Child Garden

by Geoff Ryman

  It's an exchange of light, she reminded herself. That means Thrawn can see anything I do, hear anything I say. Anything I do or say will become ammunition. If it gives away a plan, if it shows what I feel, what I'm frightened of, what I'm not frightened of, anything will be used.

  My defence is silence.

  Next to the image of Milena was an image of Thrawn. They began to play a little psychodrama.

  Reality was remade in light.

  This Thrawn looked bright and sweet and pretty. This Milena looked unbearably snotty and smug, squat, untidy and smelly. This Thrawn tolerated Milena, felt sorry for her. This Thrawn was a victim who was held back by pity. This Thrawn was the stronger one really.

  'I've got some new ideas,' said this Thrawn. 'I think they'll really help the show.'

  Low feral cunning crossed the face of this slightly hunchbacked Milena. 'Oh really? That's terribly nice of you Thrawn. But better leave the content to me. After all I am the director.'

  This Thrawn, sighed, and shook her head, full of forbearance. She turned to the real Milena and shrugged, as if to say, poor deluded thing, we have to humour her.

  'Of course, Milena, you'll get credit, don't worry. But they're supposed to be fun, these ideas. Now.' She began to talk slowly and clearly as if to someone very stupid who never understood. 'People like to laugh. Let's give them something amusing.'

  'Oh dear no,' said this Milena, nose in the air. 'That couldn't possibly be important enough for a Milena Shibush production.'

  It is so banal, thought Milena. Tykes do this. They imitate each other, making each other say the horrible things that would justify hatred. Who is frying up an injustice, Thrawn? 'Now I know you'll never be a director,' said Milena, aloud.

  Silence, fool.

  Milena the image said, 'You'll never be as talented as I am, Thrawn. No one is as talented as I am. Now then, let's play this scene as I imagine it. You'll see. It will be so very much more talented.'

  There was a kind of flicker and the holograms changed places.

  In flounced Milena.

  'Thrawn. I need something new and spectacular. I've persuaded the Consensus to give us the go-ahead. Connections. It's not what you know, it's who you know. Such a shame about you, Thrawn. If only you could rope yourself in a bit more. All you have to do is pander, Thrawn. All you have to do is exactly what the Consensus wants you to do.' Milena the mirror image had a face that was crossed with idiot concern. 'How are things, Thrawn? Working all day in here by yourself. You know how much I worry about you.'

  'Then why,' said Thrawn the image. 'Do you always make me feel like something squeezed in between the soup and the fish course?'

  Milena the mirror image faltered. 'Oh. Do I? I'm sorry.'

  'Yes, you do.' said Thrawn. This time, thought Milena, the characters are more convincing and the acting is better.

  'You always get so tangled in busy-ness,' said the image of Thrawn. 'The last time I tried to talk to you, you were washing a chicken. That chicken was the most important chicken I had ever seen. The concentration that you focused on that chicken. I asked myself: what has it got that I haven't? And the answer was: it's dead and in pieces. I can still fight back.'

  It's better, thought Milena, when she imagines herself as me. It's as if I give her a tone of voice with which she can speak. If I am that important to her, no wonder she is fighting. If I lose and she stays, I will be an appendage for the rest of my life. I'll be bagpipes round her neck that she needs to make any kind of reasonable noise at all.

  Silence, Milena. Listen and watch. Anything you say gets tied into the knot.

  'I don't mean to do that,' said Milena the image in mock horror.

  'Of course you mean it. You don't want me to be there, and it's a way of cancelling me out,' said Thrawn. It was Thrawn as she would like to be. Milena heard her speak with Milena's own intonation. 'You are continually dishonest, do you know that? You're so dishonest, it's actually very, very difficult to be direct and honest around you. Everything gets tied up in a sort of knot.'

  She knows what she does, thought Milena. Of course she knows. She's not insane; she's not out of touch with reality. She knows what reality is and she hates it, and she sucks it into herself and spews it out backwards. Mirror image.

  And Milena thought: I'll be very lucky to get out of this. This is very bad indeed. She went back into her Tarty bathroom and used the toilet, knowing what was inside it. Thrawn showed her, hovering in the air just in front of her, exactly what the head was seeing.

