Air (or Have Not Have)

by Geoff Ryman

  Mae had to wring the moisture out of her eyes.

  'The gully is where we kept our ducks and geese. Maybe some of those lived. And the house that has fallen across Upper Street, that was my friends' house, the Dohs' house, and they have lived there for one thousand years. The Dohs were Chinese warriors who stayed, and the house is older than the One Tree. And just above it, that was our new mosque. Every morning our Muerain would sing, and he sang so considerately in the early morning – soft and low and sad, as if he was sorry to wake us, wanted to let us sleep, sorry that we would have to wake up to empty bellies, or cold, or scorching sun. We all built the mosque. We all paid for it, even those of us who were not Muslim, and all the children ran to help with hammers, and the dogs barked, like when the trucks come to take the harvest.'

  Mae broke down. She couldn't speak. Her face was not her own. It was like the laundry she saw in Old Mrs Tung's hands, wrung clean.

  She wiped her face and her mouth, and swallowed and kept on.

  'That's the roof of the mosque in what is left of Mr and Mrs Ali's house. They are a fine old couple, of our Party of Progress. And there is the Okan house; they are as old as the hills. And I am so happy, because their house is whole, it isn't touched, and all the circular rugs that Mrs Okan weaves herself, with old hands, over candles at night, they will have survived. We can wash them. We can wash them and put them on her floors and it will all be as it was. And next… next to them.'

  Mae drew a breath and grew grim. 'Next to that is the house of my dear friend Mrs Ozdemir. You cannot see it. But I can. I can see it as if it had never left, was still there, as if a girl called Sezen still drew at a table, and still fumed at her mother, for being sad and frightened, as if it were still full of corncobs that the family used as furniture because they were too poor to have anything else, with beautiful naked babes and words from the Koran written in crayon on the walls. I can still see it, but that girl died, and they have lost their home. But Mrs Ozdemir's heart is broken and so is her head, and she just sits and rocks and weeps.

  'And there is my house, too.

  'My house in many ways, because it was my husband's house, and in that house I gave birth to three children. One whole side of it is gone. I can see inside it; it's so familiar, even flooded with sunlight, my bed, and my kitchen. I think I see my own TV in part of the loft, sunning itself. But the barn is full of mud, so I think my beautiful weaving machine will be gone.

  'But look at the beautiful new sea. Look at it sparkle. Look how full of hope it seems; look, it has seagulls, who could hate such a beautiful sea? Even if it covers houses – houses where you played as children – even if dear friends are trapped inside, their mouths full of mud. Even landscapes die, and give birth to new ones.

  'And here comes the sun.

  'See it? It is creeping over the hills, and the terraces, and the terraces are gone. Every spring after harvest, up we all would go, men and women and children with levers and stakes and hammers and pulleys, and all of us, even the ones who hated each other, would stand together and pull up the rocks and hammer in the stakes, to repair the terraces, to hold the earth.

  'And that earth, what it did not contain? Our blood and sweat, our shit, our stillborn babies, anything to make it rich and keep it rich. What you see spilled is not mud. It is our blood, our blood of two thousand years – that is why it is so red, and that is why it seems to me that the earth screams. For it is lost now, like a beautiful child that bursts free into danger. It will be washed away, washed away down into the valley, and so much of what we are, will go with it.'

  The corner of the room was dark, and Mae was swaying, and the constant fire in her belly gnawed at her. She saw the school high on the hill swamped with mud.

  She saw its open door.

  Farther down the hill, stumbling over the ruin of Mrs Doh's house, she saw people walking.

  'It's Shen!' Mae shouted. 'Oh, the people you see walking – see, that is our Schoolteacher, Mr Shen! We thought he was dead, surely – look at the wreck of our school – but look, he is there. Oh, tell the Haj, tell our pilgrim, that one more of us has lived, and lovely Suloi, she lives, too – beautiful Suloi and her daughters!'

  Shen shambled as he walked, everything shaking: legs, arms. But his head was held erect, stupidly high, dumbly proud, as if he had been proved right, as if he had defeated history.

