The Child Garden

by Geoff Ryman

  ‘Are you going to see your mother?’ Milena asks. She coughs. ‘In Antarctica?’

  ‘Oh yes. You and her became friends didn’t you? Allies against the Family.’ Rolfa smiles. She has bright new teeth. Fangs. ‘It’ll be nice to see the old bag. I feel a bit guilty really I haven’t written her or anything.’

  Milena feels her mouth go thin with disapproval. Only the fact that Hortensia might call herself an old bag has stopped her being very angry.

  Rolfa sees the expression and sputters, and shakes her head.

  ‘Your mother is a very nice person,’ says Milena. ‘I was wondering how she was. I haven’t heard.’

  ‘Neither have we,’ said Rolfa. ‘She’s gone quiet on us. I expect she’s been on a binge.’

  The letter in its sealed packet has not yet been written. But you know already, Rolfa, that The Family has decided Hortensia is to come back. You just think it’s none of my business. You are smiling, with your new fangs.

  ‘When are you off?’ Milena asks.

  ‘Oooh, about three weeks.’ The conversation is flagging. There is too much and therefore too little to say.

  ‘Do you…uh…have a boyfriend now then?’ Milena asks. Trying to sound casual, her voice trails off into high, forlorn question.

  ‘No,’ says Rolfa, abruptly.

  The destruction is complete. Neither of us have anyone. The director begins to feel horribly alone. Her life is her work. Somehow the memory of Rolfa has always been there, in the work, in the music, in the very sound of it, to keep her company. The work and the fact of Rolfa’s living presence, somewhere hidden in the vastness of London, has made the connection seem real. The Comedy has made it real. But the artist is not the work. And this Rolfa was not the artist.

  ‘Rolfa. I’m very, very sorry,’ Milena says, meaning, I’m sorry I destroyed you.

  ‘Don’t be sorry for me,’ says Rolfa, moving her shoulders as if punching something. If anything, this new Rolfa is far more masculine. ‘Don’t ask this Rolfa to be sorry, this Rolfa wouldn’t exist without what happened. Wouldn’t go back to being the old Rolfa for the world. What? All that moping about? All that dreary nonsense, writing, rewriting, pinning your hopes on nothing. What would have happened to that Rolfa in the end, eh? Dead drunk at the Spread, that’s where she’d be.’

  ‘Or writing another Comedy.’

  This Rolfa sighs, rising and falling like the sea. ‘Or writing another Comedy, yes. But all that’s gone now.’

  ‘It’s as if you died. It’s as if I killed you.’

  ‘Oh don’t go getting soppy on me, woman.’ This Rolfa sulks. ‘Can’t stand sop anymore. What’s the use of it?’

  ‘You feel it anyway. You might as well face it.’

  ‘Yes, but there’s no need to draw it out. That’s what I find with opera now, the people just stand there drawing it out. Takes them two hours to say goodbye to each other. I mean, what’s the point?’

  ‘If they have things to say…’ Milena doesn’t finish. ‘I…I have time to go to a kaff, if you’d like some food.’

  Rolfa’s smile has gone queasy. She’s frightened that I still fancy her, she wants to avoid that. She’s come here to make a clean break.

  ‘No, I’ll be getting back home to eat,’ said Rolfa, and slaps the beanbag. She reaches for her hat and puts it back on.

  She probably thought about not telling me at all.

  ‘Thank you for coming to see me,’ says Milena, going cold herself.

  ‘Well,’ says Rolfa generously. ‘Old time’s sake, you know. Sorry I caught you while you were so busy.’

  ‘I’m always busy,’ says Milena, her voice dull.

  ‘Well,’ says Rolfa with a dreadful heartiness. ‘You’re a success.’

  Pause. Milena goes colder. ‘I’ve got something of yours,’ she says, rising up from her beanbag. She goes to her closet, her new Tarty flat has drawers and closets, and she finds the thing stuffed behind preserving jars and spare batteries. With a sudden wrench of frustration, she pulls it out, scattering jars. A dirty lump of felt smelling of childhood. She turns and presents it to Rolfa.

  ‘This,’ she says.

  ‘Piglet,’ says Rolfa staring at it.

  ‘Take it, I don’t want it,’ says Milena, angry now.

