The Child Garden

by Geoff Ryman

  ‘I should know,’ said Milena. There was the merest whispers of memory. It was as if she heard footsteps overhead through a ceiling. ‘I grew up there. I was raised there. On the Estate of the Restorers.’

  ‘There’s a wall,’ said Al.

  Milena looked up.

  ‘A wall in you. The Museum lies on the other side of it.’

  ‘I know,’ said Milena. Her childhood lay on the other side of it.

  ‘And you’re going to go there tonight, now?’ Al could read her thoughts.

  ‘I’ve got to get that book. The Museum won’t be locked,’ said Milena. ‘Do you know the titles of the other books? That will tell me where to start looking.’

  Al touched the tip of Milena’s nose. ‘Careful, Milena,’ he said. ‘You keep thrusting, you could hurt yourself.’

  Milena remembered meeting Thrawn. It was her own fault. She kept thrusting.

  The Restoration had come. Milena was convinced that people would want holograms, and she wanted the Babes to have them first. She wanted someone who knew about hologramming, someone who came cheap. So she found herself in a hostel, off the Strand. What sort of person is it, she wondered, who lives so far away from her own Estate? Milena knocked on a purple door. What an awful colour, she thought.

  ‘Come ih-hnnnn!’ sang a woman’s voice beyond the door. It sounded like a caricature.

  The room was deep blue inside, full of water. From out of the Coral Reef walls, seaweed sprouted. Schools of thin black fish moved among it with zig-zag precision. White light wriggled like worms over the surface of everything, even Milena’s arms. A clump of seaweed spun around, and smiled with a manic, slightly daffy grin. It looked something like an amused death’s head, all sinew and bone and pop-eyes. ‘We are a Coral Reef, after all,’ it said.

  A pink-scaled fish swan up and then into Milena’s hand. Her Rhodopsin skin tingled with the light. Milena held up her hand and saw light glowing inside her flesh, orange like a sunset. Milena looked up and the face now trailed long black feathery fins. Tiger fish, said her viruses. Tough it and you are paralysed.

  ‘I’m Thrawn McCartney,’ the tiger fish said. ‘Are you my saviour?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Milena. ‘Do you need one?’

  ‘Sure do. No one will give me a job. What did they tell you about me?’ Thrawn wanted to hear about herself.

  ‘They said you were the best hologram technician that the Zoo has,’ said Milena.

  ‘And that I’m a pain in the lymph nodes.’

  ‘Somewhere else mostly,’ admitted Milena.

  ‘Well I am,’ said Thrawn, her face fixed.

  ‘So am I,’ said Milena.

  Thrawn gave a connoisseur’s shake of the head. ‘No,’ she said, and spun back around. The whole room seemed to blink, and the tiger fish was gone. A woman remained, her back towards Milena. ‘You’re one of those quiet, boring, determined little pains,’ she said. She wore a black leotard and looked small and slim. ‘I am a great, gushing volcano’s mouth of a pain.’

  She tossed what seemed half a hundredweight of black hair over her shoulders and turned, arching her back. She was deliberately posing, offering herself. Milena felt a kind of jolt, but not necessarily one of attraction. The woman was dangerously thin. The neck was all tendons. They looked as if they could snap, as if the disproportionately large head could break the tendons and then roll off. The face was haggard. Milena felt something like desire and something queasy, at the same time.

  ‘I’m about to offer you a job,’ warned Milena. But she found she was smiling. ‘Do you want to talk about hologramming?’

  ‘No,’ sighed Thrawn. ‘Holograms are two hundred years old and about as exciting as dandruff. We could remake the world now, with light.’ She glanced about at her underwater world. ‘I best all you want me for is some old opera. You want me to cube in some real places onto the stage. Right? Right?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Milena.

  ‘We’re all so bored with your old operas. We’re all so bored with your ficken high-toned quality.’ The room blinked again, and she dropped down onto a beanbag.

  It was an ordinary room now. The Coral Reef walls had been plastered over and left unpainted. There was a mattress on the floor, and bags, and a bank of equipment—metal boxes, lights, and leads. A cable went out the window to the Restoration wires along the Strange. Thrawn stretched her legs out straight and looked at Milena. ‘I ought to warn you,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been Read. I’ve never been Placed or doctored. So you’ll never know what I’m going to do or say next.’

