The Disestablishment of Paradise (59 page)

‘It’s a lot to take in,’ I said.

‘It’s all very simple,’ he said. ‘You know most of it already. You just needed a nudge. That’s all you’ve ever needed.’

‘Speak for yourself.’ I looked at the beach and the trees, and then I lay back on the sand. At that moment I felt I could stay there for ever. Just lying still. ‘Come
close, Mack.’

He lay down beside me.

‘I know I must leave soon, but there are so many things I want to ask.’

‘We have a little time yet before I—’

‘Sh. Tell me about the Tattersall weeds. I don’t understand them at all.’

‘Ha! The Tattersall weeds. Put your head on my arm and your arm across my waist—’

‘Ma-ack.’

‘And I’ll tell you a story. Now hush. Once upon a time there was a big tall Tattersall weed that had never shed its seeds.’

‘Not like you.’

‘No, not like me. I’m a Mackelangelo and we do things differently. Now do you want this story or not? OK. Pipe down. Now the thing about Tattersall weeds is that they are always
curious, always wanting to poke their flowers into everything. They are very sensitive to smell too. And this Tattersall weed thought himself really lucky because he had grown up in a place
where there was a lot of talking jenny and fart-in-a-trance close by, which wafted every time there was heavy rain, and there was a sugar lily above, which dropped its nectar down on him
whenever he wanted. Well, the sugar lily grew faster than he did. The result was that whenever he wanted some nectar, he would call out to the sugar lily and it would tip its prow in response,
but the nectar would miss the waiting blue flower and hit the sleeping jenny instead . . . and talking jennys are indifferent to sugar lily ooze. Now, as I say, Tattersall weeds are all very
curious, and this one found that if he flopped his frond over the lap of the sugar lily he could get a leg up, as it were, and hence have more chance of getting the nectar. He got quite good at
this, and the sugar lily didn’t seem to mind, but then one day, he gave an extra heave – the sugar lily had grown a bit taller, you understand – and
pop
, his root
came right out of the ground.
I’m in trouble
, he thought
. Any minute now I’m going to turn to water. If only I can connect up
. And he tried to. He tried to flop
back down onto his root. But he missed – perhaps the sugar lily had moved a bit – and he landed on top of the primed-and-ready-to-squirt orifice of the talking jenny. The jenny was
not impressed, but squirted anyway, which gave the Tattersall weed such a shock that it jumped again and dragged the jenny, root and all, right out of the mud. At this the jenny decided that
enough was enough – it was going to take retirement and turned to liquid on the spot. As luck would have it – and we all need a bit of luck in such things – the root of the
Tattersall weed struck the root of the jenny and thought to itself,
Well, it’s not my root, but it’s a pretty good root. So why not?
And it linked up.

‘And thus the Tattersall weed learned how to flop about and join up. It was never very elegant, but it could now satisfy its curiosity. And it discovered that it didn’t need a
jenny, or any other plant, because if it just lowered its root, the root would burrow in and link up with any neighbouring root. It told all the other Tattersall weeds and they started to
clamber about, but only at night when the sun was out of the way, or they ran the risk of drying their roots. Time passed and all was well.

‘But then the
Scorpion
arrived. And shortly after that, a lot of other new and strange and interesting beings came wandering about, like little Dendron, and there were new
smells too, and so the Tattersall weeds became more active and started to hang round the houses and the rubbish dumps and the chemical latrines where the smells were very strange. But by now
some of the damage we’ve talked about had already been done, and the lovely deep consciousness was stained, and so when a Tattersall weed put down its root, it could never be sure whether
it would find a clean root or something tainted that would, in the way of such things, infect it. And when it got a tainted bit of root it started to lash out and it discovered it could kill.
Not just chickens, either. It wanted to move more and so, instead of flopping and scraping with its branches, it grew tiny spines like it had on its seeds and found that with these it could
grip the soil or other plants and drag itself along. Primitive, but it worked. And the consciousness of the planet put this to good use, and the Tattersall weeds became the great nurses of
Paradise. But to this day, when you meet a Tattersall weed, you can never tell whether it has a rogue root or a healthy one. But you soon find out. Anyway, that is how the Tattersall weed
learned to walk.’

