Child Garden

by Geoff Ryman

  Oh, it was a beautiful day! Trees and clouds and sky. In one corner of the park, well away from her was a cluster of moving shrubbery. It was Bees, three or four of them. The Bees always followed Milena, keeping their distance, respectful and silent, like mourners. The Bees bored and oppressed and sometimes frightened Milena. Milena could sense how they saw the virus as something golden, in islands in her body. The cancer sang to them of life even as it was killing her.

  But today was so beautiful that Milena felt strong enough to give them a smile and a wave. And they smiled and waved back, looking for a moment like normal people, white teeth in purple faces, quick smiles for a friend on a sunny day. Then Milena saw that one of them was the King. She smiled and waved again, to him.

  Milena had not planned to come out. The friends had planned to stay inside, in the Coral Reef room at the hospital. It was comfortable there and warm. There was a kitchen and a bedsitting room and even a small balcony, with a view over the river. The friends had all crowded onto it, and felt the air like a bath all around them. It did not seem likely that Milena would get too weary or too cold. They must get so tired, Milena thought, of me being ill all the time.

  Peterpaul reached out towards her to help her sit. He took such exaggerated care to lower her gently that Milena wanted to smile. There had been just a little ill will when she had asked Peterpaul to leave the Comedy. Dante was not an Everyman, and could not be played as one. She had worried about it for weeks, losing sleep, before she finally told Peterpaul over lunch at the Zoo. She was replacing him with Jason, the waspish apothecary from the Babes' production of Falstaff. She explained, and Peterpaul had said nothing for the rest of the meal. She learned later that he wanted to reply in the funeral music from Peer Gynt and was too embarrassed. He was not angry; he was very, very disappointed. He might also have been a little relieved.

  So we've all lost the Comedy. Peterpaul didn't sing it. Mike's pregnant so someone else is riding the Bulge. And I'm dying. Someone other than Milena Shibush is pumping out the images every night into the sky. There's not a breath of live performance about it now. It's a recording. And only the first two books; we only had time to do the first two books. You can't call it a Comedy if you only do the first two books: it ends in Purgatory. Well, thought Milena with a smile, a lot of people have said watching it every evening is pure hell. She settled onto the chair and reached across to take hold of Mike's hand. Oh, it was good, just to sit and feel the sun on her face. Her Rhodopsin skin tingled with the light: she could feel the yellow reflection from the arms of the bamboo folding chair and the warm green reflections of the grass and the sudden stab of orange from the grit of the football pitch. We can almost see with our skins, she thought, her eyes closed. I can almost feel the clouds overhead on my arms.

  Little Berry was singing, a far from aimless song. His voice was like a cherubim's, inhuman. It was an infant's voice singing complex and beautiful music with perfect pitch, perfect tone. It was not innocent. It was unsettling, the voice of another kind of human being. And the song was so strange, as well. It seemed to be about the day itself, the trees, the sound of the tennis balls on racquets, the sunlight. But there was something wary in it too, something defensive. What, wondered Milena, does little Berry have to defend? He must know Singers are different. But people are not unkind to them, well, hardly unkind any longer. Then Berry stopped singing. Milena opened her eyes, and found that Berry had been looking at her, dead at her, at her face. I scare him, she thought.

  He was wide-eyed, solemn, his mouth pulled down at the corners. Was he about to cry? Milena was about to say to the Princess: Berry's worried about something. Then she decided to find out what it was. She tried to Read him. Usually infants could not be Read. Either they were too blank, or too different from adults for the reading to make sense. Milena could only get a dim sense of what Berry was feeling. Berry was a jumble of song. The songs were secret. Berry did not sing them around adults. The songs were about his world, and his world was like an egg that he was hatching. He was trying to keep it warm. This tender world, protected by secret song. Now it was Milena's turn to be disturbed.

  He's trying to defend it from us. Well, children always have secrets. Milena tried to dismiss it from her mind. She suddenly felt unutterably weary. I have a disease to fight. Little Berry must fight battles of his own. Except that it did not feel in the midst of the tangle of song as though it were his battle alone.

