The Child Garden

spreading at the speed of light, like a wobbling jelly.

‘We just hit Sirius. Thirty four years out. Sorry, George. Bloody parsecs. Stickler for parsecs is old George. So we got the Serious Dog and we got Alfie Century as well. Not too bad. Not too good either.’

The Angels travelled at the speed of light and so went back in time. They passed the map back more slowly, into their future. They twisted gravity to break the asteroids, and compress them, heating them, melting them, hauling out the metal into space where it twisted like putty, cooling to be sent back to Earth.

‘So how long before we get back to the beginning? Tuh. Long enough. Well before the sun goes Nova. And what will we take with us? Just ourselves. Just gravity and time. I’ll tell you something, Milena. I used to think I was made of meat. Then I got up here and I thought. Oh no, I’m not. I’m really rather rarefied. I’m made out of gravity and time. Gravity makes the meat, gravity makes the thought. Time makes events. We’re strung out along gravity and time like lines of laundry. Back at the beginning, when we get there, the only event left is going to be us. Gravity in quantum vacuum, with just enough time for something to happen in. Then — whoosh. We start the universe. Now look at this!’

The Angel divided. He peeled himself away in sections, like an orange. There was even a zest, a spray of personality that freshened. He spread, breaking apart into smaller and smaller selves, going up, down, sideways, all of him shivering in the wires.

He was defining a cube. He lay himself like eggs at regular intervals, and each point cried aloud a number.

‘Plus one! Plus one!’

‘Minus two! Minus two!’

‘Fifty five! Fifty five!’

Then Bob spoke, in three great voices along three axes of height and width and depth. He was a graph. ‘I call them,’ the graph said, ‘my Cherubim.’

The Cherubim called like seagulls, eager to be heard, to be useful. They were limited creatures, reduced in size and information. A fragment of the whole, that retained the rough pattern of the whole. The area that was defined neatly bounded one half of the Earth which swelled into it, like a great dome. The poles, and two points of the equator touched the outer limits of the cube.

‘There you go, Milena,’ said the three voices.

The Cherubim still called. ‘Plus seven. Plus seven. Four nineteen. Four nineteen.’

‘All for you, Milena.’

‘Minus one oh two two! Minus one oh two two!’

‘That’s your stage.’

Milena looked at the Earth, turning slowing through the area that she could now control. Oh! she thought. The thought was too wistful and dim to be dismay. It saw the beauty, it saw the innocence below, it saw the opportunity. The thought was like regret.

‘It’s called a Comedy,’ said the graph. ‘Will it be funny?’

‘Not funny,’ Milena said. ‘Just happy. Not the same thing.’

Milena paused. Milena hung back.

She looked at the blue world with human eyes. She felt it through the strings, its surface crumpled, like some old woman’s face.

‘It’s too big,’ she said, scowling.

‘What you mean, love?’

‘It’s… sinful.’

There was space, empty and pure, and she was to fill it, with a show. Is there a flower called Hubris?

My name is Milena Shibush. It is a Lebanese name, but my family were from Eastern Europe. My father died. My mother died. They were killed by the virus.

The only virus is us.’

The Cherubim fell silent. The three axes spoke together. ‘It isn’t just you, you know, Milena. It’s all of us. The Consensus. The Consensus is all of us. It wants this. It’s the one that’s doing it really.’

The stars and the black spaces between them seemed to say that it would be a violation. To make an image the size of heaven, for half of Earth to see.

‘Suppose God…’ she began to whisper and found she had no conclusion.

‘That’s a great, big, lonely word,’ said Bob the Angel. ‘Don’t know. He speaks too big. Too many connections. How could you speak to all the stars at once?’

‘I’m afraid,’ said Milena.

All the stars at once, how could all the stars be dwarfed? Only Earth, little Earth, could be humbled. We humble what is about us. We humble ourselves.

‘There’s no time like the present love. You’ve only ever got the present. You can’t do it in the past, or go dashing off into the future and hide there. Whenever you did it, it would have to be Now.’

‘Has everybody been told?’ Milena asked him. ‘Do people know this is going to happen?’

‘Of course they have, everybody’s ready. Everybody wants to see it. This is an event, girl, a real event. They’re all looking forward to it.’

‘I don’t want them to be afraid of it.’

‘Their jaws will hit their feet with wonder. And they’ll say, look at what we can do. All of us together. But they won’t be afraid.’

‘Bob. Could you break off for a minute?’

The Angel seemed to darken. ‘Sure, love, sure.’

The link in her head seemed to close. She had only one vision, now, of the inside of Christian Soldier, and the garden growing out of his walls. She blinked at it. She had expected the Bulge to look small in comparison with the universe. Instead it seemed vast, as if the walls of the Bulge were distant nebulae. Mike Stone was the size of Orion. His hands were clasped behind his back and he rocked nervously on his heels.

‘Is something wrong, Milena?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she gave her head a shake. ‘No, just nerves. It’s like a dream.’

‘Maybe this will help,’ he said.

From behind his back, Mike Stone passed her the rose that Rolfa had given to her. It was the rose from Chao Li Gardens. It even bobbed in her hand. ‘I just saw it growing on the wall,’ he said. ‘Maybe you need it for reference.’

‘No,’ said Milena, grimly. ‘No, I don’t need a reference for this.’

There it was, smelling of autumn, the tips of its petals brown with chill, a pale rose marbled with red, an imperfect rose. Milena blinked, and suddenly there were even dew drops on it. We’ll call them dew drops.

‘Milena?’ asked Mike Stone in wonder.

Why, she thought, oh why do I have the rose, Rolfa, and not you? There was an ache in her throat from grief. I have the book and the rose and the music, but I don’t have you.

You want to cover the world, Consensus? You want all the stars to see you in your greatness, do you? Well then let them see this, let them see this rose that you killed. You wanted her music, but you wanted it without her. So I will blast you with it, Consensus. Take it. Choke. Thorns scratch your throat.

‘OK. Bob, OK,’ she said. ‘OK. OK.’

The Angel came towards her in wonder. ‘Milena?’ he asked. ‘What’s all this?’

She tried to close her mind against him. ‘Do you want it or not?’

‘Steady on. It’s a cold rose, you know. It won’t burn, even if you want it to.’

‘There are people waiting. They want a show.’

‘All right,’ said the Angel, soothing. ‘But just one promise. We talk later, OK?’

‘Yes, yes, come on.’ Milena tried to pretend to him that her concentration was something that had to be seized and coralled like a wild horse.

‘Countdown,’ he said and ripped himself apart, and the Cherubim awoke again in a chorus and the eye in her head opened, and there was the harp, the billions of crisscross strings.

‘Now,’ she said.

And all the Cherubs pulled, like a net, catching the arrows from the sun and moon. The Cherubim were like