Dreaming Again

by Jack Dann

  The world changed.

  Eve bit then in earnest, burying her face in the fruit. Rich juice ran down her naked skin and fell dripping from her perfect breasts as, heedless of the watching brontosaurus, she engorged greedily and without restraint, hungrily eating death in her ecstasy.

  The tempter had to look away.

  When Eve was finally satiated, she wiped her hands on her naked thighs, leaving sticky trails there as she turned back, flushed, to the tempter. ‘I need another fruit,’ she said. ‘As I am your sovereign lady, I bid you fetch it for me.’

  ‘Certainly, my lady,’ the tempter replied. ‘But is it wise to eat more of the fruit before you truly learn its effects?’

  ‘I need it for my husband,’ she said. ‘If you are right, and God is not angered, then all is well. But if He has seen, and decrees my death, then I shall be no more and Adam will be wedded to another Eve. I cannot bear that thought, and so I am resolved that he will share with me, for well or woe.’

  ‘Your wish is my command, empress,’ said the tempter. The brontosaurus obligingly stretched up and brought down another fruit.

  Adam looked up in surprise as his wife came to him, carrying a new-picked fruit that exuded ambrosial aromas.

  ‘I am making a garland for thee, beloved,’ he said, offering her the armful of flowers he had been gathering against her return.

  ‘Thank you, my lord,’ she said. ‘But I have a more important thing for thee.’ She held out the fruit.

  Adam stared at it, wondering why she blushed so deeply to look upon it.

  ‘I met a strange creature,’ she said breathlessly, ‘who proved to me that the tree forbidden, is not a tree of danger, as we were told, but a tree of divine effect to make as gods those who taste. The brontosaurus had eaten of the fruit and was not dead, but newly endowed with human sense and speech and reason. So I also have eaten, and in growing to godhead have now understood that my future bliss will be tedious if not shared with thee.’ She looked at him with pleading eyes. ‘Fate will not now permit me to renounce Deity for thee, my lord, and so you too must eat of the fruit, that we may be again equal in love and joy.’

  ‘My wife, my darling, thou fairest of creation,’ Adam stammered. ‘What hast thou done?’

  ‘Nothing that is not for thy benefit, my lord.’

  ‘Nothing? Thou art lost — defaced, deflowered, and now to death devoted. Did’st thou not suspect that the creature may have been the Enemy of whom we were warned?’

  Eve hesitated.

  Before she could frame an answer, Adam went on, talking to himself, trying to reason out his dilemma. ‘But how should I lose thee,’ he said, ‘and live again alone in this wilderness? How should I be parted from thee, thou who art flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, how should I live without thee?’

  ‘That need not be, my lord,’ Eve said, moving closer to him, her movements sinuous, beguiling.

  Adam reached out to her, embraced her, inhaling the perfume of forbidden fruit from her hair, her skin. He breathed deeply, feeling the stirrings of lust. He nuzzled her neck, licking the residue of death’s juices, and was lost.

  ‘Give me the fruit,’ he said.

  Taking her by the sticky hand, he raised the fruit to his mouth and bit down upon it as he led her, smiling, into the depths of their green bower.

  ‘That was close,’ said Gabriel. ‘I’ve never seen Him so angry.’

  ‘Lucky for us He agreed that we could not have prevented the Enemy from entering the Garden as mist,’ Raphael said. ‘We could have been sharing the fate of the hapless brontosaurus.’ He shivered in sympathy. ‘That is unfortunate,’ Michael said. ‘But He has a point.’ ‘But the poor creature was innocent,’ said Uriel. ‘It was terribly confused when the Enemy stopped inhabiting it.’

  ‘But it still wanted to eat the fruit,’ said Michael. ‘And what one brontosaurus eats, so do the rest. You’d have to agree that a herd of suddenly sentient dinosaurs would create problems for Him.’

  ‘True,’ said Uriel. ‘But I still think that taking away their bodies and leaving their necks and heads to become serpents was extreme. The tallest of creatures are now the lowest, condemned forever to crawl on their stomachs and eat bitter dust.’

  ‘They’ll survive better outside Eden that way,’ said Raphael. ‘They are banished too, don’t forget.’

  ‘Well, He couldn’t leave them here, could He?’ said Gabriel. ‘The temptation would always be there, and serpents could still coil themselves up the Tree.’

  ‘Too late to worry about it now,’ said Raphael. ‘He has spoken.’

  ‘And the pets are condemned to make their own way in the world outside the Garden,’ said Uriel.

  ‘I feel bad about that,’ said Michael. ‘We didn’t protect them very well, did we?’

  ‘We tried,’ said Raphael. ‘But we can’t help them now.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Gabriel.

  ‘And disobey Him?’ Michael said incredulously.

  ‘Of course not,’ Gabriel replied. ‘But I’m thinking that we can at least atone for our part in this whole miserable episode.’

  ‘How?’ Raphael asked.

  ‘Well,’ said Gabriel, ‘He has decreed who should go from the Garden, but He hasn’t said anything about who should stay.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ said Uriel. ‘Maybe we can help them survive a little longer.’

  ‘Let’s do it,’ said Michael.

  Adam and Eve walked miserably towards the Gates, downcast and uncomfortable in their awkward clothing of leaves tied on with lengths of vine.

  ‘It’s the best I could do,’ Eve whined.

  ‘Obviously,’ said Adam. ‘It’s your “best” that got us into this mess.’

  The archangels stepped forward as the humans drew level with the Gates.

  ‘Stop bickering and listen up,’ said Raphael, hefting the fiery sword for emphasis.

  ‘Greetings, thou celestial messenger,’ Adam began.

  ‘Forget all that,’ Michael said sharply. ‘Are you ready to leave?’

  Adam nodded dejectedly.

  ‘Then get going,’ Raphael said, opening the Gates just wide enough for the two humans to pass.

  ‘We’re giving you a head start,’ Gabriel added in a theatrical whisper. ‘Make the best of it.’

  Puzzled, Adam and Eve stepped beyond the lush portal that had opened in the tropical wall of rainforest, and through into a harsher land. Hard at their heels a horde of serpents slithered and slipped through rising dust in a frantic rush for cover. The air was thinner, the sun hotter, the vegetation sparser. Everything was different. Eve tried to take Adam’s hand, but he shrugged her away, radiating bad temper. She walked on, feeling the first prickles of sweat and sunburn. The palm-frond skirt felt scratchy, the ground was rough beneath her bare feet. The child in her belly kicked — the first murderer was restless too.

  The howl of a hunting T. Rex pierced the air. Eve looked back, and felt for the first time the thrill of physical fear.

  Behind the fiery swords that barred the way, velociraptors clamoured at the Gates of Eden.

  AFTERWORD

  The Genesis for ‘Paradise Design’d’ was a television interview in which I saw apologists for ‘intelligent design’ insisting that there had been dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden. I then recalled that Milton had neglected to include dinosaurs when explaining the ways of God to man in Paradise Lost, and concluded that a further story was needed to remedy that lack. The dinosaurs, alas, were behaving badly.

  — Janeen Webb

  <>

  THE NEW DEAL

  TRENT JAMIESON

  TRENT JAMIESON lives in Brisbane. He has had more than sixty short stories published over the last decade, including ‘Slow & Ache,’ which won the 2006 Aurealis Award for best science fiction short story. His work has been published in Future Orbits, Agog, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Daikoiju!, Encounters, The Devil in Brisbane, Nemonymous 4, Horn Fontastyko, Aurealis, Eid
olon and Altair. His short story collection Reserved for Traveling Shows was published in 2006, and his first children’s novel, The City and the Stony Stars, is part of the Lost Shimmaron series published by ABC Books.

  ‘The New Deal’ is a wild storm of a story, dark as the twisted alleys of a ruined, deserted city. Revelations come in blinding flashes in this hard-boiled surrealistic detective tale about sex, death and undeath, and deals with those dangerous and devious powerbrokers on high…

  ‘You hear about the new Deal?’ Jacobi asked, crouching down by the nearest body on the flat corrugated iron roof.

  Ulmer shrugged. ‘Just rumours, nothing definite. Last one wasn’t so good. These two aren’t going to benefit.’

  He took a step back from the bodies, careful to stay on the line of nails marking the beam beneath. The roof was rusty; it creaked with his movement.

  Jacobi grinned and brushed flies from his cracked lips. ‘These blokes been dead a while.’