  Milena drifted into sleep, or in a state enough like sleep for her friends to call it that and not feel too disturbed. They spoke in whispers. Berry had been told to stop singing in case he woke Aunty Milena. He kept on singing in his head and Milena heard the music as if in a dream.

  She woke up after a time feeling very thirsty. She had been breathing through her mouth. There was a dull ache, all the way from the surface of her eyes back through to the back of her brain.

  Oh don't say I'm ill, she thought. Don't make me be ill. Let me have this day. It is such a perfect day. Please. I don't want to be carried back, I don't want to vomit, I don't want any pain. Not today. Tomorrow. Tomorrow the sky will be grey, and we won't be all together.

  'Are you all right, Milena?' asked Mike, rising in his chair, giving her hand a little shake.

  'Yes,' she said. No point pretending to be asleep.

  She opened her eyes. They were full of a clear, sticky moisture, that refracted the light into rainbows. There were nameless shapes of light, rainbows dancing all around them, swirls of light, beating, like wings.

  She opened her eyes and she was in another world.

  I know that! I know that place! Milena remembering suddenly sat up and yelled. I know what it is now! I know where I am!

  I'm really ill, thought Milena who had been a director. This is the start of a new sickness. But she didn't mind. She was smiling.

  The world was made of light, light exchanging light, light going in and out like breath, the breath rising up from the Earth into clouds, clouds edged with all light, light in all colours, white, fading to ice blue, swirls of ice crystals in the breath of the world.

  Hallelujah. Hosanna.

  Shaky, smiling, Milena stood up. She stood up and began to run across the grass. She wore sandals; she could feel the swish of grass against her toes; she could feel the stream of air, fresh from the respiration of the plants, the trees, the grass, the breath going in and out of her, the light on her skin, striking Rhodopsin, breaking it apart, making sugar, sugar and sodium that sent nerves flashing, her seeing, dancing skin, rippling like waves with the light.

  The ground had knees and elbows, and outstretched arms, and suddenly Milena had fallen forward with delight into them. She stared about her with delight.

  'Milena! Ma!' the adults were calling behind her.

  Everything was shielded, everything was protected by an armour of light. She looked at her arm, and saw the light rising out of her as well as into her. She looked up and she caught the trees, turning away, away from her like the Bees, orienting, disorienting.

  Milena laughed. 'Whoo-hooo!' she cried, and kicked with her feet.

  The adults were upon her.

  'Ma? Ma? Are you all right?' cried Cilia.

  Milena rolled over, and the shock of seeing Cilia took her breath away. Cilia's face had fallen in on itself. It was more of a death's head than her own. The hollow eyes were exhausted with the strain, the strain of playing nurse. Tell me to fickit off if you want to, thought Milena.

  Berry squatted beside her, leaning into her line of sight. He was grinning now. He looked dead into Milena's eyes, and Milena who was no longer a director thought: he understands. Milena who had been a director looked at him instead, and smiled. His returning gaze was steady.

  'Why did you run like that?' Cilia demanded. 'Did you hurt yourself?'

  'We're all hurt. But not hurt by the fall.' She thought she meant her own fall, into the grass, the welcoming grass. Then she thought she maybe meant something else as well. Milena lolled in th
e grass, ran her bare arms across it. Ohhhhhhh! The beautiful grass.

  The grass knew. It orientated itself towards her.

  'I think,' she said thickly, as if drunk. 'I think I'm becoming a Bee.' She believed it.

  A cure that makes you well, not ill.

  'Goddamn viruses,' chuckled Milena. 'Why do they feel so good?'

  'Oh, Milena,' said Cilia, weary, worn, taking her hand. It was a lot to bear for Cilia, who had never thought about death or its coming.

  'There is a thread, a golden thread, that connects us to Life,' said Milena. 'And we keep making it thinner and thinner. If it ever breaks then we all will the, and take the world with us. And we just keep spinning it out, thinner and thinner,' Milena was grinning. She held up her arms and looked at them.

  Her arms were blazing. They fluoresced with generated light.

