The Disestablishment of Paradise

by Phillip Mann

  Wynston laughs, and I think to myself he will lose teeth for that at day’s end. Redman heard.

  ‘Just getting the range,’ Redman shouts, cheeky fucker, but brave man, eh? Then he lights the second Molotov, takes aim and throws. This one smashes right at the base of the horns, right on the little hump they have between the horns where I’d sit. The fire runs down its front legs and into the river, and up one of the horns. I can see some of the tufts of fibres on the horns start to burn. Redman throws another Molotov, not bothering to light it, and scores another hit. Now the fire runs down the Rex’s back and under it to where the codds are and round the base of the crest, which twitches. Flame also begins to lick up the other horn. Another Molotov, but this misses. And another, Redman’s last, and this is really clever. He has thrown it high so when it hits the left horn it shatters and the fuel scatters down in a curtain which ignites with a whoosh.

  ‘Burn baby, burn,’ shouts Redman, wading backwards. ‘Now move, you fucker.’

  But the Rex doesn’t move. It just stands there and burns. It doesn’t know it is being attacked. If it knows it is burning it doesn’t seem to mind. It has no idea it might die because it has no idea about death . . . And then the flame reaches one of the cherries. I see it happen. A curl of blue flame licks a black cherry and . . .

  Then it moves. No preparation. No hunkering down to leap like a cat or drawing back a fist like a man. The front legs come up and reach forward like a horse charging. At the same time the stool stretches and throws its weight forward. In one bound it’s at the bank, and I see Redman dive back into the river, his only escape, but whether he makes it I don’t know. There is no red in the water.

  The two front legs grab and claw the shingle and the stool stamps down, and as it does the two front legs clamp again. The men fire their arrows. Many miss because they are wanting to run. Some men simply stand in shock until their hands are burned, then they fire and run. The arrows that land catch and burn with a black chemical smoke. The Rex bounds again, turning back into the stream, and it stops and shivers for a moment. With one strong move it flexes its tall horns to one side and strikes the river with a sound like a whip slapping. The spray puts out some of the flames. I see Redman swimming away, strong. But the Rex flexes to the other side, again flailing the water just where he dives. And when it rears again the water is red. I see Redman’s body without a head or an arm, and a little black hole for a neck.

  The Rex turns again, and now it does run for the shore. The front pair of legs thrust and seize, the stool pushes and leaps. In three bounds it is there. I see Father fire an arrow which sticks in the crest. Other arrows fly, and again the Rex is burning. Terry and Stanch set the bamboo wall alight and the clearing fills with smoke and cracking fire. The Rex smashes through the flimsy wall, dragging it away and trailing fire behind her.

  She hollops round the clearing and I see Big Anton standing firm and the laser starting to carve great black stripes across the flanks of the Rex. The lines smoulder and then burst into flame. I smell something like turpentine but cannot take my eyes away to see if something has spilled. I see Anton aim high and the laser beam sets fire to some of the Rex’s flags, but it also starts a fire in the trees beyond.

  I see the Rex sit back on her stool and her front legs claw the air as though she would reach up to touch her blazing flags. Surely this is pain, or can I step inside the cool mind of the Rex to whom nothing matters but to mate and move on? She reaches suddenly, her front legs stretching out and she crushes the small laser that has tormented her. I know I scream with fear for Anton, but I see him roll clear and then dart between her legs and round behind the stool, which is three times his height.

  The Rex is turning away from the cabins, and Big Anton takes his chance and runs for cover into the trees at the edge of the clearing. The Rex is looking for water. I know that, I can sense it, and so she turns back to the river and moves towards where I am, perched above the swimming hole.

  More burning arrows descend, but they do not distract her. She hollops into the water, sending up a wave, and the spray reaches as far as my hideaway. The swimming hole is deep, maybe thirty feet, once the site of a waterfall which perhaps came through my cave. She advances and I see the moment when she slips, or the ground gives way and she sinks lower until her legs and stool are completely under the water.