  Milena was still smiling, at the aggression, at the foolishness of it. ‘I haven’t been Read either,’ she said, hoping she sounded unimpressed.

  ‘Then why are you so dull?’ asked Thrawn.

  ‘I guess some people just naturally are. Like some people are naturally obnoxious.’

  Thrawn liked that. It made her grin. ‘Yup,’ she agreed. ‘So how did you get away?’ She rolled over onto her stomach, still stretching, like some starved cat.

  ‘I didn’t. They gave me one final load of viruses and I was so ill they couldn’t Read me. In the meantime I was Placed.’

  ‘Well I ran away,’ said Thrawn, rather grandly, comparing herself with Milena. ‘I hid out in the Slump, in the reeds. Nobody was going to doctor me. I hid, and then I came back. I tell you, I got terrible grammar.’ Then she leaned forward. She leaned forward and used both her arms to push her breasts forward. They hung within the neckline of the leotard. ‘Are you?’ Thrawn asked, smiling.

  ‘Am I what?’ asked Milena, scarce believing.

  Thrawn rolled her eyes and asked again. ‘Are you?’ She rolled forward onto her knees, presenting herself.

  Milena felt a kind of slow, hazy panic. My God, is she asking me? My God, have I found another one? ‘Yes,’ Milena said, experimentally.

  Now it was Thrawn’s turn to be coy. ‘Yes to what?’ she asked, striking another pose.

  Milena’s face was hot. She was smiling a lazy, fearful smile. She felt confused. ‘Yes to whatever you’re asking.’ The whole thing was moving too fast, hurtling forward.

  Thrawn laughed, and slid nearer to Milena. ‘Saying that could be dangerous. You might not know what I’m asking.’

  There was something between them, as if the gases in the air had solidified. It was a shape, defined by them, but with a life of its own. Sex was only part of it, but it was as impersonal as sex. It and time hauled Milena forward towards Thrawn.

  She crawled towards Milena with her slow smile. ‘You don’t know what I’m asking at all.’

  But this is so crude, thought Milena. This is so banal. I’m being vamped.

  Thrawn kissed her on the cheek. I’ve had fantasies like this, Milena thought and made herself continue. Then Thrawn began to lick her face as if it were a lollipop.

  I’m not sure about this, thought Milena, pressing her lips and eyes shut. Thrawn smelled of sweat and boiled onions.

  ‘Oh, tooch, bubi, tooch.’

  What, thought Milena, is that supposed to mean? Does she really think it will drive me wild with passion? Thrawn leaned back to pull off her leotard, and Milena felt desire retreat. It left her beached and dry and slightly sick in the stomach.

  The flesh around Thrawn’s eyes was coiled like a rope; her face was a knot. As she descended again, Thrawn’s face was turned away from Milena, denying what was happening. Is she enjoying this? Milena wondered.

  She tried to make the best of a bad job. She tried to shift to a more comfortable position but the rug kept rucking up and sliding away underneath her. She lay still for a few moments under the oblivious Thrawn. Finally, Milena tapped her on the shoulder.

  ‘Thrawn,’ said Milena, as if reminding her of something she already knew. ‘Thrawn. Stop.’

  Thrawn went still. Then very quickly, she rolled away.

  Milena sat up. Her elbow had been badly knocked in the struggle. She looked at Thrawn. Thrawn lay on her side, back to Milena, picking at
the rucked-up rug. Milena’s trousers swaddled her thighs and made it difficult to stand. She managed it by pushing her knees together at an awkward angle.

  ‘It’s because I’m old and fat, isn’t it?’ said Thrawn, from the floor. She was staring at the strands of the rug.

  ‘You aren’t fat,’ said Milena, out of kindness, and because it was so far from the truth.

  Thrawn sat up and her eyes were poison. ‘I am. Don’t tell me I’m not fat.’ She shook a dried pouch of loose skin on her belly. She stood up, and began to pull on her leotard, carefully running the elastic back into place along the same lines of indentation in the skin.

