Geoff Ryman - Child Garden

‘Yes, Minister,’ said Moira Almasy, who evidently ran things instead of Milton. ‘We can present both ideas to the Consensus.’

Milton sat back, making a generous gesture with his hands. ‘I just thought I’d throw a little something into the pot.’

The delighted little man whose name Milena could not remember spoke again. He had greasy hair and a tracery of purple veins on his purple cheeks. He still smiled, but his voice was solemn. ‘It’s never in anyone’s interest to innovate,’ he said, and peered at Milena. ‘Least of all the innovator. People always think its just a way of advancing someone else’s career. Or they worry that they’ll be blamed if it fails. We don’t live as long as we used to, Comrades. Perhaps we should consider ourselves lucky that in our short lives we have a chance to help instead of hinder something as insane but as essentially workable as this. And that,’ and he peered at Milena again, ‘we are lucky enough to have someone who is willing to pay the cost.’

What cost? wondered Milena the director.

There was silence, and in the silence, things swung Milena’s way. The Pears were all looking at Milena as if she were Frankenstein’s monster and they were deciding whether or not to create her.

Moira Almasy spoke. ‘Milena has now produced roughly one hundred and fifty outside projects. She has no Mainstage experience, but this will not be on a stage. She is one of the few directors we have with experience of Reformation technology. But. There is no guarantee that Reformation will work on this scale. So there will have to be a test. I’d like that to be made part of the proposal. That will mean, Milena, that you will have to go into space.’

The word was like a cold wind.

‘The Centennial is only two years away. So there is not much time. You would have to be ready to go up this autumn. Is that all right with you, Milena?’

In the silence, Milena could only nod yes.

‘You would have to be made Terminal. And you would probably have to be Read, finally.’ Moira’s eyes were firmly held on Milena’s. Yes, we all knew, Milena. The Consensus was saving you for something.

‘What a thing it is,’ said Moira bleakly, ‘to have a friend in the Consensus.’ She was saying it out of pity.

‘Speaking of friends,’ sang Charles Sheer. The words now fell on the aria ‘Nessun dorma’ from Turandot. ‘Nessun Dorma’ means ‘No one’s sleeping’. It was a reference to the effect of staging the opera at night.

‘No,’ said Milena, tunelessly.

Milena was carrying parcels. She opened the door to her room, and on her bed, in the last of the daylight, sat Thrawn McCartney.

‘Get in here and sit down,’ said Thrawn.

Oh, that face. The devouring eyes, enraptured now that what Thrawn had wanted to happen had happened. The teeth were bared as if to rend flesh. The face could have been beautiful, if it had ever stopped eating itself. Milena the director felt the feathery brush of fear.

‘In a moment,’ said Milena, and found herself actually trying to smile. ‘Surely you’d be more comfortable on the chair?’ Meaning, get off my bed. Milena went towards her sink, to put down the rice and the peppers and the lumps of chicken flesh. She started to fill her bucket.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Thrawn demanded.

‘Putting my groceries away,’ said Milena dismally. What she hated most was the impossibility of being direct as soon as Thrawn was near. Everything was veiled, every gesture she made was masked as another, hiding one part of the truth with another. Milena was afraid, irritated beyond measure, weary and dishonest.

‘OK, Milena,’ sighed Thrawn. ‘You seem to like these little games.’

I hate them. I only ever play them around you.

‘You haven’t been to see me.’ Thrawn sounded hurt, vulnerable. ‘I have all kinds of new diddly boobs. I know you think it’s all right to neglect people. But you’re neglecting your work, Milena. That’s your job, isn’t it. To find out what I’m doing and see if the Consensus can use it?’

‘If you say so.’ Milena had just finished rinsing the peppers. Who would have thought it was such a long, complicated process to put away three pieces of food? Her back to Thrawn, Milena began to wash the chicken. She was thinking: this is my room. I did not ask you here. Do not think I am going to give you the full benefit of my attention.

‘One of them duplicates what you are seeing exactly, and overlays it. A wall say. You see a wall, and it looks the same as it always has done and then the stones grow faces.’

Why can’t I tell her to go? Milena was wondering. Is it because I don’t want to hurt her feelings? Is it fear? What am I afraid of? Why am I worried about telling her to go, when I have something so much bigger to tell her? Why is she conducting the conversation, when I am the one with something to say? Milena felt small, mean, weak and bursting with things that had been left unsaid.

‘I was talking to Sheer today,’ Thrawn went on. She had started to pace. What diversionary tactic now? What evasion now? Why is my life full of crazy people? ‘Oh really?’ said Milena, trying to sound if something neutral had been said. Unfortunately the chicken was now clean, and wrapped in moist cloths. Milena was wiping her hands. Am I going to suggest we go out? If I do, that means we won’t talk properly because we are in public. If I stay here, the hop skip and jump, the games, will be worse. Only in hop, skip and jump, the rules don’t keep changing underfoot.

‘He mentioned that you might have a new project. He didn’t seem too pleased with the idea.’

He wouldn’t mention it to you, Thrawn, because he hates you and only dislikes me. He doesn’t talk to you at all. Why, wondered Milena, is it so difficult to call someone a liar?

‘In the meantime,’ said Thrawn, her arrogance perfectly ludicrous, not so much in her words as in the way she swanned around the room, lip curled at its size, at the one cold bed. ‘I need a new production.’

‘Well,’ said Milena, still with a horrible neutrality. ‘I hear Toll Barrett needs a good technician. I think he’s doing The Last of the Mohicans?

One small trick she could always play back: take what Thrawn said at absolutely face value.

Thrawn snorted. ‘I know about that shit. I’m not interested. What about The Divine Comedy?’ A very small trick, when Thrawn could play it back for bigger stakes, and always seem to both of them to be more honest.

‘This is my room. Will you please leave?’ said Milena. It sounded feeble even to her.

‘Not until we have a few things straight.’

And I always end up saying the right things in the wrong place. Jumping when I should skip.

‘Milton tells me it’s all going ahead. Why haven’t I been told?’

Milena, dear heart, this is it. You have to ditch her. If you don’t, she’ll have you forever. Somehow she has a hold on you. The hold is a knot in her own head, a knot that uses her fearsome intelligence to tie itself tighter and tighter. And you are now bound up in it, and you have to get free. Basically, you are the stronger. You are the one playing with the full hand. Mother of God, mother of anything, don’t let me falter.

‘You’re not part of it, Thrawn.’ Direct enough. Blown by the performance, a nervousness from which psychopaths are exempt.

‘You know you can’t do anything on your own,’ sighed Thrawn.

‘I put on one hundred and forty-two productions,’ said Milena.