The Child Garden

by Geoff Ryman

  ‘Of course,’ said Milena. ‘There are many precedents in the classical tradition of giant singing beasts—dragons for example. The spaceship will look like a Chinese dragon, in fact. It will land in the main courtyard of the Forbidden City. These will all be holograms created by Thrawn McCartney. Uh. No one has hologrammed scenes on this scale before, or from such a distance. We propose to use Hyde Park as the main stage. This will give us a chance to use to the full the new mind-imaging technology.’ Milena coughed. ‘The spectacle,’ she said hopefully, ‘should have some curiosity value.’

  ‘Ms Shibush,’ said Charles Sheer. ‘I am stunned. You have surpassed yourself. This makes your efforts to stage all of Dante seem almost credible.’

  That is the general idea, thought Milena to herself. We understand each other, Charlie. There is a bond between enemies too.

  The Minister sat still, without movement, as if the whole universe turned around him. On the hessian screens there were slashes of green, cartoon reeds reduced to one dead message. The screens were covered in black heads of dust.

  For you keepers of the Zoo, everything must be worthy and have high purpose. For you everything must be part of the advancing social schedule.

  Me, I’m doing it all for Rolfa. And the Consensus—what does it want?

  ‘It does tie in with what we were discussing earlier,’ said Moira Almasy in a low, quiet voice.

  All around them, the cartoon reeds slowly rotted.

  ‘I’m going to make a garden,’ said Thrawn McCartney, in a voice that was supposed to be like a child’s.

  There was a new machine. It took images from people’s heads and turned them into light. Reformation technology it was called. The Restoration had led to it.

  All the light in Thrawn McCartney’s room was muddled, in disorder. It heaved in currents like oil and water that would not mix. An orchid, half-remembered, swam into queasy existence. It attached itself to a bush with branches like serpents. The branches writhed in place then suddenly froze. They and the flower were held in place for a moment, and then faded, forgotten. Grass gathered like a slowly poaching egg, a bleary smudge of green. There was a hedge, a few leaves pinpricked out of the mass of it. The sky was full of impossible sunset colours.

  I want to get out, thought Milena the director. She stood with Thrawn in some colourless centre, a point of view. There was no air, no sound, no clarity of image. Is this all you can remember, thought Milena, of trees and plants? Can you really see no more clearly than this?

  Milena found it nearly impossible to be honest around Thrawn. She would smile tolerantly, when all she really felt was anger. She would offer compliments as if to placate. She had become frustrated with herself. Why, Milena wondered, can’t I speak?

  Thrawn placed an image of herself in the garden. At last there was something that Thrawn could see clearly. It was not Thrawn as she was. This Thrawn was tall and lissom and wore a spotless white dress. Her face had been subtly altered. It was beautiful now, and it was backwards. It was a face seen in a mirror, a face with the flaws removed.

  What an airy creature she was, this Thrawn, light as a feather, fleshless. The stringy, tormented tendons of her neck were gone, as was the desperate stare of starvation. This is why Thrawn never ate. She thought she could become like this creature. The creature danced, lean as a ballerina, bent over, arms like a swan’s neck.

  ‘Now this is beautiful. Isn’t this beautiful?’ Thrawn demanded.

  The trouble with being dishonest is that it requires an ability to act. Milena could not. She shifted inside her quilted winter jumpsuit. ‘We can see you quite clearly, yes,’ she said.

  Thrawn had sensed enough. ‘This is a new technology, you know. No one has done this before.’

  ‘Oh, I know, I know,’ said Milena, as if no criticism has been implied.

  ‘I mean here, you try it,’ said Thrawn. ‘Go on.’

  She took Milena by the shoulders and stood her in front of the Reformer. You had to stand in the point of view. Milena felt something in her head drain away, as if light, right in the centre of her head was gone. As if it now reside in the machine.

  ‘Don’t be scared,’ said Thrawn, arms folded, shaking her head in pity at poor Milena. ‘Just try to imagine something and see what you come up with.’

  Milena had been rendered self-conscious, as she always was in Thrawn’s presence. It was difficult for her to imagine anything. So she tried to remember instead.

  A garden.