  The littlest child – too young to understand, except to wonder – her mouth was open. In the beautiful sunlight, she held out her arms and began to spin.

  'She dances,' whispered Mae. 'The daughter dances.'

  Mae turned to tell someone that Shen lived. She turned and saw that crowded and silent in the doorway were Kwan and Wing and Sunni and Kuei and Joe and Mr Pin and Mr Ali and others looking over their shoulders.

  The room was going darker. Mae heard the sound of children playing in a courtyard. She heard the Muerain, year on year, and the harvest festival and the winter party, and the spring replanting with its songs, and the late-night barking of the drowned dogs.

  That's when it came into the room. Mae had seen it before: something dark and whole, something like a dog, loyal in a sense, patient, waiting. Except that it meant the end of everything she had known and loved. The black dog settled in the corner and licked its chops.

  Mae sat back onto the bed. She dropped the camera. Kwan walked forward and picked it up.

  'The road has been completely washed away,' Kwan said, to the machine. 'We are cut off and have only limited supplies of food.'

  'Wait. Look,' said a handsome man Mae once had known.

  There was a sound like sheets in the wind, clean sheets being shaken.

  'It's a helicopter.' The handsome man spun in joy. 'They have already sent a helicopter!'

  'Mae, did you send a message last night?'

  'Blurpble ah,' said Mae. She was not well.

  Mr Ali came forward with his hat, and Mr Atakoloo and even Mr Masud.

  'So,' said Mr Ali. 'You will have to teach us all now, Mae – all how to use it.'

  'We will need it,' said Mr Atakoloo. He tried to smile.

  But everything was slipping into darkness, closing down. Someone else was dancing.

  Old Mrs Tung won.

  CHAPTER 25

  Progress passed into the hands of the habitual leaders of the village: the Wings, the Muerain, and Mr Atakoloo.

  They set about rebuilding Kizuldah. As a blacksmith, Mr Atakoloo was disposed to building shelters of prefabricated metal. Mr Wing knew stone was best. Stone would hold warmth.

  'It takes too long to build!' Mr Atakoloo protested, gesturing, puffing out his handsome white moustache.

  'If you only have two or three people building. We have one hundred men, with nothing to do.'

  ' Tub. Most of them unskilled,' said Mr Atakoloo, brushing flakes of village bread into his cupped palm.

  In the end, they had to build with both metal and stone. The cold came back. Ruined houses like the Dohs' or Mae's had small shelters built against whatever walls were still sound. For this, the stones of the ruined terraces and houses served better than tidy sheets of aluminum. The men and the women carried rocks, in wheelbarrows or in gloved hands. The aluminum sheets formed the roofs. Concrete was poured on top of that to stop them radiating out all the warmth of the fires.

  Fifteen families had bought Mr Wang's insurance. Ju-mei, his city clothes gone in the Flood, made a point of giving them their cash himself. He passed them wads of bills to replace their houses, folds, and flocks. They gaped at him in wonder.

  So it was that Mae's computer was seen even to provide money. The village people were related to each other and showed solidarity. They shared their payouts, and so the village had money to restore itself.

  The TV brought other things. News, for example, that the Office of Discipline and Education had reinstated Shen in his job. The e-mail wished him a productive partnership with Mrs Chung. The Office seemed unaware that there had been a flood.

  Peo
ple temporarily shared their houses. The Kemals and the Ozdemirs found shelter in Ju-mei's house. Mr Wing put up the whole tribe of Pins. The Alis stayed with the Haseems in what was left of their house.

  Faysal Haseem had awakened late on the day after New Year, to find much of his house missing. It looked, he said, rather like his own skull felt, broken open and washed away. His garage, his white van, all his tools were gone! He thought there had been thieves. He thought that Chung Mae had finally gone crazy and driven a tractor into his house. It had its funny side, waking up hungover, having slept through disaster. He had to laugh. He told the story over and over. He did not look at his wife as he laughed. Sunni looked down at her hands.

  Food was dropped from the air: bags of flour or rice, paid for partly by money donated by the Nouvelles magpie. On cold, clear days, the village could hear the rumble of machinery, up from the valley. The road to their village was being repaired.

