The Disestablishment of Paradise (66 page)

Father thinks for a moment. Then he says, ‘You fellas be ready. Light your arrows now. If it rears and turns this way fire for the base of the horns. Don’t wait for orders.’
The men did as told, but they didn’t want to take their eyes off the Rex in case it moved. ‘OK, Redman. Try your arm.’

I see Redman light the fuse on a Molotov, and then he brings his arm over like an overhead chop with an axe, and the Molotov sails high and smoky and passes right between the horns and falls
into the river on the other side.

Wynston laughs, and I think to myself he will lose teeth for that at day’s end. Redman heard.

‘Just getting the range,’ Redman shouts, cheeky fucker, but brave man, eh? Then he lights the second Molotov, takes aim and throws. This one smashes right at the base of the horns,
right on the little hump they have between the horns where I’d sit. The fire runs down its front legs and into the river, and up one of the horns. I can see some of the tufts of fibres on the
horns start to burn. Redman throws another Molotov, not bothering to light it, and scores another hit. Now the fire runs down the Rex’s back and under it to where the codds are and round the
base of the crest, which twitches. Flame also begins to lick up the other horn. Another Molotov, but this misses. And another, Redman’s last, and this is really clever. He has thrown it high
so when it hits the left horn it shatters and the fuel scatters down in a curtain which ignites with a whoosh.

‘Burn baby, burn,’ shouts Redman, wading backwards. ‘Now move, you fucker.’

But the Rex doesn’t move. It just stands there and burns. It doesn’t know it is being attacked. If it knows it is burning it doesn’t seem to mind. It has no idea it might die
because it has no idea about death . . . And then the flame reaches one of the cherries. I see it happen. A curl of blue flame licks a black cherry and . . .

Then it moves. No preparation. No hunkering down to leap like a cat or drawing back a fist like a man. The front legs come up and reach forward like a horse charging. At the same time the stool
stretches and throws its weight forward. In one bound it’s at the bank, and I see Redman dive back into the river, his only escape, but whether he makes it I don’t know. There is no red
in the water.

The two front legs grab and claw the shingle and the stool stamps down, and as it does the two front legs clamp again. The men fire their arrows. Many miss because they are wanting to run. Some
men simply stand in shock until their hands are burned, then they fire and run. The arrows that land catch and burn with a black chemical smoke. The Rex bounds again, turning back into the stream,
and it stops and shivers for a moment. With one strong move it flexes its tall horns to one side and strikes the river with a sound like a whip slapping. The spray puts out some of the flames. I
see Redman swimming away, strong. But the Rex flexes to the other side, again flailing the water just where he dives. And when it rears again the water is red. I see Redman’s body without a
head or an arm, and a little black hole for a neck.

The Rex turns again, and now it does run for the shore. The front pair of legs thrust and seize, the stool pushes and leaps. In three bounds it is there. I see Father fire an arrow which sticks
in the crest. Other arrows fly, and again the Rex is burning. Terry and Stanch set the bamboo wall alight and the clearing fills with smoke and cracking fire. The Rex smashes through the flimsy
wall, dragging it away and trailing fire behind her.

She hollops round the clearing and I see Big Anton standing firm and the laser starting to carve great black stripes across the flanks of the Rex. The lines smoulder and then burst into flame. I
smell something like turpentine but cannot take my eyes away to see if something has spilled. I see Anton aim high and the laser beam sets fire to some of the Rex’s flags, but it also starts
a fire in the trees beyond.

I see the Rex sit back on her stool and her front legs claw the air as though she would reach up to touch her blazing flags. Surely this is pain, or can I step inside the cool mind of the Rex to
whom nothing matters but to mate and move on? She reaches suddenly, her front legs stretching out and she crushes the small laser that has tormented her. I know I scream with fear for Anton, but I
see him roll clear and then dart between her legs and round behind the stool, which is three times his height.

The Rex is turning away from the cabins, and Big Anton takes his chance and runs for cover into the trees at the edge of the clearing. The Rex is looking for water. I know that, I can sense it,
and so she turns back to the river and moves towards where I am, perched above the swimming hole.

