The Child Garden

by Geoff Ryman

  ‘No I didn’t,’ said Milena, pulling away her hand.

  ‘You didn’t know.’ Root’s mouth formed the word like a kiss. ‘You didn’t know you was doing it.’ Root tried to reach up and stroke her head. Milena leaned away. ‘We’re like a huge ocean, with a leaky boat on top. The boat is all we know of ourselves. The rest is underneath.’

  ‘This is nonsense,’ said Milena, and tried to stand, but Root was resting across her lap.

  ‘No, love, it’s not.’ Root’s face was suffused with love for her. ‘You broke Candy, and then so we could see, you changed your genes so the cancer came back. Like you were flying flags of joy, saying Here? See? Milena! You brought the cancer back so that all of us can live!’

  Milena succeeded in pushing Root away from her. She stood up, and walked away as if she could escape from what had happened.

  ‘Because of you, we can all get old again!’ Root said. ‘We’ll see our children grow!’

  ‘I don’t want people to get old!’ exclaimed Milena, her back towards Root. ‘And I hate children. So why would I do something like that, eh? Eh?’

  ‘We can copy the new gene you made. We can put it in new retroviruses, we can cure everyone!’

  ‘After what happened the last time?’ Milena found her two fists were clenched together in rage and were shaking at Root. ‘You’re still going to muck around after what happened last time! Who knows, maybe you’ll kill everyone off straight away, this time!’ She was shouting. She turned back around, and hugged herself. ‘What’s going to happen to me?’

  She heard Root rustle up from her feet and swish her way towards her. She felt the warm, plump hands on her shoulder. She was turned around and enveloped in the fatty tissues of Root’s arms and breasts.

  ‘Oh Milena, love, don’t be worry, don’t be fear. We got the genes that shut off the new blood vessels, we got the genes that stop the growing. We’ll give you those, we’ll make you well!’

  ‘Will you make me like Lucy, too?’ asked Milena, as cold as ice, and pushed Root away again.

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Root, shaking her head.

  ‘I don’t want to be like Lucy!’ Here was a new dark terror. To grow so old that you understood nothing of the world, except that everything and everyone you loved was dead. Milena’s fingers were dug into her hair.

  ‘Sssh. Sssh. If you don’t want it, then you won’t be. With what you can do? You can change your cells, move things round, cut, splice. Nothing will happen that you don’t want to. You’re Milena, who is immune.’

  ‘What cancers? What cancers do I have?’

  Root looked helpless.

  ‘Well tell me!’

  ‘All of them,’ said Root very quietly. ‘All of them we ever knew of.’

  The room seemed to hiss all around them, as if the walls were leaking air.

  The merry viruses had already known where she was ailing. The merry viruses began to roll off a list.

  Skin—squamous epithelium, basal, and pigment cells—squamous and basal carcinoma, malignant melanoma

  Alimentary tract—squamous epithelium of lips, mouth, tongue, oesophagus—squamous carcinoma

  Alimentary tract—columnar epithelium of stomach, small bowel, large bowel—carcinoma

  Milena found she was chuckling.

  ‘Isn’t it a bit excessive?’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Wouldn’t one have been enough?’

  No, replied the merry viruses. The whole balance had to be restored. All the cancers had to be brought back.

  ‘We’ll be with you, love, all of us,’ said Root, dismayed. ‘The Terminals, the Angels, we’ll be with you all the time, helping you fight, singing in your blood.’

  Nasopharynx, larynx and lungs—bronchial epithelium—carcinoma

  ‘I hope cancer likes music,’ said Milena. She was shaking, as if with laughter. She found that her hands were on her face, feeling the flesh. There were pimples on her nose.

  ‘Oh, Milena, if only you knew how much we all love you for this.’

  ‘That sure makes all the difference,’ said Milena. ‘I used to wonder why those Mayan maidens let themselves be thrown over the edge of cliffs. Now I know. Everyone loved them for it.’

  ‘No one’s throwing you over a cliff. You’re going to get well!’ Root exclaimed in anguish.

  Urinary system including bladder—urothelium cells—carcinoma

  ‘Yah,’ said Milena.

