by Geoff Ryman
'Yes?' repeated Milena. 'Does that mean yes, you'll do it?'
'Yes,' he said again.
Milena was taken aback. It was too simple, just to have him say yes. 'But how? When?' she asked, trying to inject into her voice the joy she thought she should be feeling.
'Well,' he said, in the same detached, quiet voice. 'It's a big job. I can't say when. I really need to look at the whole thing some more.'
So did he really mean yes? Already Milena felt a confusion, somewhere. 'So you need some time still to look at it.'
He made a totally meaningless gesture, a shrug that looked like some kind of deprecation. What was being deprecated? The time he still needed to make up his mind? The importance of what he was asking — no big thing?
'Do you want to keep the book?' Milena asked. 'It's just I'm a bit chary still of letting it out of my sight. There's been no time to write it all out again somewhere else. That's the only copy.'
'I'll be needing it,' he said.
'If it's just a question of looking at the music to see if it's worthwhile, there is a copy of most of the main themes.'
He looked back at her without answering. Was he terribly insulted? Finally he said, 'I will be needing the book.'
'Of course,' said Milena. She had to tell herself: the book is not yours now, Milena. It belongs to everyone now. It has to fly by itself. 'Fine. By all means,' she said.
And she thought: so why don't I feel happy?
'Well I guess that's it.' Milena tried to be generous. 'I guess I wasn't expecting you to be interested. I'm very pleased.' She smiled, but there was no response in Max's face. This was unnerving. Milena found that she did not quite know how to leave. 'You'll let me know, then?'
'Yes of course,' he replied. He turned to his pile of blank paper and began to tap its sides, as if something were out of order.
Weeks, thought Milena. That's all I'll give him. Two weeks. She looked about the office. At least it seemed organised and workmanlike.
'Then goodbye,' she said.
'Yes,' he replied, without looking at her.
It took a month to find him again.
She left messages at the music desk. She found his Postperson.
'Oh him,' said his Postperson. 'You'll be lucky. I can never find him myself, and if he ever sends messages he never sends them by me. What was your name, love? And your message?'
Max had the only forgetful Postperson Milena had ever met. That seemed to explain things. She visited his office and found it empty. She knocked on his door in the Three Eyes, where the musicians lived, but there was no answer.
Finally she went to one of Max's performances. She waited outside the concert hall, looking at the patterns in the varnished wood panels on the walls. Long after the audience was gone, Max emerged, holding the door open for a very tall, serious-looking woman. She was carrying a violin case, and nodding at something Max was saying.
Milena drew herself up next to them. Max ignored her. He kept talking about orchestra business; how to divide the orchestra's earnings fairly. The violinist kept giving Milena speaking looks, tight-lipped, steady-eyed. Finally she said, 'Excuse me, Max,' and addressed Milena. 'I'm sure you must find listening to our conversation terribly dull. Perhaps you could talk to Max later.'
'I would love to talk to Max later, but we keep missing each other. Max, have you been able to make up your mind about the Comedy yet?'
'I'm afraid not,' he said, and tried to turn back to the violinist.
'Do you think you could let me have the book back, so I can make a copy?'
'Please!' he said turning to her. He looked harassed, piteous, as if she had been hounding him. 'You are asking rather a lot. Let me look at it, and I will let you know.'
Milena felt her jaw jut out. 'You have had a month, Max. I don't think that's rushing you.'
'I will let you know soon. Please give me some time, and please let me continue talking to my colleague.'
All right. For now, all right. 'I shall try to see you in a week or two's time,' she warned him.
Sometime in early January, she visited him in his office. Winters were getting cold again. There was cold grey light coming in from the windows, but the room was still stiflingly hot. Max looked up in alarm when Milena came in. He was sitting at his desk, arms folded, hands buried in his armpits as if to stop them doing something. He's sitting here doing nothing, Milena thought. 'Hello, Max,' she said quietly. 'Have you made up your mind yet?'