More burning arrows descend, but they do not distract her. She hollops into the water, sending up a wave, and the spray reaches as far as my hideaway. The swimming hole is deep, maybe thirty
feet, once the site of a waterfall which perhaps came through my cave. She advances and I see the moment when she slips, or the ground gives way and she sinks lower until her legs and stool are
completely under the water.

The burned flags and cherries are level with my eyes. I can reach and touch them, but I don’t. I am too frightened, and the smell of the tree is making me gasp and my eyes water. But I
look, and I see the red juice run from the cherries and small grains which might be seeds pour out and onto the cave floor. Is it dying before me? Am I seeing death? What a scowl!

There is shouting now and I can see beyond the great horns. What I see does not at first make sense. My father, driving the mobile crane with the big cutter we use to cut the tops off the
umbrella trees. He has come to the edge of the riverbank, as close as he dare. And now I see the blade engage and start to spin. The bright teeth become a continuous diamond rim. The crane arm
lifts and reaches.

The saw blade, horizontal, slices into the tall trunk that I have called a horn, for that is all it is, not bone or ivory, and immediately my cave is filled with soft, mushy, chewed fragments of
fibre. They stick to everything and are in my hair and my ears and eyes.

As the limb falls away, I can see the mouth of a tube, another open throat. But this one fills with a dark green liquid which brims up like a pot boiling, and begins to slop over the sides. It
comes in gulps.

The saw blade cannot reach the other trunk and so my father simply turns his attention to the crest, which still stands high. He attempts to cut it at its base, but the blade just clogs and the
engine races and slips. We have had this problem before on Paradise.

But perhaps the Rex has had enough of play, and so, with sides burned, one horn gone, a great gash under her crest, her flags and cherries burned and her body bristling with spent black arrows,
the great one rallies and heaves round in the water and with one strong hollop is beyond the range of the saw. There are no more arrows or flaming torches. All are spent. The men stand and watch as
the Rex, spouting juice from her severed horn, moves out into the stream. Despite her injuries she moves steadily away. The mud is stirred from the bottom where the stool digs deep, but otherwise
the water is clearing fast, except where the cut trees are tied at the head of the stream. That is where the remains of Achilles lie grounded, in the place where the jetty touches the shore. He is
body-spent, all anger gone, a log in the water beside the ones he had worked so hard to cut.

And Wynston.

Ah, dirty fucker . . .

He’s knee deep in the stream, washing the shit from his legs with his hands.

And a man still lies dead in the water!

End

‘One Friday Morning at Wishbone Bay’, from the Daybooks of Mayday and Marie Newton

This report, published in
News on Paradise
, is taken from Marie Newton’s diary entry. When explaining the details to Mack, Hera was quoting from memory and, as
we shall see, her recall was pretty accurate.

The Isaac Newton referred to in the first line was the second son of Marie and Mayday Newton. At the age of eleven he died on his parents’ farm of poisoning, having eaten a Paradise plum.
He was thus one of the first victims of the toxicity that was starting to manifest in the plums, an irony worthy of Greek tragedy.

It was harvest time and everyone was working in the orchard. His cries were heard by the farm workers, but when they reached him he was already curling up in the tight seizure that later became
associated with plum poisoning. He never regained consciousness, and Marie Newton never recovered from his loss.

Although extensive tests were carried out, none of the other plums in the Newton orchard was found to be toxic and so the poisoning of young Isaac was regarded as an isolated case. The fact that
harvesting and export continued for some years after this speaks volumes regarding the demand for the fruit. However other deaths were reported off world, and within a few years the trade ceased
completely, when the plum was declared toxic. It is significant that the toxicity appeared in all parts of Paradise and not just in the Newton orchards.

The story ‘One Friday Morning at Wishbone Bay’ was celebrated in its time. Marie Newton had gained quite a following for her recipes using native foods of Paradise, and because of
the stand she had taken as first president of WAM. She also gained quite a reputation for her paintings of life at Blue Sands Orchard and for her keen observation of life about her. Marie would no
doubt be pleased to know that the story she dashed off as a diary entry and sent to Wendy Tattersall to supplement the pages of
News on Paradise
would, many years later, prove significant
when it came to saving the last of the Dendron. That is an epitaph she richly deserves.

