by Geoff Ryman
Wasn't she? Czechoslovakian? Milena suddenly wasn't sure. She was dismayed that she could not remember the nationality of Einstein's first wife. Why can't I learn? she wondered, scuffing her feet. She was a freak; she knew she was a freak; everyone treated her like a freak. The viruses buffeted her like a hurricane, but left nothing behind. She read books and they seemed to evaporate. Milena was very discouraged.
She pushed open another door, and walked up more steps, to the Hall.
The Hall was full of folding bamboo tables. They had flat, grey resin tops to make them easier to clean. On sunny days, the whole room smelled of pine. The work shift was still laying spoons and cups for breakfast, solemn, puffy-eyed children of eight or nine, moving with the mindless motions of machinery, dazed with sleepiness, driven by training.
A Nurse was serving lentil porridge. 'Good morning, Ms Shibush,' the Nurse said to Milena. The Nurse was older than most: about eighteen years. Milena knew her name but didn't use it.
'Lo,' murmured Milena grumpily, without any other greeting.
The Nurse looked at Milena, unwashed, impolite, and dazed by hard work of which the other children — indeed the Nurse herself — had no experience. The Nurse shook her head. All the staff were giving up on Milena. They had stopped praying for her, they said. Milena was beginning to give up on herself. She could not read enough, or study enough, or memorise enough or think enough to keep up with the others. Milena made kindly children doe-eyed with pity; cruel children were afraid of her. It was part of Milena's affliction that she was able to hit people.
Milena took her lentil porridge to an empty table. Some Tykes sat at another table. Wee Lambs. Billy Dan and his little gang of five year olds. Milena could hear them playing games.
'OK,' said Billy. 'What's this?' And he recited:
'Besides with justice this discerning age
Admires their wond'rous talents for the stage:
Well may they venture on the mimick's art,
Who play from morn to night a borrowed part
And the other Tykes cried out the answer: 'Johnson, Samuel Johnson!'
'London. That's the title. "London: A Poem.'"
And Billy tried to look superior. 'Written in imitation of...' He was not allowed to finish.
'The Third Satire of Juvenal!'
It was a pointless game. Everyone had the same viruses, but the Wee Lambs were still impressed by the knowledge that basked like whales inside their heads. The Wee Lambs were insufferable. They would put wood chips or dried peas in people's beds for fun and then weep themselves to sleep. They needed taking care of. The older children did their washing and ironing for them. The Wee Lambs would lord it over them, or try to prove they knew more than the older children. Just a phase, the older children said, wrinkling their noses with the disdain of those who were nearly adult. The older children admired practical skills. They prided themselves on the stalls they ran, on the deals they drove, buying or selling lumber or crystal or plaster or eggs. They compared each of the Estates, eyeing up their possible futures. Would it be better to stay a Restorer or become a Reefer, growing new buildings instead of repairing old ones? What about Farming? Nice outdoor life, with plenty of razzle — off-duty work — on the side. What about Resins or Hides or even Pharmacy? Doctors were the highest, Doctors were the best, but no one expected to be Placed as a Doctor.
It was a superstition that a child could fix on a future Placing and Develop towards it. Their main goal now that they were nine years old was to pull what they called a Plum — a Plum Placing in a good Estate. At the age of ten, they would be Read by the Consensus. Any faults in personality or criminal tendencies would be cured. The Reading would be used to plan their future lives.
Milena was nine. At the end of the summer she would be ten. What kind of Placing were they going to give her? Humping garbage, probably. How about street sweeper? There was a range of possibilities for someone who was resistant to the viruses.
Milena ate the last of her lentils in silence, finding comfort in their unvarying richness. Other, older children began to come in. Some of them came in pairs, a boy and a girl holding hands, already engaged to be married. To Milena that was pure foolishness. Come ten and you're both Read, and wiped, and you come out different people. After the Reading, they change you, you end up marrying a stranger. Or they give you different Placings in different Estates at opposite ends of the Pit. Becoming engaged was just a way of saying: huh, me, I'm Developed already. Me, I'm an adult. Why, Milena thought, do you want to be an adult anyway?
