Geoff Ryman - The Child Garden

‘I need your help,’ whispered Milena.

He closed his eyes. ‘They want to wipe me,’ he said. ‘They’re wiping everyone.’

Please?

And Al’s eyes looked back into hers with terror. He shook his head. ‘I can’t lift my head above ground.’

Milena closed her eyes and nodded. She took hold of Al’s arm, as if to say, I understand. Her hand was shaking. I must look mad, she thought, and tried to smooth down her hair. I didn’t remember to comb my hair.

Al was still looking at her, and his eyes were full of horror. Am I really that bad? Milena thought. She pulled off her stinking new shoes and began to wade towards the boat.

They slid down the mud into the water. Milena’s immune system sent Mice crawling all over her knees and ankles. The crawling itched. The water was thick and hot, and the mud felt like porridge suffused with bits of twig. Milena rinsed her shoes and then they climbed up rope ladders into the boat. It was crowded. Everyone stood pressed close together. Milena had a wall of sweaty backs pushed against her face. There was no conversation. The boat pulled away from the bank, and the people in it sweltered, smelling of mud and reeds. People clung to the outside of the boat, hanging on the rope ladders.

The taxi chugged its way through the locks. The gates were open, the wooden walls were going grey and dry. There were gaps between the timbers where the wood had shrunk. The Slump and the Pit were now on the same water level.

There were high Coral embankments with steps rising up from the docks. They cast cool, delicious shadows. Relieved to be in shade at last, the passengers began to climb slowly, one step at a time, to savour it.

Rowing boats still clustered around the locks, but bigger boats and water-taxis lay tilted on their sides in the mud. Seagulls padded their way clumsily across the silt.

‘I can treat you to a glide,’ Milena said to Al as they waited in line for the steps. She would hire a punt. She didn’t want to be by herself, with Thrawn.

Al shook his head, no. ‘A farmer doesn’t ride with a Party Member.’ It would draw attention, raise questions. He made a gesture of ducking. He had to keep low.

Milena nodded slow acknowledgement. She found a boatman on the quay, and looked back up the lock steps. Al was already gone, lost amid all the other water farmers. But as her boatman rowed them away, up the narrow river, she saw him standing on the edge of the bank. He was still looking at her, puzzled, scowling.

If only it would rain, thought Milena. If it would rain, the images would refract. She felt the small straw basket she carried. At least I still have my flask, she thought. I still have my flask full of water. She went on to the Zoo, and her heart began to sink at the thought of what awaited her there.

The Tykes at the desks prodded each other into silence as Milena approached. Monkeys, Milena called them in her mind, as they fought down grins. Here comes the mad lady, Monkeys.

Milena gave her name, trying to sound normal, asking if there were any messages. It was as if her skin gave off an odour of tension, as if she made the air vibrate with it. One of the girls said something, and because of the padding in her ears, Milena couldn’t hear and had to ask the Monkeys to repeat themselves.

Milena felt their eyes on her back as she walked away. Her shoulders hunched up, and she rocked so badly that she stumbled. She couldn’t be sure if she heard the Monkeys laugh behind her.

She walked down the corridor to the rehearsal rooms. Severed hands scuttled towards her like crabs. They wore rings of coral flowers.

I just have to hold on, Milena told herself. Hold on until Thrawn loses patience, until she breaks, or until they send me into space.

In the rehearsal hall, the cast were waiting. They were trying to record the opening, just the earliest passages of the first Canto. The cast performed, and Milena created the world around them, the world of Dante’s forest. It was to be beamed from space, images the size of a continent.

It wasn’t working.

Milena was late again, for a start. Milena was always late now. I can’t travel early, thought Milena, or I’ll be alone with the images all the way and I couldn’t stand that. So you’ll all have to wait. I’m sorry, but since you wouldn’t believe me if I told you what was happening, you’ll all just have to put up with it.

Milena did not apologise.

You think I’m crazy too, she thought.

Milena could see that in the slightly grim faces ranged against her. Cilia and Peterpaul looked bored and betrayed. And Toll Barrett leaned back in his chair without looking at her at all. A director himself, Toll was helping with the cubing. Milena rocked her head from side to side and put her basket down on a chair.

‘Good morning, Milena,’ said Cilia, deliberately loudly. Expected politeness had not been received.

Tough, thought Milena. ‘Hello,’ she said distracted. She gathered strength to face what was coming. ‘Toll. I’m going to ask you again to keep an eye out for any disruption coming from outside the cube. Huh?’

‘Sure,’ he said, without looking at her.

‘I know that something is disrupting the images.’

Thrawn was sabotaging them.

‘They aren’t as good as they could be,’ he said with a slight wisp of a demoralised smile.

‘They’re unusable,’ she said correcting him. He probably thinks I’m blaming him, she realised. Something else that can’t be helped. ‘Right,’ she said, remembering the others with a sudden jerk of her head, looking up. Her mind went blank. Where had they left off yesterday? Her viruses rose up in a disordered flurry, jittery with nerves. I can’t remember what scene we were doing. I can’t do my job.

Thrawn was winning.

‘Cilia, where did we finish last night?’ She tried to make her voice sound bright and friendly, but it was wan, near tears.

‘Temp’era dal principio del mattino’ said Cilia, with a sigh, wondering if the whole production was a mistake.

‘Um. Is that your line?’ Milena’s two fists were clenched together, shaking up and down as if rattling dice.

‘I haven’t managed to do any singing yet, Milena. I don’t sing until Virgil enters. I’m playing Virgil, remember?’

They were only thirty-seven lines into the narrative text, which was left unsung, intimated by the music and depicted in the visuals. The poor actors had not yet had a chance to sing. They had only posed for the imagery, over and over. They must think it such a waste of their time.

I will still do this, thought Milena the director. She reached across Toll, punched buttons, coordinates. She closed her eyes altogether. The light from the hall came into her mind for Reformation, and with her eyes closed, she saw Peterpaul and Cilia look at each other and shake their heads.

‘It really would be so much easier if you took those things out of your eyes,’ said Toll Barrett. He meant the mirror lenses.

‘I can’t Toll, and I can’t explain why,’ said Milena. She had to work with her eyes closed. Otherwise she would have to work rocking back and forth to escape the blurring of her vision.

I will do this anyway. I can still make this work. Milena had learned how to work with her eyes firmly closed.

Controlled by Milena’s mind came the images. She was so familiar with the images by now. She saw the dark wood, its polished dead branches, its black twigs like claws. She almost felt the soil, black with centuries of good, natural decay, overlaid with generations of fallen leaves and bark. Beyond the branches, she could feel the distance to the high, volcanic slopes. There was the brush of an early breeze, moving the branches in waves. She could feel the air scudding up the high slopes over the rocks, moving the clouds, as dawn light slowly broke with a pale tint of sunrise. It was the end of a terrible night, lost in a dark wood. Imagine, thought Milena, when this is all over.