Geoff Ryman - Child Garden

‘Go on, Milena. Why leave the job undone? I am what’s inside your head. You’d like to kill me. Well. Now you can. Without doing me any real harm. Isn’t that what you tell yourself? That you haven’t done me any real harm? Here, slice me into ribbons. There’ll be lots of blood, and I’ll the, right in the middle of your nice Tarty flat.’

‘Where are you cubing from?’ Milena demanded.

The image laughed. ‘Maybe I’m here for real and you really can kill me. Or maybe you’re making all of this up.’

‘If the Party finds out you’re doing this you’ll be scrubbed so clean even the viruses won’t know you,’

‘Will they?’ asked Thrawn with a smile and a confidence that Milena found unnerving.

Then the hologram of Thrawn McCartney transformed itself into a hologram of Milena Shibush.

‘Milton,’ said Milena Shibush. ‘Thrawn McCartney is persecuting me. She puts headless singing cows in my room. She waits for me inside my toilet. I wake up in the middle of the night and her face is smiling at me just in front of my nose. Milton, she’s driving me crazy!’

The image of Milena Shibush turned and smiled. ‘Now what is Milton going to think?’

The image of Milena Shibush turned and walked up to a bleary smudge of light that somewhat resembled Cilia.

‘Cilia,’ said Milena, her face sour. ‘Get away from me, will you? Your constant social climbing is just too unbearable for someone as talented as me.’

The image of Milena Shibush turned and batted her eyelids at Milena.

There was no edge of crackling light where the image joined reality. It cast shadows on the floor in the right direction. I’d believe it was really here, thought Milena, with a sinking heart. She thought very quickly of things she could and could not do, things like cutting the electricity supply. What electricity supply, where? She didn’t know where Thrawn was cubing from.

It’s an exchange of light, she reminded herself. That means Thrawn can see anything I do, hear anything I say. Anything I do or say will become ammunition. If it gives away a plan, if it shows what I feel, what I’m frightened of, what I’m not frightened of, anything will be used.

My defence is silence.

Next to the image of Milena was an image of Thrawn. They began to play a little psychodrama.

Reality was remade in light.

This Thrawn looked bright and sweet and pretty. This Milena looked unbearably snotty and smug, squat, untidy and smelly. This Thrawn tolerated Milena, felt sorry for her. This Thrawn was a victim who was held back by pity. This Thrawn was the stronger one really.

‘I’ve got some new ideas,’ said this Thrawn. ‘I think they’ll really help the show.’

Low feral cunning crossed the face of this slightly hunchbacked Milena. ‘Oh really? That’s terribly nice of you Thrawn. But better leave the content to me. After all I am the director.’

This Thrawn, sighed, and shook her head, full of forbearance. She turned to the real Milena and shrugged, as if to say, poor deluded thing, we have to humour her.

‘Of course, Milena, you’ll get credit, don’t worry. But they’re supposed to be fun, these ideas. Now.’ She began to talk slowly and clearly as if to someone very stupid who never understood. ‘People like to laugh. Let’s give them something amusing.’

‘Oh dear no,’ said this Milena, nose in the air. ‘That couldn’t possibly be important enough for a Milena Shibush production.’

It is so banal, thought Milena. Tykes do this. They imitate each other, making each other say the horrible things that would justify hatred. Who is frying up an injustice, Thrawn? ‘Now I know you’ll never be a director,’ said Milena, aloud.

Silence, fool.

Milena the image said, ‘You’ll never be as talented as I am, Thrawn. No one is as talented as I am. Now then, let’s play this scene as I imagine it. You’ll see. It will be so very much more talented.’

There was a kind of flicker and the holograms changed places.

In flounced Milena.

‘Thrawn. I need something new and spectacular. I’ve persuaded the Consensus to give us the go-ahead. Connections. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Such a shame about you, Thrawn. If only you could rope yourself in a bit more. All you have to do is pander, Thrawn. All you have to do is exactly what the Consensus wants you to do.’ Milena the mirror image had a face that was crossed with idiot concern. ‘How are things, Thrawn? Working all day in here by yourself. You know how much I worry about you.’

‘Then why,’ said Thrawn the image. ‘Do you always make me feel like something squeezed in between the soup and the fish course?’

Milena the mirror image faltered. ‘Oh. Do I? I’m sorry.’

‘Yes, you do.’ said Thrawn. This time, thought Milena, the characters are more convincing and the acting is better.

‘You always get so tangled in busy-ness,’ said the image of Thrawn. ‘The last time I tried to talk to you, you were washing a chicken. That chicken was the most important chicken I had ever seen. The concentration that you focused on that chicken. I asked myself: what has it got that I haven’t? And the answer was: it’s dead and in pieces. I can still fight back.’

It’s better, thought Milena, when she imagines herself as me. It’s as if I give her a tone of voice with which she can speak. If I am that important to her, no wonder she is fighting. If I lose and she stays, I will be an appendage for the rest of my life. I’ll be bagpipes round her neck that she needs to make any kind of reasonable noise at all.

Silence, Milena. Listen and watch. Anything you say gets tied into the knot.

‘I don’t mean to do that,’ said Milena the image in mock horror.

‘Of course you mean it. You don’t want me to be there, and it’s a way of cancelling me out,’ said Thrawn. It was Thrawn as she would like to be. Milena heard her speak with Milena’s own intonation. ‘You are continually dishonest, do you know that? You’re so dishonest, it’s actually very, very difficult to be direct and honest around you. Everything gets tied up in a sort of knot.’

She knows what she does, thought Milena. Of course she knows. She’s not insane; she’s not out of touch with reality. She knows what reality is and she hates it, and she sucks it into herself and spews it out backwards. Mirror image.

And Milena thought: I’ll be very lucky to get out of this. This is very bad indeed. She went back into her Tarty bathroom and used the toilet, knowing what was inside it. Thrawn showed her, hovering in the air just in front of her, exactly what the head was seeing.

So far the game will be to get me to ignore it all. That is what she wants and expects. Like the chicken. Once she gets me to react with disgust or horror, that’s a victory too. If I pretend to ignore it, she wins. If she gets a reaction, she wins. I have to cut through the Gordion knot. It can’t be untied. And I don’t know how to do it.

Except that if I stay around people, she can’t do it all. All it takes is one person to see what I see, see the holograms, and then I can go to Milton and tell him this is happening — and bring witnesses.

Otherwise, like she says, he’ll think I’m the crazy one.

Hop skip and jump. Only she’s the one making up the rules.

‘It must be comforting to know you’ll never be alone, Milena,’ said a voice.

I speak, she wins. I don’t speak, she wins.

Milena had an inspiration. She chuckled and shook her head.

‘Tee hee hee,’ said Thrawn, darkly.

Thrawn didn’t like that.

Milena stood up, flushed the toilet. The image dissolved, refracted by the water, destabilised. Water, thought Milena. Vampires can’t cross running water.