The Disestablishment of Paradise (70 page)

I can hear you say, ‘What is the moment of death?’ We have argued about that for years and have reached no final conclusion. Paradise, however, cuts through the problem. It knows
when you are dead and takes action. It may be the moment, described in some philosophies, when the fine silver thread breaks and the spirit leaps free. It may be the moment when your brainwaves
cease. If you are on Earth or in an Earth-simulated environment, such as the shuttle platform, then of course your body immediately begins a million and one dynamic processes, all the consequence
of your death, and you decay, and so we bury you or burn you or fire you into the sun.

But not on Paradise. It is the stuff of horror stories to contemplate that you might yet have consciousness when Paradise decides you are dead. You live on in an eternal moment of whatever
suffering you were experiencing as the planet closes about you. But I doubt that. That would not be consistent with everything I know and have experienced about Paradise. I would stake my life on
the fact that Paradise knows exactly to the nano of a nanosecond when you are dead, and in a way which we, confused by categories and processes, do not. The Thanatos point may indeed be a moment
bounded on one side by the grey-moving-to-black of decay and on the other by the grey-moving-to-green of life, but as a point of transition, of interface, the Thanatos point exists.

Here, on Paradise, we used to bury bodies, and for many years they remained intact, down there among the roots. There are no histories indicating that Paradise rejected the human in the early
days. The first was, I think, a child, but that was during the agricultural pioneer stage and things were already going wrong. But now, some generations on, those same bodies ‘rise again and
push us from our stools’. We find we are not destroyed beneath the soil, as would be the case on Earth, but have undergone something akin to a sea change. Shakespeare would no doubt see it
more clearly, but to the common eye the bodies that are found sleeping on the surface have shrunk as they dried and seem coated with lacquer. They become lighter too. They burn like chaff. They
leave little ash. Even the bones ignite like phosphorus. We have not been here long enough to know these mummies’ ultimate fate, but the healthy soil will not contain them and exhumes them by
some natural working of its own. We should place sentinels on the graveyards of Paradise to watch the dead rise. (My God. If I had written those words a few centuries ago, I would have been talking
about the Last Judgement. Let us keep Paradise clear of such thoughts.)

The secret to all of these changes lies in the interface between our bodies and Paradise. Buster and I have together studied this for some years.

My first experiment was of fourteenth-century simplicity. When I brought him home, dry and easy enough to carry, I cut a section across one of his claws with my scalpel. I suppose I expected to
see a fine profile of the lacquer – a bit like the rind on a horse chestnut – and perhaps, if I were really lucky, I might even see it spread to cover the newly exposed part. No such
luck. The fault is in the metaphor, for we are not dealing with lacquer or enamel or rind or any kindred process, but something vastly more subtle.

Where I had made the diagonal cut, the exposed surface was in no way different from the skin or the eyeball or the individual hair of Buster’s coat. Either the change had come as I cut, or
it had been there all the time. I am still not absolutely sure of the answer to this, although I have spent quite a time chopping bits off him, dipping them in different substances, boiling,
freezing, etc. When I cut him open – a bit like cutting through stiff cardboard – I found his organs intact, right down to the contents of his stomach and bowels, and all in a perfect
state of preservation. A cast, fired and glazed, could not have been more true. It was obvious that this cut-and-see approach was not getting anywhere.

My second major experiment was much more upmarket. I took Buster on a journey to the bio-security lab at I-HEDBET. I carried him in a sealed box containing the air of Paradise, travelled as
quickly as I could and had prepared my way well. I had booked lab time and had made known the experiment I was conducting. Many research students and former colleagues wanted to assist.

The facilities of the bio-security lab at I-HEDBET are the best one can find anywhere. There I transferred Buster and his precious atmosphere to the vacuum of a hermetically sealed manipulation
closet. I was hoping to exclude all non-Paradise contamination.