  Rolfa has already reached up and taken it. She sits with it on her lap, and strokes its ears, and feels its stomach, as if to make sure something is still there. She shudders, as if touching something cold, and then passes it back to Milena. ‘I left him on purpose. It was a present. Old time’s sake.’ She shrugs, in a gesture of utter helplessness.

  The two of them look at each other. Milena reaches up and takes Piglet back.

  ‘Someone’s cooking supper for me,’ says Rolfa and stands. She extends her hand. ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ says Milena and shakes it. Rolfa leans over her, vast, intimidating, like an adult to a child. Milena wants to fight. Why bother to tell me at all? Why didn’t you just go?

  Rolfa bunches herself under the door, out of the doll’s house, onto the stairway. Milena stands in the doorway, feeling as swollen and bitter as a wound. She thinks it is only social habit that is making them go through this ritual.

  And Rolfa turns and smiles with her new white teeth, a beautiful wide smile that the old Rolfa could not have made. ‘Such larks,’ she says. ‘I’m going to have such fun in Antarctica.’

  Milena can suddenly imagine it, dogs and ice and stars. She can see what might have been, Hortensia and Rolfa, happy on the ice that was as white as Rolfa’s new smile. An Antarctic smile.

  Out from one eye, in a trail, there is a line of moisture, and damp shiny fur. ‘Pooh and Piglet go in search of the South Pole. Eh? Who’d have thought it? Me to Antarctica, you up into space. Well if you think it’s hell down here, watch out, cause it’s purgatory up there.’ Rolfa barks out a laugh and makes a ghost punch at Milena’s shoulder. ‘Couldn’t keep either of us down, could they? Ah? Ha-ha-ha!’ Rolfa is shouting.

  Awkward, she shuffles backwards on the landing.

  ‘Anyway, take care of yourself, old girl,’ she bellows at Milena, too loudly, swaying dangerously on the tiny landing. ‘Take care of yourself. Get your work done. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be all right. Right as rain, eh? Ta-ra!’

  Rolfa starts to climb down the steps backwards, one at a time, still looking at Milena, still howling as loudly. She is shouting more loudly than Milena has ever heard anyone shout, shouting across a tundra colder than mere nature could ever blast flat, through the Dead Space.

  ‘Be good, and if you can’t be good have fun. Remember, tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life! Ah? Ah? Ha-ha!’ The head is laughing as it disappears below the level of the landing.

  The shouting continues. ‘Don’t take any wooden nickels! Ha! Old Canadian expression! Mind your pees and queues! Keep well! Keep well! Keep!’ It is a fervent hope. The voice falls away, with a kind of cough.

  Milena tries to go back to packing. She has packing to do after all. Plenty to do. And she looks out of her window, in the dusk now, and there is Rolfa, huge and swaying, her back towards Milena, walking towards the quay.

  And me, the one who remembers, I know. I know that this is the last I’ll see of Rolfa. There is her back, the gait, the huge round shoulders, the sagging head, all of it familiar. As familiar as if we still lived together.

  And oh! Rolfa turns around and waves, waves from the shore of the Slump, where the punt is still waiting for her. ‘Ta-ra!’ she booms as if across the ice.

  And little Milena waves a little wave. The lamps are out, and it is dark in the room. Does Rolfa see her. I think not. But wait, yes, she would.

  There is a fluorescent patch of skin now on my palm. Is it glowing? Does she see it? Am I burning?

  I’ll never know. Rolfa gets in the boat, but she is still standing. She stays standing as the narrow unsteady craft wobbles its way back from the shore. The hat is turning over and over in her hands. Milena s
tands by the window, stroking Piglet’s ears, smelling childhood, and she is thinking: what do I do now? What can I do? I’m getting old and selfish and I need to have someone here, someone real and alive, not a memory.

  Me, thought the Milena who remembered I know what lies ahead. Ahead of her lies space and Mike Stone.

  Behind her lies love.

  I remember Rose Ella’s room, the room I stayed in at the Estate of the Restorers, who wanted to bring back the past. I remember the Chinese panels on the walls of the room and the spaces in the inlay, the shoes, the clothes, the dolls and the bare gaps the people left behind them. The Dead Spaces, full of the things they might have felt, might have thought, might have done.

  If only, only, they were still here.