  She remembered an autumn day, the smell of loam and fallen leaves, and geese overhead, ducks fluttering their wings against still water. She remembered water, and the rose bushes, with their spotted leaves, their last roses, nibbled by the shorter days.

  She remembered Rolfa, in Chao Li Gardens. She remembered the rose Rolfa had picked for her. The shock as Rolfa broke the law. She remember the weight of the rose as it bobbed in her hand, and the scratching of the thorns against her fingers. She remembered the single, round, focusing drop of dew, catching the light.

  And suddenly the rosa mundi was in the room. It filled it with huge, dappled shaggy pink petals, curling brown at the tip, but soft and slightly rippled nearer the centre. It bobbed, poised for a moment.

  As if something had finally been set free, there was an avalanche of flowers. Milena did not know if she were imagining them in her head or seeing them in the room. What she saw and what she imagined were one and the same thing. She could feel them spill out of her head, as if some great living weight were pushing out flowers, giving birth to them. They tumbled through the room slowly, a turning kaleidoscope of flowers, remembered flowers each one different.

  There was a garland of lime blossom in summer, each flower spinning like a star. There were blowzy hollyhocks, liberated from their tall stems, showering their loose, purple petals. Arum lilies lifted up their heads in a chorus, their white hands holding out yellow stamen. They were mixed with tobacco flowers, and crowned with thorny, white acanthus.

  The kaleidoscope turned. There was a tumult of branches overhead in the wind, seen from many perspectives at once all jumbled, fragmented like Picasso, reaching dizzyingly up into a sky, blue behind them, that fell away to heaven. Confusingly, the branches went down below as well, as if the sky were the earth. The branches plunged through grass, down into clouds. Somehow the water of the clouds fed them. The grass was blown in waves. The grass came closer with attention. Each cell was revealed in the light. There was a stirring of life within each of the cells, a green movement of protein in and out of their inner structures. There were beetles as polished as jewels, frozen in the attention of the light, waiting for it to swerve away from them. There was a thin crust of earth giving birth to small, wriggling creatures. They were mild magenta. And the green stems of the rose bush rose, like ladders towards the sun.

  And suddenly Milena was inside the dew drop, the focus of light. Light burned blearily in it, catching on motes of life, swimming in it. The lens of the surface of the dew drop turned the world upside down. A face was refracted in it. It was a human face with nut brown skin and black, liquid eyes, and there was a smile, and the face was about to speak…

  Milena was pushed. With a lurch, it was all snatched away.

  Milena looked about her, dazed. She was in a rather small, messy room, with the flowing walls of a Coral Reef shelter.

  Thrawn was staring at her, outraged.

  ‘I had no idea you were a horticulturalist,’ she said. Her voice was acid, her face sour and straggly with panic. Her chest rose and fell with deep, angry breathing. ‘This is my equipment,’ she said, very quietly. ‘You do not hog my equipment.’

  Milena was still confused, snatched from her flowers. ‘How long was I on it?’ she asked.

  ‘How long does not matter. I let you use delicate, new equipment and you treat it it…like…like.’ Thrawn shook her head, at a loss for words.

  I was better than she was, thought Milena. Oh God. She’s angry because I was better than she was.<
br />
  The impulse was to make it up to her. ‘Look, if I damaged it in any way, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I don’t know whether you’ve damaged…’ Thrawn broke off. She began to cry. ‘My beautiful, new machine!’

  Why did I say that? wondered Milena. Why did I just give her an opening? What am I apologising for?

  ‘Look, let’s just find out if it’s damaged, first. Is it damaged? What could I have done to it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ admitted Thrawn, wiping her face, angrily. ‘But you just ripped through it, as if you were angry with it or something.’

  ‘I sincerely doubt I damaged it. Isn’t that what it’s meant to be used for?’

  ‘You don’t know anything about it!’ exclaimed Thrawn, she leant over the machine, patted it. It had a mirrored surface. Her own, straggly face was reflected back at her. ‘Look,’ she said standing up, taking a deep breath as if she were being amazingly tolerant, controlling rage. ‘There is a lot more to this than just ramming yourself through the machine. Focus? Do you know anything about focus at all? I don’t know what it was you were supposed to be showing me there, but it was a jumbled mess! The trees were upside down, the flowers were all over the place. That was supposed to be a garden? You’ve got to have a bit of discipline Milena.’