Within the HMC, I was able to amputate those parts of the dog which interested me. I took slices of hairs and tissue so thin they were just a few molecules thick. Whenever I cut I encountered
the membrane. What I needed was to see into the interstices of the membrane, for this surely was the threshold which Paradise used to insulate itself from the things of Earth. Here I had a stroke
of sudden good fortune.

Among our equipment we had an electron scanner. Despite its accuracy we found we could not calculate the nanometric wavelength of the membrane, since it was operating at a frequency smaller than
the scanner could achieve. However, one of the research students had come up with a technique called resonance phasing. This uses a harmonic of the original image, and when we managed to tune to
this, we were able to gain a visual image. We were in effect seeing the unseeable, looking beyond photons, and what we saw was a gleaming silver surface so bright and energetic it had to be damped
down. As I made a section through one of Buster’s hairs, we saw something that had the brilliance of molten glass (though no heat) flow from just in front of my blade. Remember, we are
talking of quantum states, and the energy of Paradise (for such it was) was predictive, coming into existence just before it was needed.

My belief, and the belief of those who were with me, was that what we were witnessing in that blazing brilliance was a threshold. Any door or a gate has a threshold, and we were all reminded of
the scintillation which occurs just before entering the fractal. We were seeing, as well as we could, the deep energy of Paradise. And what words can we use to describe that? If this threshold
protected Paradise then it was the will of Paradise or the intention of Paradise we were seeing. It is only a small step to say we were seeing the thought of Paradise, but what that thought was, we
had no way of knowing.

Even as we watched, our faces white in the reflected light and our eyes gleaming, we saw the brilliant image fade. Silver became grey and grey gradually became grainy and died away. For me that
was a moment of awe-full truth. I knew, though how I knew I cannot say, that what we were seeing was the reality of Earth reasserting itself as the vitality of Paradise withdrew. We saw the old and
familiar onset of decay.

Later, when I wrote about this, we got into a rare old row. To me, we had gone as far as the instruments would allow and reached the point at which imagination must take over if we wanted to go
further. And that seemed to me quite appropriate. If what we were witnessing was the threshold of thought, then how better to approach it than with the imagination?

I was shaken. I had seen that brilliant threshold that could hold time at bay. It was then, and remains now, as awesome as it is terrifying. If you wish to talk of a gleaming sword that protects
Paradise, then you need look no further.

With the experiment concluded I put the remaining bits of Buster in deep freeze. I went to visit my sister in Cambridge. Thinking too hard can get you drunk, and I am lucky to have Fortuna to
fall back on, for she can always lift a hangover. Ideas are more intoxicating than wine, and she let me talk and explore contradictions, and sometimes, you know, she says just the right word and
suddenly you can see things more clearly. When you live too long in your head, the reality you find there becomes too real, falsely real, and that is when you need the challenge of masterpieces to
ground you. She played me Mozart and Haydn and stole my Baudelaire. We went to one of the twentieth-century revivals Fortuna is so keen on – Shostakovich’s
Lady Macbeth of
Mtsensk
– performed by a company from Peru. It was not to my taste, but that does not matter. It had a vitality true to that great and troubled century.

Feeling more myself, I returned to I-HEDBET. I had by then worked out my theory on how Paradise protected itself with a thin skin of thought. I now needed to observe more closely my theory in
action.

My final experiment was decidedly prehistoric. I took Buster out of cold storage, stitched him together and left him decently covered with a sheet and lying on a trolley in the corridor outside
the main bio-form lecture room. A hundred students tramp by every day. I left a note on Buster saying dead dog – do not look under this sheet, thereby ensuring that 99 students a day looked
at him and breathed on him. After some days, my patience was rewarded: Buster began to smell. Two more days in an incubation box in the bio-security lab and he was ripe. Without the protection of
Paradise, he had spontaneously begun to rot. In this state I shipped him back to Paradise with me, hoping he would pass through the fractal without his decay being arrested. He did.

