The Child Garden

by Geoff Ryman

  ‘Mmmmm,’ said Milena, as if giving the thought serious consideration.

  ‘I should explain. Chris is my Bulge. The name is short for Christian Soldier Two. The first one died. Would you like to see my snapping turtle?’

  Mike Stone reached into the pocket of his jumpsuit and produced a live, suede-coloured snapping turtle. ‘Chris grew him for me. Had one since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.’ He held it out for Milena to examine. ‘He also tried to grow me back my old Army knife, but the blade was soft.’

  Milena had to turn around to face him. He loomed over her with round and innocent eyes. A child, she thought, I am talking to a child. She was in extremis. Her cheeks were compressed, her stomach muscles were clenched, her back was held rigid. She did not laugh. But her eyes brimmed full. Tears of mirth slid down her cheeks.

  Mike Stone fell silent. He looked at the tears on her face, and then down at the floor. Moved beyond words, he pressed the turtle into her hands. ‘It’s nice to know,’ he said, ‘that someone understands.’

  The turtle bit her. It snapped, as it had done in childhood.

  And Milena awoke, a child in England.

  She woke up in her room in the Child Garden. On the windowsill, there was her candle, gutted and blackened, with a spread of wax on her breakfast plate. She had been reading in the night. The book, old and heavy, had slipped out of grasp, and worked its way down between the bedding at the wall.

  It was summer, and there, beyond the old sashcord windows, was her tree.

  The tree seemed to greet her every morning. It was very tall, but its long branches were delicate and hung airily down, almost like curtains, its leaves dappled into many colours by the sun. Its trunk was mottled; sections of its bark fell off like pieces of a puzzle. Milena knew its Latin name because she loved the tree: ailanthus altissima. The Chinese called it the Tree of Heaven.

  Already it was hot. Sunlight streamed through the window. Behind her there was a sound of someone stirring. Milena turned. The two girls Milena shared the room with, Suze and Hanna, were still asleep. Their faces were as drained of personality as rice pudding. One of them had turned in her bed. They would be up soon. Milena wanted to avoid them.

  She pulled back her quilt as quietly as possible and sat up. There was her old room. There were the orange walls, there were the old chipped skirting boards, lumpy with layers of paint. There was the fireplace that no longer fed into a chimney; there were the black urns of the charcoal heaters.

  Milena the child did not want to move. Her eyes felt swollen and dusty. She had been reading most of the night. She wanted to fall back into the bed and sleep; but if she did that she would be trapped, with the others. As a kind of compromise, she reached for her book. If the others started to move, she would still be awake and could escape.

  The book was a biography of Einstein. A few days before, Milena had heard other children talking about him. The ache had come over her: something else she didn’t know. So she had gone to the Museum and found this book. She opened it up and looked at the photographs. She saw a photograph of Einstein as a child. He already had a slight, amused smile. Beidermeir, the other children had called him—honest, clumsy furniture—because he always said exactly what he thought to his teachers. At sixteen, he pretended to have a nervous breakdown, to get out of Germany.

  Suze groaned in her bed and turned away from the sunlight. Milena stood up, and pulled her jumpsuit that had been laid out flat on the floor. Everything was arranged for a quick escape in the mornings. She pulled on her black slippers, and slipped out of the apartment. The apartment had three large rooms and slept nine girls. There was a blackboard in the front hall. A work rota was written on it: names in English, tasks in Chinese. Milena’s name was not on it. Milena was regarded as disabled, and exempt from tasks.

  Milena went down to breakfast without washing first. She was famous for not washing, and was commonly supposed to smell. From the adenoidal way the other children sometimes talked to her, she knew they held their breath when she was near. But there was only one bath in the apartment for nine children. If Milena washed when they did, she would have to stand in line with them and try to think of things to say. Anything she said seemed to reveal the blankness of her memory, how little she knew.

