Geoff Ryman - Child Garden

‘If I the and if Mike dies, then the baby will be an orphan. Just exactly what I didn’t want her to be!’

‘You are not going to the. Why do you think we asked you here? The Doctors, me, the Consensus, we’ve got it all planned, exactly how you’re going to get well.’

Milena looked up at her, bleakly. I’ve done it again, she thought.

I’ve done exactly what the Consensus wanted. I don’t even have to think.

Milena felt an undertow. It was as if she had something dark inside her, pulling her down. It was larger than she was and had different interests. Life had wanted cancer back, all of life, the ocean within her that was part of her but which she did not know and could not control. Milena began to be afraid.

Milena went up and Milena came down and Milena gave the world cancer. Hop skip and jump.

‘I could go to Antarctica,’ she said. ‘I could go to Antarctica and I wouldn’t be free.’

‘You take on too much,’ said Root, her lips heavy as if with sadness. ‘You always nipping about the place. It was like that with cancer. It always took the ones who did for everyone else. When they went, other people didn’t know how they could go on. Well, you going to have to let other people take care of you now, Milena. I know you don’t like it. You have to let yourself be the child, now.’

Milena was bullied by sympathy. She let Root keep hold of her hand.

‘Come on,’ said Root, patting her arm. ‘Come on, love, let’s get you home, let’s get you home and talk to Mr Stone. We’re going to fight this thing and we’re going to win.’

Central nervous system whispered the viruses. The list continued.

Outside, the Bees were gathered.

Their faces were rigid, caught in a rigour of ecstasy, washed in waves of thought. The forest of the Consensus rose up huge around them, dazzling them with the processes of photosynthesis and elimination. Beneath their feet, the thought patterns of over one million people pulsed.

The Bees were dazzled by it. Tears streamed out of their faces and they clutched each other’s hands.

‘Milena,’ they all whispered, like trees blown in a wind. They were caught up in the patterns of the forest of flesh. They were a forest of flesh. They wore curtains of vine leaves grown out of themselves. They were sheltered by a canopy of leaves growing out of their backs. People were becoming more and more like plants.

‘Milena. Milena Shibush,’ the Bees whispered over and over in love. ‘Garden.’

They grew fruit out of themselves, heavy human fruit full of human sugars. They grew roses. The rose was a symbol of Milena. It was a symbol of the cancer. The Bees loved them both. They formed a wall of love in front of her, transfixed, trembling under the skin. The tears on their faces tremored slightly as they crept down their cheeks.

Milena stood facing them. ‘They keep following me,’ she said in despair. ‘Go on, move,’ said Root to them.

The Bees tried to shuffle, but it was as if their feet had taken root in the soil. Much longer, and they would take root, growing tender white shoots into the earth, as if from seedling potatoes.

‘Part!’ shouted Root. ‘Like the Red Sea! Move!’ Root advanced, holding Milena’s hand. Root drew her hand back to strike.

‘Please,’ whispered Milena.

There was a great rustling. It was as if the ocean parted. Slowly at fist with the sound of many leaves shifting, hissing like the sound of surf, a passage began to clear. The wall split open with gathering speed, a cleft penetrating deeper into the mass of Bees. As if something had been sparked by the movement, the Bees came awake. They began to sing in joy.

The wall of love became a wall of voices. Milena moved dazed through the shadows cast by the vines and the leaves that grew out of the human backs of the Bees.

It rained flowers. The Bees tore them from their backs and threw them. The human roses fell over Milena, leaking clear sap. The flowers were caught by human thorns in her hair. Milena moved through the Bees and the wall of human hands.

Milena moved into the sunlight, onto the steps of the Consensus. As if she pulled them by wires, the Bees were dragged after her, still singing. They followed her down the steps.

‘I hate that,’ said Milena. At once, the song was cut off, like a thread.

On Marsham Street people were running. They ran towards the Consensus and the tumult of the Bees. They ran away from it, bearing news. Boys in the uniform of the Estate School shouted to each other. They swung down from the scaffoldings. Tykes still carrying laundry baskets stumbled down stairs and into the street.

Cancer, the people said, cancer.

A woman was leaning out of a window and a boy was shouting up to her. ‘They say the cancer has come back!’ A horsecart was reined to a halt. ‘What’s that?’ the driver called as if in alarm.

Bells began to ring over and over, in no pattern at all.

‘We got to get you out of this,’ said Root, and gave Milena’s hand a quick tug. She led them down the remaining steps and into the gathering crowd.

Transfixed, the Bees followed, gathering up people in front of them like a steam shovel. The crowd swirled, clotted, trying to change direction, trying to avoid the Bees, trying to avoid the sickness and the thorns.

‘The Garda are coming!’ said Root, and hauled Milena forward.

A man in an apron stained with green grease seized Milena by the shoulders. ‘Cancer’s back!’ he roared with joy.

‘It’s true!’ someone shouted down from a window. ‘I’m Terminal and I’ve just been told. It’s true!’

There was cheer from all along the street.

‘Move!’ shouted Root at the man in the apron. His face went blank. Root pushed him out of the way.

Milena stumbled forward. She felt sick. Her knees suddenly gave way. Root scooped her up in her arms and carried her. Milena’s head fell backwards and she looked up.

There was a sound overhead, as if the air had become wood.

Helicopters roared over the tops of the purple trees, that sighed and swayed. White tubes were spat out from the machines. The tubes wrapped themselves around the trees. The Garda came swinging down the white web, white boots swinging.

‘There’ll be merry hell now,’ said Root.

There were screams behind them as people suddenly surged forward; a wave of them broke against Root’s back. Root and Milena were swept forward along Marsham Street, towards Horseferry Road.

The Bees tried to run too, but they were held by the lines of life all around them, from the crowd, from the forest of the Consensus. They ran in slow motion, as if time flowed more sluggishly for them. Perhaps it did.

The Garda raised the palms of their hands, and tubes burst forth from their palms. The tubes shot towards the Bees, whipping around their arms and legs.

‘Leave them alone!’ whispered Milena.

The Bees were entangled in the translucent tubing. They fought against it as it drew them together in a net. Then the tubes leapt up like the tongues of frogs catching insects, high into the sky, silver against blue, hitting the helicopters and sticking to them. Very suddenly, the Bees were elevated five or six at a time, as if taking wing. They were hauled skywards towards the bubbles of the helicopters.

‘Milena!’ they called, as if for salvation, kicking their protein-starved, scrawny legs.

Root pushed her way onto Horseferry Road. It was blocked with reined-in carts, or with bundles that people had let drop in order to watch. Milena felt a burning in her belly, like very severe indigestion. Root swung her shoulders from side to side, shoving people to one side. She came to a thinning of the crowd and began a burdened run. Milena could feel the swaying back and forth of the volumes of flesh on Root’s thighs.