•

Busy. Try not to let the memory of little Isaac dominate but it is hard.

Mayday is off to New Syracuse to get the SAS serviced at the station there. I know we are lucky in many ways, but oh how I wish that the grieving would soften. I always thought myself so strong.
But busy, busy. Despite the problems in some quarters with the PP, we are still getting more orders than we can fill. Mayday insists that we stay at the quality end of the market even if we have to
pick the plums early.

Each plum takes a year to get from being the size of an elderberry to full, plump and edible. Mayday would like a quicker turnaround so he wants to plant more acres. He is a real businessman
these days. I am not so sure. We have had reports back of some of the plums tasting bitter, and that never was the case. I don’t want to rewrite my recipe books to say, ‘Add more
sugar!’

I had just got back from seeing Mayday off when Berry (she’s the noisy one) came running in (about half past eleven) saying there was a Dendron coming in at Wishbone Bay. This was
important. She had never seen a live one. They have become infrequent visitors these days. I used to tell the children stories when they were little about seeing the Dendron wading across to Anvil
at Blue Sands Bluff, and of course they have seen the pictures I paint.

I dropped everything, called for Cherry (she’s the studious one), who was as usual reading in Mayday’s little library, and off we went in the Sputtor,
²⁰
up over the ridge to Wishbone Bay. We picked up Tycho, who was returning from the back field after hearing Berry’s shouting.

Ten minutes later we were at the top of the bluff looking right out over Wishbone Bay. It is wide and sandy and very safe for swimming, as it does not get deep quickly. There was the Dendron,
about a mile from shore. It seemed to be steeping, but it was shaking its tall horns and we could just see the flags flapping, and once it did that sideways slam-slam in which it hits the water
with the tips of its horns first on one side and then on the other. It was a still day and we could hear the
slap
on the water.

Suddenly Tycho pointed over to the hills. ‘Hey, Mother, another’s coming.’ And it was. Moving as fast as I have ever seen one move. It was tearing through the wild forest to
the west of us, smashing down trees, and its crest was up and swaying and slicing back and forth as it ran. ‘There’s going to be a fight,’ said Tycho, getting excited. It veered
round, and for one heart-stopping moment I thought it was going to come over the crest towards us, but instead it headed down from the highland, through the spinney and into the flat marshy area
above Wishbone Creek. It stopped there. It was only about a quarter of a mile from us, but we were safe as the bluff is sheer. I doubt it could climb up, but if it tried, I could have had us out of
there in seconds.

We could see steam rising from it, and it did a funny little dance. Next it threw its weight forward onto its two front legs, lowered its horns until the tips touched the ground and then, taking
all its weight on the front two legs, lifted its stool and stamped it down as hard as it could. We could hear the
thump
, like someone chopping a tree, and we saw the marshy mud slop about.
It did this twenty or thirty times, moving round in a circle between each stamp. ‘What’s it doing?’ asked Berry. ‘Stamping out the battleground,’ said Tycho.
‘No, it’s not,’ I told him. ‘What you are going to see may look like a battle, but before long, if we are lucky, we might have two young Dendron trees growing.’

‘One each for me and Berry,’ said Cherry. ‘Tycho can have the stool.’

I’d only heard about this, of course. I’d never actually seen a carving, though there are many stools round Wishbone Bay so it must have been a popular trysting spot. One year
we’d had a worker with us, a saw doctor and engineer who’d come to Paradise in the MINADEC days and who went bush when they withdrew. He stayed with us shortly after Tycho was born, to
help with the orchard, and he told us some of the things he had seen, including the birth rites of the Dendron.

Anyway. As soon as the Dendron that was steeping in the sea heard the other one thumping the ground, it reared up in the water and started to come inshore. As it waded up out of the water we
could see its colours. I had never seen such a brightly coloured one. The horns were of tawny gold and gleamed where they were wet. The stool was of course black – they all are – but
the body was a deep yellowish-red and the crest, when it unfurled, was a brilliant crimson. What a sight! And again I had forgotten to bring the tri-vid! It came up onshore, stopped, and then
headed for Wishbone Creek, where Mayday keeps the cutter. It went right on past the little boathouse and on up the stream.