Time to go. Milena stood up and was halfway down the aisle when she remembered her plate. You were supposed to take your plate and wash it up yourself. Milena had forgotten. Why don't I have a memory? She turned around and walked back to her table. The eyes of Billy's gang were on her, and the Lambs were smiling. One of them started to giggle and go red in the face. That's her, that's the Lump who can't remember anything. See? She's forgotten her plate. Milena glared at them and they all looked away. They were frightened of her.
Milena snatched up the plate, took it to the sink, and washed it without talking to anyone. Milena didn't want to be feared. She wanted to have friends. She wanted to be a part of things. Why? wondered Milena the child. Why can't I remember? What is it? She had no idea why the viruses failed her. She no longer knew that she could spring the viruses, rethink the codes of DNA.
She ran down the stairs away from the Hall, down to the front door of the block, and pushed it open as if bursting free, and stood outside, unwashed on the street.
There was the light; there were the trees. The street was called the Gardens, because one side of it was planted with grass and trees. Along a branch, a great fat pigeon, his neck swollen up, waddled after a female. She scurried away from him, escaping his advances. Further down the Gardens there was a cart. A huge, slow, solemn man was carrying hessian sacks. He emptied them into the cart. They were full of garbage.
Is that my future? Milena wondered, looking at him.
The man shook out the sacks, his muscles raising and lowering their heads. He had a beard and long shaggy hair. He looked like a Biblical prophet.
So what happens when you're Placed as an emptier of garbage? Milena wondered. She began to walk down the gardens, past the man. Do you suddenly discover that, yes, emptying sacks was really what you wanted to do all along? Do they give you a virus to make you love your work? The man glanced at her, scowling. He could play King Lear, thought Milena. There were more hessian sacks, lined up against the bamboo railings.
Milena wanted to be part of the theatre. She had put on shows with other orphans and would be seen to flower suddenly when directing them. Was there any chance of Milena Shibush pulling a Place in a theatre? I'd take anything, she thought. I would sweep the floors, I would pump up the alcohol lights, I would wash the sweaty costumes. I'd do anything as long as it was in a theatre.
It seemed highly unlikely. All that the Nurses could imagine her doing was being some kind of humper. They thought she would carry bricks or melons. Whenever Milena asked questions about Placing — about its fairness, or why it was necessary, the Nurses only smiled. It was a particular, soured, superior sort of smile. The smile seemed to say: haven't you got beyond worrying about that yet? Are you still stuck back there? No answers were given. Milena had come to the conclusion that they didn't have any.
Milena walked on, becoming angry.
They had told her there were no more books.
No more books! When their own Estate was hard at work saving the British Library! Every book published in the twentieth century was there! Milena had heard that and found the library for herself. She could remember the first whispered hush of those rows of shelving. She remembered the disdain on the face of the librarian. Read them? You want to read them? Child, these are historical documents, originals. Why do you need to read them? It took a visit from the Senior of the Child Garden to get Milena access. The Senior was a boisterous, hearty man in his early twent
ies, who was good at jollying people. All a great lark, he had said to the librarian. The child wants to read books. Well, good for her. Then he had whispered to the librarian and her eyes had melted into what she thought was an expression of sympathy. Reading books was a symptom of a grave disorder. The librarian had made a fuss over her after that and had talked to her in a cooing artificial voice, explaining simple things over and over, very slowly.
When Milena had finally been left alone with the books, she had wept for all the knowledge in them, the things that other people carried in their heads, as a gift, for free.
And so Milena tried to catch up. She had been six years old when she started. The first book she had read, or tried to read, was Plato's Republic. Do I remember a word of it?
Why would the Nurses tell her there were no more books? Out of shame for her disorder? Out of fear she would read something she was not supposed to know about? Milena had grown suspicious of the motives of the Nurses. She had grown suspicious of the motives of the Restorers, on whose Estate she lived.
