The Disestablishment of Paradise (20 page)

‘Alan?’

‘Yes, Hera?’

‘What do I do to change your presentation index?’

There was a slight pause – how subtle it was, how clever the programmers! – and then Alan’s voice replied evenly, ‘A full range of possibilities can be found by speaking
the moclay Alanstyle.’

Hera pronounced the word Alanstyle clearly. Immediately a checklist of the ways in which Alan could be modified flashed up in the tri-vid screen in front of her. Within minutes, Alan was reduced
to a silent but alert slave – his voice restricted to essentials.

‘Shall we depart, Alan?’ Hera asked, and waited. Normally Alan would have replied, but this time there was nothing. Not even a hum in the air. ‘Begin pre-flight
procedures,’ she instructed.

Immediately the SAS came alive.

Pre-flight procedures were fully automatic. The SAS, in a soft neutral voice, announced the different systems as they logged in and became fully operational. Hera felt much more comfortable. She
heard the magnetic bolts take hold throughout the whole SAS, anchoring charts to tables, dishes in the cleanser, clothes in closets, drawers and doors. There was a soft whine of hydraulics as the
rotor blades came out of their protective cover, straightened and stiffened.

Moments later the twin blades began to turn, slicing the sunlight. Hera slipped her hands into the pilot gloves and the machine became an extension of her body. A slight pressure with her index
finger and the SAS begin to lift. Smooth and easy. She guided the ship in a tight spiral.

Looking down, she could see the remains of the shuttle port dropping away beneath her. At 500 metres she held steady and then began to cruise towards the sea, following the supply road.

The journey took little more than a minute. Hera guided the SAS down over Ben Haroun Park, where the whistle reeds would still be piping in the morning. She flew slowly over the remains of New
Syracuse. It was not even a ghost town – only the roads and foundations of houses remained. Still intact, however, was the long curving sea wall constructed during the early, prosperous days
of MINADEC to shelter a fashionable marina and its complement of tall yachts and pleasure boats.

Hera followed the line of the sea wall and then flew low over the chessboard squares which were all that remained of the ORBE precinct. She looked at the burned dark space where her office and
the Shapiro Museum had stood and felt no strong emotion.

Moments later, the SAS kicked up a small sandstorm as it landed next to a concrete bunker. Hera left the engine running and the rotor blades turning slowly while she jumped down and went looking
for Mack’s booty. As he had promised, there was a crate containing bottles of wine and a demolition sack into which he had stuffed a few luxuries – tinned salmon, perfume, preserved
dates, a ripe round cheese, spare sunglasses, a book of poetry, candles, matches, a first-aid kit and anchovies – as well as a combination knife and corkscrew.

The goods safely stored, Hera took one last look around. How still the scene – like the stage of a desolate theatre! Then, satisfied, she climbed back inside the SAS and closed the door,
which hissed as it sealed. Seconds later the flyer hammered into the air and set a steadily rising course straight out over the sea.

Hera had decided she would revisit some of the places that had been important to her when she first arrived on Paradise. Thus, half an hour later, she was far out above Dead Tree Sea and
hovering. She had reached a place called Jericho Rise, where the seabed was close to the surface and gave an anchorage to many marine plants. Immediately below her was a large colony of yellow lip
kelp, the individual plants moving slowly in the water like eels, sliding under and over one another, pushed by the wind and their own small water jets.

Hera brought the SAS down in the middle of the feeding kelp, settling it gently on the surface of the sea. She opened the cabin door and sat on the extended steps with her feet in the water.
Soon the small mouths of the lip kelp found her. The peculiar feeling as they nuzzled and fastened to her toes brought back memories.

One day, shortly after she had joined the ORBE project, Hera had taken a cutter and, along with a few friends, sailed out from New Syracuse to the Jericho Rise.

There she had donned an aqualung and slipped into the warm clear water. Her last adventurous swimming had been on Mars, where the water in the underground lakes was thick with salts, and
visibility by headlamp was usually little more than a metre. Sometimes she’d had to climb over ice, trailing her lifeline. But here . . .

