The Child Garden

by Geoff Ryman

  ‘Good morning!’ Milena called to them, trying to be normal.

  The children looked at her in fear and silence. They sat up and edged away.

  Milena rocked as she walked, moving her head up and down, left and right. She was escaping the disruption in her eyes. When she looked in the mirror she saw someone with the eyes of a lizard, closed over with a metallic, gleaming surface. The eyes are the doorway into the soul; her mirror lenses denied all sorts of exchange besides exchange of light. People would look away from her, repelled. She saw the world, with its bright sun glaring on white stones and bleached plants through a dim blue filtering.

  In the blazing heat, Milena wore gloves. She wore a heavy shirt that buttoned around her wrists, she wore thick trousers and a scarf around her face. If any of her skin was exposed to light, the torment would begin. Light would concentrate just under its surface until it burned. There were blisters around her eyes.

  Milena walked past the children into the dead rice paddies, where she would be alone. She walked with dread. Whenever she was alone, the images began.

  A hump of dried algae appeared to rise up. Something human struggled out from underneath it, a bare arm, a blistered face. The face was bruised and torn, and the hump of algae rocked back and forth on top of it, smiling with white false teeth and glass eyes, sputtering as it breathed. Thrawn was being raped by it. ‘Stop her,’ the face pleaded, looking at Milena. ‘Stop her, please.’

  Milena’s knees wobbled and her feet seemed to turn sideways on the stones; she walked like someone with a neural disturbance. She staggered through the image. She walked through the pumping mound of algae; her feet walked through the pleading face. You are not there, she told herself. You do not exist. Her fist were clenched. She was being worn down.

  Milena had to walk around the edge of a long-dry fish-farm. There had been too many trout to save. Their corpses lay stinking in the bleached, baked mud. There were flies. They tickled the corners of Milena’s mouth. Milena waved them away.

  Suddenly a pile of dead fish heaved back and there was Thrawn McCartney. She had been opened up too, her softer portions eaten away. She opened her mouth to speak and flies ascended from it in a cloud.

  ‘Milena!’ said the swirling cloud of flies. The flies swarmed around her, buzzing. ‘Milena! Milena!’

  Milena steeled herself, hunching her shoulders and walked on. She was confronted with the scattered bodies of fish, almost to the horizon. She decided they were not real. She walked on and her feet slipped in the slime of rotten fish. That upset her more than anything else that morning. There was a sharp stab of anger, and then despair. My new shoes, she thought. My beautiful new shoes. I knew I ought to carry them! Now they’ll stink of rotten fish all day. People will see the crazy lady rock and shiver and then they’ll smell her. She tried to wipe the shoes on dried clumps of grass. The grass was as white and as brittle as china.

  She walked to the main channel of the River Thames. At low tide, the river was now no more than roughly four or five metres across. It wound its way through a stinking softness of mud and drying salt, up to the white gates of the Great Barrier Reef.

  The Barrier rose up like a range of snow-peaked, rolling hills in the distance. Even through the filter of the lenses, the Great Reef glistened in the fierce sun, as if mirror dust had been thrown over it. Milena could feel the light reflected from it on her skin. The Reef stretched away towards the South Downs, and north towards Tottenham. Its foundations were a stained and mottled brown from the lichen and the mud and the waters that had retreated. Its gates, the locks, were left handing open. There was no need to keep back the waters now.

  On the banks a crowd of people waited for taxis. The docks of the taxi station, with its walkways and awnings were now stranded far up the shore, away from the dying river. The people waited disconsolately under broad-brimmed hats. They wore shorts and airy shirts and sandals. Some of them stood sinking into mud, staring away from the world. Baskets full of their goods waited untended on the shore. There were dried and shrivelled onions, a last few nurtured radishes, whole herds of frogs killed for sale before they died of drought and disease. Downstream, the banks were white with birds gathering by the water that was left.

  As Milena approached, spiders scuttled backwards ahead of her. They had leering cartoon faces. Their grins were made and mocking, the eyes bright with violence. Sticks and stones. You think that can hurt me? Milena felt her jaw jut out with determination under its sweaty woollen mask. Do you? Hurt? Hah? Even without thinking, her head wobbled from side to side, to escape the disruption in her eyes.