The Restorers had been given the old city, the Pit, to rebuild. Everything outside it, beyond the Reef or in the hills, belonged to the Reefers, who would chew up the rubble and turn it into sleek new biological buildings. But in the Pit, the eighteenth century townhouses and the old art deco buildings were slowly being rebuilt. Their contents were recreated. The Restorers remade the chairs, they rewove the curtains, they filled in the embroidery where it had come away. They raised the great old roofs again.
There were book binders and upholsterers, there were stonemasons and sculptors, there were experts in oil painting and workers in wood. There were plasterers, and carpenters; mere were metalsmiths and those who knitted by hand. They were the preservers of history, living together in one Estate in central London.
Milena went for a long walk. She flitted through the City like some kind of ghost feeding on sunlight and other people's lives. She walked up to Euston and men back down through the trees of Tavistock Square, to Malet Street. The main warehouse for the Restorers was mere. It was called the School. Outside the School's great grey gates there were stalls of people on the razzle, selling paper, reeds, pipes, shoes — anything the community might need. A Professor of the School sold kidney beans in great heaps. The beans were red and polished like semi-precious stones, and the Professor smoothed the piles of them with anxious hands. There were oxen yoked to the gates. They were sold to carters who hauled stone and great wooden beams. A small boy guarded the oxen, with a switch and a collie dog. He sat on a stone bollard, wearing a kind of toga over his shoulder, smoking a pipe, his face turned towards the sun. From behind the gates came the sound and smell of fresh wood being sawed.
The School had once been part of a university. Now it stored goods and was a workshop. There the elegant plaster moulds were made and carefully loaded for shipment. There the timber was stored and cut to standard lengths. There were the bolts of cloth, the glass works, the vaults that kept the gold, the lead, the mercury and the arsenic. It was the preserve of history and of adults.
The Medicine was the preserve of the young. It was where all the Estate children, orphaned or not, were trained. It had once been a school of tropical medicine. The building stood on a corner of Malet Street. Milena stopped and looked at it, unwilling to go inside.
There were ornamental balconies all across its grey stone face. On the balconies were gleaming Egyptian sculptures of fleas and rats and lice. The children kept them polished. They were one of the few things Milena liked about the Medicine.
On the other corner was the Tacky Shop, where one resin tool could be melted into another. The wife of the Tacky was turning a bamboo pole round and round in her hand, lowering an awning over her display. It was going to be hot; the resin goods might go soft and warp. The Tacky Wife turned and gave Milena a happy grin.
Milena grinned back. It really did seem to her that adults were nicer than children. There was a hiss of steam inside the shop. Then the Tacky's husband came out, a mask over his face, and heavy gloves over his hands. He held up a newly pressed pitcher. Its mouth had sagged to one side. His wife laughed, and shook her head, and placed a hand on her husband's hairy chest.
It must be possible to live a life, Milena thought. It must be possible to be happy. Suddenly she wanted to be an adult. Have a nice little Place and a nice little husband. Milena wanted to be like everyone else.
What would her Reading show? A vast blank of ignorance? Would they have her loading garbage sacks? Maybe they would have one final load of virus to burn its way into her. Maybe it would kill her, like her father. Maybe that was it. Maybe Mami had lied. Maybe her father was like her, beyond education, and that's why they were in hiding in the hills of Czechoslovakia.
Milena did not think of her mother with respect. She thought of her with a kind of exasperated fondness, as if she had been a very foolish woman. Coming all that way to England to find freedom. As if England were free. She had gone to the Restorers looking for the kind of debate and discussion she had so loved back home. She had thought that people who worked with books and history would also have ideas. She did not believe that they could be so mild and so uninterested in life. The loneliness had killed her. She had died, leaving Milena here, alone among the Restorers. Milena had no one else to blame. She turned and went inside the Medicine.
