Child Garden

by Geoff Ryman

  A rose for each of them.

  'Now!' she whispered.

  The rose dissolved. It broke apart scattering itself like the Cherubim. It fell like rain, as if a continent had crumbled into roses.

  She who had learned to make the viruses still and who had read Plato at six, who could remember every detail of one hundred and forty-two productions, she could conceive of twenty-two billion roses. She held them in her mind. She held them in space as they fell, the numbers of the Cherubim ticking past like floors in an elevator.

  Milena directed roses to the continents where there were people. To London, to Paris, to western China to Bordeaux, to the Andes mountains. She directed them into the shadow, out of the cube, where they melted away, like snowflakes. She could still imagine them falling, in her mind. These, she told the people below, are for you. She began to hear music in her head, music from the Comedy, from the end that was not funny but happy, great rolls and peals of music, drums and horns and cellos. Each note was familiar.

  The light below was wrenched into sound. The great chorus filled the shallow sky of Earth. The tiny roses descended, small enough to be taken by hand, though the hands that tried to grasp the roses of light would pass through them. The roses fell out of clouds, they fell out of the sun, they passed through the roofs of synagogues and temples, ghost roses as immaterial as the love from which they were made.

  The vision possessed her. The vision held her. Milena sat rapt and staring. The music hammered and roared its way to a conclusion, and the chorus sang.

  The love that moves the sun and all the other stars.

  She held all the roses still for a moment. They hovered wherever they were, in the core of mountains, in prisons, in the branches of trees, or just out of reach, in the air. Then she wiped them away.

  'Twenty two billion!' she cried. She spun the seat around. 'That's more than the souls of the Consensus!' The extra flowers had been for the UnRead. They had been for the children.

  The Cherubim were howling with delight. They had been of use. Christian Soldier crowded round her, hungry for a direction, willing to turn the whole of its being over to the growing of roses, willing to become a garden of flowers, if that was what Milena wanted. The component parts of the Angel rolled across the wires like the heads of dandelions and met and then exploded in a shower of gravity, all the lines singing in glee. Somewhere, deep beneath the waves of Milena's consciousness, something dark and monstrous heaved like a whale. The Consensus. Even its pleasure was like an iron weight.

  But here in the world in which Milena lived, everything was dark and still. Beneath her, in the hold of the Bulge, racks of jelly wobbled like the map Angels were making of the universe. Spiralling through the jelly in smoky strands were cultures of viruses. Quarantined in space, away from dust and contamination, the codes of behaviour and memory grew out of the flesh of the Bulge.

  Milena had been able to find a platform for the Comedy in a garden of viruses. Mike Stone tended it.

  The rose of memory became the rose of confusion. It grew everywhere. The Bulge seemed to go mad, driven by desire. By breakfast the next day, rosa mundi covered the walls in identical copies of itself. There was a carpet of them on the floor and ceiling. They floated in a vase made of bone that the Christian fundamentalist spaceship had grown out of itself.

  Opposite Milena, Mike Stone sat dawdling over his food. His face was suffused with love. Love made him look goofy.

  'Do you like Moby Dick? he asked.

  It was early in their artificial day, and Milena had to pause to orientate herself to the question and to find an answer. 'No,' she replied.

  'I found the detailed descriptions of whaling techniques very interesting,' he said. 'From an engineering point of view.'

  'Do you think if I asked Chris to grow me a white whale, he might stop growing rose?'

  'I think it might overtax his capacity,' Mike Stone said, his eyebrows knitted together. Was it possible that he was taking her seriously?

  A long explanation of protein ceilings followed. The Bulge, was fed with amino acids from supply vessels and was fuelled by sunlight. Milena ate in silence and let Mike's words wash over her. Some of it was new to her, outside her viruses, and she found that, in a hazy, early-morning kind of way, it interested her. She and Mike Stone had a similar appetite for details.

  Mike Stone was a trained virologist. He told Christian Soldier which viruses were needed; he controlled and directed the mutations of its DNA. He directed it in orbit, he told it when to sleep. He could feel it shift and sigh with dreams that were half his. He provided it with a self.

