Child Garden

by Geoff Ryman

  And time stood still. The moving hub of the world turned around a point that was still and Milena stood in it, Milena at the beginning and Milena at the end.

  The adult knelt underneath the branches of the trees that had paused for breath, in the sunlight that was not moving, in one instant that was fully apprehended.

  'Do you have time?' the adult asked the child. She wanted to talk to the child, to warn her.

  The child did not understand English. That's right, of course! thought the adult, and put a hand to her face. She tried to remember the words in Czech. She wanted to warn her, protect her. Warn her against what? Life? Death? Leaving home? The child scowled, perplexed.

  'Be happy,' croaked the adult, whose world it no longer was. She reached for a foreign language and came up with the wrong one. 'Soyez content.'

  The child tugged at her father's hand and time began again.

  Stay here! thought Milena the adult. Don't hurry to be away. Your father will the, your mother will the, you will lose this whole world! You will lose your self!

  Milena remembered seeing an old, desperate, sad face yearning to deliver a message that perhaps no child should understand.

  Loving One turned away. She tugged her father's hand for a swing up the hill. He laughed, and made her fly up from the ground. She squealed, tickled both by joy and fear, and was lowered down to her feet. She walked on, up the wooded hill, through patches of shade and sun.

  But not lost, not lost in the middle of her life, thought Milena. This is at the beginning, when the wood is full of light, and the way is straight.

  The child turned and looked back at her. And the face showed that the child understood more than she could put into words.

  Ghost, the face said, go home. Ghost, you are nothing to do with me, now. Ghost do you think that just because you are at the end, that you mean more than I do?

  At the still hub of the turning world, Milena saw all of her past. She remembered the Child Garden on the day she met Rose Ella. She remembered the flowers that poured out of her on the day she stood in Thrawn's room and reformed light. She saw the Earth below through the windows of the Bulge; she saw Archbishop's Park; she saw the reeds and slow waters of the Slump. She remembered the fire as it danced up Thrawn McCartney's arm. Did any of it really weigh more than this, here, the child walking between her father and mother, up a hill, through a wood in another land?

  And Milena awoke again on the soft, warm floor of the Reading Room.

  'Not again,' said Root. 'I told you! I said don't fight.'

  'Always fighting,' murmured Milena.

  'They don't have what they want.'

  They want Rolfa.

  'The pattern isn't complete!'

  Mike Stone came crawling. 'It's got to stop now, anyway,' he said. 'My wife is ill.'

  We get old and lose our selves, thought Milena. Why did I bring the cancer back? So that people would get old? She thought of Hortensia whose calcium-leached bones kept breaking. She thought of the child running through the garden of the great house and of the faces of her childhood friends. They would be her age by now, in their early twenties, in Czechoslovakia. But they would not be dying.

  Why did I do it at all?

  Root strode quickly to Mike Stone. 'Mike, love, let me explain,' she said and helped him back into his chair. Milena heard some of what she said. Something about medicine helping. Something about it all being over in an instant.

  The Doctor came. The Doctor was in Whites and carried an applicator. Milena thought of the round, fat, flushed face of the child she had once been before the virus touched her. She thought of the feeling lips of the horse in the garden and the fun of cutting chives.

  Milena understood why she had brought the cancer back.

  'People are going to get old now aren't they?' Milena asked him. 'They're going to live a long time because of the cancer?'

  'Yes indeed,' said the Doctor. There was a hiss from the applicator. Another cure to make her ill.

  'So if people can get old again, will you let them stay children?'

  Milena Shibush had brought back cancer so that children might be left alone a little while longer to play in the garden, amid the trees, with the light. Who would have thought that Milena Shibush would the out of love for children?

  'Oh,' said the Doctor, his smile still professional and distracted. 'We've cured people of childhood. Children knew nothing: they needed to be taken care of; they were naturally cruel. Childhood was a disease.' He stood up, looking pleased, and shook his head. 'We're not going to bring childhood back.'

