The Child Garden

by Geoff Ryman

  What can I make of that, Jacob? That you should have taken better care? They had viruses that could devour memory, leave you clean and open. But you were too busy with us, too busy taking care of us. Why did we deserve such care Jacob? We did nothing for you, except exchange the hellos and the goodbyes that are everyone’s due.

  I’m glad I never saw it. They say you crawled, Jacob. When the seizures came, you would crawl, and foam at the mouth. You would tear your hair. You fought, they told me, fought against it. You howled, No! No! and tore your shirt, gentle Jacob who was the soul of circumspection and dignity.

  This last one killed you, didn’t it? You died in another blank out, Jacob. So what does that mean?

  I think it means you were abused. Your mind was stirred about like a casserole, you were taken over for the purposes of others. But you adjusted, each time. You found the joys that this life had to offer, limited as they were. The joy of knowing so many people well, the joy of being needed, of having a regular and recognised place, the joy of knowing so much about them, these many people.

  But even that was taken away, the knowledge, the memory. And you would have to start again, dead, exhausted, climbing up the weary steps.

  Good morning, Milena.

  Good morning, Jacob.

  And how are you today, Milena?

  Fine, Jacob, fine.

  Lovely weather, isn’t it Milena?

  Not really Jacob. A bit cold.

  Oh yes, it’s cold, but it’s warm too, Milena.

  Do you have any messages for me, Milena?

  Do you have any messages for me, Milena?

  Do you have any messages for me, Milena?

  Only one Jacob, only one. That you deserved better. You did not deserve to end up here like a sack of garbage in worn-through shoes and one old suit dying alone with no one to see, and that we cannot make it up to you and the flowers on the grave will not be seen by you. And if that’s the meaning, Jacob, if that’s all the meaning I can get then I should bloody well try. Bloody well try again. Because if that’s all there is then a mistake has been made, and the mistake is mine.

  Milena remembering still had the crucifix, here, now, she could feel it, in her hand.

  Ready to pass on.

  And there was Mike, moving like clockwork, back erect, lighting candles in their home, their home together, amid the smell of food that he had cooked, against a window showing the slate-grey marsh, and the black reflection of clouds of smoke drifting over it, smoke from the cremation of the dead.

  ‘What?’ said Milena, easily amused, at least by him. ‘All this? What? Tell me?’

  Mike’s thin lips turned all the way inward, fighting down a smile. He made her sit, and made her begin to eat, and poured her some wine, and then sat down.

  ‘Milly,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking. We should have children.’

  Oh. Milena set her fork back down on the table. ‘Well you go have them, then.’

  Breezy, everything was so simple and breezy back then.

  ‘That’s my idea,’ said Mike Stone. ‘I thought that since you’re busy and don’t like sex, you could donate an ovum, and I could donate a sperm cell and we could affix the result to the wall of my bowel.’

  ‘You make it sound like a recipe,’ said Milena sitting forward, suddenly disturbed. ‘No Mike,’ she said.

  ‘I’d like to do it very much. It makes sense.’ Milena remembered his daffy, trusting eyes.

  ‘It’s very dangerous,’ said Milena.

  ‘So’s going up in space. I’d rather do this. I’d find it more interesting.’

  Mike. Why are you so…so…nice? It isn’t good for people to be nice. What if I make you bend too far? You won’t know and neither will I. Until it’s too late.

  ‘I had a friend, Mike.’

  ‘I know. Berowne. You told me.’

  ‘He was nice and brave too, Mike. The placenta came away just afterwards. He bled to death. The blood hit the ceiling. And there was this baby left.’

  Milena was surprised by feeling, thinking of the infant. ‘It hadn’t been part of the deal. Berowne was supposed to take care of the baby. And Anna didn’t want him, couldn’t look at him at first, not until Peterpaul came along to help. So there were three lives ruined. No, Mike, no.’

  ‘It’s what I want to do,’ he said. ‘I’ve been consulting people. I’ve thought about all sorts of new ways to protect myself. And other people who do the same thing.’

  ‘Yes and everyone thinks he is the one who is going to get through it, and for what?’

  ‘For a beautiful new baby.’