  She joined the line for the water taxis and the images ceased. Her nostrils were plugged to keep out light, her ears were plugged. It was a little while before she realised that someone had been calling her by name.

  ‘Milena? Milena!’ he was saying.

  She turned around to see a farmer burned black-purple from the sun, under a broad hat. He wore shorts and an oatmeal coloured toga. Mud was going dry and grey on his ankles and rough resin sandals. Then she focused on the face.

  It was Al, Al the Snide. He carried a basket of shrivelled, slimy coriander leaves.

  ‘My God, what’s happened to you?’ he asked her. He took hold of Milena’s arm, and pulled her to one side, away from all the people, from the babble of their thoughts.

  Milena knew what he saw. He saw a woman with a mirror contact lenses, who never stopped rocking, very slightly, and whose ears and nostrils were stuffed with cotton wool, and whose mind seemed to be full of images of madness. A woman who believed she was being persecuted, that someone was beaming images into her head, or into the air all around her.

  Milena tried to think at him, very clearly, in the silence.

  I’ve got someone angry at me, she told him, without words. She is the best hologrammer in the world. She tried to burn out my eyes. Thus the mirrors. Now, everywhere I go, when I am alone, she hounds me with very unpleasant imagery.

  She kept backing away, drawing him up the bank, away from the others. Away from other people, he could Read her more clearly.

  I’m telling you this because you’re Snide, and you can see what I see.

  He began to look anxious, and with a tug on her arm, brought her to a stop. Then she pushed it all at him, the carcass in the living-room, the flies, the sun in her retina, and the things she had just seen.

  ‘Do you believe me?’ she asked him out loud, so he would remember to answer her in words.

  The Snide’s mouth hung open for a moment, and then he answered, choosing his words very carefully. ‘I believe…that you believe it.’

  Milena knew what that meant. How could she expect anything else? It sounded like madness even to her.

  ‘Right. Fine,’ she said, in a flat voice and began to walk back to the taxi station. She looked at her feet as she walked. Her shoes that now stank of fish grinned up at her with the faces of fish. The blubbery fish mouths were painted red with lipstick, and the eyes were ringed with blue make-up and mascara.

  See that? She jabbed the thought towards the Snide, and spun around to show him the shoes. My shoes, she cubed faces onto my shoes. Did you see it? Just then? It was in the light! It was real! It was real!

  Al the Snide watched her warily. No, he had not seen it. Milena turned away in a fury of disappointment and walked back into the crowd. The crowd was stirring. Dimly, Milena began to hear the sound of a taxi’s engine. People were climbing up the slope of the bank for their baskets. Milena stood in line. Al rejoined her.

  There’s no way for you to tell, is there? she asked him in her mind. All you can Read is my memories, and they may or may not be mad. All you can tell is that I believe them. So now you tell me, Milena thought, distinctly, what has happened to you? Al looked confused and shook his head and held up his hands in helplessness. Too many people. He couldn’t Read her clearly.

  ‘How long have you been farming coriander?’ she asked Al aloud.

  The water-taxi was d
rawing near, a round, heavy black tug with a tiny steam engine. ‘No moorings, no moorings,’ a boy on the deck was shouting. ‘You’ll have to wade to us!’

  People rolled up the bottom of their shorts, or plunged into the brown water that was infested with bilharzia. The Snide answered, warily, looking about him. ‘They’re after me,’ Al said, murmuring, thin-lipped.

  Milena couldn’t quite hear. She pulled out an earplug, and leaned towards him.

  ‘Since all this Singing, they’re after anyone who plays with the viruses,’ he said, standing up straight and looking away from her as if they were not talking. ‘They’ve got Snides out after all of us now. I’ve got to stay with people all the time too, to hide. Like you had to, from me.’

  ‘I need your help,’ whispered Milena.

  He closed his eyes. ‘They want to wipe me,’ he said. ‘They’re wiping everyone.’

  Please?

  And Al’s eyes looked back into hers with terror. He shook his head. ‘I can’t lift my head above the ground.’

