The Disestablishment of Paradise (54 page)

Forgive me, Olivia. I don’t want to talk about it any more.

So, we return to the story of Hera and Mack as they stumble about in their wet clothes, making camp inland from the small bay where
The Courtesy of MINADEC
sank. Tomorrow they will
climb into the Staniforth Mountains.

Soaked and cold from their boat journey, they made a fire under some trees inland from the shore and declared the rest of the day a day of rest. Hera put the tent up while Mack
prepared a simple meal. Then she climbed into the tent before the food was served, intending just to change her clothes. But she fell asleep, on her face, where she lay. All Mack did, for fear of
waking her, was to remove her boots and tip the water out. Later she stirred herself, pushed her damp clothes off and burrowed into him. He, flat on his back, didn’t even notice.

Morning found them stiff and hungry but more optimistic. Their plan was getting simpler.

Hera knew pretty well where they had put ashore. Mack, in a rare oversight, had forgotten to pack the charts, but it didn’t matter. She knew that if they climbed from the bay they would
reach the foothills of the Staniforth Mountains. They would then have to follow one of the valleys until they approached the snowline, where they would be able to see the Organs. Once there, they
could cross over a high valley which divided the peaks and then drop down on the other side to the Kithaeron Hills, below which was Redman Lake and old Pietr Z’s umbrella tree plantation. It
would seem, almost, like home. From there they would have half a day’s walk to the coast where old Pietr Z had his lifeboat. Hera was certain it would still be there, remembering her first
day alone on the planet when she flew over it. Then they would sail across Dead Tree Bay, just as Hera and Pietr Z had done many years earlier. They would round Dead Tree Spit and head directly for
the shores of Hammer. The journey should take them no more than a day or two, depending on the weather. She knew that coast well and was confident she could navigate their way to New Syracuse. Then
they would contact the shuttle. It would come down, they’d step aboard and within the hour they would be at the shuttle platform over Paradise and enjoying warm showers, drinks with friends,
a telling of adventures, soft beds followed by a quick skedaddle through the fractal and . . . They neither knew nor cared what came next.

It sounded a long way, but Hera knew it was not. Her ORBE people would do a trek like that and not really think much of it. The only thing they had to do was avoid the Michelangelos, and she
already had some plans for that.

By mid-morning of the next day they had made good progress. They followed a stream inland and then struck an old MINADEC bulldozer track, which led directly up towards the Staniforth Mountains.
They could see the peaks, towering white and menacing in the distance, when the clouds lifted. The track was heavily overgrown, but only with dimple and hyssop flag and trefil wanderer, and these
they could push through easily. The path led them back and forth around the hills but always upwards. By late afternoon they could see the Organs clearly and the first scatterings of snow which
surrounded them.

The Organs were just that, big pipes. They were the mineral exoskeletons of plants called tuyau – so named by the French mineralogist who discovered them. These plants – which when
living resembled thick, probing, green worms – had grown up from the valleys below. They burrowed underground. They split rock. They sent out side shoots which started new plants, and these
in turn burrowed over and under, and sometimes through their parents. Those tuyau which had grown right up to the high plateau, snaking through the valleys and thrusting across ravines, died when
they encountered the permafrost.

From studies of the growth patterns, such a journey might have taken a tuyau 5000 years, and in the case of the larger plants considerably longer. At the top they clustered like hundreds of
broken mouths. It was the wind playing over these pipes which gave them their popular name. When the wind blew from a certain direction, they sounded alto, diapason, swell to choir, basso profundo
and treble. It was mighty music, strange and spectral – and no two tunes were ever the same.

Mack and Hera climbed until evening. They reached a small shelf which had once been a turning place for the half-track grubbers, and here they pitched camp. Mack stood for a while shading his
eyes and peering up towards the Organs. The setting sun caught them obliquely, making them look like gun barrels. Then he looked closer, squinting. ‘Hera,’ he called. ‘Come here,
sweetheart. Look. Up there. Doesn’t that look like a man looking down at us? There. Near the big open pipe. Just in front. It looks as though he’s sitting on something and has his hand
raised.’

Hera looked, her eyes no better than Mack’s in the fading light. And yes, she saw it now. It did look like a man. And yes, his hand was raised as though in greeting. But when she waved in
reply, he did not move. ‘Probably just a trick of the light,’ she said. ‘The frost can make strange shapes of the rocks.’

He was still there in the morning. In the clear light the shape was unmistakable. It was a man.

With the rising sun behind, his face was in shadow, but he seemed to be leaning forward as though to get a better look at them. He was still waving, and his other arm was back behind him,
resting as though pointing. It was a strange, open posture – a sculpted pose, full of expression and energy.

Mack tried to guess what the white figure might be. Perhaps it was a statue, erected during the MINADEC days to honour some commercial baron – though why it should be placed in this remote
place he could not explain. Alternatively, its very remoteness suggested a joke, perhaps played on a boss by disgruntled employees, like the grotesque drawings Mack had sometimes found on the
wooden rafters of old buildings. Mack was sure that when he and Hera reached the figure they would find some crude and perhaps obscene effigy, and a scratched note referring to things long
forgotten and people long since dead. Hera pointed out that, even at this distance, there was a fineness of composition and proportion, no hint of mockery, and Mack had to agree. His final
suggestion was that what they were seeing were the frozen remains of some lonely wanderer who had got lost. Hera nodded at this, but she had her own ideas as to who it might be, and these, for the
moment, she preferred to keep to herself. Neither could explain the pearly whiteness of the figure. It was not snow or frost, as the snow had melted and the frost had vanished with the coming of
the sun. But the figure drew them to it, as much by its mystery as its friendly open welcome.

