Child Garden

by Geoff Ryman

  'Ah, good morning, Ms Shibush. Back with us after the storm. That's good, we have a new work group arranged for you. To prepare you for your Placement. And a nice new room.'

  Milena stared at them. Does the room have teeth she wondered, like a shark. Does it bite off fingers as you wander through the ruin of your life, chewing them? Does it grind you with great white molars of rubble? Does your blood ooze underneath the door of this nice, new white room, with the walls that have straps to bolt you down to the bed? 'I want you to burn me,' said Milena. 'I want you to burn everything out of me. I want this burned clear!' She pressed a finger to her own head. 'Make me sick,' she said. 'Make me ill. Make me as sick with the virus, as much as you can. All of it, all at once, I don't care if it kills me, just get it inside me.'

  And I will be controlled. And I will be neat and clean, and I will keep everything neat and clean, and I will never speak, and I will never show myself again, not to you nor to anyone else.

  'Cure me,' she demanded.

  And she went up to her new room. There was a new bed, as anonymous as her last, and bare walls, and the smell of other room mates. Milena stared at the wall. I hate childhood, she thought. I wish I had never been a child. I want to be old, as old as I can be. Roll on, viruses, roll over me. Come on mathematics, come on Marx and Chao Li Song. Come on logarithms, come all you operas as fixed as the North Star. Come and dance on my head and break it up into rubble. I want to forget.

  Milena the would-be adult turned feral. She turned into a hunter. She hunted memory.

  No! whispered the adult who was remembering. No! but the voice from the future was too faint.

  Milena turned on her self as if with fangs and claws. She pursued her child self through all its hated years in England. She felt the small cool coils and remembered. She had touched such things before and destroyed them. Small cool coils of DNA, DNA that encoded sight and sound, that preserved pain and loneliness and work and waiting.

  She sprung memory, as if it were virus. She savaged the coils, rended them apart and let their elements scatter. The memory of her landing in Newhaven on the boat; the death of her mother; the steady learning of the English tongue and the kindly man who had taught it to her; she pounced on them, and ripped them apart in a rage.

  She came to the memories of Rose Ella, of home, of the music and the dancing and the book of theatre that Rose Ella's father had given to her. She held the memories as if in pincers; she felt their weight. She felt them flower in her mind; the sound of the clattering clogs, the lounging in the sun in Russell Square; the row of tiny cannons for firing salutes. She remembered the music of home.

  All right, all right, she would let that be. Everything else would be obliterated. The young Restorers on her first day in the Child Gardens; they had gathered around her, calling her Russian out of contempt, damning her with Chao Li Song's words as she howled for her mother, her mother who was dead. Ah! fond memories of childhood, she thought as she slashed them. Ah my golden years! My bouquet of early life. The years of eating alone; the years of Nurses' shaking heads. The years of feeling stupid, the years of feeling foreign, the years of silence and dust and the years of her reading as well, all those books, all that work. Milena tore apart her work as well, consigning it to darkness.

  No! whispered the future.

  The Child Garden was destroyed.

  So they made Milena ill again, and this time the viruses won. Milena had no memory of that, either. She remembered how she emerged smaller, neater, pale and wan and very quiet, with a continent of knowledge crammed into her head, along with several useful calculating facilities.

  'Well, you were scheduled for your Reading,' said the Senior Nurse. 'But we couldn't send you because you were so ill. We only gave you educational viruses of course. Personality defects can only be cured by Doctors, and they do that after your Reading. I'm sure there will be a Reading arranged for you soon.' The Senior Nurse smiled, as if to an equal. Milena was now an adult. 'We're very glad that the information finally took. It must be paradise for you.'

  'Oh yes,' said Milena, her voice dull.

  'And the lack of your Reading seems not to have affected your Placing. Jack Horner, that's what we'll have to call you. You've pulled a Plum, Ms Shibush. You've been Placed as an apprentice at the Zoo — the National Theatre. That's one of the highest Placings we've ever had at the Medicine.'