  ‘Our relationship should be strictly professional,’ said Thrawn, with a kind of snarl.

  ‘It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?’ said Milena, beginning to smile.

  ‘Not,’ said Thrawn, and pulled back her hair. ‘Where I am concerned.’

  ‘Good. Fine. Glad to hear it,’ said Milena, rubbing her elbow.

  ‘I’m quite ruthless in my standards,’ said Thrawn coolly. She pulled on a pair of trousers over her leotard. ‘I am a perfectionist. It is something of a curse always to want the very best.’

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ said Milena and thought: there’s something wrong with this woman. Her elbow was black from bruising.

  ‘You’ll hate me,’ said Thrawn with a sigh, looking up. It was a statement of fact. It had the ring of truth. It also sounded like a promise. Milena looked up at the sad, devouring face.

  ‘No I won’t,’ said Milena, lightly. A process of mollification had begun.

  Later that same day, walking back from the Strand, Milena suddenly thought: it’s my birthday soon.

  It was one year since Rolfa had gone. The thought rooted Milena to the pavement where she stood. She was standing on Waterloo Bridge, where she and Rolfa had walked back together from the Spread-Eagle. This year, September had been hot, wet, monsoonish. But on this one evening, the sky had cleared. It was the same plum colour it had been on the evening when Rolfa had led her back from meeting Lucy.

  St Paul’s Cathedral looked the same, with its dome of white stone and sheets of lead. But electric lights hung in chains now all along both banks of the river. There were puddles of light, pools of it on the pavements. It will be like this, Rolfa, thought Milena. I will get further and further away from you. And you’ll get dimmer and dimmer, like one of those little lights on the end of the chain.

  Milena couldn’t dawdle. It was her turn tonight to take care of little Berry. She walked on slowly, her head down.

  A year since Rolfa; a month since Berowne had died giving birth. It was so unfair. He had made it all the way through. The child was born. It was wailing. He had time to shout at it, ‘Hello! Oh hello!’ Then the afterbirth came free. The blood had hit the ceiling. And there was another orphan. Of sorts. The baby’s mother, the Princess, could not face him.

  Milena walked down the steps of the Zoo, and into the Child Garden.

  She walked down into a room full of wood panels with colourful paintings. The place smelled of infants: milk and nappies and sodden padding. It was too warm. It made Milena giddy. A Nurse took her to Berry’s cot. He was three weeks old. He looked up at Milena with solemn blue eyes. Who are you this time? he seemed to ask. Milena lifted him up onto her shoulders and he started to wail.

  ‘I know. I know,’ she said, and patted him.

  Out of the corners of the room, on the mattress-covered floor, the other infants came. They came crawling and whispering to each other.

  ‘All these people coming to see him.’

  ‘Yes, but they’re not his parents are they?’

  The voices were high and wispy and wheedling with jealousy.

  ‘His father is dead.’

  ‘His mother never comes to see him.’

  Their minds were full of virus. They could speak, they could read, they could add and subtract. They ringed Milena round like a hostile tribe. The sound of someone else crying made them angry. They wanted to cry themselves. They wanted to howl their lungs raw. The viruses made them speak.

  ‘Why can’t he talk?’ one of the infants demanded. He supported himself on all fours. His flesh was plump and creased.

  ‘Why haven’t you given him the viruses?’

  ‘It’s time he was given the virus.’

  Milena didn’t answer them. She stepped over them. The room was hot and she was feeling ill. She simply wanted to escape.

  ‘He hasn’t had the virus!’ the infants called after her, in rage, as she fled.

  She couldn’t think why it had so upset her. She felt she was protecting Berry from them. She had to stop to gather breath, cool breath, and found she was trembling. Her hands shook as she wrapped Little Berry up in his blankets. She held him to her, and walked under one of the brick bridges along the elevated walkways, and then looked up, and saw the Shell.

  The windows were full of fire, reflected sunlight. Here it was again, September fire. Milena remembered Jacob. She remembered him walking back, into the Shell, to run his messages.

  But now, because of you and Rolfa, when I dream, I also hear the music.

