Read The Disestablishment of Paradise Online
Authors: Phillip Mann
Hera watched the crawl slowly towards her shilo. Sometimes it moved more sideways than forward, but there was always a net gain. Behind it, the left a path of torn earth. Then
came the moment when it arrived directly outside her window. Hera had by now opened the blinds so that she could see clearly. She witnessed the way it compressed and then pushed its branches up
against the wall of the shilo until it was leaning there like a drunk who, having lost his balance, does not know why he does not fall over. She saw the gather two of its branches for one final
fling. The branches coiled, tightened and then released. The tops of the branches snaked up and some of the hooked barbs caught on the gutter above the window. She saw the contract and pull itself
bodily upright. It was now standing against the wall. One of the blue flowers, its petals ragged, was pressed against the window.
The last action she observed was in the roots. The tree remained in the same spot but shook as its roots worked at the soil, digging themselves in like worms. This took a long time. Hera
concluded that the had simply run out of energy. However, it had saved its most unusual manoeuvre for last. There came a moment when all motion ceased, and then it suddenly bedded down.
It looked for all the world as though the roots and trunk had been tugged firmly from underground and then tied off. Immediately the whole tree stiffened up and became
still. Then slowly it wilted. All the branches except those that were holding it drooped down and rested on the ground. Its flowers closed and fell, scattering their petals. I think it fell
asleep!
The sky was beginning to turn grey. The crawl from the shed to the shilo had taken just over three hours.
Hera’s next actions were very characteristic. Many of us would have decided to escape the house, but she got out her drawing book and made sketches of the way she had
seen the move. Then she made herself breakfast, and when that was finished and the sun was streaming in through the window and casting the shadow of the across the room, she climbed the ladder
again, opened the skylight and climbed out onto the roof.
Three s had reached the house in the night and now lay draped across it. Others at the edge of the clearing had also moved. Two had managed to climb into one another and now lay in a tangled
heap. Another had approached the monkey trees and, attempting to climb one, had become stranded, its roots dangling above the ground. That one was already dead. The leaves and flowers had fallen and
its moisture was dripping from the ends of its flaccid branches.
Hera climbed back inside the shilo and locked the window behind her. She left the house by the back door and went round to the front, keeping well clear of the newly arrived s. She was uncertain
what to do. Her first thoughts were to get a scorch gun and trim the weeds back or dig them out. That certainly is what she would have done a few months earlier, but she was now not the same Hera.
Of one thing she felt certain: the shilo had not been attacked. Plants tend to gravitate either by seed development or by root movement to those environments that are most congenial. So, the s
– in their own ungainly fashion – were finding the outside of the shilo convivial. Well, she should feel honoured. She would not be casual around them, but nor would she walk in fear.
Nor did she see any reason to change a plan she had made to visit the Island of Thom. And if the s had gathered round her front door when she got back, well, she would deal with that when the time
came.
If in reasoning this way Hera appears to be somewhat foolhardy or naive, that is merely a measure of how far she had moved from the cautious attitudes of Earth and how much faith she placed in
those few moments she had spent in communication with Paradise. She felt protected.
Hera touched the control panel strapped to her wrist. ‘Alan. Prepare for take-off. Destination Island of Thom. Duration of time away five days. Departure time asap. Out.’
No sooner had she spoken when she heard the hangar doors begin to crank open. Moments later the compact form of the SAS emerged – fully charged, spruced and ready for action.
The land Hera was flying over had never been se led.
Rugged, wild and prone to earthquakes, it could not be farmed and even the early MINADEC prospectors had found little to interest them. It was a land of steep windswept hills and dark plunging
valleys. At the bottom of these, dark lochs, shrouded in mist, showed hardly a ripple or even a reflection of the daylight.
The SAS crossed a ravine. A spring gushed from between two rocks and filled a small circular lake. This emptied over a worn stone ledge, from which the water fell sheer, disappearing into the
misty depths. However, it was what Hera saw beyond this which astonished her. She sat up suddenly and shouted, ‘Stop, Alan. Stop.
