The Child Garden

by Geoff Ryman

  ‘I need a Snide,’ Milena told her. ‘Can you find me one?’

  If you are sick in conditions of weightlessness, your vomit will keep travelling, spreading very slightly from air resistance until it hits something. It will then cling precariously, held in place only by friction. A cloth can not absorb the moisture or be used to wipe it up. A cloth will simply shunt it free again. Eventually, vomit will coat every surface in the vehicle as evenly as its rather coarse texture will permit.

  The main body of Milena’s vomit moved towards an air vent. Suddenly it ballooned backwards, as if it had grown a head and a mind of its own. It wobbled its way back towards Milena, looking rather like an octopus.

  Something caught Milena’s ankle. She kicked.

  ‘Don’t!’ said the voice. ‘Hold still!’

  ‘Aaaah!’ squawked Milena, about to be enfolded in her own half-digested breakfast. Milena felt herself hauled backwards. The vomit followed tamely, as if unaware that it was not wanted. It was about to give Milena an unwelcome kiss, when she had an inspired idea. She puckered her lips and blew. The octopus reared backwards, rippling. It reared up and over her. Milena arched her neck and ran out of air. She gasped for breath, and pulled the thing closer towards her.

  She kicked and wrenched out of its way. Out of the corner of her eye, Milena saw that a man was trying to hold her. The vomit loomed. She blew out and it burst scattering.

  From somewhere there came a sound like peeling fruit. ‘Oh darn,’ said the man, rather mildly. ‘Dislocated my shoulder.’

  Milena was released. She and the tiny babies of vomit spun away, perpetually falling.

  She spun and seemed to land in a park in winter. Hampstead Heath, she remembered. The expanse of hill sloping away beneath her was covered in snow. She could see her own footsteps. The branches of the trees were coated in ice, as if they had been dipped in glass.

  Milena was waiting for the apothecary to catch up with her. The woman climbed the hill, panting, pushing herself up, hands on her knees. Milena could hear the rather satisfying crunching noises the woman’s feet made in the snow.

  ‘There!’ the apothecary sighed as she reached Milena and the top of the hill. There was a wreathing of vapour from out of her mouth. ‘Whoo! That’s it.’ The apothecary pointed to a wagon, a black box on huge wheels. Black smoke poured out of a stovepipe chimney. Winter ponies were watching the two women. The ponies were small and shaggy creatures, with hair that trailed into the snow. Winter ponies were fiercely loyal. If someone came for their master, they would attack. Their eyes, thought Milena, they have human eyes.

  ‘Shalom,’ said the apothecary, to the ponies. It seemed to be some kind of codeword. The animals went back to pawing back the snow with their hooves, and chomping the grass. There were other footsteps in the snow, leading to the wagon. The wagon was a mobile club for Snides and empaths. Boites, the wagons were called. The boites were continually moved from place to place. Snides and empaths gathered there, to do what exactly, Milena had little idea, except that it involved illicit viruses. They performed for each other. Mind-dancing they called it.

  The apothecary climbed gypsy steps to the door of the wagon and knocked.

  ‘Ali, Ali it’s me,’ she called.

  The door was pushed open. Men and women sat all at the lower end of the wagon, crosslegged on the floor. Milena could feel a current of hot air rise up out of the door. The apothecary pushed Milena in ahead of her and slammed the door shit.

  ‘Sorry everyone. Sorry,’ she said. ‘Good?’

  ‘His best,’ said a bearded man, his eyes dim, his speech slightly slurred. ‘He’s weaving all of us into this one.’

  The wagon leaned forward on its nose. The wooden floorboards all pointed up the sloping floor towards a man in black, sitting crosslegged on a thin rug.

  He was Al, Al the Snide.

  His eyes were closed in concentration. Then they opened. They opened and were staring directly at Milena.

  ‘That’s it ladies, gentleman.’ he said. ‘That’s all for now.’ There were jars of potheen lined up along the edge of the floor, held in place by a rack. ‘Keep warm, drink something. We’ll complete the tapestry later.’ He stood up with one smooth movement. He was still tall and lithe. The hat and cape had gone. He looked at Milena with sadness.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  ‘Hello,’ said Milena.

  He pulled on a sealskin coat. He caught something in Milena’s mind.

