Child Garden

by Geoff Ryman

  Rowing boats still clustered around the locks, but bigger boats and water-taxis lay tilted on their sides in the mud. Seagulls padded their way clumsily across the silt.

  'I can treat you to a glide,' Milena said to Al as they waited in line for the steps. She would hire a punt. She didn't want to be by herself, with Thrawn.

  Al shook his head, no. 'A farmer doesn't ride with a Party Member.' It would draw attention, raise questions. He made a gesture of ducking. He had to keep low.

  Milena nodded slow acknowledgement. She found a boatman on the quay, and looked back up the lock steps. Al was already gone, lost amid all the other water farmers. But as her boatman rowed them away, up the narrow river, she saw him standing on the edge of the bank. He was still looking at her, puzzled, scowling.

  If only it would rain, thought Milena. If it would rain, the images would refract. She felt the small straw basket she carried. At least I still have my flask, she thought. I still have my flask full of water. She went on to the Zoo, and her heart began to sink at the thought of what awaited her there.

  The Tykes at the desks prodded each other into silence as Milena approached. Monkeys, Milena called them in her mind, as they fought down grins. Here comes the mad lady, Monkeys.

  Milena gave her name, trying to sound normal, asking if there were any messages. It was as if her skin gave off an odour of tension, as if she made the air vibrate with it. One of the girls said something, and because of the padding in her ears, Milena couldn't hear and had to ask the Monkeys to repeat themselves.

  Milena felt their eyes on her back as she walked away. Her shoulders hunched up, and she rocked so badly that she stumbled. She couldn't be sure if she heard the Monkeys laugh behind her.

  She walked down the corridor to the rehearsal rooms. Severed hands scuttled towards her like crabs. They wore rings of coral flowers.

  I just have to hold on, Milena told herself. Hold on until Thrawn loses patience, until she breaks, or until they send me into space.

  In the rehearsal hall, the cast were waiting. They were trying to record the opening, just the earliest passages of the first Canto. The cast performed, and Milena created the world around them, the world of Dante's forest. It was to be beamed from space, images the size of a continent.

  It wasn't working.

  Milena was late again, for a start. Milena was always late now. I can't travel early, thought Milena, or I'll be alone with the images all the way and I couldn't stand that. So you'll all have to wait. I'm sorry, but since you wouldn't believe me if I told you what was happening, you'll all just have to put up with it.

  Milena did not apologise.

  You think I'm crazy too, she thought.

  Milena could see that in the slightly grim faces ranged against her. Cilia and Peterpaul looked bored and betrayed. And Toll Barrett leaned back in his chair without looking at her at all. A director himself, Toll was helping with the cubing. Milena rocked her head from side to side and put her basket down on a chair.

  'Good morning, Milena,' said Cilia, deliberately loudly. Expected politeness had not been received.

  Tough, thought Milena. 'Hello,' she said distracted. She gathered strength to face what was coming. 'Toll. I'm going to ask you again to keep an eye out for any disruption coming from outside the cube. Huh?'

  'Sure,' he said, without looking at her.

  'I know that something is disrupting the images.'

  Thrawn was sabotaging them.

  'They aren't as good as they could be,' he said with a slight wisp of a demoralised smile.

  'They're unusable,' she said correcting him. He probably thinks I'm blaming him, she realised. Something else that can't be helped. 'Right,' she said, remembering the others with a sudden jerk of her head, looking up. Her mind went blank. Where had they left off yesterday? Her viruses rose up in a disordered flurry, jittery with nerves. I can't remember what scene we were doing. I can't do my job.

  Thrawn was winning.

  'Cilia, where did we finish last night?' She tried to make her voice sound bright and friendly, but it was wan, near tears.

  'Temp'era dal principio del mattino' said Cilia, with a sigh, wondering if the whole production was a mistake.

  'Um. Is that your line?' Milena's two fists were clenched together, shaking up and down as if rattling dice.

  'I haven't managed to do any singing yet, Milena. I don't sing until Virgil enters. I'm playing Virgil, remember?'