  The woman who prided herself on being wild looked anxiously over her machine, holding her hair back. She shook her head, and stepped into the focal point. She tried to image. All that happened was the room about them, the light, heaved and shifted. It was as if the walls and furniture, the bleak emptiness of the place melted.

  ‘I think you have, you know. I think you’ve fried the focus!’ Thrawn’s voice became a screech.

  ‘Just look at something in the room. Something real, and see if that comes out,’ advised Milena.

  Thrawn turned to her. The eyes were burning.

  And Milena was in the room twice. She stood on the floor, as if she were there perfectly placed, feet on the floor. There was even a shadow on the shabby throw-rug.

  ‘OK,’ said Milena, soothing. ‘OK, so there’s nothing wrong with the equipment.’

  ‘Just with the people in it,’ said Thrawn. Suddenly the image of Milena was standing on its head. This imaged Milena was dumpy. The fat on her hips sagged downwards towards her face. Her tongue lolled out of her head, the size of a cow’s and the eyes rolled. She started to bounce about the room on her head.

  ‘You see, Milena. The whole point is to place the image exactly where you want it. It’s a specialised skill, Milena, and you just do not have it. It’s really very sad, the way you keep trying to push yourself into this specialist area with no skills at all. It’s as if you can’t admit for a moment that anyone could be better than you at something.’

  ‘You’re talking about yourself, Thrawn,’ said Milena, quietly.

  The eyes were turned on her again.

  And suddenly Milena was blind.

  ‘I can take light out of anywhere in this room.’ said Thrawn, out of the absolute blackness. ‘I can Reform it, or place it somewhere else. Right now, all the light in your eyes is being focused outside your head. The area I am taking it from is very precisely that of your retina.’

  Milena moved her head. There was a flickering of light. Then darkness again.

  ‘That is what I mean by focus, Milena.’

  Milena moved again, and this time the darkness followed her. ‘Of course, I could take all the light in this room and focus it on your retina, instead.’

  The room was restored. Thrawn stood arms folded, jaw thrust out. ‘That might burn your retinas out,’ Thrawn said, succinctly. ‘Now get out of here, and don’t let me catch you messing around with my equipment again.’

  ‘It’s not your equipment. It belongs to the Zoo.’

  ‘It belongs to the Zoo,’ repeated Thrawn, in a mocking imitation. ‘It belongs to the person who uses it and who has responsibility for it and that is me. Clear enough for you?’

  ‘There’s no talking to you when you’re like this.’ said Milena and turned, and fled. She closed the purple door behind her, her heart pumping. Only when she was away from Thrawn, could Milena realise her own anger. That’s it, Thrawn, she told the purple door. That’s it, you’ve done it. We finish this show, and then I get someone else. There is no reason why I should put up with this when no one else will.

  Milena turned and trooped down the Coral steps, making as much noise with her feet as she could. That machine belongs to everybody, there will be other people who will learn to use it, and the very next show, you’re dumped, you’re ditched.

  The though calmed Milena, until she reached the street.

  ‘Ahi,’ said a Tyke, standing up, holding out red scarves for sale.

  ‘No,’ said Milena.

  The Tyke pursued her. It was fat and dirty and bundled in woollens, and its voice was piercing and high. Milena could not even tell what sex it was. ‘Look, lovely scarf, beautiful scarf, for the lady, very cheap, and very warm in winter.’

  ‘Go away!’ shouted Milena, and threw of the Tyke’s light touch. Marx and Lenin! Do they see me coming? Milena glared at the child, still feeling a throbbing in her heart.

  The child shrugged. ‘Go freeze, then,’ said the child. ‘And take it out on someone else.’ The Tyke spun around and walked away, feeling in a pocket for a pipe. Horses trotted past, making a clatter. Milena felt even smaller, weaker.

  Someone has just threatened to burn out my eyes. Milena was shivery, feverish, tears beginning. She stood still in the street, a hand clamped across her forehead. How could I let her? How could I let her do that to me? How could I stand there and do nothing?

  She needs a Reading, thought Milena. She began to walk again, still driving her feet down against the pavement. I never thought I’d say it, but she needs to be Read, and wiped, and to start all over again, as a decent human being. And I need to be wiped too, for putting up with it. Why? Why do I do it?

