The Disestablishment of Paradise

by Phillip Mann

  Here is a summary of what he said.

  These fractal points of symmetry form a vast three-dimensional web in our space–time, and all the stars and planets and moons float within this web. In fact the physical stars and planets and moons, and all the rest, can pass through these points, and do so all the time. The fractal points may indeed account for ghosts or any number of strange phenomena on Earth – flying saucers and the like – because they carry enormous poly-dimensional energy. The easiest way to visualize this gigantic web is to think of a geodesic dome while remembering that there are fractal points within as well as without the dome. The fractal points can be imagined as being those points where the hexagons meet. Of course, there aren’t any hexagons in space. It is just a way of getting a handle on the concept.

  Now, I’m going to write the next bit down exactly so I can think about it later. He said, ‘Just as the quantum universe can be seen as a labyrinth of passages, occupying overlapping dimensions, well, as below, so above. The fractal points are the entry doors into different dimensions, except you must not think of them as doors, because there is no point of transition. You are either in or you are not. We choose the moment of being “in”, and that is the fractal moment when we are also “out” but elsewhere.’

  Evidently the actual moment of transgression requires no time in our conscious dimension, though of course if you slipped dimensions you could be in trouble, like poor Corrigan and Ortez.

  So, essentially, our journey to Paradise consists of: a) journeying through normal space–time to the fractal point, b) preparing to pass through, c) ¿WHAM?, d) recovering from the passage, and then e) journeying on through normal space–time to our destination. Simple as A?C. It has a lovely symmetry, with a great big question mark at its centre.

  I asked him about the fractal points at the quantum level. Apparently the most up-to-date theory is that these also are interchange points ‘where different energy-field realities meet and interact’. Lorenzo gave me one example. He said that dowsers, when they are looking for water, say, are interacting with the thing they are looking for via fractal points at the quantum level. It’s a different way of getting at the truth. So there we are – a mixture of science and folklore. A bit like us, really: quite sophisticated on a technical level, but with a yearning to plant with our hands and eat what we grow. They call us pioneers, and I am proud of that.

  I have enough to think about for some time, and if I can get up a head of steam, I might have a crack at the maths of fractal travel and try to see what is involved.

  Sweet dreams are made of this.

  DOCUMENT 2

  ‘Getting Your Man’, from Tales of Paradise by Sasha Malik

  ‘Big as your fist, healthy as garlic and sweet as nectar.’

  Marketing slogan for the Paradise plum

  The Paradise plum was a noted aphrodisiac. Indeed, there was a time when gourmets fought in restaurants for the last plum in the kitchen; when debts were paid in plums; when ageing potentates with young wives, despite the promise of their name, relied on the plum for virility. Sometimes the plums were preached against as a symbol of hedonism. Sometimes they were preached for as a promise of the heavenly delights awaiting us. Now we can only look back at a craze that went sour. More than sour – at a fruit that became poison. But they are still remembered for what they were, part of the brief golden age of Paradise.

  The plum was a fruit like no other. It was not sweet, it was not sour, but like a good wine changed flavour as it was consumed. The effects of the plum could be detected on a person’s skin within minutes of their eating one – a certain silkiness, I am told. Its fame as ‘the bedroom food’ was universal and attested: it provoked both performance and desire.

  So what happened?

  For the first account we turn to Sasha Malik, who tells a good tale. Sasha was one of the ‘wild women’ of Paradise – of which there have been many. These were women who forsook life in the camps or towns, preferring to live under the trees, surviving on what they could find in the deep, untrodden bush.

  Sasha was the daughter of a lumberjack, ‘Stammer’ Malik. He, with his wife Donna, had shipped out to Paradise shortly after its opening-up to help take down stands of umbrella trees. A few months after giving birth to Sasha, Donna Malik ran off with a ‘Gypsy-eyed miner from Chain’ and so the child was brought up by her father. He treated her as part of his logging team, which means that he treated her well. ‘I had one father, ten big brothers and twenty uncles,’ Sasha boasted.

