Child Garden

by Geoff Ryman

  'We'll get your purse, Lady. We'll get your money,' someone was saying.

  There was inside her ear, a shivering. The shivering took shape into a voice.

  'You don't like the light, do you, Milena? It shows the truth.' Her eyes screwed shut, Milena jammed her fingers into her ears.

  It seemed as if there was a fly buzzing just inside her nostrils. The fly spoke with a buzzing voice, resonating out of the bones of her septum and cheeks and sinuses.

  'Hear no evil. See no evil. Must be a first time for you,' said the voice. 'You're going to go to the Zoo, Milena. You're going to go to the Zoo to tell them you want Thrawn McCartney to work on the Comedy.'

  Then, like a ghost, it was gone.

  Milena opened her eyes. Her cheeks were smeared with tears, and there were still burning purple shapes hovering in front of her eyes. She very nearly blinded me, thought Milena.

  'Where's my money?' she asked. 'Does someone have my money?'

  The viruses had made people scrupulously honest.

  'Yes, Lady, the boys dived for it. They found some of it for you.' It was the flower girl, pressing wet coins into her hand.

  'Is there enough for a punt or a taxi there?' Milena sniffed. 'I can't see!' Milena's voice broke with distress and fear. Damn her. She's got me dancing like a puppet. Consoling hands held her.

  Yes, oh, yes, said many people, all around her.

  'I have to see someone at the Zoo,' Milena whispered. 'They may be able to help.' She felt herself being helped towards another boat.

  'Oh dear,' said Ms Will. 'What about my fruit and chestnuts?'

  'You can pay for those later,' the flower girl told Ms Will. I bet she doesn't, thought Milena.

  Many hands lowered her into another punt. A cushion was moved behind her.

  Milena felt the boat wobble sideways away from the mooring. It moved out onto the water. She felt the tickle in her ear. It seemed to shiver into place.

  'Good girl,' said the voice in her ear, as if to a dog. 'Good little Milena. You always try to do the right thing. You have such high standards of behaviour.'

  Milena settled back on the cushion, and drew a deep, trembling breath. I need a kerchief to tie around my eyes, she thought. I need plugs for my ears.

  Someone started to sing, from the prow of the boat.

  Lady oh lay hah

  Lady remember me?

  It's the boy, she thought, it's the same boy who brought me out here.

  Are you ill, Lady?

  Are you ill like me?

  Ill? thought Milena. 'Are you a Singer?' she asked. He hadn't been a Singer a week ago.

  Now I am Lady

  I have to sing to speak.

  This far? It's come out this far already? And Milena had a saddening thought: I'm the only thing that's come out this far. What if I brought it with me?

  'Sing then,' she asked the boy.

  'Poison,' said the voice in her ear. 'You are poison.'

  All the way back across the Slump, the boy sang. He ran out of songs, and began to make up music without words. It was as if he was singing about the beauty of the world that Milena could no longer see. When she ventured to open her eyes, she would catch a glimpse of blue water and soft, silver-grey reeds. Then the light in her eyes was scattered, disturbed. It dissolved into a shapeless, queasy, oily mass. Thrawn was in her eyes.

  'Don't you just love games?' whispered the voice.

  I have to be able to see the cube, thought Milena. She can stop me hologramming. She can stop me doing the Comedy. Does that matter? The important thing is that the Comedy is produced. I could just go to Moira and say, this is too much, I can't do it, get someone else. But then, Thrawn might be able to persuade them to use her as a technician, and that does matter. And there is no guarantee that she would stop doing this to me.

  I have to find a way to protect myself against this somehow. There must be some way to cut off the light, make it difficult for her to focus.

  Milena opened her eyes. For a moment, she could see the world. Then it melted. She moved her head, and the world returned, before subsiding again into a chaos of colour. She moved her head once more, and then the light flared up hot and dazzling again.

  'Ow,' said Milena again and went still.

  The band of focus was small in itself, with plenty of opportunity for error. And Thrawn needed enough light to focus in the first place.

