by Geoff Ryman
Milena felt no rage against her oppressors. The Consensus was to do such great and extraordinary things. How could she argue against those? She was the one who had got things wrong. On balance, she still believed that the Consensus was good and just.
Tyranny is a form of perversion. We come to love it. Every government is a tyranny to a degree, and the more evil it is, the more it is loved. The difficulty lies in judging the degree of tyranny under which you live.
Milena had relied on her tyranny. She had believed one day that it would Read her and cure her of her anger and fear and longing. She had hoped that she would catch the virus from Rolfa. But although she now felt just the slightest bit feverish and queasy, she was not ill. She was resistant to the viruses. She was doomed to be herself.
In the morning, and again in the afternoon, Jacob the Postperson called. ‘There is a new play. They want you to act in it,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to say that you are ill?’
‘Yes, Jacob, tell them that,’ Milena said.
The long day passed. She didn’t eat. Milena sat all night on the bed, leaning against the wall, drifting in and out of sleep. The next morning, there was a shy, apologetic rapping on her door. Cilla called in with bread and cheese. Milena told her that she wasn’t hungry. People often were not hungry; Cilla assumed that she had been photosynthesising in the sun.
‘We’ve heard the news about Rolfa,’ Cilla said. ‘You must be very happy.’
‘Yes,’ said Milena. ‘Very happy.’
‘Listen,’ said Cilla, sitting next to her on the bed. ‘Everyone from Love’s Labour’s, we want to set up our own little company of players. Just to do new theatre, you know. Our way.’
Cilla paused and smiled. ‘We want you to help us run it.’
Milena stared back at her. ‘Why me?’ she asked.
‘Why? With what you managed to do with Rolfa? Magic! Complete!’ Cilla waited for a response. ‘Everyone thinks you’ve been gutter top,’ she said, sensing sadness, wanting to make Milena smile.
It was Vampire slang: gutter top. Grate. Great.
‘You’re all gutter top, too,’ murmured Milena.
‘So I can tell everyone you’ll do it?’
‘Yah,’ nodded Milena, looking down at her hands. ‘Yah.’
Cilla leaned forward, her face crossed with a perplexed scowl, knowing there had been a loss and not understanding what it could be. Had the old, withdrawn Milena returned? Cilla took the food away.
In the middle of the afternoon, without knocking, the Snide walked in. He wore his sinister hat at a rakish angle.
‘Lo, Heather, I’m back,’ he said.
His face fell.
‘Heather?’ he asked in horror.
Milena looked at him and shook her head. No. Not Heather. Heather is dead. There’s just me.
He sank down beside her on the bed. ‘She was a virus?’ He covered his eyes. Masked by his hand, sheltered by it, he found again his edged and bitter, nervous smile.
‘And you are Milena,’ he said. ‘That was good. Good trick. You must have laughed.’
‘I was too scared,’ said Milena.
‘I sensed something, you know. It’s just that viruses aren’t usually that complete.’
‘They aren’t usually Heather,’ replied Milena.
‘I’ve stopped being a Snide,’ he said, looking down at the counterpane, beginning to pick at it. The smile had turned inwards. ‘I was going to tell her that.’
I don’t have the time or the energy for this, thought Milena. You must know what was between me and Rolfa, you must know what you tried to do to us and yet you want my help. My help. You’re not just a fool, you’re a shit. You’re a fool because you are a shit.
‘That’s why I needed Heather,’ he said, completing the thought for her. ‘Did…when she was with you…did she ever respond to you? Did…did she ever talk to you?’
Wearily, Milena shook her head. No, she just read. All she did was read. It was all she could do. She needed me to do anything else.
He stood up and went to the door. He turned and looked at her, searching her face, searching her mind. I was Heather, thought Milena. For him, I had Heather’s mind and face.
‘I’m glad you’re unhappy,’ he said.
But I’ll get over it. You won’t.
Reluctantly, pity stirred. Pity, that was Heather’s enemy. Milena showed him Heather’s face, its great freckled length, the pebble spectacles. She thought you were a fool, but I think she could have loved you. She needed someone to manage.
He started to put on his sinister hat, then thought better of it. ‘There’s a bit more to me than that,’ he told her.
‘Then go and find it,’ replied Milena. Like a shadow, he turned and was gone.
She tried to sleep and couldn’t. She picked up one of Rolfa’s books, brown and battered, and it fell open on the last page.
…at the top of the Forest, a little boy and his bear will always be playing.
She would have immediately thrown down the book, except that under each word, or rather, each syllable, there was a tiny, pencilled note of music on a tiny, pencilled stave.
Quickly, she flipped through the other pages. It had all been set to music, the entire book, re-written to be sung.
She had left Rolfa reading all day.
Milena picked up the next book in the stack. It was huge, bound in dirty grey cloth, anonymous and slumped sideways on its over-used binding. The first page was an engraving of Dante. Divina Commedia said words printed in red. Underneath, in pencil, Rolfa had written, ‘FOR AN AUDIENCE OF VIRUSES.’
