The Disestablishment of Paradise (62 page)

In the early days, when this technology was being developed, quite a number of live researchers were lost. Corrigan and Ortez are two names. They vanished into . . . well, that’s
anyone’s guess. They volunteered, and vanished. The fractal point opens to an infinite number of dimensions, so the omniscient one is the only person who might have a clue where they are . .
. and he or she ‘ain’t saying nuttin’.

Lorenzo asked me if I knew anything about maths and I said, ‘A little.’ And then he asked me if I knew anything about quantum mechanics and I said, ‘Not a lot.’ And he
said, ‘Good,’ because, in his experience, people who knew a bit were harder to talk to than those who just had to take things on faith.

Here is a summary of what he said.

These fractal points of symmetry form a vast three-dimensional web in our space–time, and all the stars and planets and moons float within this web. In fact the physical stars and planets
and moons, and all the rest, can pass through these points, and do so all the time. The fractal points may indeed account for ghosts or any number of strange phenomena on Earth – flying
saucers and the like – because they carry enormous poly-dimensional energy. The easiest way to visualize this gigantic web is to think of a geodesic dome while remembering that there are
fractal points within as well as without the dome. The fractal points can be imagined as being those points where the hexagons meet. Of course, there aren’t any hexagons in space. It is just
a way of getting a handle on the concept.

Now, I’m going to write the next bit down exactly so I can think about it later. He said, ‘Just as the quantum universe can be seen as a labyrinth of passages, occupying overlapping
dimensions, well, as below, so above. The fractal points are the entry doors into different dimensions, except you must not think of them as doors, because there is no point of transition. You are
either in or you are not. We choose the moment of being “in”, and that is the fractal moment when we are also “out” but elsewhere.’

Evidently the actual moment of transgression requires no time in our conscious dimension, though of course if you slipped dimensions you could be in trouble, like poor Corrigan and Ortez.

So, essentially, our journey to Paradise consists of: a) journeying through normal space–time to the fractal point, b) preparing to pass through, c) ¿WHAM?, d) recovering from the
passage, and then e) journeying on through normal space–time to our destination. Simple as A?C. It has a lovely symmetry, with a great big question mark at its centre.

I asked him about the fractal points at the quantum level. Apparently the most up-to-date theory is that these also are interchange points ‘where different energy-field realities meet and
interact’. Lorenzo gave me one example. He said that dowsers, when they are looking for water, say, are interacting with the thing they are looking for via fractal points at the quantum
level. It’s a different way of getting at the truth. So there we are – a mixture of science and folklore. A bit like us, really: quite sophisticated on a technical level, but with a
yearning to plant with our hands and eat what we grow. They call us pioneers, and I am proud of that.

I have enough to think about for some time, and if I can get up a head of steam, I might have a crack at the maths of fractal travel and try to see what is involved.

Sweet dreams are made of this.

‘Getting Your Man’, from
Tales of Paradise
by Sasha Malik

The Paradise plum was a noted aphrodisiac. Indeed, there was a time when gourmets fought in restaurants for the last plum in the kitchen; when debts were paid in plums; when
ageing potentates with young wives, despite the promise of their name, relied on the plum for virility. Sometimes the plums were preached
against
as a symbol of hedonism. Sometimes they
were preached
for
as a promise of the heavenly delights awaiting us. Now we can only look back at a craze that went sour. More than sour – at a fruit that became poison. But they are
still remembered for what they were, part of the brief golden age of Paradise.

The plum was a fruit like no other. It was not sweet, it was not sour, but like a good wine changed flavour as it was consumed. The effects of the plum could be detected on a person’s skin
within minutes of their eating one – a certain silkiness, I am told. Its fame as ‘the bedroom food’ was universal and attested: it provoked both performance and desire.

So what happened?

For the first account we turn to Sasha Malik, who tells a good tale. Sasha was one of the ‘wild women’ of Paradise – of which there have been many. These were women who forsook
life in the camps or towns, preferring to live under the trees, surviving on what they could find in the deep, untrodden bush.