  At the age of fifteen Sasha ran away with a carpenter called ‘Big’ Anton, a man twice her age.

  Sasha and Big Anton lived happily for three years in North Chain, until Anton was killed when a log fell from a cart and rolled on him. It was grief at his loss that drove Sasha to live wild under the trees. Later, after many adventures which included riding a Dendron across Blue Sand Straits, Sasha returned to her father’s camp, and it was there that she wrote the collection of stories that we know as Tales of Paradise.

  Sasha and her father died just over a hundred years ago. The timber barge in which they were travelling rolled in a storm while crossing the troubled water we know as Dead Tree Sea. She was just twenty-one.

  Getting Your Man

  People blamed Big Anton for taking me off. They said he was too old for me and should have known better. But it was me that seduced him, and carefully too, and I am proud of that.

  It was during the log push, and Father and the team were down the Old Nylo clearing the blockage where a rockfall had stopped the river and the logs were piling up. Big Anton pulled the short straw and was left in charge of the camp – and me. I was the one who drew the straws, and I cheated.

  I’d loved him since I was little. Don’t ask me how or why because I just don’t know. I simply fell in love with him, and knew he was the one for me come hell or high water. But I knew too, the way smart kids do, that I couldn’t have him until I was big enough in every way, like I didn’t want another father and I didn’t want an old man either or more big brothers. So timing was important. I also knew he loved me, though he didn’t know that and would have been ashamed if he’d thought it. A good man.

  I decided that the time was right when I was fifteen and very, very hungry. I was fifteen just before the log push. So when the team was gone and we’d waved them goodbye in the morning, I knew it was my time.

  I’d already made Anton a love potion taught me by one of the girls in New Syracuse. You take the seeds of the plum when they are dry and then crush them. Some people throw the seeds away, but they are the best part and you can use them in lots of charms, but you never use them like pepper. You let them steep for a day or two in spring water gathered when both moons are in the sky. Wait until the water is starting to turn a deep blue. Then give it a stir with your finger and pour it off the seeds. Put it aside. It’ll keep a few days out of the sun but don’t put it in a fridge because that kills it. See, it is a living drink. Now, when your time is right, you need to add two more ingredients. Have a wee in a bowl, dip your finger in the wee and then stir the juice with that finger. Lastly, prick your thumb and add a few drops of your blood and stir it in well. Then choose your moment when your man is there and not about to go out chopping and there are no other women or people about – and serve it fresh.

  Big Anton was not a man who worked if he didn’t have to. He’d sit by a lake with a book, or yarn the day away, or whittle a toy for a man with kids. So that was where he was, snoozing after lunch – I’d made him a good one. Unsuspecting. Feet up on a stone. Boots off. Belt loosed. Hands behind his head. Muscles like rope. Handsome as a god at dawn. An untamed and uncivilized man. Mine. I loved him so much I was worried he would read my mind or smell my ache, and I would lose him. I knew he would be frightened of me when I came at him. He would run away if he could. He would swim over Redman Lake quick as a fish, and scrabble down Old Mother Nylo until he caught up with the men. I knew him, knew his mind. I was older than him in so many
ways.

  While he was sleeping I had a good wash. Brushed my hair like that pretty girl Baigneuse. I was so very nervous. It makes me laugh now, and cry too, for I knew what I was doing – I was growing up. I rubbed the skin of a plum on my breasts and between my legs and across the back of my neck. That was another trick the girls taught me. They reckoned the smell made the men come more quickly so that they could get done with more of them when the rush was on. That wasn’t what I was thinking. I was just taking precautions because I didn’t want a broken heart and oh, I wanted my lover, and though I feel pretty, I don’t think I am really. I’ve got something else but I don’t know a word for it. The girls had other tricks too, for slowing the men down, and I thought, Time for that when we have nights together. See I knew I was in for the long walkabout, and no fucker would stop me.

  I squatted to wee, but I couldn’t. I was all tight and moist. I jumped up and down and almost panicked. Finally I squeezed out a few drops and that had to do. Then I put on a loose blue dress I’d made from strips of hybla and dyed with juice from a waltzer.18 Last of all I pricked my thumb and I said a little prayer as I squeezed the drips of blood into the drink and stirred it with my wet finger for luck.

