by Geoff Ryman
‘The boots squelch. It’s supposed to be funny.’
Cilla shrugged. ‘You could go to the Graveyard.’
A Vampire joke? Milena looked at Cilla, narrow-eyed. Life had taught Milena to be wary of humour.
‘The Graveyard,’ repeated Cilla, in a voice that indicated that Milena knew very little indeed. ‘It’s where they dump the old costumes no one wants. They’re not even on record.’
‘You mean I can just take them out? No director’s approval?’
‘Yup. It’s in an old warehouse under a bridge.’ Cilla was telling Milena how to get there, when two Vampires swept up to the table in twentieth century clothes: a black tuxedo, and a black-beaded dress.
Party Members—Tarties. The boy wore spectacles, another affectation, and had something in his nose to make his nostrils flare. His hair was combed back and his make-up was green, to make him look ill.
‘Good evening,’ he said, looking sour, his accent American. ‘We’ve managed to escape Virginia. She is busying herself listing all the ways in which Joyce is a bad writer. Her jealousy is so nakedly evident, I was embarrassed.’
The woman with him was trying to smile, under a low cloche hat. The smile wavered pathetically. ‘Tom?’ she said. His back was turned towards her. ‘Speak to me. Can’t you speak? Speak?’
‘T. S. Eliot and Vivien!’ exclaimed Cilla, and complimented them. ‘Instant. Complete.’ The couple did not relax out of their roles. Is there so little of yourselves left? thought Milena.
‘I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,’ the boy said, holding out his hand towards Milena. It was Vampire sociability. He wanted to know who Milena was playing.
‘Who am I?’ Milena responded with deadpan hostility. She did not take his hand. ‘Oh. In life, I was a textile factory worker in nineteenth century Sheffield. I died at twelve years old. I’m a rather bad Vampire because I have no teeth. But I do have eczema and rickets.’
The Vampires made excuses and left. ‘Well. That sent them packing,’ said Cilla.
‘I know,’ sighed Milena. Why did she find so many things unacceptable? ‘Is there something wrong with me, Cilla?’
‘Yup,’ said Cilla. ‘You’re prissy.’ She mused for a moment. ‘And…obsessive.’ She nodded with decision. Then, to make it sweeter, she said, ‘La, la, la.’ It was a nonsense expression. It meant that everything was the same, everything was a song.
‘Obsessive?’ questioned Milena. It was a new arrow to her bow of self-recrimination.
‘You’re still washing that fork,’ said Cilla. ‘You melted all of mine. When you visited, remember?’
‘And prissy?’
‘Severe,’ added Cilla, nodding again in agreement with herself.
Milena had gone through a phase of thinking she was in love with Cilla. Oh, woman, if only you knew what was on my mind!
‘I suppose that does sum it up,’ sighed Milena. It was bad enough to suffer from Bad Grammar, but to be called prissy with it! She contemplated her cold squid, and decided that she preferred hunger. ‘Excuse me.’ She stood up and walked rather unsteadily into the night.
‘You did ask me. Milena? You did ask!’ Cilla called after her. Cilla always spoke without thinking. She only acted on stage.
Milena walked out of the Hungerford Footbridge and looked at the river. It churned in the moonlight, muddy and smelling of drains. The eddies made by the pylons of the bridge swirled with garbage and foam. Milena yearned for some leap away from herself, away from the world.
And then over Waterloo Bridge a great black balloon rose up from its mooring by the river. It made no sound except for a whispering of air, like wind blowing over the moors. Its cheeks were puffed out, and it propelled itself gently, by blowing. It was borne up in silence, moving with the grace of a cloud towards—where? China? Bordeaux? Milena wanted to go with it. She wanted to be like it, huge and unthinking with nothing to do but be itself, carried by the wind.
She was young. She thought she was old. On the South Bank, the windows of the Zoo Cafe were full of candlelight and Vampire silhouettes and the sound of laughter. They were all young and soft, and they had no time, and so they hated the silence, the silence in themselves that had yet to be filled by experience.