All three books of the Comedy—Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso—had been bound together in one volume. Underneath all the words, all the way through, there were musical notes. The handwriting was small and neat and crabbed, as if trying to hide. Some of it was in pencil, some of it was in red ink. Some of it was written on pieces of paper stitched into the book with white thread. Some of it was written in gold. There was one note for each word, but in places there were messages: ‘trumpets here’ or ‘Virgil descant.’ Milena turned back to the first page.
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita…
Midway in the journey of our life
I found myself in a dark wood
For the straight way was lost
Then Dante meets the beast. The words were set to the music that Rolfa had sung in the dark the first night Milena had heard her, hidden in the Graveyard.
‘Rolfa!’ said Milena, and shook the book. To do this and keep it hidden! While Jacob and I copied out the rags of what we had heard. You didn’t say anything, I didn’t say anything. Did we ever tell each other a word of truth?
Milena read The Divine Comedy buoyed up by music. Her viruses translated the notes into imagined sounds. Her viruses sang.
Milena began to imagine it, a great abstract opera that would last for weeks if it were ever performed. She saw it staged in the sky, amid stars, with bars of colour and symbolic angels, beasts with human faces, a hell in honeycombs, tunnels of light opening into the heavens.
Suddenly Cilla stepped forward in the robes of Virgil. The part was written for a soprano, to contrast with Dante. For no reason, Lucy, old Lucy of the Palace of Amusement, was Beatrice. She wore the crown of heaven askew, and gave a sideways wink. A comedy after all. Milena closed her eyes and smiled. All right, Rolfa, all right. It is funny. The whole thing is funny—my not speaking, your not speaking, it’s funny. We could have sat down together, and planned what we were going to do with this. You could have orchestrated it, if you’d wanted to. I could have taken it complete and shown it complete and told them, take it or leave it, only leave her alone. Now I’ll have to put it on. I’ll have to get it performed. Thanks a lot. Milena looked at the size of the book, her finger wedged between the pages to keep her place. I’ll have to get this sung, somehow. Not all at one sitting, you understand my love, or the audience would die of starvation or old age. But over several months. But on what kind of
stage? What kind of stage could hold this? You knew, damn it, Rolfa, you knew I’d have to do something about this!
Milena went on reading and seeing and hearing while her viruses made a tally. Sometimes she had to go back and re-read for them. This was unfamiliar music. The viruses followed the structure. Milena saw the themes dart and dive and interweave like swallows, fly off and come back, in and out of the silence.
You’ve done it. You’ve done it, Rolfa. It’s better than your bloody Wagner. It’s better put together, the songs are better and it’s even longer. This is Mozart, Rolfa, this is Bach. How could you do it? How could you do it to me? Milena began to feel the terrible weight that genius, like death, leaves behind for other people.
And you won’t be here, Rolfa. You won’t be able to hear it. You’ll be someone else. You’ll be like a ghost, Rolfa. I’ll see you walking through the Zoo, but you’ll be dead, undead. I’ll hear you sing, but it won’t really be you. All of this may have been a comedy, Rolfa, but it hurts, it hurts like slapstick full in the face. So it wasn’t a high comedy, my love. I would call it low.
It was sunset and there was a knock on the door. It was Jacob the Postperson, and he came in singing.
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear Milena…
She had forgotten.
‘Happy birthday, Milena,’ Jacob said smiling shyly. ‘I bought you an ice cream.’
The ice cream was on a bamboo stick.
Milena gave a pale, grateful chuckle and reached out for it. Jacob jumped forward to pass it to her. ‘It is very good, Milena. It is very good that you eat. You have not eaten.’
The vanilla was meltingly delicious. Did Milena remember the taste of it from childhood? ‘I’m seventeen years old,’ she said. ‘An old lady.’
Milena felt weak to the point of nausea. Her Rhodopsin skin was itching for sunlight. As she ate, Milena realised something.
‘You take care of us, Jacob.’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘I carry your messages. I also know when you are ill or unhappy. I am the one who finds you when you die. That is my job.’
‘And you know all of us.’
He smiled. ‘When I dream,’ he said, ‘I dream all your messages, all scrambled up. But now, because of you and Rolfa, when I dream, I also hear the music.’
Hunger pangs returned. ‘I need to get some sun,’ said Milena.
So Milena and Jacob walked down the steps of the Shell together. He had to boost her up, help her as if she were old. Her knees felt shivery and weak. This is silly, to do this to yourself, she thought. He took her outside onto the walkways facing the Thames. It was cool, with a strong breeze from the river. Milena’s face was turned towards the wind and towards the last of the sunset sky.
‘I must run my messages,’ said Jacob. Their handclasp became more firm for a moment, and then he left. She watched him as he walked back into the Shell, and the sunset was reflected like fire on the rows of windows. That is how it is for him, she thought. Each room is alive with light. Each room has one of us in it.
Milena went for a short and gentle walk and found herself standing on Hungerford Footbridge, where she had once stood before, and she was shaking, as if the bridge, the river, the city and the sky were all shaking with her. Seagulls were festooned about her, calling, not needing to move their wings in the wind, dropping parcels of waste into the river.
Life was a disease, thriving, and it was given breath by love. That was what it seemed to Milena. Water, clouds, wind, they came at her in a rush. What am I feeling? she thought. It was as if something had pulled her up with it, snatched her up, made her its own.
