The Disestablishment of Paradise (51 page)

‘Anyway, I’ve wandered off what I wanted to say. Today I had a bad turn. Bad in one way, not in another. It was when we visited the Valentines in that round bay. When I looked at
them, I had this vision of such beauty that it hurt. It did. It hurt me here in the throat. Not like when you pinch me but another type of hurt. And it was just like the dreams – it was
something taking me over. I could feel it rise in me and start to smother me. And I asked you about their minder and suddenly realized you didn’t know what I meant. And then when I looked,
really looked, I could see it, the Michelangelo, right there amid the great dancing globes, and it was so merry. There were patterns there, but they kept changing, and that’s why you
couldn’t see them. Great rippling waves of colour. Like a red sheet in the breeze. It was chasing the wind, you see, and then bucking the wind. And it was glad we saw it. It wanted me to go
ashore. “That siren voice was sweet.” It spoke with your voice, Hera, and I almost said yes when it asked me, but I made myself say no, and you sailed us out.’

They lay still. Hera did not know what to say because a chasm had opened before her. She had seen nothing that he had seen – patterns or merriment. There was suddenly so much she did not
understand.

Mack suddenly pulled her close with the arm that was under her, half lifting her on top of him as if she were a blanket.‘Another thing when I was a boy, my granny used to do the tarot
cards. I used to ask her to tell our fortunes, but she never would. Said she couldn’t do it because we were too close. But one day she’d been fiddling with this deck of cards – I
think she’d made them herself – and out of the blue she said, “Your brother’ll be the rich one, but you’ll have the adventures, and the big one’ll be your
last.” Well, she was right about my brother. Got more money than he knows what to do with. And me? I’ve had lots of adventures – I’ve done nothing but talk about them for
the past week. And I hoped, hope, that meeting you would be my last and greatest adventure. But what do you think she meant, “and the big one’ll be your last”? If I asked you, out
of the blue, what you thought the last, biggest adventure in life was, what would you say?’

‘I’d say . . . I’d say it was death.’

‘That’s what I think too. But there are different types of death, Hera. You could die being spiked by a mad bloody Tattersall or chopped in half by a Dendron like that poor bugger
Redman or . . .’
¹³

‘Or?’

‘Or you could be taken by a Reaper.’

‘And is that what you are afraid of?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can’t you block it out?’

‘I can. A bit. But like I say, part of me doesn’t want to, and that’s what frightens me most. I could slip away. Oh hold me. I know you can’t fight off death. But we
might fight off the agent of death.’

‘Was that the message you saw in the flowers, Mack? The real message, when all those balloons were released at once? Was it a message of death, Mack?’

He took a deep breath. ‘Hold me, Hera. Hold me. Hold me. Hold me as tight as you can. Crush me into you.’ And he held her tight too, his arms as strong as any Tattersall weed, so
that she could hardly breathe. ‘What it said was – it was a choir of voices singing, every flower had its part – and what it said was, “All of these, and more, are yours.
Such is my love for you.” And it was your voice, Hera, because yours is the only voice of love I know, but it wasn’t you speaking. So you have to get me off this planet. You must not
let me out of your sight. Can you do that? Is your love strong enough?’

‘It is. If you want me. It is.’

That night they never let go of each other, as though afraid that some beast might come clambering up out of the dark water to take them.

But it was a different kind of beast came. A few hours before dawn Hera felt
The Courtesy of MINADEC
turn on her anchor and the waves slap hard against her. The wind was picking up. It
came from the east, and that was good for it would push them through the Royal Straits, but
The Courtesy
was a toy boat really, good for cruising in calm seas. Hera had no idea how it
would fare in a real storm.

Before dawn she was up on deck, dressed in heavy-weather gear and life jacket, disentangling the anchor chain, which had managed to get caught up with a rope that had blown
overboard in the night. The sky was grey and already the wind was lifting the tops off the small waves and sending them scudding across the sea. Water which had been clear yesterday was now milky
grey with bubbles and the small boat danced and skittered on the surface in the way that light craft do in a broadside wind. The sooner Hera could begin to make headway the better. Finally,
frustrated by the tangle, she cut the offending rope and threw the tail end over the side. She set the winch to slow and the chain began to clink aboard and run noisily down into its hold in the
bows. As the anchor chain tightened, so
The Courtesy of MINADEC
was pulled round until the anchor lifted from the seabed, at which point the boat leaped. Hera set the speed to slow, and
when the anchor finally came on board, she went to neutral, took one last look round, and then engaged forward and upped the revs.
The Courtesy
surged ahead.