  The Nurse reached forward and shook Milena's hand. 'We are all so proud of you, Ms Shibush.' The fact that Milena did not respond, that the flesh on her face hung dead, and that her mouth was pinched and withdrawn did not surprise the Nurse. She had seen Milena during her illness. She was surprised that Ms Shibush had survived at all.

  Like the Tree of Heaven, Rose Ella had done Milena one last great favour before being torn out of her life. Rose Ella had testified on Milena's Placement board. Moira Almasy had sat on the board as well, as a representative of the Zoo. Milena had been Rose Ella's special assignment. Years later, Moira Almasy told Milena what Rose Ella had said.

  'It is difficult to see,' Rose Ella had told the board (she spoke clinically, professionally), 'in what way someone as crippled as Ms Shibush could usefully be employed, if it is not to work in the theatre.'

  So Milena walked out of the Medicine forever, into the newly swept streets, all the old rubble now removed, like her memory. Czechoslovakia lay too far behind her, encoded in a different tongue. Her English years simply no longer existed for her. Her self had been destroyed. It would take six years, until she met Rolfa, before she could rebuild it. She felt dirty. She thought she could feel viruses crawling on her. She wanted to wash.

  The sun and the clouds, the new paving stones, and the cabbages squashed on them were all flat and heavy and slow. The viruses whispered like ghosts. They threatened to tell Milena the name of the street, and when it had been built, the names of its architects and statesmen who had slept somewhere along it. Milena walked out of the Medicine, into this unmoving world. She was free, unRead but safely Placed. She had escaped. There was no joy. Now she was an adult, and the world itself had become old.

  It was some months later that she learned that Rose Ella's father, bringing back stone from Cumbria, had been killed by the great storm as well.

  A tree had fallen on him.

  Years later, amid the trees and flowers of Hyde Park, the Crab Monsters danced.

  They pricked their way on the points of their claws and held aloft their huge front pincers. They danced in front of the Forbidden City. The Crab Monsters ruled the world. They were huge and orange and had tiny eyes.

  The Monsters were orange because they had been boiled. Thrawn had not been able to imagine crabs, so Milena had bought crabs at the market, cooked them, and scooped them out for puppets. Cooking had changed their colour. The Monsters were dead and empty shells.

  Across the grass, the Chinese princesses came crawling on their knees in red and blue silk. They were played by Chinese children, but the hologramming had made them huge as well, so they could be seen. They were giant children, wailing an ancient song, pleading for the world. The pageant was performed for an audience of children who had been allowed to stay up late and for those who had children hidden inside them, who had a world hidden inside them.

  The children fell silent. They waited. Stars wavered overhead, screened by the rising air.

  Then came Bugs Bunny.

  He was huge as well, but flat, a drawing. Bugs came dancing, a kind of Chinese wobble. He gave his audience a knowing, narrow-eyed look. With the voice of an American gangster, he began to warble a Chinese song.

  The audience of children roared with disbelief and delight. Bugs paused to bite off the tip of a carrot, and continued to sing with his mouth full. He danced in a circle round the Crab Monsters and crammed a carrot into each of their maws. They went cross-eyed.

  Next to Milena, in the darkness, Moira Almasy had covered her eyes and was shaking her head. But she was also smiling. Milena looked around. Embarrassed plea
sure was on all the faces; they were pleased but confused.

  Bugs lit all the carrots as if they were cigars. The carrots sizzled for a moment and then exploded in the faces of the Crabs. They were stunned, black-faced. Bugs kissed them hovering in mid-air, fluttering his feet like wings. Then with a whoosh he was gone. The Crabs gave chase.

  Thrawn McCartney was leaning around Moira, smiling. It was a smile that demanded collusion. It demanded that she and Milena give a performance of seamless agreement, and of professional triumph.

  It was a performance that Thrawn had been giving all night. It had been one of her best. 'We' she kept saying of herself and Milena, 'we' all the time, to indicate a partnership of equals. She had been the spokeswoman for the team, direct, bright, interceding. She had made Milena feel small, tight, and dull. As they had sat down, amid all the keepers of the Zoo, Thrawn had given Milena a wink and hearty thumbs-up sign.

