by Geoff Ryman
'Give her a hand!' roared Old Tone, suddenly furious. Milena shrank back from his voice, shrank back from touching the old woman. Rolfa pushed the old woman's skinny behind.
'Whoo-hooo! Ooops!' cried Lucy. Old Tone helped her to her feet. As she stood, Milena realized that she had smelly knees. How, wondered Milena, do you get smelly knees?
Someone passed Rolfa a squeeze box. A few testing notes announced that a song would begin, and the pub fell quiet, and the skinny purple men turned in anticipation.
An old, worn, squeaky melody began, a homely tune, and the men chuckled in recognition. The old woman gave them a wink and a toothless cackle and began to raise her skirts teasingly over slightly scaly thighs. Oh don't, winced Milena. Then Lucy began to sing, in a wheedling, bird-like voice.
'It's a Dog of a Song,' she began, her voice straining.
'Just a Dog of a Song
Ambling gently along'
She mimed an amble with her knees. Her fingers, all lumps and shiny patches, tried to trace sprightly patterns through the air. Her old wrinkled face pursed its lips and opened its eyes wide in a caricature of youthful naughtiness.
'With no ill feelings, no ill will.
Just a Dog of a Song — the voice rose and quavered.
'But it doesn't know how to end
And it's so hard
When you lose a friend — for just a note the voice held the clear tone it must once have had.
'Just a Dog of a Song
But...'
Her head did a funny sideways jump, as if something mechanical had caught in her neck.
'We all sing along. But...'
Jump.
'We all sing along. But...'
She did it over and over like a wind-up doll gone wrong. The rest of the song consisted of only that for over three minutes. The men joined in. Part of the fun was trying to make her stop. The men howled like coyotes, they shouted at her, they pounded tables with their mugs. Did they like it? Why were they smiling?
Finally Lucy stopped, and Rolfa took her hand and held it up, and there were derisive cheers. 'No more. No more.'
'Where's my pint? Where's my pint?' Lucy challenged and pretended to make a fist.
Rolfa stood back and lifted up her hands and clapped lightly. But somehow, in her mouth, by sucking air through spittle, Rolfa was able to reproduce, exactly, the sound of massed applause. It rose and fell in waves. Milena could almost hear the cheering.
Later, walking back, Milena suddenly understood what the song meant.
Lucy had been imitating a broken record played on a wind-up gramophone. It must have been a shock when the tinny horns replaced the smoothly sliding tapes.
'They were alive before the Blackout,' Milena said.
'Yup,' said Rolfa.
They were the incandescent people of the electronic age. That was what had become of them. They had seen cities spangled with light, they had laughed in unison, millions all at once watching the same entertainments all together in an electronic net. They had had to learn how to sing songs and play squeeze boxes during the Blackout and they were now — how old? At least 120, maybe 140, years old.
But it doesn't know how to end, and it's so hard when you lose a friend...'
'They were singing about themselves,' Milena murmured.
'Yup,' said Rolfa, her back towards her. Milena noticed that she was abrupt and walking ahead of her.
'We'll go again,' said Milena, to make amends.
'If they'll have you,' said Rolfa. 'Tuh!' The chuckle, her chuckle that always died and became a shudder. 'You looked most of the time like you'd swallowed your bloody parasol.'
That's when Milena remembered that she'd left it behind.
'Yup,' she said, looking away from the river. She had begun, without realising it, to imitate Rolfa.
chapter three
LOVE SICKNESS
(HOLDING A GHOST)
Love's Labour's Lost had grown so listless that the director had actually called for a rehearsal that afternoon. Actors did not normally need to rehearse; the viruses told them what to do.
The practice rooms were normally reserved for musicians, and were too small for a full cast. Summer sun streamed in through the windows. It was hot and airless.
'Me, an't shall please you,' said Milena in her own fiercely exact voice. 'I am Anthony Dull.'
'No, no, no!' wailed the director. His only job was to recreate the great production that the viruses remembered. 'Milena, you know how that line is supposed to sound.'
