your friend
Milena stopped spinning.
Someone was holding her down. He was very tall and very thin and his smile seemed to have been cut out of the tension of his face with a knife.
‘You shuffle forward, one step at a time, knees bent,’ he was telling her. His accent was American. ‘You try to keep your balance. That is the posture of weightlessness.’ He took his hands away. Success. Milena stayed where she was. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘That sure was some introduction.’
‘Yep,’ said Milena. ‘I threw up all over you and dislocated your shoulder.’
‘My name’s Mike Stone,’ he said. ‘Astronaut’
Milena dared to reach forward and shake his hand. She had finally found her feet.
Outside, the heavens were full of stars, the stars of memory. Rolfa, they seemed to whisper. Where is Rolfa?
The Reading was over.
Milena woke up. That was what it felt like. She found herself lying on a floor. At first she thought it was the Bulge. The floor was warm and soft and alive. Milena was covered in sweat. Across the room, which was dimly lit, a huge woman in white was talking, hand on her chin, shaking her head. It was Root, the nurse. And there was Mike Stone, astronaut, sitting in some strange sling chair.
When was this? thought Milena. When did this happen? I don’t remember this. Where is my Now?
Root glanced over her shoulder and saw that Milena was awake. Her eyes widened, and she cut off her conversation with a nod. She half-ran towards Milena, her round arms held aloft and swaying from side to side with her hips. Root leaned over Milena, and her hands were pressed between her knees.
‘I’m sorry, love,’ said Root. ‘But we’re going to have to Read you again.’
‘Again?’ croaked Milena. She felt horribly ill.
‘They don’t have everything. I guess there’s just so much of you to have.’ Lightly, Root stroked Milena’s thin hair. ‘You’re fighting it, aren’t you, love?’
‘What else does it want?’ Milena asked. The Consensus had everything else.
‘Well. It got nothing from your childhood, nothing at all. And there’s Rolfa. You kept back all your memories of Rolfa. She’s very important to you. They need Rolfa too.’
Oh, do they? thought Milena. Do they indeed.
‘You mustn’t fight, you know,’ said Root. Her eyes were full of sadness, but her face was deadly serious. ‘You fight, you could hurt yourself She gave Milena a steady, examining stare. ‘Ready?’
‘Why do they want the Past?’ Milena asked. ‘If they keep telling us the world is only Now?’
‘Because the Past is you,’ said Root, and stood up. Milena heard her rustle away.
My whole life, thought Milena, my whole life has not been mine.
Then space was twisted. Space shivered as when heat rises up from roadway. The shivering space rose up, and began to roll, quivering towards her. It was a wave, a wave in both space and time, a wave in the fifth dimension where light and thought and gravity are one. It confronted her, trembling as if with desire. It wanted Milena to be a story, that it could Read.
Rolfa, where is Rolfa? Where she always is, Milena thought. Here with me.
Now, where is my Now? My now is here, where I fight the Consensus.
The wave slammed into her, washing over her, through her, racing up the channels of her nerves, as if to wash them clean, as if to wash all of Milena away.
It was as if her memories of Rolfa were a rock to which Milena could cling. Milena held them and preserved them.
Everything else was surrendered to the roar.
CHAPTER TEN
An Audience of Children
(The Tree of Heaven)
Milena remembered being in the womb.
All sensation was nameless, wordless, unshaped by any kind of grammar. There was light, orange light, passing over her, through her. There was a pulsing, a rush that seethed through her, warm, thrilling, delicious.
There was music.
Dimly heard amid the throb, the sound of a violin was filtered and soft, faraway as dream. It was more like light than sound, a settling of nameless comfort. The music swayed, and the warmth that surrounded Milena swayed with it. Her world moved with the music. There was a dance in the pulsing of her blood, a dance of love, of chemical release. A delectable tingle invaded her. Milena felt the music because her mother felt it.
Her mother was making it. Her mother was playing the violin. To the adult who was remembering, the music was the only familiar thing. The adult knew it was a piece by Bartok. To the unborn infant, it was a physical sensation. The unborn Milena hummed with the music, as if she were a string of the instrument, as if her mother were playing her as well. The music lifted up and swung the unborn child, she rose and fell with it. I’ve never felt that! thought the adult who remembered. I’ve never felt music like that since. It was a different state of being: gentle, surging, warm, ultimately intimate. Milena was part of someone else. Blood and fluids caressed her; everything was touched by light filtered through flesh; everything was heard through the singing in the blood, the stroking fluid. It was like being bathed in something delicious, lemon chocolate perhaps, and being able to taste it with the skin. It was like that brief joyful moment, not necessarily of orgasm, when sex is pure delight. No wonder, thought the one who remembered. No wonder sex keeps pulling. It is trying to pull us back to this.
The infant tried to dance. It moved its legs. The very sensation of movement was new. It was power, to be able to move.
The music stopped.
There was a muffled voice, from outside, from above, a message from beyond. It was a message of celebration. The Milena who remembered could almost make sense of the words. They were like words spoken by a ghost. Milena remembered the tone and timbre, the rise and fall. It was the ghost of her mother.
The infant’s ears were plugged and her nose was plugged, but she felt no desire to breathe. She was one with her world, and it was a world of love.
And Milena remembered that world turning inside out.
The fluids left her, suddenly. A clinging veil settled over her, still warm but slightly harsh. And men the convulsion began, the expulsion. The world pushed her out. The infant knew one tiling: she had started this. She had worked at herself. She had felt like an old tooth coming loose, and so she had tried the power again, the power to move. And it seemed that she had broken the world. She felt horror and fear, but above all regret, as if the world were wounded.