by Geoff Ryman
She raised the forkful of mash in salute.
'What I'd like to do,' she said, food pushed over to one side in her mouth. 'Is plant myself for a hundred years or so. I'd just like to settle in like a tree. Feed like a tree on sunlight and rain. Get all those wrinkles in my brain to unravel. I think my bones would heal, then, too. Did they tell you? My bones are getting bigger, stronger. And all the nodules are flaking off, too.'
There was no archness about her, no mischievousness. She's lost the old London, thought Milena. She's shed it, like a skin.
'And,' said Lucy. 'I'm pregnant.'
She continued chewing the lamb that shouldn't have been there.
'Metastasis. A little bit broke free and started growing in my womb. One chance in ten million, but how many million chances have I got?' She coughed and laughed at me same time. 'As many as I need. She'll be a cancer, too, my daughter. I have very definite ideas about how to bring her up. I'd like her to be a child for forty or fifty years. I'll build a raft and we'll live on it in the middle of the ocean, just catching the fish that leap up when you're quiet and part of the scenery. I'll just let her laze. We'll turn somersaults on tiny islands. We won't do nothing at all. There won't be any need. And when she's fed up being a child — well men. She'll become something new. We'll keep on changing, getting thicker and healthier.'
She looked at Milena in silence, cheeks bulging, in motion. Kerswallow gulp. It wasn't the time to ask, but it was Milena's job to know. 'Lucy,' she said, pronouncing very slowly and clearly, as if perhaps Lucy had forgotten some of her English. 'Remember you said you would be in an opera? The Divine Comedy? Remember, you said you would play Beatrice? Will you be able to record your part in the opera?'
'Ohhhhhh,' growled Lucy in pity and fierceness. She reached out and rubbed Milena's hair rather hard. 'Oh, you poor little creature.' Lucy looked at her smiling, as if at a fool. 'I already have recorded it, can't you see? In another time.'
Her mind has gone, thought Milena. We've recorded nothing with her. We haven't been able to find her. She and Lucy looked at each other, each pitying the other.
And the Milena who was remembering thought: pity her if you like, Milena, but you will go home and find that all her part has been recorded. You'll see her, singing with Dante, leading him to heaven. And you'll try to tell yourself that she must have slipped in and done it when you weren't there. But the rest of the cast won't remember singing with her. Except in their dreams. The world isn't what we thought it was. That plate of lamb shouldn't be there, and her performance shouldn't be there, and perhaps the world shouldn't be here either.
'You're all the same,' said Lucy, shaking her head. 'Always worried. I think of you all,' she said, looking into Milena's eyes again with a newly unnerving stare, 'like you was flowers in my garden. Beautiful flowers in a garden. When you're young, your bodies are so beautiful, all firm and fresh and full of heft. I want to press you in my book, just to keep you. But I open the book, and you've all gone grey and brown.'
Lucy took Milena's hand. Lucy's skin was thick, springy, as if upholstered with foam rubber. 'There's been some mistake,' she whispered. 'I should look into it, if I were you. You weren't meant to the, you know. Ever.'
And Milena remembered being young and well, running up the steps of the Shell. There was no Terminal ache along the crown of her head. There was lightness and fire in her feet. She turned a corner, and remembered finding Jacob on the fine spring morning of his death.
He was lying slightly on one side, his eyes half-open, dry.
Just for a moment there was the faint hope that he was blanked out again. Postpeople did when their memories were full. 'Jacob?' Milena whispered, as if he could awake. Then there was the immediate certainty. 'Oh. Jacob,' she said in pity.
She looked at his shoes. He had put them on that morning, his old worn shoes, quickly ruined in climbing stairs, the sole loose and in peeling layers, a hole with borders of many different shades of grey.
I am the one who finds you when you die.
Not this time, Jacob.
Milena sat down next to him on the staircase, and took his hand. It was still limp and warm, and there was an exhalation. It was not exactly unpleasant, but it made one wary, like the smell of a foreign fruit from a strange land that one is going to have to taste.
