Geoff Ryman - The Child Garden

She came sideways, wary, as if on broken plates, cringing. Frightened of me, frightened of everybody. When Rolfa was close, Milena hit her.

‘You let them! You let everybody. You’re going to let them do it and you don’t have the right. You going to spend your time breaking rocks? What a bloody stupid waste!’

Rolfa looked back at her forlornly, and Milena heard the sound of wind in the trees.

‘Don’t just stand there.’

More silence, and applause from the leaves.

‘Do something!’ Milena’s hands were raised around her head, fingers spread like claws.

Rolfa hugged her. Milena was suddenly enfolded in long, soft, warm arms, and she was pressed against Rolfa’s stomach. ‘Sssh, Little One, ssssh,’ she said.

The edges of Milena’s vision were going black and grainy. I’m going to faint, thought Milena. She meant it as a joke, to make it ridiculous, so it wouldn’t happen. Then her knees gave way. I really am going to faint, she thought. Real people don’t faint.

‘Ooowwgot ta sssip owwn,’ she said. She was trying to say she had to sit down. Suddenly she felt herself lifted up. Her stomach felt weighted down and she thought she was going to vomit. She saw the moon dip and dive about the sky like a swallow, and she felt herself being laid out on the grass. She settled into it and went utterly still.

‘Little Ones shouldn’t drink too much,’ said Rolfa.

Milena wished that her clothing were undone. She wanted to put the very tips of her fingers onto the palm of Rolfa’s hand. She couldn’t find it. All she felt was grass. Then there was darkness.

Had Rolfa kissed the top of her head? Had she run her fingers through Milena’s hair?

When Milena awoke, she was cured. She had had enough.

She woke up in her own bed, in the little room in the Shell. How did I get home? she wondered. She didn’t remember. She sat up in bed. Her back was stiff and there was a comprehensive pain in the bones of her head, all around her eyes and temples.

Milena no longer wanted Rolfa. The very thought of Rolfa, of her smell, of her teeth, now made Milena feel a bit ill. The thought of them had become associated with pain. Sick with love, Milena had now become sick of it.

Nothing like a course of aversion therapy, she thought and was ambushed by a wet, explosive sneeze. She wondered dimly what the time was and her viruses told her. Oh Marx and Lenin! she thought. I’ve got a performance of Love’s Labour’s this morning. I’ve missed it. She felt relieved. Missing a performance was the right thing to do. She groaned, and lay back down on her bed.

Then the door opened and a stranger came in.

She’s made a mistake, Milena thought, all the rooms look alike. She managed a crumpled smile of tolerance and waited for the woman to realise she was in the wrong room. The woman began to use Milena’s towel. She was a doe-eyed female with black hair and black eyes and beautiful nut brown skin, not Rhodopsin. She was enormous.

Then Milena saw that mere was stubble all over the woman’s bare arms and shoulders, and criss cross cuts from a razor.

‘I shaved,’ said the woman, with a forlorn familiar voice.

‘Rolfa?’ Milena sat up in bed.

‘I decided to do a bunk,’ said Rolfa. She shuffled forward and sat on the bottom of the bed. ‘I had to carry you back.’ Shorn of her pelt, Rolfa had an odd face. It was fleshy and somehow chinless, with a very small, thin mouth that seemed too deeply indented between nose and chin. But the black and liquid eyes were the same.

‘They don’t know I’m here,’ said Rolfa. ‘Can I stay?’

Milena was not sure what she felt. ‘Yes, yes of course. What have you brought with you?’ She meant clothes, shoes, toothbrush…

‘Piglet,’ said Rolfa, and picked up a shapeless lump of felt from the floor. It was some kind of stuffed toy. ‘Piglet goes everywhere with me.’ Rolfa sat Piglet on her lap facing her and looked at it fondly. Even from where Milena stood, Piglet smelled of biscuit crumbs.

‘You didn’t bring anything else with you?’ Milena asked softly.

‘Wasn’t anything else to bring.’ Rolfa smiled at her. ‘I took some money. They’ll say I stole it.’ She looked back down at Piglet. ‘I did.’

‘Will they come looking for you?’

Rolfa nodded. ‘They’re scared. Papa will be scared. The Family says his genes are impure because he’s so short. He’ll try to keep me quiet, not let them know. He’ll try to find me himself. We’ll be safe for a while. We’ll be OK for a while.’ She looked at Milena and seemed to be making a promise. ‘After that, they’ll call out the bloodhounds.’

‘I’d better go and tell people not to let anyone know where I live.’

‘There’s a problem,’ said Rolfa and turned. Underneath the cheap new blouse there was a dark swelling of fur. Rolfa held up a razor. ‘I couldn’t reach,’ she said.

Milena came back from the showers with a bucket of hot water. They were silent and awkward with each other. Rolfa took off her blouse, but held it over herself, something she had never done when she had fur. Her skin had been stripped, cut, outraged. There were long straggles of fur that the razor had missed. Milena sawed at the fur on her back with the kitchen knife and used soap from the showers to get up a lather. Then she used the razor. Rolfa mewed quietly as the hair came off in soapy clumps. ‘I’m cold,’ she complained. To Milena, she felt hot, feverish. ‘We’ll put you under a blanket,’ she said. She left Rolfa wrapped up on the bed and looking at her with a trust that made Milena doubt herself.

Well, Milena thought. I’ve got her. Now what do I do with her? The gift had been too sudden, too complete.

Milena went to each of the overstaffed information desks at the Zoo. She asked the Tykes who worked mere not to tell anyone where she lived. ‘Say you’ve never heard of me,’ she told the children. ‘Say there is no record of me.’

Milena did not know the forms that love could take. She lived alone. She could not remember her childhood friends. Her memories of her mother were faint; she saw her mother only as a dim, warm, mauveness. How did people live with love from day to day? Milena was full of misgivings.

Milena came back to her tiny room, with its bed, its sink, its cooker. It was now covered in paper. Rolfa had found the books and papers that had been rescued from her ruined nest. Rolfa lay on her stomach, filling the floor. Broken-backed books and loose sheets of paper filled the sink. They were piled on the cooker. There was a smell of burning. Fire! thought Milena in alarm and went to the cooker. The papers were untouched, though there was an acrid stench of scorching. How, wondered Milena did she manage to do this?

‘Look what I found,’ Rolfa said and held up a book. It looked rumpled, as if it had been left out in the rain, and there were ring stains on the cover.

‘Oh,’ said Milena. The title was unreadable.

‘Do you think,’ Rolfa asked, ‘that you could possibly call me Pooh?’

The word Pooh meant something very specific and unpleasant to Milena. It certainly did not mean teddy bear.

‘Why on earth would you want me to call you that?’ Milena asked.

‘Pooh,’ repeated Rolfa. ‘Pooh. You must have heard of Pooh. He’s a bear. He’s in a book.’

A GE novel? Milena had sudden visions of an entire Polar literature. ‘Is it new?’ she asked.

‘No, no,’ said Rolfa and stood up. ‘Here.’ She showed Milena a drawing of Pooh.

‘He’s not part of the culture,’ said Milena, meaning there was no virus of him. She reads, thought Milena in admiration, unheard-of books.