  ‘No shit.’ Ulmer squinted down at the dead blokes, then at Smoketown beyond the roof, the city swinging like a curse of concrete and steel up Beacon Hill; dark steeples, and flat roofed towers. A storm, days in brewing, rose above it all, bleak sky and detonations stretching up and up, almost to the snake god Nehebekau’s overarching gut. No rain though. Not yet.

  On the western edge of town, John Shabtee’s doll factory belched black smoke that mingled with the cloud. Nearer, no more than a block distant, cows were being slaughtered in the abattoir. Ulmer’s ears rang with the thuk, thuk, thuk of the air gun and the bovine shrieks. The blokes on the roof had stopped shrieking days ago.

  Jacobi passed him a wallet. No ID, just forty dollars in twenties. There was also a photo, family shot; wife and kids. That sort of shit hit Ulmer every time, just ate him up. The photo was old, Pre-Deal, peeling up at the corners, smudged with hope and yearning. He slipped the wallet in a zip-lock bag, tucked the photo in his pocket. Ulmer grimaced; he knew the dark places that stuff took you to in this Post-Deal world, but he kept the photo, and if Jacobi noticed he didn’t say anything.

  Ulmer split the money with Jacobi. Standard practice; not worth the paperwork.

  The other corpse had nothing but a pair of glasses, too scratched to be worth anything, and a rabbit’s foot, hollowed and weighted with a small lump of lead. Ulmer slipped the rabbit’s foot in his pocket too.

  ‘Sacrifice, certainly not theft, always somebody trying to make their own deal.’ Ulmer motioned at the dark over Smoketown, a thick black smudge like a sketch of depression. ‘Maybe call up the storm.’

  ‘Sacrifices aren’t this subtle. This is old school haruspication.’ Jacobi pointed to the neat incisions in the corpse’s torsos, the care with which the livers of each victim had been placed on their chest. The bloke on the left’s wire-rimmed glasses weren’t even spattered with blood. Jacobi glanced towards the dark horizon. ‘And that storm’s been brewing longer than these bastards have been dead. Can’t tell you what the querents were trying to divine from these guts, but I can tell you what they’re saying.’ Jacobi grinned. ‘Storm’s coming.’

  Ulmer took a lazy swing at him.

  ‘Too slow, mate.’

  Ulmer grunted. He wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘Let’s get to work.’

  Storm broke as they turned away from the corpses. Jacobi sprinted to the edge of the roof. Ulmer followed fast as he dared because this was no mild precipitation, but rage. They couldn’t do anything about the bodies; they were too short-staffed, although Ulmer was certain Jacobi would soon be making a call to Mr Shabtee. The doll maker would find a use for them.

  All that iron and lightning tensed Ulmer up as they clambered off the roof. Jacobi seemed unperturbed, still he jumped when the storm snatched half the roof free, and he crossed himself when the bodies, laughing, lifted and tumble-flew through the air, west against the wind. Ulmer could hear their cackling clear above the rain and thunder.

  ‘Now that shit I don’t like.’ Jacobi had dropped to the ground, almost to his knees. He rose unsteadily from the crouch.

  Ulmer was already dashing for the car, even if he wasn’t designated driver. Mud that had been dust a minute before sucked at his boots. He watched the dead blokes’ stumbling shrieking flight. ‘Seen worse.’

  Jacobi stank up the car with his sweat and his music. Bobby Darin, Mack the Knife or Beyond the Sea, Ulmer didn’t know; his brain shut out the lyrics once he recognised the voice.

  ‘Hate that shit.’ Ulmer wiped the rain from his face; he could feel the soot there, in his skin.

  Jacobi turned up the volume. ‘You drive, you pick the tunes.’

  That shut Ulmer up. He couldn’t drive, that part of him hadn’t come over, Post-Deal. But you couldn’t dwell on what you lost, because it wasn’t just memories or skills. The dealmakers had bartered more than half the population out of existence. You couldn’t dwell on the things and people you’d lost. When it came to the Deal, you had to remember that things had been bad, real bad. Start thinking and you’d start sinking, spiralling down, into those dark and reaching days, into the various calamities.

  Ulmer considered winding down the window, to let out the stink and the music rattling around in his head, but the rain still pounded from the bleak clouds. So he drowned in music and stench, and the car crashed into Smoketown. Piece of shit car. Piece of shit tunes.

  He bummed a cigarette off Jacobi. His partner scowled. ‘You owe me a few of those now.’