  Kwan thanked Bugsy, thanked the world. She still had requests by voicemail for Mae's last narrowcast. Kwan always referred to the Nouvelles address. She could not bear to listen to it herself.

  At times Kwan stood looking out of that same window, to see how the village was healing, and to think of Mae.

  The wind had a different sound now. Kwan was sure she was not making that up. Some of the wind spirits had left them: The invader wind had frightened them away. Some of the spirits would never come back; the air itself would sound forever different.

  That, at least, is what her mother would have said. Her mother, Mrs Kowoloia, would have said many things.

  Kwan's mother would have said, There are four principal spirits, called Earth, Air, Water, and Fire. In times of change they become unbalanced. The Eloi despised the Chinese with their paltry system of opposition: yin and yang. The Eloi had layers of struggle and synthesis.

  Earth was female and solid, and nourishing and dark and fertile as the womb. It was the lowest layer.

  Water was the force of time that carried everything forward. It flowed, making the earth turn, the air spin. Water was the engine of the world. Water was change.

  Air was the spirit, high in heaven. Between Earth and Air was Fire.

  Fire was people. Fire was their desires, the things that made them move. Fire and Water were change; Air and Earth were what continued.

  Oh, Mrs Kowoloia would have had no trouble telling them what had happened. Air had usurped the place of time and desire. The world of the spirits had come to earth, like ghosts, and the fire-demon Erjdha had blown across the hills.

  Old Mrs Kowoloia would have had no difficulty knowing what Chung Mae was, either.

  Some people bore the weight of the world. It was not their fault. They could not be blamed. Air and Fire and Earth and Water churned within them exactly as they churned without. They did extraordinary things and were to be avoided, for they were maelstroms; and they were to be watched, for whatever happened to them, happened to the world.

  Such people became oracles to be read like yarrow stalks.

  So Kwan would sit and ponder the meaning of the oracle.

  What the oracle told her was simple and final, and all that Mae had been saying since the beginning.

  Their old and beloved world had died. It was right to mourn it. But they could not resist the movement, either. Water, spurred by Air, had changed its course. Water was time. Time had moved, very swiftly, and so must they.

  And Old Mrs Kowoloia, long since burned by funeral fire to join the world of the spirits, would also say: Do not fear for your friend. The Water in Mae has responded to the usurping Air. The Water has swept her away.

  Mae lives in the future.

  Thinking this, looking out over their darkened village, Kwan let hot water fall from her eyes. And her mother would have said to Kwan: Cry, daughter. Tears are good for people who grieve. Tears are time. The tears help bear you away beyond the time of grief.

  Why does it work, Mother? This old stuff. Why does it work? When you tell me it is dead. Why does it help me understand?

  Kwan had wanted her son to be modern and scientific. The Eloi had to be, to live in this world, and to fight the Karz if the time ever came again. But her son knew none of his people's wisdom. And he would go away, like Mae's son did, and come back a stranger.

  Look to oracles, they live out the future.

  Kwan wiped her eyes and went down to the diwan, still crowded with people. Her son's name was Luk. He was big, quiet, kind, and part of a group, not its leader. Was now the time? She saw his face. It was a university face; he might not become a soldier. He could become something even worse than a soldier.

  See the water? See the tears? See the candle burning in our little boat of wishes? He is going away, daughter. This is his last winter in Kizuldah.

  So Kwan made herself smile, and collected the stone mugs and murmured to friends, not wanting to disturb their viewing.

  They were watching a programme about Mat Unrolling.

  Kwan was glad to see Suloi there. Suloi would understand. Two Eloi sets of eyes caught each other's glances.

  Kwan said, 'Remember Mae? She talked about her Mat all the time.'

  Very solemnly, Suloi nodded downward, once – yes. Mae was our oracle.

  Kwan came to Luk. 'Son? When this is through, could you and I go for a walk?'

  He glanced at his friends, two of the Pin brothers, all bucktoothed and sweet. Kwan was glad he had such good friends.

