depression in the seat cushion. That’s real, Milena decided. You’re actually here. Who is doing the cubing, then? Is anyone doing any cubing?
Or maybe, she thought, maybe it’s me. Maybe I am mad.
Her arms suddenly seemed to be made out of stone. They weighted her down and wouldn’t move. Maybe my mind has turned on me. Maybe it is my mind that is making those horrible images. If that is so, then the first step to being cured is to admit it. Admit that my mind has gone.
‘Those flaws have been added,’ said a voice. ‘That’s sabotage.’
Milena looked around, and there, by the door, was Al the Snide. He looked nervous but grim, thin and vulnerable in his farmer’s robes.
‘What are you doing here?’ demanded Cilia, enraged. She still had not forgiven Al. ‘This is a private recording. You can just Slide, Snide, out of here!’
‘Yah, I’m Snide. I can read thought,’ said Al. ‘Reformation is thought. I can read it too. You ought to know that someone has cubed in those flaws. I can read the thought and it’s Thrawn McCartney.’
All of them went still. Thrawn went still, unmoving, smiling slightly.
‘She’s been hounding Milena, following her around with holograms, very nasty ones. And, she’s also hologrammed things right inside the eyes. So Milena can’t see. That’s why the mirrors.’
‘What?’ said Cilia, something rising in her voice. ‘Milena, is this true?’
Milena nodded her head, up and down.
‘If she’s doing all that, what’s she doing sitting there?’ asked Toll Barrett.
‘That’s not a human being,’ said the Snide. ‘There’s nothing there. That’s an image, a mirror image. She’s looking into a mirror, and sending the image to us.’
‘Could anybody else do this?’ Thrawn asked, standing up. She twirled around, in place. Her feet touched the carpet. They left depressions in the carpet behind them. The image of a depressed carpet was absolutely opaque, in focus, properly shaded, no flares or edges of light.
‘Is this or is this not the best hologram you’ve ever seen?’ Thrawn began to weep. Cilia, the Soundman, Toll, Peterpaul all looked on in shock.
‘So why are you all cutting me out?’ the image asked. ‘Why does everyone always have to cut me out?’
Milena picked up her cup of water.
Thrawn was pleading. ‘You don’t know what I could do for the Comedy. I could give you angels, and heaven, I could give you the music so clear, I could put you down on the ground so firmly, people would think that the sky had grown rocks.’
‘You could take us to hell, too,’ said Milena. And she flung the water at her.
Thrawn broke apart, refracted. Part of her face was in droplets, upside down in the air.
‘My God,’ said Toll Barrett.
Milena began to weep. ‘Whenever I’m alone,’ she said, and flung more water at her. The water was full of hate, as bitter as gall. With each lashing, part of Thrawn was pulled onto the wall and spattered against it. ‘Whenever I want to sleep.’ Another lashing of water, like a whip. ‘She puts holograms into my eyes! She puts pieces of herself onto the floor! She makes me see things! Hear things!’
Thrawn stood still, hands clasped in front of her, as if pious, silent and weeping herself.
Toll put his arms around Milena and Milena shuddered. She dropped the cup and the water spilled over her hot thick trousers.
‘Oh thank God,’ she said, breathing out with relief. They had all seen it, all of them. They all knew. And she wasn’t crazy, she wasn’t crazy at all. Cilia was stroking her hair. Thrawn looked on for a moment longer, and then the hologram wasn’t there.
Cilia stayed with Milena, while Toll and Peterpaul went to Milton, and told him what had happened. Milena never saw what followed. A delegation visited Thrawn’s rooms and took all the equipment back. There was one portable machine which had vanished, along with Thrawn. She would never work for the Zoo again, and when she was finally found, she would be Read, and wiped clean.
Sometime during the confusion, the Snide slipped away, to a new disguise.
And finally as Cilia and Milena sat talking there came a familiar drumming on the roof. They both looked up.
‘That’s rain,’ said Cilia. ‘Milena, that’s rain!’
They ran out onto the concrete walkways, under blue-black skies and the rain drove down in droplets the size of sparrow’s eggs, and everyone ran out of the buildings, holding up their hands towards the skies, looking up at the clouds, letting themselves be pelted with the hot raw eggs of rain. They danced in circles, in each other’s arms. From all over the city, came the sound of singing: Handel’s ‘Water Music’, ‘Singing in the Rain’. Milena and Cilia and Peterpaul and Toll all danced together round and round as the surface of the Thames was made rough with rain, and tiny rivers ran down the slopes of its cracked dry river bed.
And as they danced, a ghost appeared briefly, a dim image under grey skies, starved of light, scattered by raindrops. It sang, too, in a thin, unsteady wheedling voice.
Thrawn was still trying to join in.
A spindle-thread of gravity reached out all the way to Alpha Centauri. Milena could feel it in her head, and she could feel the forces of attraction tugging at her and at the Earth.
You could do worse than marry him said Bob the Angel. He felt like a thought in her own head. You need protection, Milena.
Milena was going to say, from what? But then she remembered Thrawn.
An image of exposure of loss, a sense of emptiness came to her from Bob. You are Bad Grammar. That was the implication.
‘They know about me,’ said Milena. ‘Why haven’t they Read me?’
They need you, said Bob.
Isn’t it strange, how the stars are still beautiful? In the concentration camps of the twentieth century, they must have looked up and thought how strange it was that there could still be stars and beauty.
Why do they need me?
Oh, said Bob, they have a project, wilder than this. They need someone for it. They need someone who can mould the light. The Consensus is tired of being alone. It wants to reach out.
Instead of explaining, Bob the Angel gave her the idea whole, the image, its size, its function. He gave her the diagram again. He showed her the Angels, moving out in lines, radiated from a tiny Earth, from a tiny sun. No matter how many of them were sent out, they radiated away, into infinity. They did not move in parallel lines. The lines spread apart from each other. Trajectories of exploration that had appeared to be almost side by side when they left Earth were eventually spread so far apart that whole stars, whole galaxies were lost between them.
The universe was too big to fill, no matter how many Angels streamed up the lines between the stars. The Consensus wanted to do more than explore.
It wanted to call.
Somewhere else in the universe, there must be another consciousness also reaching out. If they reached out for each other along the forces of attraction, and they met, they could give each other the universe they had explored.
The Consensus was going to call for the Other.
So it isn’t for Dante that they’ve done this, thought Milena, or for the music, or for anything else. They need to rehearse the techniques. They need to rehearse me.
Milena let it settle over her, the reality of the power by which she was held. I’ve always known that. I have always known they have me dancing, to pull me in when they want me. Why am I surprised? Did I think I was blessed, surrounded by some sort of sacred light? Did I really think the Consensus would love the music that much for its own sake?
Don’t take it hard, murmured the mind of Bob the Angel. They love the music. They want to do the Comedy. They want to do this, too.
Milena had the concept, whole in her head. The Consensus wants to find a mate. It wants to meet another like itself. It is so sure that somewhere in the spangle of stars there is intelligence. It is so sure that intelligence will take the same form as itself.