  ‘Real seals weren’t killed making it,’ he said. He paused. ‘And yes, I’m still defensive.’

  The room chuckled warmly. They all understand, Milena realised, they all hear what I’m thinking, they all know. I feel naked. Do I mind?

  The room chuckled some more. The faces were ordinary, rough, but not unkind.

  ‘Would you mind being a strand?’ one of the empath women asked Milena. Milena didn’t understand.

  The woman’s face was suddenly crossed with concern. ‘Don’t worry, love, we’re just asking if you want to be part of the tapestry. We all like you.’ The woman looked at one particular man. ‘You have to tell them or else they don’t know,’ she said. She looked back at Milena with pity. ‘Do you, love?’

  ‘Salt and wool,’ said another dancer. She also was smiling. She wore a Postperson’s headscarf. There was a murmur of assent from the other empaths.

  Al the Snide thumped down the slope of the floor, in black boots, smartly pulling on gloves. He looked at Milena with expectation. Then he smiled and closed his eyes for a moment, as if embarrassed.

  ‘Sorry,’ he suddenly said. ‘I keep forgetting you can’t hear me. Do you mind going for a walk? We can talk then.’ His pale, pale face was even leaner, but the eyes were less faraway, less self-concerned than they once had been.

  Outside, the air seemed to have daggers of ice in it. In bare branches a community of crows had gathered, cawing and croaking to each other in smoky mist. Al helped Milena down the gypsy steps.

  ‘The problem is to get him alone,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry?’ Milena was completely taken aback.

  ‘Max. I will need to be alone with him.’

  He nodded, and kept speaking.

  ‘So going to a concert or something is out. Too much mind noise. It would be best just to visit him. And tell him what you are doing. Why you think it’s best to try and trick him, I don’t know.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m not used to this,’ said Milena.

  ‘I know,’ he said darkly.

  You want this over with quickly, she realised.

  ‘I supposed I do, yes,’ he said aloud, and looked back up at her, his lips drawn thin.

  And Milena found herself thinking: I wonder what he feels about Heather? She thought it, and he looked away.

  ‘I treated you badly once. So I feel I owe you something,’ he said. ‘I won’t charge you for this.’

  ‘Thank you,’ murmured Milena. But she thought: I never mentioned money; it never even crossed my mind.

  He was trying to keep things businesslike. ‘We need to tell Max openly what we are doing. Our approach is that I’m simply helping him to remember. Arrange an appointment to meet. It’s always easier if people co-operate.’

  It still rankled Milena that he had mentioned money. ‘You don’t owe me anything,’ she said.

  He punched the palm of his gloved hand. ‘I wish you people could hear!’ he exclaimed. It was so indelicate, having to speak.

  ‘Look. You are Heather. At least half of Heather was you. Maybe most of her.’

  He still loves her, thought Milena. Oh, poor man.

  He sighed, and he ran a hand over the top of his head. ‘She’s buried deep now, isn’t she?’

  He looked at the top of Milena’s head, as if to see Heather there.

  ‘You already know that,’ said Milena. ‘Why ask?’

  Al shrugged. ‘You don’t hate me any more. That’s something.’

  ‘I did something far worse to Rolfa in the end. Far wo
rse than anything you did.’

  ‘Ssssh,’ he said, and held up his hands. ‘I know. I know.’ And there was much more than pity in his eyes. There was comprehension. ‘The bastards with their bloody Readings,’ he said. ‘It’s all about control. They don’t care what they kill in the process. I’m sorry.’

  And Milena knew there was no answering comprehension in her. ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me. How have you been? What you’ve been doing?’

  He looked suddenly, coltishly pleased that she wanted to know. He made an awkward, embracing gesture back towards his boite. ‘I make tapestries. As I told you before. I make patterns out of all the people I see. The personalities are like colours. I make them and hang them in the air for the other Snides. There’s enough of us now. We work ordinary jobs. Don’t let on, most of the time. So I make them tapestries and they buy them.’

  ‘Take them home and hang them on the wall?’

  ‘They remember them,’ he said, correcting her, shyly. More viral memory.

  ‘But you hate viruses.’

  ‘I hate their viruses. I love the ones people make for themselves.’ He looked at her face, searching it. ‘If only you could read,’ he said. ‘You’d know all that.’