  'Let's go back and eat,' said Cilia. 'You don't eat.' Her voice was clogged.

  'Have you ever wanted to be fucked by a tree?' Milena asked, and giggled.

  'Milena!' hissed Cilia and gave her hand an admonitory shake. The boy was near.

  'Trees are so big and beautiful and strong.'

  'Peterpaul,' said Cilia, turning, pleading.

  'Listen, listen,' said Milena, lolling her head. 'I don't want to the, but I don't want their virus either. I don't want to live forever. I don't want it, here.' She formed a cone with her fingers that glowed liked embers and tapped her heart. She had not understood before why her body had fought off the cure. 'This is enough,' she said, and pointed to the light all around her, and what lay beyond the light, beyond life.

  'She's all bones,' said Cilia miserably. Together, she and Peterpaul lifted Milena up.

  Let me stay in the garden, thought Milena whose head hung down, looking back at the grass, confused, confounded. The light that shone out of her arms and her face began to ebb.

  Don't take her! begged the Milena who was remembering, to Peterpaul and Cilia. Don't let them! she told Milena the director. It's yours. It's something you did yourself. You got back! It's real! They will take it away again! Keep it!

  They helped her back to the chair. They lowered her onto it. To their surprise, little Berry climbed onto her lap, and hugged her and Milena lifted up weak arms, and put them around him.

  Everything was going flat again.

  'I think she's just confused from waking up,' Cilia said hopefully to Mike. A quick warning gaze to Peterpaul said: don't tell him anything different.

  It was just a virus, thought Milena. A beautiful virus. But it's going now. It wasn't real. Why are the viruses beautiful? She held Berry up to look at him, Berowne's son, his babe, the son of a friend. She looked into huge round eyes that were in a different proportion to his face than the eyes in an adult's were. They looked blue-grey, huge and pale against the purple roundness of his face. It was Berry she wanted to defend. But I cannot help you, and I cannot protect you. I will not be with you.

  A cloud passed in front of the sun, and the light was gone. Everything was grey again. So it was sunlight and fever, that was all. And yet it had seemed so real, when I saw it. Another euphoria.

  Berry suddenly frowned, and sat up. He tightened the toggle of his cowboy hat and then turned and stumbled down from her lap.

  'I think,' said Milena, 'I want to go back inside.'

  It was on the way back, when Milena and Al were talking alone together that the Snide suddenly said: 'It wasn't a virus, you know, Milena. What you saw. It was you. It came from you.' His eyes were red, as if he had been dazzled.

  Milena stopped and looked back at the garden, at the trees and tried to see the light again. The trees were beautiful, but they were adult trees, and it was an adult sky. 'Come on,' she called smiling, to Mike Stone. 'Catch up.'

  Later, the Princess came singing music from Madam Butterfly. She told Milena that she wouldn't be bringing Berry to see her for a time. Did she understand? 'It frightens him,' the Princess sang with shame. 'You frighten him.'

  But there still was the memory of the welcoming grass; of the turning, curious, tender trees as strong and silent and gentle as fishermen in unvisited villages; of the bouncing, happy clouds; and of the birds that flew without hesitation. Rising up on the breath of the world. There and then, but not now. Only in memory could she see it.

  And the Milena who remembered understood. The silence and the light were one.

  chapter nineteen

  DOG LATIN

  (AN AUDIENCE OF VIRUSES)

  'Life is history,' said the philosophers. They imagined that life worked as they did, by preserving decisions. Thereby they took the life out of history altogether.

  'The brain works like a computer,' said the writers of popular science, as if in unison, when computers seemed to be changing the world. They meant that nerve impulses take one branch of a ganglion as opposed to another. A yes or no, a one or zero code that they could describe if they wished, and they did, as binary. They did not know what made living memory, or how sound or light or even silence could be recalled.

  'The brain works like a collection of viruses,' the Consensus said one hundred and fifty years later, when viruses were difficult to avoid.

  The need to simplify and to put things in a sequence, their devotion to history, made them slaves to whatever was current.

