Geoff Ryman - Child Garden

She probably has bad breath and is full to the brim with viruses.

For heaven’s sake, you can’t be in love with a Polar Bear! They hibernate. They moult. Their whole biology is different!

Then a thought came to Milena. The thought was so transfiguring, that it actually knocked her out of bed. She kicked involuntarily, and her legs got caught up in the counterpane, and she slid off the edge of the mattress face down onto the floor. She gave a kind of convulsive wrench and turned to sit up surrounded by fallen pillows.

The thought was this: Rolfa was immune to the viruses. All of the Bears were. Their body temperatures were too high. That was why none of Rolfa’s knowledge came from viruses, why she had to learn things afresh. If Rolfa suffered from bad grammar, then like Milena she might not have been cured.

Suddenly Milena was sure in her gut that this was so. She simply knew it. From the way Rolfa walked, from the way she drank, from her air of displacement, from her wariness of hurt, from her strange combination of strength and weakness — from many things that could never be put into words, Milena knew that Rolfa was like her. Milena had finally found a woman.

Oh Marx, oh Lenin, oh dear. Milena’s belly felt like a corset that had just been unlaced. Everything was loose and wobbly and undone. Her hands shook, her knees were weak. She stood up and walked around her room. She barked her shins on the corner of the bed, and bit a fingernail, tearing it off down to the quick, and finally had to go for a walk.

And her dreams took wing.

They would live together, Rolfa and her, and Rolfa would write great music, she would be a genius. Mozart, Beethhoven, Liszt, they were virtuosos, why not a virtuoso of the voice? And Milena would brush her hair, all of it, and put it up in curls, all of it, for special occasions, hold her at night, cure the dandruff. They would stay together, they would have each other, and Rolfa would bloom. Milena suddenly felt she understood her, understood why she shuffled, hangdog, why she drank, why she looked defeated. No one would think a Bear could sing, no one would ever listen. People thought of GEs as dogs, they hated them, feared them. Milena found that she shook with the injustice of it. She wanted to go to her. She would have walked to the GE house if she had known where it was. The sense of Rolfa all around her was so strong that she knew, she knew how her body would feel, the bulk and heat and softness of it. She knew how her mouth would taste. Her own heart was singing.

She walked for hours in a soft warm drizzle in dark streets that did not need policing. She walked until she was exhausted, her feet crossing in front of each other with each step, walked until the dull morning began to rise. And still she didn’t feel any better, and still she couldn’t rest.

She went to the railway arches and collapsed onto the pavement, and waited for Rolfa. The sun came up under an edge of retreating cloud and she felt it on her pale face. She didn’t care. She saw Rolfa approaching.

Milena stood up, and brushed her clothes and ran her fingers through her short hair, to get rid of the tangles. She waited. Rolfa came up to her.

The fear returned. Milena didn’t know she was afraid. All she knew was that she could not be herself. She would not be able to speak.

‘What are you doing here?’ Rolfa asked, blinking.

‘Oh. Oh,’ said Milena and flung her arms awkwardly about herself.

‘You are in a state. What have you been doing?’

‘Oh. I just went out. You’re a bad influence on me.’

Milena’s eyes were sparkling, almost swollen with unspoken message.

‘I don’t think anyone could have a bad influence on you,’ said Rolfa. ‘You’re immune to it.’

‘Are we having lunch today?’ Milena’s voice was wan and hopeful.

Rolfa stood very still, her fur stirring in the light morning wind. ‘If you like, Little One,’ she said and gave Milena’s head, her hair a very quick stroke, a kind of pat. Then she walked on, down the tunnel.

Milena followed her, thrilled. She’s got a pet name for me! She toddled, feeling small and tender.

‘Another busy day,’ said Rolfa sourly, as she swung open the big yellow doors that never needed to be locked.

As they walked between the racks in the dark, the silence between them became uneasy. Milena had been wanting a flood of revelation, had reached a peak of joy. Now nothing happened. Rolfa, Rolfa, I know you are, you must be. Rolfa, say something about it. Rolfa, give me a sign. But Rolfa had gone dark, silent, like the racks.

Rolfa coughed and shuffled and turned on her alcohol light and seemed to ignore Milena, and simply stared down at her desk, the suddenly shaggy and intolerable mess of it.

‘Tuh,’ said Rolfa, the shudder-chuckle. She sat down, slumped at the desk and Milena’s heart ached for her. Rolfa picked up a score and held it up, looking at it, questioning, as if no longer certain of its worth. Milena made sure that it was printed, not handwritten, not a manuscript.

‘Do you ever write music yourself?’ Milena asked.

Rolfa sniffed and shrugged.

‘I’d like to see some, if you do,’ Milena said.

‘Oh! I get a few snatches descend on me from time to time,’ said Rolfa. She turned and tried to smile. ‘But I don’t write anything down.’ She shook her head and kept on shaking it.

She must simply remember it, thought Milena. But there could be an accident, anything could happen.

Memory. A full score in memory. Milena had another transfiguring idea.

She jumped up. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to go now.’ She did a worried little dance. ‘I don’t want to, I just have to.’

‘Toilet’s over there,’ said Rolfa and pointed.

‘No, no you don’t understand. I’ll be back. Lunchtime. On the steps. Don’t forget?’

Rolfa gave her head a shake, meaning no, she wouldn’t forget and a kind of wondering, pale smile was coaxed out of her.

And Milena ran. She had about ten minutes. She ran all the way back to the Shell, up the flights of stairs. She heard a door opening on the landing below her, and spun around, and stumbled back down the steps, legs akimbo. And there he was.

‘Jacob!’ she gasped.

‘Good morning, Milena. And how are you today?’

‘Fine! Fine. I’m great! Jacob! Can you remember music?’

‘Do you mean written music, Milena? Or do you mean the actual sound?’

‘Both. Both.’

‘Yes, if it is part of a message. Yes. I can remember.’ He nodded and smiled with beautiful ivory-coloured teeth.

Milena was still panting, a queasy trail of sweat on her forehead. ‘Fine. Great. Can you come somewhere with me at six this evening?’

Jacob’s face clouded over. ‘Oh. I’m sorry, Milena. I don’t think I can do that. I must run my other messages then. I must go to everyone in the building, and then deliver messages for them. I’m very sorry, Milena.’

‘What if I helped?’

Jacob looked blank.

‘What if you took one half of the floors and I took the other? You’re supposed to come about five, right? So we’ll both start about four thirty, run back and forth until six and men go on. Agreed? Agreed? It’s very important, Jacob.’

He beamed. ‘All right, Milena. I will help you. That will be very good.’

Milena gave a little snarl of delight, and kissed him on his cheek. ‘That’s great.’ And suddenly she was weary.

‘Do you have any messages for me, Milena?’

‘Yes. One for Ms Patel. Tell her I’m too tired. I just won’t be there for lunch.’

Tell her I love her?

‘Tell her I’m not as immune as she thinks.’

And Jacob, for some reason, winked.

That afternoon, Milena ran from room to room on seven floors of the Shell. She had never known mere were so many people living there. Faces she had only glimpsed suddenly became alive for her. She knew what the insides of their rooms looked like, she knew whether or not they made their beds, she could smell what they were cooking. They did not want to give her messages.