Sasha was the daughter of a lumberjack, ‘Stammer’ Malik. He, with his wife Donna, had shipped out to Paradise shortly after its opening-up to help take down stands of umbrella trees.
A few months after giving birth to Sasha, Donna Malik ran off with a ‘Gypsy-eyed miner from Chain’ and so the child was brought up by her father. He treated her as part of his logging
team, which means that he treated her well. ‘I had one father, ten big brothers and twenty uncles,’ Sasha boasted.

At the age of fifteen Sasha ran away with a carpenter called ‘Big’ Anton, a man twice her age.

Sasha and Big Anton lived happily for three years in North Chain, until Anton was killed when a log fell from a cart and rolled on him. It was grief at his loss that drove Sasha to live wild
under the trees. Later, after many adventures which included riding a Dendron across Blue Sand Straits, Sasha returned to her father’s camp, and it was there that she wrote the collection of
stories that we know as
Tales of Paradise
.

Sasha and her father died just over a hundred years ago. The timber barge in which they were travelling rolled in a storm while crossing the troubled water we know as Dead Tree Sea. She was just
twenty-one.

Getting Your Man

People blamed Big Anton for taking me off. They said he was too old for me and should have known better. But it was me that seduced him, and carefully too, and I am proud of
that.

It was during the log push, and Father and the team were down the Old Nylo clearing the blockage where a rockfall had stopped the river and the logs were piling up. Big Anton pulled the short
straw and was left in charge of the camp – and me. I was the one who drew the straws, and I cheated.

I’d loved him since I was little. Don’t ask me how or why because I just don’t know. I simply fell in love with him, and knew he was the one for me come hell or high water. But
I knew too, the way smart kids do, that I couldn’t have him until I was big enough in every way, like I didn’t want another father and I didn’t want an old man either or more big
brothers. So timing was important. I also knew he loved me, though he didn’t know that and would have been ashamed if he’d thought it. A good man.

I decided that the time was right when I was fifteen and very, very hungry. I was fifteen just before the log push. So when the team was gone and we’d waved them goodbye in the morning, I
knew it was my time.

I’d already made Anton a love potion taught me by one of the girls in New Syracuse. You take the seeds of the plum when they are dry and then crush them. Some people throw the seeds away,
but they are the best part and you can use them in lots of charms, but you never use them like pepper. You let them steep for a day or two in spring water gathered when both moons are in the sky.
Wait until the water is starting to turn a deep blue. Then give it a stir with your finger and pour it off the seeds. Put it aside. It’ll keep a few days out of the sun but don’t put it
in a fridge because that kills it. See, it is a living drink. Now, when your time is right, you need to add two more ingredients. Have a wee in a bowl, dip your finger in the wee and then stir the
juice with that finger. Lastly, prick your thumb and add a few drops of your blood and stir it in well. Then choose your moment when your man is there and not about to go out chopping and there are
no other women or people about – and serve it fresh.

Big Anton was not a man who worked if he didn’t have to. He’d sit by a lake with a book, or yarn the day away, or whittle a toy for a man with kids. So that was
where he was, snoozing after lunch – I’d made him a good one. Unsuspecting. Feet up on a stone. Boots off. Belt loosed. Hands behind his head. Muscles like rope. Handsome as a god at
dawn. An untamed and uncivilized man. Mine. I loved him so much I was worried he would read my mind or smell my ache, and I would lose him. I knew he would be frightened of me when I came at him.
He would run away if he could. He would swim over Redman Lake quick as a fish, and scrabble down Old Mother Nylo until he caught up with the men. I knew him, knew his mind. I was older than him in
so many ways.

