The Disestablishment of Paradise

by Phillip Mann

  But not on Paradise. It is the stuff of horror stories to contemplate that you might yet have consciousness when Paradise decides you are dead. You live on in an eternal moment of whatever suffering you were experiencing as the planet closes about you. But I doubt that. That would not be consistent with everything I know and have experienced about Paradise. I would stake my life on the fact that Paradise knows exactly to the nano of a nanosecond when you are dead, and in a way which we, confused by categories and processes, do not. The Thanatos point may indeed be a moment bounded on one side by the grey-moving-to-black of decay and on the other by the grey-moving-to-green of life, but as a point of transition, of interface, the Thanatos point exists.

  Here, on Paradise, we used to bury bodies, and for many years they remained intact, down there among the roots. There are no histories indicating that Paradise rejected the human in the early days. The first was, I think, a child, but that was during the agricultural pioneer stage and things were already going wrong. But now, some generations on, those same bodies ‘rise again and push us from our stools’. We find we are not destroyed beneath the soil, as would be the case on Earth, but have undergone something akin to a sea change. Shakespeare would no doubt see it more clearly, but to the common eye the bodies that are found sleeping on the surface have shrunk as they dried and seem coated with lacquer. They become lighter too. They burn like chaff. They leave little ash. Even the bones ignite like phosphorus. We have not been here long enough to know these mummies’ ultimate fate, but the healthy soil will not contain them and exhumes them by some natural working of its own. We should place sentinels on the graveyards of Paradise to watch the dead rise. (My God. If I had written those words a few centuries ago, I would have been talking about the Last Judgement. Let us keep Paradise clear of such thoughts.)

  The secret to all of these changes lies in the interface between our bodies and Paradise. Buster and I have together studied this for some years.

  My first experiment was of fourteenth-century simplicity. When I brought him home, dry and easy enough to carry, I cut a section across one of his claws with my scalpel. I suppose I expected to see a fine profile of the lacquer – a bit like the rind on a horse chestnut – and perhaps, if I were really lucky, I might even see it spread to cover the newly exposed part. No such luck. The fault is in the metaphor, for we are not dealing with lacquer or enamel or rind or any kindred process, but something vastly more subtle.

  Where I had made the diagonal cut, the exposed surface was in no way different from the skin or the eyeball or the individual hair of Buster’s coat. Either the change had come as I cut, or it had been there all the time. I am still not absolutely sure of the answer to this, although I have spent quite a time chopping bits off him, dipping them in different substances, boiling, freezing, etc. When I cut him open – a bit like cutting through stiff cardboard – I found his organs intact, right down to the contents of his stomach and bowels, and all in a perfect state of preservation. A cast, fired and glazed, could not have been more true. It was obvious that this cut-and-see approach was not getting anywhere.

  My second major experiment was much more upmarket. I took Buster on a journey to the bio-security lab at I-HEDBET. I carried him in a sealed box containing the air of Paradise, travelled as quickly as I could and had prepared my way well. I had booked lab time and had made known the experiment I was conducting. Many research students and former colleagues wanted to assist.

  The facilities of the bio-security lab at I-HEDBET are the best one can find anywhere. There I transferred Buster and his precious atmosphere to the vacuum of a hermetically sealed manipulation closet. I was hoping to exclude all non-Paradise contamination.

  Within the HMC, I was able to amputate those parts of the dog which interested me. I took slices of hairs and tissue so thin they were just a few molecules thick. Whenever I cut I encountered the membrane. What I needed was to see into the interstices of the membrane, for this surely was the threshold which Paradise used to insulate itself from the things of Earth. Here I had a stroke of sudden good fortune.