Some of them were driven to make noise, were kept jumping by something that was alive inside them. Others like Milena, cleared the decks and waited for something to happen, something worthwhile to do or to say. They loathed the silence in themselves, not knowing that out of that silence would come all the things that were individual to them.
Something, something has got to happen soon, Milena thought. I need something new to do. I’m tired of the plays, I’m tired of the Child Gardens, I’m tired of being me. I’m tired of sitting bolt upright on the edge of my bed all night, alone. I need someone. I need a woman, and there isn’t going to be one. They’ve all been cured. The viruses cure them. Bad Grammar. I love you is Bad Grammar?
Milena suffered from resistance. She thought that in many different ways she was the last of her kind in the world.
The next day she went to the Graveyard, hugging the unwanted boots. Trains to the Continent left from Waterloo. The wooden cars creaked and groaned on rubber wheels that no longer ran on rails, chuffing with steam over the old city on old bridges made of ancient brick.
Through those brick bridges, tunnels ran. One of the tunnels was called Leake Street, and leak it did. Water dripped from the roof. The place smelled of trains, a dry oily itch in Milena’s nostrils. The walls were covered with splattered white tiles and all along them was a series of large green doors.
The green doors were locked. Milena tried each one and not one of them would open. To Milena, this was mysterious. What was the point of a door that would not open?
Finally she came to a huge gate that had been left ajar. It was covered with many different layers of flaking paint, out of which emerged the words in old alphabetic script ‘White Horse.’ From beyond the gates there came the sound of a full orchestra.
It was playing in the dark. Milena peered through the gate. There must be a light, she thought. What kind of orchestra is it that plays in the dark?
She swung the gate open and stepped inside. She had time to see disordered racks of clothing, bamboo rods on bamboo uprights and little rollers. She saw them in a narrow band of dim light from the doorway. The band of light suddenly narrowed. The gate swung shut behind her with a clunk.
It would not open again. This Milena did not believe. She knew nothing of locks. Her culture did not need them. No one ever stole. The old gates did lock however, and Milena pushed them, and slammed them, and shouted ‘Hello?’ at them. They didn’t move.
Fine, she thought in anger. I’ll starve to death in here and they’ll find me fifty years from now, my fingers clawing at the wood. Why the hell have a door like that? Why the hell can’t they light this place? And how the hell am I going to get out of here? Milena felt a sting of frustration in her eyes. She spun around and kicked the door and listened to it shudder. She listened to the music. Her viruses knew it note for note.
Some woman was warbling away to Das Lied von der Erde. Another piece by Mahler about death. All I need right now. Couldn’t the miserable little turncoat write about anything else?
Still, some Animal or another was singing in the dark. Some Animal or another would know the way out. The music was coming from a corner of the warehouse that was diagonally opposite. Milena simply had to find her way there.
This meant fighting her way through racks of old costumes. There were no orderly aisles between them. The capes, the false chain mail, the nun’s habits swung rottenly on their hangers, dry and stiff and booby-trapped with pins. Milena felt a sudden jab of pain.
Good, right, fine, she thought, sucking her finger, and growing savage. I’ve just injected myself with virus.
Then she dropped the boots. She heard a splash. Oh God, she thought, I’ve dropped them in a puddle of something. Her hand plashed in stale water
. She found them, dripping wet, and held them out, well away from her body. She stood up and hit her head on a rack, pushed it over in a rage, got her feet tangled up in dead clothing, dropped the boots again, paddled in the dark to find them, stood up, snarled and took a deep breath.
More than anything else, Milena hated losing her dignity. She forced herself to be calm, and trembling very slightly, began to swing the racks towards her, juddering on their little wheels. She made a more orderly progress.
Milena went on in the darkness until she was lost. Under her hands, she felt the cheap burlap, the frail seams, the loose threads like cobwebs. She felt the scratchiness of dusty sequins in clumps. It was as if all theatre had died around her, leaving only husks behind. What if there isn’t an orchestra? she wondered. Oh come on, Milena, who do you think is making the music, ghosts?
She began to imagine some very strange things. The music was too loud. Music was never that loud. You could stand in the middle of the orchestra next to the kettle drums and it wouldn’t be that loud. And there was a shrill, unnatural tone to it that hurt Milena’s ears.
