The Disestablishment of Paradise (36 page)

‘Bantamweight prizefighters.’

‘You’re getting the picture. Agriculture was the last thing on our minds. We were ready to create a new science if need be, a new botany, a new biology, a new taxonomy, a new way of
thinking. A new physics was already coming in with the advent of the fractal, and God alone knows where that will lead us. We used what we could of Earth when it helped – I mean, if something
has roots and it grows in what looks like soil, and it likes water and sunshine, well, there is a lot you can do with it. And the exciting thing, Mack, was finding where Earth ended and Paradise
began. And what happened? We were shot out of the water, Mack, like most of the Dendron. And so if I get upset from time to time, that’s why. And now there’s only you and me left
– travelling the circle.’

‘The brawn and the brains.’

‘I’m not that strong, Mack!’

Later, when the SAS announced they were in sight of the shallows of Paraffin Island, Hera ordered Alan to find a high place for a landing. ‘If a Dendron stamps within a
hundred miles of us,’ she said, ‘we want to know.’

Hera had gone beyond her strength and with a sleepy yawn retired to her cabin. Mack sat in the control room, wide awake, staring out through the windows. They had put down overlooking the
seashore. In the pale golden light of Gin he could see the waves breaking.

A long time ago his granny had told him that his brother would be the rich one, but he, Mack, would have the adventures and one great adventure to cap them all. Well, she was right so far.

Glancing round the cabin, Mack saw that Hera had left the ring pendulum among the sketches of wishbones and tapering horns and strange dangling fruit.

Idly he picked it up and let it swing.

With the pendulum moving freely, he asked, ‘Will we find the Dendron tomorrow?’

Immediately he received the answer: ‘Yes.’

‘And is the Dendron OK?’

The pendulum swung on a diagonal. The answer was inconclusive. Yes. No. Maybe.

Mack opened the chart of Paradise and moved his finger over it, tracing their course onward while all the time letting the pendulum swing in his other hand and asking for guidance as to where
they would meet the Dendron. His finger had just crossed the Chingling desert, which filled the inner plateau of Horse, when the pendulum reacted. It was very specific.

‘And will we be safe?’ The pendulum again made the movement which told him that the outcome was inconclusive. Mack knew that words like safe were too vague for an instrument at
precise as the pendulum, for they were not safe anywhere. He could have made the question more specific, but he chose to be content with what he already knew.

He had, however, one last question: ‘Is helping the Dendron the big adventure my granny told me about?’

Though he always tried to keep his expectations neutral, it was with some surprise that he received the answer no.

They were flying high and fast.

Mack had marked on the map the exact place where he believed the Dendron to be. He had repeated the dowsing cast that morning and Hera had seen with her own eyes the authoritative way the
pendulum changed.

Now the desert named Ching-ling was unfolding beneath them. The arid brown dunes were as clear and firmly sculpted as ripple marks on a beach. Every night the winds came up and the dunes shifted
slightly, burying anything that could not escape. One river entered from the south and fanned out into the sand before disappearing underground. This had provided the last green they had seen.
Occasionally they passed over sharp rocky mountains, which cast long, distinct shadows over the sand.

Far in the distance, but becoming clearer by the minute, were the tall mountains of north-west Horse. It was somewhere there that they would find the Dendron.

‘Reaper below,’ called out Hera, and switched the view screen to magnification.

They looked down on patterns in the sand, but these were not like the labyrinth or spider-web they had seen the previous day. These patterns swirled and coiled out across the desert sand as
though drawn by a child. But still they had a focus – though it was not at the centre. A small ring of standing stones surrounded and hid the Michelangelo in their midst. As they watched the
desert roll past beneath them, the pattern in the sand suddenly changed. New valleys and dips appeared, sand rose in spirals and a ripple of light spread out from the centre.

‘Just letting us know it’s aware of us,’ said Mack.

