Geoff Ryman - The Child Garden

Beside the loading bay there were suddenly thick, purple leaves, flapping like great wings and bowing away from her. In the forest of the Consensus, Milena looked up. She saw Dante and Beatrice come out of Leake Street and walk towards the river. The chorus sang of the seven ladies stopping in cool shade. Dante and Beatrice walked into the shadow of the Shell.

The leaves of the Consensus applauded. Milena heard shouts from below, and the helicopter descended into a forest of hands beneath the forest.

More Garda dancing, flicking up bolts, sliding her from the helicopter. All around them, Singers were singing, Bees were chanting. ‘Give us the disease, Milena. Milena, the disease!’ Someone was licking her hand, to become ill. The stretcher was turned around and Milena saw people in the windows of Marsham Street. There were people on the steps and under the fleshy trees. The people roared. Flowers were cast over her. They fell like rain, human flowers, real flowers.

What a fuss, she thought, what a fuss to make over a second-rate director. But she knew it was the conjunction of the cancer and the Comedy, both together.

Overhead Dante walked the banks of the River Thames. By Hungerford Footbridge he climbed down steps, wading into the water. The River Thames flowed like history. The Thames was now the River Eunoe, that restores the memory of the good a soul has done in life, its labours of love.

Below, in Marsham Street, the Singers began to sing one of Rolfa’s songs. The Bees joined in, unable to resist. They all began to sing in Dog Latin, as the lips of the Consensus parted, and its mouth opened amid its own forest.

Oh no, you won’t, thought Milena. Then over all the other voices, she heard one other voice begin to sing.

The voice was weak and distant. Who is singing? thought Milena. She was too weak to turn her head to see. Then she realised: she was the one who was singing. She was singing something from the old London that was gone, nothing to do with the chants and the sound of the grand opera overhead. She was singing for the Spread-Eagle and the street markets and the men unloading beer barrels and the starlings who lived in the trees and the crumbling buildings and the fringed and heavy feet of the carthorses and for the children who peddled coffee: for the children, for Berry, and for the very old people they would now turn into.

Milena felt the bier wobble as she was carried onto the tongue of the Consensus. She looked up through the fleshy trees and the tangle of leaves to the sky, where the light played. All the world seemed to be submerged in water, clear and full of bubbles that looked like pearls. The water of Eunoe, memory. Rolfa’s music gathered for a final blow. This is the last I’ll see of the Comedy, thought Milena. Yet it was not the Comedy, or her great position or the Zoo or this circus that Milena would miss.

The living tongue of the Consensus cradled them, and bore them all down into itself, and the sound and the light were lost.

But the silence remained.

Inside the white brick corridors all the children had gone. The Reading Rooms were empty; no children sang; there was no sound of guitars or bells. There was only the muffled sound of the Comedy above and the harsh glow of the bare electric light.

Milena was lowered to the floor. She could smell dust. Mike was lowered next to her, on his sling chair. There were flowers in his lap, flowers that had been thrown over him. As he leaned forward over Milena’s bier the flowers spilled onto the floor.

‘You all right?’ he asked gently.

‘I’m fine,’ she answered.

I am in no pain. Everything swirls, everything dances, and still I cannot believe. I still cannot believe that this is happening, that I am dying.

‘They’re going to make you part of the Upper House,’ Mike told her quietly. ‘Do you know what that means?’

Milena knew what it meant and she did not want it so she shook her head. Mike thought she meant she had not understood.

‘It means they keep the pattern,’ he said. ‘The pattern they Read. They save it to consult it. It means even after you the, you are still part of the Consensus.’

‘It means,’ croaked Milena, and began to laugh, ‘they need me for something.’ The laugh was a shrivelling inwards from the chest, as if in a coughing fit. ‘I wonder what happens to the Lower House?’ It was rhetorical question — Milena knew the answer. Mike Stone shrugged, to indicate he had no idea. ‘They get wiped,’ Milena told him. ‘Wiped clean away.’

The rustle of the white dress, the buttocks. Milena smiled and shook her head. Here was Root.

‘Any experiences with the paranormal, Mr Stone?’ Root murmured the question, not wanting to disturb Milena.

Only my entire life, thought Milena. Only a performance on a cube that should not have been there from a woman who cannot die. Only a plate of lamb that should not have been there. Only London. Only an enemy who shivered and danced inside my eyes. Only Angels and Cherubim who talked to me through the wires, the wires of gravity.

‘Now it will just be a few seconds longer and we’ll be ready.’ said Root, folded into herself by sadness. But Root could not stay closed up for long, and suddenly her face blossomed out into its great grin. ‘How are you my love?’ Root asked, picking up Milena’s hand. ‘How are you my darling?’

The great grin was enough to make Milena smile back. ‘Not too well,’ she said.

‘You been here before so you know what happens next, don’t you?’ said Root.

‘Yes,’ lied Milena.

‘You’ll see everything, all at once, your whole life.’

Like drowning men do. ‘No time like the present,’ said Milena. There was no time left but the present.

‘I got things wrong didn’t I?’ said Root. There had been no cure.

‘Yup,’ said Milena. No denying it.

‘But you’ll live forever, here,’ said Root, and held up her hands, to indicate the Consensus, all about them.

I’ll never be free of the Consensus.

‘And here,’ said Root, and touched her own heart.

But not here, thought Milena, of the flesh in which she lay, on the brick floor. ‘I want to be free,’ whispered Milena.

Root looked at her out of love and pity. Such a hope could only lead to pain and disappointment. ‘Then maybe you will be,’ she said, falsely, and touched Milena’s hand. ‘I’ll be back.’ She stood up, and rustled away.

Mike pulled himself out of the sling-chair and crawled towards Milena on all fours.

Like the opera in the sky, Mike leaned over her.

‘There’s something I have to tell you,’ Mike said. ‘I caught a virus from you. A receptor turned transmitter. I caught you. Do you understand? I have you in my mind. Like you have Heather.’

How very strange. It’s as if I’m shedding myself all over the place, like leaves. ‘So that’s how you know about Heather,’ murmured Milena. ‘That’s how you knew about the tapestry.’ The weakness of her voice surprised her.