Geoff Ryman - Child Garden

‘Because the Past is you,’ said Root, and stood up. Milena heard her rustle away.

My whole life, thought Milena, my whole life has not been mine.

Then space was twisted. Space shivered as when heat rises up from roadway. The shivering space rose up, and began to roll, quivering towards her. It was a wave, a wave in both space and time, a wave in the fifth dimension where light and thought and gravity are one. It confronted her, trembling as if with desire. It wanted Milena to be a story, that it could Read.

Rolfa, where is Rolfa? Where she always is, Milena thought. Here with me.

Now, where is my Now? My now is here, where I fight the Consensus.

The wave slammed into her, washing over her, through her, racing up the channels of her nerves, as if to wash them clean, as if to wash all of Milena away.

It was as if her memories of Rolfa were a rock to which Milena could cling. Milena held them and preserved them.

Everything else was surrendered to the roar.

Milena remembered being in the womb.

All sensation was nameless, wordless, unshaped by any kind of grammar. There was light, orange light, passing over her, through her. There was a pulsing, a rush that seethed through her, warm, thrilling, delicious.

There was music.

Dimly heard amid the throb, the sound of a violin was filtered and soft, faraway as dream. It was more like light than sound, a settling of nameless comfort. The music swayed, and the warmth that surrounded Milena swayed with it. Her world moved with the music. There was a dance in the pulsing of her blood, a dance of love, of chemical release. A delectable tingle invaded her. Milena felt the music because her mother felt it.

Her mother was making it. Her mother was playing the violin. To the adult who was remembering, the music was the only familiar thing. The adult knew it was a piece by Bartok. To the unborn infant, it was a physical sensation. The unborn Milena hummed with the music, as if she were a string of the instrument, as if her mother were playing her as well. The music lifted up and swung the unborn child, she rose and fell with it. I’ve never felt that! thought the adult who remembered. I’ve never felt music like that since. It was a different state of being: gentle, surging, warm, ultimately intimate. Milena was part of someone else. Blood and fluids caressed her; everything was touched by light filtered through flesh; everything was heard through the singing in the blood, the stroking fluid. It was like being bathed in something delicious, lemon chocolate perhaps, and being able to taste it with the skin. It was like that brief joyful moment, not necessarily of orgasm, when sex is pure delight. No wonder, thought the one who remembered. No wonder sex keeps pulling. It is trying to pull us back to this.

The infant tried to dance. It moved its legs. The very sensation of movement was new. It was power, to be able to move.

The music stopped.

There was a muffled voice, from outside, from above, a message from beyond. It was a message of celebration. The Milena who remembered could almost make sense of the words. They were like words spoken by a ghost. Milena remembered the tone and timbre, the rise and fall. It was the ghost of her mother.

The infant’s ears were plugged and her nose was plugged, but she felt no desire to breathe. She was one with her world, and it was a world of love.

And Milena remembered that world turning inside out.

The fluids left her, suddenly. A clinging veil settled over her, still warm but slightly harsh. And men the convulsion began, the expulsion. The world pushed her out. The infant knew one tiling: she had started this. She had worked at herself. She had felt like an old tooth coming loose, and so she had tried the power again, the power to move. And it seemed that she had broken the world. She felt horror and fear, but above all regret, as if the world were wounded.

The world pushed, caressing no longer, and the infant knew death, the death of the world and she grieved as she was being born.

For the adult who remembered, sensation was as jumbled as a roller coaster, great peaks and sudden fallings. All things were terribly important, the sounds, communicated through flesh, the clackings of separation, the slitherings of movement, the lapping of the walls like giant tongues, the pumping in her ears and veins. The world parted, like lips.

Giddyingly, inside became outside, as if Milena herself was being born out of herself, swapping places, mother and daughter. Suddenly, all inside had been swallowed up.

It took a moment — each moment a different universe — for air to envelop her. Air was new. It was dry, searing like fire. It burned her face; it burned her whole body. There was blazing light, and stinging gases. The infant was gripped about her ankles, and where she was held there was a sizzling abrasion as if her skin was being fried.

Suddenly she was fighting. There was a swelling in her, as if she was trying to start the pumping up again. Something gave. But the pumping was not outside her now, but smaller and contained in her. Air rasped its way like sandpaper over her tongue, down her throat. She felt an ache across her chest as the aerole of her lungs inflated — pop, pop, pop, one after the other. She roared in pain.

She was lowered onto soft warmth. A ghost of paradise returned. Dimmer now was the pumping, louder now was the murmuring voice. She lay on top of her old world. She covered it now. This world was in layers. Panels of warmth descended over her back, rough, but comforting as they lay still on her, weighing her down, pushing her, it seemed. The infant hoped. Was she going to be pushed back inside?

Then something clattered on a tray, horribly sharp like something rammed into her ears, and she began to wail again. The infant was wailing for the vastness of things, and an already forming sense of all the things she had to learn. The voice soothed her, the warm fingers stroked her, and the infant remembered what had been lost. It’s still here, the voice seemed to say, it’s different now, but it’s still here. Here, but different.

Layer on layer of life folded over the infant. Lungs breathing, two hearts pumping, all the organs with their rough surfaces and hidden spaces, all of them turning in and out of each other like patterns in a kaleidoscope.

The infant was left there, on her mother’s stomach, to sleep. She dreamed of tunnels of light, and sealed places full of fluid, and things dim in the fluid, cushioned, floating, safe.

Milena remembered crawling.

She remembered the braided rug, padded sections in a concentric pattern. They swirled under Milena’s fingers and smelled of cat.

The old world was forgotten now, driven out by the wealth of this new one. The infant looked up, and the world still seemed concentric, fragmented.

It looks, thought the adult who was remembering, like a Picasso painting.

There was a room, in this her second and forgotten world. The room itself was not familiar at all. The room was jumbled, cast in layers, like many photographs of the same room. Things had so many sides, it was difficult for them to hold their shapes. The back and sides of the chair were just as present as the front. They drifted in and out of view, overlapping each other. They were now near, now far. Anything she liked seemed to come closer. She reached out for it, thinking it was coming to meet her.

Milena saw the top of the spout of a watering can. The adult who was remembering recognised it, with a jolt. The watering can had a rough, screw-on cap with holes in it that turned the water into a spray. The infant’s eyes focused on the cap and brought it together as a whole. The world spun around it, fragmented as if seen through a jewel.