A small gold crucifix fell out of Jacob's hand into hers, on a broken gold chain. The action seemed so natural it was as if he had passed it to her. Milena looked at the broken chain. He must have grabbed the cross, she thought, as if it could hold him up. He must have felt it coming, like a descending weight. He grabbed the cross and held it and the chain broke and he fell.
It was not exactly shameful to be a Christian. It meant you were a simple soul. Jacob did not come by a crucifix of gold by himself. It would have been passed from one dying hand to another, through generations. Who did Jacob have to pass it on to? He had his tiny room on the first floor, with his tiny stove and his tiny bed. He was not married. His life had been burnt through in service. The conviction came to Milena, irrational and immovable: the crucifix has been passed to me.
She stroked Jacob's head, as if to touch all the memories and all the good faith that had been there. She did not want to leave him, though there were all the usual things to be done: the quiet summoning of the What Does, the speedy gathering up of the dead. Well, someone else could go and get the What Does. Milena would stay there. Milena would stay there and take account of what had happened, pay attention to the death of Jacob the Postperson.
She took his ankles and pulled him out of the corner of the landing, away from the wall, into what seemed a more comfortable position. She arranged his hands.
We never had our talk, Jacob, the one in which I asked you what it was like to know so many people so well, to have so much information in your head. But I think it must have been like being smothered, smothered in other people, making demands.
I made more demands than anyone, Jacob. I cannot remember you making any demands on me. So I'm just going to sit here Jacob, and give you the time you deserve, a bit of time to understand the pattern you made, weaving through space and time, up and down the Shell, over and over, room to room, reminding people about debts and rehearsals, appointments and times to take medicines. Did you pray at night alone? Did you go to a Church, a boisterous singing church that made you happy? Is there a church for Postpeople? And what about the seizures, the way you would blank out?
People said you were used to blanking out, Jacob. Postpeople do blank out if they don't take care of themselves. Three times, you blanked out, Jake, three times you let yourself get too full. You told me that it was like dying. Each time it happens, you said, you could feel your mind going cold in sections, like a city turning out its lights. Then they would give you a virus that taught you who you were and who your clients were, and back you went again. Three times you started anew, but it didn't make you look any fresher. You always looked dead around the eyes.
What can I make of that, Jacob? That you should have taken better care? They had viruses that could devour memory, leave you clean and open. But you were too busy with us, too busy taking care of us. Why did we deserve such care Jacob? We did nothing for you, except exchange the hellos and the goodbyes that are everyone's due.
I'm glad I never saw it. They say you crawled, Jacob. When the seizures came, you would crawl, and foam at the mouth. You would tear your hair. You fought, they told me, fought against it. You howled, No! No! and tore your shirt, gentle Jacob who was the soul of circumspection and dignity.
This last one killed you, didn't it? You died in another blank out, Jacob. So what does that mean?
I think it means you were abused. Your mind was stirred about like a casserole, you were taken over for the purposes of others. But you adjusted, each time. You found the joys that this life had to offer, limited as they were. The joy of knowing so many people well, the joy of being needed, of having a regular and recognised place, the joy of knowing so m
uch about them, these many people.
But even that was taken away, the knowledge, the memory. And you would have to start again, dead, exhausted, climbing up the weary steps.
Good morning, Milena.
Good morning, Jacob.
And how are you today, Milena?
Fine, Jacob, fine.
Lovely weather, isn't it Milena?
Not really Jacob. A bit cold.
Oh yes, it's cold, but it's warm too, Milena.
Do you have any messages for me, Milena?
Do you have any messages for me, Milena?
Do you have any messages for me, Milena?
Only one Jacob, only one. That you deserved better. You did not deserve to end up here like a sack of garbage in worn-through shoes and one old suit dying alone with no one to see, and that we cannot make it up to you and the flowers on the grave will not be seen by you. And if that's the meaning, Jacob, if that's all the meaning I can get then I should bloody well try. Bloody well try again. Because if that's all there is then a mistake has been made, and the mistake is mine.