She was late. That was a symptom of Milena's disorder as well. Other people had a virus which told them the time. The other children were already hard at work. The Medicine was built around a large brick courtyard. It was hot, so classes were being held in it, outside in the shade. Work groups had already claimed tables. They hammered their copper plates, or stitched their leather seat covers. Some of them were cooking their breakfast, boiling gruel on little charcoal stoves, and arguing with their parents about whose turn it was to cook the evening meal.
The children worked at their own speed towards set targets. The School Nurses measured their Development. The children talked to each other as they worked, about sport or sales or sources of cotton cloth. Sometimes a School Nurse would set a Problem Race or lead a discussion. Milena wished she had brought her book to read. Books had been written by people like her. She could sense that in the careful, step by step links they made, and in the simplicity of their thinking.
Milena was in the Physical Development Group — the Lumps. The Lumps were all to some degree mentally retarded. The Nurses did not have high hopes for the Lumps. Most of them would be Placed as humpers. The Lumps were the last to leave the state of childhood. It was not fair to send ten year olds out into the world to drag rocks. After their Placing, they were brought on for a year or two with injections and weight-lifting.
Milena saw them at a table. There was no mistaking the Lumps. One or two of them were huge males, fat but heavily dependent, rather tame. They loomed over the tables, smiling as always. They smiled hopefully, offering the world their good nature until their good nature was disappointed. Then, and only then, the boys would become dangerous.
It was the girls that Milena had the greater difficulty understanding or dealing with. The girls laughed at Milena. They affected a wild superiority; they needed someone to whom they felt superior.
Milena sat down, boldly, on the concrete instead of the bench. The Lumps slapped each other's shoulders and giggled.
'There are benches, Milena,' said one girl called Pauline. Her face was flat.
'Too tired to climb up here?'
Milena hated the Lumps, hated having to be with them. She knew that she herself could not learn, but she thought that the Lumps were simply stupid.
She could see the congenital damage in their faces; their eyes were sunken, there was a coarseness to their mouths. The poor Lumps. The viruses had filled their heads with Shakespeare and the Golden Stream of philosophy that led to Chao Li Song.
The School Nurse approached. Milena saw that there was someone new with her, another Nurse.
'Lo, team,' she said, greeting them
by placing her hands on their shoulders. 'Everybody happy?'
'Milena's sitting on the ground!' exclaimed Pauline, her eyes like goggles, so thick were her artificial corneas.
'Perhaps she's more comfortable there,' said the School Nurse, glancing at Milena. The Nurses were a little frightened of Milena. She could not learn, but she was far from stupid. She would say things that politeness would normally forbid. The School Nurse was called Ms Hazell, and Milena thought she was beautiful. She had sun-deepened purple cheeks and hazel eyes, like her name. She made Milena ache to be like her, to be noticed by her.
The new Nurse with her was very pretty too — blonde curling hair and a scattering of magenta freckles. Milena's heart sank. Someone else who was pretty and happy and whole — forever beyond Milena's reach. The new Nurse smiled at her, perfect white teeth gleaming against purple skin. Milena stared back at her bleakly.
'This is the new Nurse, team,' said Ms Hazell. 'Her name's Rose Ella. Now I know Rose Ella very well because she was a child here herself. She grew up a Restorer, and was Placed here as a Nurse. So it's very nice for all of us here that she's joined us.' The School Nurse bestowed on Rose Ella a smile of real affection. The smile made Milena go desolate with longing. How did people become friends? Why was it so easy for them?
Then a Team Discussion began. It was a kind of group Problem Race, to give the Lumps practice in thinking. The School Nurse introduced the topic.
The mentally retarded, the gravely challenged, were going to discuss Derrida and Plato. It was an exercise to see if the Lumps could apply the Golden Stream to their own lives. I read Plato, thought Milena. I read Derrida. I understood hardly any of it, and can remember less.
'Now what is Derrida really talking about in his article on Plato?'
'Writing!' chorused the Lumps. Then, washed by the same viruses, they remembered other answers. Racing time, they straggled in, one after another. 'And memory. Writing as tool for memory. What's wrong with writing.'