  Milena closed her eyes and nodded. She took hold of Al’s arm, as if to say, I understand. Her hand was shaking. I must look mad, she thought, and tried to smooth down her hair. I didn’t remember to comb my hair.

  Al was still looking at her, and his eyes were full of horror. Am I really that bad? Milena thought. She pulled off her stinking new shoes and began to wade towards the boat.

  They slid down the mud into the water. Milena’s immune system sent Mice crawling all over her knees and ankles. The crawling itched. The water was thick and hot, and the mud felt like porridge suffused with bits of twig. Milena rinsed her shoes and then climbed up rope ladders into the boat. It was crowded. Everyone stood pressed close together. Milena had a wall of sweaty backs pushed against her face. There was no conversation. The boat pulled away from the bank, and the people in it sweltered, smelling of mud and reeds. People clung to the outside of the boat, hanging on the rope ladders.

  The taxi chugged its way through the locks. The gates were open, the wooden walls were going grey and dry. There were gaps between the timbers where the wood had shrunk. The Slump and the Pit were now on the same water level.

  There were high Coral embankments with steps rising up from the docks. They cast cool, delicious shadows. Relieved to be in shade at last, the passengers began to climb slowly, one step at a time, to savour it.

  Rowing boats still clustered around the locks, but bigger boats and water-taxis lay tilted on their sides in the mud. Seagulls padded their way clumsily across the silt.

  ‘I can treat you to a glide,’ Milena said to Al as they waited in line for the steps. She would hire a punt. She didn’t want to be by herself, with Thrawn.

  Al shook his head, no. ‘A farmer doesn’t ride with a Party Member.’ It would draw attention, raise questions. He made a gesture of ducking. He had to keep low.

  Milena nodded slow acknowledgement. She found a boatman on the quay, and looked back up the lock steps. Al was already gone, lost amid all the other water farmers. But as her boatman rowed them away, up the narrow river, she saw him standing on the edge of the bank. He was still looking at her, puzzled, scowling.

  If only it would rain, thought Milena. If it would rain, the images would refract. She felt the small straw basket she carried. At least I still have my flask, she thought. I still have my flask full of water. She went on to the Zoo, and her heart began to sink at the thought of what awaited her there.

  The Tykes at the desks prodded each other into silence as Milena approached. Monkeys, Milena called them in her mind, as they fought down grins. Here comes the mad lady, Monkeys.

  Milena gave her name, trying to sound normal, asking if there were any messages. It was as if her skin gave off an odour of tension, as if she made the air vibrate with it. One of the girls said something, and because of the padding in her ears, Milena couldn’t hear and had to ask the Monkeys to repeat themselves.

  Milena felt their eyes on her back as she walked away. Her shoulders hunched up, and she rocked so badly that she stumbled. She couldn’t be sure if she heard the Monkeys laugh behind her.

  She walked down the corridor to the rehearsal rooms. Severed hands scuttled towards her like crabs. They wore rings of coral flowers.

  I just have to hold on, Milena told herself. Hold on until Thrawn loses patience, until she breaks, or until they send me into space.

  In the rehearsal hall, the cast were waiting. They were trying to record the opening, just the earliest passages of the first Canto. The cast performed, and Milena created the world around them, the world of Dante’s forest. It was to be beamed from space, images the size of a continent.

  It wasn’t working.

  Milena was late again, for a start. Milena was always late now. I can’t travel early, thought Milena, or I’ll be alone with the images all the way and I couldn’t stand that. So you’ll all have to wait. I’m sorry, but since you wouldn’t believe me if I told you what was happening, you’ll all just have to put up with it.

  Milena did not apologise.

  You think I’m crazy too, she thought.

  Milena could see that in the slightly grim faces ranged against her. Cilla and Peterpaul looked bored and betrayed. And Toll Barrett leaned back in his chair without looking at her at all. A director himself, Toll was helping with the cubing. Milena rocked her head from side to side and put her basket down on a chair.

  ‘Good morning, Milena,’ said Cilla, deliberately loudly. Expected politeness had not been received.