  I've lost, thought Milena. She had not even known there had been a battle. Her life had been spent trying to bring back what she had known in childhood.

  Milena had thought her life had begun with Rolfa. She thought that she had bloomed when she found Rolfa, and that her life had gone on blossoming even after Rolfa had left. Instead, her life had been finished, in the sense of being accomplished. Its end had been achieved. In Rolfa, with Rolfa, she had found love. And love was the image of everything that had been lost: her home country, her home tongue, the landscape of childhood, her way of seeing it, her father, her mother, her name, the place where she would have been happy. She had lost her self.

  And Rolfa, even she was lost. Rolfa, they even have you. They have your voice, they have your mind, they can make you speak when they want you to. I gave you to them. So why am I holding back my memories of you? Let them have those.

  I am going to have to find another way to fight.

  Milena relinquished her claim. She remembered Rolfa for the Consensus.

  Milena remembered being lost in the dark in the Graveyard. Loose threads of old dead costumes strayed across her face and blistered sequins were rough under her fingers.

  There was music playing, insanely loud. The music was Das Lied von der Erde. The words told a kind of ghost story.

  Milena was sucking her finger, sick at heart with fear, fear of being ill again, of losing more of herself. She was lost in the dark, more frightened than she need be, because it reminded her of all the other ways in which she was lost. It reminded her that no one would notice she was gone. And the voice, high and sweet and sad, was a woman's voice, reminding her that she needed love.

  So the dark around her was haunted. Don't be silly, she told herself, what do you think it is, an orchestra of ghosts? She scraped her head on brick, looked through an arch and saw a light on the wall. She saw there was no room for an orchestra. It was obvious what was playing; if she could have thought clearly she would have known that it was a recording. But she was too frightened of life and of herself to think clearly. Milena remembering felt pity for Milena the actress. The actress knelt and pulled back a curtain of old clothes.

  Trouble, thought Milena the actress. Trouble, thought the Milena who remembered. Trouble, seeing the mound of papers, the mess, the shrieking music, and the slumped, dazed brute of a Polar Bear. There was disorder there.

  Ewig blauen licht die Fernen

  Everywhere and eternally, the distance shines bright and blue.

  In the music, someone who might already be dead was departing with regret and sadness. The dead are more afraid than the living, and in some ways they are more alive.

  Ewig... ewig...

  Ever... Ever...

  The GE stirred herself with a kind of convulsion as if she had almost settled into death herself, following the music there. She knocked over paper and plastic cases, as if she were blind. Sadness hung from her face like lead weights, pulling down the flesh under her eyes and around her jaws. The music had been calling for someone. The paper slid away to reveal a box, a small, crude soundbox, made of metal as thin as paper. No wonder the music had hurt when the volume was full up.

  To the poor starveling of the Consensus the soundbox was a wonder, and it drew her out of her hiding, out of her fear, as did the soul-sadness on the GE's face.

  'Where did you get that?' Milena the actress asked in wonder, though she
could hear music any time she liked. Her viruses would sing it for her, out of memory. It was the metal that drew her, the cost of the thing. It was private metal, something owned and therefore more precious, if only to someone else.

  'China, I believe,' said Rolfa, and Milena could hear the youth in her voice. Youth was plump and fruity, not yet worn by doubt. It still had hope. 'You wouldn't happen to have any alcoholic beverages about your person, would you?'

  Milena remembering saw that Rolfa was trying to be raffish. She was already trying to charm. She liked me as soon as she saw me, realised the Milena who remembered. She was signalling in a thousand ways.

  'No. I don't like poisoning myself,' said the actress, narrow, bitter, expecting defeat.

  'Tuh.' Rolfa turned away. She was slightly slimmer then, without the pouches of fat on the small of her back. There was something musical in the way she moved. The clumsiness was stricken with feeling. Feeling grew out of her like fur: she bristled with it. Bleary with love and music, she began in a rather rational way to dispose of the mess on her desk.