  They were only thirty-seven lines into the narrative text, which was left unsung, intimated by the music and depicted in the visuals. The poor actors had not yet had a chance to sing. They had only posed for the imagery, over and over. They must think it such a waste of their time.

  I will still do this, thought Milena the director. She reached across Toll, punched buttons, coordinates. She closed her eyes altogether. The light from the hall came into her mind for Reformation, and with her eyes closed, she saw Peterpaul and Cilia look at each other and shake their heads.

  'It really would be so much easier if you took those things out of your eyes,' said Toll Barrett. He meant the mirror lenses.

  'I can't Toll, and I can't explain why,' said Milena. She had to work with her eyes closed. Otherwise she would have to work rocking back and forth to escape the blurring of her vision.

  I will do this anyway. I can still make this work. Milena had learned how to work with her eyes firmly closed.

  Controlled by Milena's mind came the images. She was so familiar with the images by now. She saw the dark wood, its polished dead branches, its black twigs like claws. She almost felt the soil, black with centuries of good, natural decay, overlaid with generations of fallen leaves and bark. Beyond the branches, she could feel the distance to the high, volcanic slopes. There was the brush of an early breeze, moving the branches in waves. She could feel the air scudding up the high slopes over the rocks, moving the clouds, as dawn light slowly broke with a pale tint of sunrise. It was the end of a terrible night, lost in a dark wood. Imagine, thought Milena, when this is all over.

  The leopard entered, prowling, bright skinned, with a Cheshire cat smile. The music transcribed the words into sounds.

  And it did not did not depart before my eyes,

  but did so impede my way that more than once

  I turned round to go back.

  'Uh,' said Toll Barrett. 'Maybe you could make that leopard look a little less human. Unless that's what you want.'

  Milena forced the face back to animal form. 'OK,' she said.

  Peterpaul, in ordinary dress, an ordinary man, thick-necked in a short-sleeved shirt began to limp along the mountainside. The sun mounted up into the stars of morning. Milena placed him in the landscape. He walked on its ground, as the leopard prowled, to be joined by a lion.

  Toll Barrett tapped her hand.

  'Milena, look at what you're doing,' he said.

  Milena opened her eyes. All along the bottom of the lion's feet, her beautifully imagined lion, there was a searing, crackling line of light: bad composite work. She closed her eyes. It was not there in what she was piecing together in her head. It shouldn't be there. Milena knew how to build up an image! Damn. Damn. Damn.

  Milena found that she had slammed the console three times. Cilia, Peterpaul, Toll all looked at her in shock.

  Thrawn had found the way to truly ruin her. Oh the elegance of it, oh the technique! Thrawn was placing perfectly recreated, common, amateurish flaws right into the heart of the Reformation image. In exactly the right place. Who else could do that? Who would ever believe she was?

  'Lets just stop,' said Toll.

  Milena opened her eyes again. She opened her eyes again, and that meant she had to start rocking again, back and forth, from side to side, like an autistic child.

  Cilia looked stricken. She walked forward, playing with the rings on her fingers. She leaned over the counter and looked into Milena's eyes, or rather tried to. The exchange was cut off by the mirror.

  'Milena. Is all of
this too much for you?'

  'No,' said Milena, hard, determined.

  'It's a huge project and needs professional imaging. There's no shame in admitting that.'

  'You've done your best and it hasn't worked.' Toll Barrett was less sympathetic. Peterpaul was a Singer and refused to speak if it meant a choice between stammering and sounding absurd. He said nothing, but his eyes were heavy on her.

  Milena went very still and quiet, closing her eyes. 'We're going to try again,' she said, her face taut. She would not give in. The others sighed.

  'Hello everyone,' said a familiar voice, 'Having a good time I hope.'

  The voice was strained, like a violin string tuned too tightly. Milena felt everything in her pull tight. There was a kind of ache, all along her scalp. She opened her eyes and looked around.

  Thrawn was in the room. Thrawn was wearing a bright autumnal print, but it couldn't disguise the depredations that had been made in her face. The mouth was sagging to one side. The mouth tried to smile, and failed, as if pulled down by weights hung from wires on her face. Her hair had not been combed for weeks. It was in clumps, lumpy uneven strands that fell into her eyes, or stood up at angles. This is how Thrawn is really looking. This is what this is doing to her. Milena found she could not speak.

