Air

by Geoff Ryman

  The terraces were lined with pumps, dipping their heads like graceful marsh birds. Below, on the hillside, there was no schoolhouse, no mosque.

  The opposite mountain was striated like an onion in layers of paddies. The terraces climbed in steps, green and lush, to the village of Aynalar. Its main street zigzagged up the narrow pass between high, fine stone houses with whitewashed walls and stained-glass windows. There was a dome and a minaret.

  Hu Ai-ling looked at it with yearning. One day, she promised, I will live in Aynalar.

  She let go again and Mae lurched out of the past.

  She blinked and that same hill was now beige and featureless, a mass of tumbled gray stone. If you focused, you could see traces—traces only-—of the walls.

  The flood had washed one terrace down onto another, wiping them all away. One whole side of the valley had gone. No one spoke of it now, no one remembered. It was healed scar tissue. The opposite hillside, once layered with fields, stared back at her like an old blind face.

  Mae remembered Old Mrs. Tung. She had always sat at her attic window, facing out across the valley, wind in her face, blind. She had been looking in the direction of Aynalar as if, for her, it was still there.

  This is worrying, thought Mae. No, this is really worrying, the way the world shrugs, and suddenly there is the past, there is the future. Like I have a sickness in my head.

  No one said this would happen. They did not say you would visit the past. They did not say dead friends would not leave. They do not understand what Air is. She felt the wind move, chilling her wet arms like fear.

  Where is this? Mrs. Tung asked.

  ALL MAE WANTED WHEN SHE GOT HOME WAS A CHANCE TO THINK, BUT WAITING IN HER KITCHEN WAS HER BROTHER, WANG JU-MEI.

  “Afternoon, sister,” Ju-mei said. He wore his cream-colored summer suit.

  “Hello, brother. Thank you for coming to see me,” she beamed.

  Thank you for coming when it will be necessary to make you lunch, thank you for coming so that it will be impossible for me to wash. Thank for trying, as always, to assert that Joe’s house is in some way yours.

  “Would you like something to drink?”

  “Tea would be excellent,” he nodded.

  She put on the kettle and thought: no, I will not miss my bath. She snatched up fresh clothes and draped them over her arm. “You will not mind, brother, if I wash?” she said, in a little-girl voice.

  Or would you rather I stank and dripped sweat into your lunch?

  Ju-mei waved his hand as if it were nothing, but he was too choked with his own unsorted emotions to speak. If the kettle boils and he wants to make his own tea, let him.

  My brother. He wants this house, and cannot accept it will not be his. He is a grain merchant, he sells insurance, he wears suits, he has to cast his shadow over things.

  Anger made her snap shut the curtain closing off the narrow alley between the two houses. She scowled as she peeled off the sweaty T-shirt, all pleasure in her bath gone. She needed to think. Absentmindedly she scooped cold water over herself from the rain butt.

  Ju-mei will want to chaperone me, or even have me move back into his house for propriety. Well, that won’t happen. But he will also feel he has the right to drop in and out when he pleases. Joe knows what Ju-mei is up to, that is why my brother never does this when Joe is around. But, oh God, he will be here day and night, with his new baby, and his wife will want me to change its diapers. He’ll bring Mother and leave her here and say it’s my turn to take care of her.

  When I want to sleep in Ken Kuei’s arms.

  Unless I am so rude that he goes away and doesn’t come back.

  Necessity in life can have a wonderful, calming effect.

  Unless I finally, really tell him what I think is going on. Unless I say it in the way I have always wanted to say it. She began to grin. I am just going to say what I really think. I am a peasant wife used to livestock and hard reality. His little cream suit is no defense against that.

  Mae went back into the house, still smiling with anticipation. Ju-mei sat staring at the boiling kettle.

  “Ha-ha. Men. You just sit there watching it boil. Can’t you make the tea yourself?”

  Ju-mei had no answer for that. “I … I was offered tea.”

  “Indeed,” said Mae, toweling her hair. “There it is.” Her hand indicated the earthenware bin, in which the tea leaves kept dry. Briskly she put away the dirty clothes in the wicker basket.

