Child Garden

by Geoff Ryman

  'Leave them alone!' begged Milena, too weak to move on her long chair. The Bees hurt no one: they left after each night's performance; this was the last night; why come now?

  Two helicopters. They landed, springing on their sled-like feet, the Bees retreating to the walkways and the walls. The blades kept spinning. Milena felt the air rush past her face. It was as if she were moving at a hundred miles an hour.

  'Mike?' she asked, but the words were drowned in the sound of the rotors.

  Mike was standing, looking out over the balcony.

  'No!' a sea of voices seemed to sigh all together.

  'They're fighting!' shouted Mike Stone. 'They're fighting the Garda.' Outside their front door, Piper began to howl, ya-roo like a dog singing at church bells.

  'What?' asked Milena, and a bubble of something seemed to burst out of her mouth.

  'Lie back, Milena. Don't worry. I'm here.'

  Mike Stone, astronaut, thought Milena. What can you do against the Consensus?

  'They're coming inside,' said Mike, pointing, voice raised.

  Piper wailed. His voice broke. It became a human shout. Toddling on his knees, Piper came into the room, stammering, howling. Then he stood up, like a man. Piper ran on two legs, spinning in circles towards her. 'Milena!' he shouted quite plainly. 'Milena.' Piper had remembered how to talk.

  'Piper,' she whispered, and he came, weeping. He knelt beside her, doglike again and she had time to touch him behind the ears.

  Then, looming through the door came men covered in white plastic with clear plastic facemasks. They shone torches about the darkened room and then strode with great nimbleness towards Milena. It was so nimble, it looked like a comedy double-take, a piece of elegant, exaggerated performance. With beautiful, dancelike weaving, their arms laced her up in tubes. Tubes were inserted into her nostrils. A wafer, thin, small, translucent was placed on her tongue. Milena could no longer talk.

  'What are you doing?' asked Mike Stone with a kind of numb helplessness.

  A litter was unfolded as from nowhere. Milena, limp and heavy as clay, felt herself hoisted, helpless to resist. Lifted up, lowered, in a swoop that was delicately timed to avoid making her sick again.

  'Taking her to be Read,' said one of the men in white, answering Mike finally, kneeling down with his back to him. 'We've only just caught her in time.'

  As if all of the Earth was falling away Milena felt herself lifted up. One of the men in white snapped white resin fingers and pointed. 'The chair,' he said. Milena turned her head. Her head was heavy, and hung unsupported by her neck over the edge of the litter. She looked behind her to see Mike helped back into his chair. The men in white kneeled around that too.

  Piper was held back by his collar. He strained against it, gasping. 'Don't go!' he called. 'Don't go!' A gloved hand gently lifted up Milena's head, as she was shifted further onto the litter.

  In the sky Lucy was singing, looking back over her shoulder. 'Brother,' she sang in Dante's Italian, 'why don't you dare to question me, now you are coming with me?' Then Milena was borne away.

  She heard Piper howling as she was carried down the hospital staircase. With a bustle she was carried along the hospital corridors. Light blazed from the hands of the Garda sweeping over the glinting, flowing surface of the Coral, making it yellow, making it flutter. The Coral sang: the Comedy embedded in it, ringing with human voices in some kind of extremity. The walls thumped like an angry neighbour. The monstrous egotism, she thought. The monstrous egotism to put this on, to flood every space in the world with it, to drive out the silence, to hammer the heads of the children, of the fragile, of the ill. Who wants this? Who cares about Naiads and medieval allegory?

  The white men carried her into pandemonium.

  Bees were pasted, writhing, against the walls of the hospital, held by the tubes. The tubes worked their way blindly along the ground, whiplashing around ankles and arms, hauling Bees up and away in the light from Lucy's face. Lucy shook her head with a sad smile.

  'Milena!' the Bees wailed with loss, holding out their arms to her. 'Don't go!'

  Around the helicopters the Bees had linked arms. Two white men stepped forward. They had things in their hands that looked like frozen lizards. Light leapt from them. The Bees made a sound like falling rain. A passage had been cleared. Briskly, the white men ran, the litter jostling. Deft hands kept tubes in place, deft feet stepped over fallen bodies.