Distracted, she scraped her head on brick. She crouched blindly under an arch and saw light. Light! Like in a forest just at dawn, grey daylight.
But the music! The music was louder than before, and she could see the rough texture of the bricks in the wall; she was yards away from it. There was no orchestra. There was no room for an orchestra.
But an orchestra screeched at her. The flutes were like knives, slicing into her head, the walls were being beaten like drums. Milena covered an ear with one hand, and moved back a rack of clothing with the other. She ducked down, in a kind of terror, and drew back a velvet dress, like a curtain.
There was a window to the outside world. A window in a bridge? Milena had never seen that. In the light, there were mounds of paper, heaps of it, stacked up in columns or fallen sideways across the floor. Paper was wealth, and Milena’s eyes boggled in her head.
Sitting slumped in front of it was a Polar Bear.
Effendim, excuse me, you’re not supposed to call them that, Milena reminded herself. They are GEs, genetically engineered people.
GEs had been human once. Effendim, are human, now. They had recoded their genes for work in the Antarctic, before the Revolution. It was a sickness, to be pitied. This GE was huge and shaggy, covered in fur of varying chestnut colours, staring ahead, mouth hanging open. The eyes did not blink, but seemed to ripple and glisten with a life of their own, wide and black and unseeing.
The music was coming from nowhere.
The monstrous voice was singing in German, with a voice like a steam whistle.
ewig blauen licht die Fernen
everywhere and eternally, the distance shines bright and blue
The viruses knew all the words, knew all the notes. The effect was to make the music wearisome to Milena, like a thrice-told joke. The mystery of where it was coming from simply made her feel very creepy. She looked instead at the posters of beautiful paintings curling on the wall. There were books as well, books turned face downwards on the desk. There was a scattering of what looked like wafers, something to eat. Books, paper, Milena had never seen such wealth or such waste.
Milena knew about the wealth of Bears, GEs. Bears, GEs, lived outside the Consensus. They were deliberate outlaws, selling Antarctic nickel. This one was massive, burly. What a gorilla, thought Milena. This one’s trouble, she decided.
The music settled into silence.
ewig…ewig…
forever…forever…
The giant voice throbbed. Earwigs yourself, thought Milena. The GE looked stunned as if the music were a blow to the head. Finally the song fell silent and it was as if the entire building sighed with relief.
The GE moved. It fumbled behind itself without turning, sending a cascade of paper pouring out over the edge of the desk. Out from under it emerged a small, metal box with switches. The GE felt for one of them.
An electronic device.
Milena lived in a world without much electricity. Pulse weapons and poverty, sheer numbers, and a shortage of metal had made domestic electronics a part of history.
‘Where did you get that?’ Milena asked, stepping forward, forgetting herself for once.
Milena had a clock in her mind, a viral calculator. It added up the cost of the metal, and the cost of manufacture, all in terms of labour-hours. The electronic device was the most expensive thing she had ever seen.
The GE squinted at her, as if across the Grand Canyon. Its mouth hung open. Finally it spoke.
‘China, I believe,’ the GE said. The voice was high and rasping. The GE was a woman.
Milena had heard stories of Polar women. They gave birth on the ice, and stood up, and went straight back to work, blasting rocks. Milena’s prejudices lined up in place. The creature spoke again, with a delicious, rambling delicacy.
‘You wouldn’t happen to have any alcoholic beverages about your person, would you?’
Milena was by now out of step with the conversation. She had forgotten the question she had asked and was trying to work out what the answer, ‘China, I believe,’ could possibly mean. Distracted, she gave her head a little shake.
‘No,’ Milena said. ‘I don’t like poisoning myself.’
‘Tuh!’ said the GE. It was a chuckle that became a shudder. She stood up. She was nearly twice the height of Milena, and had to shuffle to turn around in the enclosed space. With slow bleariness, she began to ransack her desk. She pushed over more piles of paper, and swept a resin tray of wafers onto the floor.
It occurred to Milena that she was being ignored.
