towel and dry myself and put on my clean white dress and try to get the horrible images from my mind.

  The water was shallow and the bottom sandy as we waded ashore. Mack shook the sand out of my towel and threw it to me. All the while he had not said a word, and I was glad of that because silence was safer for the moment. But I was aware he was watching me, and probably in the way of this world he already knew what I was thinking, but that did not occur to me then.

  When I was dry I put on my dress and sat on the beach looking out to sea. I began, ‘Let me see if I have got this straight. Correct me if I go wrong, Mack. The root of Paradise – let me call it that – at its deepest level, is the consciousness of Paradise. Is that right?’ He nodded. ‘And what has happened on Paradise, I mean the things that have happened – the conscious acts of cruelty, the deliberate violence, the hatred, rape and so on – they have carried a kind of dark energy. And that energy has flowed into the consciousness of the planet somehow. And now it is everywhere. Everything has now been stained by the hatred and anger that I have just felt. And it is us – I mean everyone who has come here since the Scorpion landed – who have introduced this pollution. That is what is meant, isn’t it, by the people turning to liquid and draining away and into the soil?’ He nodded. ‘And that is the problem?’

  ‘That and more.’ He looked at me steadily.

  ‘Go on. I’m not quite with you yet. I’m still . . .’ I looked for words. ‘I’m still down there.’ I shiver
ed.

  ‘It is more than a stain, Hera. The very essence of what you call the root is that it is alive in a special way. It is more like your brain, really. It is dynamic; it can learn; it can change. But it is not a thing, like a root or a brain. If it were to die there would be nothing. It is not like wishbone, resilient and strong and able to spring back. If it dies it is gone. It would not leave a cavity, just an absence. And Paradise would be finished for ever. Just like the Dendron we managed to save would have been finished for ever. Remember your words: “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.” A child of our universe – and we pulled it back from the brink, Hera. You and I. And for that you are honoured by being here now.’

  He stopped and looked round. ‘All of this, everything you see about you now, is a manifestation of that great energetic, creative force that we find at the heart of Paradise. It is not just here on happy little Paradise, it is everywhere; and everywhere it manifests differently. Earth has its own special and totally unique representatives, as does Paradise, as do all the countless worlds where consciousness has taken form. But here it is under threat, and the threat is now within for exactly the reasons you give. Paradise is a very reactive place. Look how the Dendron sought you out, and look how you reacted. Talk about providence in the fall of a sparrow! Here you only have to think of it falling and you have an impact. And that is of course what kept this world innocent and safe for so many eons. A world in which a Dendron could happily trample on a hybla and never know of killing, or malice, could now learn to kill intentionally.’

  Mack saw the expression on my face. ‘That may never happen,’ he said quickly. ‘Our little ones are safe. Your love is in them. And as long as I am here, it will not happen!’ Then he shook his head sadly. ‘But you see the danger. A world which never knew of violence, because here every end was always a beginning and the essence poured back into the soil, has learned the idea of killing. It learned it in the shells which felled the Dendron, the saws which toppled the trees, and the devices which were used to explode the Reapers, as well as in the hatred and blood which were in the air and on the land. Why do you think the first plums became toxic? Because they were fighting back? No. There was no way that could have happened. It was an accident; it was contamination from the root and it was felt in the plum first simply because, of all the forms on Paradise, the celebrated plum was the most sensitive and the most concentrated. The contamination took the form of poison because anger or hatred must always do harm to realize themselves. And some poor bugger ate the plum and got sick. And the Newton kid died. And then we, we Michelangelos, became Reapers, we Tattersalls gained claws and learned how to kill. But slowly. We are still pretty backward, otherwise I don’t think you or I would have made it as far as Moonshine Bay.’

  ‘Mack,’ I said. ‘This is me, Hera. I am not a stranger to you. You are sounding angry.’

  ‘Ah yes. There is some of the poison in me, and that is because I spend time down there, there where the darkness gathers. The fisherman smells of fish. Sorry. I’m not angry in myself or worried for myself. Anyway, that same Paradise which welcomed the merry crew of the Scorpion because it did not know what danger was, has learned terror at the hands of the alien. Fear and hatred and anger – they don’t make anything – they haven’t the wit – but they contaminate. And that is now manifesting on Paradise. And that is why you are in danger and why you must leave. Remember that madman who tried to kill you with a chair . . .’

  ‘Proctor Newton.’

  ‘Yes, him. Or those people who hung a silly Tattersall weed outside your door to terrorize you. That was the instinctive reaction of rottenness to that which it knew was its enemy – something that could love. Well, that rottenness is here, now, and there is no hiding place for you. You are a double target. You are both alien and good.’

  I had never heard Mack speak at such length or use language such as this. If I had not known before, I now was convinced that it was the Michelangelo that was speaking.

  ‘Will Paradise close down?’ I asked finally.

  ‘Completely. We will play to our strengths. We will lick our wounds and we will learn to play again. And perhaps, in a million years or so, we will have Dendron again, running all over plants that are happy to be trodden down as the price for hearing its bells. You can see why I wanted you to come here. I know the touching of the cherries made you scream but hey, a small price for so much knowledge. There is so much to say, so much to show.’