  Then a wave of Bees broke around them, hands raised. They struck the Garda full in their clear plastic masks. Both the Garda and the Bees reeled backwards. Any pain the Bees inflicted they also felt themselves. 'Take the pain. Take the pain,' they told each other, and broke again against the Garda. A Bee woman was trying to wrest the litter from the grasp of the Garda. She quivered, cowering, hands fluttering, eyes screwed shut.

  'They are taking you! The Consensus wants you. Swallow you!'

  All Milena could do was stare, weakly. No, she thought, I don't want this, no. The cancer in her, hot and heavy and victorious, blazed out at the Bees with terrible life. As Milena came near them, they doubled up or dropped to their knees, as surely as if they had been struck. The woman fell away.

  With a wrench and a jostle, Milena felt herself hoisted into the black loading bay. She felt tiny clicks in her spine, as bolts were slid through the supports of the litter, into the floor of the craft, as she was strapped in. The blades overhead began to beat more loudly.

  In defeat the Bees began to chant, a chant they had surrendered to silence with Milena's promise to be with them. Now that she was going, they sang it again.

  Milena Shibush

  Shibush Shibush

  Shibush Cancer

  Milena Cancer

  Cancer Cancer

  Very suddenly, the helicopter left the ground, leaning forward, wafting upwards over the roof of the Tarty flats.

  Cancer Flower

  Flower Cancer

  And old Lucy was singing too:

  cosi queste parole segna a vivi

  del viver ch 'e un correre a la morte

  so teach them, to those who live the

  life that is a race towards death

  The roofs of the flats were in slated pinnacles like bare mountains. The sky was full of light, light glowing in the leaves of Eden. The roofs fell away as Rolfa's music glinted like the light, sparkling, cool music for paradise and the rivers of paradise. The helicopter turned, slanting, and Milena saw far below her the river of London, old Father Thames.

  She saw the garden of her life, whole. She saw the Shell, like a series of building blocks, two great wings open in an embrace, with walkways between them, the walkways she had beaten back and forth at such a pace. She saw the Zoo, held up by bamboo, and the steps of the Zoo where she and Rolfa met for lunch and the park on the embankment where they had eaten.

  The Cut was gone. The old buildings had finally been torn down, made into rubble. They were growing again in cauliflower shapes of Coral, hard against the old brick bridge. Leake Street was now closed at one end. Everything changes. The Cut was closed and dark, but the old railway bridge was lit and full of traffic. Milena saw the Hungerford Bridge, where she had stood with Berowne to see the lights come back on. It was crowded with people now, looking up, as if at her, as if she was still down there among them. The same lights still hung in a line along the embankment, making the river glow yellow and green. The whole city flickered green, from the light in the sky, from the Comedy.

  Milena looked up too, and the garden in the sky was the same as the garden below. Lucy and Dante walked together out of the chasms of light that was Archbishop's Park.

  They walked past Virgil Street, encased in brick. And from somewhere came a ghostly, floating voice. It was Rolfa's voice singing out memory, singing on the night when Milena had tried to find her, after the Day of the Dogs.

  Beatrice and Dante alluded to their old love. Dante sang:

  Si come cera da guggello...

  Even as wax under th
e seal that

  does not change the imprinted figure,

  my brain is now stamped by you.

  Rolfa kept singing without words. Her voice would now not leave the rest of the opera, hoarse and enraged, echoing out of Virgil Street. On the Day of the Dogs, Rolfa had been singing the end of the last Canto, alone in the dark.

  Elsewhere in the Comedy, Dante was saying that he could not remember that he ever estranged himself from Beatrice or the conscience of having wronged her.

  The viruses will know what that means, thought Milena.

  He has drunk the waters of Lethe and has forgotten all the wrong he did in life.

  He doesn't remember losing Beatrice. That means losing Beatrice was a sin.

  Like my not speaking to Rolfa. Like my not loving her. Milena's hands were stroking something soft and spilled. Piglet was still in her lap.

