Geoff Ryman - Child Garden

All the stars at once, how could all the stars be dwarfed? Only Earth, little Earth, could be humbled. We humble what is about us. We humble ourselves.

‘There’s no time like the present love. You’ve only ever got the present. You can’t do it in the past, or go dashing off into the future and hide there. Whenever you did it, it would have to be Now.’

‘Has everybody been told?’ Milena asked him. ‘Do people know this is going to happen?’

‘Of course they have, everybody’s ready. Everybody wants to see it. This is an event, girl, a real event. They’re all looking forward to it.’

‘I don’t want them to be afraid of it.’

‘Their jaws will hit their feet with wonder. And they’ll say, look at what we can do. All of us together. But they won’t be afraid.’

‘Bob. Could you break off for a minute?’

The Angel seemed to darken. ‘Sure, love, sure.’

The link in her head seemed to close. She had only one vision, now, of the inside of Christian Soldier, and the garden growing out of his walls. She blinked at it. She had expected the Bulge to look small in comparison with the universe. Instead it seemed vast, as if the walls of the Bulge were distant nebulae. Mike Stone was the size of Orion. His hands were clasped behind his back and he rocked nervously on his heels.

‘Is something wrong, Milena?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she gave her head a shake. ‘No, just nerves. It’s like a dream.’

‘Maybe this will help,’ he said.

From behind his back, Mike Stone passed her the rose that Rolfa had given to her. It was the rose from Chao Li Gardens. It even bobbed in her hand. ‘I just saw it growing on the wall,’ he said. ‘Maybe you need it for reference.’

‘No,’ said Milena, grimly. ‘No, I don’t need a reference for this.’

There it was, smelling of autumn, the tips of its petals brown with chill, a pale rose marbled with red, an imperfect rose. Milena blinked, and suddenly there were even dew drops on it. We’ll call them dew drops.

‘Milena?’ asked Mike Stone in wonder.

Why, she thought, oh why do I have the rose, Rolfa, and not you? There was an ache in her throat from grief. I have the book and the rose and the music, but I don’t have you.

You want to cover the world, Consensus? You want all the stars to see you in your greatness, do you? Well then let them see this, let them see this rose that you killed. You wanted her music, but you wanted it without her. So I will blast you with it, Consensus. Take it. Choke. Thorns scratch your throat.

‘OK. Bob, OK,’ she said. ‘OK. OK.’

The Angel came towards her in wonder. ‘Milena?’ he asked. ‘What’s all this?’

She tried to close her mind against him. ‘Do you want it or not?’

‘Steady on. It’s a cold rose, you know. It won’t burn, even if you want it to.’

‘There are people waiting. They want a show.’

‘All right,’ said the Angel, soothing. ‘But just one promise. We talk later, OK?’

‘Yes, yes, come on.’ Milena tried to pretend to him that her concentration was something that had to be seized and coralled like a wild horse.

‘Countdown,’ he said and ripped himself apart, and the Cherubim awoke again in a chorus and the eye in her head opened, and there was the harp, the billions of crisscross strings.

‘Now,’ she said.

And all the Cherubs pulled, like a net, catching the arrows from the sun and moon. The Cherubim were like crystals. They broke the light apart and reformed it, clutching it to themselves, pierced by the arrows, as if through the breast, dying for love.

Cherubim murdered, love dead. Dead love returned fourfold. Feel the blast. Consensus, this one is for you. Here it comes. Image in her mind, the feel of smooth green stem, brown thorns, slight scent, the chill, the odour of roses and birdshit in pondwater, and the geese overhead, Rolfa’s fur touching her just lightly on the arm, and the rose.

The memory caught the light, and was held by what it caught. The lens was gravity and gravity was thought and thought was the memory. Light was filtered through memory.

Her eyes were shut again. She opened them, and looked out through the window of the Bulge, and the window blinked, and when it cleared, there was an explosion of pink light that filled the window, pink light wobbling like a jelly, as if to fill the universe. Pink light falling in on itself, tumbling back into form, into focus.

Milena gave a kind of strangled shout. Rosa mundi. Rose of the World. There, over the Earth, filling heaven, and it was her rose. Do you see it, Rolfa? Do you know what it is, do you know what it means? A rose of light the size of the world. The rose of memory was also the rose of anger.

It is rising up over mountains like some new flowering sun. In other places below, at midday, it is misty, high up in blue sky, pale like a daylight moon, pink-white, its shadows the same blue as the sky around it. It will be a pink glow behind monsoons in the south, where I can see them sweeping in arcs over the coastline. And in the east, it will be setting like the sun, streaks of cloud across its face, which it will pinken. In some places, the sun will shine through it, as if the sun wore a collar. Or a crown. Half the world will look up and see it and wonder at the way it shines, and it is shining out of my head, out of memory.

The Earth that is humbled is yours, Consensus.

‘It’s big, Milena,’ said Mike Stone.

Milena smiled a crooked grin. ‘That is the general idea, Mike.’

‘Roses generally aren’t big,’ said Mike Stone.

‘No,’ murmered Milena, almost as silently as the Angel. The rose was huge and angry, and the curling-back petals looked like blubbery lips.

It’s a monster, she thought, like the Crabs.

It wasn’t supposed to be a rose of arrogance, hubris, or anger, it’s supposed to be a rose of love, and a rose of love is small, small enough to be held in someone’s hand. This was supposed to be a gift.

And then she thought: a gift to twenty-two billion people, both the adults and the children. A rose for each of them?

A rose for each of them.

‘Now!’ she whispered.

The rose dissolved. It broke apart scattering itself like the Cherubim. It fell like rain, as if a continent had crumbled into roses.

She who had learned to make the viruses still and who had read Plato at six, who could remember every detail of one hundred and forty-two productions, she could conceive of twenty-two billion roses. She held them in her mind. She held them in space as they fell, the numbers of the Cherubim ticking past like floors in an elevator.

Milena directed roses to the continents where there were people. To London, to Paris, to western China to Bordeaux, to the Andes mountains. She directed them into the shadow, out of the cube, where they melted away, like snowflakes. She could still imagine them falling, in her mind. These, she told the people below, are for you. She began to hear music in her head, music from the Comedy, from the end that was not funny but happy, great rolls and peals of music, drums and horns and cellos. Each note was familiar.

The light below was wrenched into sound. The great chorus filled the shallow sky of Earth. The tiny roses descended, small enough to be taken by hand, though the hands that tried to grasp the roses of light would pass through them. The roses fell out of clouds, they fell out of the sun, they passed through the roofs of synagogues and temples, ghost roses as immaterial as the love from which they were made.

The vision possessed her. The vision held her. Milena sat rapt and staring. The music hammered and roared its way to a conclusion, and the chorus sang.

The love that moves the sun and all the other stars.