'Yes, thought Milena, flat, stupid, dull. She had no interest in it. She felt restless and worried and she did not know why. She did know that she wanted to talk to Rolfa, as if there were some unfinished business between them.
So in the late summer evening, still dressed as Constable Dull, she went to Rolfa's chamber. A new aisle had been cleared through the racks. It was easier for her to find her way. As Milena walked through the archways of brick, she heard Rolfa begin to sing, alone in the dark.
She'll stop in a moment, thought Milena. Rolfa didn't. The song rose and fell wordlessly. It was embarrassing. How could she go up to Rolfa and say, hello, do you always sing to yourself in the dark?
Milena was about to creep away, when the music snagged her attention. A lowering note seemed to seize something in her chest and drag it down. Milena felt a great weight of something like sadness.
But it wasn't sadness. It was as if someone were walking deliberately, sombre perhaps, but with high purpose. It had the sound of noble music.
What was it? Milena rifled through her viruses, but there was no answer. It wasn't Wagner or Puccini. What the hell could it be? Milena sat down between the racks.
Milena's viruses were told to keep track of the themes. They wove a structure in her head. The music kept unfolding out of itself, like a flower blooming. Then there was a slight catch, not in Rolfa's voice, but in the notes, a slight wavering of uncertainty.
Rolfa stopped. She sang the passage in a new form. Yes! said the viruses. They showed Milena how the three new bars referred to the first notes she had heard.
By all the stars, Milena's mind seemed to whisper. This is Rolfa's. This is Rolfa's music. She's imagining it, here in the dark. Rolfa began to sing again, from the beginning. Rolfa can do this? This wasn't bathtub singing or a drunken wallow. I've got her wrong, thought Milena. This is someone I don't know. Why is she singing here? Why don't people know about her?
Milena tried to remember the music. She told her viruses to remember, but even they got tangled up. The viruses were not used to listening to new music. New music was too alive, it wouldn't sit still, the themes got tangled up like snakes. Very suddenly, almost with a perceptible click, the viruses gave up.
Milena was not used to listening to unfamiliar music either. It made her feel strange, as if she were in a dream where everything is scrambled but weighted with meaning. Rolfa's voice suddenly rose to peaks, like a mountain, and Milena felt her eyes bulge. She felt tears start in her eyes. It was as if some great winged thing had taken to the air, rising out of a human body, transcending it. Milena saw it fly.
Rolfa sang for a half hour. The music was a single piece from beginning to end. Toward the end, it faltered. Very suddenly, Rolfa broke off. 'No. No,' Milena heard Rolfa say. There was a cough and a sniff, and a small crash.
'Oh bugger,' said the light, rasping voice. Milena smiled fondly, with a kind of ache for her. By now it was dark, and no light came through the little window. Milena heard a shuffling come towards her. In the darkness a wisp of fur brushed her, the very tips of it against her cheek, and Milena froze. She waited some minutes more in the dark.
'Bloody hell,' she murmured. Then she stood up and slipped out of the Graveyard, arch by arch.
Milena went to the room of her friend Cilia. Like Milena, Cilia lived in the Shell, in another wing. Milena knocked on her door. Cilia was wearing a pinny and was frying sausages on a single-ring cooker.
'Oh, Lo,' said Cilia,
surprised to see Milena at all, let alone dressed as a Tudor constable. 'I thought you hated that costume.'
'I do,' said Milena and stepped briskly into Cilia's tiny room. Her sword clanked. 'Cilia, do you have any paper?'
'What?' said Cilia, with an unsteady chuckle. 'Uh. No. What makes you think I've got paper?'
'I don't know. You're in The Mikado.'
'Madam Butterfly. Same country, different opera.'
'Don't they give you paper for notes or anything? I mean, being an Animal and all.'
'Milena, are you all right? We use the viruses for notes, like anybody else.'
'Can you get paper? Do you have any access to paper?' Milena suddenly felt the hopelessness of it. 'I need some paper.'
'What do you need it for?' Cilia asked, quietly.
'I've got to write some music down!' Milena's hands made a fist.