  So far the game will be to get me to ignore it all. That is what she wants and expects. Like the chicken. Once she gets me to react with disgust or horror, that's a victory too. If I pretend to ignore it, she wins. If she gets a reaction, she wins. I have to cut through the Gordion knot. It can't be untied. And I don't know how to do it.

  Except that if I stay around people, she can't do it all. All it takes is one person to see what I see, see the holograms, and then I can go to Milton and tell him this is happening — and bring witnesses.

  Otherwise, like she says, he'll think I'm the crazy one.

  Hop skip and jump. Only she's the one making up the rules.

  'It must be comforting to know you'll never be alone, Milena,' said a voice.

  I speak, she wins. I don't speak, she wins.

  Milena had an inspiration. She chuckled and shook her head.

  'Tee hee hee,' said Thrawn, darkly.

  Thrawn didn't like that.

  Milena stood up, flushed the toilet. The image dissolved, refracted by the water, destabilised. Water, thought Milena. Vampires can't cross running water.

  Thrawn was standing beside her.

  'I'm going to get to know you terribly well, Milena. I'm going to be here all the time. I'll see every petty little stunt you're going to pull. When you talk to the little What Does who cleans your Tarty house, I'll be there. If there is a little fly on the wall, it will be me, watching.'

  Milena in silence knelt under the sink, and pulled out her flask. She suddenly felt exhausted, drained. I feel tired all the time now. Can't let Thrawn see.

  Milena the director stood up with her flask. She often filled it with tea to take to rehearsals. Now she filled it with water. If I can get her near people and throw water at her, at the image, the light will refract. People will see she is a hologram.

  Milena walked out of the bathroom. She walked through the image of Thrawn, feeling the light tingling in her Rhodopsin skin. Better not fill anything else up with water, or I will give myself away. It's July now. I go into space in October. She won't be able to reach me in space. Sometime before then, they will have to make me Terminal. When they make me Terminal they'll know everything. I'll be linked with the Consensus. The Consensus will know, through me, what she has done. They'll have to pull her in. So I've already won. All I have to do is hang on. Until space, until I'm Terminal.

  Until then, I'll have to be around people. I need to stay with people. Thrawn is the most impulsive, impatient person I've ever met. She won't be able to wait. Unless of course she realises that I am relying on that.

  Work. Lots of rehearsals, lots of recording, lots of people all the time. She'll hate that too. She'll see me cubing the holograms, and she won't be able to stand it, she'll see it's happening without her and she'll have to act.

  Thrawn, thought Milena with quiet certainty, I am going to have to destroy you. I wonder if that's what I was supposed to do all along? 'Say goodbye to your old life,' said Thrawn. 'Say hello to your new.'

  There was the Dead Space between all the residences, but Milena could still hear the slithering sound of panels being pulled back. Someone else was going out. Milena spun around and immediately went out of her own front door. She did not slide it shut behind her.

  Below, in the public atrium of the house, Ms Will was walking towards the open gate. The sight of Ms Will had never been so welcome.

  'Going out?' Milena asked pleasantly.

  Milena had not made
an effort with Ms Will. She was too much like what Milena had imagined a Party wife would be, a kind of overstuffed, throwaway cushion. She was well dressed, hair coiffed, well fed, looked after, and her face carried an expression of settled resignation. Her husband did not really need her. The circles under her eyes were black rings in the full July flush of a Rhodopsin face.

  'Yes. I have to do the shopping myself,' said Ms Will.

  'Do you mind if I join you?' Milena asked, feeling false. I ignore people, she thought, until I need them. It's like the chicken. Thrawn was right.

  'If you like, I'm not doing anything special,' said Ms Will. 'I never do anything special. It's different for you artists.' Ms Will waited, staring into space as Milena's feet applauded their way down the steps. Milena half ran to her across the woven floor.

  'The weather has been lovely,' said Milena.

  'Oh, it's far too hot,' said Ms Will. Behind Ms Will, unseen by her, the walls started to ooze mucus, and there was a whisper of sound, a voice in the air, a reminder. Thrawn was still with her. As if prodded, Milena walked on.