While he was sleeping I had a good wash. Brushed my hair like that pretty girl Baigneuse. I was so very nervous. It makes me laugh now, and cry too, for I knew what I was doing – I was
growing up. I rubbed the skin of a plum on my breasts and between my legs and across the back of my neck. That was another trick the girls taught me. They reckoned the smell made the men come more
quickly so that they could get done with more of them when the rush was on. That wasn’t what I was thinking. I was just taking precautions because I didn’t want a broken heart and oh, I
wanted my lover, and though I feel pretty, I don’t think I am really. I’ve got something else but I don’t know a word for it. The girls had other tricks too, for slowing the men
down, and I thought,
Time for that when we have nights together
. See I knew I was in for the long walkabout, and no fucker would stop me.

I squatted to wee, but I couldn’t. I was all tight and moist. I jumped up and down and almost panicked. Finally I squeezed out a few drops and that had to do. Then I put on a loose blue
dress I’d made from strips of hybla and dyed with juice from a waltzer.
¹⁸
Last of all I pricked my thumb and I said a little prayer as I squeezed
the drips of blood into the drink and stirred it with my wet finger for luck.

‘I’m bringing you cordial,’ I said, nudging him with my toe. ‘I want to know what you think of it.’

He snuffled, a bit like a horse, and farted and I thought,
Great. That’s something else I’ll have to get used to
. But he squinted up at me with his big daft smile.

‘Like the way you’ve done your hair,’ he said. ‘Pretty dress too. Look a real lady, Sasi.’ Then he reached up for the glass. Christ love me, if I’d been a
step further forward his hand would have gone straight up under my dress. I almost dropped the drink.

He sipped it. Pulled a face. ‘What’s in it?’

‘A bit of this and a bit of that. Don’t you like it?’

He sipped again. ‘I can smell a bit of plum. That right?’

‘Might be. Drink it up.’

He took a bigger drink. And then he drained the glass. I think he did that just to please me. He handed me the glass and lay back.

I didn’t know what to do next. What to expect. So I waited. ‘Well?’ I said finally.

‘Well, what?’

‘Did you like it?’

‘Yes, it was all right. A bit more plum’d make it be er.’

‘Doesn’t it . . . make you feel anything?’

He looked up at me. ‘You’re a funny one, Sasi. What’s it supposed to make me feel?’

I shrugged. This was not going according to plan. ‘Happy,’ I said.

‘Yep. OK. Gotcha. It makes me feel very happy.’ And he stretched his body slowly, all five foot three inches of him like a great cat, a panther. ‘Now I think I’ll go for
a swim.’

‘No, don’t do that,’ I said, and I kneeled down beside him.

See, I know what the men do sometimes when they go for a swim. They swim round to the rapids where the Rex
¹⁹
came down, and sit in the foam and bring
themselves off with their hands when they want relief. They all do it. Father too. I’ve seen them. I knew that if Big Anton went that way I would lose him. I didn’t know what to do, but
something inside me did. The next thing I knew I was out of my dress and my hands were all over him and I was kissing and kissing and kissing so that he couldn’t speak. Was a woman ever
bolder? And he was so big and hard in my hand and I thought,
All this is mine
. And I was flowing all over him like honey.

He said once, ‘If Stammer—’

But I stopped him. ‘Leave my father to me,’ I said sternly, and straightway kissed him a hundred times so he would forget. ‘Now, Big Anton,’ I said, working my way under
him like a tree dolly and him a fallen log, ‘do your duty by your woman. I’m yours now, for good ’n’ all, and I’m here as long as you want me, and there’s no
going back, so there.’

And there wasn’t. Though I never did find out whether it was my love potion or me that did the trick . . . but we never needed it again.

When my love was dead, and I had set him to sleep, I rubbed his body with the skin of a plum and squeezed the juice between his lips. I ate the fruit myself, but it was not as
sweet as the smell of his hair or the taste of his lips in the morning.

Beautiful in his stillness, like a man asleep beside a lake, boots off, belt undone, arms back, a god in his slumber, dreaming of whatever gods sleeping dream – perhaps of me.

I took him to a private place. There I have a Reaper friend who will treat him well. It is one who knows me and has felt me and has shown me myself.

My Reaper friend, it took him in. There I left him, staying only long enough to see my golden dead love’s silver flowers rise and know he is safe in Paradise.

End