The path they followed wound back and forth, and for long periods it was out of sight, but then the next time they saw the figure it was nearer – and it was definitely a carved chair or a
throne of some kind it was sitting on. Finally, they scrambled up a slope and came out onto the bleak platform where the figure sat. They had reached the place where the Organs began. Here, and on
the neighbouring hills, were the grey and white pipes of the tuyau, jutting up out of the ground and pointing to the sky or twisting like serpents across the valleys. They moaned to themselves in
the light breeze.

The view was magnificent. They could see right down to the sea, where the swell, still marching in from the storm in the east, formed great arcs in the water. Close to the shore the waves became
foam-backed as they reared and broke. They could not see the bay where they had made landfall. That was hidden behind a hillside. Looking inland they saw the Staniforths magnificent against the
blue sky. They were among the highest mountains on Paradise.

The figure on its throne was seated very close to the edge of the stone platform. In front of it the cliff fell away steeply. Mack approached cautiously from behind until he was close enough to
reach out and touch its back. It was smaller than Mack had expected, but there was now no doubt that it was a man and he had once been alive. Even the tangle of his beard was preserved. But
everything, his body and even his clothes, had been turned to a creamy white as though made from wishbone. He was wearing an open shirt and shorts. The scuff marks on his hiking boots and the
laces, double knotted, and even the fibres of the laces, could be seen. The hairs on his arms, the knees – knobbly with age – the wrinkles at the neck, the thick splayed fingers of a
man who worked with his hands, everything was perfectly preserved. At his feet was a small backpack, the top undone and the strap lying across his boot. Inside was a cut-down pipe and some leaves
which could only be from the calypso. All were white. And the face?

Mack edged round in front of the figure and looked at the face. The man was smiling – a fierce kind of smile, but a smile none the less. One hand was raised, open-palmed – you could
see the lines in the palm, and if you knew about such things you could have read his fortune. The other arm rested behind on the back of the throne, and seemed to be pointing to one of the large
pipes. ‘Go that way,’ he seemed to be saying.

Hera had hung back. She had recognized the figure. It was, of course, her old friend Pietr Z. So this was where he had run to after escaping from the umbrella tree plantation. She might have
guessed. He had often talked about the music of the Organs, and he knew more paths and ways to get here than anyone. She looked round the stone platform. It was one of his lookouts, no doubt of
that. She could see where he had cleared the ledge, piling up little cairns of stones, each of them serving as a memorial to someone. She saw where he had chiselled and carved the chair from slabs
of tuyau and bedded them into the rock platform.

Pietr Z often used to disappear on his ‘sabbaticals’, as he called them, for two or three days at a time and always alone. This was one of the places he would come to. Well, he had
found a fine place to die. And he had no doubt planned it for some time. But it was very strange too. How had he managed to die with his hand up like that? And what kept it in position now? How
come his body had not slumped? It was as though he had been frozen instantly.

She edged round to the front and reached forward and touched him, stroking his grizzled cheek. He was as hard as rock but with a hint of warmth from the morning sun. His body seemed to have
fused with the slabs of tuyau that made up his seat. This was, Hera guessed, a more advanced form of the ‘lacquering’ that had so interested Shapiro.
¹⁴
Here, if Shapiro was right, the mind-matter of Paradise had done more than interfuse with human cells; it had taken them over completely, transforming them molecule by molecule
into the material of Paradise itself. It would never weather. It would always retain this sharp and detailed clarity, for it was, in a way, alive, and would remain so as long as Paradise remained
alive. ‘Was this your reward, old man?’ she murmured. ‘Was this what you wanted?’ She guessed that the answer to both questions was yes.

‘So you knew him?’ said Mack.

‘One of the originals. In every way. Pietr Z. He came up here to escape. I’ll tell you about him later.’

Mack sensed that Hera wanted a few minutes alone. He wandered off to explore. The gaping mouths of the tuyau especially interested him.

Hera sat for a while with her back against the old man’s knees, staring out. She looked in the direction he was looking. It was exactly the direction from which they had come. If you
partly closed your eyes, you could believe you were floating. She found herself wondering if any of the red Valentine balloons had come drifting by this way. That would have been a sight!

‘Well, old Pietr Z,’ she said finally. ‘I took your
Tales of Paradise
. Thought you wouldn’t be reading it for a while. And you’ll be glad to know that the
last time I was at the plantation everything was doing well. And the bloody Tattersall weeds – remember how we used to curse them and chop them back? Well, they have proved to be a
friend.’ It was ‘friend’ which triggered her tears. Not heavy, and not causing sniffing. Just emotion coming out through the eyes. Tears for memory, and tears of gladness too,
that she had had the good fortune to find him and say her last farewell. She suspected, though, that there might be more to this than just good fortune. In many ways her path seemed shaped.
‘Did you hope I would find you, old friend? I think you did.’

Hera stood up and wished she had something to leave, some little token to mark her presence, and then she remembered how Pietr Z had always wanted her to wear her hair down. Men of his
generation always liked women with long hair. Well, now she
was
wearing it long, and had got used to the pony tail bobbing at her back. She pulled a few strands loose, ran her tongue along
them, twisted them, and tied them round the thumb of his upraised hand. ‘There you are, Pietr Z. That’s for you. You’ll be glad to know I’m finding long hair very useful
these days.’ And as she released the hair, it turned white and stiffened and stopped blowing in the wind. When she touched it, it was hard and sharp, and although she did not try, she knew it
would not break or bend, no matter how hard she twisted.