  'We do everything together,' Mike Stone looked tender and embarrassed. 'He even worships with me every Sunday. He knows that he doesn't have a soul, but he prays for mine. He feels that my soul is his soul. He wants to go with me when I the.'

  'Yuck,' said Milena, over her scrambled eggs. It was bad enough having to suck them through a straw.

  'He wants to go with you, too, when you the, Milena,' said Mike Stone. His face went even more solemn and sincere. 'I want to go with you when you the, Milena.'

  Oh ficken hell, thought Milena, succinctly.

  'I'd be your Christian Soldier, too, Milena.'

  Ficken again.

  'I know you're not a Postmillenairian Baptist and are therefore damned, but I pray for your soul, Milena, for the good that I know is in you.'

  Milena paused for thought, and pressed shut her pouch of cooling egg. 'I've got to go use the head,' she said, and escaped. She floated upwards to the john.

  Inside the door, there was a bouquet of confusion, more roses, taped with a note. 'For Milena who makes the flowers,' it said.

  Milena fastened her boot clamps, and her shoulder straps to keep her in place. Finally and most importantly she tightened the seat belt. The toilet worked like a vacuum cleaner and it was absolutely necessary to maintain an airtight seal. Milena sat thinking: how long can I hide in here? How else can I avoid that man?

  Maybe I could pretend to be sick, she thought. Then she had an image of a worried Mike Stone, bringing her collapsible bags of tea. I can shower after this, that will take a half hour. Then maybe I can pretend I'm working. But after that? I'm trapped in here with him.

  After some considerable time, Milena emerged from the toilet. Just outside the door a snapping turtle floated in the air. It hissed, its beak opening wide, its eyes glaring. The air was full of floating snapping turtles and two large brown rabbits from Mike Stone's childhood.

  Mike Stone reached up and caught hold of the turtle from behind. 'I forgot to put on his little sticky boots,' he said, apologetically. He stood in the posture of weightlessness, looking at Milena with anticipation.

  'I'd like to show you a picture of my mother,' he said, still holding the turtle.

  'Can't wait,' said Milena.

  There was still a slight smile on his face, as if he were amused. Was he pleased? Can't he hear the way I'm talking to him?

  'I like to think that you and my mother are a lot alike,' he said.

  Suddenly hanging in the air was a hologram of Mike Stone's mother. Milena had the unfocused back view. The face turned around. Mike Stone's mother looked exactly like Mike Stone, except for a thick, pulled-back clot of white hair. A rabbit wobbled up to it and sniffed, hoping perhaps it was a head of lettuce. Mike Stone smiled, and caught the rabbit by its belly.

  'She was a very strong woman, too. I like strong women.'

  'I'll start lifting weights,' said Milena.

  'Would you?' he asked, looking over his shoulder, pleased. 'For me?' Smiling he put the rabbit back in its cage. 'Mother lifted weights,' he said. 'She could bench-press one hundred and twenty kilos.'

  'Golly,' said Milena.

  'She said Amen after each set. She said she pumped for Jesus.' He leaned over and peered into the rabbit's cage. 'That picture was taken just before she died. She couldn't lift any more weights by then, Milena. Her hair went white. You know how in the old days, people's
hair used to go white? Well, Mama said it was a sign from heaven. She said that soon, people would be able to get old again. That God didn't want us to the so young. He wanted us all to have time to get to know Him before we were called. I tell you, we had a special service for her, all around her deathbed. The whole family was singing.'

  In a voice of uncertain power, he began to sing himself. 'Yes Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so.'

  He gave up pushing lettuce through the mesh of the cage, for the rabbits to nibble. 'I've been very lonely since she died.? He stood waiting, as if for Milena to help him.

  'I'm sure you must have been, Mike,' said Milena.

  The picture in the air between them faded.

  'Will you marry me?' he asked.

  'No,' replied Milena.

  'Oh,' said Mike Stone, 'Well. That's just the first time.' He turned back to his rabbits.

  This is getting serious, thought Milena. Honesty, Milena, if you've learned anything, it's the need to be clear and honest. 'Mike. The answer is going to be no, no matter how often you ask. So please, please don't ask again.'