His face was frozen. His mouth gaped open, with a kind of twist in its slackness. Milena realized that Max was trying to smile and couldn't. He dreads me, she thought, he dreads me coming. I am the least welcome thing that could happen to him. Well, Max, say yes or no, and either way I'll let you alone.
'Max,' she repeated. 'Have you made up your mind?'
'Yes,' said Max, in an unconvincing imitation of firmness. 'Yes, I have. I think the material is very good. It does require, a lot, a lot of work. But I'll be happy to do it for you.'
'Fine. Thank you Max.'
'It will take some time.'
'I'm sure of that, Max. But we don't need a full orchestration. I think just the first canto will be enough to show the Minister what we want to do. So. I have brought you all the vocal line for the first canto.' She had reconstructed it from memory, it was such a part of her life. She passed it to him, all tidy on staves. 'Now, could I please have the book back?'
'It isn't here, Milena.'
'I realize that, Max. It's a big book. I'd see it if it were here. When can you get it to me?'
'I will send it to you tomorrow.'
'I will expect to see it. This is a major project, Max, and we have to begin thinking in terms of time. The Minister will want to see a schedule.'
He began patting his blank paper again. 'He shall have one.'
'I will need one, too,' said Milena.
He shrugged again.
Milena chuckled with frustration. 'Max!' she said, as if to call out his better self. 'Will I see a copy of the schedule?'
He only nodded.
'I'll come in tomorrow for the book, if that is well with you. Max? Max, please answer me.'
'Yes,' was all he said.
Milena shook her head as she left. I get that book back, and then I get rid of you, Max. There's no way that you are up to doing this project.
Milena came back the next day to his office, and was not surprised to find that he wasn't there. The charcoal burners were full of icy ash. Milena searched his room. The drawers of the black desk were empty, the long white shelves were empty. The room was as blank as the paper.
Milena took a sheet of his paper and wrote on it, angrily, making slashes of the Chinese characters.
Where is my book
Then she went to the Three Eyes.
The corridors echoed with the sound of distant feet walking on other floors, and with the strains of music — pianos, violins. It was as if the building were sighing to itself.
Milena knocked on his door. The door was green and should have hidden dirt, but all around the handle there were grubby fingermarks. From down the corridor, from outside the windows came the drifting sound of someone rehearsing Bartok on the violin.
The door opened very slightly, and there was a blast of hot air. It smelled of socks and stale bedding, and the room beyond the door was dark. Milena saw part of Max's face, one eye looking at her.
'May I come in, Max?' she asked.
'It's a bit of a mess,' he replied.
'I'm used to that. I don't need to come in, if you can just give me the book.'
'Let me get dressed,' he said.
Dressed? thought Milena. It's mid-afternoon. I'm not waiting for you any more, Max, I am not standing out here in a cold corridor looking at a closed door. Milena lunged forward at the door before Max could close it and pushed her way in. She felt the edge of the door thump into the soft flesh of his shoulders and toes.
'Milena, please!' he yelped in genuine outrage. Milena forc
ed herself sideways through the door.
Max stood looking at her, appalled, in only his linen shirt, underpants and socks. The room was dark and the blinds were down. Milena had an impression of clothes in heaps and bedclothes that had fallen onto the floor.
'I'm very sorry, Max, but we agreed to meet today. I have been leaving messages and trying to talk to you for over a month. I am sick of chasing you. Please may I have that book!'
'It's in my office,' he said.
'No. It is not. I have searched your office and it is not there. Where is it, Max?'
He stared at her, even more exposed than his nakedness made him. 'This is really outrageous,' he said to the floor. 'I am the conductor of an orchestra. Having you go through my office!'
'Max. Where is the book?'
'I will get it for you.'
'Is it in this room, Max?'
The room was small. A sink, a bed, a cupboard, a chest of drawers. He was Party member, so there was also a small water closet. He was Party and had privileges. But there was not much space there for the great grey book to hide. Clothes were piled on the floor, twisted in strange shapes as if being tortured.
'You've lost it, haven't you Max?'
'I'll find it for you!' he insisted. He could not manage anger, only petulance. Hands shaking, he began to pull on his baggy, wrinkled trousers.
'Did you give it to someone else to write the music?'
He did not answer. Shaking, wounded, he was pulling on socks.
'If you gave it to someone else, simply tell me who and I will fetch it.'
No answer. 'Max. Please answer me. Did you give it to someone else?'
'Of course not. I don't think so.'
'Which is it Max. Yes or no.'
'I don't remember!' he suddenly shouted.
'You don't remember?' It was Milena's turn to be undone. Her voice went dismayed and childlike.
'No! Now leave me alone, and let me think.'
'Max, what do you mean, you don't remember?'
'I don't know. I'm a very busy man with a full concert schedule and I'm afraid I had rather more on my plate than your silly little book.'
'Max. Max. It was a great work. It was not your property, it belonged to the Zoo, to everyone. What do you mean, you were busy? Will you answer me please, Max?'
He didn't, he couldn't, there was nothing to say. Milena began to ransack his room. She picked up all of his clothes, trousers, shirt and socks, and threw them one after another onto a heap in the middle of the floor. She pulled back the sheet and the under blanket from his bed and dragged the mattress away from the wall, and looked behind it. Max stood over her, hands on his hips.
'Go on, make a mess,' he said. 'It's not behind the bed.'
'It's probably up your arse,' said Milena. Max went pale.
Milena stood up, and began as neatly as her rage would allow to turn out the contents of his cupboards. She unloaded masses of paper from the upper shelf. It was full of music paper. There was a fortune of paper, and it had all been wasted. Notes were placed aimlessly on it, and crossed out, sometimes in what looked like scrawled fury. The notes sometimes dribbled away into doodles, meaningless patterns, or drawings of faces or women's genitalia.
'What I wouldn't have given to have this paper,' said Milena, thin lipped.
'All right,' said Max, and began to help, as if doing her a favour. He was taller than Milena and could reach the upper shelf. He stepped in front of her, blocking her view and went through the paper, sheaf by sheaf.
As he thumbed through the first sheaf, he said, 'It's not there!' With each subsequent pile of paper, he said, 'And it's not there! It's not there,' as if to say I told you. Almost as if to say, see? It's gone forever.
'It's not in this room,' he said, as a finale.
'So try to remember, Max. A big grey book. What did you do with it Max?' No answer. 'How long ago did you last see it, Max?'
'I don't know. A long time.'
'Why didn't you tell me?'
'I kept thinking it would turn up.'
'Max!' and Milena found that she was almost weeping. 'Max, how could you do it? How could you do it and keep any self-respect?'
The face was blank again. You don't have any self-respect, Milena thought. Not really. Your whole life is a mask. What are you trying to hide?
A man like this, Milena thought, has motives that are secret even from himself. Without realising it, Max, you wanted to destroy the Comedy. She thought of sheafs of wasted paper, and the angry scrawls and knew, without quite being able to say why, that part of him had deliberately lost the book.
Milena looked at him. He was so ugly and helpless that she could not yet pity him. She could feel only anger and scorn. Somewhere in that fat head of yours, she thought, is the answer, buried deep, deep down so that even you can't find it. I need a mind-reader to get at it. I need a Snide. Milena knew then what she was going to do.
'I'm not going to tell the Minister for a week,' she said. 'I'm not going to tell him you've lost an entire, very valuable project for one week. Start thinking, Max. I won't tell him anything about this if I get that book. But I will be back and back and back again until it's found.'
She left him and went straight to the apothecary woman.
Without her clown make-up, the woman's face was beautiful but sharp. The nostrils were too flared, the eyes too avid, the precision-painted mouth too perfect. It was a criminal's face. Milena needed a criminal.
'I need a Snide,' Milena told her. 'Can you find me one?'
If you are sick in conditions of weightlessness, your vomit will keep travelling, spreading very slightly from air resistance until it hits something. It will then cling precariously, held in place only by friction. A cloth can not absorb the moisture or be used to wipe it up. A cloth will simply shunt it free again. Eventually, vomit will coat every surface in the vehicle as evenly as its rather coarse texture will permit.