  ‘I’m not taking the responsibility. I’ve been through it all before. You think Berowne went around swinging from trees? He made it, he made it all the way through to delivery and out the other side, but they couldn’t keep the placenta down. One good shove, and out it came and he was dead, dead in seconds, all the blood just pumped out of him.’

  ‘There are stitch viruses. They can give me a stitch virus which will meld the placenta, hold it to me.’

  ‘Please. I told you, I’m scared. I’m scared to death of all this biology. We’re going to get something else wrong soon.’

  ‘That’s a different issue to my being pregnant.’

  ‘I’m immune to it all. I don’t have to worry. But you’re not. What if these stitch viruses keep on stitching?’

  ‘They don’t,’ he said, unafraid. ‘They’re safe behind Candy.’

  Milena sighed and shook her head. He was right, they were getting off the issue. ‘I don’t want to make another orphan,’ she said.

  ‘One of us is bound to be left. For a time. Both of us are bound to die. That’s no reason not to have a child. Otherwise, no one would have any children. And I like children. And someone has to be left to carry on.’

  Make it breezy again, Mike. Take away the fear again. Tell me I’m just working too hard, that I don’t want up every morning feeling like I’m lead sheeting on a roof.

  Mike kissed her on the end of her nose.

  ‘No harm can ever really come. Even if someone dies. Death is going to come anyway. People always react to the thing that’s just happened. Not to what’s happening now. Out of step. I’m not Berowne.’

  Milena went quiet again. Is there just a glimmer, she wondered, just a little tickle of jealousy? Thinking: hoi, that’s my job. Men always seem to take over everything. Even this?

  ‘So tell me, slowly and clearly,’ said Milena. ‘Why it won’t kill you. And tell me what I’m supposed to do if it does.’

  Milena remembered sitting at her desk in her new flat, working. She has a box that plays music to her. Das Lied von der Erde throbs gently in the background. Milena looks at maps of the Zoo Estate. She is trying to find the best place for a hospice for the Bees and for the sick. Milton wants to put them far out into the country. Milton the Minister is still alive.

  The shutters of her lacquered rooms are closed against the weather. It is cold and from somewhere below comes the smell of coffee. There is a bleakness in Milena’s belly, fear in the shadows, a tremor of anxiety in her hands. It is winter still, and she is not yet completely free. Thrawn is still out there, somewhere, with her one tiny machine.

  ‘How’s it going?’ asks a familiar voice.

  Milena glances up, quickly, and looks back down. She talks to the map. ‘The Angels will be here soon, so you might as well go.’

  Milena is Terminal now. The Consensus knows when it happens, and Angels come to break up the light.

  ‘Look at me,’ says Thrawn.

  Milena pauses and then does look round. Thrawn’s head is shaved; it is covered in stubble and little criss-cross cuts. She is smiling a faraway smile and is dressed only in a white vest and torn trousers. From somewhere, there is the smell of cooking alcohol, from the stove most likely. Thrawn’s arms and knees twitch with cold. My God, thinks Milena, what a state.

  ‘Look, Thrawn, part of me is very sorry how things have worked out, but I’m hardly like
ly to ask you to work with me again, am I?’ Milena looks back around at the map.

  ‘Are you sorry? Oh that’s good.’ Thrawn’s voice is breathy, like a little girl’s. Milena turns up the volume of the electronic box. The music becomes loud, the soprano’s voice like a steam whistle, the flutes like knives. The Dead Spaces between the flats will kill the sound. Must see about that smell of alcohol, thinks Milena, trying to cancel out what stands behind her.

  ‘Milena!’ shouts Thrawn over the noise. ‘Milena, look around, I’ve got a really good effect.’

  Milena ignores her, eyes narrowing.

  ‘That’s your job, isn’t it? To use my ideas? Please look around!’

  Damn it, where are the Angels? I’ve been through all this before; I can’t take any more of it.

  Thrawn laughs, helplessly, musically. Out of the corner of her eye, Milena can see her staggering into her field of vision.

  ‘Milena, just look around, and then I promise, I’ll be out of your life. Out of your life forever!’

