The Child Garden

by Geoff Ryman

  The walls were slightly phosphorescent, and they seemed to pull back as they entered.

  ‘Hello, Baby,’ said Root. ‘Time to go for a walk.’

  She’s Terminal, realised Milena. She talks to the Consensus, with her mind. It can talk to her. She can see for it, hear for it. This is the Consensus, here.

  ‘What’s it like?’ asked Milena, all in one breath.

  ‘Big,’ said Root the Terminal, warmly. ‘And alive. Come on, now Rolfa love, you sit over there, on the floor, anywhere will do.’

  This is what holds me, Milena thought. This is what rules. This is Charlie. This is the Slider, maker of Angels. The beating heart of her culture, and she had never seen it. Machines had imitated life, and now life had returned the compliment. Patterns were repeated. A computer made of flesh, growing new capacity when it needed it, sending mycelia through the earth, sprouting elsewhere like mushrooms, fed by purple gardens.

  Milena remembered again.

  She had never seen a film, but other people had with viruses in their heads, and she had their memories. They were the memories the Party wished her to have. She remembered a film now, of Chao Li Song.

  Milena saw a wry, smiling face, an old gentleman full of good news he could not contain. ‘We will have to accept that we have been superseded,’ he said in a voice like a rusty hinge. ‘We are like parents who have produced a giant baby. It deals in things we cannot conceive of.’

  Thought was chemistry moving into electricity, and electricity was unified with the other forces. In the fifth dimension, the master of the eleven dimensions, gravity and electromagnetic phenomena were the same thing. The Consensus could think in gravity. It could imprint personalities in gravity. Angels, they were called. The Angels could slide through gravity. They could slide across space at the speed of light. As predicted, they travelled backwards in time. They travelled backwards in time to other stars.

  The highways of gravity were called by the English the Charlie Slide.

  ‘How will it help?’ asked Chao Li Song, ‘to send thought to the stars, long ago? The answer is that it will mine for wealth. Thought and gravity are one. Gravity pulled the universe into existence, by inflation. It pulled against nothingness, and as it pulled energy was released. There was a flash of heat.’ Chao Li Song smiled, in the past, as if he had travelled at the speed of light. ‘The Angels will unleash blasts of heat. They will smelt the rocks of other worlds. They will lift them, like toffee, and hurl them towards us, out of the past. They will guide them to us, through the long light years back, very slowly.’ He paused to smile privately. ‘We know they will do this, because it has already happened in the past. The blocks of metal. We have seen them coming towards us. We have heard the Angels, in the lines of gravity.’

  The universe had been made by inflation, gravity pulling energy out of nothing. The Consensus was mining the vacuum as well. It was plucking it gently, to release floods of heat. The Consensus would soon be making energy by making tiny, pocket universes.

  ‘You comfy, love?’ Root asked, giving Rolfa a drink of water.

  Chao Li Song had other things in store to say. ‘For so long now, we have known the universe was not material. Everything calls up its opposites and achieves a new synthesis. Hegel told us, Marx told us. The time has come now. We had Dialectical Materialism. Now we must have Dialectical Immaterialism. Idea precedes reality.’

  He had to flee for his life. The viruses did not tell Milena this. Her mother had, in the name of her father who had died. Because of Chao Li Song, socialism forged an alliance with resurgent religion. Because of him, socialism won. It required only a few compromises, with prudery and common sense. Milena lived in a theological state.

  Charlie, the English called him. Charlie Song.

  ‘Sing a song of Charlie, take you for a ride,’ Root the Terminal was singing, wobbling backwards like a jelly towards Milena. ‘Sing a song of Charlie, down the Charlie Slide.’

  We rose out of Africa, thought Milena. We rose out of a drought and survived, not with a bigger jaw, but with a smaller jaw because we had the beginnings of speech. We survived because we worked together. We are designed to survive changes in climate by working in concert. Like music.

  Root gripped her hand and shook it. ‘You stay here with me, love, or we get two readings all mixed up, and that’s very weird. You never seen this. You never seen this, you in for a real treat, I can tell you that.’ She chuckled. She was like a balloon full of chuckles.

  We survive, thought Milena, because after everything else, we are good. We survive to the extent that we are good.

  The thing that was the room chuckled with them. It chuckled and space chuckled, the space containing Rolfa. There was a wave through it, and her.

