Air

by Geoff Ryman

  Hold, hold how can I remember this?

  The flow of knowledge stumbled. Who said that? someone, somewhere, seemed to ask.

  The overcoming spirit was frightened.

  What’s in my head? it seemed to ask.

  Nothing, nothing, said Mae, and went still and small. She started thinking in this new train again. How it rattled along this train of thought. Knowledge came intimately as if it were her own. The thoughts felt close and personal.

  The thing was eager to share. It felt its life had been vindicated by doing this one great thing. Mae began to see a tiny old white man with bright and shining eyes.

  So. They are somehow able to copy Krus, give us Krus in our heads. This Kru was a great and good Mat Unrolling Kru, so great and good that he could afford to give his head for nothing. He gives his wisdom as from Heaven, to help, because he feels pity.

  There is a word for that: bodhisattva.

  So where else would you expect to find an emanation of the Buddha but in Heaven? But never, never, would you expect the great gift of wisdom to enter you as if from a balloon in reverse, as if the balloon was pumping you up, filling you with air.

  This was a very great gift indeed. Mae felt her wide grin and she felt her solid body press both hands together in respect.

  And she also had one wicked thought. I have an address. No one else in Kizuldah does.

  Mae sat under another desert mountain sky. She sat with hands kept pressed in respect and learned all she could about Question Maps and unrolling her mat.

  The stars turned slowly. Mae grew tired, before that bright, enduring, unchanging mind. Somewhere her giant body dipped in respectful farewell. Mae’s spirit went back the way she had come. She recited.

  “Mae, Mae, Mae, Mae, Mae…”

  She felt a wind blow and scatter her and spin her. She seemed to spin dancing back into the solid world.

  Mae found herself sitting next to the dead and useless mechanical box. Her eyes were wide and streaming with water as if she were weeping from joy. She had not blinked all the time she was in Air.

  And she stood up, and she strode forward, and she knew what she would do.

  She would make a Question Map and ask all the women in the village what they wanted and that would be what she would make. And she would be one with the Kru to understand how the magic of money really worked, for it seemed clear now that money had come from the gods, was an aspect of them. Until it had been stolen by kings and presidents. Coins should bear the image of the Buddha.

  And she would go back and learn more. If the Net were all about greed and gouging then she would learn how to use it to unroll her mat. She would be among the ones who won in this life, through work and virtue.

  Air was new, Air was strong, Air would bear her up. She felt the long root go back and she knew now. ‘She was rooted in the world but the world was in rooted in Air.

  6

  MAE WALKED BACK DOWN LOWER STREET JUST BEFORE THREE A.M.

  She was looking down at her feet, in the moonlight, to avoid stumbling on the old cobbles.

  Something happened inside her eyes. It seemed as if the surface of the road swelled up flickering. She felt herself swell, grow larger, but more diffuse, as mist.

  Suddenly the road was paved, with yellow light reflected from its smooth asphalt surface.

  Mae looked up to see a street lamp, towering over Lower Street on a high concrete pole. When had there been a streetlight on Lower Street? Or a concrete pole?

  Mae looked around and saw the town, spilling down the hillside like a necklace, all strings and spangles of light.

  Below, in the valley where once there had been a marsh, a neon sign glowed: HOTEL NEARNESS, it said. Next to it was some kind of shop, blazing out blue fluorescent light over its own whitewashed wall and the road. A bright red awning hid the things in its window. Children yelled somewhere, running. Children stayed in the village these days. Why leave? All the world was here now. Because of Air, the children stayed. Mae saw her great-grandchildren every day.

  Where am I? Where is this?

  The air smelled of car exhaust and was full of noise: televisions, backfiring cars, and an ambulance siren.

  Mae was old and irritated by a bad back and she was thinking: This is where it was: this is where my house once stood. My house with Joe.

  Climbing up this steep hill had cost her. She had fallen months before and her back was still not right. She still tried to walk in a sprightly way, though crumpled, stiff and sore.

