Air

by Geoff Ryman

  “It is more than that! It asks us to think about the future,” said Kwan. “Do you need any help?”

  “Oh! You are so kind. No, I have An, Han Kai-hui’s daughter, as my secretary. If it works out, she can join me in the business.”

  “Ah,” said Kwan. “Yes, of course. You have that terrible loan to repay.” She paused. “Our offer of help is always open to you.”

  Mae’s inner heart groaned. This was difficult. How could she say: you are kind, and a good friend, but I believe you are smarter than I am and would take over my project, make it yours? How can I say that the part of you that hungers, needs to take my project over and make it yours?

  Mae replied, “I may have to take up the offer, indeed. You are so good, such a kind heart.”

  Kwan’s smile did not change, just her eyes. “What value is that, in the new world?”

  Against her own instructions, Mae had spent some of Sunni’s-man’s loan on pens and paper and clipboard for An to write with. This made her feel bad. Her new image made her feel good.

  An did not have to be told how to dress. She also wore a jacket of her father’s, and suddenly, proudly, wore the big spectacles she had always tried to hide. She looked like a newsreader.

  They worked in the evenings, after supper. Their first appointment was with Tsang and her husband Mr. Muhammed. The village children lined up outside their gate to watch the arrival of the Talents.

  “Ask her about Kwan’s son,” one of the boys bellowed like a bullfrog, to squeals of delight and harsh, unkind laughter.

  Tsang had put on her best clothes and made tea, and curtained off the room full of corncobs. Her husband Hasan was a most devout Muslim who wore a black robe and had a copy of the Book ready.

  Mae explained her two purposes. She phrased it this way: To ask the man of the house about the coming of Air, and to ask the woman about fashion. But either could speak at any time. Any questions they did not wish to answer were fine. Had they any views about the coming of Air?

  “Indeed,” said Mr. Muhammed. And spoke for twenty-five solid minutes.

  The religion of Peace has always been a friend to science. When the West descended into a dark age, it was Peace that kept alive the teachings of Aristotle and Plato. Peace had no difficulty reconciling God and mathematics, the spirit and the solid world of physical laws.

  An nodded and wrote down the odd phrase. Mae said, “Ah!” and “Oh!” at each fresh insight and felt her heart dragged down.

  Mr. Muhammed paused to sip tea. He was all lean neatness, with thin lips going purple with age, and thin fingers. His head was wrapped in white like a bandaged wound that needed to be kept clean.

  When she asked her second question—what he felt about the Test—he simply repeated what he had said before. But he added that all information was nothing compared to the word of God. And that if the Air became a channel for godlessness, then it would be a great evil, to be rooted out.

  But how had he reacted, what did he himself experience? Mae was surprised. She really wanted to know.

  Mr. Muhammed denied Air had any effect. It was interesting to see the Beijing opera. But it should not be allowed to drive out the Book.

  Tsang, plump, cheerful, and slovenly, agreed with her tidy husband. Everything he said, that was her view. Pressed to say what her activities were, she listed cleaning, cooking, and fieldwork. Fashion—oh, a married woman such as herself needed no fashion.

  An’s and Mae’s eyes caught each other.

  They bowed, professed delight, and congratulated Mr. Muhammed on his contribution. He seemed pleased and guided them to the door.

  “If you need any help, Mrs. Chung-ma’am, help teaching the children about this new thing—then come to me. To speak frankly, you have a great enemy. Tuh.” He cast his head back up the hill. “That animal-worshipping Eloi.”

  Mae didn’t understand. “I am sorry, I am just a wife, I do not know who you mean.”

  Mr. Muhammed’s eyes softened, moved by the incompetence and innocence of a woman.

  “Teacher Shen,” said Mr. Muhammed, gently. “He hates it. He is very angry with you for what you are doing.”

  “What am I doing?” Mae asked.

  “Causing trouble,” said Mr. Muhammed, still smiling.

  ACROSS THE BRIDGE FROM MR. MUHAMMED WAS THE VAST HOUSEHOLD OF OLD MR. DOH.