  And outside the helicopter, on a level with it, were the black balloons that went up from Waterloo Bridge. They were swollen and singing gently to themselves the music they heard. The light reflected on their hides. Faces from memory flickered on their surface.

  And the music walked through an Eden that was made of old brick. It spoke of life in the stone, in the ground, in the air. Air moved like the trees and the grass; brick was as solid as stone. It was fulgent and fragrant; even in old London, wafting with history. Touches of minor keys and discords made it disturbing, pained. Odd sour notes glinted like light on falling leaves. The music became an eerie dance, as if, unseen, the Garden was dancing to itself, by itself. The dance was lost to us.

  Beatrice and Dante walked across Westminster Bridge Road and into the Cut: the Cut that no longer existed, the Cut in the Summer of Song. There were all the old familiar faces; the boy with the Hogarth face; the slim clothseller and his pretty wife; the seller of mirror lenses. They were a chorus. For the first time, the narrative was sung. They sung about the sun at the meridian, noon on the heights of Purgatory.

  In this Comedy, the Pit, the sink of Hell and the heights of the mountain were the same place. Eden and all the other circles up and down overlapped each other in layers, in a world of layers.

  Is that plain enough? wondered Milena. Will they understand this Low and earthbound Comedy of mine?

  Could I have done Heaven like this, Paradiso? Could I have found heaven on Earth as well? Who will finish the Comedy? Should anyone finish it, or should it exist only in the pages of Rolfa's book?

  Then she thought of little Berry, who sang. He had sung the music of the Comedy before he could speak, as he lay helpless in Milena's rooms. As if a sword had been jammed into her throat, Milena had the metal taste of certainty. It would be Berry, little Berry. He would finish the Comedy. He would keep it alive. She seemed to see herself passing it to him. What she passed to him was its smallness not its grandness: The Comedy was the size of flower.

  She felt herself flush with light. Her whole skin blazed with it. It illuminated the inside of the helicopter. It shone through the open door. The people below saw her in the sky overhead: light in the shape of a woman. There was a roar from below.

  A weight was taken off her. The helicopter began to descend.

  Beside the loading bay there were suddenly thick, purple leaves, flapping like great wings and bowing away from her. In the forest of the Consensus, Milena looked up. She saw Dante and Beatrice come out of Leake Street and walk towards the river. The chorus sang of the seven ladies stopping in cool shade. Dante and Beatrice walked into the shadow of the Shell.

  The leaves of the Consensus applauded. Milena heard shouts from below, and the helicopter descended into a forest of hands beneath the forest.

  More Garda dancing, flicking up bolts, sliding her from the helicopter. All around them, Singers were singing, Bees were chanting. 'Give us the disease, Milena. Milena, the disease!' Someone was licking her hand, to become ill. The stretcher was turned around and Milena saw people in the windows of Marsham Street. There were people on the steps and under the fleshy trees. The people roared. Flowers were cast over her. They fell like rain, human flowers, real flowers.

  What a fuss, she thought, what a fuss to make over a second-rate director. But she knew it was the conjunction of the cancer and the Comedy, both together.

  Overhead Dante walked the banks of the River Thames. By Hungerford Footbridge he climbed down steps, wading into the water. The River Thames flowed like history. The Thames was now the River Eunoe, that restores the memory of the good a soul has done in life, its labours of love.

  Below, in Marsham Street, the Singers began to sing one of Rolfa's songs. The Bees joined in, unable to resist. They all began to sing in Dog Latin, as the lips of the Consensus parted, and its mouth opened amid its own forest.

  Modicum, et non videbitis me;

  Et iterum

  sorelle mi dilette

  modicum et vos videbitis me.

  A little while and ye shall not see me,

  And again a little while and you shall see me.

  Oh no, you won't, thought Milena. Then over all the other voices, she heard one other voice begin to sing.