  The burned flags and cherries are level with my eyes. I can reach and touch them, but I don’t. I am too frightened, and the smell of the tree is making me gasp and my eyes water. But I look, and I see the red juice run from the cherries and small grains which might be seeds pour out and onto the cave floor. Is it dying before me? Am I seeing death? What a scowl!

  There is shouting now and I can see beyond the great horns. What I see does not at first make sense. My father, driving the mobile crane with the big cutter we use to cut the tops off the umbrella trees. He has come to the edge of the riverbank, as close as he dare. And now I see the blade engage and start to spin. The bright teeth become a continuous diamond rim. The crane arm lifts and reaches.

  The saw blade, horizontal, slices into the tall trunk that I have called a horn, for that is all it is, not bone or ivory, and immediately my cave is filled with soft, mushy, chewed fragments of fibre. They stick to everything and are in my hair and my ears and eyes.

  As the limb falls away, I can see the mouth of a tube, another open throat. But this one fills with a dark green liquid which brims up like a pot boiling, and begins to slop over the sides. It comes in gulps.

  The saw blade cannot reach the other trunk and so my father simply turns his attention to the crest, which still stands high. He attempts to cut it at its base, but the blade just clogs and the engine races and slips. We have had this problem before on Paradise.

  But perhaps the Rex has had enough of play, and so, with sides burned, one horn gone, a great gash under her crest, her flags and cherries burned and her body bristling with spent black arrows, the great one rallies and heaves round in the water and with one strong hollop is beyond the range of the saw. There are no more arrows or flaming torches. All are spent. The men stand and watch as the Rex, spouting juice from her severed horn, moves out into the stream. Despite her injuries she moves steadily away. The mud is stirred from the bottom where the stool digs deep, but otherwise the water is clearing fast, except where the cut trees are tied at the head of the stream. That is where the remains of Achilles lie grounded, in the place where the jetty touches the shore. He is body-spent, all anger gone, a log in the water beside the ones he had worked so hard to cut.

  And Wynston.

  Ah, dirty fucker . . .

  He’s knee deep in the stream, washing the shit from his legs with his hands.

  And a man still lies dead in the water!

  End

  DOCUMENT 7

  ‘One Friday Morning at Wishbone Bay’, from the Daybooks of Mayday and Marie Newton

  This report, published in News on Paradise, is taken from Marie Newton’s diary entry. When explaining the details to Mack, Hera was quoting from memory and, as we shall see, her recall was pretty accurate.

  The Isaac Newton referred to in the first line was the second son of Marie and Mayday Newton. At the age of eleven he died on his parents’ farm of poisoning, having eaten a Paradise plum. He was thus one of the first victims of the toxicity that was starting to manifest in the plums, an irony worthy of Greek tragedy.

  It was harvest time and everyone was working in the orchard. His cries were heard by the farm workers, but when they reached him he was already curling up in the tight seizure that later became associated with plum poisoning. He never regained consciousness, and Marie Newton never recovered from his loss.

  Although extensive tests were carried out, none of the other plums in the Newton orchard was found to be toxic and so the poisoning of young Isaac was regarded as an isolated case. The fact that harvesting and export continued for some years after this speaks volumes regarding the demand for the frui
t. However other deaths were reported off world, and within a few years the trade ceased completely, when the plum was declared toxic. It is significant that the toxicity appeared in all parts of Paradise and not just in the Newton orchards.

  The story ‘One Friday Morning at Wishbone Bay’ was celebrated in its time. Marie Newton had gained quite a following for her recipes using native foods of Paradise, and because of the stand she had taken as first president of WAM. She also gained quite a reputation for her paintings of life at Blue Sands Orchard and for her keen observation of life about her. Marie would no doubt be pleased to know that the story she dashed off as a diary entry and sent to Wendy Tattersall to supplement the pages of News on Paradise would, many years later, prove significant when it came to saving the last of the Dendron. That is an epitaph she richly deserves.

  •

  Busy. Try not to let the memory of little Isaac dominate but it is hard.