  “I hope, brother, you did not come with thoughts of my cooking you lunch. I have my appointments.” She smiled at him. Her teeth had never felt so big.

  He was foxed. Nothing was going as he had pictured it.

  “You are bold, Mae,” he said.

  “Bold? To visit neighbors I have known all my life, what is bold about that? You are bold to wear so much perfume. Pooh! You smell more like a woman than my customers.”

  She pulled the alcove curtain shut around her to put on her Talent clothes. “I’ll tell you what else is bold: to drop into another man’s house the moment he is gone and expect to be cooked lunch. Or doesn’t your wife cook for you anymore?”

  “You are a woman alone.”

  “No. I am not. Miss An and I always work together, so I do not need a chaperone. I certainly do not need to be chaperoned in my husband’s house.” Mae was decent in the heart-patterned dress, so she pulled the curtain back. She wanted to see his face slack with surprise. She stepped into her Talent shoes. “And there is no need to try to establish any rights to this house. If Joe dies, Siao inherits; if he dies, Old Mr. Chung inherits. Either one of them could marry and then it would never fall to the family Wang.”

  He shivered in his chair. “Mae! You are impossible. This is a brotherly call!”

  “I know,” replied Mae, flinging up her husband’s jacket to open up its arms. She paused. “And I know exactly what that means. Whatever I’ve got, Ju-mei, you want. It’s been like that for as long as I can remember. You want Joe’s cock, too? You want to inherit this house? Maybe you can inherit it if you let Joe fuck you.” She sniffed and made plain she was about to leave. She muttered, “Both of you would probably enjoy it.”

  All blood drained from her brother’s face. Abruptly, like a cripple, he stood up, shambling, shivering, having trouble gathering up the cane.

  “I don’t know what’s come over you! You talk like a peasant. A rough farm girl.” He was at the door.

  “I am a rough farming girl.”

  “I … I had come to offer to pay the debt!”

  And Mae whooped in triumph. “I know! I know! And that is how you thought you would get the farm!”

  Her sneaky little brother. His face fell. Mae had to laugh. She took his arm and led him towards the door. “Come, come, brother, it’s not so bad, all our fights end this way, only this time I have decided to skip the fight.”

  Mae remembered the kettle. She swooped back into the kitchen to take it off the ring, and when she came back, he had gone.

  FOR A FEW WEEKS, MAE’S DAYS SETTLED INTO A PATTERN.

  She did her housework in the early morning and worked in her fields until noon. At lunch or during the day, she might snatch some time with Mr. Ken. In the early evening Mae and An would visit neighbors with their Question Map and drink tea late into the night.

  After escorting An home, Mae worked to master the television. She read the Question Map answers into a spreadsheet. She saw there were hundreds of things she might do with the TV. She could use the television to sell or to Market Call. She could use it like a telephone to talk live or leave voicemail. In a year she would be able to use it make material for Aircasts.

  Aircasts were like films, but they were translated into the Format. They could go then direct to people’s heads. So there would be Aircast versions of movies.

  And Aircast version of ads, thought Mae. And all the ads, if you looked hard enough, had something called Intimacy Shields. So, Mae began to wonder, how do you do that in Air? When it�
�s inside your head.

  She tried to buy bolts of cloth online. But she still needed something called a Believability Card and that was easiest to do when you had a Clever Card.

  Kwan rubbed her shoulders. “The world out there has grown bigger. There are two worlds. There is the one you can see, and another world people have made up, and it is bigger than the real one. They call it ‘Info.’”

  And Mae felt lust.

  Lust to be part of that world, lust to know how it worked, lust to know how the television worked, and how the Net and how the Air would give all that wings. With a lust that bordered on despair, she wanted to be first, she wanted to know all, she wanted to be mistress of all its secrets.

  I will learn, she promised herself.

  Kwan would leave to go to bed. Mae would keep learning and relearning how to make the accounts system work. She asked for the wrong things, the machine got stuck on the way she said certain things, she kept forgetting what fo mu lah were, and how you entered them, but she knew that it meant the numbers would add themselves up. She thought in passing of Siao, Joe’s brother, and how he should see this.