Being a strong swimmer, she deliberately headed directly into the midst of the kelp and let the small hungry mouths pluck at her. Swimming steadily, she came to where several arms of kelp joined
together. There she dived, pulling herself slowly down the plant, until she came to the main stem. The small mouths, being surface feeders, detached as she went deeper. She was about ten metres
down when the water became suddenly turbulent, spinning her round, and she felt a powerful tugging on the stem she was holding. She gripped tight. Looking down, Hera could see where the stem curved
away below her and how it was bending round in the water like a thick yellow snake. Faintly she saw a large dark shape gradually rising from the depths. Hera kept her nerve.
There are no sharks
or octopuses on Paradise
, she reminded herself. And she told herself that repeatedly as the giant organism rose closer.

Hera had read about this plant. She knew she was seeing the giant bellows of the kelp, the organ which drew water in and expelled it with force. It would rise until close to the surface, where
it would bask for a while in the warm water before sinking again to the bottom, where it would pump steadily for an hour or so before rising again . . . and so on and on, in a cycle that would only
end when the plant became too large for its foot to hold it in place on the seabed during a storm. Then it would tear loose and drift until marooned on a shore. The small individual yellow tubes
would then detach and swim away to become, unless consumed, giant kelps in their own right. Hera knew all this. Even so, she was not prepared for the huge dark ventricle, twice the size of her own
body, which opened in front of her face. When the ventricle closed there came a great jet of water which pushed her away, detaching her goggles and breaking her grip from the slippery stem. She
tumbled in the water, and then let herself slowly rise to the surface, where again the small nuzzling mouths greeted her hungrily. She let them hold her and roll her on the surface before
retrieving her goggles and swimming back to the cutter.

Afterwards, she often wondered what the kelp must have felt as it filtered the cells from her human body. Exotic food indeed. Alien food to the kelp. And she had never quite rid herself of the
notion that the heart of the kelp had risen to find out where the strange taste was coming from. Later, when she returned to ORBE HQ, Shapiro had pointed out that she had taken a silly risk.
‘What,’ he asked, ‘might be the consequences if the kelp has now taken a liking to human cell tissue? Can you not see the headlines?
KILLER KELP STALKS THE
SHORELINE
’ He had given her his old-fashioned look. ‘Don’t be fooled by this place, Hera. It is not a kindergarten like Mars. Our interaction with Paradise is
complex.’

She had answered by pointing out that every time anyone breathed out, something of their organic nature entered the biosphere. ‘Not to mention the miners and loggers who piss and shit
wherever they want.’

‘I know,’ said Shapiro. ‘That’s what worries me. Does Paradise learn as well as give? If so . . .’ He had never finished his sentence, preferring, in his irritating
way, to be enigmatic.

Now, after half an hour playing with the kelp, Hera finally detached the small lips. She closed the cabin door and gave instructions for the autopilot to take off gently while she got dried.

When she again entered the control room they were hovering at 300 metres, and the kelp beds below looked like many small yellow nebulae with hundreds of swirling arms.

She flew on. Beyond the kelp the sea became choppy and blue, sure signs that they were above deep water. Blue sea, blue sky, clear horizon – Hera was suddenly filled with a tremendous
optimism and a surging love for where she was and what she was doing. It felt right, and any residue of discomfort over what had happened the previous night had vanished.

Hera adjusted course slightly and steadily increased her speed until she reached the limit of the gyro blades. To go faster, the SAS needed to change its mode of flight, which it did. For a few
seconds they glided and then, with a surge that pressed her back into her seat, the SAS leaped forwards, climbing as the jet unit took over. The course she had chosen would take her directly over
Dead Tree Spit, a famous landmark she had not seen for many years.

Hera loved speed.
Free
, she thought.
And abandoned too
. She stretched her arms above her head.

Some time later, the autopilot sounded a cheerful bell and Hera came awake to find that she was now cruising slowly and approaching the dark rocky shore of Anvil. This was a harsh coast of
hidden reefs and surging waves. It took the brunt of any storms that struck from the north-west. Since there were few safe anchorages, many ships had foundered here during MINADEC times.