  It was here, old Mae thought, here that we met, here it all happened. Here I was reborn.

  A wind rose, carrying with it the sound of blown reeds. The wind seemed to lift Mae up with it.

  Mr. Ken stood waiting in the courtyard gate.

  And the old woman saw Mr. Ken. To her, he was a ghost from the past. Old Mae choked, put a hand to her mouth. Everything: heart, eyes, gorge, seemed to swell with panic and love.

  There he was, her Mr. Ken. He wore a sweatshirt—she remembered it now clear as day—and his good trousers with the spandex band instead of a belt.

  The wind blew stronger. The sense of panic and loss were taken with it, along with the streetlights.

  And Mae collapsed, not like dust settling, but like a house of cards all at once. And it seemed she pulled the world with her. It had all fallen back into place as she knew it.

  What? Mae thought. What was that? She clamped a hand to her forehead. It was a gust of madness.

  Air, thought Mae.

  Air goes into the future as well?

  She looked about her. There was no Hotel Nearness. The hills were dark; the rural streets were silent.

  Maybe, she thought, maybe I should not go into Air too often.

  Mr. Ken put a hand to his lips, and paused, questioning, to give her a chance to refuse.

  Mae’s response was simply to walk towards the valley. He followed. There were no listening lights at three in the morning.

  The wind in the reeds was like the sound of a waterfall, like everything tumbling out of her head. They walked in silence. Just outside the village, in the sound of the wind, he felt safe to speak.

  “I thought you might not come,” he said. “Your house was dark. Where have you been?”

  “In the future,” she heard herself say. She thought, and then confirmed it: “I’ve been into the future.”

  “Watching television?”

  Mae felt distant. Maybe she was just tired. She shook her head. She didn’t want him to talk. She wanted to listen to the world, the wind, and the moon. She could hear the moon move through clouds.

  “Mae. What do you mean?”

  She was not looking at him; she was looking up, away. “Kizuldah will become just like everywhere else. We will have stores and streetlights and parking lots.” She turned and looked back at the darkened, silent silhouettes of houses, and already regretted it, mourned her village.

  His handsome face was crossed with concern. You are a husband inside, Mae thought: kind, decent, capable of love. So why was she not responding?

  “I’m very sleepy,” she said, as an excuse, as a lie, as the truth. Mae was feeling suddenly contrary.

  He took her hand. “Are you worried?” he asked. His eyes were searching her face for something.

  The woman who had a lover and brandished knives suddenly unsheathed herself.

  “What do you think of when your remember Tui?” she demanded.

  His head hung for a moment. “She was my wife.” He struggled. “She was always frail. She did not like…” The rolling of his hand somehow indicated sex. “It made her shake. I thought that was love, but later I knew it was fear. I don’t know what frightened her.”

  Mae sighed. “She was always a frightened little thing. We used to pick on her. It was not right, but we said she had fleas.”

  “I remember,” he said, in soft surprise. Had he really forgotten that?

  “You never teased her. You were always a good boy,” said Mae. It was
not said entirely with respect. But then it is difficult to be bad when your grandmother runs the school.

  “I remember the things you would make,” Mr. Ken said. “My grandmother would sometimes show them to me specially. I thought they were beautiful.”

  “What things?” she said. People always talked about the things Mae made as a child. It meant they didn’t have to say: You were slow at your letters.

  Mr. Ken said, “You would find old shells, and make a necklace. Once you made peas in their shells, out of library paste. I thought they were wonderful. Grandmother tried to bake them, to save them, and they broke, remember?”

  Mae began to understand. He was saying he had wanted her even in those days and had not spoken. The truth was that she had not much noticed him back then. When had Ken Kuei gone from the quiet, staring boy to the broad-shouldered handsome man? Joe had been the one when they were young. Joe was like a knifeblade. Young and sharp, the rebel. Maybe he had been the fashion expert then.

  “You married very young,” Ken Kuei said.

  He was trying to say that he had been screwing up his courage when the announcement came of their wedding had come.