  Young Mr. Doh was Joe’s great friend, and he greeted Mae and An with gusts of hilarity. He tried to pour them rice wine instead of tea, and spoke over his shoulder to his own and his brother’s children, who clustered around the door to listen.

  Young Mr. Doh teased and complimented Mae at the same time. “Oh! Where are your angel wings? Where are the veils and the bobbles? You are wearing glasses, why did you put on your husband’s clothes by mistake?”

  The children chorused giggles and hid their mouths.

  Mae asked, “What does Young Mr. Doh think of Air?”

  “What Air? Where is it? I tell you, it will never happen. How many people died, eh? No one wants it.”

  “I want movies,” said his brother, who was a bit simple.

  “So do I,” piped up one of the grandsons. “It is as boring as mud in this village.”

  “Fut-bol!” roared all the boys in unison, approximating in their language the name of the great international sport.

  Mr. Doh said, “We get all of that on TV already. I tell you, nothing will change.”

  The two young Doh wives, of course, worked and had no need of fashion. On the other hand, Young Miss Doh was famous for wearing men’s clothes and riding a motorcycle. Outside on the street, An and Mae shrugged to each other.

  At home, Joe waited for them in the kitchen, still in his undershirt and work trousers. “So, wife, did you learn anything?”

  An bowed, and Joe grunted. Siao and Old Mr. Chung watched. Why suddenly, did it seem to Mae that their gaze was insolent?

  Mae found she did not want to talk in front of them. Everything was like an egg that she wanted to warm and protect and hide away.

  The two women also sat at the table, under the stares of the men. An looked over their Question Sheets. “Very few of your questions are answered, ma’am.”

  “We will need to talk to wives separately.”

  “Why do you need to do that?” said Joe, belligerently.

  “Because wives do not talk around their husbands.”

  “Oh. And you want to encourage them. Tuh.” Joe looked to his father and brother for support. Siao grunted, and hid his face.

  Mae sighed. “Joe. I try to make us money. To do that, I need to know what women want clothes for.”

  “To cover their nakedness, or else they’d all be whores,” he said.

  “Joe, we have a well-brought-up lady guest.”

  Joe looked sullenly at both of them.

  Mae looked at An. “Everyone is pretending that nothing has changed. No one will talk about the Test at all.”

  An looked a bit tense. “No one knows what to make of it. Except you.” An hesitated and then decided to push on. “In your case, ma’am, it was like a doctor prescribing deadly poison as a last resort. You have already gone through it, the worst. Every time people see you, they are reminded. That you were driven mad by it. That it changed you, beyond recognition.” An’s eyes were saddened.

  “Yes!” said Joe, suddenly fierce. “Yes! You are not the woman I married.”

  An persisted, in a quiet, kindly voice: “People might become frightened of you.”

  “I will walk you home,” said Mae.

  Joe forbade it. They had a terrible fight, in front of An. Mae was beside herself. She really had had enough. “Think, you stupid man—though I know you find it difficult to even recognize your own shoes! I cannot let the village beauty walk home unchaperoned. What would her mother say?”

  “Oh, so now you quote tradition at me. You, who walk about in men’s jackets!”

  “I am not staying here to listen to rubbish or to let you make a greater fool
of yourself in front of Miss An.”

  Mae stormed out.

  She said to An, “This is going to be harder work than I thought.”

  “I think of it,” said An, “as being like childbirth. I find it is already preparing me for many difficult tasks ahead.” She paused. “I want to thank you for the opportunity.”

  “I want to thank you for all your help.”

  “We will find who your friends are, Mrs. Chung-ma’am.”

  Mae safely delivered An to her mother, and climbed back up to the village square. The Teahouse overlooked the hill, growing out of the side of Joe’s cousin’s house. It was full of light and smoke and bellowing. Mae walked away from it across their little stream, which was allowed to find its own way across the cobbles. She sat in the dark on the bench in front of Mrs. Kosal’s house under the great oak. Generations of children had swung from its branches. The people of Kizuldah called it “the One Tree.” It seemed to reach up into the stars.

  Away from her husband, away from everyone, Mae settled back down into Air. She did not have to go far before she felt the wisdom of the Kru come to her.

