Geoff Ryman - Child Garden

She stood by the door and said, feeble and embarrassed. ‘I’d better find somewhere else to live. They will find me somewhere else to live, won’t they?’

Milena sat on the edge of her bed, looking away from her, and nodded. ‘Yes, they will,’ she said. ‘Come back for your books when you’ve got somewhere.’ There was nothing else to be done. She heard the door close, a soft, considerate clicking.

Milena stayed sitting on her bed. She didn’t move. She didn’t think she felt particularly sad. She simply didn’t move. For the last three months, Rolfa had been almost the only thing she had thought of, and without her Milena found she had nothing to do. She could think of nothing to do. She didn’t want to eat, she didn’t want to go outside. Go outside for what? To be an actress? She didn’t want to be an actress. Sunlight poured in through the windows, the room became hot, Milena was as silent as a ghost. This is what it was like when Rolfa was here and I was away, she thought.

When she began to smell herself, she went to the showers and washed. She looked glumly at the trails of stubble around the drains where Rolfa had shaved. Stony-faced, she turned the jet of water on them and washed them down the drain with her foot.

She came back and tried to sleep. There was a stirring in the bed. She sat up and saw that the pillow and the quilt were crawling with purple mites. Her immune system was looking for Rolfa. She saw her Mice, scuttling in a kind of frenzy of alarm over each other, over the rumples in the undersheet.

It was what happened when people lost a part of themselves, an arm or leg. In a kind of panic their Mice would go hunting for what was missing. Where is Rolfa? Where is Rolfa? they seemed to be saying. In the end, exhausted, they would crawl back home.

The mites were particularly thick around the back corner of the bed. Milena felt behind it, and found Piglet, jammed between the mattress and the wall. As if in relief, as if the doll were something alive, the Mice swarmed up and over it.

Milena had always hated the doll. Now I’m stuck with the bloody thing, she thought, and threw it at the cooker. Piglet lay face down on the cold floor. Its eyes seemed to look at Milena. Its eyes seemed to say: don’t leave me here.

Finally Milena picked it up. As if it were alive, she stroked its grubby felt ears. It had been almost the only thing Rolfa had brought with her from her old life and now it was left behind, deserted.

Part of you didn’t want to go, Rolfa. That’s why you left so much of yourself behind, all the books, all the papers. She kept on stroking Piglet’s ears. She began to weep, and then stopped herself, angry with herself. Oh, you weep do you? Well you did it, she told herself. You made it happen.

Milena felt no rage against her oppressors. The Consensus was to do such great and extraordinary things. How could she argue against those? She was the one who had got things wrong. On balance, she still believed that the Consensus was good and just.

Tyranny is a form of perversion. We come to love it. Every government is a tyranny to a degree, and the more evil it is, the more it is loved. The difficulty lies in judging the degree of tyranny under which you live.

Milena had relied on her tyranny. She had believed one day that it would Read her and cure her of her anger and fear and longing. She had hoped that she would catch the virus from Rolfa. But although she now felt just the slightest bit feverish and queasy, she was not ill. She was resistant to the viruses. She was doomed to be herself.

In the morning, and again in the afternoon, Jacob the Postperson called. ‘There is a new play. They want you to act in it,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to say that you are ill?’

‘Yes, Jacob, tell them that,’ Milena said.

The long day passed. She didn’t eat. Milena sat all night on the bed, leaning against the wall, drifting in and out of sleep. The next morning, there was a shy, apologetic rapping on her door. Cilia called in with bread and cheese. Milena told her that she wasn’t hungry. People often were not hungry; Cilia assumed that she had been photo-synthesising in the sun.

‘We’ve heard the news about Rolfa,’ Cilia said. ‘You must be very happy.’

‘Yes,’ said Milena. ‘Very happy.’

‘Listen,’ said Cilia, sitting next to her on the bed. ‘All of us from Love’s Labour’s, we want to set up our own little company of players. Just to do new theatre, you know. Our way.’

Cilia paused and smiled. ‘We want you to help us run it.’

Milena stared back at her. ‘Why me?’ she asked.

‘Why? With what you managed to do with Rolfa? Magic! Complete!’ Cilia waited for a response. ‘Everyone thinks you’ve been gutter top,’ she said, sensing sadness, wanting to make Milena smile.

It was Vampire slang: gutter top. Grate. Great.

‘You’re all gutter top, too,’ murmured Milena.

‘So I can tell everyone you’ll do it?’

‘Yah,’ nodded Milena, looking down at her hands. ‘Yah.’

Cilia leaned forward, her face crossed with a perplexed scowl, knowing there had been a loss and not understanding what it could be. Had the old, withdrawn Milena returned? Cilia took the food away.

In the middle of the afternoon, without knocking, the Snide walked in. He wore his sinister hat at a rakish angle.

‘Lo, Heather, I’m back,’ he said.

His face fell.

‘Heather?’ he asked in horror.

Milena looked at him and shook her head. No. Not Heather. Heather is dead. There’s just me.

He sank down beside her on the bed. ‘She was a virus?’ He covered his eyes. Masked by his hand, sheltered by it, he found again his edged and bitter, nervous smile.

‘And you are Milena,’ he said. ‘That was good. Good trick. You must have laughed.’

‘I was too scared,’ said Milena.

‘I sensed something, you know. It’s just that viruses aren’t usually that complete.’

‘They aren’t usually Heather,’ replied Milena.

‘I’ve stopped being a Snide,’ he said, looking down at the counterpane, beginning to pick at it. The smile had turned inwards. ‘I was going to tell her that.’

I don’t have the time or the energy for this, thought Milena. You must know what was between me and Rolfa, you must know what you tried to do to us and yet you want my help. My help. You’re not just a fool, you’re a shit. You’re a fool because you are a shit.

‘That’s why I needed Heather,’ he said, completing the thought for her. ‘Did… when she was with you… did she ever respond to you. Did… did she ever talk to you?’

Wearily, Milena shook her head. No, she just read. All she did was read. It was all she could do. She needed me to do anything else.

He stood up and went to the door. He turned and looked at her, searching her face, searching her mind. I was Heather, thought Milena. For him, I had Heather’s mind and face.

‘I’m glad you’re unhappy,’ he said.

But I’ll get over it. You won’t.

Reluctantly, pity stirred. Pity, that was Heather’s enemy. Milena showed him Heather’s face, its great freckled length, the pebble spectacles. She thought you were a fool, but I think she could have loved you. She needed someone to manage.

He started to put on his sinister hat, then thought better of it. ‘There’s a bit more to me than that,’ he told her.

‘Then go and find it,’ replied Milena. Like a shadow, he turned and was gone.

She tried to sleep and couldn’t. She picked up one of Rolfa’s books, brown and battered, and it fell open on the last page… at the top of the Forest, a little boy and his bear will always be playing.

She would have immediately thrown down the book, except that under each word, or rather, each syllable, there was a tiny, pencilled note of music on a tiny, pencilled stave.