  And suddenly, Milena had an answer. In the Cut the week before, there had been a Seller of Games, a great booming woman with a very high, but very loud voice. She had been a Singer, too.

  Have you got friends who can't see themselves?

  Have you chum who's a bum?

  It's easily done, no mystery

  With a little item from history...

  She had been selling mirrored contact lenses. A joke, another game.

  Mirrored lenses would reflect light.

  Yes, yes, the mirror would reflect light, make focusing very difficult indeed, and it would cut down on the amount of light inside the eye that Thrawn had to play with. Thrawn would always have to focus in from the back, instead of the front. Milena's viruses calculated the intensity of light, the resulting possible strength of any Reformed image.

  It would be enough. It would have to be enough.

  So how was Milena to get to the Cut to buy them?

  'Take me to the Embankment Garden quay,' she told the singing boy. 'That's the one closest to the Zoo.'

  The only way I can go to the Cut without Thrawn blinding me is to get lost. I have to get lost on my way to the Zoo and end up there as if by mistake. The only way I can do that is to make her mad enough to blind me with light. That means I have to make her angry.

  'So you've won, Thrawn,' said Milena, aloud.

  Silence.

  'Thrawn? You can answer me now.'

  Milena felt a tiny fist of light clenching in her eyes, and she closed them, and covered them with her hands. That left her ears exposed, and her skin open to the light. Fire suddenly crawled over the bare flesh of her arms, just under the skin. A worm seemed to writhe just inside her ear.

  'This isn't Thrawn. It's you, yourself. Remember that,' warned the worm.

  I can get you mad, thought Milena. So I can control you. 'You see, Milena, there is justice sometimes after all. You can't get away with using people forever.'

  Silence and darkness, those are my friends, thought Milena.

  Milena reeled into the New Cut market, into the Summer of Song. Everyone sang, even those who did not have the disease, just to be part of the fun. It was a new craze. Milena stumbled blindly, buffeted by people she could not see.

  'These daytime drunks are everywhere!' someone exclaimed to the opening bars of Beethoven's 'Song of Joy'.

  Song was all around her, in waves. 'Where are you? Where are you?' the voice in her ear demanded.

  'I don't know! I'm lost! You won't let me see!'

  Waves of song washed over her. The voice in her ear said something Milena could not hear. A wall of song bore down on her.

  Oh I do like to be beside the seaside!

  Someone pulled her to one side. There was a whizzing of bicycles, just past the tips of her toes. Milena's vision cleared. Trolleymen on bicycles sizzled past her, pulling their wagons full of hot food behind them.

  Oh I do like to be beside the sea!

  Two women were just by her elbow, at a fruit stall. They were singing new words to 'The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy'. The effect was delightfully, prinklingly sarcastic.

  Oh you can't sell just one orange

  How int'resting, oh how strange

  Other markets can.

  The voice of Thrawn screeched in Milena's ear. You're in the Cut? You're in the bloody Cut? How did you get there?'

  'You'll just have to let me see!' whispered Milena.

  There was a wrench of light. Milena doubled up under its impact. She covered her eyes. She refused to move. She heard the stallowner answer, to the final, demonic theme f
rom Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique. Each word was separate and heavy as if made of lead.

  I can sell them by the kilo

  I can't sell them separately!

  All around her, people sang. It was easy to do, easier almost than speaking. As long as you told the truth.

  What is the price please? a woman asked, in the theme 'Povera donna' from Falstaff. The effect was inappropriately tragic, as if everything in the woman's life were inappropriately tragic. The music revealed her.

  Five francs and two yen

  The answer came in a lively, happy voice to 'Alle due al la tre' — also from Falstaff. That would be the dress seller, the happy young wife. The song revealed her too.

  The song whirled around Milena. It drifted out of the open windows above, women humming as they sizzled sausages. It came from the roofs, where people would be lying down and photosynthesizing. From the bar by the butcher's shop came a steady, frog-like croaking:

  Slup, slup, slup, drink it all up, up, up and we won't go to bed until the morn-ning!

  'All right!' said the voice in her ears.