  The main gate had been left open, so the air could flow through the house. The sunlight they stepped into was blistering, blinding. The ground was white, as bleached as bone. The What Does woman was hanging out sheets and underwear. They burned white in the sun. Already there was a smell of rotting reed. Already the grass on the bank was brown and brittle. A slope of mud led down towards the narrowing channel.

  Everything was already going dry.

  The What Does, Ms Marks, called out to them.

  'Wonderful weather for sheets. They dry as soon as you look at them!' Suddenly Ms Marks' smile sprouted fangs and an eel's head glared out from between her teeth. Look! thought Milena and tried to pull Ms Will around. Then the image was gone. Ms Will blinked up at her, only momentarily distracted from her complete absorption in herself.

  Milena kept thinking. The eel's head and that buffalo carcass were very good. Thrawn is using references. She's in a market somewhere, somewhere with beef carcasses and fish. Milena walked towards the quay. It no longer reached the water. The bank of the Ark ended, high over the edge of the water. From the kilns, smoke still drifted, and the formless choir of Remembrance still sung in the distance.

  Ms Will took Milena's arm, as if she were a What Does companion. 'It's not good for you, all this sun,' said Ms Will. 'I got a terrible sunburn yesterday, just sitting out on the balcony. And it puts you straight off your food. You're never hungry. I told our girl Emily to come up with something especially appetising. But she can't change, won't change. No, it's tamales again.' Ms Will had not the least idea that she was extraordinarily privileged.

  'It's so difficult to remember to eat,' Milena agreed.

  'Well Emily blames the shortages. I can't fault her there. The perfect excuse. Isn't it ridiculous? Food shortages now that we have electricity.'

  'There are a lot of people to feed,' said Milena, keeping her voice mild. 'And all this sun is lovely, but it's very bad for farming. A lot of the land crops have just burned up.'

  'It's the costermongers, too, of course,' said Ms Will. 'I think they engineer these shortages, just to put up the price. Making everyone else pay. I don't want to eat tamales for the rest of my life. So I'm just going to have to do the shopping myself.'

  Oh God, oh God, oh God, she's so boring, thought Milena. Fear made her more irritable.

  'I'd like some bananas,' said Ms Will. 'Just for a change. I'd like something different.' The flesh on her face hung dead on her skull. The smoke of the dead from the Estate lay overhead. They waited for a punt, in the full, glaring horrible light.

  I have an enemy, thought Milena. And I am alone.

  Eventually a boat came past, punted by a stringy, burnished old man in his mid-thirties. Ms Will needed to be helped down off the Ark and into the boat. She let her full weight rest on the withered arms of the dying man.

  As she sat down, Ms Will complained that it was so far to the market. Party Members should have their own market, she felt.

  'I find it awfully difficult to get anyone to pay any attention when I'm talking,' said Ms Will. 'Do you find that? People can be so extraordinarily cruel for no reason.'

  'Yes,' said Milena. She was thinking about the light all around them. Light was her enemy, too. The holograms were exchanges of light. Light in one place was exchanged for light in another, through the fifth dimension, where thought and light could interact. But it was a reciprocal exchange. Only as much could be donated as was received. So I could live in the dark, too, thought Milena. She looked down into the water. It was opaque, like moving gelatin, but in its depths, she could see the heads and hands of children swimming. They had long reeds in their mouths that broke the surface and let them breathe. They hunted for fish or for snails.

  And suddenly, just under the water, she saw Thrawn. Thrawn was a corpse and fish was nibbling the flesh of her face. Milena looked up and away.

  'My skin feels so peculiar,' said Ms Will.

  It seethed with worms, just under the surface, as if they would eat their way out any moment. You can't imagine flowers, Thrawn, thought Milena, but you can imagine that.

  There was a niggling in Milena's nose. She sneezed. The tickle grew worse. She sneezed again. She began to sneeze over and over. Her head was tossed helplessly from side to side. Her nose and eyes streamed, trying to eliminate the tickle. The tickle suddenly took shape. It became a voice, resonating in the bones of Milena's skull.

  'Achoo!' it said, in mocking imitation. 'Hello, Milena.' The voice sounded like her own. 'Think of me as a virus. You have caught a conscience from somewhere. You have committed a grave injustice, of which you are deeply ashamed. You hurt Thrawn McCartney. You must make amends.'

