The Child Garden

‘Poison,’ said the voice in her ear. ‘You are poison.’

All the way back across the Slump, the boy sang. He ran out of songs, and began to make up music without words. It was as if he was singing about the beauty of the world that Milena could no longer see. When she ventured to open her eyes, she would catch a glimpse of blue water and soft, silver-grey reeds. Then the light in her eyes was scattered, disturbed. It dissolved into a shapeless, queasy, oily mass. Thrawn was in her eyes.

‘Don’t you just love games?’ whispered the voice.

I have to be able to see the cube, thought Milena. She can stop me hologramming. She can stop me doing the Comedy. Does that matter? The important thing is that the Comedy is produced. I could just go to Moira and say, this is too much, I can’t do it, get someone else. But then, Thrawn might be able to persuade them to use her as a technician, and that does matter. And there is no guarantee that she would stop doing this to me.

I have to find a way to protect myself against this somehow. There must be some way to cut off the light, make it difficult for her to focus.

Milena opened her eyes. For a moment, she could see the world. Then it melted. She moved her head, and the world returned, before subsiding again into a chaos of colour. She moved her head once more, and then the light flared up hot and dazzling again.

‘Ow,’ said Milena again and went still.

The band of focus was small in itself, with plenty of opportunity for error. And Thrawn needed enough light to focus in the first place.

And suddenly, Milena had an answer. In the Cut the week before, there had been a Seller of Games, a great booming woman with a very high, but very loud voice. She had been a Singer, too.

Have you got friends who can’t see themselves?
Have you chum who’s a bum?
It’s easily done, no mystery
With a little item from history…

She had been selling mirrored contact lenses. A joke, another game.

Mirrored lenses would reflect light.

Yes, yes, the mirror would reflect light, make focusing very difficult indeed, and it would cut down on the amount of light inside the eye that Thrawn had to play with. Thrawn would always have to focus in from the back, instead of the front. Milena’s viruses calculated the intensity of light, the resulting possible strength of any Reformed image.

It would be enough. It would have to be enough.

So how was Milena to get to the Cut to buy them?

‘Take me to the Embankment Garden quay,’ she told the singing boy. ‘That’s the one closest to the Zoo.’

The only way I can go to the Cut without Thrawn blinding me is to get lost. I have to get lost on my way to the Zoo and end up there as if by mistake. The only way I can do that is to make her mad enough to blind me with light. That means I have to make her angry.

‘So you’ve won, Thrawn,’ said Milena, aloud.

Silence.

‘Thrawn? You can answer me now.’

Milena felt a tiny fist of light clenching in her eyes, and she closed them, and covered them with her hands. That left her ears exposed, and her skin open to the light. Fire suddenly crawled over the bare flesh of her arms, just under the skin. A worm seemed to writhe just inside her ear.

‘This isn’t Thrawn. It’s you, yourself. Remember that,’ warned the worm.

I can get you mad, thought Milena. So I can control you. ‘You see, Milena, there is justice sometimes after all. You can’t get away with using people forever.’

Silence and darkness, those are my friends, thought Milena.

Milena reeled into the New Cut market, into the Summer of Song. Everyone sang, even those who did not have the disease, just to be part of the fun. It was a new craze. Milena stumbled blindly, buffeted by people she could not see.

‘These daytime drunks are everywhere!’ someone exclaimed to the opening bars of Beethoven’s ‘Song of Joy’.

Song was all around her, in waves. ‘Where are you? Where are you?’ the voice in her ear demanded.

‘I don’t know! I’m lost! You won’t let me see!’

Waves of song washed over her. The voice in her ear said something Milena could not hear. A wall of song bore down on her.

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside!

Someone pulled her to one side. There was a whizzing of bicycles, just past the tips of her toes. Milena’s vision cleared. Trolleymen on bicycles sizzled past her, pulling their wagons full of hot food behind them.

Oh I do like to be beside the sea!

Two women were just by her elbow, at a fruit stall. They were singing new words to ‘The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’. The effect was delightfully, prinklingly sarcastic.

Oh you can’t sell just one orange
How int’resting, oh how strange
Other markets can.

The voice of Thrawn screeched in Milena’s ear. You’re in the Cut? You’re in the bloody Cut? How did you get there?’

‘You’ll just have to let me see!’ whispered Milena.

There was a wrench of light. Milena doubled up under its impact. She covered her eyes. She refused to move. She heard the stallowner answer, to the final, demonic theme from Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique. Each word was separate and heavy as if made of lead.

I can sell them by the kilo
I can’t sell them separately!

All around her, people sang. It was easy to do, easier almost than speaking. As long as you told the truth.

What is the price please? a woman asked, in the theme ‘Povera donna’ from Falstaff. The effect was inappropriately tragic, as if everything in the woman’s life were