  Rolfa’s head was flung back like a cannonball, and it split into a grin. ‘Yeee-haaa!’ she cried. She roared with laughter. ‘Whooo-eeee!’

  ‘That’s it, that’s it!’ shouted Root and she jumped up and down with her vast bulk. ‘Oh, yeah. Ride it love, ride it!’

  I had heard, thought Milena. I had heard it was wonderful, and I never believed.

  Every synapse is engaged at once, every neural pathway, every cell in the brain works together, all at once for the first and only time. Like a national grid, all lit up. Each person a nation, a universe.

  The Consensus pulled energy up out of nothing, from quantum vacuum, and it could roar back in time by travelling faster than light. It had been known for a century and a half that gravity in the form of inflation had helped spark the beginning. But how was there a viewpoint, a reference, for gravity to work in before space and time? The answer was that gravity had been imported back to the beginning, thought in the form of gravity.

  Humankind, working as the Consensus, was going to make the universe. So loved the world that we made God in our own image.

  ‘Oh!’ cried Rolfa, in fondness for everything. ‘Oh!’ and her voice broke into a whine of loss and regret and she looked at Milena, smiling and sad.

  ‘That’s it,’ said Root. ‘Darling, you just been Read.’ She walked to Rolfa, leaned over her, inspected her, stroked her head. ‘So what did you see, love?’ she asked, speaking gently.

  ‘All kinds of things,’ said Rolfa, faintly.

  Root laughed and nodded. ‘Yes, yes, everything comes back.’

  ‘I saw my mother,’ said Rolfa. ‘She was picking water lilies in a pond; she had her dress, her big orange dress lifted up out of the water, and she was laughing in case she fell.’ She sat up and took hold of Root’s arm. ‘The pond was behind an old white farmhouse. We were staying there. On Prince Edward Island. I was five years old. I got in a fight with my sister. She said she was going to grow bigger than me because she drank tea. And big people drink tea.’

  ‘I tell you, it’s the same for everyone. I see people, they leave here dancing.’

  ‘But it doesn’t just come back,’ said Rolfa. ‘It goes forward as well.’

  ‘Hmmm?’ said Root, turning, as if someone had spoken to her. Someone had. ‘Back to business,’ she murmured, and cupped a hand around an ear, and listened, rapt. Milena was given an uncomfortable chance to think.

  Root began to smile. ‘Well you’re quite a character, aren’t you? You’re all over the place. I’ve never seen anyone like you before.’ She chuckled and shook her head. ‘You like your drink, I can tell you that.’

  Milena felt a familiar chill. ‘Change as little as you can,’ she said, in a whisper.

  ‘We do, love. We don’t go mucking around.’

  ‘She’s a genius. That’s why this is being done.’

  ‘Is she now?’ Root was amused. ‘Well I wouldn’t be knowing about that.’ She bent down. ‘You feel up to moving now, Rolfa? We’ve got to make space now for someone else.’

  Gently, Rolfa nodded. Root helped her to her feet.

  ‘In and out like a giant lung,’ murmured Rolfa.

  Milena took the other arm. She felt Rolfa lean on her, exhausted. They walk
ed through the concertina, down a white corridor to a little room with old chairs. As she was leaving, Root gave Milena a wry grin, and waved her to follow into the corridor, to talk.

  ‘Your friend, you know, she shakes with both hands.’ Root’s eyebrows were raised, her cheeks were bursting with amusement, her tiny hand on its fat wrist was placed delicately over her breast.

  What was the woman talking about? Milena began to have an uncomfortable creeping feeling. ‘I think she’s left-handed, actually.’

  ‘Now don’t let on you don’t know!’ insisted Root. ‘We see it all here, nothing bothers us.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Your friend. She wants to botty-bump with other ladies.’ Root covered her face and hooted with laughter. ‘Oh, the shapes humankind gets in. We see them all! But a little rough justice and it all works out.’

  Milena went still and cold. ‘She likes other women.’

  ‘Oh, loves them, love. Loves you.’

  ‘Can we stop this?’ Milena asked. Her voice was a croak.

  Root shook her head sadly. ‘It’s the law,’ she said. Her vast buttocks made her white skirt rustle as she walked away.