  It was so evident then, what she was doing wrong. She was just talking. She had to explain to people what the rules were, and ask them for quick, simple answers. If people left one question unanswered, it was either irrelevant to them, which told you something, or they had something to hide. Ask questions that had simple objective answers, avoid yes or no. Listen carefully and find a way to characterize the replies so they could be compared.

  The Kru was not a voice. It was like bubbles full of answers popping in her head. It did not ask stupid questions like, Why don’t you get them to write the answers themselves? (They can’t write.) It knew what she knew. It was becoming part of her.

  Mae knew nothing, really, about making dresses. She knew nothing, really, of Air or the old Net or what money really was, or even how to get things off this mountain. But she knew one thing. Through Air she could add knowledge to herself in a new way.

  From somewhere, from the future, she heard the sound of a siren.

  THE NEXT DAY MAE AND AN INTERVIEWED MR. AND MRS. MACK.

  Musa Mack looked like the other village men except that his hair had a reddish tinge and curled. He was a Christian. So was his wife, who was from across the Valley, a world away, on slopes lost in haze.

  Mr. Mack was the village’s token Westerner, even though his family had lived in the Valley for over a century. He could drink whisky and not get drunk. He was gross in his movements, too large. People watched him for corrupt tendencies. He talked too loudly.

  Mr. Mack shouted them into his house and both Mae and An blanched as if the sheer force of his shouting could hurl them against the wall. Most gross of all, he had recently grown a long red beard. It was incredibly good fortune to have facial hair, he was like an emblem of good luck, but really, who could bear to kiss such a thing?

  There was a picture of Isa, the Christians’ God, on the wall, and he, too, had a beardful of good fortune. But why would a god be helping with the lambing?

  Tea was served, which was a relief. Mr. Mack kept bellowing. He was shouting, Mae suddenly saw, because he was so uncomfortable. All his life, he had been seen as compromised. And so he had become what people thought he was.

  “It will be a great thing. It will bring the world in right here,” Mr. Mack said. Marginalized, he had a love of foreign things.

  “I am very frightened,” whispered his wife, Mariam. “I did not like that thing in my head!”

  “I was spitting terror!” laughed Mr. Mack. “But I reckon that you get used to it after a while.”

  It was said his mattress was often seen in his courtyard, draining urine. It was said that he wet his bed.

  His wife, when they examined the responses, did most of the talking. Both were frightened of Air, both wanted to learn how to use it.

  Mariam spoke at great, sincere length about fashion. Mae was sorry she had never approached her before. It had been unfair thinking on Mae’s part. She had supposed the Macks were dirty and uninterested in fashion.

  “I would like to have three good dresses; one in white for funerals, and one full of bright colors for festivals, and one very dignified dress for happy ceremonies and for going to my church, which I can only do once a year.”

  Mae saw that she was lonely.

  “You missed it last year,” said Mr. Mack.

  Mariam looked sad. “It was a bad year for farming.”

  “What sort of dignified dress? What kind of colors?”

  “Simple, very simple, but looking nice, you know? Very modest, please, and easy to keep clean—it must look good after I wash it. But I was thinking, perhaps in blue and white together, if the colors held fast.”

  Mariam had a pinched face, and she pressed her hand over her heart.

  Blue and white? That was a new color. Mae saw An write it down.

  They said goodbye, and loose Mr. Mack had his arm around his wife as though she were a parcel.

  Outside, An said. “They seemed happy enough.”

  They visited the Pin tribe. Like the Macks and An’s mother, they lived south of the main village, along the river.

  The Pins had turned the marsh below Lower Street into a graveyard for cars. Baked tire-tracks swept round to rows of vehicles of faded green or rusty red. Old taxis and rumpled pickup trucks were missing doors or tires. Dusty cats and tiny black turkeys called hindis picked their way among them. Under corrugated tin sheds, saws and drills and welding torches were hung with festive abandon.