  Milena looks around. She thinks she sees a hologram of Thrawn McCartney, holding a lighted match. She is used to the perfection of Thrawn McCartney’s images. The fire on the match rises out of gases from the wood. It hovers over the wood, and creeps its way up along it, slowly, towards the fingers.

  ‘You promised,’ says Thrawn, still somehow looking hopeful. Something thick hangs in strands between her cracked lips. ‘You promised you wouldn’t hate me.’

  A whiff of cooking alcohol. I can smell alcohol, why can’t you? asks the Milena who is remembering. If I can smell it, you can.

  You can.

  You’re telling yourself you think you’re seeing a hologram, thinks the Milena who remembers. Holograms don’t smell. There’s even a whiff of sulphur from the match. And you’re watching the match get closer to her, and you want it to happen, I can remember you thinking, oh for God’s sake go on, I know what’s coming next, as if it’s just one more horrific image in the light. You want to be rid of her, the crazy Fury, so she won’t hound you, this Happy One, so that she will no longer be somewhere alive and betrayed and alone to make you feel guilty.

  Look, even now, she’s stopping, holding the match back. She wants you to stop her. She wants you to help. She wants to collapse weeping in your arms so that she can tell you that she’s sorry, tell you she’s hateful, tell you that it’s not your fault.

  ‘You were supposed to be my Saviour!’ she has to shout, her voice breaking.

  And the music wails.

  everywhere the distance shines bright and blue!

  Not hate, not love, but passion of a kind, twisted with lizard eyes. There are such things as demons. They are alive, and they live in the dead spaces between people.

  forever…forever…

  Soft, and sad, Mahler bids another farewell.

  The match burns low, too low, while Thrawn waits for you to save her. The flame touches her finger. Her fingers, her arm, are soaked in alcohol.

  The flower blooms, pink, flame. An unfocused flicker and a sudden eruption from the hand, along the arm up into the face, coating the flesh like this year’s latest fashion, a crawling, living bloom of flame. Trickles of black smoke waver upwards.

  And still Milena, the People’s Artist, hesitates. Can it be real? What if this isn’t just an image? Has she really done this to herself? Dead, horror mixed with an angry wrench of justification: you did it to yourself, Thrawn.

  Stifle the dramatics, Milena, this is you, yourself who is remembering. You know what is happening is real. Worry a few moments longer and it will be too late.

  ‘Oh shit,’ says Milena the director and stands up finally. Not I’m sorry, oh God, but oh shit, as if it were the final inconvenience to have someone burn to death in your lacquered rooms. Worried about the rugs, Milena? That’s it, stand up, get flustered, panic, pretend it takes a full minute to remember the thick new rug rolled up on the landing. You bought it just last week, your nice thick Tarty rug. Wipe away the distaste for spoiling it, wipe it nobly from your mind. What a sacrifice, Milena. Go to it, girl. Nice new part to play here. Heroine. You’ll like this part, except you always were a terrible actress. You are strangely unconvincing in your concern. But there are no lines to remember, it makes you look good, everything a star can require, including someone else to cry over.

  Somewhere in the midst of the flame, Thrawn is trying to dance, and is laughing. The thing that has hold of her knows that it has won at last.

  ever…ever…

  Fade into silence. The music is over.

  Milena the director runs to hug Thrawn, the new, thick rug between them, to smother the flames. Thrawn is too tall. The rug encircles only her midriff.

  ‘Get down on the floor! Get down on the floor!’ wails Milena the director.

  You weep do you, Milena? thinks her future self. Any animal would weep seeing this. Hitler’s guards wept in the camps. The tears mean nothing except that you can feel the horror of it in your belly. You know you will feel that horror for the rest of your life, and that you will remember the tang of burnt hair, burnt flesh in the back of your throat until you die.

  The alcohol burns away, like brandy on a plum pudding. Thrawn looks like a plum pudding. The plum pudding smiles and has bright white teeth, flecked with black. ‘Oops,’ it says and giggles.

  ‘We’ll get you a doctor,’ Milena murmurs, unable to muster enough breath to talk plainly. She wants to scream, not to attract help so much as to express to the world that something terrible has happened. She wants to express it to Thrawn, who does not seem to have realised.

  ‘Come on,’ says Milena. ‘Downstairs.’ Without thinking, she takes Thrawn’s hand. It is sticky.

