"Geoff Ryman - The Child Garden" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ryman Geoff)

hand touched the apple's dappled skin, she had thought of what it cost the boy
to grow the apples and haul them to market and how he had to do all this in
his spare time. She could not do it, she could not make herself steal. Was
that because of the virus? Was it part of herself? She could not be sure.
There was one virus to which Milena knew she had been immune. There was one
thing at least that she was sure was part of herself. There was no ignoring
the yearning in her heart for love, the love of another woman.
This was a semiological product of late period capitalism. So the Party said.
Milena suffered, apparently, from Bad Grammar. Bad deep grammar, but grammar
nonetheless. This made Milena angry. What late period capitalism? Where? It
had been nearly one hundred years since the Revolution!
She was angry and that frightened her. Anger was dangerous. Anger had killed
her father. He had been given so many viruses to cure him of it that he had
died of fever. Milena was certain that one day soon, the Party would try to
cure her, too, of anger, of being herself. Milena lived in fear.


Everyone was Read at ten years old, by the Party. It was part of their
democratic rights. Because of advances in medicine, representative democracy
had been replaced by something more direct. People were Read, and models were
made of their personalities. These models joined the government, to be
consulted. The government was called the Consensus. It was a product of late
period socialism. Everyone was a part of the Consensus, except Milena.
Milena had not been Read. She had been too ill with viruses at ten years old
to be Read. Her personality was still in flux; a Reading would have been
meaningless. She had not been Read, but she had been Placed as an adult. Would
they remember, soon? When she was Read, her Bad Grammar and her petty crimes
would be discovered. And then, as a matter of social hygiene, she would be
made ill, in order to cure her.
Milena was frightened of dying when it happened, like her father. Had he been
resistant as well? Her father had died, in Eastern Europe, and her mother had
fled with Milena to England, where the diseases were milder. Then she too had
died, and Milena had grown up as an orphan in a foreign land.
She had grown up with a head full of theatrical visions. She loved the
mechanics of rotating stages, of puppets, of painted flats being raised and
lowered. She loved the cumbersome, stinking alcohol lights that blazed with
brightness found only in theatre. She thought about such things as the effect
of alternating bands of white and yellow light cast over a white, white stage.
She loved light. She toyed with hazy ideas of productions that consisted only
of light. No people.
At ten years old, Milena had been Placed for work in the theatre, as an
actress. This was a mistake. Milena was a terrible actress. There was
something unbending in her that refused to mimic other people: she was always
herself. She was doomed always to fight to stay herself.


Most mornings, a bus would take Milena to her next performance. She would sit,
arms folded, like a flower that had not yet bloomed, and look at London as it
creaked past her window.
People called London the Pit, with rueful fondness for its crumbling buildings