  ‘You have to believe you are,’ said Root, warning her.

  Solid epithelial organs—epithelial cells of liver, kidney, thyroid, pancreas, pituitary, etc—carcinoma

  ‘Shut down!’ Milena said to the viruses, to make them still. It was the viruses that would have told her the meaning of each gene, the function of each protein so that she could change them. There was a kind of hiccup, but the list kept scrolling through her mind. Part of her wanted to know.

  ‘So how are you going to cure me?’ she demanded.

  ‘First, you move into the hospital, St Thomas’s. You live there, you and Mr Stone, he’s pregnant, it’s good for him too. Then we start, site by site. We cut off the new blood supply. Then we have the retroviruses that infect the tumours with growth inhibitor. They start to regress.’

  ‘How long before I’m well?’

  Root looked helpless again. ‘We’re out of practice with cancer.’

  ‘You don’t know.’

  Root shook her head.

  Milena began to feel sick and weak in her stomach. She needed to sit down. She dropped back down onto the one chair.

  ‘I want to see the baby,’ Milena said. Already life had bargained her down. ‘I never thought I would have a child, and I want to see her. I want to finish the Comedy. We’ve only got backgrounds for two of the books! I want to go up again and finish the Comedy!’

  ‘And you will,’ said Root, going a little harder. ‘You’ll do those things and more.’

  ‘If I die and if Mike dies, then the baby will be an orphan. Just exactly what I didn’t want her to be!’

  ‘You are not going to die. Why do you think we asked you here? The Doctors, me, the Consensus, we’ve got it all planned, exactly how you’re going to get well.’

  Milena looked up at her, bleakly. I’ve done it again, she thought. I’ve done exactly what the Consensus wanted. I don’t even have to think.

  Milena felt an undertow. It was as if she had something dark inside her, pulling her down. It was larger than she was and had different interests. Life had wanted cancer back, all of life, the ocean within her that was part of her but which she did not know and could not control. Milena began to be afraid.

  Milena went up and Milena came down and Milena gave the world cancer. Hop skip and jump.

  ‘I could go to Antarctica,’ she said. ‘I could go to Antarctica and I wouldn’t be free.’

  ‘You take on too much,’ said Root, her lips heavy as if with sadness. ‘You always nipping about the place. It was like that with cancer. It always took the ones who did for everyone else. When they went, other people didn’t know how they could go on. Well, you going to have to let other people take care of you now, Milena. I know you don’t like it. You have to let yourself be the child, now.’

  Milena was bullied by sympathy. She let Root keep hold of her hand.

  ‘Come on,’ said Root, patting her arm. ‘Come on, love, let’s get you home, let’s get you home and talk to Mr Stone. We’re going to fight this thing and we’re going to win.’

  Central nervous system whispered the viruses. The list continued.

  Outside, the Bees were gathered.

  Their faces were rigid, caught in a rigour of ecstasy, washed in waves of thought. The forest of the Consensus rose up huge around them, dazzling them with the processes of photosynthesis and elimination. Beneath their feet, the thought patterns of over one million people pulsed.

  The Bees were dazzled by it. Tears streamed out of their faces and they clutched each other’s hands.

  ‘Milena,’ the
y all whispered, like trees blown in a wind. They were caught up in the patterns of the forest of flesh. They were a forest of flesh. They wore curtains of vine leaves grown out of themselves. They were sheltered by a canopy of leaves growing out of their backs. People were becoming more and more like plants.

  ‘Milena. Milena Shibush,’ the Bees whispered over and over in love. ‘Garden.’

  They grew fruit out of themselves, heavy human fruit full of human sugars. They grew roses. The rose was a symbol of Milena. It was a symbol of the cancer. The Bees loved them both. They formed a wall of love in front of her, transfixed, trembling under the skin. The tears on their faces tremored slightly as they crept down their cheeks.

  Milena stood facing them. ‘They keep following me,’ she said in despair.

  ‘Go on, move,’ said Root to them.

  The Bees tried to shuffle, but it was as if their feet had taken root in the soil. Much longer, and they would take root, growing tender white shoots into the earth, as if from seedling potatoes.