  They walked on. ‘Until you’re Snide, it’s hard to believe how complex people are. Like a whole universe. There’s all this chattering going on in their heads. Mist we call it, like the inside of clouds. It fogs everything stops people seeing. Most people function by shutting almost everything out. Below that, there’s the Web. That’s the memory. That’s where everything is stored, and the Web is a real mess. You can get tangled up in it. A very complex personality is actually difficult to get out of. It can be very scary. Underneath that is the Fire, and that just burns. That’s where the heart is.’

  ‘How tangled am I?’ Milena asked.

  ‘You…’ he paused, eyes narrow. ‘You’re very neat, very tidy. But you’re in compartments. There’s parts of you that don’t communicate with each other. So you surprise yourself all the time. It’s an ordered mind. You’ve got an amazing capacity for detail, you’re good at organizing. But you could do a lot more than that.’ He smiled at her. ‘You’d make one hell of a Snide, you could take it all in.’

  He was being kind. He likes me, thought Milena, seeing him smile.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, gently.

  He loves me. I’m still Heather for him.

  He must have heard her, but the smile stayed steady, and the eyes were still full of comprehension.

  ‘They’ve paid for their tapestry,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go back and finish it. Then we’ll go and meet this Max of yours.’

  As they walked back towards the boite, Milena thought: the clouds have cleared for him. She had never seen a change like that, when someone comes whole.

  ‘Not entirely,’ he said, looking back casually. ‘I’m still a criminal. But I don’t hurt people any more.’ He stopped in front of his door, looking back behind him on the steps. ‘The thing about being a Snide is, if you hurt people, you feel the pain too. So you end up hurting yourself.’ He smiled again, and pulled the door open, and stepped smartly inside.

  He sat still again, weaving patterns. There was a warm, approving chuckle.

  ‘There she is,’ said the Postwoman. ‘There she is, our thread of wool.’

  ‘Undyed,’ said the dim-eyed man. ‘The kind that holds the whole thing together.’

  It was dark, night, when they got back to the Zoo. They found Max rehearsing the orchestra for Wozzeck. He saw Al and Milena slip into seats in the theatre, and gave them one of his long, unblinking stares.

  Then he turned, and nodded, and the music began.

  ‘Hoo, boy!’ Al exclaimed. ‘Oh, poor baby.’

  ‘What? What can you Read?’ Milena asked.

  ‘Sssh,’ said Al.

  The music began. It sidled forwards, uncomfortable, disjointed, angular, expressing alienation. Max conducted, making flowing, muscular gestures. Al’s face seemed to freeze, fixed on him, watching him, as if he were a flickering light.

  ‘He can feel you at his back,’ murmured Al, without moving his head.

  Suddenly Max made a messy, hurried wave in the air. No, no, no, said his hands. The orchestra stopped playing by degrees, the music trailing off into disorder, the musicians looking up in wonder. Max turned around. He looked at Milena. ‘Do you have to be here now?’ he said. His voice was quiet but it still manage somehow to penetrate the curtain of air between them.

  ‘We’re just listening to the music, Max,’ said Milena. ‘We’d like to talk to you. We’ll wait outside for you.’

  ‘I’m busy this evening, I can’t.’

  ‘When are you free?’

  ‘Talk to me later!’

  ‘We can never find you, Max. One week, Max. Remember? Two days of it have gone, Max. We need to find the thing that you lost, Max. This gentleman can help you.’ The musicians began to stir in their seats and murmur to each other.

  ‘Stop,’ said Al. ‘Stop now. Or you’ll kill him.’

  ‘We will wait outside,’ said Milena, gathering up her coat.

  They walked in silence up the corridor.

  ‘Whoo!’ said Al, expelling air as the doors swung shut behind them.

  ‘What did you get?’ Milena asked.

  Al scowled. The music began again, dimly, behind the doors. ‘It’s like this. He makes a motion one way.’ Al moved his hand like an arrow. ‘But then the motion deserts him, and he’s left stranded, so he makes another motion this way, in another direction, and that stops because he then remembers he meant to go the other way. There’s no centre to give him any weight.’

  The music wheedled through the door, sad, aching, the music of ghosts.

