Geoff Ryman - The Child Garden

‘I’m always busy,’ says Milena, her voice dull.

‘Well,’ says Rolfa with a dreadful heartiness. ‘You’re a success.’

Pause. Milena goes colder. ‘I’ve got something of yours,’ she says, rising up from her beanbag. She goes to her closet, her new Tarty flat has drawers and closets, and she finds the thing stuffed behind preserving jars and spare batteries. With a sudden wrench of frustration, she pulls it out, scattering jars. A dirty lump of felt smelling of childhood. She turns and presents it to Rolfa.

‘This,’ she says.

‘Piglet,’ says Rolfa staring at it.

‘Take it, I don’t want it,’ says Milena, angry now.

Rolfa has already reached up and taken it. She sits with it on her lap, and strokes its ears, and feels its stomach, as if to make sure something is still there. She shudders, as if touching something cold, and then passes it back to Milena. ‘I left him on purpose. It was a present. Old time’s sake.’ She shrugs, in a gesture of utter helplessness.

The two of them look at each other. Milena reaches up and takes Piglet back.

‘Someone’s cooking supper for me,’ says Rolfa and stands. She extends her hand. ‘Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye,’ says Milena and shakes it. Rolfa leans over her, vast, intimidating, like an adult to a child. Milena wants to fight. Why bother to tell me at all? Why didn’t you just go?

Rolfa bunches herself under the door, out of the doll’s house, onto the stairway. Milena stands in the doorway, feeling as swollen and bitter as a wound. She thinks it is only social habit that is making them go through this ritual.

And Rolfa turns and smiles with her new white teeth, a beautiful wide smile that the old Rolfa could not have made. ‘Such larks,’ she says. ‘I’m going to have such fun in Antarctica.’

Milena can suddenly imagine it, dogs and ice and stars. She can see what might have been, Hortensia and Rolfa, happy on the ice that was as white as Rolfa’s new smile. An Antarctic smile.

Out from one eye, in a trail, there is a line of moisture, and damp shiny fur. ‘Pooh and Piglet go in search of the South Pole. Eh? Who’d have thought it? Me to Antarctica, you up into space. Well if you think it’s hell down here, watch out, cause it’s purgatory up there.’ Rolfa barks out a laugh and makes a ghost punch at Milena’s shoulder. ‘Couldn’t keep either of us down, could they? Ah? Ha-ha-ha!’ Rolfa is shouting.

Awkward, she shuffles backwards on the landing.

‘Anyway, take care of yourself, old girl,’ she bellows at Milena, too loudly, swaying dangerously on the tiny landing. ‘Take care of yourself. Get your work done. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be all right. Right as rain, eh? Ta-ra!’

Rolfa starts to climb down the steps backwards, one at a time, still looking at Milena, still howling as loudly. She is shouting more loudly than Milena has ever heard anyone shout, shouting across a tundra colder than mere nature could ever blast flat, through the Dead Space.

‘Be good, and if you can’t be good have fun. Remember, tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life! Ah? Ah? Ha-ha!’ The head is laughing as it disappears below the level of the landing.

The shouting continues. ‘Don’t take any wooden nickels! Ha! Old Canadian expression! Mind your pees and queues! Keep well! Keep well! Keep well!’ It is a fervent hope. The voice falls away, with a kind of cough.

Milena tries to go back to packing. She has packing to do after all. Plenty to do. And she looks out of her window, in the dusk now, and there is Rolfa, huge and swaying, her back towards Milena, walking towards the quay.

And me, the one who remembers, I know. I know that this is the last I’ll see of Rolfa. There is her back, the gait, the huge round shoulders, the sagging head, all of it familiar. As familiar as if we still lived together.

And oh! Rolfa turns around and waves, waves from the shore of the Slump, where the punt is still waiting for her. ‘Ta-ra!’ she booms as if across the ice.

And little Milena waves a little wave. The lamps are out, and it is dark in the room. Does Rolfa see her. I think not. But wait, yes, she would.

There is a fluorescent patch of skin now on my palm. Is it glowing? Does she see it? Am I burning?

I’ll never know. Rolfa gets in the boat, but she is still standing. She stays standing as the narrow unsteady craft wobbles its way back from the shore. The hat is turning over and over in her hands. Milena stands by the window, stroking Piglet’s ears, smelling childhood, and she is thinking: what do I do now? What can I do? I’m getting old and selfish and I need to have someone here, someone real and alive, not a memory.

Me, I know what lies ahead. Ahead of her lies space and Mike Stone.

Behind her lies love.

I remember Rose Ella’s room, the room I stayed in at the Estate of the Restorers, who wanted to bring back the past. I remember the Chinese panels on the walls of the room and the spaces in the inlay, the shoes, the clothes, the dolls and the bare gaps the people left behind them. The Dead Spaces, full of the things they might have felt, might have thought, might have done.

If only, only, they were still here.

Antarctica was one of the few places in the world from which it would be impossible to see the Comedy.

And suddenly Milena is in the Bulge, saying goodbye. Through the window, she sees the stars. She can sense their weight now. The stars to her are anchors, solid and unmoving hooks on which to hang things. She is calling for Bob, plucking the strings of thought that are in the air.

‘Going.’ she says. All the other feelings, of farewell and anticipated return throb in the lines of gravity. She passes on feelings, direct.

Ah, love, hums the Angel, as if plucking strings in her.

And she asks him a question she would be too embarrassed to put into words, a personal question about him that was also a heartfelt mystery to her, a question that was somehow one with the unmoving stars.

Bob answers. We’re embedded in the flesh, the Angel says. He means the flesh of the Consensus, and for a moment, Milena can feel the flesh of the Consensus in her mind, a mountainous and tangled pattern etched in the lines of gravity.

But once we leave it, he says, meaning once we become Angels, then we are embedded in the lines. And we just keep dancing in the wires. And Milena feels how the self could slither up out of the Slide, the Charlie Slide. The self is a perturbation in the forces of attraction. Gravity pulled energy out of nothing. The Angels do not need feeding. The self is embedded in the universe, beyond harm.

Milena remembers: I look through eyes of flesh at the darkness between the stars, the small part of the universe that flesh can see. And I’m thinking that we are embedded in flesh too, and I’m wondering if we can become Angels, too.

Goodbye, says Bob, but the feeling is: you’ll be back, girl, you’ll be back here again.

‘Time to go,’ says Mike Stone, months before I marry him, ducking down into the little Bulge, and feeding the last of my equipment into the holding maws of the cargo racks. I’m strapped into the living chair, and Mike Stone gives me a quick kiss on the top of my head. Like a butterfly, it is beautiful, but I’m not sure I don’t want to swat it away from my hair.

And there is my future husband, standing in the open mouths of the two Bulges, where they meet and kiss. He gives me an odd little wave, just the tips of his fingers moving, as if in a breeze.

Then there is a hiss and the seal is broken. The mouths of the Bulges purse shut, shifting and crinkling and turning inward. I look out of the window, at the stars. I think of the lines and the Angels moving up and down them. The air is full of people dancing.