The Disestablishment of Paradise (28 page)

With Hera’s agreement, I wish to add a comment to this account. Hera has called me a rationalist, and I suppose that, in comparison with her, I am. However, for once I am
the one being somewhat mystical, albeit in a rather down-to-earth way, for I have thought long and hard about labyrinths, considering them a gateway between realities. We are close to a universal
law.

The labyrinth Hera had followed on her way in to the Michelangelo undoubtedly defined the power outline associated with that small entity the Michelangelo-Reaper, just as iron filings define the
power lines of a magnet. That it should take a spiral form should not surprise us, since that is one of the fundamental creative patterns of nature.

My contention is that the path she followed to escape was quite different from the path of entry. The escape path did not truly exist when she entered, or existed only potentially, that is in a
veiled way, available only to the person of knowledge. Hera’s experience in the labyrinth brought her that knowledge. What is more, I think a fundamental acceptance of her by that psychically
lively world had taken place. The key moment was when she kneeled down and reached out in love to the small entity. That act triggered everything. Had it been anyone else – Shapiro, say, or
me – a death would have occurred. Only those like the wild girls of Paradise such as Sasha, or perhaps a man like Pietr might have been safe.

My belief is that the new path was revealed by a will greater than that of the Michelangelo. We can call it the will of the Dendron, for it is assuredly that which saved her. Through her simple
act of love, the Dendron came to know her. The trees parted, a way was found, and I am very sure they closed ranks again when she had passed. The mischievous little Michelangelo again took
charge.

Having stepped in so far, I will go further. To me, there is no doubt that Hera should have died in that clearing. How could anyone survive that ordeal and walk out? It is my belief that there
was a moment of choice in which one reality was replaced by another.

Labyrinths, as I said in my introduction, are pathways of knowledge. As such, they have only one right way of entering if you wish them to fulfil their purpose. Hera entered the labyrinth the
right way, and faced the ordeal it offered, as well as her own fear. She triumphed. She thereby gained mastery. She was thus her own salvation. The intelligence of the heart, strong in faith and
toughened by experience, can achieve what, on the surface, seems to be impossible. The mind is the cause; the effect is the miracle.

There can be no cheating with labyrinths. Had Hera spotted a narrow path which looked like a short cut, and had she taken it in order to enter, or had she cut and burned her way, she would have
found the going hard. Perhaps, mysteriously, she would have found herself walking out again. But if she had battled to the centre, she would, as it were, have gone against nature, and no friendly
weed or long-dead Dendron (as she then believed) would have saved her.

She was no real risk to the child in the clearing, but it would have had her and consumed her in its way, and all that would now be left would be another small desiccated corpse lying on the
surface of Paradise and a scrap of meshlite.

No book either!

‘C’mon, boss. You don’t get overtime for lying in bed. Brought you some tea.’ It was Dickinson. He was shaking Mack’s shoulder. Mack growled
something and rolled over. Then he came awake with a start. It seemed as if his head had just touched the pillow. But there had been no more dreams.

‘You feeling any better?’

‘No. But I’ll cope.’

After breakfast Mack’s demolition crew kitted up for outside. They completed their buddy check and one by one passed through the airlock and out into space. They emerged
at the end of one arm of the shuttle platform, close to where certain barges that had already been filled but then rejected as unsafe for fractal were tethered. These barges had not been filled
correctly and needed to be repacked and resealed before transit.

High above them a fractal freighter was angling down, its beautiful silver and black panels catching the sun. It had emerged during their sleep break, being already several days late. In a few
hours it would lock on to a brilliant silver photon beam from the platform, and that would lead it into the docking web, where hundreds of transit barges were already waiting. However, by the time
the photon beam came on, Mack’s team would all be safe inside the shuttle port, for the raw energy of the beam did strange things to the space nearby.

Mack’s team assembled outside the airlock, linked safety lanyards and then, using a permanent skim line, crossed as a group to an assembly point where four or five of the barges were
tethered. There they separated, each person linking to one of the several skim lines that connected up all parts of the holding pen. Using simple magnetic induction and a small hand-held field
generator, they could move up and down the lines with the skill of spiders. Already a charged mesh net was in place around a couple of the barges to make sure no cargo was accidentally spilled into
space when they were opened. They were not taking any chances.