  Milena trudged down the steps, all the way to the basement. The other children used the front door of their stairway and walked to breakfast in the sunlight. Milena walked the length of the building at its lowest level. Milena liked it there. The old mansion block had been built two hundred and fifty years before around a series of light wells. The light wells were tiled and streaked and looked somewhat lavatorial, but there was blue sky at their summit. Light was shed seven storeys down through the honeycomb of pipes and lift shafts. It was like a hidden city. The Senior kept his bee hives humming in the air, rising and falling. They were working. Milena liked their faithfulness.

  The light wells and the roof were supposed to be out of bounds. The children raided the hives for honey, and ran screaming through the basement at night, playing hide and seek. They burst into the Nurses’ rooms, which lined the lower floor, and ran laughing as the Nurses chased them. The Nurses would be thirteen or fourteen years old. They laughed too. It was then, at night, when the other children played, that Milena could read, alone in the room.

  Milena walked on and tried to remember what she had read the night before. She had been charmed to find that Einstein’s first wife had been called Mileva. They had lived together in Berne when he was a civil servant. He had forgotten the key to their apartment on the day of their wedding. Mileva was from Czechoslovakia, like Milena.

  Wasn’t she? Czechoslovakian? Milena suddenly wasn’t sure. She was dismayed that she could not remember the nationality of Einstein’s first wife. Why can’t I learn? she wondered, scuffling her feet. She was a freak; she knew she was a freak; everyone treated her like a freak. The viruses buffeted her like a hurricane, but left nothing behind. She read books and they seemed to evaporate. Milena was very discouraged.

  She pushed open another door, and walked up more steps, to the Hall.

  The Hall was full of folding bamboo tables. They had flat, grey resin tops to make them easier to clean. On sunny days, the whole room smelled of pine. The work shift was still laying spoons and cups for breakfast, solemn, puffy-eyed children of eight or nine, moving with the mindless motions of machinery, dazed with sleepiness, driven by training.

  A Nurse was serving lentil porridge. ‘Good morning, Ms Shibush,’ the Nurse said to Milena. The Nurse was older than most: about eighteen years. Milena knew her name but didn’t use it.

  ‘Lo,’ murmured Milena grumpily, without any other greeting.

  The Nurse looked at Milena, unwashed, impolite, and dazed by hard work of which the other children—indeed the Nurse herself—had no experience. The Nurse shook her head. All the staff were giving up on Milena. They had stopped praying for her, they said. Milena was beginning to give up on herself. She could not read enough or study enough, or memorise enough or think enough to keep up with the others. Milena made kindly children doe-eyed with pity; cruel children were afraid of her. It was part of Milena’s affliction that she was able to hit people.

  Milena took her lentil porridge to an empty table. Some Tykes sat at another table. Wee Lambs. Billy Dan and his little gang of five year olds. Milena could hear them playing games.

  ‘OK,’ said Billy. ‘What’s this?’ And he recited:

  ‘Besides with justice this discerning age

  Admires their wond’rous talents for the stage:

  Well may they venture on the mimick’s art,

  Who play from morn to night a borrowed part…’

  And the other Tykes cried out the answer: ‘Johnson, Samuel Johnson!’

  ‘London. That’s the title. “London: A Poem.”’

  And Billy tried to look superior. ‘Written in imitation of…’ He was not allowed to finish.

  ‘The Third Satire of Juvenal!’


  It was a pointless game. Everyone had the same viruses, but the Wee Lambs were still impressed by the knowledge that basked like whales inside their heads. The Wee Lambs were insufferable. They would put wood chips or dried peas in people’s beds for fun and then weep themselves to sleep. They needed taking care of. The older children did their washing and ironing for them. The Wee Lambs would lord it over them, or try to prove they knew more than the older children. Just a phase, the older children said, wrinkling their noses with the disdain of those who were nearly adult. The older children admired practical skills. They prided themselves on the stalls they ran, on the deals they drove, buying or selling lumber or crystal or plaster or eggs. They compared each of the Estates, eyeing up their possible futures. Would it be better to stay a Restorer or become a Reefer, growing new buildings instead of repairing old ones? What about Farming? Nice outdoor life, with plenty of razzle—off-duty work—on the side. What about Resins or Hides or even Pharmacy? Doctors were the highest, Doctors were the best, but no one expected to be Placed as a Doctor.