  ‘Mmmwhoh!’ roars Thrawn, like a deaf-mute. Her nerves are beginning to feel what has happened. She jerks the hand away. The skin remains in Milena’s hand like a glove, translucent. Milena keeps holding it, as if the hand were in two places at the same time.

  Thrawn stares at the hand. She is no longer smiling. She looks dazed. ‘Let’s give the little lady a big hand,’ she says, making a joke. She bobs as if floating.

  Milena the director moves like a cat and throws the crisp and blistered skin away.

  ‘Downstairs,’ murmurs Thrawn. She walks ahead of Milena. She looks somehow ordinary, a quiet and somewhat muted person going for a leisurely stroll. Except for the hardened, flaking blackness of her head, Thrawn looks in some way normal for the first time. Her eyes are not bulging out with tension, her smile is not knife-edge sharp, she is not smiling at all. Her arms and legs move with a smooth and simple motion, and her fingers are not extended in a rictus of anger or unease.

  Milena darts ahead of her, and pushes back the screens, one by one, the screens that lead through the Dead Space.

  ‘Thank you,’ says Thrawn, regally. She walks past Milena and out onto the varnished bamboo stairs. Outside the insulated flat, it is February freezing. Is it steam rising off her, or smoke? Milena wants to get her a coat but thinks: a coat on that skin? Her viruses tell her: third degree burns. Thrawn begins to trudge down the steps, like weary What Does at the end of a day.

  ‘Oooff!’ she says, as if exhausted from cleaning floors. She leans onto the handrail and the instant she touches it, she hisses and leaps back as if the rail were fiery hot.

  Still hissing, Thrawn puts her arms over her head, and tries to pull off her vest. Blackened, the vest breaks up, falls away. Her back and shoulders are a mass of rising pink blisters, blackened streaks, and places that seemed to be covered with grit, as if it could be washed away.

  It doesn’t look too bad, it doesn’t look too bad, Milena the director tells herself. The lower back is hardly touched at all. The breasts are beautiful, they have not been touched. She’ll survive. She’ll survive. Look, she is walking.

  Thrawn takes another step and howls. Another step and she doubles up.

  ‘Thrawn,’ weeps Milena, helplessly.

  Thrawn starts to scream. She starts
to scream like a strangled car, a harsh, meowing wail that moves in fits and starts but that doesn’t stop. Her hands over her head, wanting to hold something, finding only pain, moving in a dance of helplessness.

  There is a sound of sliding panels. Ms Will steps out of a Dead Space, and stands below on the rush matting. She stops and stares.

  ‘There’s been a terrible accident,’ says Milena.

  ‘There’s been a terrible accident,’ says Milena.

  ‘There’s been a terrible accident,’ says Milena.

  ‘There’s been a terrible accident,’ says Milena.

  ‘She poured cooking alcohol over herself.’

  Thrawn suddenly rolls forward. She tumbles down the steps, gathering speed, losing flesh, blackening the bamboo. She lies at the bottom of the step. Milena runs after her. Thrawn is on her back, gasping, breath coming in short agonised hops. She looks up at Milena, but does not seem to see her. She starts to shiver.

  ‘Thrawn,’ whispers Milena. ‘I’m sorry.’

  And what are you sorry for, Milena? You’re sorry because you know you’ll be so sorry for the rest of your life. Are you mourning for her? Or mourning for yourself, for the anguish this will cost you?

  Thrawn knows what you are. Thrawn focuses on you and smiles again, the demon smile, rearing up, in a frenzy, but paralysed, her hand a blackened claw, she looks up at you. ‘Saviour,’ she breathes out in a voice like the wind, smile blazing. She drags her hand along the floor, scraping layers of it away, leaving a blackened mark. ‘Saviour?’ she says, an angry, wheedling, bitter question. It is a rhetorical question. The answer is known.

  She knows she has won.

  We are coming Milena, says a voice in her head. Someone is coming to help.

  The Consensus in her head.

  The Angels soothe her. It’s not your fault, Milena, don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ asks Milena.

  Do your work, Consensus. Rule the world, heal the sick, build the roads. Breed the viruses. Do anything you consider to be good.