  'Time is money,' said Rolfa's father, on the last night of the Comedy. He meant the younger members of the Family had become slack, and did not see the connection between how hard they worked and Family wealth. Zoe had just asked him if he wouldn't come outside to see the end of Rolfa's opera. She stood at the door of the starkly tidy room he called his office. Zoe was scowling slightly. Becoming Consul had not been good for her father. It had made him pompous and insecure.

  Rolfa's father was thinking that it was strange, that of all his children it should be Rolfa who ended up the most like him. Rolfa would have known the opera was there just to glorify the Squidges. She would have known it was more important to get on with work. It had been Rolfa who had invented the time sheets. Every hour a member of the Family worked was supposed to earn forty francs — four marks. This meant that every hour they did not work also cost four marks.

  Rolfa's father had become Consul of the Family after the Restoration. The Family called it the Emergency. The Squidges had metal of their own now.

  Time is not money. Money is money. Money is a promise, nothing more, an agreement not to doubt. Money is, for example, an exchange of iron ore for promises. The Family were receiving fewer promises for their Antarctic iron, but the time sheets still said they were rich. That kept them happy. And money being nothing more than a promise, an abstract notion, the Family somehow managed to stay wealthy. Rolfa's father sat with his whizzing machinery, looking at figures that were pure superstition. Like all superstitions, money was real. It was as real as the gods of ancient Sumer. The gods of Sumer were media of exchange as well — they presided over storehouses for goods. They also were agreements not to doubt. Gods collapse.

  Zoe shook her head. 'One of us ought to see it,' she said. She was thinking of Rolfa, who could not see the Comedy, under the clear unshielded skies of Antarctica. She was thinking of Milena and the strangeness of life. 'The little fish,' Zoe murmured to herself.

  Her father was busy with an account. Any system of accounting, whether it uses words or numbers, achieves meaning by what it leaves out. Her father's account left out almost everything that interested Zoe. She and her father spoke in different tongues.

  As Zoe turned away, a cat on the roof over her head slunk down the roof slates. A thin coating of cats moved all over London, some in mid-air leaping, others licking their feet in doorways, others hunched over bowls, eating. Some of them lay on their sides, cold, on the pavements.

  Under the roof of the Family house, seven women and two men were cooking in various kitchens, chopping vegetables or staring at boiling pots without really seeing them. Downstairs, eight Polar teenagers watched their video, each costing the Family
a notional two marks an hour. The time of teenagers was given half value.

  In the houses on the other side of the street, a Party Woman was filing her toenails. Another was repairing seat covers. One couple made love, another fought, someone else was washing the leaves of her rubber tree. Outside in the street, two coffee vendors passed each other, pulling their wagons and tureens. One was on his way to Knightsbridge, the other was going home. They smiled and nodded to each other in good fellowship. There was good fellowship among those who plied the new trade, now that the public were safely addicted to caffeine. At the bottom of Rolfa's street, where the terrace ended, there was a noisy main street full of traffic. A smelly omnibus dragged its low-hanging rear end past the corner, alcohol exhaust billowing up behind it. On the pavement, a woman covered her face with a scarf, to filter the fumes. A sun-blasted drunk was slumped in a doorway and he held up a bottle, saluting the woman in the twilight.

  The shops on the corner were closing early. A plump, bald man, only nineteen years old, but afflicted with the signs of middle age, folded bamboo shutters over his windows. There was no night trade now, with the opera. He lived with other families in rooms above the shop. On the roof, the shopowner's wife and his children and the What Does cousins were gathering setting up pears or tables, carrying basins of food, preparing a party.

  Two miles away, along the river, fishermen were pulling in lines. There were bonfires on wasteground, where people were gathering to share the last night of the opera. In parks, bamboo platforms had been erected, onto which the Comedy was cubed when there was heavy cloud. Much of the Comedy had been obscured by cloud, but tonight, the sky was autumnal and clear. Even so, technicians were carrying out final checks on the equipment. Holograms of giant roses and human hands flickered in and out of existence. The platforms would serve if there was a sudden front of warm moist air. Overhead there were balloons which would see the advancing front of weather and give warning.