  It was unusual for her to ask. He looked at his friends and said, 'I can go now if you like.' Mat Unrolling bored him, maybe.

  Kwan was careful not to tell him how to dress; he did not want to hear his mother telling him to bundle up. And she promised herself as she slipped on boots that she would not let her worries run away with the night. She would not worrit him about studying, about not spending, about writing her. Nothing he could do would fill the gap that would be left behind when he went. Nothing she could do would make his life better if he failed to fly by himself.

  We must meet as equals, she thought.

  So they trudged out together, and her son had bundled himself up in sheepskin coat, scarf, and gloves, almost too carefully.

  And this made Kwan think: Where is the swagger in him? Is Luk a bit too quiet, even a bit dull?

  Don't worrit, Kwan.

  They walked out into the courtyard.

  Kwan asked her son, 'What do you make of Chung Mae?'

  That surprised him. If he had been dreading a motherly discussion, that would have reassured him.

  'I don't really know,' Luk said, finally. 'She is your good friend. I'm sorry she is not well.'

  'That's what I think, too, of course. But what do you think she is?'

  Luk looked back at her askance. Was this a trick question? Adults asked questions when they knew the answers.

  Kwan did not want to play a guessing game. 'The Eloi in me thinks she is something very mysterious.' Kwan found herself smiling and wiggling her eyebrows, almost making fun of it. They both stood in the courtyard light.

  Luk grinned. He understood. 'She is a bit spooky,' he said.

  'Your grandmother would have said she was oiya,' said Kwan. 'That means "disturbed," which means the elements are out of balance.'

  'Many people would have called her disturbed,' said Luk. 'Only, she turned out to be right.'

  Kwan stepped out of the courtyard, and began to walk out of the village, up the hill. It was so cold that the stars seemed to be made of frost – as if her own wreathing, white breath blew up into heaven to freeze there. Stars and breath, it's too big, she thought. You can't cram all of the Eloi world into someone all at once.

  'The Elois said that stars are solid places in the air, for spirits to rest,' she said. 'They are like frozen air.'

  'Well, they're fire instead,' said Luk.

  'Do you ever think about the Elois?' she asked him.

  She could hear his sheepskin shrug. 'Only that I am part Eloi. My first name is Eloi – I think. It doesn't seem to ma
ke any difference in the way people treat me.'

  'You don't have any sudden urges to stand up and herd sheep on the high hills?'

  She heard the rustle of a smile. 'No. No urge to tattoo my legs, either.'

  'You should try it, it looks beautiful.'

  'Ah, but my legs are just a bit too hairy for it.' He was joking, but it was also the truth. His legs were Chinese.

  'And they don't allow tattoos in the military.'

  He sighed. 'Well. That might be a good reason to get one, then.' Then he said, 'Okay. Tell me about the Eloi.'

  The air was still.

  'You really want to know?'

  'Not as much as you want to tell me. But I don't know it.'

  Good, said the stars.

  'Okay. I'll talk. But if a nightjar churrs, we have to go back inside, because birds can talk to the air. If a nightjar calls, it is warning you.'

  'About what?'

  'That you are betraying the secrets of the spirits. Or that the spirit inside the body you are talking to is not ready yet. Things like that.'

  'Mom. You don't really believe this, do you?'

  Kwan had to consider. 'Not really. Not with the top part of my head. But, this old stuff – it produces the right words. You just say what the old people would have said, and something is explained. Somehow it's all easier to bear.'

  Even now, down the hillside, water trickled.

  Luk spoke next: 'There's something about Earth resting underneath, and being the foundation. And Air on top, with Fire and Water as the filling in the sandwich.'

  'Yes, but I think those are the wrong words.'

  'Ah. I am a modern fellow,' he said.

  Kwan said. 'There are two kinds of time. There is time in motion, measured by clocks, and there is "the Time." The Time is the situation you live in. You make it, the world makes it, most of the time it is like a punch you roll with. You make your choices, and do not resent them, and wait for the season to pass. And the season is made of the four elements, all of which have characteristics, powers. They all kind of swirl together.'