  Among our equipment we had an electron scanner. Despite its accuracy we found we could not calculate the nanometric wavelength of the membrane, since it was operating at a frequency smaller than the scanner could achieve. However, one of the research students had come up with a technique called resonance phasing. This uses a harmonic of the original image, and when we managed to tune to this, we were able to gain a visual image. We were in effect seeing the unseeable, looking beyond photons, and what we saw was a gleaming silver surface so bright and energetic it had to be damped down. As I made a section through one of Buster’s hairs, we saw something that had the brilliance of molten glass (though no heat) flow from just in front of my blade. Remember, we are talking of quantum states, and the energy of Paradise (for such it was) was predictive, coming into existence just before it was needed.

  My belief, and the belief of those who were with me, was that what we were witnessing in that blazing brilliance was a threshold. Any door or a gate has a threshold, and we were all reminded of the scintillation which occurs just before entering the fractal. We were seeing, as well as we could, the deep energy of Paradise. And what words can we use to describe that? If this threshold protected Paradise then it was the will of Paradise or the intention of Paradise we were seeing. It is only a small step to say we were seeing the thought of Paradise, but what that thought was, we had no way of knowing.

  Even as we watched, our faces white in the reflected light and our eyes gleaming, we saw the brilliant image fade. Silver became grey and grey gradually became grainy and died away. For me that was a moment of awe-full truth. I knew, though how I knew I cannot say, that what we were seeing was the reality of Earth reasserting itself as the vitality of Paradise withdrew. We saw the old and familiar onset of decay.

  Later, when I wrote about this, we got into a rare old row. To me, we had gone as far as the instruments would allow and reached the point at which imagination must take over if we wanted to go further. And that seemed to me quite appropriate. If what we were witnessing was the threshold of thought, then how better to approach it than with the imagination?

  I was shaken. I had seen that brilliant threshold that could hold time at bay. It was then, and remains now, as awesome as it is terrifying. If you wish to talk of a gleaming sword that protects Paradise, then you need look no further.

  With the experiment concluded I put the remaining bits of Buster in deep freeze. I went to visit my sister in Cambridge. Thinking too hard can get you drunk, and I am lucky to have Fortuna to fall back on, for she can always lift a hangover. Ideas are more intoxicating than wine, and she let me talk and explore contradictions, and sometimes, you know, she says just the right word and suddenly you can see things more clearly. When you live too long in your head, the reality you find there becomes too real, falsely real, and that is when you need the challenge of masterpieces to ground you. She played me Mozart and Haydn and stole my Baudelaire. We went to one of the twentieth-century revivals Fortuna is so keen on – Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk – performed by a company from Peru. It was not to my taste, but that does not matter. It had a vitality true to that great and troubled century.

  Feeling more myself, I returned to I-HEDBET. I had by then worked out my theory on how Paradise protected itself with a thin skin of thought. I now needed to observe more closely my theory in action.

  My final experiment was decidedly prehistoric. I took Buster out of cold storage, stitched him together and left him decently covered with a sheet and lying on a trolley in the corridor outside the main bio-form lecture room. A hundred students tramp by every day. I left a note on Buster saying dead dog – do not look under this sheet, thereby ensuring that 99 students a day looked at him and breathed on him. After some days, my patience was rewarded: Buster began to smell. Two more days in an incubation box in the bio-security lab and he was ripe. Without the protection of Paradise, he had spontaneous
ly begun to rot. In this state I shipped him back to Paradise with me, hoping he would pass through the fractal without his decay being arrested. He did.

  Meanwhile I had Dr Melhuish come up to the platform. I made her look at Buster and undertake microbial and DNA tests. With these complete, we travelled down to the surface in a private shuttle. At my request we journeyed as slowly as possible. We monitored the dog closely and within minutes of leaving the shuttle platform we noticed a change. Buster was becoming enamelled again. It spread over him and through him. I imagine the effect was instantaneous, but it took a few moments for it to manifest. Our instruments stopped recording and the smell stopped too. This proved one thing: that it was not the air of Paradise – for we were breathing shuttle air or platform air – but the presence of Paradise that caused the sea change.

  We had the shuttle stopped and then taken up again, but could detect no change. Buster remained enamelled, which meant simply that the insulation of Paradise took a longer time to wear off than to be imposed. Finally we dropped down to the surface.