  Milena turned and walked into the room. She saw Rolfa sitting, smiling, looking through the whole world to somewhere else.

  ‘Rolfa,’ Milena said. ‘I love you. I want to sleep with you—I mean—I want to have sex with you.’

  Rolfa began to grin. She covered her eyes. ‘This is a fine time to tell me.’

  ‘I tried before, but I couldn’t.’

  Rolfa began to laugh.

  ‘It’s not funny!’ Milena did an anguished little dance.

  ‘It’s ficken hilarious! It’s the funniest thing I ever heard.’ Rolfa took Milena’s hand, and shook her head. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was afraid. Why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘Because you’re a human being, and I thought you’d be cured! You told me. You said. I had all those viruses when I was ten years old!’

  Oh merciful heaven. Something so simple. Milena whispered. ‘But I was never Read. They gave me viruses to educate me. But I was never Read. I was never cured.’ And I never talked about not being Read, because I was afraid of being found out. I never said anything because I was afraid. But they knew all along.

  I had Rolfa. I had Rolfa all along. And now they’re going to destroy her.

  Rolfa was laughing. ‘All those nights! Should I touch her, shouldn’t I touch her, no I mustn’t, they cure these people.’ She looked down at Milena’s hand and played with its fingers. ‘Who needs viruses, when you’ve got fear?’ She looked up at Milena, still smiling. ‘We’ll have some time,’ she promised. ‘However long, we’ll have it.’

  Root rustled back into the room. Involuntarily, Milena jumped away. Rolfa pulled her back.

  ‘A little bit of honey,’ Root said, ‘and a touch of immune-suppression.’ She bounced her hips back and forth with the rhythm of the words. She was wearing pink gloves. ‘Now. Stick out your tongue at me. Going to give you Candy.’

  Run away, thought Milena. She contemplated violence, pushing the huge nurse over and running. But where? Where was the way out?

  Rolfa stuck her tongue out like a naughty girl. Root said, ‘That’s the spirit,’ and dabbed the tongue with a finger of the glove.

  ‘And that’s all there is to it. You’ll begin to feel ill in about three hours. Just relax, drink some fluids. No booze, now. Any complications, use your Postperson and let me know, and I’ll be straight around.’ She turned and her eyes flicked towards Milena. ‘This is a main virus,’ Root told her. ‘It’s contagious.’

  Milena looked back at her bleakly.

  ‘Rough justice,’ said Root the Terminal. ‘But less rough than it used to be, I tell you that.’

  Then she helped Rolfa to her feet and led her out of the room. Milena followed. There was nothing else she could do.

  chapter seven

  AN ULTIMATELY FATAL CONDITION (LOVE’S LABOURS)

  Outside, it was Indian Summer, almost warm with patchy sunlight and racing shadows of clouds. Fat pigeons limped across the stretch of green beside Lambeth Bridge. It was mid-afternoon and most people were working. A circle of teenage boys, their shirts open, sat on the lawn drinking and playing a desultory game of cards. On the bridge, a wagon had broken its axle and kegs of beer had split open on the slope of the bridge, sudsy and bitter-smelling. Children paddled in it, kicking at the seagulls that had gathered.

  ‘I didn’t know about your mother,’ said Milena as they walked.

  ‘She left us,’ said Rolfa. ‘She didn’t like Papa.’

  ‘Where did she go?’ Milena asked.

  Rolfa turned and gave her a very peculiar smile. ‘Antarctica,’ she said.

  They walked on in silence past what had once been the palace of an archbishop. They knew they were going to make love, and Milena knew that she was going to catch the virus. She wanted to catch the virus. She did not want to be left behind. It was not something she needed to think about. Sex complicates, but it is the power of love to simplify.

  They walked past the hospital that Florence Nightingale had founded, and past another small park, listening to seagull cries. They passed into the open enfolding stone arms of the Shell, its forecourt, and then up the stairs.

  Finally, in their small, cold, crowded room, they made love and it was both more ordinary and more strange than Milena had imagined, as ordinary and as strange as rainfall.

  Then the shivering began. Rolfa was cold. Milena piled on blankets. Rolfa complained how dry and sore her sinuses were. Milena kept a kettle boiling in the little room, to keep the air moist. The steam hung in the air like a fog.

