The Disestablishment of Paradise Read online

  The Disestablishment of Paradise

  A NOVEL IN FIVE PARTS PLUS DOCUMENTS

  Phillip Mann

  GOLLANCZ

  LONDON

  Dedication

  For my grandchildren

  Jasper, Poppy and Ianto

  in the hope that they inherit

  a world more peaceful than Paradise.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  Part One The Political Tale

  1 Concerning Paradise

  2 Political Games

  3 A Moment of Madness

  4 Political Games – Concluded

  5 Sister Hilda Speaks of Hera

  6 Count Down to Vigil

  Part Two Alone on Paradise

  7 Elegie

  8 The Witness

  9 Lux in Tenebris

  10 The First Day

  11 The Call

  12 Tattersall Errant

  13 At the Heart of the Labyrinth

  14 Mack the Dreamer

  15 Ordeal in the Labyrinth

  16 Convergence

  17 Things Fall Apart

  Part Three Saving the Dendron

  18 A Team

  19 Abhuradin Worried

  20 A Moment of Peace and Reflection

  21 The Path of the Pendulum

  22 Dendron!

  23 First Close Encounter

  24 A Closer Encounter

  25 Sirius

  26 Third and Final Encounter

  Part Four Paradise Menacing

  27 Love – a Transcript

  28 The Courtesy of MINADEC

  29 Round the Head of the Horse

  30 Haven

  31 Concerning Mack

  32 The Watcher on the Heights of Staniforth

  33 Down the Tuyau

  Part Five Michelangelo-Reaper

  34 Reaper – Mack

  35 Reaper – Hera

  36 Disestablishment

  Documents

  1 ‘Concerning the Fractal Moment’, from the Daybooks of Mayday and Marie Newton

  2 ‘Getting Your Man’, from Tales of Paradise by Sasha Malik

  3 Extract from the official report into illicit trade in Paradise products: Paradise plum and Dendron

  4 ‘Agricultural Developments and a Recipe’, from the Daybooks of Mayday and Marie Newton

  5 ‘Plum Crazy’, from the private notebook of Professor Israel Shapiro

  6 ‘Shunting a Rex’, from Tales of Paradise by Sasha Malik

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

  8 ‘If You Go Down to the Woods Today . . .’, from Tales of Paradise by Sasha Malik

  9 ‘Child Spared Grim Fate’ by Wendy Tattersall, News on Paradise 27

  10 ‘The Pity of It’ by Wendy Tattersall, News on Paradise 28

  11 ‘Buster’, by Professor Israel Shapiro

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

  Endnotes

  Also by Phillip Mann

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Be thou, Spirit fierce,

  My spirit! be thou me, impetuous one!

  Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,

  Like wither’d leaves, to quicken a new birth;

  And, by the incantation of this verse,

  Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth

  Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!

  Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth

  The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,

  If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

  From the final verse of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s

  ‘Ode to the West Wind’

  This book is dedicated to Sister Hilda,

  late of Anchor Hold-over-Europa.

  Good friend and teacher

  Wise guide and counsellor

  Strong as the strung bow of Odysseus chasing demons,

  Gentle as the Great Mother you so loved to quote.

  In gratitude.

  Hera Melhuish

  Introduction

  The book you are now reading reveals the experiences of Dr Hera Melhuish during her last few months on the planet Paradise. Dr Melhuish, let us recall, was the last human being to escape from Paradise. None have returned since and none will ever do so, for that planet is now closed to us. Absolutely. Thus this biography, as much the biography of that world as of the woman, while it does not end in death, has something equally final about it.

  It will come as a surprise to some readers that a writer such as myself, better known (if known at all) as a writer of fiction for children, should now turn my hand to a work of non-fiction, a biographical work no less. In explanation let me say that this was not an honour I sought. The invitation to collaborate with Dr Melhuish was completely unforeseen. However, it arrived on my desk during one of the dark periods of my creative life – a time that all writers know well – when I was full of doubt and seeking a new direction. Thus the timing of her letter, as with so much else concerning Paradise, had a certain appropriateness.

  At that time my knowledge of Dr Hera Melhuish consisted only of what was available on the public record. She had been director of the Observation, Regeneration and Botanic Expansion (ORBE) project on Paradise at the time of the planet’s Disestablishment. Dismissed from this position for alleged misconduct, she nevertheless contrived to return to the planet on a solo mission and was, for a significant time, the only human being there. After a near-fatal accident, Dr Melhuish was joined by her ‘research assistant’ Mack – of whom more later. Together they discovered, and saved, the last living example of the Dendron Peripatetica, hitherto believed extinct. Later Mack died after encountering a rogue Michelangelo-Reaper, and Hera continued her journey alone across this now hostile planet. She was finally rescued just before the shuttle platform over Paradise began its final disintegration.