  'Anyone mind if I watch?' Thrawn asked. 'I just thought I'd pop in and see how it's going. You must be nearly finished by now. How long has it been since you started? Over two months, isn't it?'

  Milena still said nothing. Silence.

  'Right,' said Toll Barrett. 'See what you think of this.'

  He replayed what had just been recorded.

  The mountain, the pass, the leopard, the lion, the music again, gone over so often it had become almost nauseatingly dull, Rolfa's beautiful music made unpalatable by long hours of failure. And there it was again, the unreal, mottled flare of light around the lion's feet. The stars were bleary overhead.

  'Don't look at the composite,' said Milena, to Toll. 'Look at Thrawn. Just keep looking at Thrawn.'

  Toll turned. Milena reached down into her bag for the flask.

  'If you're having trouble,' said Thrawn, in wary voice, offering genuine help. 'I could come in, brush these up for you.' Her eyes were round and sad.

  'Just watch her, Toll.' Milena unscrewed the cup from the top of the flask. She filled the cup full of water.

  I fling water at the light of the image and it is distorted, and she is shown to be a hologram. What a waste of water. Milena sipped it thirstily and looked at Thrawn. Milena saw the worn face and the wild hair. Each hair was visible, individual, out of place, and the wrinkles about the mouth did not float about the face but were embedded in its flesh.

  Is that a hologram? Could that possibly be a hologram? What if Thrawn is really here? If I throw water over her and she is really here, that will simply help convince everyone that I'm the one who has gone crazy.

  Milena scanned Thrawn, looking at her for some flaw, some line of light. It was perfect. There was even a depression in the seat cushion. That's real, Milena decided. You're actually here. Who is doing the cubing, then? Is anyone doing any cubing?

  Or maybe, she thought, maybe it's me. Maybe I am mad.

  Her arms suddenly seemed to be made out of stone. They weighted her down and wouldn't move. Maybe my mind has turned on me. Maybe it is my mind that is making those horrible images. If that is so, then the first step to being cured is to admit it. Admit that my mind has gone.

  'Those flaws have been added,' said a voice. 'That's sabotage.'

  Milena looked around, and there, by the door, was Al the Snide. He looked nervous but grim, thin and vulnerable in his farmer's robes.

  'What are you doing here?' demanded Cilia, enraged. She still had not forgiven Al. 'This is a private recording. You can just Slide, Snide, out of here!'

  'Yah, I'm Snide. I can read thought,' said Al. 'Reformation is thought. I can read it too. You ought to know that someone has cubed in those flaws. I can read the thought and it's Thrawn McCartney.'

  All of them went still. Thrawn went still, unmoving, smiling slightly.

  'She's been hounding Milena, following her around with holograms, very nasty ones. And, she's also hologrammed things right inside the eyes. So Milena can't see. That's why the mirrors.'

  'What?' said Cilia, something rising in her voice. 'Milena, is this true?'

  Milena nodded her head, up and down.

  'If she's doing all that, what's she doing sitting there?' asked Toll Barrett.

  'That's not a human being,' said the Snide. 'There's nothing there. That's an image, a mirror image. She's looking into a mirror, and sending the image to us.'

  'Could anybody else do this?' Thrawn asked, standing up. She twirled around, in place. Her feet touched the carpet. They left depressions in the carpet behind them. The image of a depressed carpet was absolutely opaque, in focus, properly shaded, no flares or edges of light.

  'Is this or is this not the best hologram you've ever seen?' Thrawn began to weep. Cilia, the Soundman, Toll, Peterpaul all looked on in shock.

  'So why are you all cutting me out?' the image asked. 'Why does everyone always have to cut me out?'

  Milena picked up her cup of water.

  Thrawn was pleading. 'You don't know what I could do for the Comedy. I could give you angels, and heaven, I could give you the music so clear, I could put you down on the ground so firmly, people would think that the sky had grown rocks.'

  'You could take us to hell, too,' said Milena. And she flung the water at her.

