Child Garden Read Online Free PDF Page A

narrowed. The gate swung shut behind her with a clunk.
    It would not open again. This Milena did not believe. She knew nothing of locks. Her culture did not need them. No one ever stole. The old gates did lock however, and Milena pushed them, and slammed them, and shouted 'Hello?' at them. They didn't move.
    Fine, she thought in anger. I'll starve to death in here and they'll find me fifty years from now, my fingers clawing at the wood. Why the hell have a door like that? Why the hell can't they light this place? And how the hell am I going to get out of here? Milena felt a sting of frustration in her eyes. She spun around and kicked the door and listened to it shudder. She listened to the music. Her viruses knew it note for note.
    Some woman was warbling away to Das Lied von der Erde. Another piece by Mahler about death. All I need right now. Couldn't the miserable little turncoat write about anything else?
    Still, some Animal or another was singing in the dark. Some Animal or another would know the way out. The music was coming from a corner of the warehouse that was diagonally opposite. Milena simply had to find her way there.
    This meant fighting her way through racks of old costumes. There were no orderly aisles between them. The capes, the false chain mail, the nun's habits swung rottenly on their hangers, dry and stiff and booby-trapped with pins. Milena felt a sudden jab of pain.
    Good, right, fine, she thought, sucking her finger, and growing savage. I've just injected myself with virus.
    Then she dropped the boots. She heard a splash. Oh God, she thought, I've dropped them in a puddle of something. Her hand plashed in stale water. She found them, dripping wet, and held them out, well away from her body. She stood up and hit her head on a rack, pushed it over in a rage, got her feet tangled up in dead clothing, dropped the boots again, paddled in the dark to find them, stood up, snarled and took a deep breath.
    More than anything else, Milena hated losing her dignity. She forced herself to be calm, and trembling very slightly, began to swing the racks towards her, juddering on their little wheels. She made a more orderly progress.
    Milena went on in the darkness until she was lost. Under her hands, she felt the cheap burlap, the frail seams, the loose threads like cobwebs. She felt the scratchiness of dusty sequins in clumps. It was as if all theatre had died around her, leaving only husks behind. What if there isn't an orchestra? she wondered. Oh come on, Milena, who do you think is making the music, ghosts?
    She began to imagine some very strange things. The music was too loud. Music was never that loud. You could stand in the middle of the orchestra next to the kettle drums and it wouldn't be that loud. And there was a shrill, unnatural tone to it that hurt Milena's ears.
    Distracted, she scraped her head on brick. She crouched blindly under an arch and saw light. Light! Like in a forest just at dawn, grey daylight.
    But the music! The music was louder than before, and she could see the rough texture of the bricks in the wall; she was yards away from it. There was no orchestra. There was no room for an orchestra.
    But an orchestra screeched at her. The flutes were like knives, slicing into her head, the walls were being beaten like drums. Milena covered an ear with one hand, and moved back a rack of clothing with the other. She ducked down, in a kind of terror, and drew back a velvet dress, like a curtain.
    There was a window to the outside world. A window in a bridge? Milena had never seen that. In the light, there were mounds of paper, heaps of it, stacked up in columns or fallen sideways across the floor. Paper was wealth, and Milena's eyes boggled in her head.
    Sitting slumped in front of it was a Polar Bear.
    Effendim, excuse me, you're not supposed to call them that, Milena reminded herself. They are GEs, genetically engineered people.
    GEs had been human once. Effendim, are human, now. They had recoded their