The main body of Milena's vomit moved towards an air vent. Suddenly it ballooned backwards, as if it had grown a head and a mind of its own. It wobbled its way back towards Milena, looking rather like an octopus.
Something caught Milena's ankle. She kicked.
'Don't!' said the voice. 'Hold still!'
'Aaaah!' squawked Milena, about to be enfolded in her own half-digested breakfast. Milena felt herself hauled backwards. The vomit followed tamely, as if unaware that it was not wanted. It was about to give Milena an unwelcome kiss, when she had an inspired idea. She puckered her lips and blew. The octopus reared backwards, rippling. It reared up and over her. Milena arched her neck and ran out of air. She gasped for breath, and pulled the tiling closer towards her.
She kicked and wrenched out of its way. Out of the corner of her eye, Milena saw that a man was trying to hold her. The vomit loomed. She blew out and it burst scattering.
From somewhere there came a sound like peeling fruit. 'Oh darn,' said the man, rather mildly. 'Dislocated my shoulder.'
Milena was released. She and the tiny babies of vomit spun away, perpetually falling.
She spun and seemed to land in a park in winter. Hampstead Heath, she remembered. The expanse of hill sloping away beneath her was covered in snow. She could see her own footsteps. The branches of the trees were coated in ice, as if they had been dipped in glass.
Milena was waiting for the apothecary to catch up with her. The woman climbed the hill, panting, pushing herself up, hands on her knees. Milena could hear the rather satisfying crunching noises the woman's feet made in the snow.
'There!' the apothecary sighed as she reached Milena and the top of the hill. There was a wreathing of vapour from out her mouth. 'Whoo! That's it.' The apothecary pointed to a wagon, a black box on two huge wheels. Black smoke poured out of a stovepipe chimney. Winter ponies were watching the two women. The ponies were small and shaggy creatures, with hair that trailed into the snow. Winter ponies were fiercely loyal. If someone came for their master, they would attack. Their eyes, thought Milena, they hav
e human eyes.
'Shalom,' said the apothecary, to the ponies. It seemed to be some kind of codeword. The animals went back to pawing back the snow with their hooves, and chomping the grass. There were other footsteps in the snow, leading to the wagon. The wagon was a mobile club for Snides and empaths. Boites, the wagons were called. The boites were continually moved from place to place. Snides and empaths gathered there, to do what exactly, Milena had little idea, except that it involved illicit viruses. They performed for each other. Mind-dancing they called it.
The apothecary climbed gypsy steps to the door of the wagon and knocked.
'Ali, Ali it's me,' she called.
The door was pushed open. Men and women sat all at the lower end of the wagon, crosslegged on the floor. Milena could feel a current of hot air rise up out of the door. The apothecary pushed Milena in ahead of her and slammed the door shut.
'Sorry everyone. Sorry,' she said. 'Good?'
'His best,' said a bearded man, his eyes dim, his speech slightly slurred. 'He's weaving all of us into this one.'
The wagon leaned forward on its nose. The wooden floorboards all pointed up the sloping floor towards a man in black, sitting crosslegged on a thin rug.
He was Al, Al the Snide.
His eyes were closed in concentration. Then they opened. They opened and were staring direct at Milena.
'That's it ladies, gentlemen.' he said. 'That's all for now.' There were jars of potheen lined up along the edge of the floor, held in place by a rack. 'Keep warm, drink something. We'll complete the tapestry later.' He stood up with one smooth movement. He was still tall and lithe. The hat and cape had gone. He looked at Milena with sadness.
'Hello,' he said.
'Hello,' said Milena.
He pulled on a sealskin coat. He caught something in Milena's mind,
'Real seals weren't killed making it,' he said. He paused. 'And yes, I'm still defensive.'
The room chuckled warmly. They all understand, Milena realised, they all hear what I'm thinking, they all know. I feel naked. Do I mind?
The room chuckled some more. The faces were ordinary, rough, but not unkind.