  ‘Part!’ shouted Root. ‘Like the Red Sea! Move!’ Root advanced, holding Milena’s hand. Root drew her hand back to strike.

  ‘Please,’ whispered Milena.

  There was a great rustling. It was as if the ocean parted. Slowly at first with the sound of many leaves shifting, hissing like the sound of surf, a passage began to clear. The wall split open with gathering speed, a cleft penetrating deeper in the mass of Bees. As if something had been sparked by the movement, the Bees came awake. They began to sing in joy.

  Milena Shibush

  Milena Cancer

  Cancer Cancer

  Cancer Shibush

  Shibush Flower

  Flower Cancer

  Flower Flower

  Cancer Flower

  The wall of love became a wall of voices. Milena moved dazed through the shadows cast by the vines and the leaves that grew out of the human backs of the Bees.

  It rained flowers. The Bees tore them from their backs and threw them. The human roses fell over Milena, leaking clear sap. The flowers were caught by human thorns in her hair. Milena moved through the Bees and the wall of human hands.

  Milena moved into the sunlight, onto the steps of the Consensus. As if she pulled them by wires, the Bees were dragged after her, still singing. They followed her down the steps.

  Flower Cancer

  Flower Shibush

  Shibush Flower

  ‘I hate that,’ said Milena. At once, the song was cut off, like a thread.

  On Marsham Street people were running. They ran towards the Consensus and the tumult of the Bees. They ran away from it, bearing news. Boys in the uniform of the Estate School shouted to each other. They swung down from the scaffoldings. Tykes still carrying laundry baskets stumbled down stairs and into the street.

  Cancer, the people said, cancer.

  A woman was leaning out of a window and a boy was shouting up to her. ‘They say the cancer has come back!’ A horsecart was reined to a halt. ‘What’s that?’ the driver called as if in alarm.

  Bells began to ring over and over, in no pattern at all.

  ‘We got to get you out of this,’ said Root, and gave Milena’s hand a quick tug. She led them down the remaining steps and into the gathering crowd.

  Transfixed, the Bees followed, gathering up people in front of them like a steam shovel. The crowd swirled, clotted, trying to change direction, trying to avoid the Bees, trying to avoid the sickness and the thorns.

  ‘The Garda are coming!’ said Root, and hauled Milena forward.

  A man in an apron stained with green grease seized Milena by the shoulders. ‘Cancer’s back!’ he roared with joy.

  ‘It’s true!’ someone shouted down from a window. ‘I’m Terminal and I’ve just been told. It’s true!’

  There was cheer from all along the street.

  ‘Move!’ shouted Root at the man in the apron. His face went blank. Root pushed him out of the way.

  Milena stumbled forward. She felt sick. Her knees suddenly gave way. Root scooped her up in her arms and carried her. Milena’s head fell backwards and she looked up.

  There was a sound overhead, as if the air had become wood.

  Helicopters roared over the tops of the purple trees, that sighed and swayed. White tubes were spat out from the machines. The tubes wrapped themselves around the trees. The Garda came swinging down the white web, white boots swinging.

  ‘There’ll be merry hell now,’ said Root.

  There were screams behind them as people suddenly surged forward; a wave of them broke against Root’s back. Root and Milena were swept forward along Marsham Street, towards Horseferry Road.

  The Bees tried to run too, but they were held by the lines of life all around them, from the crowd, from the forest of the Consensus. They ran in slow motion, as if time flowed more sluggishly for them. Perhaps it did.

  The Garda raised the palms of their hands, and tubes burst forth from their palms. The tubes shot towards the Bees, whipping around their arms and legs.

  ‘Leave them alone!’ whispered Milena.

  The Bees were entangled in the translucent tubing. They fought against it as it drew them together in a net. Then the tubes leapt up like the tongues of frogs catching insects, high into the sky, silver against blue, hitting the helicopters and sticking to them. Very suddenly, the Bees were elevated five or six at a time, as if taking wing. They were hauled skywards towards the bubbles of the helicopters.

  ‘Milena!’ they called, as if for salvation, kicking their protein-starved, scrawny legs.