  It was a superstition that a child could fix on a future Placing and Develop towards it. Their main goal now that they were nine years old was to pull what they called a Plum—a Plum Placing in a good Estate. At the age of ten, they would be Read by the Consensus. Any faults in personality or criminal tendencies would be cured. The Reading would be used to plan their future lives.

  Milena was nine. At the end of the summer she would be ten. What kind of Placing were they going to give her? Humping garbage, probably. How about street sweeper? There was a range of possibilities for someone who was resistant to the viruses.

  Milena at the last of her lentils in silence, finding comfort in their unvarying richness. Other, older children began to come in. Some of them came in pairs, a boy and a girl holding hands, already engaged to be married. To Milena that was pure foolishness. Come ten and you’re both Read, and wiped, and you come out different people. After the Reading, they change you, you end up marrying a stranger. Or they give you different Placings in different Estates at opposite ends of the Pit. Becoming engaged was just a way of saying: huh, me, I’m Developed already. Me, I’m an adult. Why, Milena thought, do you want to be an adult anyway?

  Time to go. Milena stood up and was halfway down the aisle when she remembered her plate. You were supposed to take your plate and wash it up yourself. Milena had forgotten. Why don’t I have a memory? She turned around and walked back to her table. The eyes of Billy’s gang were on her, and the Lambs were smiling. One of them started to giggle and go red in the face. That’s her, that’s the Lump who can’t remember anything. See? She’s forgotten her plate. Milena glared at them and they all looked away. They were frightened of her.

  Milena snatched up the plate, took it to the sink, and washed it without talking to anyone. Milena didn’t want to be feared. She wanted to have friends. She wanted to be a part of things. Why? wondered Milena the child. Why can’t I remember? What is it? She had no idea why the viruses failed her. She no longer knew that she could spring the viruses, rethink the codes of DNA.

  She ran down the stairs away from the Hall, down to the front door of the block, and pushed it open as if bursting free, and stood outside, unwashed on the street.

  There was the light; there were the trees. The street was called the Gardens, because one side of it was planted with grass and trees. Along a branch, a great fat pigeon, his neck swollen up, waddled after a female. She scurried away from him, escaping his advances. Further down the Gardens there was a cart. A huge, slow, solemn man was carrying hessian sacks. He emptied them into the cart. They were full of garbage.

  Is that my future? Milena wondered, looking at him.

  The man shook out the sacks, his muscles raising and lowering their heads. He had a beard and long shaggy hair. He looked like a Biblical prophet.

  So what happens when you’re placed as an emptier of garbage? Milena wondered. She began to walk down the gardens, past the man. Do you suddenly discover that, yes, emptying sacks was really what you wanted to do all along? Do they give you a virus to make you love your work? The man glanced at her, scowling. He could play King Lear, thought Milena. There were more hessian sacks, lined up against the bamboo railings.

  Milena wanted to be part of the theatre. She had put on shows with other orphans and would be seen to flower suddenly when directing them. Was there any chance of Milena Shibush pulling a Place in a theatre? I’d take anything, she thought. I would sweep the floors, I would pump up the alcohol lights, I would wash the sweaty costumes. I’d do anything as long as it was in a theatre.

  It seemed highly unlikely. All that the Nurses could imagine her doing was being some kind of humper. They thought she would carry bricks or melons. Whenever Milena asked questions about Placing—about its fairness, or why it was necessary, the Nurses only smiled. It was a particular, soured, superior sort of smile. The smile seemed to say: haven’t you got beyond worrying about that yet? Are you still stuck back there? No answers were given. Milena had come to the conclusion that they didn’t have any.

  Milena walked on, becoming angry.

  They had told her there were no more books.