  But there was something more in Thrawn's smile, now.

  It was relaxed. The tendons and muscles of her neck, and the rope of tissue around her mouth seemed to have cleared, like some kind of disease. The smile was bright and young and full of affection. The affection was for Milena.

  Milena smiled back, with relief: relieved for once not to have to pretend, relieved for once to have a real smile warmed out of her by Thrawn. For just a moment, there was a hint of what might have been.

  Bugs was drawing a gate in the ancient stone walls of the City. He filled it in black, and ran through it. The Crab Monsters tried to follow, and bashed their heads on stone. For them, the gate was always closed.

  Bugs trotted behind them, holding up a box. Fireworks, said a sign on it, in Chinese. Bugs stuck in one of his sizzling carrots and walked away.

  The sky was full of pink and green flowers of fire, blossoming outward, amid the clatter of gunpowder and the echoing boom of explosions. White smoke rose up.

  And through the blazing light and drifting smoke, the Dragon Ship descended.

  It was a tightly curled ball of scaled cord. That was all that Thrawn had been able to imagine.

  But now, slithering, the knot unfurled, scales moving against scales, light glinting yellow on them. Talons emerged, great chicken feet with claws of steel. Very suddenly, the head was free. The Dragon had a face like a Pekinese dog, and long silver hair. She tossed her head and roared, showing shark teeth, and her hair lashed like giant whips, crackling at the tip. Milena stared into her huge, unblinking, yellow eye and she knew the Dragon was alive, as if she had been born crawling out of Milena's skin.

  It was not Thrawn's Dragon. The Dragon had come to Milena, demanding to be born, and at the last minute, Milena had overlaid the image onto the recording. Milena had meant to tell Thrawn, but somehow the time was never right. Thrawn was staring at her now, icy with fury, the smile gone, black circles restored around her eyes. Here we go again, thought Milena.

  The Dragon gathered up the Crabs. They were her wayward children. The Crabs, it turned out, were children too. The Dragon hissed, and vapour rose from her scales. She blasted fire from out of her mouth, and was driven backwards into the sky. She carried off the Monsters with her, to justice.

  As she accelerated towards the stars, Bugs saluted. He had the power to charm, and the power to fool. He was the defender of children, whose only power is to love, and forgive, or to wail until they are heard.

  And there was Milena, that same night. After the show, after Thrawn had turned her back on her, after the long walk back home. She was lighting the candle again, and placing it on her windowsill. It was the candle of work, which she had lit in childhood. She confused work with love. And she confused love, or the speaking of love, with the loss of home.

  She had money to buy a chair now, but still did not have a desk. She opened the great grey book on the windowsill and sat down. Canto Sixteen. She had been working for a year and a half.

  Milena lay her head down on the open book as if it were the lap of a lover. She wanted to work; she had to work, but she felt the world closing down, folding into darkness. Helpless, she slipped away into sleep, pulled by time from where she wanted to be.

  Outside in the streets, the children were still singing with joy.

  chapter eleven

  FORCES OF ATTRACTION

  (BOUQUETS OF CONFUSION)

  The candle of work had burned out. It was late, so late that the sun had risen over the roof of the Shell, and sunlight flooded Milena's room. Milena had been awoken by a light touch on her sleeve. She looked up from the Comedy, and turned around.

  Moira Almasy was in the room. Milena's vision was bleary from sleep and dust in her eyes. It seemed to her that Moira Almasy glowed with light so brilliantly that her features were blanched away, with all their lines and creases. Her hair was almost white.

  'Milena,' Moira Almasy said. There was a hushed quality to her voice. 'Milena, something's happened.'

  Milena sat up, feeling her hair. As always it hung straight and tidy in its ponytail. Moira was holding out a wad of paper towards her. There was a stack of paper on the floor. Milena took what was offered her, and stared.

  It was paper in staves, and on it were written the words:

  Divina Commedia

  Canticche Uno

  Inferno

  Canto I

  Piccolo

  2 Flauti

  2 Oboi

  Corno inglese

  Clarinetto piccolo (Es)

  For a moment it meant nothing.