  These are the bare bones of Dr Melhuish’s story. However, it was the live transmission of the programme called The Saving of the Dendron which most caught the attention of the general public. Many of you will remember this programme, which was in continuous transmission for almost three days and did more to awaken public awareness of the deep issues behind our journeying into space than the thousands of documents issued annually by the Space Council.

  For me, this broadcast was a seminal moment in my life. For the first time I witnessed the kind of contact with an alien life form that I had dreamed about since being a child. Not only did the Dendron fulfil the deepest needs of my imagination, but I was one of those many viewers who felt the impact of the creature’s psychic presence at the moment of its severance. We were attending a birth, and while the delight of that moment has dimmed over time, its memory lingers in the most private parts of my being. It was a very pure and personal contact, and any doubts I may have had concerning the cultural importance of alien contact were dispelled by what I saw and felt. In those few moments I became vividly aware of the possibilities offered by our venture into space, and at the same time critical of what we had accomplished to date.

  Before making a formal acceptance of Dr Melhuish’s offer, I reviewed the tri-vid The Saving of the Dendron. I also read most of Dr Melhuish’s published works, and this almost undid the entire project for I discovered that Hera Melhuish is herself a fine writer. I could not understand why she could not undertake the task herself. For those who do not know her work, Tales of Io and Me is a delightful collection of bedtime stories for children. They have as their heroine a certain little girl who, not unlike their author, travels
widely, having adventures in strange places. Of Canals and Caves is a personal memoir which gives a spirited account of Hera’s diving explorations in the deep subterranean lakes on Mars and her discovery there of the luminous burrow worms. In Beyond Orion, written shortly after she joined the ORBE project on Paradise, Hera offers her vision of the possibilities for space travel via fractal gates and our responsibilities concerning alien contact. In sum, the scathing prose of her political pamphlet ‘Saving Gaia’ is matched by the light-hearted humour of her various stories for children. Stirring stuff! I found in these books a breadth of vision which I could share.

  At the end of my reading I wrote to Hera. I had three main concerns. Firstly, I freely admitted that my scientific knowledge is superficial. What I do not know, I invent – a practice well suited to fiction but hardly acceptable for a scientific inquiry. Secondly, I felt Dr Melhuish, on the evidence of her own works, was well qualified to handle her own story. And finally, why me? My strengths, such as they are, are in the fanciful, the dark and the mysterious. When I come down to earth I become leaden. I prefer the storm to the rainbow. I have also been criticized because my stories are pagan in background and savage in event. In sum, I could name ten or twenty writers whom I would regard as more qualified than me to tell her biography. But of course it was not really a biography that she wanted; it was an evocation.

  Her reply to me was characteristically direct.

  To hell with the science. You can leave that to me, not that there will be much science in the story I want to tell. The nearest we will come to physics is pataphysics! If we talk briefly about the ‘survival of the fittest’, we will talk longer about love and courage, reason and sacrifice.

  The first thing to realize is that most of the things that happened on Paradise can not be explained in a rational way – which is not to say they don’t have a reason. Paradise was never rational in our way, and the challenge is to understand it in its own terms. That in turn will tell us about the greater reality of the universe.

  You wonder why I do not write my own story. The truth is I have tried many times – but am too close to it. When I try to write about those days, I find myself so close to the events that I become like a log of wood in the fire, unable to help myself or stop the burning. There is so much I want to tell. I want to reveal why Paradise was disestablished in the first place – that itself is a dirty story, and I to my shame was no saint. I want to convey the impact Earth had on that solitary world and how it learned to respond in self-defence. I want to tell what it was like to stand inside the living body of a Dendron as its codds beat to survive. I want to tell why I am covered with the dark stains of the weeping Michelangelo, and to tell in detail what happened to Mack, who is the unsung hero of all my adventures.

  Let me confess something. At the inquiry after my rescue from Paradise I said that Mack was killed by a Michelangelo-Reaper. That is not strictly true. Mack, who was dearer to me than my own shadow, chose to join with the Reaper, while I, who loved him and Paradise more than myself and would have stayed there willingly as a slave if need be, was, in effect, dismissed both by him and the planet. My consolation has been my memories and my awareness that ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’ It was the pain and privacy of that parting which kept me silent for many years. Can you understand that? I think you can for it is women’s logic, as old as time. But I knew I would have to speak out one day. Well, now is the time. Now, like the Ancient Mariner, I feel an irresistible urge to tell my tale. And you must help me. You must question me until, like the sea in Yvegeny’s poem, I begin to yield up my monsters.

  Whatever else it does, the writing must convey the deeper, more imaginative order which underlies all those experiences. I have admired your books, enjoying the strange creatures you create from your imagination, your sense of wonder, as well as your willingness to acknowledge the darkness that can hide in the heart of man. If your style is slightly old-fashioned, as some of your critics maintain, that to me is an advantage, as is your gentle wit. In sum, I feel confident you are the best equipped person to tell this story. And if it is more understood by the children, well so be it.

  Receiving this letter, I felt as though a door into a secret garden had opened before me. I did not hesitate. I stepped through.