  Root pushed her way onto Horseferry Road. It was blocked with reined-in carts, or with bundles that people had let drop in order to watch. Milena felt a burning in her belly, like very severe indigestion. Root swung her shoulders from side to side, shoving people to one side. She came to a thinning of the crowd and began a burdened run. Milena could feel the swaying back and forth of the volumes of flesh on Root’s thighs.

  From all over the floor of the Pit, bells were ringing. There was the light clamouring of the signal bells of each Estate. There was the heavy, droning toll of church bells, and the great din of the bells of Westminster Abbey. Everyone’s face was turned towards the sky. The helicopters rose over the tops of the buildings of Horseferry.

  Root slowed to a staggering walk. She dodged round the carts stopped in the middle of the embankment road. Milena slipped out of her grasp. ‘Can you walk?’ Root asked her. Milena nodded. Root led her down the granite steps of the embankment, to the jetty, on the river.

  On the river, the horse ferry floated in place, the tillerman and the passengers crowded into its prow. Beside the jetty, in a small barge, two Slump Bobbers gazed up at the sky. Behind them was a cargo of mattresses. Root stepped down into their boat.

  ‘You get us out of this,’ she said to the two boys, leaving no possibility of denial.

  ‘What’s that all about?’ the Slumpers asked.

  ‘Just some bloody Bees,’ said Root and helped Milena step onto the mattresses. ‘You lie down there,’ said Root.

  ‘Lo, she’s no ill, is she?’ one of the boys asked. ‘We can’t sell them if people think there’s sickness on them.’

  ‘Oh! Everybody’s ill. Don’t tell anybody and they won’t know,’ said Root, slapping the boy’s shoulder. ‘Go on, now, the Garda’s pulling people in.’

  The boys pushed the boat away from the jetty and one of them danced across the mattresses to take the till. A small, dirty sail was unfurled.

  Milena lay on her back, listening to the slopping of water under the prow and along the sides of the boat. It was a comforting, satisfying sound. Milena felt more at peace. Looking up she saw the ancient buildings of the embankment and their bamboo scaffoldings. She saw people clinging to the bamboo, leaning out or up to see. Bees dangled from threads in the sky. The helicopters chopped their way through the mix of gases that bore them up. They headed east and south, bound for Epping, or the New Forest or even the South Downs. The
Bees would be dumped there. But they would return.

  In her hand, Milena still held a human rose. She lifted it up to her nose to smell it. It was perfumed, like freshly washed, soapy human skin. ‘It’s all so bizarre,’ she said. She sat up and leaned on one arm, to look behind the boat.

  All along Lambeth Bridge traffic had come to a halt and groups of people singing and marching arm in arm were spreading the news. They talked to people in the carts, animated, waving their hands. The word cancer kept cutting through the air between them. There were threads of song, from Singers no longer able to keep quiet.

  But in the quiet on the river it seemed to Milena that she saw something else moving among and through the people on the bridge. Something seemed to impel them forward, sweeping them along with it. It seemed to push behind them, and force its way out of them, pouring out of their eyes and mouths, making their hands leap and their feet spring. It was as if she were seeing the force of life, moving through them.

  Milena looked at the people, looked at life, as if she were being borne away from it. What have I done? she asked herself, amid the sound of helicopters and church bells. Life had forced its way through her like a bush through soil. Life has a will. It needs things. It needs us to grow wings, or larger brains, or pads on our elbows, and we do. That’s how it was done, she thought, remembering the foliage growing out of Bees. Life has a need, and need hammered on the door of our genes until the genes were changed by will. That’s how we grew, up from the slime. We needed hands, and made them. Only now, Lord, now we know we can do it. It will all happen faster.

  Milena saw the clouds over Lambeth Bridge. That’s how there are spiders in the sky. They thought themselves into that shape. She smiled. Give the Bees time, she told the helicopters. Give them time, and they will live up there, suspended between ice crystals on the tubes. Will you drive them from there too?

  That’s what we are becoming. The Bees are our future. Life wants us to be more like plants, there’s not enough room on the planet now for hunters. We’re growing new shoots in so many directions at once, the Consensus will never be able to hold us. The Bees and Lucy and the GEs and the Singers. We’re a new forest growing out of the old. We’re pushing it back.