  No more books! When their own Estate was hard at work saving the British Library! Every book published in the twentieth century was there! Milena had heard that and found the library for herself. She could remember the first whispered hush of those rows of shelving. She remembered the disdain on the face of the librarian. Read them? You want to read them? Child, these are historical documents, originals. Why do you need to read them? It took a visit from the Senior of the Child Garden to get Milena access. The Senior was a boisterous, hearty man in his early twenties, who was good at jollying people. All a great lark, he had said to the librarian. The child wants to read books. Well, good for her. Then he had whispered to the librarian and her eyes had melted into what she thought was an expression of sympathy. Reading books was a symptom of a grave disorder. The librarian had made a fuss over her after that and had talked to her in a cooing artificial voice, explaining simple things over and over, very slowly.

  When Milena had finally been left alone with the books, she had wept for all the knowledge in them, the things that other people carried in their heads, as a gift, for free.

  And so Milena tried to catch up. She had been six years old when she started. The first book she had read, or tried to read, was Plato’s Republic. Do I remember a word of it?

  Why would the Nurses tell her there were no more books? Out of shame for her disorder? Out of fear she would read something she was not supposed to know about? Milena had grown suspicious of the motives of the Nurses. She had grown suspicious of the motives of the Restorers, on whose Estate she lived.

  The Restorers had been given the old city, the Pit, to rebuild. Everything outside it, beyond the Reef or in the hills, belonged to the Reefers, who would chew up the rubble and turn it into sleek new biological buildings. But in the Pit, the eighteenth century townhouses and the old art deco buildings were slowly being rebuilt. Their contents were recreated. The Restorers remade the chairs, they rewove the curtains, they filled in the embroidery where it had come away. They raised the great old roofs again.

  There were book binders and upholsterers, there were stonemasons and sculptors, there were experts in oil painting and workers in wood. There were plasterers, and carpenters; there were metalsmiths and those who knitted by hand. They were the preservers of history, living together in one Estate in central London.

  Milena went for a long walk. She flitted through the City like some kind of ghost feeding on sunlight and other people’s lives. She walked up to Euston and then back down through the trees of Tavistock Square, to Malet Street. The main warehouse for the Restorers was there. It was called the School. Outside the School’s great grey gates there were stalls of people on the razzle, selling paper, reeds, pipes, shoes—anything the community might need. A Professor of the School sold kidney beans in great heaps. The
beans were red and polished like semi-precious stones, and the Professor smoothed the piles of them with anxious hands. There were oxen yoked to the gates. They were sold to carters who hauled stone and great wooden beams. A small boy guarded the oxen, with a switch and a collie dog. He sat on a stone bollard, wearing a kind of toga over his shoulder, smoking a pipe, his face turned towards the sun. From behind the gates came the sound and smell of fresh wood being sawed.

  The School had once been part of a university. Now it stored goods and was a workshop. There the elegant plaster moulds were made and carefully loaded for shipment. There the timber was stored and cut to standard lengths. There were the bolts of cloth, the glass works, the vaults that kept the gold, the lead, the mercury and the arsenic. It was the preserve of history and of adults.

  The Medicine was the preserve of the young. It was where all the Estate children, orphaned or not, were trained. It had once been a school of tropical medicine. The building stood on a corner of Malet Street. Milena stopped and looked at it, unwilling to go inside.

  There were ornamental balconies all across its grey stone face. On the balconies were gleaming Egyptian sculptures of fleas and rats and lice. The children kept them polished. They were one of the few things Milena liked about the Medicine.

  On the other corner was the Tacky Shop, where one resin tool could be melted into another. The wife of the Tacky was turning a bamboo pole round and round in her hand, lowering an awning over her display. It was going to be hot; the resin goods might go soft and warp. The Tacky Wife turned and gave Milena a happy grin.

  Milena grinned back. It really did seem to her that adults were nicer than children. There was a hiss of steam inside the shop. Then the Tacky came out, a mask over his face, and heavy gloves over his hands. He held up a newly pressed pitcher. Its mouth had sagged to one side. His wife laughed, and shook her head, and placed her hand on her husband’s hairy chest.