The Disestablishment of Paradise (31 page)

Carefully, he stripped back the sheet from her body, soaking the fabric where the blood had dried and stuck to her skin. He saw the wounds and it did not take him long to deduce what had caused
them.

He worked on down, steadily easing back the stained sheet.

Finally he uncovered the knee. It was horrific. It no longer looked like a knee joint, but was blue with yellow patches and a gash on one side. It had swollen to the size of her thigh and
smelled. Mack studied it like he might study a jammed pulley block. He had seen such wounds before. There was something inside, something locked within the tissue, and while that was there it could
not heal. This, he decided was a separate problem.

He began to wash Hera. The face was healing. He checked as well as he could to see if her cheekbone was damaged. It did not seem to be, and the eye under the swelling was clearing. As he checked
the face he became aware that she was smiling and her lips moved. Some hidden drama being worked out in there, he guessed. But she did not wake.

Many of the wounds had bled, but the dressings that Hera had applied had done their job and the flesh showed signs of healing. Hera’s neat clips had held and there was no sign of infection
apart from in the knee.

With the wounds treated and her body washed, Mack slipped his arms under her. She groaned briefly as he lifted her and laid her down on the towel on the floor. As quickly as he could he stripped
the bed, rolling up the wet and soiled sheets. He turned the mattress over and remade the bed with the crisp clean sheets.

Hera was so light he could have lifted her with one hand. He placed her carefully on the clean sheets and covered her with the towel, leaving the wounded leg exposed. Then he placed a pillow
under the knee and packed more towels around the joint.

What to do with the knee? His first inclination was to open the wound and let any poison out, but he was no surgeon and would have been cutting blind. He opted for the oldest treatment of all
– a poultice. And he made one of those intuitive leaps, the kind of thing that either succeeds, and you are called a genius, or fails, and you are considered a fool or worse. He went outside
into the sunshine. He found a weed flower that had recently opened and he pulled off its thick blue aromatic petals. Perhaps he was thinking of the drunkard’s cure, the hair of the dog that
bit you.

He placed the fresh petals on the wound and covered them with a towel soaked in hot salted water. Five minutes later, when the poultice had cooled, he checked and there seemed to be no
rejection. If anything, the skin looked slightly pinker. He applied the poultice again, and then again. Finally, convinced that there was no anti-reaction, he found a hot water bottle and used this
to keep the petals warm. By experiment he found that a petal would only last for three poultices before it lost its colour, and so he went outside with the ladder and little by little stripped the
weed of all its petals.

With the knee treated, Mack reheated the soup. He was able to spoon some of it into her mouth and saw her swallow. While he did this, he noticed that Hera’s one good eye was open, and that
it stared up at him. When he moved round the room, the eye followed his movements. But there was no hint of recognition. She growled once, and he growled back. Anything to help.

Hera slipped back and forth between worlds – like the salmon that becomes a princess and then a salmon again.

While days passed in Mack’s busy world, for Hera there was no sense of time.

Sometimes she saw the great brown bear shambling round her room. Sometimes she was aware of strong arms lifting her up, dragging her back from the lovely green meadows, of food being spooned
into her mouth and of coughing. At other times her arms and legs were moved as though she was a limp manikin filled with damp sawdust. Sometimes the bear growled at her. And the knee . . . the bear
was always fussing with the stupid knee. And sometimes the bear hurt her and she screamed and hit out at it – but then she would slip away.

But the dreams were changing.

Hera
Everything was becoming more intense. There is a lot I don’t remember, but one occasion stands out clearly. Again I was on the shore. And again I was watching a
Dendron swimming towards me. Only the tips of its twin trunks were visible, cutting through the water like blades, its pennants snapping back and forth, and I could hear the Venus tears sounding
together like chimes.

It came rearing up, with the water streaming off it and great waves lapping, heaving out of the sea towards me. It was urgent. But then, just when I thought it would crush me, it started
shuffling. I stood absolutely still and it walked right over me. I was in the private space between its two high arching cathedral legs. The bulk of its body was over me!

Hera woke up slowly. She was truly herself again and she was seeing in colour – the sun streaming in, her lying back, and her bare leg held firm . . . and . . .

The brown bear was sitting on her bed, its hunched back towards her, crouched over her knee, doing something. She struggled up onto her elbows, and for the first time she saw him clearly and
knew who he was and what he was doing. ‘What the hell . . .’

But let us not get ahead of ourselves.

Mack, the nurse, knew nothing of Hera’s visionary adventures.

After a few days he could tell that the poultices were working and whatever was lodged in the knee was being brought to the surface. Hera seemed more at rest too, though she never seemed to
regain proper consciousness.

Mack established a rhythm. Every morning, after he had fed Hera soup, he would tease open the wound on her knee so that the skin did not close and trap whatever was within. That done, he applied
new poultices in the morning, at midday and in the evening.

One night, the very night which Hera has described, he was woken up by her groaning. When he switched on the light he saw that she had pushed off the light covers and was rolling her head back
and forth on the pillow. She began to breathe in gasps, calling something, and she was running her hands up and down her body. Mack thought that she might be reliving the crisis when she was
injured and was up from his bed on the floor in a moment.

He touched her lightly and Hera became calm but was still breathing deeply, and then suddenly she stretched out her legs and twisted her body violently as though some demon had seized her. She
was crying out now as she twisted round on the bed. All Mack could think of to do was to hold her down by the arms, and when that did not work, he lay on her, not totally, not flat, but so that she
could not injure herself.

