The Disestablishment of Paradise (21 page)

He guided the boat out into the fog. Pietr was steering by compass, but he slowed every so often and stood up to peer at the sea in front of the cutter. Once he swung hard to starboard and the
boat bumped against a huge submerged trunk that ran along its side with a harsh scraping sound. ‘Bloody things move, you see. Currents always changing.’ Pietr swore for a few moments in
whatever language it was that he called native. Moments later they were free and again in open water. ‘That was part of an old Dendron,’ he said. ‘When they get waterlogged, they
only show about 5 per cent above water. So if you hit one, you know about it. There are a lot of them round here – a regular graveyard. Lots of other rubbish too, but they are the
worst.’

Hera peered into the greyness, looking for any telltale ripples or small waves suddenly appearing on the flat surface. ‘What do you mean a graveyard? Do you mean like people used to say
with elephants? That they went to a special place to die?’

‘Naw. Perhaps some of them got a bit adventurous and tried to walk over to Hammer and then got into trouble when the water got deep. Dendron couldn’t turn quick. They weren’t
bloody goats. And if they lost their footing or got swept away there’s nothing they could do. Just here the current runs up pretty fierce. Yes. And if the wind is from the north-west, it
blows them in here. Once anything gets washed in here there’s no way out. It’s a bloody trap. Has been for millions of years. They’re here till they rot. Tell you, Hera
m’girl, if you want to make your fortune, just excavate down here. There’ll be wishbones by the ton.’ Wishbone was the fanciful name given to the girdle of tough flexible fibre
which gave the Dendron its shape and allowed it to walk.

The cutter entered deeper water and Pietr increased speed. The boat began to pitch in the swell coming from the deep ocean. Hera was aware of a change in the light – the mist was blowing
away – and then, for the first time, Hera saw the island towering in front of them, and there, at its top, just emerging from the mist, a pair of giant curved horns rearing up to the clouds.
Absurdly, she was reminded of the twin towers of Chartres cathedral, until, when the mist lifted completely, she saw the monument for what it was: an old dead Dendron, twin trunks and a broken
body.

‘There he is,’ called Pietr, ‘The old man of the sea. Still on guard.’ He steered the boat through the shallows around the island. When they were close, Hera slipped over
the side and, holding the painter, guided the boat until it ground up onto the shingle shore. They pulled it up high and Pietr tied it to an iron post concreted between a pair of rocks. Then he led
the way up a rocky path, which had been marked with splotches of white paint. As they climbed, the massive remains of the Dendron seemed to peer at them over the crest of the hill. However, it was
only when they got to the top and were climbing the last few metres that its true size became apparent. The two front legs joined to form a giant arch which at its apex was some ten metres high.
Hera stood under this, looking up. She could see the gentle curve of the twin trunks soaring up to where they were broken.

Pietr, out of breath, sat on a flat rock and watched. ‘You wouldn’t have stood there if it was alive,’ he called. Hera grinned. She’d seen pictures of a Dendron when she
was a little girl on Io, seen it running with its strange three-legged gait, stamping its back foot deep into the ground and rocking forward while the tall trunks flexed and the Venus tears rang
like bells. Dendron could move fast when they had to.

Hera squeezed out between one of the front legs and the place where the Dendron had slumped as it died. She touched its side and was surprised at how prickly it was. Pietr saw her pull her hand
back. ‘Dendron aren’t like most of the plants here,’ he said. ‘When the fibres dry out, they don’t rot; they get sharp and brittle and then they flake. They must have
carried a lot of minerals, eh?’

Hera nodded and walked round the Dendron, looking up to where its twin trunks ended bluntly. ‘How tall was it when it was alive?’

‘More than a hundred metres from pad to flag, I guess.’

‘Quite a big one.’

‘Not bad, but there was one measuring a hundred and thirty metres seen up in northern Chain. Can you imagine something like that heaving its roots up out of the ground and setting off to
find a mate?’

Hera laughed. ‘How did it die?’

‘Shot. Like most of them were. For sport and profit. The old folks reckon it was the crew of one of the barges sailing out of New Syracuse. One of the crew must’ve seen Old Man
Dendron climbing up the hill here. This barge had some kind of gun with exploding shells. So these boys did some target practice. The first shot hit the crest. Completely blew it off. The Dendron
was trying to turn when the second round hit it.
Bang
. Right there between the twin trunks, and that blew its lights out.’