Milena remembering still had the crucifix, here, now, she could feel it, in her hand.
Ready to pass on.
And there was Mike, moving like clockwork, back erect, lighting candles in their home, their home together, amid the smell of food that he had cooked, against a window showing the slate-grey marsh, and the black reflection of clouds of smoke drifting over it, smoke from the cremation of the dead.
'What?' said Milena, easily amused, at least by him. 'All this? What? Tell me?'
Mike's thin lips turned all the way inward, fighting down a smile. He made her sit, and made her begin to eat, and poured her some wine, and then sat down.
'Milly,' he said. 'I've been thinking. We should have children.'
Oh. Milena set her fork back down on the table. 'Well you go have them, then.'
Breezy, everything was so simple and breezy back then.
'That's my idea,' said Mike Stone. 'I thought that since you're busy and don't like sex, you could donate an ovum, and I could donate a sperm cell and we could affix the result to the wall of my bowel.'
'You make it sound like a recipe,' said Milena sitting forward, suddenly disturbed. 'No Mike,' she said.
'I'd like to do it very much. It makes sense.' Milena remembered his daffy, trusting eyes.
'It's very dangerous,' said Milena.
'So's going up in space. I'd rather do this. I'd find it more interesting.'
Mike. Why are you so... so... nice? It isn't good for people to be nice. What if I make you bend too far? You won't know and neither will I. Until it's too late.
'I had a friend, Mike.'
'I know. Berowne. You told me.'
'He was nice and brave too, Mike. The placenta came away just afterwards. He bled to death. The blood hit the ceiling. And there was this baby left.'
Milena was surprised by feeling, thinking of the infant. 'It hadn't been part of the deal. Berowne was supposed to take care of the baby. And Anna didn't want him, couldn't look at him at first, not until Peterpaul came along to help. So there were three lives ruined. No, Mike, no.'
'It's what I want to do,' he said. 'I've been consulting people. I've thought about all sorts of new ways to protect myself. And other people who do the same thing.'
'Yes and everyone thinks he is the one who is going to get through it, and for what?'
'For a beautiful new baby.'
'I'm not taking the responsibility. I've been through it all before. You think Berowne went around swinging from trees? He made it, he made it all the way through to delivery and out the other side, but they couldn't keep the placenta down. One good shove, and out it came and he was dead, dead in seconds, all the blood just pumped out of him.'
'There are stitch viruses. They can give me a stitch virus which will meld the placenta, hold it to me.'
'Please. I told you, I'm scared. I'm scared to death of all this biology. We're going to get something else wrong soon.'
'That's a different issue to my being pregnant.'
'I'm immune to it all. I don't have to worry. But you're not. What if these stitch viruses keep on stitching?'
'They don't,' he said, unafraid. 'They're safe behind Candy.'
Milena sighed and shook her head. He was right, they were getting off the issue. 'I don't want to make another orphan,' she said.
'One of us is bound to be left. For a time. Both of us are bound to the. That's no reason not to have a child. Otherwise, no one would have any children. And I like children. And someone has to be left to carry on.'
Make it breezy again, Mike. Take away the fear again. Tell me I'm just working too hard, that I don't wake up every morning feeling like I'm lead sheeting on a roof.
Mike kissed her on the end of her nose.
'No harm can ever really come. Even if someone dies. Death is going to come anyway. People always react to the thing that's just happened. Not to what's happening now. Out of step. I'm not Berowne.'
Milena went quiet again. Is there just a glimmer, she wondered, just a little tickle of jealousy? Thinking: hoi, that's my job. Men always seem to take over everything. Even this?
'So tell me, slowly and clearly,' said Milena. 'Why it won't kill you. And tell me what I'm supposed to do if it does.'
Milena remembered sitting at her desk in her new flat, working. She has a box that plays music to her. Das Lied von der Erde throbs gently in the background. Milena looks at maps of the Zoo Estate. She is trying to find the best place for a hospice for the Bees and for the sick. Milton wants to put them far out into the country. Milton the Minister is still alive.