Out in the main channel the weather was fierce. The grey clouds streamed overhead, strained by the wind. Hera did not like the wind coming from behind, as the cutter had a low stern and could be
swamped if a chasing wave broke over them. Hera would have to have eyes in the back of her head. But she was not really complaining. She had lain awake most of the night and was now glad to have
something practical to do, to take her mind off the problems. She had left Mack sleeping. In repose there was something king-like about him, she had decided, his strong face and solid body, but the
similarity came from the carved images she had seen on a sarcophagus. On balance she preferred the real man.

Lying awake, glad that he slept but weary herself, she had realized that a man such as Mack was very vulnerable. The very intuitions that were his strength opened him to danger, for they were
psychic channels. For a brief time she had been open, after the voice of Paradise had called her name – how long ago that seemed – and look what had happened to her! Mack had a lifetime
of openness and so might be easy meat for a predator Reaper. For that was how she saw the situation. She would be a woman going into battle to save her man. How dare that Michelangelo – she
could think of other names – how dare it send
billets-doux
, valentines no less, and offers of love to her man? In some ways it was comic, she could see that. Comic and absurd. But
she wished that at this minute they were both on the way up to the shuttle platform to rejoin the quick-witted Dickinson, the up-front Annette and the people she had come to love and trust such as
Inez Abhuradin and Tania Kowalski. She had done her bit for Paradise and so had Mack; could they not now have their peace? Apparently not. So they must take it.

The Courtesy of MINADEC
bucked as she entered the main channel. The water was lumpy and broken, and Hera could not cut through it without taking on waves and side hits. She adjusted
speed in an attempt to match the speed of the waves which now chased the small boat.

It was an hour or so later that Mack stumbled up on deck. He looked a bit green and dishevelled, but alive.

‘Put your life jacket on, Mack. Even if you lie down, keep it on.’ He nodded and stumbled back down into the cabin and the door slammed behind him. A wave took them from the stern
and ran the length of the boat. The cutter was not well designed, Hera noted. The water did not drain away quickly, and in these conditions that was important. Must remember to tell Mack to keep
the cabin door shut at all times. One wave in there and we’ll be in trouble.

Mack came on deck again, bulkier now, and he had seen the danger and closed the door firmly. Conversation was difficult, but by shouting close to her ear he could make himself understood.
‘Let me know if you want me to take a turn.’

She nodded gave him the thumbs up, and went back to trying to read the sea.

Hera had been in plenty of storms during her time on Paradise. It was here she had learned to sail, crewing on yachts out of New Syracuse or taking one of the ORBE cutters out on expeditions.
She didn’t frighten easily, and being light and small but strong, she could scamper safely about a pitching boat where a bigger man would stumble.

With every wave that hit them she was learning the tricks of
The Courtesy of MINADEC
. It was not the boat for these conditions, that was certain, but it was gutsy and pugnacious, she
decided, and she liked that. It took the troughs and lifted easily and didn’t dive too deep.

To Hera, every wave was an individual and to be treated as such, with constant adjustments of speed and line. She could detect patterns and sometime predict, but there were rogue waves too.
These seemed to come from nowhere and were suddenly on you. One such took her broadside before she could react and the boat shuddered. And lifted. That was where
The Courtesy
was
vulnerable. Like most boats, side on she could be rolled.

They survived that broadside, and they survived others. Slowly, as the morning drew on, they made headway, and while the weather did not ease, at least it did not get worse.