Hera took over the controls and steered along the coast until she came to an inlet. This gave access to one of the few places where a ship could anchor. But you had to know the complicated
tides. As so often on Paradise, when both moons pulled together the passage was closed by massive waves, which came thundering through, driving all before them, only to waste their energy on the
quieter water within. The place was a graveyard.

Looking ahead, Hera could just see the first faint outlines of the Staniforths. These were the highest mountains on Paradise and permanently covered in snow. The peaks, floating serenely above
the clouds, always reminded her of the mountains on a Chinese silk fan that her mother had owned, which decorated the wall of their small apartment on Io.

Beyond the cliffs a bay opened and at its centre was an island. This was what Hera had come to see. Standing on the highest point of the island were the ruined remains of a giant Dendron, a
mighty
Rex peripatetica
, famous and unique, the so-called ‘walking tree’ of Paradise, now extinct. Its tall twin branches and broken stump still faced the passage to the sea
defiantly. Hera flew around it slowly and then brought the SAS down to land on the shingle shore.

As part of her introduction to Paradise, Hera had been sent on an orientation visit to Pietr Z’s famous umbrella tree plantation at Redman Lake. This was located just a
short distance inland from the bay.

One morning, just before dawn, Pietr Z had come tapping at her window to tell her he was going to hike over the Scorpion Pass and down to the sea. Would she like to join him?

This was an unexpected honour. Pietr Z’s knowledge of this part of Paradise was unrivalled. But he was also a man who loved his solitude and who would on occasions (and much to the
exasperation of his wife) disappear into the wild hills and not emerge for a week, regardless of who was coming to see him. So Hera had caught him on a good day.

It was mid-morning when they finally reached the top of Scorpion Pass. For the last fifteen minutes they had been climbing through mist and the only way they knew that they had crossed the pass
was when the path levelled and then began to slope downwards. They could neither see nor hear the sea, but they could smell it.

‘Bad water here,’ said Pietr. ‘Very bloody dangerous. Great slab waves, lift from nowhere. Come swilling at you with the speed of a running horse. You heed my words, young
Hera, if ever you have to sail here, don’t trust it. And don’t bloody swim!’

He led the way down the steep winding path to the shore, where tiny waves lapped the sand peacefully. Pietr grunted. Then, almost as though he had willed it, one of the waves reared up and came
tumbling up the shore and washed round Hera’s ankles. Pietr spat into the sea. ‘Don’t trust it,’ he said.

Part-way up the hillside, and well above the high-water mark, was a boathouse with a long slipway that led down to the water. Pietr led the way up through the brevet, and Hera admired the wiry
strength of the old man as he climbed with a springy step. When they reached the boathouse, the mist was lifting and the sky was clearer, but little could be seen of the bay.

Inside the shed was one of the all-purpose ORBE cutters. Pietr waved for Hera to climb into the front and put on a life jacket. Pietr meanwhile, stood at the stern and prepared to winch the boat
down into the water. ‘Why so high?’ asked Hera.

Pietr winked at her. ‘When the bastard waves come in, the whole shore goes underwater. That’s why I built it like this, and that’s why I come out here once a month to make sure
it is OK. There’s twenty people still breathing thanks to this little boat.’ He banged its side with his fist. Pietr was obviously proud of the winch mechanism. He had both designed and
made it himself. ‘Watch this, Hera.’ Pietr eased the winch and allowed the cutter to slip slowly down towards the sea and then stop. ‘Now imagine this. Bastard sea running. Waves
coming up at you like mad dogs. Wind in your face. You have to judge your moment to enter, or they’ll have you. You’ll be upended and down under before you can piss yourself. So you
watch. And when a wave is just passing, you let her go. And get your bloody revs up! Now hold on.’

So saying he released the dog shackle and let the boat accelerate down the last few metres into the sea. He laughed when he saw Hera’s expression as the boat hit the water, and the screws,
already whirling, drove it forward. ‘You understand, young Hera? You have to be self-reliant to live out here. If there’s only me to launch the boat and there’s a real bastard sea
running, and some poor bugger is out there clinging to driftwood, well the only way to get out through the surf is to hit it running. Today it’s calm. Tomorrow we might have two-metre waves
to deal with. The day after that, who knows? Mad bloody planet!’