  'I'm very faithful, Milena,' he said, to the rabbits.

  'I don't want you to be faithful.' She gathered breath and strength. 'I want you to be silent.'

  'Right-o-rooty,' he said. 'I'll be silent.' Then he looked up, and smiled, and the smile said: but I'll always be here.

  'This,' chuckled one of the Pears, 'is insane.' He looked delighted. Milena remembering could not now think of his name. He was dead now. She had not known that he was a friend.

  'It would work,' Milena told him, quietly.

  Charles Sheer was sitting on his hands, his legs crossed, and he was bouncing quietly up and down.

  The Minister's office had been repainted. It was mushroom-coloured now, with stripes of subtly contrasting browns and greys running round the walls. The screens were gone. So was the Zookeeper. In his place was the sleek young man, fatter now, in even more wildly printed trousers and shirt. Milton. Milton the Minister. He had gone plump and florid with success, and anxious to show he had something to contribute. The Milena who was living looked at his purple face with its swollen neck and young smile and thought: he's not going to live long.

  'Buh!' said Charles Sheer in a sudden plosive burst. The others turned. 'Buh-buh.'

  The sound was appalling. There was something about it that made Milena physically queasy.

  'Charles?' asked Moira Almasy. 'Are you all right?'

  He looked at her with outraged dignity, terror and sickness in his eyes, and anger.

  'Nuh! Nuh!' He was trying to say no.

  They all went quiet and still. Milena thought: stammering, stammering again. It was over a year since the Princess had started to stammer. It seemed now as if almost everyone did.

  Would you believe me, Charles, thought Milena, if I said I was sorry?

  'To say anything,' Milena told her enemy. 'You'll have to sing.'

  He looked at her with hatred.

  'I'm sorry, but other people have caught this, and it's the only way they can talk.' People sang in the streets.

  Charles Sheer writhed in place. He hated this. He knew it was true. From now on, he would have to sing to speak. He looked at Milena, and anger fuelled him. All right, his eyes and the creases around them seemed to say. All right. I will do it. You may make me look like a fool. You will not stop me saying anything.

  The music and the words had to flow as one. The selection of the melody would always reveal more than words alone would. That was why singing was embarrassing. It was impossible to lie.

  Charles Sheer began to sing, slowly.

  'I want to make sure that I've got this right,' he sang. 'And that it is the case...'

  The melody was unsettling, and slightly childish at the same time. It seemed to stalk something through a wood. Milena's viruses scrambled to identify it. It took them some time, a matter of seconds. The song was buried deep in history.

  Charles Sheer was singing 'The Teddy Bears' Picnic'. Without effort, the words took roost on the tune, as if humankind had always been meant to sing instead of speak.

  'That you intend to fill the sky

  With holograms from space?

  You've suggested this and outlined the cost

  And the other productions that might be lost

  But you haven't said why we should fill the sky

  With Dan-te!'

  The delighted little man chuckled again and clapped his hands. He was silenced by a glare from Moira Almasy. 'I think,' said Moira, 'that given the circumstances we should confine the discussion to the matter at hand. Milena?'

  Milena felt herself placed at a disadvantage. She was very slightly flustered. 'I... I didn't go into the aesthetics in my proposal. The costings were complicated enough, and frankly, they seemed to me to be the main issue. Obviously, the Consensus has some interest in a performance of the opera. The Consensus orchestrated it. But the Comedy lasts over fifty hours. Any performance at all would be very expensive and difficult. I'm proposing that the Comedy be Britain's contribution to the Revolution Centennial. Staged as I suggest, it would become a public event, like fireworks, if you like. We would be saying in effect, here is a great new opera — there hasn't been one in some time — and here is the great new technology to go with it. It would become a tribute to the Revolution itself.'

  Moira Almasy was considering something. 'It would do those things, I think, but I worry, for example, about the sick.' She did not glance at Charles Sheer. 'I worry about all the people who won't be able to get away from this, but who might want to very much. Imagine you're ill with a virus. Imagine that you're dying. All you want is quiet, peace. You don't want one hundred nights of an opera to take over the sky.'