  Antarctica was one of the few places in the world from which it would be impossible to see the Comedy.

  And suddenly Milena is in the Bulge, saying goodbye. Through the window, she sees the stars. She can sense their weight now. The stars to her are anchors, solid and unmoving hooks on which to hang things. She is calling for Bob, plucking the strings of thought that are in the air.

  ‘Going,’ she says. All the other feelings, of farewell and anticipated return throb in the lines of gravity. She passes on feelings, direct.

  Ah, love, hums the Angel, as if plucking strings in her.

  And she asks him a question she would be too embarrassed to put into words, a personal question about him that was also a heartfelt mystery to her, a question that was somehow one with the unmoving stars.

  Bob answers. We’re embedded in the flesh, the Angel says. He means the flesh of the Consensus, and for a moment, Milena can feel the flesh of the Consensus in her mind, a mountainous and tangled pattern etched in the lines of gravity.

  But once we leave it, he says, meaning once we become Angels, then we are embedded in the lines. And we just keep dancing in the wires. And Milena feels how the self could slither up out of the Slide, the Charlie Slide. The self is a perturbation in the forces of attraction. Gravity pulled energy out of nothing. The Angels do not need feeding. The self is embedded in the universe, beyond harm.

  Milena remembers: I look through eyes of flesh at the darkness between the stars, the small part of the universe that flesh can see. And I’m thinking that we are embedded in flesh too, and I’m wondering if we can become Angels, too.

  ‘Goodbye,’ says Bob, but the feeling is: you’ll be back, girl, you’ll be back here again.

  ‘Time to go,’ says Mike Stone, months before I marry him, ducking down into the little Bulge, and feeding the last of my equipment into the holding maws of the cargo racks. I’m strapped into the living chair, and Mike Stone gives me a quick kiss on the top of my head. Like a butterfly, it is beautiful, but I’m not sure I don’t want to swat it away from my hair.

  And there is my future husband, standing in the open mouths of the two Bulges, where they meet and kiss. He gives me an odd little wave, just the tips of his fingers moving, as if in a breeze.

  Then there is a hiss and the seal is broken. The mouths of the Bulges purse shut, shifting and crinkling and turning inward. I look out of the window, at the stars. I think of the lines and the Angels moving up and down them. The air is full of people dancing.

  Next.

  And here it comes, on a high, hot April day of a different year, with a different Milena. She walks slowly, musing how to bring the Comedy down to Earth. The animals will be Zoo performers, the souls of the dead will be the dry and empty clothes of the Graveyard. And the clouds of lovers? Will the peak of Purgatory be the summit of the orbit of the Bulge?

  There are cries of children, climbing scaffolding, swinging from it. Monkeys. And there is a clutch of Bees, sitting on the walkway to the Zoo, in the sun.

  The Bees have learned how to do something new. Perhaps they learned it from the Bulge. Perhaps they learned it from me. They can change their genes by thinking. And now there are leaves sprouting out of their backs, thick, broad leaves on sinewy stems, like purple rubber plants.

  They sit up and turn and smile, delighted. There is the woman with the green teeth and the wide happy eyes. There is the young boy, with hair down the middle of his back and he is happy too. They all are happy.

  In some other time, someone else is shouting. Keep Well! Keep Well! Keep Well! It is a fervent hope.

  The Bees all exclaim in triumph, pointing in unison at me.

  ‘Cancer!’ they cry, like birds.

  chapter seventeen

  TERMINAL (LOVE SICKNESS)

  If cancer did not swim in the same sea as us, we might admire it, as we admire sharks. We might admire its simplicity and fitness for purpose, its lethal beauty.

  Cancer is a disruption of the process of growth. Some cancer cells produce their own growth hormone, giving themselves the signal to divide and multiply. Others increase the number of growth hormone receptors on the membrane of the cell, or duplicate the internal message bearers that carry the command to grow. They do not respond to messages of overcrowding from other cells. They need blood to feed and so they secrete proteins that induce the body to grow new blood vessels for them.

  They do not need to be firmly attached to the intercellular matrix, as normal cells do. They can split off from the main tumour, float freely in the bloodstream and find new sites to grow. Cancers are a disfunction of what is called differentiation. They do not mature into fully functioning blood or bone or muscle or skin cells—they are not differentiated. When they find a new site, in different kinds of tissue, they can grow there too. They can spread. The word for that is metastasis. The word for that is malignant.