  Milena removed her hands. Her vision was still slightly blurred but she could see to walk. She could see if the Seller of Games was still there. And if she wasn't, what then? Go to the Zoo? Crawl into the Graveyard and hide there? Milena found it difficult to think, with all the noise.

  The world seemed to spin with song. Old street cries had been revived. 'Ripe cherries, ripe!' Insinuating love songs were given like gifts to female customers. 'Someone as beautiful as you... should buy two.'

  Children ran on the ledges of the crumbling old buildings overhead. A woman admonished them, out of a half-open window. 'Watch out, you be careful! Watch out, you be careful!' she squawked to a dance tune, her mature authority undermined by the rollicking of her hips.

  Song washed up and down the street, as formless as the chorus of Remembrance, as if it were a funeral for things already gone. There were occasional quiet moments and occasional contagions when a particular chorus caught everyone's fancy. The new viruses then trumpeted their triumph.

  We all fall down!

  The entire street roared in unison, and then laughed.

  And Milena, stumbling, confused, peered half blind at each wagon-stall. There was the seller of paints and brushes, there was the Tacky with his hot, smelly little press, there was the birdman with his cages. Somewhere she heard someone singing:

  Have you a chum who's bum?

  'Turn around, you're going back,' said Thrawn in her ear.

  'Can't hear,' said Milena, though she could.

  The voice in her ear was then pitched to the level of pain.

  'Now it's too loud!' said Milena. It was as if she were wading through glue, through the noise, through the people, through the glare, through increasingly panicked voice in her ear, the voice of Thrawn who now had guessed that Milena was playing a brand new game.

  Then Milena saw her, the Seller of Games, big boned, hearty, with virulently purple cheeks.

  All light was sucked from her eyes.

  She groped her way blindly forward. Her hands crawled up and over people's shoulders.

  'I'm blind,' she said, 'Take me to the Seller of Games.'

  For some reason, Symphonie Fantastique was taken up by everyone. It was a half-serious prayer for rain. Everyone sang it, the song for a Sabbath, praying for the waters to fall. 'Oh God, please God, make it rain God.'

  The person, a man, murmured something and took hold of Milena's shoulder to lead her.

  Oh God, please God, make it rain!

  'Cunt! Cunt! Cunt!' Thrawn was howling like a gale in her ears. Milena could hear nothing else. Her hands were clamped over her eyes shielding them. Blindness was replaced by fire all along her arms and hands. Thrawn was burning her skin with light.

  She felt the edge of a stall. 'Am I here? Am I here?' she shouted.

  'Yes!' she could barely hear the man howling at her.

  'Sorry, sorry. I'm ill,' said Milena, unable to see the Seller, unable to hear her. 'I need your lenses. Your contact lenses, with the mirrors.'

  Fire danced on her skin. Milena screamed. The sound of the scream was lost in the chorus.

  'What? What love?' she could hear the Games Seller wailing.

  'The light burns!' Milena wailed. 'I need the lenses!'

  Milena rammed her hands into her armpits, to hide them from the light.

  The beefy hands of the Games Seller seized Milena's arms. The Games Seller led her. Milena tripped up; she fell forward. The woman caught her up. Blisters ruptured against her cotton shirt. Her hands wept. The woman led her into Leake Street.

  Everything went dark and cool, and Milena could suddenly hear.

  'Put them in please,' wept Milena.

  The woman was over her huge and sheltering. 'Yes, you are, yes you are, yes you are in a bad way,' the Gameswoman sang soothingly. It was a lullaby. She kept on singing, soothing, as she forced Milena to open her eyes away from the light.

  Thrawn made the worms crawl inside them, but in Leake Street, the light was dull.

  First one in. Then the other. Now there really was something in her eyes. Tears welled up to expel them. I will get used to them, Milena told herself. I will have to get used to them. She turned and looked up at the end of Leake Street. Thrawn tried to focus the light. It concentrated into a dull blue circle. Milena moved her head. It took some seconds for Thrawn to find the focus. That would have to be good enough.