  She knows I can't answer back, thought Milena. I am with someone, and I can't start talking to myself in public. Or, again, people will think I'm the crazy one.

  'This is your own voice, Milena. Your own mind is telling you what is right. Your own mind is telling you: go to the Zoo and tell them you want Thrawn to be part of the Comedy.'

  What now? wondered Milena in dismay. What game is this now?

  Until October, she thought, I just have to hold out until October. In October, I'll be made Terminal, and the Consensus will see what's happening and.... And then Milena understood what the game was. She groaned and hid her face.

  'You'd never believe it, but I used to have a beautiful complexion,' said Ms Will, feeling her seething cheeks. The worms had pincers.

  'I'm sorry, Ms Will, I'm afraid I'm not feeling too well,' said Milena.

  It was quite simple. Thrawn had never once admitted that she was sending holograms. She was saying that Milena was producing the images herself, out of a bad conscience.

  'You don't have to tell me about illness,' said Ms Will. 'Not with my back, my kidneys. And all the Nurses can say is that I'm making it all up.'

  When I am made Terminal, all the Consensus will know is that someone they have never Read is seeing impossible things and thinking that someone else, someone she dislikes, is beaming them at her.

  When I am made Terminal, the Consensus will think I'm the crazy one.

  'I told you the light was too strong,' said Ms Will.

  The thirty-five-year-old boatboy punted them to the floating market. It was some five kilometres away from the smoke of the funereal Estate.

  As if in Remembrance, everyone in the market sang, another formless chorus, but this one sounded joyful. People sang of onions piled high in their punts, or of lotus fresh and crisp. They sang of reed blankets, soft as a kiss. They sang of fish steamed with ginger, or frogs' legs in garlic. Instead of black smoke, there was a sizzling sound and wafts of spicy food.

  'Stop here, boy,' said Ms Will.

  He grabbed hold of a mooring post and pulled them in next to a barge that sold fruit. A woman of about sixteen looked up at them and beamed. Her shirt was printed in colours and patterns that seemed to jump and dance. A flower, a w
ater lily, was wound into her hair. Oh, to be as safe and happy as you, thought Milena.

  Ms Will complained that there were no bananas.

  'Bananas mostly grow on the Continent,' the woman explained. 'That's burned dry.'

  'They should grow them here,' said Ms Will. She bought water chestnuts instead. Ms Will saved bags. The bags were made of resin and were slithery to hold. Milena blinked. She seemed to have something in her eye.

  The bag was filled and without saying a word, Ms Will held it out towards Milena to carry it for her. How miserable it must be to be you, thought Milena. She felt a surge of sympathy for Ms Will. It can be so difficult to be happy. Milena took one bag, and then another. Whatever was in her eye became increasingly irritating.

  'Oh,' said Ms Will. 'I've forgotten my money. Could you pay for this?'

  So much for sympathy. Milena was going to look for her purse. Ms Will's face became a smear. Water streamed out of her eyes.

  'Could you take the bags for a moment?' Milena asked. 'I've got to get my money out.'

  Ms Will looked glum. 'I'm not sure I can hold them,' she said.

  'Well then I can't get my money out,' said Milena, with a slightly exasperated chuckle. She blinked trying to clear her eyes. Sunlight wriggled on the water, searing.

  Ms Will reluctantly took the bags, and Milena pulled out her purse.

  The light from the water swam in the water in her eyes.

  Then it focused blazing inside them.

  'Ow!' howled Milena.

  The light drew even brighter into hard fierce knots. Milena was screaming, and threw her head to one side. The wriggling light seemed to swim after her, like worms. It was as if plasma direct from the sun had been planted in her eyes. She could feel the jelly in them heat up.

  She screamed and dropped the purse. She was dimly aware of the sound of coins rolling out over the prow of the boat.

  Lady, Lady, said voices all around her. Milena was aware that she was making an animal sound, a high helpless screeching. Her hands were pressed over her eyes, tears streaming between her fingers. There was darkness. There was relief. No light at all to exchange. She sobbed helplessly as the pain subsided, as purple patterns floated glowing on her retina.