Hours passed, and then, far in the distance, amid a maze of ravines and tumbled rock, they saw what seemed like a wavering line imprinted on the desert floor. At first they thought it might be
the remains of a MINADEC water channel, but as they drew closer they could see it was not a single line but a series of small craters, each containing a small pocket of shadow. Hera took the SAS
down to a hundred metres. Though she had never seen the spoor of a live Dendron, she knew what to look for. ‘Look, Mack,’ she said steadily. ‘Look. Look. Look. There. We’ve
found it. That’s the mark of its stamp.’

To Mack it looked as if someone was planning to build a fence and had dug a series of post holes. They came wandering up from a deep ravine and entered the sandy desert between two massive
pillars of rock. The fence maker must have been drunk, as the holes were not in a straight line, but wandered all over – even sometimes doubling back and crossing themselves. Between the
holes were trail marks where something had been dragged and there were smaller impressions to either side.

But Mack’s attention was on the ravine over which they were now drifting. It was sheer-sided, as though the roof of a subterranean cavern had fallen in at some distant time in the past.
Smooth meandering pathways showed where water had flowed, perhaps quite recently, though now it was dry. Mack also saw the shadow of caves in the depths, and steep-sided overhangs. His guess was
that there could be any number of interesting things hiding down there.

Away in a corner at the very bottom of the ravine was the merest hint of a spiral pattern, which ran along the floor and up one of the cliff faces.
Another of them
, he thought.
They’re everywhere! Wherever there’s action!

Hera was busy guiding the SAS, following the tracks. They were not recent and she frequently lost them where the sand had drifted over them. But the general movement was in the direction of the
foothills, and so a small time spent scouting in a circle was all that was needed to find the prints again.

The rounded dunes were giving way to stony terraces, which emerged like the backbone of a buried creature. Twice they came to places where the Dendron had obviously stopped for a while. Stamp
marks formed a ragged circle, and the ground was scored and torn where the Dendron had scraped at it.

‘I’ll make a guess,’ said Mack. ‘I’ll bet that’s where it was broadcasting. I think it was looking for water. Look how it has torn up the ground and kicked
those boulders aside. And there, look. What did I tell you?’ Unmistakably, where the Dendron had stamped as hard as it could, crashing its stump into the desert floor, there was now a pool of
clear water, visible only because it reflected the sky. ‘I bet it sat there for a few days, thinking things over.’

Finally, as they were approaching the hills, the footprints vanished. The ground became flat rock, and not even a Dendron left a trace here.

They flew on slowly and came upon the first signs of vegetation – low plants which crept into the desert and had wide black leaves. Mack pointed out where several had been flattened and
others torn out of the ground.

The stone plateau gave way to cliffs of shale and they could see where the Dendron had tried to climb and had slipped down, not once but several times. ‘Why did it try to climb
there?’ wondered Mack. ‘That’s the hardest place of all. If it had come a mile east it could have easily got up that ridge, couldn’t it?’

‘Perhaps it wasn’t bothered about finding the easy way.’

‘Perhaps it was crazy! What’s it weigh do you reckon? Hundreds of tons! Whatever it is, that’s a hell of a lot of Dendron to go heaving about. Given the amount of climbing
since its last stop, it would be getting pretty tired by now. That’s when things make mistakes: animals, plants and machines. Once fatigue sets—’

He never got to finish. The sky suddenly darkened in a way which they recognized. Hera screamed and clutched her ears. At the same moment Mack felt as though he had been clubbed from behind.
Both heard a roaring, as though sky and earth were about to be slammed together or torn apart. They braced themselves for the onslaught and then . . . were left hanging. There was no sudden peal of
bells or roar of thunder. Instead they felt what Mack later described as ‘pins and needles in the head’. And that too gradually faded.

They looked at one another, both afraid, both like people who had felt an earthquake tremor and now awaited the main shock. But there was nothing. Just a hollowness which had its own kind of
energy.