  A few days later I set off to visit Hera. I wanted to arrange how we were to proceed. And, to be frank, I was more than a little curious to know what she would be like in the flesh.

  I was, of course, familiar with the tri-vid images of her: short of stature even for a woman, fine features, a stubborn jaw, enviably slim and with her long hair drawn back and pinned so tightly as to give her face an Asian cast. Even soused and gleaming with the sap of the Dendron, as I first saw her in the tri-vid, she nevertheless managed to convey a somewhat neat and prim impression.

  Much of all this remains. She has neither put on weight or dwindled, and her voice for the most part retains a deep cultured tone. But the marks of Paradise are on her – her ‘love bites’ or ‘ tear-stains’, as she calls them. One is on the forehead and one on her right cheek. Her neck and arms are also marked, as is, she informs me, the rest of her body. These marks have become darker with the passing of the years. Sometimes they become sore and angry – at which times strange things must be happening on Paradise, for it is reaching out and afflicting her. If, when this resonance is really severe, she turns her gaze on you, she can, without meaning to, seem to stare coldly through you. It is the imperious look of a hawk or a basilisk. And she will apologize for this when she sees you fidget. At those times, as I eventually came to understand, she is resonating – a very important word if you wish to understand Dr Hera Melhuish – by which she means that she is both here and there, experiencing direct communion with distant Paradise while sitting in your workroom. It took me a long time to accept this, and even now I do not really understand who or what she is communicating with. Lastly, as regards her primness, you will discover if you read on that there is nothing prim about Hera Melhuish – far from it.

  However, it is the raw energy of the woman which provides the most abiding memory and for which I was unprepared. It is there at all times, whether making a sketch with quick deft strokes or cackling at some bawdy memory, gesticulating wildly for emphasis or pinning you with her bright eyes. That energy, she informs me, is the wild spirit of the Dendron, which she received into her mind and body and is now lodged there, and which may, as she avers, keep her alive for many years or snuff her out without warning, perhaps by accident through an excess of love. Suffice to say that it is the loving, spirited Dendron rather than the dread Michelangelo which is the true alien in her, and for that we should be glad.

  We agreed upon a procedure. Hera would talk and I would record her words and ask questions to draw her out. The talk could ramble, following its own logic. No topic, no matter how intimate, was off limits. And we would keep going until we had reached agreement or impasse. Arguing was also anticipated and proved unavoidable. We would meet as often as necessary.

  In this way raw material was generated, which I could then edit and shape as I saw fit. The style of the writing was left up to me. Hera’s preference was for me to tell a story and to treat her as I would a character in a novel. This proved remarkably easy.

  However, as I discovered more about Paradise and Hera, my view of the narrative changed. Sometimes, when describing events, Hera attained a clarity that I could never have matched in composition. I saw no need to improve upon what nature had supplied. Thus I have frequently used her words as spoken during our interviews. Also, to give a clearer image of Paradise, I have included a short collection of documents selected from writers who had firsthand experience of that planet. These include stories written by young Sasha Malik, who was born on Paradise, as well as passages from the daybooks of the agricultural pioneers Mayday and Marie Newton and some personal speculations by the late Professor Israel Shapiro. These documents, gathered at the end of the book, will I hope add variety and
background to the story.

  Hera also wished me to avoid specialist scientific vocabulary. ‘We are not writing a textbook,’ she said on more than one occasion. ‘Keep it simple and sweet.’ Thus, while I might have relished sounding erudite, you will find that I frequently refer to the creatures of Paradise as plants rather than bio-forms or some such equally neutral term. I do this simply because that is how they were most often seen and spoken about, even by specialists. But this must not blind us to the fact that, while there are distinct parallels with the botanic life of Earth, when we speak of the entities of Paradise we are dealing with life forms which derive from a wholly alien environment.

  Initially we met at Hera’s small apartment on Anchor Hold-over-Europa. Later, as the project neared completion, we met at my studio on Albertini-over-Terra. During each visit Hera would read and correct what I had written. I was glad to observe that, as we progressed in the project, her corrections became less – a sure sign that either I was becoming more accurate as I grew to know my subject, or that she was forgetting and letting the imaginative world of fiction become the truth.

  One difficulty we encountered from the outset was that, as a consequence of her calamitous departure from Paradise, Hera had lost all her notebooks, diaries, memos of meetings, personal records, sketches, photographs and so forth. They are still down there no doubt, on Paradise, preserved in that lacquered state in which Paradise embalms all things of Earth. And so we talked. We talked long and late. We talked until I began to see through her eyes. Sometimes we talked until there were no more words and we just stared out into space or fell asleep where we sat.

  I am not the ‘Spirit Wild’ that Shelley speaks of in his ‘Ode to the West Wind’, the poem which Hera chose to open her story. But this book is. As Hera stated during one of our meetings, ‘I hope the book will help us think about what we are and how we fit into the vast scheme of things. What we need now is not more knowledge, but to understand what we already know.’