Geoff Ryman - The Child Garden

Mike nodded.

‘Heather’s not going to the!’ said Milena. She was relieved and happy: Heather won’t be destroyed with me! ‘Say hello to her for me.’ she said. ‘And tell Al, will you? Let him come and talk to her.’

‘I know about them,’ said Mike. ‘I know about Rolfa, too. I know everything now.’ He pointed to his temples. ‘So you don’t have to worry about me. If you are worried about me. Tuh.’ The shudder-chuckle. Mike Stone shook with Rolfa’s shudder-chuckle. ‘I won’t be alone. I’ll still have you to talk to. I’ll tell the child about you, all about you. And you’ll be able to talk to it. Through me.’ In all innocence, he was smiling. ‘It’s what I said when I first told you I wanted to have the baby. No harm can come, I said. And it’s true. You see? It’s true.’

On his hands and knees, he lowered himself and kissed her on the forehead. Milena managed to encircle his neck with one thin arm. ‘I love you,’ said Milena. It was the first time she had said it.

His smile did not change. It was still happy. The eyes did not soften or lose honesty. ‘Yes, I suppose you do. In your own way,’ he said.

The hot hard lump on Milena’s shoulder seemed to ripen. It burst.

‘Ow,’ said Milena, rather mildly, feeling it. There were ragged edges of flesh. The tips of her fingers came away wet, but not with blood. She looked at them. On the tips of her fingers there was clear sap.

‘Oh, Milena,’ said Mike Stone, and pulled something from her.

It was a rose, a human rose.

‘It’s a tumour,’ said Milena. ‘That means it’s immortal. Plant it and it will never the.’

There were other rupturings. Something seemed to fall into the sleeve of her smock. She shook it, and smeared with blood, a snapping turtle crawled out onto the floor. Milena was giving birth to memories.

Her stomach creaked like leather. It creaked and opened up. Something stirred, and Milena lifted up her smock.

There was something new.

It was smooth and pink and had a long extended nose and drooping ears. On Milena’s lap there was the spilled and broken doll of Piglet. As if stepping out of him, shedding old dead skin, there was a new Piglet. He was alive. He looked about him in fear and wonder. Mike Stone reached down and took his hand.

‘Hello, Piglet,’ he murmured kindly. Dazed, Piglet stepped down from Milena.

There was a rustle of skirts.

‘For the love of heaven,’ murmured Root. Piglet stared up at her and cocked his head in curiosity.

‘They’re all getting out while they can,’ said Milena.

Root was shaking her head again and again. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’ She turned and walked towards the Reading Room.

Is this happening now? wondered the Milena who remembered. Or is this a few moments ago? Has this already happened? I can’t remember. Am I the one who is living, or the one who is remembering?

‘It’s all right,’ said Mike, as other hands came to help. The litter was raised. Mike had to let go of Milena. He cradled up the snapping turtle and Piglet. Piglet carried the rose. All of them were carried in the sling chair. They went ahead of Milena, through the ultra-violet, light along the accordion corridor, into the Public Reading Room.

In the room there was a tall man in white, his face behind a clear plastic mask.

‘How much more virus?’ he asked, disapproving. ‘You all ought to be in whites.’

He was a Doctor. Doctors were the highest Estate of all. They supervised the Health Regime. They tended the Consensus.

‘And what the hell is that?’ the Doctor asked, pointing to Piglet.

‘New…’ said Mike Stone, and couldn’t speak. ‘New life,’ he said.

Vita Nuova, whispered a voice from elsewhere.

‘It’s been ultra-violeted,’ said Root to the Doctor. Her hand was on Mike’s shoulder. ‘Mike, love,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to come away now. Come away, or we get two readings mixed up together and that’s very weird.’

‘We’re already mixed,’ he said, his voice strained.

‘It’ll be all right, Mike,’ said Milena.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It will.’ He turned around and leaned over. She had never seen his face like that before. It was twisted, pulled in many directions at once. He looked at her face, looked over all of it. He’s looking at me to remember, she thought. He’s looking at it to remember me. Root’s dark, reassuring, reminding hand on his shoulder pulled gently backwards. He turned and crawled away.

Milena was left alone on the living floor. My, but dying is lonely, thought Milena. Everyone has to fall away.

What happens next?

She remembered Rolfa. This happened to Rolfa. I saw the wave go through her. When does it come? Do you know it? Do you remember, afterwards, all the things you saw, or only some of them?

Overhead, dim, as if in a dream, Rolfa’s music shook the earth and the stone and the flesh of the Consensus. Rolfa, where is Rolfa now?

The voice spoke again, gently. It whispered in Milena’s mind.

What happens next, said the voice, is that you remember. Everything. There is nothing to fear. It seems to go on forever, and only lasts a moment.

Root? Milena tried to sit up, to look around. Who was talking?

I have to go now. But modicum et vos vitebitis me

In a little while you will see me.

It was Rolfa. It was Rolfa who was talking.

Overhead, through the stone, the music suddenly ended. The Comedy was over.

Space shimmered. Suddenly space and time and thought rolled towards her, all together.

Then the wave struck.

Somewhere in memory, Milena saw the face of Chao Li Song as a young man. ‘The problem,’ said the outlaw, ‘is time.’

Milena remembered being on the Hungerford Footbridge and it was crowded with strangers and old friends. She remembered Berowne standing next to her, and he was alive, alive and young, the wind stirring his hair as if with hope, his smile leached of calcium. ‘I want to be part of it,’ he said.

‘ZERO!’ the people called. ‘MINUS ONE! MINUS TWO!’

Lights came on, one after another, and Milena kept splitting into a thousand selves, a thousand moments, each Now a different world, all the moments of her life moving like a bird in flight, each moment separate. Cause and effect were not enough to unite the world.

Paradise is eternally present and so is hell. Time blurs them, crowds them in so close together that salvation and damnation are one. Memory is like being outside time. It can separate them. Memory shows us what heaven is like, where nothing ever happens. It shows us that moment when desire achieves its end, and stays touching, holding the thing it loves, forever. Memory enslaves us, preserving the horror, bending us to it, moulding us to it. Memory is purgatory. To be saved or damned you have to be outside time. You have to step out of this life.

‘Oh!’ Milena howled, lifting up her thin and dancing arms like the branches of a tree. ‘Oh!’ she cried aloud in both pain and joy.

She met Mike Stone for the first time. She met Thrawn McCartney. The apothecary spun on her heel, and the Bees moved on the tidal mud like a flock of flamingoes. Milena faced Max. ‘A big grey book. What did you do with it Max?’ Al the Snide came to help her. ‘A person is a whole universe,’ said Al the Snide. ‘We call memory the Web. Underneath is the Fire. And that just burns.’

Chinese princesses dancing in orderly rows lifted up fans in unison, before a giant, enthroned crab. The King, from Love’s Labour’s stared at her with a dirty face. ‘The food weeps,’ he said. ‘The coffee screams.’ The Seller of Games was peddling mirror contact lenses, and she was singing in great, clear voice: