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

elderly people Adam met the last time he was here, naked except for the tiny silver crucifixes around their necks, and as Adam peers at them, some of them notice him. A muffled cry is raised, and they mill about. Yet it is the tree at the fore of the magnificent view that draws Adam’s attention. Standing at the height of the tallest hill is Eden’s cherry tree, and its petals drift in the artificial breeze running through the garden. They are a pink veil that partially obscures the creature at the tree’s trunk.

Pig has been chained to the cherry tree.

Chains are wrapped around his limbs and his neck, so that his bloodied belly protrudes. His clothes have been torn to rags, and his skin has been cut and bruised so badly that every inch of exposed flesh is red and black. He dangles helplessly from his chains, and his head is drooped, his pale tusks gleaming as they arc from his torn lips. The only sign that he is still alive is the laboured rise and fall of his chest, and the occasional twitch of his heavy limbs.

The garden’s occupants gather.

Some are carrying hunting rifles, and others are empty-handed, but all of them are naked. Their wrinkled, pale flesh quivers as they approach the airlock, and at their head is Frank Sinclair. The small man is grinning, or maybe snarling, and his little teeth are white against his ruddy flesh. The party comes to a halt before the airlock, glaring through the multiple layers of reinforced glass as if their contempt alone might murder Adam where he stands.

Frank’s voice crackles through a hidden speaker.

“I killed you,” he hisses. “I watched you die.”

Adam notices Pig try to raise his head. The flesh around his right eye has swelled so badly that he is only able to see out of his left eye, and he blinks away the crust of blood holding it closed. When he catches sight of Adam he coughs and splutters, swinging his pale tusks uselessly, as if he might be able to tear himself free of his thick chains, but his efforts prove futile. One of Frank Sinclair’s party strides across and snatches a black baton from the grasses at Pig’s feet. The end of the baton flickers with electricity, and the man presses it against Pig’s exposed flesh. There is a prolonged squeal as Pig convulses, distorted through the hidden speaker, and when the violent convulsions subside his head drops again, limp against his chest.

Adam can feel his fists trembling. When he strikes the airlock there is a loud enough bang that Frank Sinclair and the rest of his party stumble backwards. Yet the glass holds. Blood rolls down Adam’s knuckles, but he has caused not so much as a dent. The surprise in Frank Sinclair’s face fades, and he begins to laugh. The laugh is a wretched, barking noise, and as it takes hold of him it rocks his soft frame, making his wrinkled flesh quiver. Adam strikes the airlock again, and again, ruining his fists with each useless strike, and he draws one of his pistols and shoots at it, making a black stain across it, but the glass holds; and the more he tries, raging against it, the harder Frank Sinclair laughs.

They all laugh together, all those naked people safe in their vault, and behind them Pig bleeds, with the pink petals of Eden’s cherry tree gently settling upon his bruised shoulders.

* * *

Adam remembers wandering among the evergreens of Eden, until he came to a grassy clearing where there was a creature that he had not seen before. The creature had hooves, and coarse black hair, and curved white tusks, and rooted at the earth with its long snout, all the while grumbling and snuffling. Adam remembers that he went down on his knees and mimicked the creature until it noticed him, and that they then faced each other. He recalls that the creature’s tusks gleamed, pale and deadly, and that it trembled before it charged. Adam caught it by its tusks, then, and they both fell to the soft earth, a mess of limbs and hands and hooves, struggling and wrestling, until they were both exhausted and lay back in the grasses, breathing heavily. The creature made soft grumbling noises, and snuffled at Adam’s hand when he offered it.

“My name is Adam,” he told it, and he remembers running his fingers through its coarse hair until it stilled. “And your name is Pig.”

The problem with the memory is that Adam remembers naming Pig in English, and try as he might, he is unable to shrug off the corruption. He has no recollection at all of Pig’s name in Edenic, or any of the words he used to name everything in paradise.

* * *

There is too much stuff in Sinclair House. The walls are covered in damp and ruined paintings, and white marble statues loom from alcoves, stained with black mould, and there are bookcases and shelves in almost every room, cladding the walls like thick and musty insulation. The books are a perfect example, Adam thinks, of reading to confirm one’s own beliefs: they are all theological in nature, and of a very particular slant. They speak to the superiority of man, and his God-given right to possess and exploit the world for his betterment. They give the reader permission to plunder all that is not man, interpreting ancient words for profit. Adam pulls books from shelves, spilling sheaves of notes, flicking through them and discarding them into the waters. Let the floods wash away those words, he thinks. Let those books become pulp. Let them remember that they were once trees, alive and thriving and heavy with leaves.

Nowhere can he find anything that resembles the code to the airlock.

In the game room, where the walls are hung with the heads of dead animals, Adam leans up against the snooker table and tries to order his thoughts. Glass eyes stare at