Geoff Ryman - The Child Garden

The leopard entered, prowling, bright skinned, with a Cheshire cat smile. The music transcribed the words into sounds.

‘Uh,’ said Toll Barrett. ‘Maybe you could make that leopard look a little less human. Unless that’s what you want.’

Milena forced the face back to animal form. ‘OK,’ she said.

Peterpaul, in ordinary dress, an ordinary man, thick-necked in a short-sleeved shirt began to limp along the mountainside. The sun mounted up into the stars of morning. Milena placed him in the landscape. He walked on its ground, as the leopard prowled, to be joined by a lion.

Toll Barrett tapped her hand.

‘Milena, look at what you’re doing,’ he said.

Milena opened her eyes. All along the bottom of the lion’s feet, her beautifully imagined lion, there was a searing, crackling line of light: bad composite work. She closed her eyes. It was not there in what she was piecing together in her head. It shouldn’t be there. Milena knew how to build up an image! Damn. Damn. Damn.

Milena found that she had slammed the console three times. Cilia, Peterpaul, Toll all looked at her in shock.

Thrawn had found the way to truly ruin her. Oh the elegance of it, oh the technique! Thrawn was placing perfectly recreated, common, amateurish flaws right into the heart of the Reformation image. In exactly the right place. Who else could do that? Who would ever believe she was?

‘Lets just stop,’ said Toll.

Milena opened her eyes again. She opened her eyes again, and that meant she had to start rocking again, back and forth, from side to side, like an autistic child.

Cilia looked stricken. She walked forward, playing with the rings on her fingers. She leaned over the counter and looked into Milena’s eyes, or rather tried to. The exchange was cut off by the mirror.

‘Milena. Is all of this too much for you?’

‘No,’ said Milena, hard, determined.

‘It’s a huge project and needs professional imaging. There’s no shame in admitting that.’

‘You’ve done your best and it hasn’t worked.’ Toll Barrett was less sympathetic. Peterpaul was a Singer and refused to speak if it meant a choice between stammering and sounding absurd. He said nothing, but his eyes were heavy on her.

Milena went very still and quiet, closing her eyes. ‘We’re going to try again,’ she said, her face taut. She would not give in. The others sighed.

‘Hello everyone,’ said a familiar voice, ‘Having a good time I hope.’

The voice was strained, like a violin string tuned too tightly. Milena felt everything in her pull tight. There was a kind of ache, all along her scalp. She opened her eyes and looked around.

Thrawn was in the room. Thrawn was wearing a bright autumnal print, but it couldn’t disguise the depredations that had been made in her face. The mouth was sagging to one side. The mouth tried to smile, and failed, as if pulled down by weights hung from wires on her face. Her hair had not been combed for weeks. It was in clumps, lumpy uneven strands that fell into her eyes, or stood up at angles. This is how Thrawn is really looking. This is what this is doing to her. Milena found she could not speak.

‘Anyone mind if I watch?’ Thrawn asked. ‘I just thought I’d pop in and see how it’s going. You must be nearly finished by now. How long has it been since you started? Over two months, isn’t it?’

Milena still said nothing. Silence.

‘Right,’ said Toll Barrett. ‘See what you think of this.’

He replayed what had just been recorded.

The mountain, the pass, the leopard, the lion, the music again, gone over so often it had become almost nauseatingly dull, Rolfa’s beautiful music made unpalatable by long hours of failure. And there it was again, the unreal, mottled flare of light around the lion’s feet. The stars were bleary overhead.

‘Don’t look at the composite,’ said Milena, to Toll. ‘Look at Thrawn. Just keep looking at Thrawn.’

Toll turned. Milena reached down into her bag for the flask.

‘If you’re having trouble,’ said Thrawn, in wary voice, offering genuine help. ‘I could come in, brush these up for you.’ Her eyes were round and sad.

‘Just watch her, Toll.’ Milena unscrewed the cup from the top of the flask. She filled the cup full of water.

I fling water at the light of the image and it is distorted, and she is shown to be a hologram. What a waste of water. Milena sipped it thirstily and looked at Thrawn. Milena saw the worn face and the wild hair. Each hair was visible, individual, out of place, and the wrinkles about the mouth did not float about the face but were embedded in its flesh.

Is that a hologram? Could that possibly be a hologram? What if Thrawn is really here? If I throw water over her and she is really here, that will simply help convince everyone that I’m the one who has gone crazy.

Milena scanned Thrawn, looking at her for some flaw, some line of light. It was perfect. There was even a depression in the seat cushion. That’s real, Milena decided. You’re actually here. Who is doing the cubing, then? Is anyone doing any cubing?

Or maybe, she thought, maybe it’s me. Maybe I am mad.

Her arms suddenly seemed to be made out of stone. They weighted her down and wouldn’t move. Maybe my mind has turned on me. Maybe it is my mind that is making those horrible images. If that is so, then the first step to being cured is to admit it. Admit that my mind has gone.

‘Those flaws have been added,’ said a voice. ‘That’s sabotage.’

Milena looked around, and there, by the door, was Al the Snide. He looked nervous but grim, thin and vulnerable in his farmer’s robes.

‘What are you doing here?’ demanded Cilia, enraged. She still had not forgiven Al. ‘This is a private recording. You can just Slide, Snide, out of here!’

‘Yah, I’m Snide. I can read thought,’ said Al. ‘Reformation is thought. I can read it too. You ought to know that someone has cubed in those flaws. I can read the thought and it’s Thrawn McCartney.’

All of them went still. Thrawn went still, unmoving, smiling slightly.

‘She’s been hounding Milena, following her around with holograms, very nasty ones. And, she’s also hologrammed things right inside the eyes. So Milena can’t see. That’s why the mirrors.’

‘What?’ said Cilia, something rising in her voice. ‘Milena, is this true?’

Milena nodded her head, up and down.

‘If she’s doing all that, what’s she doing sitting there?’ asked Toll Barrett.

‘That’s not a human being,’ said the Snide. ‘There’s nothing there. That’s an image, a mirror image. She’s looking into a mirror, and sending the image to us.’

‘Could anybody else do this?’ Thrawn asked, standing up. She twirled around, in place. Her feet touched the carpet. They left depressions in the carpet behind them. The image of a depressed carpet was absolutely opaque, in focus, properly shaded, no flares or edges of light.

‘Is this or is this not the best hologram you’ve ever seen?’ Thrawn began to weep. Cilia, the Soundman, Toll, Peterpaul all looked on in shock.

‘So why are you all cutting me out?’ the image asked. ‘Why does everyone always have to cut me out?’

Milena picked up her cup of water.

Thrawn was pleading. ‘You don’t know what I could do for the Comedy. I could give you angels, and heaven, I could give you the music so clear, I could put you down on the ground so firmly, people would think that the sky had grown rocks.’

‘You could take us to hell, too,’ said Milena. And she flung the water at her.