  During this short journey we developed the most terrible sore throats. We also experienced stomach cramps which grew in intensity the lower we descended. We tottered from the shuttle, me clutching the dead dog and Hera making a beeline for the ladies. We both suffered from what I afterwards called Buster’s revenge, until our systems were purged of all dead dog matter. In addition I had an itchy scalp and itchy skin, which did not really clear until I swam in the sea. We drank copious quantities of water. The symptoms did not last long, fortunately. Paradise deals swiftly with death.

  But I had proved my theory. Paradise enclosed us. Prohibited decay. It was not something in the soil. And now we also knew why the early dog handlers complained of sickness after they had taken the dead guard dogs for disposal. And why, when others had brought in sheep and cattle, there were complaints from the shearers and slaughterers. Their sickness was caused by the particles of the dying creature that they had inadvertently consumed, which had then been lacquered by Paradise inside them.

  People used to say that this was because there were no animals native to Paradise, only plants. This is the great popular misconception. The truth is that there are no animals on Paradise and there are NO PLANTS either. There are only the Paradise bio-forms, unique and singular, and they have a culture of total exclusion and the ability to impose it on elements from outside Paradise.

  •

  POSTSCRIPTUM (not for publication): Do I mean ‘total’? Absolutes are dangerous. I think there is a will in the planet which can lift the veil of exclusion, but I have no idea how. I am teased by those lines of young Sasha when she says, in her love story, ‘to see my golden dead love’s silver flowers rise’.

  I have seen that silver. I saw it in a lab at I-HEDBET, and I saw it shine on the sober, surprised faces of my fellow scientists. I see it still in my mind’s eye. And I am bold enough to make a prophecy. As Paradise wakes up, as the bodies start to bob to the surface more frequently, as the toxins grow in leaf and fruit, as the rejection gathers strength – for all these are manifestations of the will, by which I mean the thought of Paradise – so you will find that the fractal connection will break down. They are kindred processes, and hence they work in sympathy. It is one of the deep laws of nature.

  Let us return to Miss Malik. I think that witch-woman, the more-than-a-woman, the woman that any man would die loving (I am talking of Sasha, of knowledge) knew how to cross that threshold and she did that for her man Big Anton. His body will never be found, and nor will Sasha’s. That I promise. At their death they simply dissolved like a leaf of the tough hybla that settles on the ground. They dissolved. Skin, juices, bones and all flowed into the soil of Paradise – to be reborn in some way of its own devising. For them the gate into Paradise was open.

  As for me, well, I am pretty pickled inside, and I know I am hooked on Paradise, but I will not deliquesce. So, when my time comes, my wishes are very clear. To get me off Paradise before the last breath. I do not want that sudden insulation, that lacquered shroud. And burn Buster too, as a hero. But . . .

  Get me back to Earth, please.

  Cremate me when you can.

  And I who once knew Paradise,

  Will die a happy man.

  End

  DOCUMENT 12

  ‘How the Valentine Lily Got Its Name’, from Tales of Paradise by Sasha Malik

  The following is the story which Hera was referring to when she mentions the tale of Valentine O’Dwyer and Francesca Pescatti.

  Most references in the story are obvious, but it is worth remembering that there never was a child called Jemima. She was the fictional younger sister or niece that Sasha imagined. Conventional wisdom holds that this was wish-fulfilment, a product of Sasha’s loneliness. But I hold there is more. I think Jemima reflects Sasha’s desire to communicate and pass on her knowledge of Paradise. In my reading, Jemima is the child which Sasha would never have.

