The Disestablishment of Paradise (49 page)

A surprise was waiting for Mack and Hera as they made their way down the shingle banks beside the river and turned right and so up into Moonshine Bay. Standing back from the
shore was a cabin. It was a bit old-fashioned-looking but otherwise seemed in good condition. The windows had not been broken and the blinds were all down. Mack tapped at the door, perhaps thinking
that someone might have been at home, or perhaps he was just warning the ghosts. In either case there was no answer and so he punched out a window, released a catch and climbed in. With the blinds
up and the doors open, he could see he was in a luxury cabin, a retreat for the executives of MINADEC, a place to bring friends and girlfriends for a quiet weekend of R & F beside a clear blue
sea and with a view of islands. The cabin was dry and clean and more or less as the last occupants had left it a hundred years earlier.

When MINADEC ruled Paradise, there was a small settlement at Moonshine Bay. It did not figure on any of the maps, hence, when MINADEC withdrew, the cabins were left intact. The ORBE project knew
of them and had had some plans to use them for an outstation, but these plans remained on the drawing board. A few of the cabins had survived the seasons. They were, as Hera once described them to
me, ‘like a display in a museum panorama’, and one wonders if there was more than chance involved in their survival.

The remains of a concrete landing pad – now rendered useless as it had lifted and twisted – could be seen in the foothills; the supports for a jetty, looking like so many broken
teeth, could be seen stretching out from the shore.

Though other and more luxurious cabins might have been habitable, Hera and Mack liked the cabin they had first found because it was right on the shore. Ten seconds from bed to bathing.

They made themselves at home. There were big soft double beds – one each if they wanted – and showers which still functioned, after a bit of coaching, despite not being used for a
long time. Everything needed airing so they simply carried the mattresses, cushions and quilts outside and left them in the sun.

It was Hera who found the wine. Some bottles were ruined, but enough were not. And she found some clothes that were the height of fashion during the MINADEC days. For Mack she selected a dinner
suit with wide shoulders, flexible waist straps and a vivid red plastic carnation sewn in. For her, she chose an evening dress with low cleavage and lots of feathers in strange places and perfume
from La Boutique de Paris. They moved the table out onto the beach and ate their simple meals while the sun set over the sea. And when it was dark, they lit candles.

‘This is decadent,’ said Hera, opening another bottle of wine, her eyes sparking. ‘Do you want a cigar? I found some in a vacuum chest. Should still be OK? I’ll get you
one.’

‘Later,’ said Mack. ‘For the moment, would you like to see some magic? If so, turn your back and close your eyes.’

‘I love surprises,’ said Hera. She poured herself a glass and turned her back. She heard a scratching sound.

‘OK. Turn round now.’ Hera did, quickly, and was in time to see a rocket fizz into the air. ‘This is for the Dendron,’ said Mack, and the rocket exploded into a sparkling
crown of gold and red. ‘And this one is for Shapiro.’ The second rocket described a spiral as it shot upwards before bursting into blue sparks which fell like rain. ‘And this is
for us.’ Two rockets shot high into the air. There they exploded and crackled in silver and red balls of sparks. They hung there for a moment before dropping and dispersing in the breeze.

It was a golden time. But nagging in the back of their minds was the awareness that it was borrowed time. The problems of the platform, far overhead, were a constant worry, despite frequent
radio contact. Mack in particular felt that he should be ‘up there’ helping his team – though Polka, who had become the main contact, insisted they were coping and that the
situation was ‘not so bad’ since the Dendron had been divided. Hera found herself torn between her enjoyment of the present moment and her knowledge of how far they had still to
journey. She felt a strange kind of guilt in being happy.

When they went for walks beside the sea, they always carried matches because occasionally they found bodies, dried and shrunken, cast high on the strand during a storm. These they burned and
watched thoughtfully as the smoke rose and the bones burned bright as phosphorus. They found old boxes and crates, and if they picked them up, none of the sand of Paradise clung to them. Mack shook
his head. ‘It wants nothing to do with us, does it?’

Lots of Dendron stools stood in from the beach and in the rivers. Some had decayed right down to ground level. Others still stood tall, and Mack hoisted Hera up so that she could stand on one of
them and look down the margin. ‘They go on and on and on’, she said. ‘Thousands of them.’ They also found where the young trees had been cut down, sometimes with an axe,
sometimes with a chainsaw. ‘Your maths works in reverse too, Mack. Too much of this kind of thing and numbers soon reduce. But can you imagine the mighty carvings that took place here? And
look at the size of some of these stools. These were real giants. We were lucky. Ours was small by comparison.’ She lifted up one of the tines from a crest and it was taller than her.
‘Imagine this in full swing. Now that’s the stuff of romance.’

