The Child Garden

by Geoff Ryman

  ‘Nuh! Nuh!’ He was trying to say no.

  They all went quiet and still. Milena thought: stammering, stammering again. It was over a year since the Princess had started to stammer. It seemed now as if almost everyone did.

  Would you believe me, Charles, thought Milena, if I said I was sorry?

  ‘To say anything,’ Milena told her enemy. ‘You’ll have to sing.’

  He looked at her with hatred.

  ‘I’m sorry, but other people have caught this, and it’s the only way they can talk.’ People sang in the streets.

  Charles Sheer writhed in place. He hated this. He knew it was true. From now on, he would have to sing to speak. He looked at Milena, and anger fuelled him. All right, his eyes and the creases around them seemed to say. All right. I will do it. You may make me look like a fool. You will not stop me saying anything.

  The music and the words had to flow as one. The selection of the melody would always reveal more than words alone would. That was why singing was embarrassing. It was impossible to lie.

  Charles Sheer began to sing, slowly.

  ‘I want to make sure that I’ve got this right,’ he sang. ‘And that it is the case…’

  The melody was unsettling, and slightly childish at the same time. It seemed to stalk something through a wood. Milena’s viruses scrambled to identify it. It took them some time, a matter of seconds. The song was buried deep in history.

  Charles Sheer was singing ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic.’ Without effort, the words took roost on the tune, as if humankind had always been meant to sing instead of speak.

  ‘That you intend to fill the sky

  With holograms from space?

  You’ve suggested this and outlined the cost

  And the other productions that might be lost

  But you haven’t said why we should fill the sky

  With Dan-te!’

  The delighted little man chuckled again and clapped his hands. He was silenced by a glare from Moira Almasy. ‘I think,’ said Moira, ‘that given the circumstances we should confine the discussion to the matter at hand. Milena?’

  Milena felt herself placed at a disadvantage. She was very slightly flustered. ‘I…I didn’t go into the aesthetics in my proposal. The costings were complicated enough, and frankly, they seemed to me to be the main issue. Obviously, the Consensus has some interest in a performance of the opera. The Consensus has orchestrated it. But the Comedy lasts over fifty hours. Any performance at all would be very expensive and difficult. I’m proposing that the Comedy be Britain’s contribution to the Revolution Centennial. Staged as I suggest, it would become a public event, like fireworks, if you like. We would be saying in effect, here is a great new opera—there hasn’t been one in some time—and here is the great new technology to go with it. It would become a tribute to the Revolution itself.’

  Moira Almasy was considering something. ‘It would do those things, I think, but I worry, for example, about the sick.’ She did not glance at Charles Sheer. ‘I worry about all the people who won’t be able to get away from this, but who might want to very much. Imagine you’re ill with a virus. Imagine you’re dying. All you want is quiet, peace. You don’t want one hundred nights of an opera to take over the sky.’

  ‘Where else could we stage it?’ asked Milena, in a smaller voice. She had to admit, imagining it, that Almasy had a point.

  ‘Down here. You can hologram a whole sky into a tiny room and it will look real.’

  ‘I don’t want it to look real. I want it to be real.’ Milena knew she was on her weakest ground her. ‘At New Year, the streets are full of parades and singing. People are ill then and nobody minds.’

  ‘New Year doesn’t last for fifty hours,’ said Moira. ‘Do we have to stage all of it?’

  ‘The Comedy is not just a string of arias. Every single note refers to something else in the opera. It is a fifty-hour-long, unified piece of music. If it’s cut it will make less sense.’

  ‘I know!’ exclaimed Milton the Minister, suddenly sitting up. ‘I know what we could call it!’

  ‘You want to change the title of The Divine Comedy?’ Moira Almasy was from Europe and still had a capacity to be horrified by British provinciality.

  ‘There’s never been anything like this before, right?’ said Milton. He chirps, thought Milena. It’s very annoying. Milton’s eyes gleamed, his teeth gleamed. ‘We need something that’s never been thought of before, something mint new. How about…’ He paused for the effect, his eyes glittering. ‘A Space Opera?’

  There was an embarrassed silence.

  ‘No one’s thought of it before!’ he explained.

  ‘I wonder how the Italians would like it?’ said Moira Almasy.