‘Thank you. And where did the Tattersall weed learn to help other plants?’

‘It had always done that, with its perfume. So when it learned to move it just followed its instinct.’

‘And are there a lot of rogue Tattersall weeds?’

‘Not too many. More than there were. Enough. And increasing. Especially where there used to be towns and houses. But so are the good ones too. And now . . . listen.’

I heard a noise in the air. It came from beyond the headland, and moments later a flyer like an old fashioned SAS came over the headland and prepared to land. It set down on the shore about
a hundred metres from us. On its side were stencilled the words
SCORPION SURVIVOR
.

‘You always said you wished you could have seen the illustrious Estelle Richter. Here she is.’

The door opened and a woman jumped down. She was wearing a bulky meshlite suit and still had her mask on. I saw her open her mask and breathe. And then she lifted her mask off completely and
threw it down on the sand. I saw her call to the others.

One by one, they came out. This was the crew of the
Scorpion
, Olivia, and they spread out and they called to one another and played a game on the sand. And then Estelle came along
the beach towards me and Mack. She was holding hands with this tall lanky long-haired lad who was trying to grow his first moustache. They couldn’t see us. Estelle came right up to me and
. . .

Olivia
And?

Hera
And I’m sorry to disappoint you, Olivia, but we have all been too much influenced by that picture called
First Landing
, in which Estelle
looks like Botticelli’s Aphrodite. Estelle did not look like that. She looked better. She was a sturdy ginger-headed girl with freckles and blonde eyebrows. And when she laughed, her
whole face lit up. The story is true about her bathing. It was a dare from her boyfriend, and she stripped off and plunged into the sea in her bra and pants. And she splashed water at him until
he came in. They took their clothes off in the sea. Then they wandered away into the woods, where I trust and pray they made love because that is what Paradise is good at.

Olivia
I prefer your version to the original. And what happened to you?

Hera
Mack and I left them playing. We floated up for a while, and in the distance, far out to sea, I saw a Dendron which was making its way towards the shore
in great holloping strides, coming to see what all the fun was about.

Mack took us up slowly. He asked if I was all right. It was strange being so high and without a suit or the walls of a shuttle – but then I didn’t have a body either. But if you
don’t have a body, well . . . you don’t worry about falling or breathing, do you? Soon we were reaching the edge of the atmosphere and entering the true velvet blackness of
space.

We moved above the green, white and blue face of Paradise. He was taking me towards Tonic, and when we were close, I mean, ten or fifteen miles above its surface, he asked me to look about.
I saw the stars. I saw my love star, Sirius, and all the colours of space. And Mack seemed sort of mischievous, and so I knew he was up to something.

Mack said, ‘You see how things are?’ spreading his arms and pointing round.

And I said yes, though really I had no idea what he was talking about.

Then he said, ‘Now close your eyes. I’m going to count to three, and then open your eyes and tell me what you see.’ This was just like the games we used to play. He counted
one, two, three . . . and when I opened my eyes, I saw the space about us was beginning to change. New bright lights were appearing, but the stars were getting fainter.

‘What are those points of light?’ I asked.

‘Fractal points,’ he replied. ‘At least that’s what you call them. To me they are points of natural energy. “Therein all time’s completed treasure
is.” Watch.’

I saw light spring up from the surface of Paradise until it was an incandescent ball radiating energy into space. The darkness backed away. All the bright fractal points joined up in a vast
three-dimensional web, above and below and to the sides, and the energy that was flowing in that web was greater than anything I could conceive of. It was all about us. It was in the spaces
between stars. It was more solid and stable than crystal or diamond and brighter than both. And still it grew. Connections made connections. Yet it was never confusing, and I knew where I was
and who I was, and that if I had wanted to, I could have moved to any point in space or time. I could, Olivia. I could have gone back to my moment under the light of Sirius, to the death of my
father, to Earth in the time before dinosaurs.