  She learned that she could save pictures from the Net or from video. She learned she could change their color. She learned she could use the tiny camera to copy things from the real world and change them.

  Above all else, she learned that she would no longer need to know how to read or write.

  And at three A.M., her feet crossing in front of each other as she walked, she would make her way home, as sweaty as if she had been weeding the rice by night as well.

  A note on the door might say, in her mother’s handwriting: Your mother called. She wonders where her daughter spends her time and asked if you would be good enough to visit her. Mae would promise herself that she would. When she had time. She would fall into her bed. Mr. Ken might be there, snoring gently. She might kiss him.

  More usually, she would sleep alone. She would pull the pillow that smelled of him between her legs.

  And she might dream, always of the past, of beautiful thank-you cakes not delivered until stale. Of a prize dress forgotten on a line until the sun bleached it. The sense of unease would persist, as she sat up. The long hot day would begin again.

  The next fashion season would not be until after harvest, in October. By then she would know how much Joe and Siao had brought in. She could leave deciding about her fashion business until then.

  Mae thought she was doing all that she could.

  THEN SUNNI SET HERSELF UP IN THE BEST-DRESS BUSINESS.

  Mae arrived at the Kosals to interview them.

  “Oh, Mrs. Haseem has just visited and asked us all the same questions,” Mrs. Kosal told Mae. “See. She has sent us a leaflet.”

  Mrs. Kosal went to fetch it and passed it to Mae, her watchful face and smile not entirely sympathetic.

  Mae felt sick. The thing she feared most had happened. Her knowledge, her ideas, had been taken and used by her enemy before she had had a chance to complete them.

  And Sunni was richer and had more time and she had a television of her own.

  Mae stood reading in the street, looking at the professional print job, alarmed and unhappy. An kicked grit beside her.

  “I cannot bear to read it,” said Mae, and passed it to her. Did An know she could not read? Perhaps she did. An read it aloud.

  TRUE FASHION FOR TRUE LADIES

  NOW THAT CERTAIN PARTIES HAVE BEEN UNCOVERED AS OFFERING FALSE ADVICE, THE WAY IS NOW OPEN FOR TRUTH AND BEAUTY.

  Mrs. Haseem-ma’am sets the new standard for fashion.

  With her eye on the world, she sees what the world of fashion really has to offer. Visit her Fashion-Doctor surgery when you have a moment. See what she can offer you as a best dress. It will be

  PROFESSIONALLY MADE BY BEST FASHION HOUSES.

  She will also visit to listen with clear heart and true vision to what you have to say. Do not waste words like seed grain on barren fields. Only Mrs. Haseem-ma’am can make your words grow into green fields.

  Sunni was trying to destroy her.

  Mae forced herself to be calm in front of An. She looked at the swallows. The swallows still darted, the sky was faithful. Mae took some comfort.

  “The village has never had a leaflet before,” she said. “I have to admit, it is a bold stroke, a great compliment. It says to us: ‘You are as important as rich city people, to have a leaflet printed for you.’”

  It was the work of a professional letter-writer. And that, Mae saw, was wrong in many ways.

  “She has made a mistake,” Mae said, saving face in front of An. “She addresses us as an employer would. And who are these fine ladies she writes for? Mrs. Wing? Only Mrs. Wing, who I think is still my friend.”

  “Yes, I see,” said An. But she still kicked grit.

  “An, can you help me this evening? Can you stay late?”

  An sat at her kitchen table and wrote thirty-three letters in her beautiful handwriting on pages torn from Mae’s exercise books. Mae made sure every one of them was different.

  Dear Mrs. Pin,

  Your husband feeds his children by fixing cars and vans. How would you feel if a rich man wrote everyone saying, “Don’t use Mr. Pin, he can’t fix things.”

  This would be unkind and untrue. Sunni gives herself airs and calls herself Mrs. Haseem-ma’am. She wants you to talk to her like she is your boss.

  You can call me Mae, like I am your servant. I will work hard to get you a good best dress.

  Your servant,

  Mae

  Dear Mrs. Doh,

  I am not rich and do not have the money to pay someone to write letters for me. I can’t pay to have them printed in the City.