  How the Valentine Lily Got Its Name

  Once upon a time, a long time ago, before I was born, there lived in the small town of New Syracuse, on the planet called Paradise, two families named the O’Dwyers and the Pescattis, and though their gardens shared a common river that flowed between them at the bottom of their gardens, they hated one another like fire hates water. If Mrs Pescatti put the washing out, Mrs O’Dwyer lit a bonfire and the smoke always dirtied the washing because she burned sooty things and fanned the smoke with her apron. If Mr O’Dwyer was sitting down to watch a tri-vid of a distant conflagration, for such was his passion, Mr Pescatti would start his lawn mower with the faulty coil and mow the patch of brevet he called a lawn until there was no plant left, and he would not stop even though the sun went down until Mr O’Dwyer had come to his door in a rage and shouted across the ravine which separated them.

  Now the O’Dwyers had a son called Valentine, a tall handsome dark-haired lad much fancied by the girls of the town, who would hang out their washing in the rain just to catch a glance of him. But he had no eyes for them. He looked for and sighed for and stiff-ached for Francesca Pescatti, the only daughter of Mr and Mrs Pescatti. And she, Francesca, beautiful as dawn, with skin like the white Crispin lily which grows in the cold plains of Ball, and hair that was golden and curly like maid o’ the lake, and full-breasted too, like her mother (but firm and tight, not slack and slouched, so that her mother had to keep adding darts and pleats to keep her decent) she moist-ached for Valentine.

  Valentine and Francesca grew up like poppies in a coil of barbed wire. When they were little – I mean younger than me, about your age, Jemima – Francesca would put on a white dress, for she loved wearing white, and then she would slip through the loose fence board near the garden shed, hidden behind the family blue waltzer, which is, as you know, the protector of the good, and run down to join Valentine. He had come crawling through the hole he had cut in the Machiavelli nettle, which is, as you know, the protector of freedom, which he had lined with tin sheet so he didn’t get stung. They would meet at the little bridge which crossed the stream which separated their houses and play quietly. They floated boats of hybla under the bridge and pretended to cook meals on a campfire. They didn’t play mothers and fathers as that didn’t seem much fun. But when the jenny bobbed up to feed, Francesca would put her finger to her lips and whisper she had to go home, and they would arrange the next time they were to meet. Once Valentine kissed her quickly, and she said she would tell, but the only person she told was the big blue waltzer, and he wasn’t telling anyone. But her mother would catch her when she got home and say why was she wearing a white dress to play near the dirty back shed. And Mrs Pescatti would have to wash it, and no sooner was it pegged on the line when out would come Mrs O’Dwyer with her matches, like a smelly one after monkey nuts.

  But they grew up, Francesca and Valentine, and the day came when she could no longer get through the fence and he had trouble with his tunnel. And besides, boat races and pretend cooking had lost their t
ang, so what were they to do? They didn’t know it, Jemima, but they had fallen in love, like you will one day, and love is like a Rex with her fanny up – she always finds her mate.

  Now there was in the town of New Syracuse a woman who had a shop where you could buy everything from pens and pins to prayer books and potions. So Francesca would hide her mother’s prayer book and Valentine would hide his father’s pencil – and they would be sent down to Mrs Lorentz’s shop for replacements. And she looked on them fondly, for she remembered what it was like to be young and let them sit in her back parlour, face to face, knee to knee, holding hands and hurting for something they could not name. See, they had never been told what bodies are for, and they could not read very well so they couldn’t go to the library and get a book about bodies. And they didn’t have a nice big Auntie Sasha to tell them. Course, they knew that if they touched themselves in certain ways it was very nice and made them feel alive and drowsy at the same time. So they sat there aching and then they got to peck-kissing, and then they got to touching and then Mrs Lorentz threw them out because she had to shut up shop.

  One day when Valentine was sixteen and Francesca was just fifteen, he said to her, ‘Meet me at your blue waltzer tonight after the streets lights are out.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I’ll be in bed.’

  ‘Well, get out of bed when you hear your dad snore. Come down the stairs and don’t slam the door.’

  She told herself she wouldn’t, but when the street lights of New Syracuse went out she was out of bed in a flash. There was no sound in the house but the snoring of her dad as she tiptoed down the stairs and outside into the sweet night air.