  ‘It’s like a buzz,’ said Rolfa. ‘It goes all along your arm and right into your head.’ Milena got her cups of hot water. The steam seemed to help. Rolfa’s voice went smooth again, and she drank the water thirstily, gulping, and sat up on the bed. Milena lay beside her, put her head on her stomach. It gurgled, and they both laughed. Outside, it was growing dark. The city disappeared.

  ‘I’m going to sing,’ said Rolfa.

  Milena fumbled for the candle, fumbled under the bed for the paper and before she found it, the song began. Hold, hold it! she thought and began without the beginning.

  It was like the final chorus of Beethoven’s Ninth or the Hallelujah chorus, simple and powerful and happy. Rolfa smiled as she sang it. She was singing about her life seen whole. Somewhere, Milena was part of it.

  ‘Give it a rest!’ someone shouted from an upper floor.

  Rolfa’s smile was broader, and she raised her voice.

  ‘Qui—et!’ howled someone else.

  Milena slammed open her window. ‘Someone’s dying!’ she roared in fury. For her, it was true.

  When it ended, slowly, peacefully complete, Rolfa made a tracing in the air with her hand. She and Milena looked at each other in the unsteady light, in silence.

  Then, with a self-mocking smile, Rolfa made, perfectly, the sound of massed applause. To an actor, it is nothing less than the sound of justice being done.

  Milena pulled the counterpane up over her, and kissed her, and Rolfa slept, and during the night, the illness passed. In the morning, when Milena tried to kiss her, Rolfa turned her head. Milena passed her a cup of tea. ‘I drink this, I get bigger. Like a big person,’ said Rolfa. That afternoon she said, ‘I think I’m well enough to get out of bed.’ She threw back the counterpane. Her cheeks, her arms, her shoulders were covered in stubble. Slowly, still slightly dazed, she began to pack her few things—the huge cheap clothes, her apron, her frying fork.

  She stood by the door and said, feeble and embarrassed, ‘I’d better find somewhere else to live. They will find me somewhere else to live, won’t they?’

  Milena sat on the edge of her bed, looking away from her, and nodded. ‘Yes, they will,’ she said. ‘Come back for your books when you’ve got somewhere.’ There wa
s nothing else to be done. She heard the door close, a soft, considerate clicking.

  Milena stayed sitting on her bed. She didn’t move. She didn’t think she felt particularly sad. She simply didn’t move. For the last three months, Rolfa had been almost the only thing she had thought of, and without her Milena found she had nothing to do. She could think of nothing to do.

  She didn’t want to eat, she didn’t want to go outside. Go outside for what? To be an actress? She didn’t want to be an actress. Sunlight poured in through the windows, the room became hot, Milena was as silent as a ghost. This is what it was like when Rolfa was here and I was away, she thought.

  When she began to smell herself, she went to the showers and washed. She looked glumly at the trails of stubble around the drains where Rolfa had shaved. Stony-faced, she turned the jet of water on them and washed them down the drain with her foot.

  She came back and tried to sleep. There was a stirring in the bed. She sat up and saw that the pillow and the quilt were crawling with purple mites. Her immune system was looking for Rolfa. She saw her Mice, scuttling in a kind of frenzy of alarm over each other, over the rumples in the undersheet.

  It was what happened when people lost a part of themselves, an arm or leg. In a kind of panic their Mice would go hunting for what was missing. Where is Rolfa? Where is Rolfa? they seemed to be saying. In the end, exhausted, they would crawl back home.

  The mites were particularly thick around the back corner of the bed. Milena felt behind it, and found Piglet, jammed between the mattress and the wall. As if in relief, as if the doll were something alive, the Mice swarmed up and over it.

  Milena had always hated the doll. Now I’m stuck with the bloody thing, she thought, and threw it at the cooker. Piglet lay face down on the cold floor. Its eyes seemed to look at Milena. Its eyes seemed to say: don’t leave me here.

  Finally Milena picked it up. As if it were alive, she stroked its grubby felt ears. It had been almost the only thing Rolfa had brought with her from her old life and now it was left behind, deserted.

  Part of you didn’t want to go, Rolfa. That’s why you left so much of yourself behind, all the books, all the papers. She kept on stroking Piglet’s ears. She began to weep, and then stopped herself, angry with herself. Oh, you weep do you? Well you did it, she told herself. You made it happen.