Finally, speaking softly, dryly and without emotion but very distinctly, Hera said, ‘From all the evidence we have, it seems that we have just been spared . . . or protected.’

Mack could not speak. He was standing very still and with his eyes closed, but he nodded. Hera continued: ‘I think we were shielded because we are here, and useful. Let’s hope
so.’

Then, tight-lipped, she took the SAS up higher. She could still feel the presence in her mind, but she was under no illusions. The Dendron, raw and untutored, had cried out as it would have
cried out had a thousand other Dendron been in the region. It was a cry of pain and desire, innocent as a knife. But what, she asked herself, had intercepted that cry? What had absorbed it and made
it palatable to their minds? If not the Dendron, then the only other creature she could think of that might be able to do such a thing was the Janus-faced, dark and formidable
Michelangelo-Reaper.

She guided the SAS up and over the shale bank. The place where the Dendron had finally torn through the top of the shale was just beneath her. Now the vegetation became more dense, and some
distance inland they came to a pool of grey water. The SAS hovered, and its rotors made the surface erupt into small frothy waves. A river emptied into this pool, but since no water flowed from it,
they presumed the river continued underground. Facing them were three heavily wooded ravines which came down from the foothills in a broken zigzag pattern. Hera had expected to see the telltale web
of a Michelangelo, but there was nothing except the camouflage jumble of bush and tree. The path of the Dendron, however, was unmistakable. It had marched straight through the lake and had entered
the middle ravine, crushing everything in its path.

Hera guided the SAS up into the ravine, following the Dendron’s track. Below, the stream tumbled white over rocks. After many twists the ravine gradually opened into a narrow valley and
this led up to the first plateau. Looking back, Hera could see the desert behind her. It was shimmering in the sun, and the shadows were a dark blue. They had already risen some 500 metres.

In front was another lake, and here the water ran clear. A colony of talking jenny lay crushed and torn in the middle of the lake, a sure sign that the Dendron had passed through, and recently
too. At the edge they saw a delicate lily, its flowers just opening.

It would have been a peaceful scene, except that facing them at the end of the lake was a huge Tattersall weed. Its blue flowers glowed and glared in the sunlight. Some long heavy hairy branches
rested on the ground and in the water. Taller branches reached out to the sides as though barring the way. Even from this distance, Hera could see the thorns at their tips. They were in clusters,
black and curved. In all her time on Paradise Hera had never seen a Tattersall weed like this. Things were changing, evolving quickly.

Mack stood at her elbow. ‘Might have known we’d find one of those buggers hanging about.’

They could clearly see the stamp line where the Dendron had left the water. Hera guided the SAS along the margin of the lake and directly towards the Tattersall weed. The Dendron had stamped on
past it, breaking and crushing some of the lower limbs. Mack nodded in approval.

As they approached the Tattersall weed, they saw it move. It began to wind up slowly, dragging its branches in so they tore the soil. ‘Go high, Hera,’ said Mack. ‘There’s
something mad about it. Even for this mad place.’

They passed high over the tree. It did not lash out at them, which was what Mack had expected, but some of its giant flowers opened and closed quickly, and that was disturbing in its own
way.

They entered a gently rounded valley which climbed on into the mountains, but not steeply, and here the vegetation was lush. The stream flowed quickly between dark banks, and where the Dendron
had stamped were pools of clear water.

The valley widened, but a spur, jutting out from the side, hindered their view of its higher reaches. The top of the spur was crowned with a monkey tree which crouched as if ready to spring.
Tattersall weeds grew beside the stream and up the slopes.

Hera guided them round the spur, following the river, and they entered a wide wooded canyon where the stream tumbled over rapids. There she brought them to a stop, hovering in the air.

They had found it. The Dendron. It stood just a few hundred metres in front of them, surrounded by the blue of Tattersall weeds. They both stared, for whatever they had imagined, nothing had
prepared them for this.