  Mae said, “You should have been quicker.”

  “I know,” he said, quietly. He stopped. “Do you want to do this?” he asked.

  Mae shrugged. “I am here.”

  “You don’t seem happy.”

  Happy? Whoever said life would be happy? His wife had just killed herself. “No, I’m not, I never am,” she said, her fingers digging into her hair. “You will have to get used to that.”

  They stepped down off a bank, down into reeds. She tried to feel anything at all. Maybe she was just tired.

  Maybe I just want to know what it is all for, if everything is to be swallowed up, if we are all reduced like those old photographs of Eloi. History turns us into exposed meat.

  Sex, like history, stripped away who you were. You do what everyone else does, overwhelmed by base nature. Sex would blow away their selves, Chung Mae, Ken Kuei, like favorite scarves lost in the wind.

  Mae was the one who initiated it. Perhaps she just wanted it over. She pulled his face to hers, they kissed. The ground was damp in patches. The tops of the reeds danced as if in excitement, in honor of the moon. The clouds were strange. They were stippled around the moon, like splattered mud-plaster.

  Mae noticed that even while Mr. Ken offered the beauty of his flat stomach and round thighs, he was slower this time. He worked himself up through many minutes, while she looked at the moon. Through his endurance, Mae was finally brought once again to the state she had never achieved with Joe. She became no one, just a body.

  But she had learned: A lessening of desire in the man makes him work harder, longer, so the woman got more out of it. Joe was always done in an instant.

  She said, “We’d better go, it must be getting late.”

  “Or getting early,” he chuckle, and put his forehead on hers again. It was a gesture of—what—relief? gratitude? surrender? It made her smile because already parts of him were becoming familiar.

  Mr. Shenyalar began to sing from his tower. The sky was already silver as she slipped back into her disordered house.

  Inside, it was tiny and dark. The ground floor looked posed, like a museum exhibit, except that it smelled of Joe and was full of his snoring.

  It was only then that the love came, the love she had been trying not to feel. It came torn out of her, like a baby ripped raw out of the womb. She missed Mr. Ken; she wanted him there, not to screw, but to talk to about the past, the village, and all the things she could never talk about Joe.

  Her marriage was over.

  She couldn’t bear to get into bed with Joe, so she set about cooking his breakfast. She cooked in hatred, weeping as she oiled the pan and boiled the noodles.

  Siao and Old Mr. Chung tumbled down out of the loft and she dumped noodles onto their plates and she thought of the ridges of callus on Mr. Ken’s palms. She remembered his soft voice, the strength of him, the hesitant words.

  Joe got up an hour later, hung over and silent. Finally he left to go, he said, to work.

  Mae sat in a chair feeling drained and exhausted and baffled by herself. I wasted our night, she thought, as if holding it to herself. And I’ve got my Question Map to do. How am I to do a Question Map? I can’t write.

  She was half asleep when the thought came: It’s a manager’s job to manage. There’s always going to be something you don’t know how to do. Just find someone who does.

  It was a beautiful new thought for Mae. Of course, just find someone who can. It warmed and comforted her and made the world seem tranquil and forgiving.

  Mae went to sleep and woke up as someone new.

  7

  THE NEXT EVENING, MAE CALLED ON HAN AN’S MOTHER WITH A PROPOSITION.

  The house was the last on Marsh Street, down in the floodplain. Even now in summer its courtyard was full of mud, goat turd, and chicken shit. Mae balanced over it on high heels and knocked on the inner door.

  An’s mother, Kai-hui, opened the door in a haze of fatigue and loose hair. Her eyes widened at Mae’s outfit.

  Mae bowed. “Mrs. Han-ma’am.”

  Mae was wearing her white dress with hearts and over that, her husband’s best gray jacket. Her hair was pulled severely back, she wore her huge spectacles, and she carried a clipboard. Mae was well aware: no village woman had ever dressed like that before.

  Kai-hui covered surprise in polite responses. She ushered Mae inside and exchanged assurances of well-being.