  ‘Or, I know!’ said Milton struck with fresh inspiration. ‘We could call it The Restoration Comedy!’

  Charles Sheer was making nasty snorting noises on his pillow. He was trying to laugh, but the virus wouldn’t let him.

  ‘I mean, why does it have to be Dante? Why can’t it be something British? If we’re paying for it? I know! We could do Paradise Lost!’ exclaimed Milton.

  This idiot is going to cost me the Comedy.

  ‘Certainly,’ said Milena. ‘If you’ve got Milton set to music, Milton.’

  ‘I have,’ said Milton. ‘It’s by Haydn and is called The Creation.’ Milton looked pleased. ‘Haydn changed the title too,’ he added. He looked so pleased.

  ‘It would at least be shorter,’ sang Charles Sheer, gleefully. The melody was from The Creation.

  Milena could begin to feel it slip away. The new Minister grinned like a puppy dog, happy to have been a part of things.

  Moira Almasy spoke, looking pained. ‘We…we seem to be straying from the original point.’ Her brows were knitted, fighting back the bouquet of confusion scattered by Milton. ‘We know the Consensus is interested in this particular work. Ms Shibush seems to have an unusual idea for presenting it. It is new, and it has a strong international element. If we make it our Centennial contribution, we might be able to ask other theatrical Estates to sponsor it with us. Even those in Europe.’

  ‘There’s a German version of The Creation,’ offered Milton.

  ‘Yes, Minister,’ said Moira Almasy, who evidently ran things instead of Milton. ‘We can present both ideas to the Consensus.’

  Milton sat back, making a generous gesture with his hands. ‘I just thought I’d throw a little something into the pot.’

  The delighted little man whose name Milena could not remember spoke again. He had greasy hair and a tracery of purple veins on his purple cheeks. He still smiled, but his voice was solemn. ‘It’s never in anyone’s interest to innovate,’ he said, and peered at Milena. ‘Least of all the innovator. People always think it’s just a way of advancing someone else’s career. Or they worry that they’ll be blamed if it fails. We don’t live as long as we used to, Comrades. Perhaps we should consider ourselves lucky that in our short lives we have a chance to help instead of hinder something as insane but as essentially workable as this. And that,’ and he peered at Milena again, ‘we are lucky enough to have someone who is willing to pay the cost.’

  What cost? wondered Milena the director.

  There was silence, and in the silence, things swung Milena’s way. The Pears were all looking at Milena as if she were Frankenstein’s monster and they were deciding whether or not to create her.

  Moira Almasy spoke. ‘Milena has now produced roughly one hundred and fifty outside projects. She has no Mainstage experience, but this will not be on a stage. She is one of the few directors we have with experience of Reformation technology. But. There is not guarantee that Reformation will work on this scale. So there will have to be a test. I’d like that to be made part of the proposal. That will mean, Milena, that you will have to go into space.’

  The word was like a cold wind.

  ‘The Centennial is only two years away. So there is not much time. You would have to be ready to go up this autumn
. Is that all right with you, Milena?’

  In the silence, Milena could only nod yes.

  ‘You would have to be made Terminal. And you would probably have to be Read, finally.’ Moira’s eyes were firmly held on Milena’s. Yes, we all knew, Milena. The Consensus was saving you for something.

  ‘What a thing it is,’ said Moira bleakly, ‘to have a friend in the Consensus.’ She was saying it out of pity.

  ‘Speaking of friends,’ sang Charles Sheer. The words now fell on the aria ‘Nessun dorma’ from Turandot. ‘Nessun Dorma’ means ‘No one’s sleeping.’ It was a reference to the effect of staging the opera at night.

  ‘Speaking of friends

  Is that mad person,

  Ms Thrawn McCartney,

  part of this project,

  part of this mad endeavour?’

  ‘No,’ said Milena, tunelessly.

  chapter twelve

  THE WILD HUMOURS (WHAT YEAR IS THIS?)

  Milena was carrying parcels. She opened the door to her room, and on her bed, in the last of the daylight, sat Thrawn McCartney.

  ‘Get in here and sit down,’ said Thrawn.