Hold steady.’
The SAS banked in the air and the rotor blades changed pitch as the craft hovered. Below, where the ravine widened, Hera saw blue-flowered weeds. Nothing really surprising about that, except
that the plant had been absent for most of the journey so far. But now, suddenly, here they were in their thousands, and instead of being randomly spaced and growing wherever the seed fell, these
had sprung up following a very precise pattern: a spiral.
The lines of the spiral were not perfect – they followed the contours of the land – but the basic shape was unmistakable, it was like a frozen blue whirlpool, with the centre hidden
under what was, in effect, a bouquet.
This could not be ignored. Quickly Hera checked the ORBE reference records stored in the memory bank of the SAS, hoping to discover whether there had ever been any project work done here.
There had not. Out-plantings had been undertaken at the coast and in some of the valleys close to the shore, but little work had been done elsewhere. This land had been left alone. A footnote
indicated that in the early days Mayday Newton had led a small expedition through here hunting for different varieties of the Paradise plum. It had been unsuccessful. And that was all.
Certainly, if anything like these rings had ever shown up on the satellite images which formerly tracked changes on the surface of the planet, ORBE workers would have come running. But the
satellites had been among the first things closed down when the Disestablishment began. So, this formation was a relatively recent phenomenon, and one that would not have been observed had Hera not
chanced to pass by. Hera wondered if the presence of the weeds meant that a rescue operation was in progress. If so, for what?
Hera guided the SAS down slowly and held steady as soon as she detected the slightest turbulence from the rotor blades among the flowers. She adjusted the magnification on the tri-vid screen to
maximum. Immediately, the image of the flowers filled the screen and their blueness brightened the cabin. But Hera could not see through them. At maximum resolution she could see the individual
thorns and stalks of the Tattersall weed. They came into and out of focus as they moved in the breeze. But nothing definite could be seen below them. Hera tried other filters – ultraviolet,
infrared, sonic imaging – and they all told the same story. Certainly there was something at the centre. It was small, dark and warm; but that was all she could tell.
If Hera wanted to know more, she would have to go down and see for herself.
‘Find a landing place, Alan. As close as you can to an entry point into that labyrinth.’
The SAS cruised slowly over the spiral. The weeds grew closely together with no obvious breaks. In speaking to Alan, Hera had used the word labyrinth in a casual way. She had not realized how
accurate her description was. And, had she known, would she have behaved differently? Probably not. But she would have been more careful.
The best landing place Alan could find was a small rock-strewn plateau where the side of the ravine was less steep. It was just above the rows of weeds. The small stream, after its hectic
journey from the pool above, meandered nearby, and provided a natural opening through the plants.
Thoughtfully, Hera donned meshlite overalls and a helmet and visor. After witnessing the antics of the weeds at the shilo, she did not know what to expect and so added a small scorch gun to her
equipment. Then she climbed out of the SAS and slid down the bank to the stream.
Crossing the stream was easy and Hera soon found herself standing in a narrow avenue with tightly packed weeds towering on either side. She reasoned that if she followed this natural path round
for several circuits she would eventually reach the centre. She set off at an easy jog, heading down the slope. She splashed across the stream again at the lowest point, and then climbed up the
hill on the other side. From the top she could see the SAS perched on the hillside.
With each circuit the path got smaller. Soon the giant weeds were packed so closely together that they seemed like a wall. The way became darker too, and it seemed as though she had entered a
tunnel, for the plants now met overhead in a tangle and she could no longer see the sky. The air was still and heavy with the perfume of the s. She jogged on while the path steadily narrowed until
it finally stopped at a wall of weeds. The centre would be just beyond this.