  ‘He’s weightless,’ said Al. ‘There’s no up or down for him. He’s totally lost. Like some poor, huge, overgrown child. He’s been unable to move anywhere since childhood. He was stunned in childhood.’

  The music stopped again. They could dimly hear Max talking.

  ‘That’s why he likes music. It’s pre-written, it’s all rehearsed. It all flows in one direction for him. It’s the only time he gets any flow. Most of us go swimming through time, with the current like a fish. He just gets lost in it. Except when there’s music. As long as the music doesn’t surprise him. So.’ Al looked up at Milena with an odd smile. ‘He hates new music.’

  The problem again was time. The music started up again.

  Al was still looking at Milena with an odd smile. ‘He hates you. He hates the Comedy. He can’t bear either of you. You make him feel so small.’

  After the rehearsal, Max saw them outside in the corridor. The angular violinist was with him and she was pale with fury.

  ‘How could you do that to me!’ Max said, fists clenched and pale, mouth stretched and desperate.

  ‘Who are you?’ the violinist demanded, glaring at Milena. ‘Who are you to interrupt rehearsal like that? This is a very talented musician, and you’re making him very unhappy.’

  ‘He’s made me very unhappy,’ said Milena. ‘He’s lost the entire score of an opera. The only copy.’

  ‘Don’t!’ he said, his pink fists bobbing up and down. He shuffled, knees bents, in the posture of weightlessness.

  ‘He’s lost it,’ said Milena, ‘because it makes him realise that he could never write it himself.’

  ‘Milena,’ warned the Snide.

  The woman smiled bitterly. ‘A new opera,’ she said. ‘God. We get one of those a month. No one can write opera any more. They’re all written by ambitious stumblebums like you, who have no more appreciation than…’ the woman broke off. ‘Oooh! You should be grateful that someone like Max even looked at it.’

  ‘We don’t want to hurt him,’ said the Snide. ‘Not at all. We would just like a few moments alone with him.’ Al took Max’s hands, and began to coax the fists to uncurl. ‘I’d just like to go back onto the stage with him. Where the instruments were pla
yed. The beautiful violins, the harps. The oboes. The place will still be warm from the music. We’ll go there, and you can tell me all about the music you love. Eh, Max? Maybe that will help you remember.’

  ‘Will she be there?’ Max demanded, looking in terror at Milena. It was as if Milena were his mother, as if he were a naughty little boy.

  ‘No, Max,’ said the Snide. ‘Just you and me.’

  ‘If anything happens to him,’ said the violinist, and jabbed a finger towards Milena, ‘I’ll hold you responsible. Max. I’ll be waiting downstairs.’

  ‘And I’ll be waiting here,’ said Milena.

  Max and the Snide went back down, into the theatre. And Milena waited. How long? What was time? She got to know her own fingernails better. They were bitten, right down to the quick. Please, she prayed, though she knew of nothing to pray to, please let him remember.

  Finally the door opened, and Al came out, supporting Max. Max was sobbing, rubbing fat hands into his eyes. Milena looked into Al’s eyes.

  ‘We found it,’ said Al.

  Max broke free and began to run. He ran for the stairs. ‘Alice! Alice!’ he cried, stumbling down the steps, covering his face.

  Al looked at him as he ran. ‘He really didn’t know that he’d done it, Milena. It was buried deep, well below the Web.’

  ‘In the Fire,’ said Milena.

  ‘In his heart,’ said the Snide, and blew out again. ‘He was like a maze, a horrible twisted tangle, everything unsorted.’ Al was staring, looking now at what he had seen, eyes round with fear. ‘I nearly didn’t get out.’

  Milena touched his arm. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Do you want a drink?’

  Al shook his head, no, no. ‘I know what drink does. Oh by all the stars! To be like that. To be trapped in that, forever.’ Al looked back at the stairs and the plush carpet, as if a ghost stood there. ‘At least he gets out. At least he gets out in music.’

  Milena found that her sympathy was somewhat limited. ‘What did he do with the book?’ she asked.

  Al’s eyes turned around slowly to look at her. Al spoke very carefully. ‘He bundled it up with other old books he had borrowed, and returned them. They were books he had borrowed from the British Museum. You know where that is.’ It was a statement, not a question.