  I am a plain person, who likes beautiful clothes and wants her friends to be beautiful. You do not need to call me ma’am.

  I have always made good dresses for my friends and always will.

  Your friend,

  Mae

  And finally:

  Dear Sunni,

  I may be a servant, but I find I am still a fashion leader.

  I start to wear men’s jackets and so do you. I do a Question Map, and lo, so do you. Mr. Wing brings television. Your husband, so original, does the same.

  You follow me and that shows I give true fashion advice. Everyone in the village thinks that, too.

  It will be good to have two fashion experts. Because both fashion experts must work harder. It will be fun for me to see you work hard.

  Your servant,

  Mae.

  Hands shaking with rage, Mae folded up the letters and sealed them with rice paste. “I will walk you home,” she told An, and then she delivered all the letters to the thirty-three houses, including Sunni’s.

  Mae looked up at the stars, as bright as the souls of her people. Something inside her thrashed like a fish pulled up onto the shore. At first she thought it was anger. It was the need to do something more. Instead of going home, she marched up the hill to Kwan’s house.

  Kwan’s courtyard was empty, but the television was running an old film with no one watching. Mae sat down to work, speaking to the machine. Kwan’s dog started to bark. Finally Kwan came out, saw Mae, and started to laugh.

  Kwan sat on her steps in her nightdress, and shook her head. “Mae! You have just written letters to everyone in the village and now what are you doing?”

  “I am setting up a school,” said Mae.

  Kwan was still laughing. “What, tonight?”

  “Yes, tonight. I feel like the whole village will be swept away unless we do something now. Come and see.”

  Images of the five pens swam up onto the screen. Kwan came up behind her.

  “I made these. There are the five pens that Air sets up in your mind. I will make the TV imitate Air and I will show people how to use them, what they will be able to do. What do you think?”

  Kwan was quiet. “That will be a good thing to do.”

  “I will call in everyone. I will call in peopl
e during those times when they are not busy. I will ask men to come just after breakfast, I will ask women to come after lunch.”

  Kwan started to chuckle again. “You just thought of this.”

  “I have been slow,” said Mae. “We all have to learn, Kwan. Or Air will come and it will use us, not the other way around.” What she felt was akin to panic. What she felt was akin to flying.

  “Audio. Poster. Pictures,” she ordered. “Birds. Swallows. Blue on white.” The words flew onto the screen as if they were swallows. The screen said for her under the silhouette of a bird.

  “We have the school here, ah? Okay?”

  Kwan nodded yes.

  Mae’s words became a poster.

  SWALLOW SCHOOL

  BE LIKE A SWALLOW

  LEARN TO FLY IN THE AIR

  Mrs. Chung Mae has been deep into Air. She has been learning a lot about how the TV works. She wants her friends to know it, too. She will show how Air will work by giving lessons on my television for free.

  • Men come just after breakfast.

  • Women come just after lunch.

  • Rowdy unruly young pests come after school and not before.

  Mrs. Wing Kwan

  (Lady Sunni-ma’am. You do not need a letter writer and a printer to make a leaflet. Mae will do one for you.)

  * * *

  Kwan was, by now, laughing aloud.

  “Print,” said Mae, “thirty-three copies.” Two copies were lined up side by side on one sheet of paper.

  There was a whirring sound, and Kwan eased the paper out of her machine.

  “Mae,” she said, reading. “You are a miracle.”

  Mae felt triumph.

  9

  THE ONLY MAN TO SHOW UP AT MAE’S FIRST LESSON WAS MR. KEN.

  He sat quiet and patient and brought no one else with him. He was not a leader of the village. “There is no need to do this just for me,” he said.

  “I need to practice,” said Mae.

  Alone, in front of someone who accepted her, she spoke from the heart.

  “We should all be grateful to Mr. Wing who brought us this machine just in time. Finally we can see TV. But not just TV, not just kung fu, ah, but Info. This is what the rest of the world has had since they were born. This is what they know like we know how to breathe. Now, this is where Air starts from. Air thinks everyone knows this. If we don’t know it, we get nowhere in Air. And if we get nowhere in Air, we will be as far behind the rest of the world as apes are from us.