Geoff Ryman - Child Garden

Milena had been rendered self-conscious, as she always was in Thrawn’s presence. It was difficult for her to imagine anything. So she tried to remember instead.

A garden.

She remembered an autumn day, the smell of loam and fallen leaves, and geese overhead, ducks fluttering their wings against still water. She remembered water, and the rose bushes, with their spotted leaves, their last roses, nibbled by the shorter days.

She remembered Rolfa, in Chao Li Gardens. She remembered the rose Rolfa had picked for her. The shock as Rolfa broke the law. She remembered the weight of the rose as it bobbed in her hand, and the scratching of the thorns against her fingers. She remembered the single, round, focusing drop of dew, catching the light.

And suddenly the rosa mundi was in the room. It filled it with huge, dappled shaggy pink petals, curling brown at the tip, but soft and slightly rippled nearer the centre. It bobbed, poised for a moment.

As if something had finally been set free, there was an avalanche of flowers. Milena did not know if she were imagining them in her head or seeing them in the room. What she saw and what she imagined were one and the same thing. She could feel them spill out of her head, as if some great living weight were pushing out flowers, giving birth to them. They tumbled through the room slowly, a turning kaleidoscope of flowers, remembered flowers each one different.

There was a garland of lime blossom in summer, each flower spinning like a star. There were blowzy hollyhocks, liberated from their tall stems, showering their loose, purple petals. Arum lilies lifted up their heads in a chorus, their white hands holding out yellow stamen. They were mixed with tobacco flowers, and crowned with thorny, white ailanthus.

The kaleidoscope turned. There was a tumult of branches overhead in the wind, seem from many perspectives at once all jumbled, fragmented like Picasso, reaching dizzyingly up into a sky, blue behind them, that fell away to heaven. Confusingly, the branches went down below as well as if the sky were the earth. The branches plunged through grass, down into clouds. Somehow the water of the clouds fed them. The grass was blown in waves. The grass came closer with attention. Each cell was revealed in the light. There was a stirring of life within each of the cells, a green movement of protein in and out of their inner structures. There were beetles as polished as jewels, frozen in the attention of the light, waiting for it to swerve away from them. There was a thin crust of earth giving birth to small, wriggling creatures. They were mild magenta. And the green stems of the rose bush rose, like ladders towards the sun.

And suddenly Milena was inside the dew drop, the focus of light. Light burned blearily in it, catching on motes of life, swimming in it. The lens of the surface of the dew drop turned the world upside down. A face was refracted in it. It was a human face with nut brown skin and black, liquid eyes, and there was a smile, and the face was about to speak…

Milena was pushed. With a lurch, it was all snatched away.

Milena looked about her, dazed. She was in a rather small, messy room, with the flowing walls of a Coral Reef shelter.

Thrawn was staring at her, outraged.

‘I had no idea you were a horticulturalist.’ she said. Her voice was acid, her face sour and straggly with panic. Her chest rose and fell with deep, angry breathing. ‘This is my equipment,’ she said, very quietly. ‘You do not hog my equipment.’

Milena was still confused, snatched from her flowers. ‘How long was I on it?’ she asked.

‘How long does not matter. I let you use delicate, new equipment and you treat it it… like… like.’ Thrawn shook her head, at a loss for words.

I was better than she was, thought Milena. Oh God. She’s angry because I was better than she was.

The impulse was to make it up to her. ‘Look, if I damaged it in any way, I’m sorry.’

‘I don’t know whether you’ve damaged…’ Thrawn broke off. She began to cry. ‘My beautiful, new machine!’

Why did I say that? wondered Milena. Why did I just give her an opening? What am I apologising for?

‘Look, let’s just find out if it’s damaged, first. Is it damaged? What could I have done to it?’

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Thrawn, wiping her face, angrily. ‘But you just ripped through it, as if you were angry with it or something.’

‘I sincerely doubt I damaged it. Isn’t that what it’s meant to be used for?’

‘You don’t know anything about it!’ exclaimed Thrawn, she leant over the machine, patted it. It had a mirrored surface. Her own, straggly face was reflected back at her. ‘Look,’ she said standing up, taking a deep breath as if she were being amazingly tolerant, controlling rage. ‘There is a lot more to this than just ramming yourself through the machine. Focus? Do you know anything about focus at all? I don’t know what it was you were supposed to be showing me there, but it was a jumbled mess! The trees were upside down, the flowers were all over the place. That was supposed to be a garden? You’ve got to have a bit of discipline, Milena.’

The woman who prided herself on being wild looked anxiously over her machine, holding her hair back. She shook her head, and stepped into the focal point. She tried to imagine. All that happened was the room about them, the light, heaved and shifted. It was as if the walls and furniture, the bleak emptiness of the place melted.

‘I think you have, you know. I think you’ve fried the focus!’ Thrawn’s voice became a screech.

‘Just look at something in the room. Something real, and see if that comes out,’ advised Milena.

Thrawn turned to her. The eyes were burning.

And Milena was in the room twice. She stood on the floor, as if she were there perfectly placed, feet on the floor. There was even a shadow on the shabby throw-rug.

‘OK,’ said Milena, soothing. ‘OK, so there’s nothing wrong with the equipment.’

‘Just with the people in it,’ said Thrawn. Suddenly the image of Milena was standing on its head. This imaged Milena was dumpy. The fat on her hips sagged downwards towards her face. Her tongue lolled out of her head, the size of a cow’s and the eyes rolled. She started to bounce about the room on her head.

‘You see, Milena. The whole point is to place the image exactly where you want it. It’s a specialised skill, Milena, and you just do not have it. It’s really very sad, the way you keep trying to push yourself into this specialist area with no skills at all. It’s as if you can’t admit for a moment that anyone could be better than you at something.’

‘You’re talking about yourself, Thrawn,’ said Milena, quietly.

The eyes were turned on her again.

And suddenly Milena was blind.

‘I can take light out of anywhere in this room.’ said Thrawn, out of the absolute blackness. ‘I can Reform it, or place it somewhere else. Right now, all the light in your eyes is being focused outside your head. The area I am taking it from is very precisely that of your retina.’

Milena moved her head. There was a flickering of light. Then darkness again.

‘That is what I mean by focus, Milena.’

Milena moved again, and this time the darkness followed her. ‘Of course, I could take all the light in this room and focus it on your retina, instead.’

The room was restored. Thrawn stood arms folded, jaw thrust out. ‘That might burn your retinas out,’ Thrawn said, succinctly. ‘Now get out of here, and don’t let me catch you messing around with my equipment again.’

‘It’s not your equipment. It belongs to the Zoo.’

‘It belongs to the Zoo,’ repeated Thrawn, in a mocking imitation. ‘It belongs to the person who uses it and who has responsibility for it and that is me. Clear enough for you?’