  The Seller of Games was inspecting Milena's blistered fingers. 'Your poor little hand...' she began. La Boheme. Then she tried to speak. 'Buh! Buh!' she stammered, and sighed, and sang again.

  'Bloody viruses! What will they do to us next?'

  Milena said she didn't know. She thanked the Seller, paid for the lenses and stepped out again into the light and the roar of the songs. She rocked her head, very slightly, from side to side. She bought a pair of gloves and some ear plugs.

  'Go and die,' said Thrawn in Milena's ear, just before the plugs were inserted.

  The game we are playing now, thought Milena, is called Sticks and Stones. Words can never hurt me.

  All around her, everywhere around her, people sang.

  Slightly less than a year later, Milena married.

  She remembered the wedding party, in the forest of the Consensus. That year the summer was clouded and cool. A blustery wind rocked back and forth between the fleshy trunks of the purple trees. The guests were as chilled as the wine. They clutched their glasses with one hand, and warmed the back of their arms with the other and did their best to make conversation. Mike Stone tried to make conversation. Milena had forgotten how stiff he could be. He bent forward from the waist and shook people's hands and could think of nothing to say except 'Thank you very much for coming,' or 'I suppose you're all famous,' or 'I've always wanted to act.'

  He had worn his astronaut suit to the wedding. He liked his astronaut suit and saw no reason ever to wear anything else. The pockets were full of astronaut gear — microscopes and multipurpose DNA capsules. He explained them at great length to Cilia, who used every particle of her acting ability in looking rapt with fascination.

  Halfway through the party, Milton the Minister died.

  'The two of you alone together up there in space,' Milton was saying. It was his way of congratulating them. 'It must have been a real Battle of the Bulge.' His eyes closed and his smile spread, as if he had finally made the perfect Milton joke. An expression of peace settled onto his face. Then he fell forward into the calamari salad and overturned the table of refreshments.

  Mike had a first-aid kit in the pouches of his overalls. He slipped a pulse injector into Milton's ear to keep his breath and heartbeat going while Milena, Moira Almasy, all the Terminals, called for the Consensus. It came in the form of the new police, the men in white, the Garda.

  They came with a chopping, juddering sound as if something were cutting the air into slices. Something predatory descended from the sky onto th
e pavements of Marsham Street. It was the first time Milena had ever seen a helicopter. It was made entirely of metal and resin, and it gleamed like some hungry insect. Mike swept Milton up and carried him past the Garda, his wiry limbs moving with a robotic smoothness. He lowered Milton into the bubble of the beast and the Garda trooped back inside it, and with a whirlwind of air, the thing lifted off, and was gone.

  The death and the helicopter shook Milena. Many things had happened over the last year to shake her. She found her teeth were involuntarily tap dancing and the cold seemed to rise out of her own bone-marrow. Milena was cold inside. Milena asked to be taken home. The party was over.

  It was a cold, cold boat ride back to the Slump, through little, lapping, grey waves. Milena curled up against Mike Stone to be warmed, and she still shook. She didn't know it was fear. She only knew that soon her husband might want to make love, and that she did not. She only knew that she had never told him she could not accept sex from a man. Paradoxically, the fear made her turn to him for comfort.

  She was still afraid walking back into her little lacquered boxes. She showed him each of the rooms, puffing up pillows, folding in shutters, lighting the alcohol lamps. In the darkness in the corners, the truth still waited, unsaid. Whenever I get into this kind of trouble she thought, it is because I have been dishonest. What happens next? What happens now?

  'Play some music, Mike, if you'd like to,' said Milena. Her back was to him.

  Mike Stone said nothing. He stood in the centre of the bamboo box, his back rigid, his hands clasped behind him, uncertain what was to come next.

  'You don't feel like it?' Milena asked him, gently. She often found herself thinking of him with kindness.

  Still smiling his engineer's smile, he shook his head. He went and sat very tidily on a Pear, hands folded in his lap.

  'Do you want to do anything special?' she asked him. Now what could you possibly do that was special on your marriage night?