  Mayday is off to New Syracuse to get the SAS serviced at the station there. I know we are lucky in many ways, but oh how I wish that the grieving would soften. I always thought myself so strong. But busy, busy. Despite the problems in some quarters with the PP, we are still getting more orders than we can fill. Mayday insists that we stay at the quality end of the market even if we have to pick the plums early.

  Each plum takes a year to get from being the size of an elderberry to full, plump and edible. Mayday would like a quicker turnaround so he wants to plant more acres. He is a real businessman these days. I am not so sure. We have had reports back of some of the plums tasting bitter, and that never was the case. I don’t want to rewrite my recipe books to say, ‘Add more sugar!’

  I had just got back from seeing Mayday off when Berry (she’s the noisy one) came running in (about half past eleven) saying there was a Dendron coming in at Wishbone Bay. This was important. She had never seen a live one. They have become infrequent visitors these days. I used to tell the children stories when they were little about seeing the Dendron wading across to Anvil at Blue Sands Bluff, and of course they have seen the pictures I paint.

  I dropped everything, called for Cherry (she’s the studious one), who was as usual reading in Mayday’s little library, and off we went in the Sputtor,20 up over the ridge to Wishbone Bay. We picked up Tycho, who was returning from the back field after hearing Berry’s shouting.

  Ten minutes later we were at the top of the bluff looking right out over Wishbone Bay. It is wide and sandy and very safe for swimming, as it does not get deep quickly. There was the Dendron, about a mile from shore. It seemed to be steeping, but it was shaking its tall horns and we could just see the flags flapping, and once it did that sideways slam-slam in which it hits the water with the tips of its horns first on one side and then on the other. It was a still day and we could hear the slap on the water.

  Suddenly Tycho pointed over to the hills. ‘Hey, Mother, another’s coming.’ And it was. Moving as fast as I have ever seen one move. It was tearing through the wild forest to the west of us, smashing down trees, and its crest was up and swaying and slicing back and forth as it ran. ‘There’s going to be a fight,’ said Tycho, getting excited. It veered round, and for one heart-stopping moment I thought it was going to come over the crest towards us, but instead it headed down from the highland, through the spinney and into the flat marshy area above Wishbone Creek. It stopped there. It was only about a quarter of a mile from us, but we were safe as the bluff is sheer. I doubt it could climb up, but if it tried, I could have had us out of there in seconds.

  We could see steam rising from it, and it did a funny little dance. Next it threw its weight forward onto its two front legs, lowered its horns until the tips touched the ground and then, taking all its weight on the front two legs, lifted its stool and stamped it down as hard as it could. We could hear the thump, like someone chopping a tree, and we saw the marshy mud slop about. It did this twenty or thirty times, moving round in a circle between each stamp. ‘What’s it doing?’ asked Berry. ‘Stamping out the battleground,’ said Tycho. ‘No, it’s not,’ I told him. ‘What you are going to see may look like a battle, but before long, if we are lucky, we might have two young Dendron trees growing.’

  ‘One each for me and Berry,’ said Cherry. ‘Tycho can have the stool.’

  I’d only heard about this, of course. I’d never actually seen a carving, though there are many stools round Wishbone Bay so it must have been a popular trysting spot. One year we’d had a worker with us, a saw doctor and engineer who’d come to Paradise in the MINADEC days and who went bush when they withdrew. He stayed with us shortly after Tycho was born, to help with the orchard, and he told us some of the things he had seen, including the birth rites of the Dendron.

  Anyway. As soon as the Dendron that was steeping in the sea heard the other one thumping the ground, it reared up in the water and started to come inshore. As it waded up out of the water we could see its colours. I had never seen such a brightly coloured one. The horns were of tawny gold and gleamed where they were wet. The stool was of course black – they all are – but the body was a deep yellowish-red and the crest, when it unfurled, was a brilliant crimson. What a sight! And again I had forgotten to bring the tri-vid! It came up onshore, stopped, and then headed for Wishbone Creek, where Mayday keeps the cutter. It went right on past the little boathouse and on up the stream.