'Oh,' said Cilia, feeling absolved now of the need to be sympathetic. She went back to her sausages. 'Becoming a composer now, are we?'
'No, no,' said Milena, giving her head a distracted shake. She was trying to keep Rolfa's music going in her head. 'It's someone else's.'
Cilia seemed to find this unexpected. 'Listen. I'm sure whoever it is can go to Supplies and explain, if the viruses can't cope. There's going to be a lot more paper soon, they say. They've got the new beaver bugs.'
Milena shook her head. 'It's a GE,' she said.
Cilia went still. 'Really?'
'I think,' said Milena, 'that she's the Bear who goes to all the first nights. I just heard her sing. She sings beautifully. And it was new music.'
Cilia took her arm and made her sit down on the bed. 'U-nique,' she said, avaricious for news of other people's doings.
'She's rich, she's got all the paper she needs. But I don't think she wants it written down. She just sings it, in the dark.' Milena found that she was really quite disturbed. 'It's beautiful. I don't understand. She just sings it with no one to hear. Why doesn't she want anyone to hear it?'
'You want some sausages?' Cilia asked in a soft voice. 'I can't eat them all. I was out in the sun. You want to stay?'
Milena nodded. As the sausages sizzled and filled the room with meaty smells, Milena tried to sing snatches of the music. In her own thin voice they sounded aimless and colourless.
'How did you meet her?' Cilia asked, serving the food.
Milena told her the story of how they had met in the Graveyard. 'She says it's where she hides.'
'We ought to keep that a secret then,' said Cilia. She passed Milena a plate of sausages. They would have to eat with the plates on their laps, sitting on the bed. Cilia did not own a table or chairs. With a snap of the wrist, Cilia held out a twisted, melted piece of resin that had once been a fork.
'I think this one's yours,' Cilia said with a rueful smile.
Milena didn't notice. She kept talking about Rolfa. As she ate, Milena told Cilia about the Spread-Eagle, and the people in it. Cilia stirred the sausages round and round on her plate and said, 'Go on, go on.'
Milena talked about the dandruff and the whisky and the cloth shoes and about the voice. Most of all, she talked about the music. As she left, Cilia took her arm, as if she needed support, to help her to the door.
Milena stumbled scowling downstairs to her own bed. Scowling, she slowly undressed. It was as if she had suddenly found herself in a different world. She blew out the candle, and squeezed it between her wetted fingers to hear it hiss. She felt the sausages repeat, and she settled down under her one counterpane.
She could hear Rolfa sing. She had a sudden vision of her as Brunnhilde, winged helmet and spear, with fur sprouting out from the edges of the breastplate. Half-asleep, she grinned. Dreamily, she imagined settling down amid the fur, brushing aside the dandruff. It would be soft and warm, and she would stroke it. She imagined Rolfa's head in her lap.
Marx-and-Lenin! she thought and sat upright in bed.
I am sexually attracted to her!
Milena had no shorter form of words. Milena lusted after the huge, baggy body. She wanted to do very specific things with it.
No, no, I can't, Milena thought, and tried to talk herself out of it. She's got green, rotting stumps for teeth, Milena reminded herself. There was no answering revulsion. The pull was too strong.
She's huge and hairy. Yes, replied some wicked part of Milena's mind. Don't I know?
She's got dandruff!
All over, came the reply. Tee-hee. The whole thing was one great hoot.
She probably has bad breath and is full to the brim with viruses.
For heaven's sake, you can't be in love with a Polar Bear! They hibernate. They moult. Their whole biology is different!
Then a thought came to Milena. The thought was so transfiguring, that it actually knocked her out of bed. She kicked involuntarily, and her legs got caught up in the counterpane, and she slid off the edge of the mattress face down onto the floor. She gave a kind of convulsive wrench and turned to sit up surrounded by fallen pillows.
The thought was this: Rolfa was immune to the viruses. All of the Bears were. Their body temperatures were too high. That was why none of Rolfa's knowledge came from viruses, why she had to learn things afresh. If Rolfa suffered from bad grammar, then like Milena she might not have been cured.
