Read The Disestablishment of Paradise Online
Authors: Phillip Mann
What had she done? The question hit her like a body blow. What had she done? What moment of madness had gripped her? How, how, how could she make amends?
She scooped up the remains of the plum and its seeds. She took them out into her small garden and there, under the light of the moon called Tonic, which had now risen over the horizon, she
buried them, offering a prayer to Paradise and asking for forgiveness. There was nothing else she could do. Finally, she cleaned the knife and the cutting board, scrubbing them and putting them in
the automatic cleanser just for good measure.
Finally, drained and white, she switched out the lights, went back outside and stood for a while in her garden staring up at Tonic, and then quietly made her way to bed.
Lying there, curled up on her side with her arms crossed and holding herself tight, she wondered what wisdom had come to her. It was, she decided, that she had come perilously close to crossing
a boundary of innocence. In trying to taste the plum, she had gone against something deep in her nature, and her body, with a wisdom of its own, had taken over and cleansed her – and she was
so glad. She was Hera still.
She should have known better, of course, and for that she could not readily forgive herself. It had been a moment of madness.
What fools we women are sometimes!
And now it had passed.
And it had left her whole, in possession of her faculties and, in all the ways that really mattered, undamaged.
She wondered, even as she began to doze, how people had managed to eat those things, and faintly she seemed to hear Shapiro’s wheezing laugh. ‘It takes practice, Hera . . . and a
certain amount of self-disgust at the beast in us.’
And when Hera woke up she was clear-eyed and ready for battle.
The following morning Hera dispatched two formal messages.
The first was to Abhuradin acknowledging that Hemi had indeed received the captain’s message but had neglected to inform her. The second was to the Space Council applying for a special
review hearing.
To the first message Hera received no answer and she had to wait two days for a reply from the Space Council. Their communication, when it arrived, was a brief acknowledgment from a certain M.
Hackabout inviting the senior management team of the ORBE project to present their arguments in writing. Dr Melhuish was assured that if the review panel considered the arguments carried sufficient
weight then the Recommendation of Disestablishment served on Paradise would be put on hold and a formal public hearing held. Hera noted with some optimism that the review committee was to be
chaired by Ishriba, a senior diplomat who had, in his youth, been a fractal pilot. He had visited Paradise many times and knew the work of the ORBE project well.
Hera prepared her submission carefully. She argued that the absence of consultation by the Economic Subcommittee was an unacceptable breach of protocol. She maintained that the Economic
Subcommittee was in error regarding the scientific work of the ORBE project and appended a list of successful projects which, she claimed, would have a bearing not only on the future of Paradise
but on the shape of future space exploration. Her strongest argument was saved till last – that space exploration being still in its infancy, the difficulties being encountered on Paradise
were to be valued as evidence of the ‘dimension of the alien’. Far from disestablishing Paradise and hence closing the ORBE project down, she argued that it should be given a wider
mandate than merely to service the agricultural needs of Paradise. It should, she claimed, ‘become the main scientific arm of the Space Council dealing with non-terran bio-forms’. Her
final paragraph was full of characteristic bravura.
So here is where we now stand. Paradise is a unique world. In all our wanderings in space to date we have not encountered another world like it. We have encountered life,
yes, in the warm caves on Mars, on other worlds, but nothing like Paradise. But we will, and stranger worlds too, which will baffle us even more than Paradise does now. Paradise is well named.
But let its name not blind us to the fact that it is a vast and largely unknown alien world – it is not a second Earth or an idealized Earth. I sometimes wish it was just called X or Z so
that its name did not provoke such high expectations – but yet its name is good, for on Paradise we confront life in an abundant, vigorous, pristine and alien state, and there is so much
to learn from it. The parallels with structures we are familiar with from Earth are remarkable, but so are the differences. We have really hardly begun. Let us look upon the agricultural work
we have done to date as one big experiment, for that is what it truly is. And any scientist will tell you that you learn as much, if not more, from experiments that fail as from those that
succeed. We study. We learn. We adapt. We try again. And we will succeed. But there must be no retreat. The ORBE project was never conceived as a fly-by-night one-issue project, but as a place
of contact between the human and the ‘other’, a place of learning and discovery. It demonstrates our faith in the future and represents the finest traditions of our science. And of
course it costs money. But to disestablish Paradise and abort the ORBE project now is akin to stopping Galileo just as he was on his way up the steps of the leaning tower of Pisa, or Newton as
he was about to sit down in his orchard, or Archimedes when just about to take a bath, or Einstein because his experiments took place in his mind, in his vision, and lesser minds could not
understand them. Let us not make that mistake.
A week after submitting her letter Hera received the following reply from the secretary of the Special Review Committee of the Space Council.
Dr Hera Melhuish
Director ORBE project
Paradise
The Special Review Committee has considered your submission re the Disestablishment of Paradise. After due deliberation, the Committee has concluded that your letter
provides insufficient grounds for the summoning of a full review hearing. No further action will be taken on this matter. The committee will therefore recommend that the Disestablishment of
Paradise proceed as proposed.
M. Hackabout
Secretary to the Review Committee
White-faced, Hera pinned the letter up on the board for all to see. It was greeted with anger, frustration, disbelief and talk of revolution – the entire ORBE project
seethed with such feelings.
Hera contacted the Settlers’ Agricultural Association (SAA) to see what their reaction was, but they were strangely unresponsive, evasive even. That night stones were thrown through the
front windows of the ORBE HQ.
The very next morning Hera was informed by the legal division of the Space Council that serious allegations of malpractice had been lodged against the ORBE project by members of that same
Settlers’ Agricultural Association and that the project was to be audited forthwith. She was ordered to make all files, letters and fractal transcripts available to the investigative body.