Hera found books in the house: novels and some technical works, as well as books for children, among which was a spelling book. Mack began receiving lessons every day, and it was a sight that
touched her heart to see the big man sitting on a towel on the beach and picking his way through the words, repeating them to himself and then drawing them in the sand. His favourite text was one
of Sasha’s shorter tales, ‘Getting Your Man’.
¹¹

Mack being Mack, he spent time exploring. So while Hera read and drew and prepared interesting meals, Mack checked out some of the houses. One had lost its roof and the wind
and rain had done the rest, but most were in amazing condition. All had an unreal cleanliness, a lacquered patina, for, like the crates and the corpses, they were insulated from Paradise. He also
searched through all the sheds, and in one he found something which he kept hidden from Hera. It was a boat, an old-style cutter, with a solar panel, a small fluid-core engine and a mast lying flat
with meshlite sails furled round it. It was standing on a set of solid rubber wheels. He cut back the plants impeding the double doors of the shed and prised them open. Minutes later, with the help
of a lever at the back and grease on the axles, he had moved the cutter out into the sunshine. Mack was no connoisseur of boats, but to his eyes it looked very comfortable, with bunks down below
and a galley and lifebelts. He knew Hera liked boats and so this would be his present to her.

Each day he found an excuse to go off and each day he worked on the boat, checking the engine and the solar panels and the batteries. These were flat, but to his joy, since they were dry cells
of the type developed for use in space, they soon began to pick up and hold a charge.

And then one day while Hera was busy trying to prepare something complicated and spicy from what remained of their rations, he trundled the boat down to the sea and manoeuvred it into the water.
It floated. No leaks. He started up the engine. It took a while for the fluid core to warm before any moving parts could function. But he watched the temperature guide, and he watched the shore
too, hoping against hope that Hera would not come out before he had it running.

The needles passed from the black to the green. He heard the engine turn and the torque plate take up the strain. Gently he eased the engine to forward. It coughed once – he had no idea
what caused that – and then it engaged and the boat surged away from the shore. About a mile out, having heard no worrying torque squeals, he took it to full power and had the shock of his
life. The boat sat back and then lifted and planed. The speed was frightening to one not used to such things, but he took it in a wide arc and headed back to shore. He had located the horn and now
he sounded it. Three times. Moments later he saw Hera come running out onto the beach, wearing a bikini she’d found in one of the cupboards. He saw her hold up her hand to shade her eyes, for
the sun was behind him, and then she ran back and seemed to be calling. He could not hear, but he guessed she was calling for him. She ran back onto the beach. This time he was close, and he cut
the power and drifted in to the shore.

‘Dr Melhuish, I presume.’ He jumped down onto the shingle, took the painter in his hand and gave it to Hera. ‘Here you are, sweetheart. It’s all yours.’

Hera was breathless with astonishment. ‘But it’s . . . it’s beautiful. Where did you find it?’

‘Bought it from a friend in Birmingham. Do you like it?’

‘Mack it’s . . . O, Mack. What’s it called?’

A name had been painted on the front and on the stern in Mack’s new, careful handwriting:
The Courtesy of MINADEC
.

The Courtesy of MINADEC
made their lives even more interesting. They could now sail out to the islands, not using the engine when the wind was fresh but scudding over
the clear water and tacking home. Hera was in her element with the dashing spray and the buffeting, but Mack was content to sit and steer and sometimes he was sick. He was never at ease on the
water, and though he learned to swim, it was more of a wallow and he was nothing like the graceful minnow that darted beside him.

But both were aware that time was passing. The situation on the shuttle platform had again worsened. They had to field questions about where they were exactly. Had they been attacked again? Were
they coping? They were very vague in their answers, but when the contacts were over they felt guilty because those who cared for them were having a hard time on the shuttle platform. The backlog of
barges was being cleared slowly, but they were hampered by the media interest the broadcast on the Dendron had generated. To make matters worse, there were occasional inexplicable breakdowns
leading to blackouts. Sometimes the fractal gate would close down completely. This happened most noticeably if something native to Paradise was being shipped out, so strict checks were made, and
anything, whether it was a piece of carved wishbone or a painting on stretched-and-dyed hybla or a Venus tear, was removed. A whole cargo bay was now filling with the artefacts.

As Dickinson explained to Mack, ‘The feeling here is that the whole place is breaking up, so the sooner you get yourself and your missus up here the better. There’s talk in the team
of coming down to get you. I know what you said about that, but we might just have to withdraw from the shuttle if things get worse. Captain Eiderdown looks like she’s ready to quit.
I’m not being too subtle for you am I, Mack?’

Descartes was more direct. ‘I’m frightened of that place down there, Mack. It’s creepy. And Polka and me are having the shittiest dreams of our lives, not to mention pains at
the end of the month. So the sooner you and your sweetheart get your big arses up here the better, and the sooner we shift out. Otherwise we’re leaving you, Mack. We love you dearly and we
always will, but Polka and I can’t stand it.’

Captain Abhuradin was putting a brave face on things and confided to Hera that the only thing that kept her going was that she was pretty sure she was pregnant. She now only wanted to get the
job done so she could concentrate on that. She wanted Hera to say how long she thought it would be before they reached the old shuttle port, as she had to think of scheduling. She wanted to know
where they were and Hera had to be very vague. So, while Hera and Mack were happy in themselves, that happiness began to feel selfish. But there were other things too. Tattersall weeds, hitherto
conspicuous by their absence, began to appear on the high hills. They saw three of them scatter seeds in one morning. The invasion had started.