  'Where else could we stage it?' asked Milena, in a smaller voice. She had to admit, imagining it, that Almasy had a point.

  'Down here. You can hologram a whole sky into a tiny room and it will look real.'

  'I don't want it to look real. I want it to be real.' Milena knew she was on her weakest ground here. 'At New Year, the streets are full of parades and singing. People are ill then and nobody minds.'

  'New Year doesn't last for fifty hours,' said Moira. 'Do we have to stage all of it?'

  'The Comedy is not just a string of arias. Every single note refers to something else in the opera. It is a fifty-hour-long, unified piece of music. If it's cut it will make less sense.'

  'I know!' exclaimed Milton the Minister, suddenly sitting up. 'I know what we could call it!'

  'You want to change the title of The Divine Comedy?' Moira Almasy was from Europe and still had a capacity to be horrified by British provinciality.

  'There's never been anything like this before, right?' said Milton. He chirps, thought Milena. It's very annoying. Milton's eyes gleamed, his teeth gleamed. 'We need something that's never been thought of before, something mint new. How about...' He paused for effect, his eyes glittering. 'A Space Opera?'

  There was an embarrassed silence.

  'No one's thought of it before!' he explained.

  'I wonder how the Italians would like it?' said Moira Almasy.

  'Or, I know!' said Milton struck with fresh inspiration. 'We could call it The Restoration Comedy!'

  Charles Sheer was making nasty snorting noises on his pillow. He was trying to laugh, but the virus wouldn't let him.

  'I mean, why does it have to be Dante? Why can't it be something British? If we're paying for it? I know! We could do Paradise Lost!' exclaimed Milton.

  This idiot is going to cost me the Comedy.

  'Certainly,' said Milena. 'If you've got Milton set to music, Milton.'

  'I have,' said Milton. 'It's by Haydn and is called The Creation.' Milton looked pleased. 'Haydn changed the title too,' he added. He looked so pleased.

  'It would at least be shorter,' sang Charles Sheer, gleefully. The melody was from The Creation.

  Milena could begin to fee
l it slip away. The new Minister grinned like a puppy dog, happy to have been part of things.

  Moira Almasy spoke, looking pained. 'We... we seem to be straying from the original point.' Her brows were knitted, fighting back the bouquet of confusion scattered by Milton. 'We know the Consensus is interested in this particular work. Ms Shibush seems to have an unusual idea for presenting it. It is new, and it has a strong international element. If we make it our Centennial contribution, we might be able to ask other theatrical Estates to sponsor it with us. Even those in Europe.'

  'There's a German version of The Creation,' offered Milton.

  'Yes, Minister,' said Moira Almasy, who evidently ran things instead of Milton. 'We can present both ideas to the Consensus.'

  Milton sat back, making a generous gesture with his hands. 'I just thought I'd throw a little something into the pot.'

  The delighted little man whose name Milena could not remember spoke again. He had greasy hair and a tracery of purple veins on his purple cheeks. He still smiled, but his voice was solemn. 'It's never in anyone's interest to innovate,' he said, and peered at Milena. 'Least of all the innovator. People always think its just a way of advancing someone else's career. Or they worry that they'll be blamed if it fails. We don't live as long as we used to, Comrades. Perhaps we should consider ourselves lucky that in our short lives we have a chance to help instead of hinder something as insane but as essentially workable as this. And that,' and he peered at Milena again, 'we are lucky enough to have someone who is willing to pay the cost.'

  What cost? wondered Milena the director.

  There was silence, and in the silence, things swung Milena's way. The Pears were all looking at Milena as if she were Frankenstein's monster and they were deciding whether or not to create her.

  Moira Almasy spoke. 'Milena has now produced roughly one hundred and fifty outside projects. She has no Mainstage experience, but this will not be on a stage. She is one of the few directors we have with experience of Reformation technology. But. There is no guarantee that Reformation will work on this scale. So there will have to be a test. I'd like that to be made part of the proposal. That will mean, Milena, that you will have to go into space.'