  Thrawn broke apart, refracted. Part of her face was in droplets, upside down in the air.

  'My God,' said Toll Barrett.

  Milena began to weep. 'Whenever I'm alone,' she said, and flung more water at her. The water was full of hate, as bitter as gall. With each lashing, part of Thrawn was pulled onto the wall and spattered against it. 'Whenever I want to sleep.' Another lashing of water, like a whip. 'She puts holograms into my eyes! She puts pieces of herself onto the floor! She makes me see things! Hear things!'

  Thrawn stood still, hands clasped in front of her, as if pious, silent and weeping herself.

  Toll put his arms around Milena and Milena shuddered. She dropped the cup and the water spilled over her hot thick trousers.

  'Oh thank God,' she said, breathing out with relief. They had all seen it, all of them. They all knew. And she wasn't crazy, she wasn't crazy at all. Cilia was stroking her hair. Thrawn looked on for a moment longer, and then the hologram wasn't there.

  Cilia stayed with Milena, while Toll and Peterpaul went to Milton, and told him what had happened. Milena never saw what followed. A delegation visited Thrawn's rooms and took all the equipment back. There was one portable machine which had vanished, along with Thrawn. She would never work for the Zoo again, and when she was finally found, she would be Read, and wiped clean.

  Sometime during the confusion, the Snide slipped away, to a new disguise.

  And finally as Cilia and Milena sat talking there came a familiar drumming on the roof. They both looked up.

  'That's rain,' said Cilia. 'Milena, that's rain!'

  They ran out onto the concrete walkways, under blue-black skies and the rain drove down in droplets the size of sparrow's eggs, and everyone ran out of the buildings, holding up their hands towards the skies, looking up at the clouds, letting themselves be pelted with the hot raw eggs of rain. They danced in circles, in each other's arms. From all over the city, came the sound of singing: Handel's 'Water Music', 'Singing in the Rain'. Milena and Cilia and Peterpaul and Toll all danced together round and round as the surface of the Thames was made rough with rain, and tiny rivers ran down the slopes of its cracked dry river bed.

  And as they danced, a ghost appeared briefly, a dim image under grey skies, starved of light, scattered by raindrops. It sang, too, in a thin, unsteady wheedling voice.

  Thrawn was still trying to join in.

  A spindle-thread of gravity reached out all the way
to Alpha Centauri. Milena could feel it in her head, and she could feel the forces of attraction tugging at her and at the Earth.

  You could do worse than marry him said Bob the Angel. He felt like a thought in her own head. You need protection, Milena.

  Milena was going to say, from what? But then she remembered Thrawn.

  An image of exposure of loss, a sense of emptiness came to her from Bob. You are Bad Grammar. That was the implication.

  'They know about me,' said Milena. 'Why haven't they Read me?'

  They need you, said Bob.

  Isn't it strange, how the stars are still beautiful? In the concentration camps of the twentieth century, they must have looked up and thought how strange it was that there could still be stars and beauty.

  Why do they need me?

  Oh, said Bob, they have a project, wilder than this. They need someone for it. They need someone who can mould the light. The Consensus is tired of being alone. It wants to reach out.

  Instead of explaining, Bob the Angel gave her the idea whole, the image, its size, its function. He gave her the diagram again. He showed her the Angels, moving out in lines, radiated from a tiny Earth, from a tiny sun. No matter how many of them were sent out, they radiated away, into infinity. They did not move in parallel lines. The lines spread apart from each other. Trajectories of exploration that had appeared to be almost side by side when they left Earth were eventually spread so far apart that whole stars, whole galaxies were lost between them.

  The universe was too big to fill, no matter how many Angels streamed up the lines between the stars. The Consensus wanted to do more than explore.

  It wanted to call.

  Somewhere else in the universe, there must be another consciousness also reaching out. If they reached out for each other along the forces of attraction, and they met, they could give each other the universe they had explored.

  The Consensus was going to call for the Other.

  So it isn't for Dante that they've done this, thought Milena, or for the music, or for anything else. They need to rehearse the techniques. They need to rehearse me.