  ‘I’m bringing you cordial,’ I said, nudging him with my toe. ‘I want to know what you think of it.’

  He snuffled, a bit like a horse, and farted and I thought, Great. That’s something else I’ll have to get used to. But he squinted up at me with his big daft smile.

  ‘Like the way you’ve done your hair,’ he said. ‘Pretty dress too. Look a real lady, Sasi.’ Then he reached up for the glass. Christ love me, if I’d been a step further forward his hand would have gone straight up under my dress. I almost dropped the drink.

  He sipped it. Pulled a face. ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘A bit of this and a bit of that. Don’t you like it?’

  He sipped again. ‘I can smell a bit of plum. That right?’

  ‘Might be. Drink it up.’

  He took a bigger drink. And then he drained the glass. I think he did that just to please me. He handed me the glass and lay back.

  I didn’t know what to do next. What to expect. So I waited. ‘Well?’ I said finally.

  ‘Well, what?’

  ‘Did you like it?’

  ‘Yes, it was all right. A bit more plum’d make it be er.’

  ‘Doesn’t it . . . make you feel anything?’

  He looked up at me. ‘You’re a funny one, Sasi. What’s it supposed to make me feel?’

  I shrugged. This was not going according to plan. ‘Happy,’ I said.

  ‘Yep. OK. Gotcha. It makes me feel very happy.’ And he stretched his body slowly, all five foot three inches of him like a great cat, a panther. ‘Now I think I’ll go for a swim.’

  ‘No, don’t do that,’ I said, and I kneeled down beside him.

  See, I know what the men do sometimes when they go for a swim. They swim round to the rapids where the Rex19 came down, and sit in the foam and bring themselves off with their hands when they want relief. They all do it. Father too. I’ve seen them. I knew that if Big Anton went that way I would lose him. I didn’t know what to do, but something inside me did. The next thing I knew I was out of my dress and my hands were all over him and I was kissing and kissing and kissing so that he couldn’t speak. Was a woman ever bolder? And he was so big and hard in my hand and I thought, All this is mine. And I was flowing all over him like honey.

  He said once, ‘If Stammer—’

  But I stopped him. ‘Leave my father to me,’ I said sternly, and straightway kissed him a hundred times so he would forget. ‘Now, Big Anton,’ I said, working my way under him like a tree dolly and him a fallen log, ‘do your duty by your woman. I’m yours now, for good ’n’ all, and I’m here as long as you want me, and there’s no going back, so there.’

  And there wasn’t. Though I never did find out whether it was my love potion or me that did the trick . . . but we never needed it again.

  When my love was dead, and I had set him to sleep, I rubbed his body with the skin of a plum and squeezed the juice between his lips. I ate the fruit myself, but it was not as sweet as the smell of his hair or the taste of his lips in the morning.

  Beautiful in his stillness, like a man asleep beside a lake, boots off, belt undone, arms back, a god in his slumber, dreaming of whatever gods sleeping dream – perhaps of me.

  I took him to a private place. There I have a Reaper friend who will treat him well. It is one who knows me and has felt me and has shown me myself.

  My Reaper friend, it took him in. There I left him, staying only long enough to see my golden dead love’s silver flowers rise and know he is safe in Paradise.

  End

  DOCUMENT 3

  Extract from the official report into illicit trade in Paradise products: Paradise plum and Dendron

  The date at which organized smuggling on a planet-wide scale began is not known. It was, however, in full operation during the last decade of the MINADEC administration and investigations are continuing. The main centre for the processing was the island of Scarlatti in the Largo Archipelago.

  When investigating officers arrived on Scarlatti they found presses and a bottling plant capable of handling several thousand litres of juice at one pressing. The residue, the skins and seeds of the plant, were deposited in a pit which was in the process of being covered over when the officers arrived. In this operation the plums were not picked individually, as this would have taken too long and required too many people. Instead the entire tree was cut off at its base and then loaded into one of the ore transports which had an open licence to move from location to location. In this way, entire regions of Horse, Northern Chain and the western seaboard of Hammer were denuded of the Paradise plum. The plums were picked while in transit and the wood from the trees was disposed of at sea.