‘Effendim?’ she said, crisply, meaning excuse me, sorry to trouble you. ‘I’ve come to change these boots.’
As she said it, Milena thought: GEs aren’t part of the Consensus. This person does not work here. It’s not her job to find me boots.
The GE lurched around to look at her. ‘You,’ she said, ‘are a ponce.’ The consonant sounds were incised with a laboured precision. Milena was mortified into silence.
I know who this is, thought Milena.
She had heard of the Bear who Loves Opera. GEs were wealthy. This one was wealthy enough to buy a ticket for the first night of each production. She sat in the same seat each time, and left without talking to anyone. Milena never went to the opera herself. Though she did not admit it, Milena did not respond deeply to music. She had never seen the Bear who Loves. It was rather like meeting a legend. Milena watched as the GE began to empty the drawers of her desk, shaking out the contents over the floor. The GE found something.
‘Bastard,’ the GE murmured.
Milena was unaccustomed to harsh language. She herself might have committed an error of social judgement, but enough was enough.
‘Are you talking to me?’ Milena demanded.
‘Oh, no,’ said the GE in blank surprise. ‘I was talking to this empty whisky bottle.’
The GE held up the bottle for Milena to see, and then tossed it aside. It clinked against glass as it shattered. Somewhere in the darkness, there was a mound of broken whisky bottles.
‘Did you know?’ said the GE. ‘This used to be a distillery warehouse? I’ve made the most exciting discoveries.’
She was tugging at a drawer that was stuck. It suddenly came free, sowing its contents about the floor like said—pens, earrings, more wafers, used handkerchiefs, spools of thread, a shower of loose and rusty needles, and a Georgian silver ear-pick.
Lodged in one corner of the drawer was a full bottle. The GE held it up, ‘God,’ she said, ‘is a distiller.’ She grinned, and her teeth were black and green rotting stumps.
Where did they dig her up? thought Milena.
The Bear was covered in dandruff. Silver flakes of it clung to the tips of her fur all over her body, and she was panting like a dog. A long pink tongue hung out of her mouth, curled and quivering, to cool. She took a great swig of alcohol. ‘Gaaah!’ she exclaimed, as if breathing fire, an
d wiped her mouth on her arm.
Milena felt a sudden wrench of amusement. She had a vision of the GE leading a troglodyte existence in this nest of paper and music.
‘Do you live here?’ Milena asked.
‘It would be better if I did,’ said the GE. Her fur dangled into her eyes, making her blink continually. ‘This is where I hide instead.’ She hugged the bottle. ‘Since you don’t like poisoning yourself, perhaps you’d like to look at this.’
She passed a thick, broad, bound wad of paper from the desk. Milena needed both hands to accept it from her. The paper was beautiful to touch, heavy and creamy, ochre around the edges. On the cover, printed in large Gothic lettering was its title. Das Lied von der Erde. Song of the Earth.
Milena had never seen a musical score. They were a waste of paper, and cellulose was needed to feed the yeasts and hybridomas that were the cultures of the Party. She flicked through it and found it disappointing. Yes, yes, the notes were all there.
‘I take it,’ the Polar Bear said, ‘that the reading of music presents you with no difficulties.’
‘No,’ said Milena, innocently. Who couldn’t read music?
The Bear smiled wistfully. ‘Of course not,’ she whispered. She reached forward. It was alarming how far she could reach. Gently she coaxed the score out of Milena’s hands. ‘But you haven’t learned how to read music. If you haven’t learned it, it isn’t yours.’ She took a mouthful of whisky and sloshed it around her teeth like mouthwash. She put the bottle down, and seemed to forget that Milena was there. She turned to the end of the score, all its vast bulk over to one side, threatening to tear the ancient binding in half. The GE spat the whisky onto the floor. Then she began to sing.
She sang the end. ‘…ewig blauen licht die Fernen…’
She’s forgotten I’m here, thought Milena.
‘Ewig…Ewig…’
The GE sang better than the electronic device. Her voice was warm and strong, a fine mezzo, clear but weighty as if pushed from behind by something vast. Milena blinked. The GE was singing very well indeed.