Birds of Paradise by Oliver Langmead (read any book .TXT) 📗

especially enormous portrait, encompassing almost the entire wall of a drawing room. The portrait depicts a silver tree with golden leaves and ruby fruits, and around its trunk winds an enormous green snake. Among the tree’s coiled roots stand a pale man and a pale woman, genitals obscured by artfully placed fig leaves, and the two of them sup greedily on the tree’s fruits. The sky beyond the tree is pinpricked with dazzling stars and angelic figures, accusatory fingers aimed at the pair eating from the tree. Adam spends a while absorbed in the painting. It’s not that the painter got him so wrong, he thinks. He’s more uncomfortable with how little the representation of Eve resembles her. There is nothing of her grace, her intelligence, her loveliness in the painting.

When Adam emerges from his thoughts, Ada Sinclair has changed. She is now wearing a robe so thin that it reveals the few angles of her he had yet to see. Without her fur shawl, Ada seems diminished – less trustworthy than Adam had initially thought. He finds himself suddenly wary of her. “Marvellous, isn’t it?” she smiles, lips glistening. “The original, no less. But let me show you something even more marvellous.” Taking Adam by the hand, she pulls him gently through tall corridors.

At the very rear of the mansion is a great glass airlock. Visible through its thick panes is the interior of the overgrown greenhouse, which is bursting with greenery. A meadow rolls away from the airlock and up to a low rise, where thriving trees bloom green as if it is still summer inside. Tiny flowers emerge from the meadow, and artfully arranged bushes and copses enrich every angle of the artificial hills that roll away to every side. Adam approaches the glass, feeling something shift inside him at the sight of that magnificent garden. Yet, when he presses his hand against the nearest pane, it feels strange beneath his fingers.

“This isn’t glass,” he says.

“My husband’s recipe,” says Ada, as she keys numbers into a pad and cycles the airlock. “We had it patented a few years ago. It’s very, very strong. We have government agencies coming in every now and then to ask after it. They think we’re building a bunker.”

“Are you?”

“No. This is a vault.”

The glass airlock whirs, and then they are inside. The interior of the greenhouse is rich with scents, the air thick with pollen and insects and warmth. Adam spends a while simply breathing it all in. Above, the knife-like tiers of the greenhouse capture and refract the sky, arranged to maximise the little light coursing from the distant autumn sun. Ada shuffles out of her sandals. “You can remove your shoes,” she says, sweetly. “You can remove as much as you’d like, here.”

Adam glances at his shoes: plastic white crushing the long grasses.

“I’m fine,” he says.

There’s so much to take in. As Adam follows Ada further into the greenhouse, he finds himself trying to absorb as much of the place as possible. There are groves and orchards and trees of all kinds; artificial hills and small, glittering rivers; common flowers, and rare flowers; humble, tiny leaves, and enormous, fan-like leaves casting shade, all artfully arranged so that nothing quarrels with anything else for light. Temperatures subtly shift as they move from hill to valley, and so does the light. Adam catches sight of delicate mirrors clicking into place in order to cast better sunlight on certain sections. They must be automated, he thinks. In fact, the whole place seems especially designed to provide the optimum conditions for every living thing planted within it. It’s been painstakingly designed.

Eventually, Ada leads Adam to a gentle grassy slope above a silvery river. This meadow is dotted with daisies, and sitting among them is a small man wearing a white dressing gown. The man rises, and each part of him is fleshy and wrinkled and round. What little white hair he has left is a white halo around his pockmarked scalp. He seems bewildered when he catches sight of Adam approaching, small mouth twitching beneath his white moustache, and he looks to his wife for confirmation. Ada nods, and with that he advances, raising his hand. “You must be Adam,” he says, tiny eyes agleam. “My apologies. You look different to how I imagined. I’m Frank Sinclair.”

Adam’s hand engulfs Frank’s.

“You’ll have to forgive the robes. Usually my wife and I like to explore the greenhouse as God intended, as it were, but we thought we’d spare you the sight.” He winks. “And you’ll have to forgive the drilling, as well. Still a couple more sections to be built, and they’re hard at work on it nearby. Too many apologies, I think. Come – if you’re thirsty, you can drink from the stream. It’s perfectly safe. We have machines that purify it.”

“I like your greenhouse,” says Adam.

“Yes,” says Frank Sinclair.

“He’s here about Magnus,” says Ada.

“Of course. Of course.” Something of Frank’s smile fades. “What a devil old Magnus is. Impossible to get hold of. I’m told that you’re here searching for him. You’ll be glad to know that, so far as our sources are concerned, he is still in the country. In fact, my wife and I are very much interested in getting in touch with him ourselves. Which is why we thought we’d reach out to you.” He clears his throat. “We’d like you to extend an offer to him on our behalf, when you find him. But tell me: do you know what it is that Magnus has been trying to buy from me?”

Adam shrugs. “No.”

“Ah, then you’re in the dark. Let me illuminate you.” Standing, Frank brushes the grass from his dressing gown. “This way,” he says, and he steps with bare feet across another hill, with Adam and Ada in his wake. “When next you see him, please let him know that I’m finally ready to hear his offer. I know I’ve snubbed him in the past, but all of this