She was also informed that she would be summonsed in due course to answer any allegations that were found to be substantiated.
Later that very same day agents from the Audit Unit began to arrive at the shuttle port. All filing cabinets and computers were immediately seized and sealed and taken to the New Syracuse
Library for evaluation. The library was placed under guard. The reaction of the ORBE staff was, predictably, one of outrage. Who had ordered this? Why? On what grounds? But answers were slow in
coming. The only assurances they received were that the cabinets and computers would be returned as soon as their contents had been viewed and, where relevant, copied. That left many feeling very
uneasy.
Soon the entire ORBE HQ was alive with AU agents. They had a mandate signed by Tim Isherwood himself, giving them wide powers. They could investigate anything and everything, from financial
records to the suspected use of ORBE equipment for personal activities. They behaved in a manner that seemed calculated to create maximum disruption and irritation.
Work ground to a halt. Tempers flared, resulting in flat disobedience and non-cooperation. Passwords were withheld and someone crashed the entire computer and communications network. It fell to
Hera to try and calm the situation – which, as one wit observed, was like asking the fire to cool the pot. But she did broker a deal whereby the computers and filing cabinets were returned in
exchange for sworn assurances that no data would be destroyed until vetted. Magically the network repaired itself and work recommenced. But everyone was shaken, not least Hera, who had never
experienced the full abrasive impact of bureaucratic ruthlessness.
Special audit teams went out to the various outposts where experimental work was taking place. This led to a clash at the umbrella tree plantation. One of the investigators urinated under a tree
and Pietr Z, already fuming from answering questions about how his work helped farmers trying to grow corn, grabbed the man and threw him off the observation platform and into the marsh which
surrounded the trees. There he became entangled in the Talking Jenny and almost drowned. By the time he was rescued Pietr Z had run off into the dense thickets surrounding the plantation, thickets
in which he knew every path and glade. Pietr Z was never caught or seen again.
Worst of all were the agents who specialized in personal interrogation. These were led by a big heavy-jawed man named Stefan Diamond. He had eyes that stared and were unsmiling, a manner that
always suggested that he disbelieved what he had been told, an ability to simply keep asking the same question time after time and a slowness in note taking that was clearly deliberate. His team
were all cast from the same mould. They sat in on meetings, and the easy, candid and salacious back and forth of argument that had previously characterized such meetings came to an abrupt end.
People started to talk like automatons, knowing that every word was being recorded. Or else they were heavily ironic and used the technical jargon of their discipline to confuse and mock their
interlocutors. They referred to them as scatophaga, merdivora, escherichia and Symplocarpi foetidi. It did not make them popular but helped them feel a lot better.
The same agents also began to interview individual members of the ORBE project. They asked about personal research work, about dealings with the agricultural sector, about how ORBE funding was
distributed, and whether clear directives regarding their work priorities were received from senior management. All conversations were recorded with warnings that any false information or failure
to disclose information could form the grounds for later action – though it was not clear what that action might be.
Morale plummeted among ORBE personnel. Meetings between friends took place in greenhouses, or by the sea where there were no Auriculae aconitae listening.
Hera, of course, came in for very close scrutiny and had the indignity of being suspended while on duty. She was locked out of her office and denied access to her files.
One night Tania Kowalski was woken up by knocking on her door. Hera was in a terrible state, shaking and hardly able to stand. Tania’s first thought was that Hera had
been raped. She brought her into the small lounge and sat her down and held her in her arms and rocked her and tried to make sense of what had happened. It was rape but not of the sexual kind
– of the mind and sensibilities.
That evening Hera had gone to her laboratory and discovered that someone, despite the big warning sign, had disabled the alarm and then turned off the power to the cryogenic units. All the
bio-form samples dating right back to the early days of Paradise were now slush. The loss was irreplaceable. This could only have been deliberate.
Shocked and distraught, Hera had returned to her shilo to find the front door open, a window smashed and there, hanging on the veranda by a cord, was a Tattersall weed. It had been trimmed so
that the blue flower resembled a head, and four of its spiky limbs were like arms and legs. It was draped in some of Hera’s underwear. Grotesquely it turned in the light breeze.
Hera, afraid to go into the house, had run all the way to Tania’s cabin.
Next morning there was no sign of the hanging Tattersall weed and no one owned up to the damage in the deep-freeze lab.
Hera stayed with Tania after that. And when she moved about New Syracuse she was always accompanied. The theory was that it was members of the Settlers’ Agricultural Association who had
done these things and there was whispered talk of reprisals, which Hera tried to stop, but she felt the weakening of her authority.
Then, with no warning, the audit ended as quickly as it had begun. The Audit Unit personnel simply packed up and took passage off planet without any explanation.
The ORBE workers were left dazed, insecure and baffled. What had it all been about? Thousands of documents had been copied but none were of what you could call an incriminating nature –
embarrassing possibly, comic frequently, scatological often and sometimes brutally frank. Simply the ephemera of busy, clever people.
There were no financial irregularities. ORBE
did
work efficiently. They knew it; everyone knew it – and if some of its members were disrespectful and looked a bit scruffy, that
was their choice. There was nothing untidy about their minds.
But relations with the Settlers’ Agricultural Association dropped to an all-time low. Fights broke out, and the aggies, who had always had a certain contempt for the scientists, discovered
what it meant to tangle with the range-hardened and self-sufficient men and women of the ORBE project, for they could give better than they received when it came to a fight.
The only gleam of hope was that the Space Council had not yet ratified the Economic Subcommittee recommendation. A crucial debate was scheduled to take place just seven days after the audit
agents had departed.