And we must just imagine his astonishment when she kissed him fiercely in the sensitive place behind his ear.

Mack was not a fool – he could read what was happening and was shaken by it. When Hera was again resting quietly, half turned on her side, her hair spread out on the pillow, he noticed
there were none of the flickering eye movements that had so characterized her earlier trance states. Nor was there any fever.

If someone had told Mack that in those wild moments Hera was not responding, as it were, to a man, but that like a weather vane, she was simply caught up and buffeted by the mighty sexual gale
of the Dendron, well, he wouldn’t have believed it. Would you? I wouldn’t. But that was the truth.

The next morning, Mack went through his usual routine, opening the skylight, letting the sunlight in at the windows, putting water on for the poultice and for coffee. Hera was breathing easily
and so he did not try to wake her. He drew back the sheet, folding it neatly over her thighs and tucking it between her legs for modesty’s sake. He sat on the bed to inspect her knee, placing
a pillow under it as he usually did. As he feared, the exertions in the night had had their effect. The wound had split open and bled a bit. It was a red gash, and something, like a black hair, was
lodged inside. He looked more closely. Within the wound but pointing up were two small jagged points. Mack squeezed the wound slightly to see how tender it was, and Hera sighed. Quickly he selected
tweezers from the medicine cabinet. He sterilized them and then, very calmly, he set to work.

Hera moved but he held her leg firm under his arm. He could not stop now. He felt her struggle up onto her elbows.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Then she must have reached down to the sheet and discovered that she was more or less naked from the waist down. She screamed and tried to wrench
herself free, but Mack held her leg as in a vice. ‘Let me go! Get your hands off me!’ With her good leg she kicked him, jarring his elbow.

Mack exploded. ‘Stupid woman. LIE STILL!’

She was so surprised, she did.

Moments later, Mack blew out his breath in a long sigh, released her and stood up.

Hera immediately pulled the sheet down.

Mack turned and looked at her. ‘Well, I suppose I didn’t expect gratitude,’ he said and extended his hand. ‘Here, these are yours.’

Onto the bed he dropped two thin pieces of what might have been dark seashell, but smeared with red blood. One was about an inch and a half long and curved like a blade. The other was a pointed
hook with a nasty twist in it. He shrugged, for he had no more words, and went outside.

Hera tried to feel outraged, but that didn’t work. She tried to feel indignant and that was better, but it begged too many questions. She looked at the two splinters of the weed and, like
Shapiro before her contemplating the seeds of a Paradise plum, realized that they were still alive. Thus it followed that inside her knee had taken place the most implacable battle of all: the
instinctive and absolute rejection of the alien by her human tissues, and the desperate struggle of the alien to survive. Between them, they would have torn her apart – and nearly did. She
knew that if the thorns had died inside her and deliquesced, her blood would have been fatally tainted. So perhaps, in a strange way, she had been lucky. It was all so complicated! And then there
was the poor Dendron out there somewhere, aching. It too had taken up residence in her mind, demanding attention to its needs. Ah, how she would like to serve them all. And Mack . . .

She looked round the tidy room. She smelled the soup warming on the stove and the coffee that he had not yet drunk. She saw the clean towels laid out, the bedding freshly aired, the open
windows. All the evidence of care.

So little made sense. She saw the sheet that covered her and realized it had been used more to conceal than reveal.

Hera worked her way to the edge of the bed and stood up on her good leg. When she put weight on her other leg it hurt, but not in that piercing way. She knew it would heal and she would run
again. Her crutches were nowhere to be seen and so she hopped to the door. Mack was not in the clearing. ‘Mack,’ she called, and heard a shout from down near the lake.

Moments later Mack appeared at the top of the steps, puffing.

‘You get back into bed, Hera,’ he shouted. ‘I haven’t wasted days and nights looking after you so you can throw it all away.’

Hera didn’t move. ‘I wanted to say I was sorry.’ It was not what she meant to say, but those were the words that came out.

‘OK. Well, you’ve said it. Now get back into bed.’

‘Hmgh! Men!’ If Hera could have stamped, she might have. But instead she hopped back to the bed and flopped down.

Minutes later Mack arrived at the shilo. ‘I suppose you’ll be telling me next that you want some coffee?’

‘If there’s some going, or some soup. But I’m
so
sorry, I’m
far
too weak to get it for myself. Would you be so kind . . . please?’

‘Hmgh!’ It was Mack’s turn to growl. But it was a funny sort of growl because he was smiling.

During the rest of the day they started to get to know one another.

Mack explained how be came to be there.

‘You mean you stole a shuttle, flew a half-powered Demo Bus halfway round this world, came here, crash-landed – and all on a hunch?’

‘A pretty good hunch, eh?’

Hera did not reply. She was too surprised. What Mack had just told her, in such a simple way, was the most extraordinary thing anyone had ever revealed to her – and yet he seemed unaware
of it. Men – by which she meant the men she knew – didn’t just go taking risks and chancing everything on a hunch . . . and now here was Mack, one of the least fey and
otherworldly of all the men she could ever have imagined, and he had. So, what was going on? Why had he brought her back from the brink of death? Was he too obeying the will of Paradise? She sat
and stared at him with her quick little intellect buzzing.