  Just a dog of a song

  Just a dog of a song

  Ambling gently along

  With no bad feelings no ill will

  The voice was weak and distant. Who is singing? thought Milena. She was too weak to turn her head to see. Then she realised: she was the one who was singing. She was singing something from the old London that was gone, nothing to do with the chants and the sound of the grand opera overhead. She was singing for the Spread-Eagle and the street markets and the men unloading beer barrels and the starlings who lived in the trees and the crumbling buildings and the fringed and heavy feet of the carthorses and for the children who peddled coffee: for the children, for Berry, and for the very old people they would now turn into.

  And it doesn't know how to end

  And it's so hard when you a lose a friend.

  Just a dog of a song

  But

  Milena felt the bier wobble as she was carried onto the tongue of the Consensus. She looked up through the fleshy trees and the tangle of leaves to the sky, where the light played. All the world seemed to be submerged in water, clear and full of bubbles that looked like pearls. The water of Eunoe, memory. Rolfa's music gathered for a final blow. This is the last I'll see of the Comedy, thought Milena. Yet it was not the Comedy, or her great position or the Zoo or this circus that Milena would miss.

  We all sing along

  But

  We all sing along

  The living tongue of the Consensus cradled them, and bore them all down into itself, and the sound and the light were lost.

  But the silence remained.

  chapter twenty

  WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

  (AN ORCHESTRA OF GHOSTS)

  Inside the white brick corridors all the children had gone. The Reading Rooms were empty; no children sang; there was no sound of guitars or bells. There was only the muffled sound of the Comedy above and the harsh glow of the bare electric light.

  Milena was lowered to the floor. She could smell dust. Mike was lowered next to her, on his sling chair. There were flowers in his lap, flowers that had been thrown over him. As he leaned forward over Milena's bier the flowers spilled onto the floor.

  'You all right?' he asked gently.

  'I'm fine,' she answered.

  I am in no pain. Everything swirls, everything dances, and still I cannot believe. I still cannot believe that this is happening, that I am dying.

  'They're going to make you part of the Upper House,' Mike told her quietly. 'Do you know what that means?'

  Milena knew what it meant and she did not want it so she shook her head. Mike thought she meant she had not understood.

  'It means they keep the pattern,' he said. 'The pattern they Read. They save it to consult it. It means even after you the, you are still part of the Consensus.'

  'It means,' croaked Milena, and began to laugh, 'they need me for som
ething.' The laugh was a shrivelling inwards from the chest, as if in a coughing fit. 'I wonder what happens to the Lower House?' It was rhetorical question — Milena knew the answer. Mike Stone shrugged, to indicate he had no idea. 'They get wiped,' Milena told him. 'Wiped clean away.'

  The rustle of the white dress, the buttocks. Milena smiled and shook her head. Here was Root.

  'Any experiences with the paranormal, Mr Stone?' Root murmured the question, not wanting to disturb Milena.

  Only my entire life, thought Milena. Only a performance on a cube that should not have been there from a woman who cannot die. Only a plate of lamb that should not have been there. Only London. Only an enemy who shivered and danced inside my eyes. Only Angels and Cherubim who talked to me through the wires, the wires of gravity.

  'Now it will just be a few seconds longer and we'll be ready.' said Root, folded into herself by sadness. But Root could not stay closed up for long, and suddenly her face blossomed out into its great grin. 'How are you my love?' Root asked, picking up Milena's hand. 'How are you my darling?'

  The great grin was enough to make Milena smile back. 'Not too well,' she said.

  'You been here before so you know what happens next, don't you?' said Root.

  'Yes,' lied Milena.

  'You'll see everything, all at once, your whole life.'

  Like drowning men do. 'No time like the present,' said Milena. There was no time left but the present.

  'I got things wrong didn't I?' said Root. There had been no cure.

  'Yup,' said Milena. No denying it.

  'But you'll live forever, here,' said Root, and held up her hands, to indicate the Consensus, all about them.

  I'll never be free of the Consensus.

  'And here,' said Root, and touched her own heart.

  But not here, thought Milena, of the flesh in which she lay, on the brick floor. 'I want to be free,' whispered Milena.

  Root looked at her out of love and pity. Such a hope could only lead to pain and disappointment. 'Then maybe you will be,' she said, falsely, and touched Milena's hand. 'I'll be back.' She stood up, and rustled away.