The shutters of her lacquered rooms are closed against the weather. It is cold and from somewhere below comes the smell of coffee. There is a bleakness in Milena's belly, fear in the shadows, a tremor of anxiety in her hands. It is winter still, and she is not yet completely free. Thrawn is still out there, somewhere, with her one tiny machine.
'How's it going?' asks a familiar voice.
Milena glances up, quickly, and looks back down. She talks to the map. 'The Angels will be here soon, so you might as well go.'
Milena is Terminal now. The Consensus knows when it happens, and Angels come to break up the light.
'Look at me,' says Thrawn.
Milena pauses and then does look round. Thrawn's head is shaved; it is covered in stubble and little criss-cross cuts. She is smiling a faraway smile and is dressed only in a white vest and torn trousers. From somewhere, there is the smell of cooking alcohol, from the stove most likely. Thrawn's arms and knees twitch with cold. My God, thinks Milena, what a state.
'Look, Thrawn, part of me is very sorry how things have worked out, but I'm hardly likely to ask you to work with me again, am I?' Milena looks back around at the map.
'Are you sorry? Oh that's good.' Thrawn's voice is breathy, like a little girl's. Milena turns up the volume of the electronic box. The music becomes loud, the soprano's voice like a steam whistle, the flutes like knives. The Dead Spaces between the flats will kill the sound. Must see about that smell of alcohol, thinks Milena, trying to cancel out what stands behind her.
'Milena!' shouts Thrawn over the noise. 'Milena, look around, I've got a really good effect.'
Milena ignores her, eyes narrowing.
'That's your job, isn't it? To use my ideas? Please look around!'
Damn it, where are the Angels? I've been through all this before; I can't take any more of it.
Thrawn laughs, helplessly, musically. Out of the corner of her eye, Milena can see her staggering into her field of vision.
'Milena, just look around, and then I promise, I'll be out of your life. Out of your life forever!'
Milena looks around. She thinks she sees a hologram of Thrawn McCartney, holding a lighted match. She is used to the perfection of Thrawn McCartney's images. The fire on the match rises out of gases from the wood. It hovers over the wood, and creeps its way up along it, slowly, tow
ards the fingers.
'You promised,' says Thrawn, still somehow looking hopeful. Something thick hangs in strands between her cracked lips. 'You promised you wouldn't hate me.'
A whiff of cooking alcohol. I can smell alcohol, why can't you? asks the Milena who is remembering. If I can smell it, you can.
You can.
You're telling yourself you think you're seeing a hologram, thinks the Milena who remembers. Holograms don't smell. There's even a whiff of sulphur from the match. And you're watching the match get closer to her, and you want it to happen, I can remember you thinking, oh for God sake's go on, I know what's coming next, as if it's just one more horrific image in the light. You want to be rid of her, the crazy Fury, so she won't hound you, this Happy One, so that she will no longer be somewhere alive and betrayed and alone to make you feel guilty.
Look, even now, she's stopping, holding the match back. She wants you to stop her. She wants you to help. She wants to collapse weeping in your arms so that she can tell you that she's sorry, tell you she's hateful, tell you that it's not your fault.
'You were supposed to be my Saviour!' she has to shout, her voice breaking.
And the music wails.
everywhere the distance shines bright and blue!
Not hate, not love, but passion of a kind, twisted with lizard eyes. There are such things as demons. They are alive, and they live in the dead spaces between people.
forever... forever...
Soft, and sad, Mahler bids another farewell.
The match burns low, too low, while Thrawn waits for you to save her. The flame touches her finger. Her fingers, her arm, are soaked in alcohol.
The flower blooms, pink, flame. An unfocused flicker and a sudden eruption from the hand, along the arm up into the face, coating the flesh like this year's latest fashion, a crawling, living bloom of flame. Trickles of black smoke waver upwards.
And still Milena, the People's Artist, hesitates. Can it be real? What if this isn't just an image? Has she really done this to herself? Dread, horror mixed with an angry wrench of justification: you did it to yourself, Thrawn.