  And, cancers are immortal. Normal cells stop dividing after between fifty and one hundred and fifty times. Normal cells senesce. Cancer cells go on growing.

  Before the Revolution, in the world of the very rich and the very poor, something terrible had happened. Through some alteration of genes in DNA viruses, there were new strains of cancer that spread with the ease and speed of the common cold. New DNA was inserted in proto-oncogenes, which altered their function. Sometimes as soon as two weeks after infection, tumours began to grow with an almost choreographed dexterity, spinning off and landing with both feet firmly in other tissues.

  A final cure for cancer became a matter of shrieking urgency.

  Cancers disrupt key genes in the chromosomes. These genes are called proto-oncogenes. They code for proteins that are involved in growth or differentiation or certain kinds of cell structuring. Genetic material might be added to them—as when retroviruses introduce new genetic material. Genetic material might be taken away from them, as when they are irradiated. They might suffer an accident in reproduction where their order is reversed, or they are translocated among other gene sequences.

  Proto-oncogenes are normal. When disrupted by addition, subtraction, or alteration, they can become oncogenes—genes that are involved in cancer.

  All possible proto-oncogenes had been identified. A final cure for all the cancers would be something that would protect these key genes from any kind of genetic change.

  The DNA spiral is made of alternating phosphates and sugar. Between them are rungs, like rungs of a ladder, made of nucleic acids. The answer was to coat the rungs themselves in sugars and phosphates—and reinforce the helices of DNA.

  The sugar-coated genes were protected against attempts to add new genetic material to them. They were firmly bound to a reinforced spiral and would not be broken and replaced out of sequence. Radiation or chemicals did not remove genetic material from them. They were able to communicate with reverse transcriptase and mRNA. The communication was one-way. They were inviolate to change, locked in sugar.

  People called the cure Candy. Engineered retroviruses inserted Candy genes into all cells of the body—including germ cells. Candy became part of human genetic inheritance.

  Cloned tumour-suppressants cured the existing cancers. Cancer disappeared. The capacity for cancers disappeared. So did the proteins they secreted.<
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  Cancers had been of unsuspected benefit. They secreted anti-senescence proteins in large amounts of very low molecular weight. The proteins entered other cells easily.

  Cancers delayed the senescence of other cells. Small, premalignant lesions prolonged human life to its accustomed span. Without cancer, the span of human life was halved.

  Attempts to duplicate the anti-senescence proteins produced only localised effects. Only patches of tissue responded.

  And the proto-oncogenes and the Candy genes were locked safely behind a wall of sugar.

  Bees admired cancer, as we would admire flowers; for their life, for their beauty. For them, it burned like a white light. They could feel it escape from order as a break for freedom by individual cells.

  They followed Milena, entranced.

  ‘It sings,’ they would sigh.

  ‘Milena! You are a Garden!’ they would call to her. ‘Full of flowers!’

  The Bees followed Milena to St Thomas’s Hospital, to the Cancer Wards where she was tested. They followed her when she was summoned to the Reading Rooms, under the purple forces on Marsham Street. Milena was Terminal and she kept asking the Consensus as she approached it: what have you got to tell me? The Consensus stayed silent.

  Milena remembered waiting in the white brick rooms and thinking: all the bad things in my life happen here.

  The door opened and in came Root, the Terminal.

  Root stared at Milena, her shoulders slumped. She kept shaking her head. Root the voluble did not know how to begin. ‘Oh, child,’ she said. From down the corridor came the sound of a garden full of children; the guitars, the kazoos, the clapping hands, and the singing of ten year olds waiting to join the world.

  ‘You got cancer,’ Root said finally, held up her hands and let them drop.

  Milena looked at the white bricks and the bare electric light. ‘How?’ she asked, ‘How is that possible? Cancer’s dead, cancer’s gone.’

  ‘You got no Candy,’ said Root. She came to Milena, who was sitting on the only chair, and knelt at her feet. She picked up Milena’s hand. ‘You can play around with genes, love, like you was thinking with them. You kept trying till you found a gene that made a new kind of transcriptase. It went to the rungs, and dissolved the sugar round them.’