I said to Mack, ‘What am I seeing? Is this the universe as it really is?’

And do you know what he said? I give his words to you as simply as they came to me. He said, ‘All you are seeing now is the impress of our love. To see the universe as it really is,
you have to see every atom and its history, every molecule and its history, and so on round and round the spiral until . . . and still you are not there, because there are dimensions beyond
dimensions where finally dimensions disappear. Only then are you at the bottom of the ladder. But hey, I didn’t bring you up here for metaphysics, sweetheart, but so you could see what
you have done. Not bad for a little lady, eh?’

‘I couldn’t have done it alone, Mack.’

‘Nah. That’s true. The workhorse carries the load. But you did the steering. And does it matter, finally? How can you tell the dancer from the dance?’

God, I wanted to kiss him then. But it is hard to kiss when you don’t have hands to hold with or lips with which to kiss.

Mack said, ‘You have one last wish, Hera.’

‘Need you ask, Mr Mack?’

We went back to the tent. The tent as big as a cathedral. At some point in the night I asked, ‘Can a Mackelangelo reach as far as Earth?’ I needed to know. He said, ‘To
Earth, yes, and beyond a million, million Earths. Love and thought do not obey the inverse square law of matter.’

I know you find scientific language unromantic, Olivia. But those were the words of love I wanted to hear. I now knew I would never lose him. Nor he me. Now and for as long as it matters,
which can be an eternity for me. And at last I could go. Happy, free – as full as I need ever be of salt and honey.

And in the morning, he said, ‘You like paradoxes, don’t you, Hera? Well, here is one. I can reach Earth but I can no longer walk with you over Paradise, not even back to New
Syracuse. That is beyond my parish. I will do what I can to help, but you will walk alone. As you walk, I want you to remember these things only: that you have all the knowledge you need to get
home, and that you have more friends than you know. So, when the going gets rough, remember the Dendron. Got that?’

‘Yes, Mack.’

‘God speed, Hera.’

I was again at the clearing.

To my dear dying love, now so still under the watching cherries, no more than a few minutes had passed since I had left. But his breathing was almost still and only his eyes had light. I was
kneeling beside him and words came into my mind:
We bring them into the world and we see them out again
. A woman’s lot, Olivia, to see them into life and out of life, though it
leaves us grieving.

He was looking at me and there was an intensity there. He was trying to say something but could no longer form words. I was holding his hands, and it seemed that the tension was in his right
hand. I turned it and looked at it, and there was his ring, his granny’s ring, still with my hair attached.

I took the ring and I held it before his eyes, and I waited until I saw him focus. Then I placed my finger, my index finger because it was a bit big for the others, in the opening of the
ring. And slowly I slipped the ring on my finger. And then I closed my hand into a fist. The first was for love, the second was for strength. And he saw. And he knew. And I heard the rattle in
his throat and I put my ear close to his lips. I heard his last whisper: ‘ “Till . . . the river jumps over the mountain . . . and the salmon swim in the street”.’ I
watched his eyes. They were soft and warm, and then they slowly set as his spirit withdrew.

I moved quickly then. I do not know whether he was conscious or not, but I got the scissors from my first-aid kit and I cut my hair off. I cut it as close to the scalp as I could. And I laid
it on him. On his brow. On his chest. Round his arms like a warrior. On his stomach. On his manhood. Round his thighs. Over his knees and down round his ankles. Thus I laid him out with my hair
as his shroud. I was just in time. I saw the last light die.

And then, as I expected, I saw him dissolve. The body slowly turned to water. Not all at once, but gradually, and the parts in contact with the soil changed first. The buttocks and legs and
back of his head became glassy, and then jellied and finally drained away. He sank lower into the brevet. I began to see the leaves through his chest and neck and through my hair. Then his
cock, entwined with my hair, vanished into the soil. His smiling peaceful face remained for a moment, glimmering, and then it too slowly evaporated. And my hair went with him.

And that was it. It was an ending.

I was now alone.

And we who live on, must move on.