  Two great heaves, reaching up with the front legs and pushing with the stool, and it was onto the plateau. The other Dendron moved out of the muddy area that it had pounded and started to prowl around the perimeter. I say prowl because that is what it looked like. It had its horns lowered in the front and was tapping them on the ground. It crept forward with small steps, stopped, dragged its stool up and stamped it down. It was just like a dance. Its crest, meanwhile, was stiff and erect – you get the picture – and the tips of the blades gleamed like butchers’ knives.

  We have a pair of those blades that Mayday found a bit further up Wishbone Creek and we keep them like crossed swords on the wall. They are very sharp, and the edge is serrated like a bread knife. They are quite light, and very brittle now.

  The Dendron that was doing the prowling began to move each of the blades in its crest separately. It was as if each one had a mind of its own. Sometimes they rippled like the side of a stingray when it is swimming and sometimes they crossed like scissors. If you put your hands together but with the fingers straight and interlocked, and then move your fingers, still keeping them stiff, you get the general idea. It was obviously getting ready to cut and was trying out its weapons.

  The one that had come in from the sea – Mustard, the girls had christened it – moved right into the middle of the swamp. Its crest was very erect. It too had its horns lowered and had them in the mud. It seemed to be looking for something. Then it reared up and did that slam-slam to either side they are so fond of. I don’t know how it is they don’t lose their cherries – they must be welded on – but they don’t. Obviously they know what they are doing. Well. The effect of this slam-slam was significant. It made a trench in the mud but, more important, it must have dislodged some blockage higher up as I saw the water start to run more freely. It was still muddy of course, but it was soon clearer and flowing quickly. Then Mustard positioned itself so that its two front legs were on either side of the stream, and the stool – well, it stamped it down once really hard right in the middle of the stream and the water splashed up and the stool sank deep. The crest was very stiff and, after shaking a bit, didn’t move.

  The other Dendron, the one that had come overland – it didn’t have much colour, just a dun browny grey, nothing like Mustard, though its cherries and flags were bright – now stopped its prowling and came into the circle and then it lowered one of its horns down between Mustard’s horns until it rested on the cleft there. It rocked for a while, and I could understand that. It was a tender movement. But then it started to walk slowly backwards, and just at the moment when its cherries were being dragged between Mustard’s hor
ns, Mustard started to shake. Then the brown and grey one withdrew quickly, back to beyond the edge of the circle where there was a muddy pool, and there it stopped and steeped.

  Great shivers ran through Mustard, and green water came from its back and from its hump and from its cleft. Water poured down its tawny sides and stained the stream. It looked horrible, the green dribbling down over the yellow, like one of my watercolour paintings when I get caught in a shower. The girls thought it was having a pee and they are young enough to giggle. Young Mr Tycho looked a bit disgusted, and since I could not think of any better explanation I kept quiet, though I am not convinced it was having a pee. Something else was happening. Like Mayday says, when we get some specialists out here, we’ll find out all these things.

  I could see the way the shivers started down at the stool and travelled right up through its body to the tops of the flags, and the flags flapped but they were wilting. When the shaking stopped they drooped and became heavy, and I think some water dribbled from them too. Then Mustard opened and closed her crest twice, and Berry and Cherry, bless them, waved back to her. We watched as, very slowly, the crest sank down. It didn’t close onto its back the way they do when they are walking at sea, it lowered down right behind it and slightly turned so the sharp blade tips cut into the bank of the stream. My brave son saw this as submission. ‘Yah, it’s yitten,’ he said. (I have no idea where he has learned that language.) ‘It’s not going to fight.’

  Mustard waited, crest awry, still as a statue.

  The other Dendron waited too, stiff and still at the edge of the circle, stool deep.

  We all waited. Almost an hour. The girls started to get restless and Cherry wanted to go back and get her book. Tycho wanted to walk down and get closer, but I absolutely forbade that. I don’t want to lose two sons.