  'After the show, last night,' said Moira. 'There was a call to all of the Terminals. They were told to find paper. Stores were opened, withdrawals recorded.'

  2 Clarinetti (B)

  Clarinetto Basso

  2 Fagotti Contrafagotto 4 Corni (F)

  3 Trombe (B)

  'Who did this?' asked Milena, still not fully understanding. It was not her music.

  'The Consensus,' said Moira. 'Milena. The Consensus has scored the Comedy. The Terminals, all of them. Last night. They wrote it down. Two Cantos each.'

  'All one hundred?' Milena felt dazed, hanging between many emotions. 'The whole thing?' She thought of all of her own work. 'All of it?'

  Moira nodded yes, her smile muted by awe.

  Milena knelt on the floor beside the heap of paper. It rose at least as high as her forearm was long. She fanned through the pages and found Canto Eight. She wanted to see how horns could be both sombre and hopeful.

  'There's no vocal line,' she said.

  It was instruments only, until Dante asked Virgil the question: 'Questo che dice?'

  None of the narration was sung.

  'Those were the red notes!' exclaimed Milena. Most of the poetry was made mute, turned into music.

  Milena's viruses played the notes on the page. She heard it, the swirling horns, deep, dark, water smelling of filth and of corpses. But light glinted on the surface of the water, and over the surface of the music. Even here, crossing the river of death, to the marshes of the Styx, there was purpose, there was justice.

  Milena began to shake. 'Oh Marx and Lenin,' she said. 'Oh Marx and Lenin.'

  She went to Canto after Canto. Music flowered. It was in gorgeous colours, as pungent as scent, combinations of sound that she would never have been able to imagine.

  'It's wonderful,' she said, and began to laugh, and shake her head. 'It's all wonderful!'

  Something rose up in her, and she stood up and whooped for joy. She jumped up and down in her tiny room, and Moira began to beam with pleasure.

  'Moira! Oh, Moira!' cried Milena, and hugged her, and Moira chuckled at her pleasure. She draped her hands on Milena's shoulders and looked into her eyes. 'It means,' said Moira, 'that the Consensus wants us to put it on. We're going to put it on, Milena.'

  Milena covered one eye, as if to protect herself from too much good news. 'I don't believe it,' she said simply.

  The world changed about her. She felt her place in it change in that moment. The opera was going to exist, it was going to be real
, and Milena somewhere had a place in that. She had done something with her life.

  'We're all fair stunned too,' said Moira. 'The Consensus has never intervened so directly in the arts. We're having a meeting later today, about three. I can leave the score with you, if you want to read it, and think about it.'

  All Milena could do was nod yes, yes, yes of course. Could she bring it with her? It was a lot to carry. Milena kept nodding yes. She had been carrying a load for so long, what difference could it make. Yes, yes. The word of acquiesence, which is not the same thing as freedom.

  There was an orange on Milena's windowsill, as round and perfect as the world. As she read through all the Comedy, as all its streams and tributaries of music flowed towards one immense ocean, Milena ate the orange, smelled its zest, felt the spray of its skin. And she looked out of her narrow window at the sky, and saw the clouds.

  The clouds were wispy and white, moving as if blown by the music of the Comedy. Beyond them, the sky was blue, and Milena could see that the sky was infinitely deep, masked by a haze of light.

  Time pulled. Milena was hauled up through the sky, leaving the orange, the manuscript, her room behind.

  And Milena was looking down through the sky, backwards, from above.

  The sky was a thin film of blue haze that looked as if it could be peeled back, like the skin of an orange. Earth would be left exposed and defenceless.

  Below there was a forest. The forest was like a carpet made of thousands of green needles. Milena could almost see each tree. They were floating above the Amazon. In the west, rising up above the blue haze of the horizon were the Andes, the snow on their peaks pink with sunrise.

  On the walls of the Bulge, there were plants growing. They were small mountain flowers, tiny, pale blooms amid spines. They were the flowers of Czechoslovakia. The Bulge remembered the code that grew them. The same helix that coded life coded information. It grew both flesh and thought. Life was a pun.