If there was a physical problem for Hera it was in her arms and back. The continual battle with the steering wheel was a strain which became an ache and finally she called Mack to the helm.
Although he was not a natural sailor, he had an instinctive grasp of engines and how to coax the best out of them. Before she went down into the cabin, she watched to see how he was coping. He had
observed her closely, learning how she reacted, seeing what she reacted to. Hera saw that he rode with the boat, spread-legged, and reacted quickly when the waves built up, leaning in to the wheel
and not away from it. She gave him a thumbs up and went below.

She made tea for them both, holding the small kettle still. And when she had delivered him his cup, half-full, she stretched out below. Even while fully occupied steering the boat, she had been
thinking about their conversation in the night, wondering what to do. It had brought their relationship into sharper focus for her, and made it more real too: less romantic, more pragmatic, and
that felt good. When he had said ‘I don’t want magic; I want a wife’ she felt her cup overflow. Was this the same Hera who had always seemed so job-driven that she had no time or
interest in romance? Ha! No, this was Hera, the woman, awake and enlivened, and part of her own great tradition. They were a team, she and Mack, she knew it. Anyone seeing them now would think they
had crewed together for years. She loved the way he trusted her. When she was boss, he jumped. He asked good questions too that showed he was thinking. He was protective, but not in a way that
weakened her. She would fight for him, by God she would. And she would not let up until he said, ‘Stay.’ Like Sasha before her, she was there for the long haul – a wave hit them
broadside and her tea spilled – as long as they survived the storm.

By late afternoon they had shared the work of the day and, apart from a few mishaps, all was well. They were tired but, most important, they were in sight of Royal Straits, and that cheered
them. This three-mile channel – named after the Royal Seafood Company, which specialized in gourmet seaweeds and had used to trawl these waters – had a bad reputation. The problem was
that the straits were shallow, and so the twin-moon waves which surged round the planet here experienced drag and so could, in the right conditions, turn into mighty breaking tidal waves. Small
boats could be turned end over end. The danger for a big ship such as a trawler was that it could survive the comber, but might then be dumped and dragged on the rocky bottom in the following
trough and hence lose its propeller or keel. It was then vulnerable to being turned broadside on to the sea and the next comer could roll it. It had happened plenty of times, and the shore was do
ed with wrecks. The question facing Hera and Mack was, simply, should they make a run for it now despite the gathering evening, or should they turn into Preacher’s Cove and ride the night
out?

Three miles. Not far with a wind pushing you and the prospect of safety at the end of it, for there were many good anchorages off the western coast of Horse and Hera knew this part of the coast
well. It was here that she had been working to re-establish the pancake wrack when she first heard the news of the Disestablishment.

‘Let’s get it behind us,’ she said. ‘Then we can relax.’

‘Whatever you say, boss.’

‘OK. But if we are caught by a wave, I’ll be taking us as straight as I can, and I want to know that you are tied on to the boat. Because it can get very steep and if you do get
swept overboard . . . well, I’d never find you. And you would be swept off, because a wave is stronger than your grip.’

‘Understood.’

She upped the revs and set out. She had sailed the channel several times in fair weather and foul. Now she was trying to remember the tricky parts. On a fine day it was beautiful and the rocks
on the bottom gave the water incredible colours and patterns. But today there was so much broken water that she could not have told a wave breaking on a rock from a simple clash of currents or
spray drift. She knew the channel was safe as long as she kept just left of centre. The dangerous rocks were mainly to the side. But one of the things that made steering difficult was that the
straits were full of cross-currents, and these would push the small boat sideways. She decided to go as fast as possible.

The tactic worked.

And they almost made it.

They had just reached the place where the pancake wrack was seeded and were in sight of the end when a giant wave started to build behind them. It was like the back of a whale rearing up out of
the water – it just grew and they found themselves being lifted up its face. They stared down, and a hole in the sea seemed to open before them. The engine laboured as Hera fought to keep
them straight. She was counting too. If the wave began to break now they were finished: nothing could survive that weight of water. But if it held its shape and they reached the crest . . . Five,
six . . . It became dark. The light was cut off by the rearing wave. It was so close they could have touched it. Nine, ten . . . And then, just when they thought they must surely fall, the air
lightened. They had crested the wave. They were through, and
The Courtesy of MINADEC
came level again. The hump of the wave passed under them with a hiss.