‘Someone should have blown their lights out.’

‘Yeah, well. In all the times the Dendron were hunted, not one of them ever tried to fight back. The people who shot at them were hoping they’d put up a fight – in the
interests of sport, you see. They made the mistake of thinking Dendron were like us, like animals. They weren’t. They didn’t have minds – well, not the way we think of them. They
couldn’t think, and so they couldn’t come up with clever ideas like defending themselves. They just sat and took whatever hit them. And they died.’

‘And now they are extinct.’

‘Yep. And now they are extinct. Poor dumb buggers.’

As he spoke the sun broke strongly through the clouds. The dull grey of the Dendron became patterned with blue and green as though it had feathers or scales. Pietr Z kicked about in the shingle
and scrub behind the Dendron. Eventually he stooped and picked up a long black thorn with a thick wavy stem, like a kris. ‘Here,’ he said, handing it to Hera. ‘A memento of your
visit. Part of the Dendron’s crest. Now imagine that coming at you with a thousand tons of Dendron behind it. How is that for lovemaking, eh?’

Standing there now, many years later, looking at these pitiful remains, Hera felt the tears well up inside her. She had cried then too, on the way back to shore after her first visit, imagining
the great Dendron walking, bright red flags waving at the very tips of their branches and the sharp tinkling sound as the Venus tears hit together. ‘I hope a comet blazed in the sky when the
last Dendron died,’ she said.

Pietr cut the engine to idle and let the boat glide past the remains of a giant stump. ‘Now there’s a fine poetic thought,’ he said, obviously surprised. ‘And it is still
only the afternoon.’

‘The end of a species deserves a clamour!’ said Hera. ‘When beggars die there are no comets seen. The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. Of all the plants of
Paradise, the Dendron were surely the greatest. That’s all. I wonder who saw the last one die?’

‘Sadly,’ said Pietr thoughtfully, ‘we’ll never know.’ He started the engine.

Such then were Hera’s memories as she climbed back into the SAS. The remains of the Dendron were far more decayed now than when she had last visited. Much of its rear pad
had fallen away, revealing a gaping hole. The twin trunks had begun to break up. Deep fissures had opened across the back. The next gale could topple the entire thing and send it crashing down onto
the shingle shore, where it would slowly break up in the tides. And that would be that.

Hera sent the SAS spiralling up and let it fly slowly over the bay towards the mainland. The sea was still littered with hulks. Wherever she looked she could see other debris too, far more
modern and garish – dozens of blue plastic demolition cases which had probably blown off the wharf at New Syracuse, broken sheets of striped plastic, scraps of burned timber, the bottom of an
upturned barge with a hole in it, broken bottles, an umbrella without its fabric, broken oars and hundreds of lengths of the bright red fibre used to truss up cargo for space and which here had
become tangled and knotted among the trunks and branches at the water’s edge. That stuff would last for ever. Everything had a pale brown lustre, the patina with which Paradise covered the
things of Earth. She wondered how many other inlets there were around Paradise choked with the flotsam and jetsam of Disestablishment. Millions, she guessed, for Paradise was a planet of islands
and bays. It occurred to her that here was a job if she wanted one – a fine, sad, solitary job, token indeed, but rich with meaning: to compile a visual record of the state of the planet as
left; a statement revealing the true face of Disestablishment.

Hera circled the bay and was pleased to see that at least Pietr Z’s boathouse and slipway were still intact. It was probable that Pietr had never registered it as a building and so it had
been overlooked by the demolition crews. A Tattersall weed had grown right up over the boathouse, sending its long ropy arms and flowers down the walls. Left to grow, it would end up crushing or
tearing the building apart.

Hera lifted quickly to clear the trees at the margin of the bay and then flew over the low dunes and turned inland to follow a narrow ravine. Below her was the road that she and Pietr had walked
so many years ago. It had been well maintained until the Disestablishment. Now it was overgrown in parts but still visible winding up and following the twists and turns of a creek.