She looked at the Thames, with its heavy-bodied barges and their thick, waxy sails hanging in crisp folds as if carved out of wood; and at the rowing boats painted in bright colours; and at the brown autumn leaves being gathered up for storage by organised parties from the Child Gardens; and the press of bicycles and horses on the South Bank; and the sun panels on the roofs of the ancient white buildings. Further around the sweep of the river just behind St Paul’s were the Coral Reefs, the new houses looking like giant cauliflowers. They sparkled in the last of the light, as if it had snowed.
How much work had made it? How many billions of hours, to build the roads, the carts, the boats, the embankments? How many billions more to learn how to do it, and to store the information? To write the songs in people’s heads, to tame the horses, to grow the food? Her viral clock began to count.
On the opposite bank, a great green drum was being hauled by dray horses.
It was laying cable. The power would soon be on again. There would be metal, sent back along the Slide. The world was going to be rich again, and hung with light. There would be stages big enough for Paradiso. There would be no need for mines in the Antarctic.
Four billion hours and counting.
And all of this will go, sometime. Here it was, in front of her, history, if only for someone else.
Everything goes, everything is lost, eventually. But if something is good, it doesn’t matter what happens. The ending is still happy.
We might have lived in the Antarctic, my love. We would have visited your mother, and you would still have sung, if only to sled dogs. We might have run away to Scotland and been sheep farmers in smelly old jumpers. Or we could have stayed as we were until we hated each other.
Or there could have been this. You will be great, and I will stand in the wings and hear your music, and the applause will rise up.
Endings don’t mean anything. Meanings lie where the world takes its breath, and that is always now. And suddenly, over Waterloo Bridge, the black balloon rose up again, in sunlight this time. Light was reflected from its full black cheeks. It was blowing itself backwards, as it rose into the sky. It blew itself, and was blown. It had been made by others, but it was also entirely itself. That’s me, thought Milena. From the gondola that hung underneath it, people waved. There were coloured streamers. Was there a wedding? Milena waved back, and saw herself, as if she were the balloon. She was tiny, standing on the bridge, but the gesture, the wave of greeting, was clear.
Ten billion and counting.
There was a lot to do. Seventeen years old, Milena thought. She only had another seventeen, maybe eighteen years left to live. Time to get busy. She began to walk, as if counting her steps as well. Time was the problem. She thought she could control it. Instead, time swept her up, blew her on her way, through her life, without Rolfa for all her life. But whatever work she did could not be negated, not even by the death of the sun. That would only be an ending.
Twelve billion and counting.
Milena walked backwards to keep her face toward the sunlight, unaware that she was humming to herself.
Just a Dog of a Song. But…
Jump.
Somewhere else, the voices of the Consensus were falling like rain, calling
Rolfa
Rolfa
Rolfa
Rolfa
Rolfa.
They were the voices of children, wounded and anxious and eager for love. And they said:
It wants to hear your music. The Crown of the World wants you to sing.
And a pattern gathered itself into thought, and seemed to say, in mild surprise, Oh, really? Very well then. It was a pattern that was used to singing in the dark and imagining music out of silence.
There was a blast of imagined light.
It was engulfing, blinding, and the voices scattered like cherubim. With the light, there was the striking of a great chord, made of many voices and instruments, a sound like the beginning of the world, or the end. The sound was sustained. Very faintly at first, like a ringing in the ear, came a voice.
In the end is my beginning.
A hidden thought followed the words like a dart: and this the end of the Comedy, and the music at the end is the same as at the beginning.
The one who had come awake could orchestrate thought and
sensation. The blinding light seemed to fade; eyes were adjusting to it. There were clouds, mountainous, rumpled, going off into many layers of distance, with shafts of light and lakes of shadow and cloud-valleys full of icy mist. There was an infinity of light and air, a world without end.
The audience felt wind in its face and a throbbing of blood in its temples and cold air being pulled into its lungs—it felt nostalgia for flesh. And out of the mists, Angels came streaming in black, their round and innocent faces painted white. Their robes and lips and eyesockets were black.
The Angels were the Vampires. They had been a chorus all along. There was T. S. Eliot, his face painted green to make him look ill. There was Madame Curie, glowing with her discovery. T. E. Lawrence had the marks of the lash, and the Brontës coughed, their arms about each other. The Vampires of History held each other back. They bore each other up. The signs of health were indistinguishable from the signs of disease.
The song they sung was this:
All’alta fantasia qui mano possa…
Here high fantasy failed
Yet, like a smoothly spinning wheel
Desire and my will were turned as one by Love.
Then everything dropped out. The audience fell into the night, into a sky dark and blue and full of stars. The darkness, the sky, had been below the light.
The Love that moves the sun and all the other stars.
Drums beat. The imagined music drew to a firm and conclusive end. The thought came that this was a prediction: we will all live in the spirit. Rolfa was free.
Then, silence.
Book Two
FOR MILENA
WHO MAKES THE FLOWERS
or
A Change of Climate
To run on better water now, the boat of my invention
Shakes its sails and leaves away to stern