  Milena the actress had felt the first tug, the first little spindle thread of love, but she did not know it. 'Effendim?' she said, pained at being ignored. 'I've come to change these boots.'

  Already, unknown to either of them, they were together. Their animal selves had recognised it. Their whole lives were there to be read in the way they each smiled and moved. They had already Read each other, but their conscious selves had yet to catch up.

  'You,' said Rolfa, turning, 'are a ponce.' It was said with a kind of honest affection. It was true, and Milena the actress needed to know that other people could see the things she tried to hide.

  Milena the actress went cold and shy. She had been seen through again. Her masks were paper-thin. The moment for a reply passed and Rolfa turned away. The actress kept seeing Rolfa through a series of paper masks. Polar woman, rough and tumble. The Bear who Loves Opera, a famous Zoo character. Her conscious self was not seeing Rolfa at all.

  'Bastard.' the GE murmured to herself.

  'Are you talking to me?' demanded the actress. You know she's not, Milena! Why are you looking for injustice?

  'No,' said Rolfa, turning to smile, holding up a bottle. 'I was talking to this empty whisky bottle.' She's saying she sees through you, but likes what's on the other side. And she wants, she yearns, for you to like her.

  Made bold by the force of attraction, Rolfa threw the whisky bottle away and listened to the breakage, as if extraordinary acts and sudden sounds could speak when people could not.

  If it was me, now, Rolfa, I'd laugh and ask your name. I'd sit beside you and let you know that I already thought you were wonderful, that I didn't mind the fur or the teeth or the rotting shoes. We'd sit and talk for hours about music, and I'd say, let's go out for a drink if you like whisky so much. We'd be friends from the start. And the reason why I could do that now, Rolfa, the reason why I'm different, is you.

  I don't want to remember any more, I don't want to see the waste and the pain and the waiting. I just want to hold you. I just want to stroke the fur on your arm, and try to save you from what's coming. And this time I'd do it, this time, I would know how: I wouldn't let anything go to waste. I'd say, wait until the metal comes and your Family has to make friends with the Consensus. I'd say, be with me from time to time, but don't run away until you've shown them, your father and your sisters, that the music works. And I'd never let you be Read.

  Rolfa held up a bottle. 'God,' she said, 'is a distiller.' She grinned, and Milena the actress saw the horrible teeth and the dandruff and finally relaxed enough to realise that she liked her, liked this strange creature.

  'Do you live here?' Milena the actress asked, and stepped forward a bit. Amusement suddenly bubbled up through her, and childish wonder, and something sweet that was kept hidden and protected.

  Maybe not, maybe I wouldn't change anything, thought Milena remembering. She ached with love for both of them. Maybe this is the best way for this to happen, as tentative as a spider's web. Not bold and knowing and businesslike.

  A look came over Rolfa's face, a look Milena remembering now recognised, a look of great tenderness, of simple kindness, of wishing the world were different for them both. Her hair in her eyes made her blink. 'It would be better if I did,' she said, ruefully, amused. 'This is where I hide, instead. Since you don't like poisoning yourself, perhaps you'd like to look at this.' She held out the musical scores.

  I'd forgotten that, thought the one who remembered. Already the music was being passed between us. The music would unite us and part us and fix us together for all of our lives. The paper was smooth like skin, and still warm from Rolfa's grasp.

  'I take it the reading of music presents you with no difficulties,' said Rolfa, meaning that most other things did. It was plain now that Rolfa was the older of the two, plain that she was controlling. I always thought you were a shuffling innocent, thought the Milena who remembered. But you knew so much, Rolfa. You were a genius after all.

  Genius is in the shapes your hands make as they move, in every reaching or withholding gesture. You know what you are, and you know that ego is the enemy of what you are, so you defend yourself against it, against pride and ambition, and you are very gently guiding me, and you so very gently want me. You knew who I was, Rolfa, and you knew that you could make my body bloom, and my soul. I still want you, Rolfa. I want your hand on me, on the flower between my legs. Desire is like a blister that needs to be burst. And cunning, you were cunning to sing, knowing that it was the music that would hold me, hold us both. You sang, to show me what you already knew. That music in you had found its elect.