Meanwhile I had Dr Melhuish come up to the platform. I made her look at Buster and undertake microbial and DNA tests. With these complete, we travelled down to the surface in a private shuttle.
At my request we journeyed as slowly as possible. We monitored the dog closely and within minutes of leaving the shuttle platform we noticed a change. Buster was becoming enamelled again. It spread
over him and through him. I imagine the effect was instantaneous, but it took a few moments for it to manifest. Our instruments stopped recording and the smell stopped too. This proved one thing:
that it was not the air of Paradise – for we were breathing shuttle air or platform air – but the presence of Paradise that caused the sea change.

We had the shuttle stopped and then taken up again, but could detect no change. Buster remained enamelled, which meant simply that the insulation of Paradise took a longer time to wear off than
to be imposed. Finally we dropped down to the surface.

During this short journey we developed the most terrible sore throats. We also experienced stomach cramps which grew in intensity the lower we descended. We tottered from the shuttle, me
clutching the dead dog and Hera making a beeline for the ladies. We both suffered from what I afterwards called Buster’s revenge, until our systems were purged of all dead dog matter. In
addition I had an itchy scalp and itchy skin, which did not really clear until I swam in the sea. We drank copious quantities of water. The symptoms did not last long, fortunately. Paradise deals
swiftly with death.

But I had proved my theory. Paradise enclosed us. Prohibited decay. It was not something in the soil. And now we also knew why the early dog handlers complained of sickness after they had taken
the dead guard dogs for disposal. And why, when others had brought in sheep and cattle, there were complaints from the shearers and slaughterers. Their sickness was caused by the particles of the
dying creature that they had inadvertently consumed, which had then been lacquered by Paradise inside them.

People used to say that this was because there were no animals native to Paradise, only plants. This is the great popular misconception. The truth is that there are no animals on Paradise and
there are NO PLANTS either. There are only the Paradise bio-forms, unique and singular, and they have a culture of total exclusion and the ability to impose it on elements from outside
Paradise.

•

POSTSCRIPTUM (not for publication): Do I mean ‘total’? Absolutes are dangerous. I think there is a
will
in the planet which can lift the veil of exclusion, but I have no
idea how. I am teased by those lines of young Sasha when she says, in her love story, ‘to see my golden dead love’s silver flowers rise’.

I have seen that silver. I saw it in a lab at I-HEDBET, and I saw it shine on the sober, surprised faces of my fellow scientists. I see it still in my mind’s eye. And I am bold enough to
make a prophecy. As Paradise wakes up, as the bodies start to bob to the surface more frequently, as the toxins grow in leaf and fruit, as the rejection gathers strength – for all these are
manifestations of the
will
, by which I mean the
thought
of Paradise – so you will find that the fractal connection will break down. They are kindred processes, and hence
they work in sympathy. It is one of the deep laws of nature.

Let us return to Miss Malik. I think that witch-woman, the more-than-a-woman, the woman that any man would die loving (I am talking of Sasha, of knowledge) knew how to cross that threshold and
she did that for her man Big Anton. His body will never be found, and nor will Sasha’s. That I promise. At their death they simply dissolved like a leaf of the tough hybla that settles on the
ground. They dissolved. Skin, juices, bones and all flowed into the soil of Paradise – to be reborn in some way of its own devising. For them the gate into Paradise was open.

As for me, well, I am pretty pickled inside, and I know I am hooked on Paradise, but I will not deliquesce. So, when my time comes, my wishes are very clear. To get me off Paradise before the
last breath. I do not want that sudden insulation, that lacquered shroud. And burn Buster too, as a hero. But . . .

End

‘How the Valentine Lily Got Its Name’, from
Tales of Paradise
by Sasha Malik

The following is the story which Hera was referring to when she mentions the tale of Valentine O’Dwyer and Francesca Pescatti.

Most references in the story are obvious, but it is worth remembering that there never was a child called Jemima. She was the fictional younger sister or niece that Sasha imagined. Conventional
wisdom holds that this was wish-fulfilment, a product of Sasha’s loneliness. But I hold there is more. I think Jemima reflects Sasha’s desire to communicate and pass on her knowledge of
Paradise. In my reading, Jemima is the child which Sasha would never have.