  ‘It’s a lot to take in,’ I said.

  ‘It’s all very simple,’ he said. ‘You know most of it already. You just needed a nudge. That’s all you’ve ever needed.’

  ‘Speak for yourself.’ I looked at the beach and the trees, and then I lay back on the sand. At that moment I felt I could stay there for ever. Just lying still. ‘Come close, Mack.’

  He lay down beside me.

  ‘I know I must leave soon, but there are so many things I want to ask.’

  ‘We have a little time yet before I—’

  ‘Sh. Tell me about the Tattersall weeds. I don’t understand them at all.’

  ‘Ha! The Tattersall weeds. Put your head on my arm and your arm across my waist—’

  ‘Ma-ack.’

  ‘And I’ll tell you a story. Now hush. Once upon a time there was a big tall Tattersall weed that had never shed its seeds.’

  ‘Not like you.’

  ‘No, not like me. I’m a Mackelangelo and we do things differently. Now do you want this story or not? OK. Pipe down. Now the thing about Tattersall weeds is that they are always curious, always wanting to poke their flowers into everything. They are very sensitive to smell too. And this Tattersall weed thought himself really lucky because he had grown up in a place where there was a lot of talking jenny and fart-in-a-trance close by, which wafted every time there was heavy rain, and there was a sugar lily above, which dropped its nectar down on him whenever he wanted. Well, the sugar lily grew faster than he did. The result was that whenever he wanted some nectar, he would call out to the sugar lily and it would tip its prow in response, but the nectar would miss the waiting blue flower and hit the sleeping jenny instead . . . and talking jennys are indifferent to sugar lily ooze. Now, as I say, Tattersall weeds are all very curious, and this one found that if he flopped his frond over the lap of the sugar lily he could get a leg up, as it were, and hence have more chance of getting the nectar. He got quite good at this, and the sugar lily didn’t seem to mind, but then one day, he gave an extra heave – the sugar lily had grown a bit taller, you understand – and pop, his root came right out of the ground. I’m in trouble, he thought. Any minute now I’m going to turn to water. If only I can connect up. And he tried to. He tried to flop back down onto his root. But he missed – perhaps the sugar lily had moved a bit – and he landed on top of the primed-and-ready-to-squirt orifice of the talking jenny. The jenny was not impressed, but squirted anyway, which gave the Tattersall weed such a shock that it jumped again and dragged the jenny, root and all, right out of the mud. At this the jenny decided that enough was enough – it was going to take retirement and turned to liquid on the spot. As luck would have it – and we all need a bit of luck in such things – the root of the Tattersall weed struck the root of the jenny and thought to itself, Well, it’s not my root, but it’s a pretty good root. So why not? And it linked up.

  ‘And thus the Tattersall weed learned how to flop about and join up. It was never very elegant, but it could now satisfy its curiosity. And it discovered that it didn’t need a jenny, or any other plant, because if it just lowered its root, the root would burrow in and link up with any neighbouring root. It told all the other Tattersall weeds and they started to clamber about, but only at night when the sun was out of the way, or they ran the risk of drying their roots. Time passed and all was well.

  ‘But then the Scorpion arrived. And shortly after that, a lot of other new and strange a
nd interesting beings came wandering about, like little Dendron, and there were new smells too, and so the Tattersall weeds became more active and started to hang round the houses and the rubbish dumps and the chemical latrines where the smells were very strange. But by now some of the damage we’ve talked about had already been done, and the lovely deep consciousness was stained, and so when a Tattersall weed put down its root, it could never be sure whether it would find a clean root or something tainted that would, in the way of such things, infect it. And when it got a tainted bit of root it started to lash out and it discovered it could kill. Not just chickens, either. It wanted to move more and so, instead of flopping and scraping with its branches, it grew tiny spines like it had on its seeds and found that with these it could grip the soil or other plants and drag itself along. Primitive, but it worked. And the consciousness of the planet put this to good use, and the Tattersall weeds became the great nurses of Paradise. But to this day, when you meet a Tattersall weed, you can never tell whether it has a rogue root or a healthy one. But you soon find out. Anyway, that is how the Tattersall weed learned to walk.’

  ‘Thank you. And where did the Tattersall weed learn to help other plants?’

  ‘It had always done that, with its perfume. So when it learned to move it just followed its instinct.’

  ‘And are there a lot of rogue Tattersall weeds?’

  ‘Not too many. More than there were. Enough. And increasing. Especially where there used to be towns and houses. But so are the good ones too. And now . . . listen.’

  I heard a noise in the air. It came from beyond the headland, and moments later a flyer like an old fashioned SAS came over the headland and prepared to land. It set down on the shore about a hundred metres from us. On its side were stencilled the words SCORPION SURVIVOR.

  ‘You always said you wished you could have seen the illustrious Estelle Richter. Here she is.’

  The door opened and a woman jumped down. She was wearing a bulky meshlite suit and still had her mask on. I saw her open her mask and breathe. And then she lifted her mask off completely and threw it down on the sand. I saw her call to the others.