  They both were a tangle, tangled in each other.

  It was a long walk back to the Shell. The sun was shining, crisp, bright and cold.

  Well, thought Milena, consoling herself. At least I learned one good thing. I have a talent. I never thought I had a talent. Just a small one.

  I can imagine flowers.

  The sister Bulge smelled of rosemary and sage. A bay tree grew out of its walls, and a current of air made its laves rustle. The Bulge could commandeer its own genes and grow other forms of life, out of itself, out of memory. It grew garden herbs; it grew the flesh of chickens. It lactated orange juice.

  ‘May I offer you a drink, Ms Shibush?’ offered Mike Stone, Astronaut.

  ‘Oh, don’t bother, please,’ said Milena. She was mortified. She had thrown up all over him and dislocated his shoulder and he was still being so nice. If only he wasn’t so polite, she thought. If only he would get angry, I wouldn’t have to feel so awful.

  Mike Stone kept smiling. Even his teeth looked tense. ‘The circulatory system behaves differently under conditions of weightlessness,’ he informed her. ‘Dehydration may sometimes result. It is advisable to drink plenty of fluids.’

  Milena relented. ‘Then thank you very much, I’d love a whisky.’

  Mike Stone’s smile did not slip. ‘I’m afraid I have no alcoholic beverages. Would you care for an orange juice?’

  ‘Yes, yes, that will be fine,’ said Milena. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Right-o-rooty,’ said Mike Stone.

  Right-o-rooty? Milena began to see the humour of the situation. It had indeed been quite an introduction. Oh God, she thought, I’m going to laugh. I’m going to go into one of those silly giggling fits where you can’t stop laughing.

  The prophecy was self-fulfilling. She looked at Mike Stone, at the way he moved. He was very tall, and very slim, with coathanger hips, and his muscles seemed to have been pulled too tight, like piano wire. I had heard Americans were starched, she thought. This one looks like he’s ironed every morning. He’s being so prope
r and pukka and nice. Milena felt her cheeks clench.

  He held up her orange juice in benediction. ‘For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful,’ he said. Then he looked at Milena with the complete seriousness of a child. ‘Wine is the blood of our Saviour,’ he said. ‘We should not drink it or any alcohol except in a spirit of communion.’

  ‘Ah,’ was all Milena managed to say. She took the drink from him, her arms bobbing in weightlessness like waterwings under water. Poor man, he’ll think I’m laughing at him. He’ll think I’m laughing at his religion. Milena was giddy with a desire to laugh. She turned away, to hide from him. She looked out of a living window, down onto the Earth below.

  It was beige and blasted, white plains with blue mountains, discolorations like age spots, dry canyons like crows feet. The Bulge was in orbit over a desert. It moved beneath them, slowly drifting.

  Milena thought of production schedules and holograms; she thought of Thrawn McCartney. Even that didn’t make her feel serious. Everything made her want to laugh; everything seemed funny. The weight of her life had been left below.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ said Mike Stone. Milena had a quick glimpse of him waddling closer to her, as if on slippery ice. He looked like an elongated penguin. ‘I look through this window and I say “Hallelujah!”.’

  ‘Hmmm?’ said Milena, not trusting herself to speak.

  ‘In five minutes, we’ll be over Mount Ararat. From up here, the outlines of Noah’s Ark are clearly visible.’

  ‘Mmmmmm!’ said Milena, trying to sound impressed.

  ‘Of course, Ararat would have been underwater for most of the Flood. We know how deep the Flood was: two-thirds for the highest mountain. Now. Mount Everest is 8,840 metres high, which means the Flood was 5,893.32 metres deep. Which is very nearly the height of Mount Ararat. Do you believe in reincarnation, Ms Shibush?’

  ‘Mmmm mmm,’ said Milena, shaking her head.

  ‘Neither do I,’ he said, and sipped milk through a straw. ‘Post-millenarian Baptists such as myself do not. But I have a thought I’d like to share with you. If only Noah survived, then he is the ancestor of us all. And we would have his memories stored in our racial subconscious. Many is the time that I’ve sat in this spacecraft, Ms Shibush, and felt that I was Noah. If there was another Flood, I could repopulate the Earth, grown by Chris from memory.’