  The core of the family had been two brothers and their wives. When they had stopped farming to become mechanics, Enver Atakoloo, the village blacksmith and a full-blooded Karz, became enraged. Mr. Atakoloo shot the eldest of the brothers. Pin Xi survived and, it was whispered, lived as husband to both his own and his brother’s wife; not to mention, it was whispered in even lower voices, his brother’s wife’s unmarried sister, who also lived there. The ten children and other homeless relatives meant that no fewer than nineteen people lived among the wrecks of the cars or in the barns that had once sheltered livestock.

  The whole house smelled of feet and bedding. The tiny diwan was screened from the rest of the house by drying laundry. Mrs. Pin Xi wore trousers and an apron covered in blue and yellow checks. The five daughters peered out from behind the laundry, in awe of the transformation of An.

  The five Pin sons considered themselves men to be interviewed. They sat up straight on the diwan cushions and were forthright. Air would be great: the Doh boys were wrong; they could do much more than watch football, there were great games you could play in Air.

  Mrs. Pin beamed with pride every time one of her huge brood spoke. Fashion? Oh? She needed a new apron. No, lots of aprons, a different one for every day, so she could wash the others. And good dresses? Hmm, it might be nice. Yes, a good dress, nothing fancy.

  Nothing fancy, nothing fancy again.

  And the daughters. Come out, girls, come out. And out poured the girl’s hearts, in the direction of An. So An had to do both the wise encouraging nods and the writing.

  They wanted to be modern. They did not want to look traditional. They wanted to see what the rest of the world wore. Though (glance at Father) it would be good to show the world that traditional values could still be modern.

  They all of them told stories, in turn, of the day of the Test. Mae asked if they were frightened. No, they said, they were not scared at all; no, they were ready. Mr. and Mrs. Pin shrugged. “We are old,” they said. “What do we know?”

  Leavetaking took half an hour of shaking hands and bowing. The widow and the spinster sister, who had not spoken at all, now made very formal goodbyes, professing pleasure.

  Afterwards, An and Mae stood talking on boards, balancing across the mud of Marsh Street.

  “So,” sighed Mae. “They want work clothes that look good but will wear well. They want lots of cheaper clothes, so they can take them on and off and wa
sh them a lot. The younger women want to be modern but they don’t know what ‘modern’ will be. So they will rely on us to show them. And … adornment is passing. They like our men’s jackets.”

  An was smiling. “Mrs. Chung is very wise. I did not see that, but I feel you are right.”

  Mae settled under the One Tree on the bench, and called her self, and sank down into Air.

  Answers popped again and again.

  Numbers sang to the Kru. They showed him their hidden secrets, joyfully. Those secrets shocked Mae. She had planned to buy aprons, oven gloves, blouses, and day shoes cheap in Yeshibozkent. This would cost 125 riels and give her less than 16 profit. The numbers did a dance and showed her: To pay off the interest and only 25 riels’ principal each year, she could do nothing that did not make 100 percent profit. Her situation was impossible.

  At least with best dresses there was no risk. You only bought cloth when you had a sale, and it was a luxury, you could charge more. The numbers did a further dance. Mae knew how many girls would graduate next year. There was likely to be only one wedding. Eight dresses, for a profit of about 30.

  Doing nothing was not an option. Best dresses it would have to be. If Mae was still going to be in the best-dress business, she would need a seamstress. Cheap.

  She stood up from the One Tree and walked to Hatijah Ozdemir’s house.

  HATIJAH SAT SLUMPED ON THE FLOOR.

  She looked up piteously at Mae, dark circles under her eyes. Her oldest daughter sat, just as unmoving, but vastly plumper, disconsolately mumbling bread. Forgotten laundry hung crisp and shriveled over the woodbin and the floor was piled with unwashed pots. Another child was wailing in the backyard that Mae had vowed she would never enter. It smelled, specifically, of pus.

  How, Mae wondered, was such a creature able to sew so skillfully? Maybe she put her heart into that and nothing else.

  “How are you, Hatijah?” said Mae, as if she were ill.

  “Oh,” said Hatijah, and shook her head.

  “Are you unwell?”

  “It is all this worry,” said Hatijah. “Five mouths to feed, and we have no money. And Edrem’s joints ache, so he finds it difficult to work, poor man. Sometimes he cannot work for days.”