  ‘I’m good for them,’ Ulmer said. Jacobi turned up the volume some more; the speakers rattled.

  The wipers tick-tocked on their fastest setting, Smoketown swam behind their swinging beat. They passed the brothels, the dolls out; their smooth wooden limbs and breasts slick with rain. Jacobi leered, even though he had a doll waiting at home. Ulmer watched them, suspicious of their predatory movements, their calculated desire. He could feel them from his balls up. Smoketown was a city of longing, pent up, like that storm. But with no release.

  Storm didn’t last long, mostly spent by the time they reached the stationhouse.

  Dorian sat at the front desk, flicking through a dog-eared porno magazine. He lowered it without shame, took their guns and counted out the bullets with sweaty fingers, his fingertips smearing the desk.

  ‘Bullets all there. Or we’d be telling you they weren’t.’ Jacobi snarled.

  Dorian flashed his black teeth. ‘Your time of the month, eh, Jacobi?’

  ‘You shut up.’

  ‘Bean in?’ Ulmer asked.

  Dorian laughed. Bean was always in. Chained to his desk, literally; a silver chain, links an inch thick. Part of the Deal. Some things hadn’t come over. Other things had, and one of those was Bean. Bean was always in; down below, in the basement, filing, running through the paperwork, following leads, and listening, always listening.

  ‘Bean doesn’t need to see this,’ Jacobi said, and Ulmer could tell he was thinking of his desk and his notes and all that paperwork. Job was mostly paperwork.

  ‘You don’t need to come,’ Ulmer said, heading out to buy his offering.

  Jacobi didn’t look back. ‘Suit yourself.’

  ‘Bought with a dead man’s cash. You’re all class.’ Bean sniffed at the burger, fries, and Coke that Ulmer had dropped on his desk.

  Ulmer ignored the slur. ‘To your taste?’ He inquired, about as formal as he got.

  Bean wiped at the sweat beneath the neat part in his hair. ‘Always hungry, Ulmer. Crack your knuckly bones and suck the marrow out, if it weren’t for this chain.’ Bean leant over the desk. His dead breath washed against Ulmer’s face.

  ‘Thank Christ.’

  ‘No. Not Christ. Something darker, something crueller. Like they say, you don’t make deals with gods, though people never learn. Isn’t it enough that there’s a god in the sky, and that I’m down here. Don’t you people know when to stop?’

  ‘If people stopped making deals, I’d be out of a job,’ Ulmer said.

  Bean swallowed the food
down in a couple of gulps. The soft drink he took a little longer on, his big black eyes never leaving Ulmer.

  ‘What do you want?’ Bean asked.

  ‘Two dead blokes,’ Ulmer said, and gave him the details, sketched the knife marks, the position of the bodies in relation to the major celestial points.

  He pulled out the heavy rabbit’s foot. Bean’s eyes widened a little at that, with theatrics, or genuine surprise, Ulmer wasn’t sure. Ulmer put the rabbit’s foot on the desk. Bean leant down and sniffed it. He popped it in his mouth. He spat it out, his face twisting in a grimace. ‘This isn’t a rabbit’s foot. It’s an arrow pointing somewhere, like the haruspication. It’s a message.’

  ‘What’s it say?’

  Bean finished his soft drink. Dropped the bottle in the bin, wiped the water mark from the desk with a paper towel; dropped that in the bin too.

  ‘It says, you don’t want to pursue this.’ Bean slid the foot back to him, Ulmer noted he was careful to touch it with just the dark squares of his nails. Ulmer picked it up. Bean had lost interest, his eyes already straying to the papers piled up in his in-tray. ‘Do your paperwork and leave it on someone else’s desk. You’re too thorough.’

  ‘Inside job.’

  ‘Shit yeah. You leave it alone, or you’ll regret it.’

  Ulmer thanked him and got out of there, and home, not sure what to do. The photo of the dead bloke and his family in his pocket.

  Ulmer woke just as irresolute, went and bought some cigarettes, and coffee, and caught up with Jacobi at the stationhouse.

  ‘I don’t understand you.’ Jacobi picked the cigarettes Ulmer owed him out of his pack, careful in every selection. ‘You make a good wage, better than me. And you piss it all away, always hanging out for the next pay check. One day you won’t make such a good wage, what you going to do then?’