Geoff Ryman - Child Garden

Milena felt the strange, inextricable tangle that was her mother, and felt the loss beyond naming, and Milena began to cry too, for everything: for her mother, for her father, for the love and the pain and the warfare between them, and for the world. Beyond the fence, the fields still glowed. The gate was barred.

‘It’s called,’ said Milena, the director, ‘ Attack of the Crab Monsters.’

She was sitting in the Zookeeper’s office. She was very concerned about her new grey suit. She was sitting crosslegged on stuffed bags, and the knees of her new trousers would bag and crease. She worried about marks on cloth and braced herself for the reaction of the people around her.

They stared back at Milena, all expression on their faces suspended. They sat on the bags too. The bags were called Pears, and the people were pear-shaped, pears on Pears, their stomachs ballooning outwards. A large-boned woman sat folded across from Milena. Moira Almasy! thought the one who remembered, startled by the change. The woman’s hair seemed less grey, her face less creased, as if she had suddenly become well after an illness. She was younger.

Milton the assistant served tea in little cups on lacquered tables. The cups rattled and Milton insinuated with a smile. In the corner sat the Minister, now a scant but formal presence. His eyes were closed and he was perfectly still, his hands resting on his folded knees.

Courage, Milena the director told herself. ‘The opera is about…’ she said, and hesitated. ‘It’s about an invasion of aliens from outer space. They look like crabs, but can talk. Well, sing. The idea comes from an old video that Thrawn McCartney saw.’

The expression on the faces of the Pears had curdled from horror.

‘People like junk,’ said Milena. ‘In fact, they need junk. Junk is fun and harmless and makes no demands. People are starved of junk. Everything has been so terribly high-toned. I think if you ask the Consensus, it will tell you the same thing.’

Milena the director glanced at the Minister. He sat unmoved, unmoving.

‘It’s best to let the Consensus speak for itself,’ warned Moira Almasy.

‘What other social benefits can you claim for this?’ asked a man in the circle. ‘Except for the fact that it is, as you say, junk?’ He had an open, likeable face, a broad smile and hair that flopped over his forehead. Charles Sheer.

You weren’t so bad, Charlie, thought the Milena who was remembering. You just had other projects you wanted to promote. You wanted the money to go elsewhere. You didn’t think I was very talented. You were probably right.

‘First,’ said Milena the director, ‘no one in the cast will use viruses. This should be made very plain. People are going to become very frightened of viruses.’

That was the easy part.

‘Second, it will help people with their feelings of…’ the director prayed for a delicate word,’… distrust for the Chinese.’

Milena felt the room go still. There was an explosion of breath from Charles Sheer. But it is the truth, isn’t it Charlie? ‘I think you will find many people of British descent do not like the Chinese. They feel surpassed by them. Junk makes people feel good. So. This junk…’ Milena paused to gain both breath and spirit. ‘This work will be staged in the manner of classical Chinese opera. The music and the dancing will be classical Chinese opera.’

‘The crabs too?’ demanded Charles Sheer.

Moira Almasy was beginning to smile.

‘Of course,’ said Milena. ‘There are many precedents in the classical tradition of giant singing beasts — dragons for example. The spaceship will look like a Chinese dragon, in fact. It will land in the main courtyard of the Forbidden City. These will all be holograms created by Thrawn McCartney. Uh. No one has hologrammed scenes on this scale before, or from such a distance. We propose to use Hyde Park as the main stage. This will give us a chance to use to the full the new mind-imaging technology.’ Milena coughed. ‘The spectacle,’ she said hopefully, ‘should have some curiosity value.’

‘Ms Shibush,’ said Charles Sheer. ‘I am stunned. You have surpassed yourself. This makes your efforts to stage all of Dante seem almost credible.’

That is the general idea, thought Milena to herself. We understand each other, Charlie. There is a bond between enemies too.

The Minister sat still, without movement, as if the whole universe turned around him. On the hessian screens there were slashes of green, cartoon reeds reduced to one dead message. The screens were covered in blackheads of dust.

For you keepers of the Zoo, everything must be worthy and have high purpose. For you everything must be part of the advancing social schedule.

Me, I’m doing it all for Rolfa. And the Consensus — what does it want?

‘It does tie in with what we were discussing earlier,’ said Moira Almasy in a low, quiet voice.

All around them, the cartoon reeds slowly rotted.

‘I’m going to make a garden,’ said Thrawn McCartney, in a voice that was supposed to be like a child’s.

There was a new machine. It took images from people’s heads and turned them into light. Reformation technology it was called. The Restoration had led to it.

All the light in the Thrawn McCartney’s room was muddled, in disorder. It heaved in currents like oil and water that would not mix. An orchid, half-remembered, swam into queasy existence. It attached itself to a bush with branches like serpents. The branches writhed in place then suddenly froze. They and the flower were held in place for a moment, and then faded, forgotten. Grass gathered like a slowly poaching egg, a bleary smudge of green. There was a hedge, a few leaves pinpricked out of the mass of it. The sky was full of impossible sunset colours.

I want to get out, thought Milena the director. She stood with Thrawn in some colourless centre, a point of view. There was no air, no sound, no clarity of image. Is this all you can remember, thought Milena, of trees and plants? Can you really see no more clearly than this?

Milena found it nearly impossible to be honest around Thrawn. She would smile tolerantly, when all she really felt was anger. She would offer compliments as if to placate. She had become frustrated with herself. Why, Milena wondered, can’t I speak?

Thrawn placed an image of herself in the garden. At last there was something that Thrawn could see clearly. It was not Thrawn as she was. This Thrawn was tall and lissome and wore a spotless white dress. Her face had been subtly altered. It was beautiful now, and it was backwards. It was a face seen in a mirror, a face with the flaws removed.

What an airy creature she was, this Thrawn, light as a feather, fleshless. The stringy, tormented tendons of her neck were gone, as was the desperate stare of starvation. This is why Thrawn never ate. She thought she could become like this creature. The creature danced, lean as a ballerina, bent over, arms like a swan’s neck.

‘Now this is beautiful. Isn’t this beautiful?’ Thrawn demanded.

The trouble with being dishonest is that it requires an ability to act. Milena could not. She shifted inside her quilted winter jumpsuit. ‘We can see you quite clearly, yes,’ she said.

Thrawn had sensed enough. ‘This is a new technology, you know. No one has done this before.’

‘Oh, I know, I know,’ said Milena, as if no criticism had been implied.

‘I mean here, you try it,’ said Thrawn. ‘Go on.’

She took Milena by the shoulders and stood her in front of the Reformer. You had to stand in the point of view. Milena felt something in her head drain away, as if light, right in the centre of her head was gone. As if it now resided in the machine.

‘Don’t be scared,’ said Thrawn, arms folded, shaking her head in pity at poor Milena. ‘Just try to imagine something and see what you come up with.’