  Formalities over, Mae said, “I was wondering if I might speak to your daughter. I have a proposition for her.”

  An was called, and came in. She was in work clothes, an old flowered dress and an apron. Her hair was in a kerchief, which she quickly pulled off her head. Kai-hui made tea, and served. They talked of the season: It was time to get out into the terraces, but it seemed as if lambing had only just finished.

  Mae felt impatience. Dead, dead, this all has died. Perhaps too soon, she launched into the business.

  “All our lives,” she said, “are going to change. Air will come again. We have the television now to help us be more modern, but nothing is really being done to make the village ready.” She explained that she needed the help of a diligent, studious person. She saw a stirring of interest, then excitement, in An’s eyes.

  Mae continued: “I have two purposes, I confess. First, it is to help me shape my business. That will change, too. But the second is also to help the village to decide: What do we want to do for the future?”

  Also, thought Mae did not say so, to write the answers down and read them later.

  Kai-hui did not know what to think, coming fresh from floors, the battle against mud, and the trial of boiled socks. “We are very flattered that you think of my daughter for such an unusual activity,” she said. “I must confess, I do not understand. Are you offering her a position?”

  “Not yet,” admitted Mae. “I am not yet sure I have a business. People might tell me, ‘Don’t bother, no one wants your fashion.’ But if I do, then I will need a bright young Talent.”

  An’s eyes glistened. Oh, she understood, the young one. She could smell the new world, she knew the fragrance of it.

  Kai-hui said, “That is very interesting. But we are talking about time. And my daughter is needed in work here.”

  It would not be polite to say: Your daughter will have to leave you one way or another—by marriage or by work. It was not polite, but perhaps politeness had died, too.

  So Mae said it. “An will not always be with you. And like all of us, she faces choices. One choice is to cling to old ways. And end up boiling her husband’s underwear. Or, she can use her way with words and her beauty in a new way. A way that will bring cash and not labor into your house.”

  An was trying to fight down a smile. Her cheeks clenched, and she was not daring to look at either her mother or Mae.

  “May I see the questio
ns?” asked Kai-hui. Her eyes were hard with the mild insult, pained at the truth, and alert.

  With a flourish, Mae produced her Question Map. An could not suppress a cry of surprised admiration.

  Mae had spoken the questions to Kwan’s TV and the TV had printed it out all in lines. It looked like something from the government.

  Kai-hui might be stuck boiling socks, but she could read. As she read, she began to look wistful. “These are indeed questions that need to be asked. I am concerned about modesty. These questions are to be asked of men as well?”

  “Mother!” An blurted out, and pulled herself in.

  “Indeed, yes,” said Mae, shyly herself. “The men run the village, and so must be asked. That is one reason why I myself need an assistant, so that there is no misinterpretation. We will always present ourselves together.”

  Kai-hui’s eyes said something else: You are no longer a model of propriety. “As long as you do not go armed,” she said. An did not move. “We will consider the offer, its good and bad points.”

  Mae bowed as she sat. When she stood to go, An got up and took her arm, and said, “I will escort our guest.” Her mother decided to relent.

  At the courtyard gate, An said fiercely, quickly, “No matter what she says, I will help you.”

  There was no need for rebellion. Kai-hui said yes.

  THE NEXT DAY, MAE AND AN WENT TO WORK.

  Mae had decided that it would flatter people if she made an appointment to see them. It would get them thinking, and it would establish her claim to have done it first. Her secretary, as she called An, wrote a letter to all thirty-four households, asking for a convenient time to visit.

  That night, when Mae sat down to consult the TV, Kwan came running down the steps of her four-farm house. She kissed her.

  “Mae,” Kwan said, “you clever, clever lady! Why did you not tell of such a brilliant plan?”

  “I felt it might seem stupid,” Mae lied. “It was unformed, I had no idea what the response would be.”

  “But it is just the thing!” exclaimed Kwan, eyes bright and full of pain.

  “Oh! It is to help me with my fashion business.”