Hera had decided to visit Pietr Z’s umbrella tree plantation. She, like many in the ORBE team, had never accepted that Pietr was dead. The thought kept recurring – the hope really
– that Pietr might have survived out in the wild forest. If anyone could, he could. But she was realistic too. ORBE had mounted a search for Pietr Z as soon as he had gone bush after the
Disestablishment was announced, and not a trace of him had been found. He had often said that he would never leave Paradise and that if anyone tried to make him retire he would retire himself.
Perhaps he had simply decided that the end had come.

The SAS flew over the Scorpion Pass and began to descend. The breeze which had blown in from the sea had dropped away. Only the wind from the rotor blades moved the treetops, which otherwise
stood stiff and still.

The valley opened before her. At its end was Redman Lake, surrounded by hills and with the Staniforth Mountains as background. This was one of the pictures that the ORBE project had used to
advertise its operation. The lake was already in shadow and the mountain tops were pink. Evening was falling quickly, as it did in these parts. Hera let the SAS drift slowly down the valley. No
rush. She would spend the night here.

Redman Lake was small by Paradise standards. Collecting different kinds of water plant had been one of Pietr’s hobbies, and the lake contained examples from most parts of Paradise. In the
midst of these and far out in the middle of the water was a floating island built up over many years, and on this Pietr had built his small house. It was reached by a wooden walkway which zigzagged
out from some shyris rushes at the side of the lake. But most often Pietr had used a small runabout which Hera could see still moored to the deck outside the house. She guessed that Hemi had
deliberately removed the name and location of Redman Lake Station from the demolition manifest so that it would be left in peace as a monument to old Pietr.

At the margin of the lake Hera studied the tall swaying umbrella trees, with their glossy purple domes from which streams of heavy sap slopped and dripped. Many of the trees were just reaching
their full height, and it was now that they were beginning to extend their mature domes. The older the tree, the bigger the dome – that was the rule. Beneath them, permanently drenched in the
sap, she could see the little ones called spikes. They grew up drinking the sap.

Hera banked the SAS and flew slowly around the margin of the lake. How she wished to see Pietr come out of his house, hand raised to shade his eyes, wondering who had come to disturb his
privacy. But nothing moved. The door remained shut. There was no drift of smoke from the chimney.

Hera landed on the SAS platform which floated on the surface amid the dark bladders of the talking jenny. Disturbed, the jenny began gulping and voiding. When Hera opened the door the air
reeked, and the flatulent calling of the talking jenny was deafening as Hera made her way along the swaying walkway to the deserted house.

The door was not locked. Revealed inside was the old man’s cabin. It had grown with his habits. Modern equipment stood on old packing cases. The calendar pinned on the wall was three years
out of date, but had been updated by hand. One corner was filled by a big soft-looking double bed covered with a brightly coloured woollen bedspread made by Pietr’s wife. Beside the bed stood
a wooden bookcase, its shelves bowed with too many volumes. The floor was strewn with rushes which, when walked upon, gave off a perfume reminiscent of cinnamon. A sliding window stretched from
floor to ceiling and looked out across Redman Lake towards the umbrella seedbeds with the mountains beyond them. Tonic was rising, creating a silver path across the water. Facing the window was one
of Pietr’s famous armchairs – famous because he would carve them to order and to the dimensions of the occupant. This one was carved from the pad of a long-departed Dendron. He had
oiled and sanded the wood, making it smooth and silky to the touch. On the table beside the chair was an open book, an ashtray and a water pipe. Pietr Z, like Professor Shapiro, enjoyed smoking the
dried flowers of the calypso lily.

Old men and their pipes
, thought Hera, and was suddenly overcome by a wave of sadness for old Pietr Z. Everything she saw, everything she looked at, reminded her of him, of his funny
way of talking and his thick accent and his sensitive eyes, never merrier than when teasing her, but still a man who knew how to listen. She began to cry quietly. Pietr had been a good friend and
had stood by her on many occasions. And now he was out there somewhere in an unmarked grave. He had given so much, and had loved this place with a single, unwavering and uncomplicated devotion.
‘God bless you, Pietr, wherever you are,’ she murmured. On impulse she picked up the book he had been reading –
Tales of Paradise
by Sasha Malik. She slipped a bookmark
into the pages, closed the book and put it into her pocket. She wished there was more she could do, but she couldn’t think of anything, and so she sat in the armchair for a few minutes while
the grief worked its way through her.