Dropping to her knees, Hera was able to crawl under the lower branches. Emerging from under these, she found herself facing another wall of branches. But here there was nothing random. She was
facing what, if she had been on Earth, would have been called a formal hedge. The tall weeds were bent and tightly intertwined as though they had been plaited to make a basket. There were no
gaps.
Hera comments:
I knew that whatever was being guarded by s was on the other side, but there was no way through. I moved on round what was now quite a small circle. I was very aware of the
noise that I was making. But I tried to be quiet, the way one does in a church or a museum. I remembered the time when I was a student and someone had an epileptic it in the library. The noise
of the chair being knocked over and the harsh gasping could be heard in all the rooms. Terrible. Then there was the time when my mother and I were on our travels and in a big gloomy building in
Italy, and someone dropped a bottle of wine on some marble steps and it shattered and the echoes seemed to go on for hours. These memories came to me with great force.
Surely there must be a way through
. And there was.
She came to a giant weed, one with a trunk wider than her outstretched arms and branches that supported masses of flowers which tumbled right to the ground. A guardian tree if ever she had seen
one. So densely packed were its flowers, they were like a wreath. But the lowest branch formed an arch about two feet above the ground, and so, down on hands and knees, like a humble pilgrim, Hera
was able to crawl through to the other side, and so to the centre.
I found myself in a vast cistern. The walls formed by the weeds rose sheer and unbroken, towering up until they grew inwards like an ancient beehive tomb. And the roof was
a canopy of blue flowers speckled with sunlight.
I could feel a tremendous energy in the air – a bit like in a greenhouse – but an energy that was, as it were, latent or held in perfect balance. Have you noticed how a pan of
water goes still just before it boils? Have you stood and watched the golden light of dawn spread through the sky as the sun rises – a sight which should be greeted with trumpets and
cymbals, but there is only silence or the ring of a lonely cow bell? O Olivia, it took me a great effort to move out from under the tree and stand upright. My fear, if fear it was, was that my
presence might just tip the balance and I would trigger the boiling, or be crushed by . . . what? A shower of gold?
In front of Hera, in the middle of the clearing, a small plant was growing. It stood alone in the bare soil. Though she had never seen one live, Hera knew what it was from
early descriptions. She was seeing the thing called a Michelangelo, or a Reaper – a young one, one that would now in the fullness of time, become a giant.
Dark tapering leaves, no more than a metre tall, rose from the ground and then spread open like cupped hands. Growing up from its heart I saw many stems, and each ended in
a cluster of small black berries. They moved slightly, bumping one another, and occasionally entwining their stalks like snakes. All of them had clustered on the side facing me. They were
interested in me. And I saw a dark liquid began to drip down from the small beads, and I became aware of the smell of the plant – a sharp astringent odour, like bitter lemons. It made my
lips feel dry.
Hera realized she could feel the ‘aura’ of the plant touching her. It made her scalp tickle and caused a slight feeling of nausea in her stomach. She crawled
forward but stopped when she was a metre or so away. Kneeling up as tall as she could, Hera was able to peer down into the cup of the plant. She could see the start of its bulb – a red and
black mo led ball which at this early stage of development was akin to the head of a mushroom just pushing up through the soil.
Hera wanted to touch it. It was a tender feeling. Later she thought of it as the woman in her responding to the infant before her. She knew too that the small plant wanted in some way to touch
her as well, to feed from her. She felt her own will responding, and watched with a smile as her right hand begin to reach out, while her left hand took her weight on the ground.
At that same moment a shadow moved over her. Her legs and body were gripped from behind. She cried out as thorns pierced her meshlite suit, pricking into her skin. The giant weed had moved. One
of its branches from above had coiled round her in one convulsive move, lifting and turning her so that she found herself staring into a mass of its prickles. These, still contracting, scratched
the hard plastic of her visor and were deflected past her ears and throat. Right in front of her eyes was the bud of a flower, and, as she stared, it began slowly to open. The bud casing tore and
fell away and the blue petals unfurled. The flower angled round and stared into her.