  Oh, that face. The devouring eyes, enraptured now that what Thrawn had wanted to happen had happened. The teeth were bared as if to rend flesh. The face could have been beautiful, if it had ever stopped eating itself. Milena the director felt the feathery brush of fear.

  ‘In a moment,’ said Milena, and found herself actually trying to smile. ‘Surely you’d be more comfortable on the chair?’ Meaning get off my bed. Milena went towards her sink, to put down the rice and the peppers and the lumps of chicken flesh. She started to fill her bucket.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Thrawn demanded.

  ‘Putting my groceries away,’ said Milena dismally. What she hated most was the impossibility of being direct as soon as Thrawn was near. Everything was veiled, every gesture she made was masked as another, hiding one part of the truth with another. Milena was afraid, irritated beyond measure, weary and dishonest.

  ‘OK, Milena,’ sighed Thrawn. ‘You seem to like these little games.’

  I hate them. I only ever play them around you.

  ‘You haven’t been to see me.’ Thrawn sounded hurt, vulnerable. ‘I have all kinds of new diddly boobs. I know you think it’s all right to neglect people. But you’re neglecting your work, Milena. That’s your job, isn’t it. To find out what I’m doing and see if the Consensus can use it?’

  ‘If you say so.’ Milena had just finished rinsing the peppers. Who would have thought it was such a long, complicated process to put away three pieces of food. Her back to Thrawn, Milena began to wash the chicken. She was thinking: this is my room. I did not ask you here. Do not think I am going to give you the full benefit of my attention.

  ‘One of them duplicates what you are seeing exactly, and overlays it. A wall say. You see a wall, and it looks the same as it always has done and then the stones grow faces.’

  Why can’t I tell her to go? Milena was wondering. Is it because I don’t want to hurt her feelings? Is it fear? What am I afraid of? Why am I worried about telling her to go, when I have something so much bigger to tell her? Why is she conducting the conversation, when I am the one with something to say? Milena felt small, mean, weak and bursting with things that had been left unsaid.

  ‘I was talking to Sheer today,’ Thrawn went on. She had started to pace. What diversionary tactic now? What evasion now? Why is my life full of crazy people? ‘Oh really?’ said Milena, trying to sound as if something neutral had been said. Unfortunately the chicken was now clean, and wrapped in moist cloths. Milena was wiping her hands. Am I going to suggest we go out? If I do, that means we won’t talk properly because we are in public. If I say here, the hop skip and jump, the games, will be worse. Only in hop, skip and jump, the rules don’t keep changing underfoot.

  ‘He mentioned that you might have a new project. He didn’t seem too pleased with the idea.’

  He wouldn’t mention it to you, Thrawn, because he hates you and only dislikes me. He doesn’t talk to you at all. Why, wondered Milena, is it so difficult to call someone a liar?

  ‘In the meantime,’ said Thrawn, her arrogance perfectly ludicrous, not so much in her words as in the way she swanned around the room, lip curled at its size, at the one cold bed. ‘I need a new production.’

  ‘Well,’ said Milena, still with horrible neutrality, ‘I hear Toll Barrett needs a good technician. I think he’s doing The Last of the Mohicans.’

  One small trick she could always play back: take what Thrawn said at absolutely face value.

  Thrawn snorted. ‘I know about that shit. I’m not interested. What about The Divine Comedy?’ A very small trick, when Thrawn could play it back for bigger stakes, and always seem to both of them to be more honest.

  ‘This is my room. Will you please leave?’ said Milena. It sounded feeble even to her.

  ‘Not until we have a few things straight.’

  And I always end up saying the right things in the wrong place. Jumping when I should skip.

  ‘Milton tells me it’s all going ahead. Why haven’t I been told?’

  Milena, dear heart, this is it. You have to ditch her. If you don’t she’ll have you forever. Somehow she has a hold on you. The hold is a knot in her own head, a knot that uses her fearsome intelligence to tie itself tighter and tighter. And you are now bound up in it, and you have to get free. Basically, you are the stronger. You are the one playing with the full hand. Mother of God, mother of anything, don’t let me falter.

  ‘You’re not part of it, Thrawn.’ Direct enough. Blown by the performance, a nervousness from which psychopaths are exempt.

  ‘You know you can’t do anything on your own,’ sighed Thrawn.

