Geoff Ryman - Child Garden

Milena was learning how to be honest. Honestly deceitful? Or just too damn inflated to care?

She looked back at Cilia, smiling, tougher man she had been.

‘I have no intention of marrying anybody, but the Consensus would like a nice story. So. It’s going to get one. Marriage of the astronauts. Romance in the stars.’

‘You’re going to give away the best part of yourself,’ said Cilia in the weak voice of truth.

‘I gave that away a long time ago to someone else,’ said Milena, also truthfully.

‘Any hope?’ Cilia asked. She really was, when reality bit, a friend. The reasons did not matter.

‘No,’ said Milena and shook her head. ‘But it’s nice to know that somebody knows. That you know.’

A long pause. ‘It was Rolfa, wasn’t it?’ said Cilia.

Well what do you know? Milena nodded. Yup. Yes. Pretty good, Cilia. ‘Do you mind?’ Milena asked.

‘Mind what? About you being sexually drawn to a member of the same sex, but a different species? Why would I mind that?’ Cilia was not on the firmest of ground at this point. Her delivery wobbled. ‘No. No. No, I don’t mind. It puts a lot of things into perspective. But I must make plain that my interests do not lie along similar lines.’ She coughed, and tried to take a sip of coffee and missed, hitting her teeth with the edge of the cup.

Cilia had not really wanted to know the truth. She had been ambushed by her more honest self.

‘I really wish you weren’t,’ she said, in a mournful rush.

‘Because it spoils the story?’ Milena asked, lightly.

‘Because I’ll always be wondering if you’re sexually attracted to me,’ she lifted the cup up again, thought better of it, let it drop.

‘Cilia. I think of you as my best friend. But I am not sexually attracted to you. Ask yourself this question. Am I Milena’s type? Am I two and a half metres tall and covered in fur?’

‘Now you’re making fun of me.’

‘No I’m not, Cill.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me!’ Cilia demanded, angry and heartstricken at the same moment. ‘Now I feel as if I don’t know you, just when I thought I finally did.’

To Milena’s mingled horror and amusement, Cilia began to weep. A huge fat tear slid down her face like melting ice cream. ‘Am I a ludicrous person?’ she asked suddenly, in all sincerity.

‘No. Why would I think that?’

‘Because you’re smiling again.’ Cilia had been made suddenly self-aware by the shock of the truth. She was not used to being self-conscious and was not very good at it. Her hands were all of a jumble. ‘Why haven’t you been cured? I thought they took sick people like you and cured them.’

‘There’s a reason for that,’ said Milena.

Cilia realised what she had just said and her eyes closed with shame. ‘Milena. I want you to know I did not mean that the way it sounded.’

‘The reason I have not been Read,’ said Milena, holding to the point, ‘is that the Consensus knows perfectly well what I am, and has decided not to Read me. Because it has a use for me as I am.’

Cilia paused. ‘Is that what Bob says?’

God, she’s bright.

‘How can you say you don’t know me,’ said Milena. ‘When you have everything worked out?’

‘Because I can never be sure if it’s me that’s talking or one of my characters. Occupational hazard.’

And a bloody fine actress too.

‘I always catch myself repeating my lines as if I’d just thought of them myself.’ Cilia took a swig of cold coffee and made a face at it. ‘Does Mike know he’s being used as a cover?’

A flash of steel in there somewhere too. I really do like you, Cilia, very much.

‘He wants the beautiful story too,’ said Milena. ‘For him, the story is the reality. I said no a hundred times. I said I am not interested a hundred times. He didn’t even hear. He just kept on acting as if we were courting.’

‘Yuck,’ said Cilia.

‘I said that, too. But after a while, I began to think he was a kind of daffy. Deep down daffy.’

‘Is that why you like me?’

‘Only partly. Don’t worry, Cill. I’ve thought about this a lot. I think it’s the right thing to do.’

Cilia reached across and took more of Milena’s cake. It was made of slump protein and carrots. Milena rescued her glass of what was officially known as milk. People sometimes called it Seepage.

Cilia seemed to be mulling over the cake. ‘Do you know you’re going to be made a People’s Artist?’

‘What?’ Milena’s breath caught.

‘Well, they’ve got to do it. They’re investing more in the Comedy than just about anything else. Not just the British Consensus, but the European Consensus. They can’t do that for any old Vampire. Of course they’ve got to make you a People’s Artist.’

‘Cilia have you heard any rumours about this?’

‘It’s just logic, Milena. It’s how the system works. You know that, you play it better than anyone.’ Another large chunk of Milena’s carrot cake disappeared. Cilia was wrong. Milena did not play the system.

‘I never wanted that Cill. I never asked for that.’ Milena found she still did not want it.

They give you that, they own you, or they think they do.

Outside in the night, more bells began to ring. The sound seemed to be part of the starless sky. Someone else was ill.

Bloody Consensus. I always end up doing what you want.

The horror seeped back into the room, like an inky fluid from out of the corners. Milena thought of Thrawn McCartney. I went to space and thought I had left it all behind me. Now it’s down to earth with a bump. They’re letting people the. They will be killing them next.

Milena stood up. ‘I can’t just sit here,’ she told Cilia.

She walked to Milton’s table. Unease flashed around the uncertain faces. They’re a little bit frightened of me, she realised.

‘Milton,’ she said. ‘I need to talk to you.’

‘Sorry, love?’ Again the bulging corneas.

Milena pulled up a chair beside him. Cilia stood next to her, and put a hand on her shoulder.

‘Milton, when I was in space, I worked with an Angel. I was Terminal with him, and I worked with him in the Fifth. I’ve just talked to Billy, who was with me in Love’s Labour’s. He’s a Bee, and he told me what it’s like and I swear to you, that the Bees see something not all that different from what the Angels see. Milton don’t look away, just listen. There’s nothing wrong with the Bees. They’re perfectly healthy. They just see the world in a different way. We can live with them. Point two. A lot of the people who get sick with other viruses are going to be people we know, people from our Estate, Milton. The Zoo has a lot of money. Can’t we set up some kind of hospice, some place to take care of them?’

Milton shrugged and grinned. It really was all beyond him. I’ll have to talk to Moira, thought Milena.

Milton’s girlfriend spoke. Her voice was raw. ‘What’s happening now must be what the Consensus wants,’ she said.

‘What the Consensus wants is wrong,’ said Milena. The sentence came to a point like a dagger.

The girl gave an incredulous smile. ‘You can’t say that!’ She looked around at all the other climbing Vines. ‘You’re saying that everyone in the world is wrong?’

‘Yes,’ said Milena, eyes hard on her. She started to nod, in realisation. ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes.’ It was, she now understood, what she had been saying all of her life. The patch of luminous skin on her hand began to glow, fiercely, without her even realising it.

It took a lot of extra work, a lot of sitting on dull committees. It took Moira Almasy to help her. It was not in its details an interesting story. But Milena managed to save the Bees and help the sick. ‘Magic,’ said Cilia.