CHAPTER NINE
Where is Rolfa?
(Conditions of Weightlessness)
Nothing is impossible.
Milena remembered looking out of the window of the Bulge at the Earth below. The sky was black, like velvet, and the Earth was like polished brass. It was sunset and the Earth reflected the fire. The sea was smooth and burnished, and the clouds were pink and orange, skimming the surface of the ocean. The cloud shadowed the sea, and the sea reflected the light that came from underneath the clouds. It was a network of light, a system of exchange.
The Bulge had docked, meeting its larger sister in space. Kissing, the procedure was called — two mouths were sealed together. There was a hiss of air.
‘Hello,’ said a voice just behind Milena.
Milena reared back from the window in surprise. She launched herself from the floor, and suddenly saw her feet rear up over her head. Why are they doing that? she wondered mildly. She somersaulted into flesh and bone. Someone’s elbows were rammed into her ribs. Milena reared up and over him. That’s the ceiling, she thought as she plunged into it. The ceiling was soft and warm, and gave with her weight, enveloping her in its chamois embrace. Then it flung her out, back down towards the floor.
This isn’t supposed to happen, she thought. I’m supposed to be trained for weightlessness. Then she remembered. The training was a virus. She had been resistant to that as well.
‘What do I do?’ she wailed.
‘There are holds. Grab them.’ said a man’s voice.
Milena whirled like a propellor. Her stomach seemed to be somewhere down around her ankles. ‘I’m terribly sorry!’ she cried. She was giddy and confused, the balance of her inner ear disrupted by weightlessness.
‘Oh,’ said the voice, calmly. ‘That’s OK.’
He didn’t understand. Milena had been apologising in advance.
‘I think I’m going to be sick!’ she wailed.
And the Milena who was remembering spun as well, through memory.
Milena remembered work.
She remembered going to an Estate in Deptford, the Samuel Pepys Estate, to try to sell a production of Love’s Labour’s Lost. The cast had set up their own small Estate, to do new plays. Milena remembered the ride in the water taxi. The day was grey and cold, without comfort. Milena remembered the tink-tink-tinkling of the tiny engine, and the tillerman who sang a song about lovers being parted. Why thought Milena, hunched against the river wind, why do songs always have to be about love?
She was met at Deptford docks by a very lean and smiling woman. The Pepys Estate grew Coral. ‘We call ourselves Reefers,’ said the woman.
She smiled sweetly and explained that the Estate did not want a production of Shakespeare, no matter how original. ‘We like to put on shows for ourselves, you know. A bit of singing, a bit of a laugh. We have got our centenary coming up though. If you could do us a new show about the history of growing Coral, that would be good.’
Milena paused for just a moment. It was as if she were trying to catch a handkerchief in the wind. If she didn’t snatch it right away, it would be lost. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘We’ll do it’
‘You will?’ The woman looked surprised. ‘And you all work at the Zoo, you’re all professional singers?’
‘Yes,’ said Milena, in a whisper and a catching of breath that meant: I think I’ve done it.
‘Oh well, then,’ said the woman. ‘I’ll have to put it to the others and see what they think. How will you do it? I thought you only did viral plays.’
‘No, no, that’s the whole point.’
We’re whores. We’ll do anything.
And Milena remembered talking with the Reefers about their history, of how Coral was developed, and how it was used to grow the great white wall that kept back the sea, the Great Barrier Reef. She remembered rehearsals, the false starts, and the look on the faces of the actors, the blank horror, when they tried to speak without a virus giving them lines.
She remembered Mote the actor standing helplessly in place, wondering what to do.
‘Look, Ma, where do I go? Do I keep standing here, or do I walk off? I don’t know what to do next!’
‘Of course you don’t,’ said Milena. ‘This is all new, remember? Make it up.’
Mote still looked perplexed. Milena had an idea. ‘I know. This is before the Revolution, right? You smoke cigarettes. Take out a pack, find it’s empty, and start asking other people for tobacco. In desperation, that’s right, you’re an addict.’
Milena started to direct.
All that October after Rolfa had gone, into November, Milena spent her time telling actors what to do. She remembered finding Technicians and hiring the ambulances of St Thomas’s hospital to deliver lighting. She remembered the fittings for costumes, the bright little Zoo seamstress who restitched them out of cloth from the Graveyard. She visited every Estate that was about to have a centenary, and offered them a production. The boatbuilders, the maids and manservants — they had all started forming Estates in the days just before the Revolution. Each Estate was like a separate country, self-contained, in rivalry with the others.
‘The What Does Estate wants us to do a show!’ she announced, expecting enthusiasm.
‘Uhhhhh!’ the actors groaned. ‘Not another one. We can’t do it!’
‘Each one takes us weeks?
The problem was time.
It was the actors who found a solution. It was not a solution of which Milena approved.
She remembered being ushered into a secret meeting in a bare rehearsal hall. The King guarded the door and only let in members of the company. The Princess, Berowne, Cilia who had joined them, they all came in and sat on the floor. Hiya Babe, they said to each other. They had started to called themselves the Babes.
In a corner of the room, there sat an apothecary.
Oh no, thought Milena. Apothecaries thrived around the Zoo. They sold illicit viruses that heightened emotion or powers of mimicry.
The apothecary stood up. She wore black, shiny leotards that showed off her slim legs, and a loose white smock that hid her apple-round belly. Her face was painted with apothecary make-up, a clown-like promise of emotional cornucopia.
‘A play is in the mind!’ the apothecary announced. ‘And minds can be Read!’ She flourished a plate of agar jelly like a tambourine. It was a viral culture.
‘This virus has children,’ the apothecary said. ‘It plants them in you, and the children read you. Then the mother comes, and harvests them, and merges them. She gives birth to the play for you, out of all of you. And then you catch her, as you would for any other play.’ She held up a gloved hand, as if to say, what could be simpler?
The Babes applauded. They admired her performance.
‘So it’s not one disease, but two,’ said Milena.
The woman’s face faltered.
‘The first disease collects whole sections of personae. The second is a transfer virus that picks up all that information and merges it. We then become ill with the transfer virus. Is that right?’
‘Yes. That’s all it is,’ said the apothecary, giving a clown’s smile, and holding up her glove again.
‘Both of your viruses have to pick up information. The DNA has to be open to change. So neither of them can be Candy-coated. Obviously your transfer virus reproduces itself. Does it have two sets of chromosomes? One for information and one for reproduction?’
‘Only the transfer virus,’ said the woman.
‘Only the transfer virus,’ said Milena grimly.
‘So?’ asked Cilia.
‘So it’s contagious! It’s contagious and it can mutate. Ficken hell, woman, what you’ve got there is the end of the world!’