Mack was about to launch himself down a line when he heard a call on open frequency. ‘Hold it, Mack. Don’t engage. Your harness is loose.’

Annette Descartes, one of the two women in the demolition team, came skimming down the line. She tethered next to Mack and drifted round him. ‘Hell, Mack. You’re as undone as a whore
at a barbecue. Who was your buddy?’

‘Yeah, I was told,’ said Mack. ‘Thought I’d done it.’ He felt the straps tighten and the magnetic clips lock.

‘That’s what comes of staying up half the night with that arsehole Dickinson!’

‘I heard that,’ said Dickinson, who was hanging clamped to the side of the barge. He had been first out and had set up the mesh. ‘We were discussing the pros and cons of French
philosophers.’

‘Well, you should look after the old man better. There you go, Mack. Engage now.’ She touched her helmet to his – the deep-space equivalent of a quick squeeze – and then
gave him a push. Mack shot along the line. At the other end, the other woman in the team, Polka, was waiting just in case there was some malfunction.

The truth was that Mack’s mind was not on the job at all. The unease he’d felt in the night was still with him. He’d tried to contact Captain Abhuradin to see if there was any
message from Hera, but she was already on duty in the fractal control room and could not be disturbed. And now he had started to make mistakes. He knew that something was wrong with Hera, and the
feeling would not go away.

‘You OK, boss?’

‘Yeah, fine. Just a bit dozy this morning, eh?’ He did not see the members of the team hanging round the mesh make small hand signals to one another. Mack’s reply had convinced
no one. They would be watching him closely.

Mack was a man of hunches. Usually they came to him like sudden certainties and he would hear himself say things like, ‘Everyone check your shackles – now,’ or,
‘We’re going to back off from this one.’ And, sure enough, moments later some problem would be revealed. The feeling he had now was less specific, just a deep unease. It was the
uncertainty that was undoing him. Later that shift he welded shut a case that had just been opened for checking.

‘Hell, boss. You’re getting to be a liability.’ It was Cole Barata, the man who had just spent twenty minutes cutting the case open.

‘I am too,’ said Mack. And he switched his welding torch off and went on open transmission. ‘OK. Private talk. Barge 7. Everyone secure your work and then come on over.’
One by one the members of the team assembled. Some came down, walking the mesh on magnetic soles; others came gliding in using the skim lines. When they joined they linked magnetically to whoever
was nearest and then plugged in for private radio connection.

‘Fire away, boss.’

‘All on closed circuit? Transmitters off?’

A chorus of voices said, ‘Yes,’ all sounding very loud and without the space echo that sometimes made conversation on open frequency difficult.

‘You’ve all noticed that I’m, er . . . not quite myself this shift?’

‘Ye-es.’

‘Well, those of you who have worked with me for a while will know that I sometimes act on instinct. Like I sometimes get a feeling that something is wrong and I stop work and get us out.
Don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with this job. This job is just a pain in the arse, and if we weren’t getting paid double we wouldn’t be out here cos we’ve got
contracts waiting on Proxima Celeste and the Moon Dump and—’

‘Get to the point, Mack.’

‘Well, I’ve got a bad feeling now, but it’s not to do with us. It’s . . . er . . . it’s to do with . . . er . . .’

‘Not that pretty little professor woman who threw us out of her place on Paradise when that tree shed its seeds? What was her name now – Sheila Belich?’

‘Hera Melhuish. Thank you, Dickinson. Yes, it is her. She’s on her own down there. Don’t ask me why. Some people are plain dumb when it comes to looking after themselves. But I
keep getting this feeling that something really bad is happening down there. And I want to do something to help, but I don’t know what.’

‘Did Polka and me ever meet this woman?’ This from Annette Descartes.

‘No, you weren’t on that trip. Just me and a few of the fellas.’

‘I get the picture. And a few bottles of wine. And I bet you wish you’d had that Abwhoradin woman there too.’

‘She was, actually.’