  ‘I put on one hundred and forty-two productions,’ said Milena.

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Thrawn looking away half-interested. ‘But it was Crabs that was the success, wasn’t it. Now you’ve got hold of someone else’s music and someone else’s poetry. I supposed you think you’re on to a good thing. Do you really think you could cube like me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Milena.

  And part of her pre-rehearsed speech fell into place, as it had been delivered so often to the walls of her room. ‘You’re the one who can’t do without me, Thrawn. Until I came along, no one would work with you. Can you imagine yourself directing? Getting along with forty or fifty people? Not futzing around, not bursting into tears, not playing any of what you call your little jokes? You also have a very poor visual imagination, Thrawn. I know it sounds strange, but you’re only good at duplicating what is in front of you. When you reform from scratch, the images are muddy. Toll Barrett wouldn’t have you, Thrawn. Why should I be any better than him?’

  Thrawn still mused, as if unconcerned. ‘So. You’re going to take my ideas and execute them badly at public expense. Vast public expense. Don’t you think that’s dishonest?’

  ‘No. I’m getting rid of someone who is deeply unreliable and who is likely to ruin a project at vast public expense.’

  ‘Getting rid of me, are you?’ Thrawn managed an absolutely convincing, confident chuckle. ‘I wonder what Charles Sheer thinks about that?’ Does she believe it herself, I wonder?

  ‘I don’t know what Sheer thinks. And neither do you.’

  And Milena reminded herself. I am the stronger really. I no longer have to worry about hurting her. I am going to have to hurt her. I am going to have to break her.

  ‘But I do know,’ continued Milena. ‘That Sheer wasn’t much impressed by either out-theatre or the Crabs. So I am moving beyond those. Because this cannot be and will not be junk. And you can’t produce anything else.’

  That’s right, Milena told herself. This is Rolfa’s. It isn’t mine. I don’t count. You will not get your hands on it, Thrawn. You don’t have your hands on it.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ said Thrawn. She looked wounded. ‘I work with you. I give you the best I can. I’ve o
nly produced junk, because that’s what’s been called for.’

  And Thrawn sang, as accurately as her voice could manage, the opening of Inferno. Sang it with feeling. She could imitate any feeling.

  ‘That is beautiful music,’ Thrawn said with conviction. ‘I know what we’ve got with the Comedy. Don’t cut me out as soon as we’re finally going to do something good,’ she said.

  ‘You just said I could never do anything on my own.’

  Thrawn gave her head an annoyed little shake, brushed that away. ‘Who can do anything on their own in the theatre? You know what I’m like. I don’t always do or say the right thing,’ she shrugged, giggled.

  You have, absolutely, to dominate. You are almost afraid not to, as if you will cease to exist if you do not.

  ‘But all the shit to one side. You know, I know. You’re the strong one really. I got the wild humours. I got to move sometimes. Yeah.’ She did a kind of wiggle, and the hunger showed itself. She was under the illusion that it was somehow charming. ‘But you can ride with that,’ she chuckled, confiding. ‘You’ve done it for so many productions.’

  So many productions. Why not one more? Milena felt herself begin to weaken.

  Outside the window, the electric lights were reflected, rippling and distorted on the moving river. Milena wished she had a lamp, a huge, brilliant electric lamp. She wanted light suddenly. She wanted to escape from that dark room, to some other, large and airy place where there was no Thrawn.

  ‘Let’s just said I’m tired of riding it,’ said Milena. ‘Let’s just say you’ve worn me out. Let’s not plead high intentions for the moment, Thrawn. A lot of this is selfish. I don’t want to work with you again. I want to try someone else. Directors change technicians all the time. Even ones they like.’

  ‘I’m not just a technician, am I?’ Thrawn stood up, changed tack. She had a rueful smile, and she pressed her hands together prayer-like, pleased. ‘Supposed we say I’ve put in my own bid for Dante. Say I’m ready to move up to directing. Let’s not plead good intentions for the moment. I’m as ambitious as you are. You’ve only directed one major piece. Badly. I can put in my own bid of Rolfa Patel’s opera. And I’ll be more willing to shorten it. Cut it a bit. Like you did to Falstaff, so don’t get all weepy and artistic on me. I’ll be cheaper.’