  Tough, thought Milena. ‘Hello,’ she said distracted. She gathered strength to face what was coming. ‘Toll. I’m going to ask you again to keep an eye out for any disruption coming from outside the cube. Huh?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, without looking at her.

  ‘I know that something is disrupting the images.’

  Thrawn was sabotaging them.

  ‘They aren’t as good as they could be,’ he said with a slight wisp of a demoralised smile.

  ‘They’re unusable,’ she said correcting him. He probably thinks I’m blaming him, she realised. Something else that can’t be helped. ‘Right,’ she said, remembering the others with a sudden jerk of her head, looking up. Her mind went blank. Where had they left off yesterday? Her viruses rose up in a disordered flurry, jittery with nerves. I can’t remember what scene we were doing. I can’t do my job.

  Thrawn was winning.

  ‘Cilla, where did we finish last night?’ She tried to make her voice sound bright and friendly, but it was wan, near tears.

  ‘Temp’era dal principio del mattino,’ said Cilla, with a sigh, wondering if the whole production was a mistake.

  ‘Um. Is that your line?’ Milena’s two fists were clenched together, shaking up and down as if rattling dice.

  ‘I haven’t managed to do any singing yet, Milena. I don’t sing until Virgil enters. I’m playing Virgil, remember?’

  They were only thirty-seven lines into the narrative text, which was left unsung, intimated by the music and depicted in the visuals. The poor actors had not yet had a chance to sing. They had only posed for the imagery, over and over. They must think it such a waste of their time.

  I will still do this, thought Milena the director. She reached across Toll, punched buttons, coordinates. She closed her eyes altogether. The light from the hall came into her mind of Reformation, and with her eyes closed, she saw Peterpaul and Cilla look at each other and shake their heads.

  ‘It really would be so much easier if you took those things out of your eyes,’ said Toll Barrett. He meant the mirror lenses.

  ‘I can’t Toll, and I can’t explain why,’ said Milena. She had to work with her eyes closed. Otherwise she would have to work rocking back and forth to escape the blurring of her vision.

  I will do this anyway. I can still make this work. Milena had learned how to work with her eyes firmly closed.

  Controlled by Milena’s mind came the images. She was so familiar with the images by now.
She saw the dark wood, its polished dead branches, its black twigs like claws. She almost felt the soil, black with centuries of good, natural decay, overlaid with generations of fallen leaves and bark. Beyond the branches, she could feel the distance to the high, volcanic slopes. There was the brush of an early breeze, moving branches in waves. She could feel the air scudding up the high slopes over the rocks, moving the clouds, as dawn light slowly broke with a pale tint of sunrise. It was the end of a terrible night, lose in a dark wood. Imagine, thought Milena, when this is all over.

  The leopard entered, prowling, bright skinned, with a Cheshire cat smile. The music transcribed the words into sounds.

  And it did not did not depart before my eyes,

  but did so impede my way that more than once

  I turned round to go back

  ‘Uh,’ said Toll Barrett. ‘Maybe you could make that leopard look a little less human. Unless that’s what you want.’

  Milena forced the face back to animal form. ‘OK,’ she said.

  Peterpaul, in ordinary dress, an ordinary man, thick-necked in a short-sleeved shirt began to limp along the mountainside. The sun mounted up into the stars of morning. Milena placed him in the landscape. He walked on its ground, as the leopard prowled, to be joined by a lion.

  Toll Barrett tapped her hand.

  ‘Milena, look at what you’re doing,’ he said.

  Milena opened her eyes. All along the bottom of the lion’s feet, her beautifully imagined lion, there was a searing, crackling line of light: bad composite work. She closed her eyes. It was not there in what she was piecing together in her head. It shouldn’t be there. Milena knew how to build up an image! Damn. Damn. Damn.

  Milena found that she had slammed the console three times. Cilla, Peterpaul, Toll all looked at her in shock.

  Thrawn had found the way to ruin her. Oh the elegance of it, oh the technique! Thrawn was placing perfectly recreated, common, amateurish flaws right in the heart of the Reformation image. In exactly the right place. Who else could do that? Who would ever believe she was?