Geoff Ryman - The Child Garden

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 fist 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 into the mass of Bees. As if something had been sparked by the movement, the Bees came awake. They began to sing in joy.

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.

‘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 a 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 not 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.