  So the ghost began to sing again, out of the past.

  Ewig... ewig... ewig...

  Promises of forever, with silence in between them.

  Suddenly Jacob's face was smiling at her, eyes weary. 'I have a message for you, Milena.'

  I am Constable Dull, an't shall please you. No, no, no, no, howled the director.

  'From Ms Patel,' said Jacob.

  'Want some mitts?' asked Zoe, not at all unkindly, in the dining-room of the Family. Zoe passed Milena the fingerless indigent gloves of kindness. No, not mitts. Palcaky.

  Milena and Rolfa ate again in the riverside park. They walked together to the Buddhist shrine and watched the acrobats. They rode on the back of a dustcart from the night market, listening to the sound of the horses' hooves.

  'But now,' said Jacob, 'because of you and Rolfa, when I dream, I also hear the music'

  And Jacob and Milena walked together again out into the sun, regretting Rolfa. The whole river regretted Rolfa, now, and the sky, and the birds. Jacob gave Milena's hand one last squeeze. This time the crucifix was passed between them. 'I must run my messages, now,' he said, and turned away, and Milena saw again the sun reflected in the windows, the fire in each of the rooms. Jacob walked into the fire and was consumed. He made the light burn brighter.

  'Fire!' Cilia was shouting. 'Fire!' A bell was ringing and Milena was outside in the cold again, in the dark.

  Each room has one of us in it.

  Cilia opened the box and inside was paper, being passed again, like human skin.

  'Oh Cill,' asked Milena, 'who did this?'

  'Just us Vampires,' said Cilia. 'Just us Vampires of History.' Her face in the moonlight, in the past, was blue.

  A trumpet blast sounded. The fire was over. A trumpet blast sounded. The Comedy started again, and the sky was full of fire: it was the Inferno. The souls roiled within it. The souls had been imagined like dandelion fluff, rolling on invisible wires, toiling through the fire, caught in their own sins and imbalances forever, in a universe made of thought. What made the fire, then?

  'You like dogs?' a man in a body warmer asked. He was on fire too, a fever. Rolfa turned in rage, drunken, demented with what had been denied to her. Rolfa lifted up a table.

  It wasn't the sweaty man she was going to hit with it, realised Milena.

&n
bsp; She was going to hit me.

  And it seemed to the Milena who remembered that she could see across the river to a park and a little boy in a cowboy hat ran round and round it, singing, 'Pi-per! Pi-per!'

  And the dog cried out, 'Don't go! Don't go!'

  I have to. A little while, you shall not see me.

  All the Earth seemed to fall away. Milena saw the fields and the village of England in neat patterns, the grain, the pinioned pear trees, and the beehive houses. She wafted up through cloud, into mist, and up into Antarctica, and there, in the light of heaven, in the icy chill, there was life. There, the spiders danced, between crystals of ice. I know where I am, thought Milena, remembering.

  Then the window of the Bulge blinked, and suddenly, strung between the clouds were Bees. They had grown great purple wings, veined like leaves, and they hung like bats. There were veins in the sky, clear tubes, full of sluggishly pumping fluids. There were bobbing plants rising up in seaweed tangles, attached to pumpkins full of gas. There were great swirls of Bees, throwing themselves between the plants, rising up on spirals of air like Dore's Angels, living on light and moisture. They attached themselves to the veins that bridged the clouds.

  When was this? Then Milena remembering remembered.

  Rolfa threw her head back and howled with joy.

  It doesn't just go back. It goes forward as well, Rolfa said in wonder.

  This is the future, thought Milena. I am seeing the future.

  Past and future swirled together, in a vision. Milena was swept higher. The sky overhead went dark and the sea far below was like burnished brass. The Earth and the clouds exchanged light. All of it, the Earth, the clouds, the light, the many Milenas, the future and the past, the net of Bees, the net of nerves, all held in a system of reciprocity.