Milena paused for thought, and pressed shut her pouch of cooling egg. ‘I’ve got to go use the head,’ she said, and escaped. She floated upwards to the john.
Inside the door, there was a bouquet of confusion, more roses, taped with a note. ‘For Milena who makes the flowers,’ it said.
Milena fastened her boot clamps, and her shoulder straps to keep her in place. Finally and most importantly she tightened the seat belt. The toilet worked like a vacuum cleaner and it was absolutely necessary to maintain an airtight seal. Milena sat thinking: how long can I hide in here? How else can I avoid that man?
Maybe I could pretend to be sick, she thought. Then she had an image of a worried Mike Stone, bringing her collapsible bags of tea. I can shower after this, that will take a half hour. Then maybe I can pretend I’m working. But after that? I’m trapped in here with him.
After some considerable time, Milena emerged from the toilet. Just outside the door a snapping turtle floated in the air. It hissed, its beak opening wide, its eyes glaring. The air was full of floating snapping turtles and two large brown rabbits from Mike Stone’s childhood.
Mike Stone reached up and caught hold of the turtle from behind. ‘I forgot to put on his little sticky boots,’ he said, apologetically. He stood in the posture of weightlessness, looking at Milena with anticipation.
‘I’d like to show you a picture of my mother,’ he said, still holding the turtle.
‘Can’t wait,’ said Milena.
There was still a slight smile on his face, as if he were amused. Was he pleased? Can’t he hear the way I’m talking to him?
‘I like to think that you and my mother are a lot alike,’ he said.
Suddenly hanging in the air was a hologram of Mike Stone’s mother. Milena had the unfocused back view. The face turned around. Mike Stone’s mother looked exactly like Mike Stone, except for a thick, pulled-back clot of white hair. A rabbit wobbled up to it and sniffed, hoping perhaps it was a head of lettuce. Mike Stone smiled, and caught the rabbit by its belly.
‘She was a very strong woman, too. I like strong women.’
‘I’ll start lifting weights,’ said Milena.
‘Would you?’ he asked, looking over his shoulder, pleased. ‘For me?’ Smiling he put the rabbit back in its cage. ‘Mother lifted weights,’ he said. ‘She could bench-press one hundred and twenty kilos.’
‘Golly,’ said Milena.
‘She said Amen after each set. She said she pumped for Jesus.’ He leaned over and peered into the rabbit’s cage. ‘That picture was taken just before she died. She couldn’t lift any more weights by then, Milena. Her hair went white. You know how in the old days, people’s hair used to go white? Well, Mama said it was a sign from heaven. She said that soon, people would be able to get old again. That God didn’t want us to the so young. He wanted us all to have time to get to know Him before we were called. I tell you, we had a special service for her, all around her deathbed. The whole family was singing.’
In a voice of uncertain power, he began to sing himself. ‘Yes Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so.’
He gave up pushing lettuce through the mesh of the cage, for the rabbits to nibble. ‘I’ve been very lonely since she died.? He stood waiting, as if for Milena to help him.
‘I’m sure you must have been, Mike,’ said Milena.
The picture in the air between them faded.
‘Will you marry me?’ he asked.
‘No,’ replied Milena.
‘Oh,’ said Mike Stone, ‘Well. That’s just the first time.’ He turned back to his rabbits.
This is getting serious, thought Milena. Honesty, Milena, if you’ve learned anything, it’s the need to be clear and honest. ‘Mike. The answer is going to be no, no matter how often you ask. So please, please don’t ask again.’
‘I’m very faithful, Milena,’ he said, to the rabbits.
‘I don’t want you to be faithful.’ She gathered breath and strength. ‘I want you to be silent.’
‘Right-o-rooty,’ he said. ‘I’ll be silent.’ Then he looked up, and smiled, and the smile said: but I’ll always be here.
‘This,’ chuckled one of the Pears, ‘is insane.’ He looked delighted. Milena remembering could not now think of his name. He was dead now. She had not known that he was a friend.
‘It would work,’ Milena told him, quietly.
Charles Sheer was sitting on his hands, his legs crossed, and he was bouncing quietly up and down.
The Minister’s office had been repainted. It was mushroom-coloured now, with stripes of subtly contrasting browns and greys running round the walls. The screens were gone. So was the Zookeeper. In his place was the sleek young man, fatter now, in even more wildly printed trousers and shirt. Milton. Milton the Minister. He had gone plump and florid with success, and anxious to show he had something to contribute. The Milena who was living looked at his purple face with its swollen neck and young smile and thought: he’s not going to live long.
‘Buh!’ said Charles Sheer in a sudden plosive burst. The others turned. ‘Buh-buh.’
The sound was appalling. There was something about it that made Milena physically queasy.
‘Charles?’ asked Moira Almasy. ‘Are you all right?’
He looked at her with outraged dignity, terror and sickness in his eyes, and anger.
‘Nuh! Nuh!’ He was trying to say no.
They all went quiet and still. Milena thought: stammering, stammering again. It was over a year since the Princess had started to stammer. It seemed now as if almost everyone did.
Would you believe me, Charles, thought Milena, if I said I was sorry?
‘To say anything,’ Milena told her enemy. ‘You’ll have to sing.’
He looked at her with hatred.
‘I’m sorry, but other people have caught this, and it’s the only way they can talk.’ People sang in the streets.
Charles Sheer writhed in place. He hated this. He knew it was true. From now on, he would have to sing to speak. He looked at Milena, and anger fuelled him. All right, his eyes and the creases around them seemed to say. All right. I will do it. You may make me look like a fool. You will not stop me saying anything.
The music and the words had to flow as one. The selection of the melody would always reveal more than words alone would. That was why singing was embarrassing. It was impossible to lie.
Charles Sheer began to sing, slowly.
‘I want to make sure that I’ve got this right,’ he sang. ‘And that it is the case…’
The melody was unsettling, and slightly childish at the same time. It seemed to stalk something through a wood. Milena’s viruses scrambled to identify it. It took them some time, a matter of seconds. The song was buried deep in history.
Charles Sheer was singing ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’. Without effort, the words took roost on the tune, as if humankind had always been meant to sing instead of speak.
The delighted little man chuckled again and clapped his hands. He was silenced by a glare from Moira Almasy. ‘I think,’ said Moira, ‘that given the circumstances we should confine the discussion to the matter at hand. Milena?’
Milena felt herself placed at a disadvantage. She was very slightly flustered. ‘I… I didn’t go into the