‘This gets better. So what does this little professor woman have that Polka and I don’t?’

‘Can I answer that, Mack?’

‘Quiet, Dickinson.’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘So . . . er . . . that’s why I’m not quite myself,’ finished Mack lamely. ‘Sorry.’

There was a pause. No one was sure what to say. They were looking at a side of Mack they had hardly ever seen before. They had seen him thoughtful, but rarely shy. The idea that he might have
fallen for a woman – especially a high-powered scientific one – surprised, pleased and amused them. But Mack was obviously unhappy. He was not love sick, he was worried sick, and his
mind was not on his work. This needed sorting out, for all their sakes.

Finally, Polka lifted her hand to show she wanted to speak. This itself was unusual, as Polka was the quieter of the two women. ‘So tell us, Mack. What would you like to do? You’re
no good up here while your mind’s down there.’ Several voices murmured assent. ‘Do you want us to get Captain Headdown to give this Hera woman a call? Make sure she is OK and
everything? Annette and I can arrange that, can’t we, sweetheart?’

‘Not a problem. She and me are like that!’ replied Annette with a gesture.

‘Excuse me. Can I offer a suggestion?’

‘What is it, Dickinson?’

‘Polka’s idea’s good. But it has one problem. You can’t trust the radio cos clever people can lie, you know, and that lady is clever and determined and if she thought you
were on your way down or were worried about her, then she’d lie through her teeth just to keep you out because she’s proud, man. She’s proud. I know it sounds a bit far-fetched,
but here’s what I think we should do. I suggest we break into the control room down below and steal a shuttle. Cole and Annette stand guard up here. No fucker gets past them, right? Everyone
else acts as normal. I guide the shuttle down to the surface; you fire up the old Demo Bus we left down there – it’ll still fly – and then you get your arse over to Monkey Tree
whatsit and see what the fuck is going on. Then when she kicks you out, we do everything in reverse and no one is any the wiser. And the best time to do this is in about an hour when this freighter
is docking and everyone is up top watching the fireworks. See, Mack. I only mention this because I know you’d never think of such a brilliant idea for yourself. But I’ve been in your
team for, what, eight years now, and I would have been fried twice, crushed once and jetted out into deep space if it hadn’t been for you and your hunches. If you think something is wrong
down there, then I reckon there is.
Carpe diem
, Mack. Take the chance while it’s on offer, because we can cope up here. Right, everyone?’

Everyone, despite their space helmets, was clearly astonished at what Dickinson had suggested, but they gave their support. They looked at Mack.

‘Thank you, Dickinson. The thought had crossed my mind. But I don’t want word about this to leak out. I mean it is a bit . . . it’s not as if I was a young . . .’

‘
Amor vincit omnia
, Mack,’ said Dickinson. ‘Do it.’

The rest of the team chimed in, agreeing. As Dickinson had said, they were all busting for a spell off planet, and if they couldn’t take leave, well, a bit of quiet adventure, intrigue and
thumbing your nose at authority would fit the bill. Finally Mack agreed.

Brilliant red lights began to blink on beacons stationed all round the shuttle port. Only fifteen minutes before the photon beam came on. Everyone working outside would have to move inside the
platform or enter a security pod. Mack’s team moved inside the platform.

As they were waiting to go through the airlock. Annette Descartes touched her helmet to that of Dickinson. ‘Listen blue-eyes. What did that
Amor vincit omnia
stuff mean? Is it
French?’

‘No, a bit of Latin I picked up when I was cleaning windows in the convent. It means love conquers all – and if you meet me in the shuttle bay after we’ve got the old man down
below, I’ll give you a practical demo, OK?’

At some time during the journey home to Monkey Tree Terrace, Hera must have woken up sufficiently to crawl into bed before again passing out. She does not recall this. Nor does
she recall the announcement from Alan that they had landed safely.

Some ten minutes after landing Alan began to play music which gradually got louder. He warmed the inside of the SAS and made sure there was boiling water available.

Finally Hera shifted and opened her eyes. She had trouble orientating herself for a moment. She felt sore all over. ‘Turn the music off,’ she said huskily.