Suddenly Milena was sure in her gut that this was so. She simply knew it. From the way Rolfa walked, from the way she drank, from her air of displacement, from her wariness of hurt, from her strange combination of strength and weakness — from many things that could never be put into words, Milena knew that Rolfa was like her. Milena had finally found a woman.
Oh Marx, oh Lenin, oh dear. Milena's belly felt like a corset that had just been unlaced. Everything was loose and wobbly and undone. Her hands shook, her knees were weak. She stood up and walked around her room. She barked her shins on the corner of the bed, and bit a fingernail, tearing it off down to the quick, and finally had to go for a walk.
And her dreams took wing.
They would live together, Rolfa and her, and Rolfa would write great music, she would be a genius. Mozart, Beethhoven, Liszt, they were virtuosos, why not a virtuoso of the voice? And Milena would brush her hair, all of it, and put it up in curls, all of it, for special occasions, hold her at night, cure the dandruff. They would stay together, they would have each other, and Rolfa would bloom. Milena suddenly felt she understood her, understood why she shuffled, hangdog, why she drank, why she looked defeated. No one would think a Bear could sing, no one would ever listen. People thought of GEs as dogs, they hated them, feared them. Milena found that she shook with the injustice of it. She wanted to go to her. She would have walked to the GE house if she had known where it was. The sense of Rolfa all around her was so strong that she knew, she knew how her body would feel, the bulk and heat and softness of it. She knew how her mouth would taste. Her own heart was singing.
She walked for hours in a soft warm drizzle in dark streets that did not need policing. She walked until she was exhausted, her feet crossing in front of each other with each step, walked until the dull morning began to rise. And still she didn't feel any better, and still she couldn't rest.
She went to the railway arches and collapsed onto the pavement, and waited for Rolfa. The sun came up under an edge of retreating cloud and she felt it on her pale face. She didn't care. She saw Rolfa approaching.
Milena stood up, and brushed her clothes and ran her fingers through her short hair, to get rid of the tangles. She waited. Rolfa came up to her.
The fear returned. Milena didn't know she was afraid. All she knew was that she could not be herself. She would not be able to speak.
'What are you doing here?' Rolfa asked, blinking.
'Oh. Oh,' said Milena and flung her arms awkwardly about herself.
'You are in a state. What have you been doing?'
'Oh. I just went out. You're a bad influence on me.'
Milena's eyes were sparkling, almost swollen with unspoken message.
>
'I don't think anyone could have a bad influence on you,' said Rolfa. 'You're immune to it.'
'Are we having lunch today?' Milena's voice was wan and hopeful.
Rolfa stood very still, her fur stirring in the light morning wind. 'If you like, Little One,' she said and gave Milena's head, her hair a very quick stroke, a kind of pat. Then she walked on, down the tunnel.
Milena followed her, thrilled. She's got a pet name for me! She toddled, feeling small and tender.
'Another busy day,' said Rolfa sourly, as she swung open the big yellow doors that never needed to be locked.
As they walked between the racks in the dark, the silence between them became uneasy. Milena had been wanting a flood of revelation, had reached a peak of joy. Now nothing happened. Rolfa, Rolfa, I know you are, you must be. Rolfa, say something about it. Rolfa, give me a sign. But Rolfa had gone dark, silent, like the racks.
Rolfa coughed and shuffled and turned on her alcohol light and seemed to ignore Milena, and simply stared down at her desk, the suddenly shaggy and intolerable mess of it.
'Tuh,' said Rolfa, the shudder-chuckle. She sat down, slumped at the desk and Milena's heart ached for her. Rolfa picked up a score and held it up, looking at it, questioning, as if no longer certain of its worth. Milena made sure that it was printed, not handwritten, not a manuscript.
'Do you ever write music yourself?' Milena asked.
Rolfa sniffed and shrugged.
'I'd like to see some, if you do,' Milena said.
'Oh! I get a few snatches descend on me from time to time,' said Rolfa. She turned and tried to smile. 'But I don't write anything down.' She shook her head and kept on shaking it.
She must simply remember it, thought Milena. But there could be an accident, anything could happen.