  The fate of the Dendron is perhaps more spectacular. The Dendron was hunted from the platforms of prospecting planes which had been modified to carry cannon. Two such planes were found on the ground at Scarlatti. MINADEC records revealed that they had been declared lost at sea some years earlier.

  No accurate estimate can be placed on the number of Dendron killed and cut up for their wishbones, but the number must be at least in the hundreds of thousands and possibly in the millions. One index of the damage to numbers as a result of this culling is the decline in the number of sightings of the Rex during the last decade of the MINADEC occupation. To date the number has continued to decline, and we face the prospect that the viable population of the Rex has collapsed.

  This document is taken from an official report concerning smuggling. While MINADEC was withdrawing from Paradise a fractal barge called Hoy Linden, having taken on cargo and surplus mining equipment at the shuttle platform over Paradise, aborted its mission when just twenty minutes out from fractal. A leak in one of the containers in the cargo hold had been discovered. The manifest indicated that the crate contained used uniforms, but the material which leaked out was juice from the Paradise plum. The crate was opened and inside were jars of the juice. Some of these had not been made secure and several had broken at some point in transit. Discovery of this led to other crates being opened. Some were found to contain the cut wishbones of several hundred Dendron. Other crates contained juice as well as bales of dried calypso petals. Juice may seem a strange commodity for smugglers, but as already indicated, in those early days the belief was widespread that both the juice of the Paradise plum and the ground-up wishbone of the Dendron had aphrodisiac and generative powers. Calypso petals brought sweet dreams to even the most chronic insomniac.

  There was a ready market for all of these. Two hundred millilitres of juice could be worth up to 200 solas. Dendron fibre, with its fine blue and green flecks and its perfume reminiscent of primrose, was worth even more, as it could be cut up to make little charms and jewellery as well as being ground into powder to be added to wines and cordials. The calypso petal was sold by the p
ouch. One pouch being a hundred grams. Combine all these with a bit of vodka and you had a tincture of renowned potency. Even sold separately, the ingredients were worth a fortune.

  This report was never made public and, as far as I can ascertain, the only people ever brought to justice were those caught actually on the island of Scarlatti as well as a small party of hunters and their girls who, having enjoyed a weekend of sex, drinking and hunting, crashed their SAS on landing and were caught red-handed with the wishbones of twenty-seven Dendron in the hold. The report was certainly not known to the agricultural pioneers such as the Newtons or the Tattersalls, who while they could see the physical damage done to native flora, had no true knowledge of its extent.

  Further evidence relating to this case was destroyed during the mysterious fire on the MINADEC torus, the year before the first agricultural pioneers arrived. However, it is inconceivable that the managers and senior officers of MINADEC could have been ignorant of what was happening. That fire was, as one of the prosecuting offices declared at the time, ‘convenient for the guilty’.

  The report from which I have quoted only came to light as part of a routine research request submitted to SC Archives when I was preparing this book for print. I have taken steps to ensure that it will be published in full as part of a public archives project.

  DOCUMENT 4

  ‘Agricultural Developments and a Recipe’, from the Daybooks of Mayday and Marie Newton

  The Newton diaries are invaluable, providing the only consistent record of day-to-day life on Paradise from the point of view of the agricultural pioneers. Reflected in these pages are the excitement and the optimism as the small family settles in and begins to create a new life. In many ways the Newtons were fortunate. The land they occupied was virgin meadow and had not been cleared with the herbicides used in Northern Chain and the Largo Islands. The crop they chose to grow was native – the Paradise plum – and there was a plentiful stock of young plants in the woods nearby. Their house had one of the best views on Paradise, looking out over the Blue Sand Straits and across to the high grey cliffs of Anvil. This was of course a migration route for the great, and already nearly extinct, Dendron. The following description was written three years after their arrival on Paradise.