Geoff Ryman - The Child Garden

‘There’s been a terrible accident,’ says Milena.

‘There’s been a terrible accident,’ says Milena.

‘There’s been a terrible accident,’ says Milena.

‘There’s been a terrible accident,’ says Milena.

‘She poured cooking alcohol over herself.’

Thrawn suddenly rolls forward. She tumbles down the steps, gathering speed, losing flesh, blackening the bamboo. She lies at the bottom of the step. Milena runs after her. Thrawn is on her back, gasping, breath coming in short agonised hops. She looks up at Milena, but does not seem to see her. She starts to shiver.

‘Thrawn,’ whispers Milena. ‘I’m sorry.’

And what are you sorry for, Milena? You’re sorry because you know you’ll be so sorry for the rest of your life. Are you mourning for her? Or mourning for yourself, for the anguish this will cost you?

Thrawn knows what you are. Thrawn focuses on you and smiles again, the demon smile, rearing up, in a frenzy, but paralysed, her hand a blackened claw, she looks up at you. ‘Saviour,’ she breathes out in a voice like the wind, smile blazing. She drags her hand along the floor, scraping layers of it away, leaving a blackened mark. ‘Saviour?’ she says, an angry, wheedling, bitter question. It is a rhetorical question. The answer is known.

She knows she has won.

We are coming Milena, says a voice in her head. Someone is coming to help.

The Consensus in her head.

The Angels soothe her. It’s not your fault, Milena, don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault.

‘Isn’t it?’ asks Milena.

Do your work, Consensus. Rule the world, heal the sick, build the roads. Breed the viruses. Do anything that you consider to be good.

Only leave us alone.

From the top of the Tarty flats, a bell begins to toll. The emergency bell. Ms Will arrives with a blanket, and begins to wrap Thrawn in it. Thrawn’s teeth are clicking together as she quakes with cold. Milena winces. It goes against instinct to put rough blankets on skinless flesh.

The Fire Warden arrives. She is trained to give treatment. In summer, if there was a fire in the floating Ark, pumps would spray water from the Estuary. Fire tugs would arrive, great steam boats that shoot water from cannons. But all the water is frozen now. The pumps don’t work.

The Fire Warden kneels down and opens up her box of viruses and cream.

‘Leave her alone,’ says Milena, standing very still and quiet. The Fire Warden doesn’t seem to understand that she means it.

‘We’ll use open treatment,’ says the Fire Warden. She is a brisk and efficient Party Member. She has been trained to do good. She has been waiting for a chance to be needed. Her viruses are speaking, to the viruses of those who hear her, social viruses that know how to help the sick. ‘We need to clean the burns, then keep them open to dry. Here.’ The Fire Warden passes Milena a syringe. She wants Milena to take a blood sample. ‘Test for nitrogen, prothrombin time, electrolyte levels, blood gases, hematocrit…’

Milena brushes the syringe away.

‘Someone else is coming,’ says Milena again. She means someone who can give better treatment than us.

‘Don’t see who it could be,’ said the Fire Warden, getting out her creams. ‘The Estuary is frozen, the Fire Tugs can’t get here.’ This was her responsibility, this was why she was trained and designated, so she could do good in the world. It is impossible to do good in the world, impossible that is, without also doing harm. The creams, the swabbing, the painkillers will do harm, relative harm.

Milena kicks the box over. The creams scatter, the applicators spin. Something made of glass shatters.

‘What the… that is medicine!’ wails the woman outraged.

So are the viruses. Relative harm, relative good.

The What Does Lady slides back the hangar doors. ‘Come see, oh quick!’ she says, gesturing to Ms Will. ‘A wagon on the ice!’

Ms Will goes to the door. The Fire Warden bitterly gathers up her medicines. Milena watches over Thrawn. She looks at her shivering jaws and staring eyes.

And so I’m going to pass you over to them, Thrawn. You could have been beautiful. Maybe you will be. But you will still be theirs.

She hears the sound of galloping and looks up. Ms Will and the What Does are pushing back all of the great screens. There is a flood of cold air. Galloping across the ice, four great white horses, silvery as if frosted by the cold come pulling a fire wagon. Steam boils up as thick as cream from the boiler, and from the nostrils of the beasts. The wagon thunders up the bank of frozen mud and right into the Tarty flats, into the covered atrium, the horses reined in, snorting, half-turning and coming to a halt.

And Milena sees them. For the first time she sees the Men in White, the Garda. They are the masters. Their faces are screened by plastic, screened from the rest of us. For them, all of us are diseased.

‘Look at my kit!’ the Fire Warden says. ‘She kicked it!’

The Garda do not reply. One of them takes hold of the Fire Warden’s shoulders and moves her aside. He wears gloves. The other, with practised motion, peels back the blanket, slices through the clothes. Thrawn lies sad and exposed and barely breathing, looking back up at Milena, sadly, as if asking her a regretful, reasonable question. Why? Pads are stuffed into her nose and ears.

The Men in White start covering her with spray. Milena looks away, to the horses.

The horses are huge, white, muscled. The horses wear wraparound mirror-shades. It keeps them looking only at what their masters want them to see. They toss their heads and their smoky yellow manes dance. Horses are beautiful even in slavery, because no one has told them they are ugly. Horses have no demons.

Milena hears the sound of the spray. Thrawn will grow new skin, a new mind. She will not be Thrawn anymore. There will be someone else, living a quite happy, very limited life, with gaps in her memory. She won’t feel any anguish over what happened. A relative good then? Tell yourself it’s a relative good, then, Milena.

The only place Thrawn is alive is here, now, as I remember.

Saviour.

hey fish it’s me again!!!!!!

Milena finds a sealed oiled pouch, waiting for her when she returns from space. She remembers the spidery, shaking scrawl.

— well — they want the old lady to go back and she just doesn’t want to go! broke my leg again — well — my hip but it amounts to the same thing — now they want to get the old dam back — thats what they want — get her safely on some old sofa and we’ll bring her dinner whenever we remember

us polar types get old, fish — you don’t know what that means — it means you start to fall apart — but what it feels like is that all the world starts dropping away too, piece by piece — it feels like they want to take the sky away from me

I used to be young — used to lay out all night long, feel the air sting its way over my face like someone touching me and i ud look up into that clear air and all the stars ud seem to look back at me — like all the stars have a face—

hell, fish, i could trek over forty k to the stores and drink all night hot raw whisky and roll back all in two days with no sleep — there was old betty who used to haul the stuff in on her back — we used to bath in whisky, wash the old tin plates in it and spend all day shooting fire out of our paws — blasting the stones apart and smelt them for metal like we was making hot soup — set up a sound system on the ice —sound system on the ice and we ud dance and blast and boom and batter and hunt penguins with lasers!

we were so crazy — we ud go fishing underwater in wet suits with music in headphones and whisky in a little tube that went straight into our mouths — shoot that fish! sip that stuff! shake your tail to old Bessie smith, high and pure in the phones — it was like we could make life up like kids playing pretend — they ever tell you about bessie smith, fish??????????? — honey, go ask your virus, go get it to play you old bessie — that’s what we mined to in the dry rocks — bessie and satchmo