  Rolfa was gone, and Berowne was gone. Jacob was gone too. All in one year? Milena had found Jacob one day in the spring, crumpled on the staircase like an old suit of clothes, a costume in the Graveyard. The fire in the windows had once seemed like the fire of people’s lives. Now it was the fire of ghosts.

  Milena stood where she had once stood before, unable to move. How did I get here? she wondered. How did I get here, holding someone else’s baby, with the smell of Thrawn McCartney still on me? In a world with holograms and electric lights. Milena felt the giddiness of time. It was kind of vertigo. It was as if time had hauled her up at high speed a dizzying distance away from herself, away from her life. It was as if she were on a train, and the train was going faster and faster, and it never stopped. The stations of her life were rattling past. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. She was never given the chance to get off.

  It was dark by the time Milena had climbed the stairs to her room. It looked much the same as it had when Rolfa lived there; a little tidier perhaps; a little emptier. The baby needed changing. Milena was surprised by how brave she had become about nappies and feeding times. When the baby was clean, she put him into his hammock and began to rock him.

  Berry started to sing. His voice was high and pure and piping and he sang particular songs. Was it normal for a child to sing before it could talk? She thought. Berry seemed to hear her. He smiled at her. Is he Snide? Milena wondered. The songs he sang were the songs he had heard Milena humming. He sang the songs of the Comedy.

  Milena lit a candle on her windowsill and opened the great, grey book. Here she could find herself. She took a piece of staved paper from a tidy pile of paper. And she began to work.

  Milena was orchestrating the Comedy. A year after Rolfa had left, she had worked her way to the beginning of Canto Eight. There were one hundred cantos in all. Dante and Virgil had come to the river Styx. Milena looked at the tiny notes of music, one for each syllable. Why were some of them in red? In the corner, in pencil, words said:

  trumpets glint like light on water. Sombre and joyful at once (a Comedy after all)

  How, she wondered, how can you make horns sound sombre and joyful?

  She could only do what she was able to do. Pretend the Comedy is a transcription, she told herself. Pretend that it’s a vocal version of an orchestrated original. Pretend you are reversing the cause and effect and remember that horns in G will be written in C. No sharps or flats. The viruses will help.

  Milena started to write, lost in work. She did not realise that she and Little Berry were humming in unison.

  dear fish

  Milena remembered a letter. She saw all of it, in memory, the light on the page, the clots in the ink. It read:

  sorry about the name, but i think of you as fish—i dont mean any harm by it but tell me if you really hate it and ill try to mend my
ways—to answer your question—i actually think of myself as canadian—the artic is different from the antarctic—more grass, more trees—the antarctic is a desert—but i still love it—now rolfa’s father he is definitely english tough which is how we ended up trying to live in south ken from which god preserve me

  well im back now in the antarctic—place doesnt look any different—all blue ice and blue sky—my dogs still knew me—good lord—the love in dogs—you wouldnt believe—yipped and yelped whined and widdled—you sure knew you were wanted—dogs simply feel more than we do—im sure of it—never saw people get so happy to see anyone—never mind me I am just trying to get you to think of dogs a bit more kindly after what happened last year

  anyway here i am sitting under my old alcohol lamp and im going out digging tomorrow with my dogs and im eating a greasy stew thats still frozen in the middle and i couldnt be happier—

  rolfa didnt come with me—said she didnt want to and she should know except that right now i think she doesnt know what she wants—never saw anyone so confused as that poor girl—she went for the weediest little fella, a squidge, real tiny with a pudding basin haircut, blouse, shorts—papa’s hair turned spiky over it—then that all passed just as quickly as she took it up—she said she ate the little guy for breakfast and I can believe it—believe it or not my great soft lump of a girl is getting real aggressive these days—just before i left she THRASHED her first cousin—now he is one huge devil—size of a house—he said something and suddenly he was swallowing all of his teeth—last i heard she was reading up on ACCOUNTANCY—

  you keep writing—i really like your letters—they make me laugh—though i know the real reason you take such an interest in an old Antarctic lady is that you want to know whats happening with rolfa—thats OK—ill let you know when i hear things

  your friend

  hortensia patel

  Milena stopped spinning.

  Someone was holding her down. He was very tall and very thin and his smile seemed to have been cut out of the tension of his face with a knife.