Air

by Geoff Ryman

  Mae groaned for him. He had come back with nothing, to find nothing. “What are they saying about Shen?”

  “To me? Nothing. My dear, I am your champion. There are people who will walk past me as if I am not there.”

  Mae pondered this for a moment. What was her position in this house? She would have to make some kind of contribution, both in money and in attention and gratitude. How long could she stay? She needed to stay, but every friendship can wear out.

  “God, I hate being poor,” said Mae. Poverty afflicts everything, in the end, everything that should be sacrosanct. Love, friendship, the chance to dream, how you live, with whom you live.

  “You can stay here as long as you like,” said Kwan, quickly, to get it out of the way.

  “If I get my business back together, can I run it from here?”

  Kwan faltered ever so slightly. She saw cloth, sewing machines, strangers coming into her house.

  “I can work from one of the barns. I know it’s difficult.”

  Kwan fought her way to honesty. “I have to ask Mr. Wing.”

  If not … Well, things would be bad if not. Well, things had always been bad and a dishonored woman in a village had to settle for what she could get.

  “Could you tell Joe for me about the TV charges? How I bargained with Sunni? And that the interest on the loan has been waived? That should ease his mind a bit.”

  Kwan nodded and worked Mae’s fingers in her own.

  “You are still fond of Joe.”

  “Of course. I lived with him for thirty years.”

  “And Mr. Ken?”

  “The saddest thing of all is that I had decided to end it.”

  Kwan sighed, and patted her arm. “You rest,” she said.

  Mae fought her way to honesty as well. “There is something else,” she said.

  Kwan could not help putting her hand on her forehead. What now?

  “I think I am pregnant,” said Mae.

  SEZEN CAME TO CALL, STILL BLINKING, WITH BLACK HAIR IN HER EYES.

  Sezen said, “You sit in bed? You have work to do.”

  Mae was not in a position to admonish her for rudeness. Merely visiting Mae had put Sezen in the position of being owed. “I will start work again, soon,” said Mae.

  “Your face is a mess, but no one has to see it,” said Sezen. “Musa and I can get the cloth for you. No problem.”

  “I’m not doing bad-girl clothes,” said Mae.

  “Of course not,” said Sezen. “Just whatever you need the cloth for.”

  Mae adjusted to this in silence.

  Sezen added, “Aprons, oven gloves. Things people really use.”

  What is it with you, Sezen? Why can’t I understand what you want? Why, in a word, are you sticking by me?

  Sezen jerked sideways in an angry, harnessed way that was entirely new. “I have bad news,” she said, and her jerking body expressed impatience with herself for not knowing how to begin. “Han An has gone off to work for Sunni. I saw the two of them still going around with clipboards, trying to look as if you had not done it first.”

  Mae judged the seriousness of the blow. Finally she said, “That is the least of my worries.”

  “She’s a traitor,” said Sezen, pouting with scorn.

  Mae thought she was going to defend An, but found she could not be bothered. “Yes.”

  “Hmm! She’d better stay clear of me or I will pull out all her hair. Musa and I can go this afternoon to buy your cloth. But we will need the money to do that.”

  Her hard brown face, her demanding dark eyes.

  Mae felt her deadened face strain towards a smile. “There is no money, Sezen,” she said.

  The girl blinked.

  Mae kept explaining: “The loan was to my husband. It’s his money.”

  “We will do something else, then,” Sezen said, her jaw thrusting out.

  “We?” wondered Mae.

  “That government man, he must be good for money,” said Sezen.

  “You mean I should ask the government man for money!” Mae felt outdone in audacity.

  Sezen shrugged. “He keeps saying how advanced we are. Meaning you. So. Ask.” She sniffed and then said, “I can’t have you going soft, like my mother.”

  “I won’t do that,” said Mae. It was a promise.

  IN THE EVENING, MR. OZ CALLED.

  His eyes said: How could you do this to me? “This is a serious setback to our program,” he said. He tutted. Light caught his spectacles. “I was relying on you to be our model.”

  “If only I’d known,” replied Mae. “I would not have fallen in love.”

  “I have to write my report.” Mr. Oz swayed, as if under a burden. “I have nothing to say. Except to tell them it is all a mess, everywhere.”

  “When hasn’t it been?” said Mae, and thought: How could they send a boy like you out on his own?

  Down below, on Kwan’s landing, the men were gathered around the box. Mae could hear the barking announcer and a sighing crowd: the sound of fut-bol on TV.

  “Can you continue your school?” Mr. Oz demanded. “Can you still teach others?”

  Mae pondered just how much she needed this young man. She wanted to tell him off. “My main worry now, Mr. Oz, is my own life. I have lost a home and a husband.”

  He understood that, and winced and rubbed the back of his neck.

  “Mr. Oz. Do you want to help?’

  He looked up as eagerly as a puppy. “That’s what I’m here to do!”

  “Then teach me how to make screens, so I can sell my goods.” Mae sat up on her bed. “I want to specialize and spread my geography. I want to make things to sell abroad to specialist markets that will express the buyer’s interest in Third World issues. I want sell my goods to New York, Singapore, Tokyo…”

  The government man was in love. His pulse had quickened, his eyes gleamed, this was what he yearned to report. “Yes, yes, I can do that for you.… I can set them up, I can show you how. I can show you how to tell people how to find your screens.…”

  Mae nodded. “But I am now a poor woman on my own, with no money to invest. You are from the government. Do you have any way the government can help me?”

  He paused to think. “Not by myself. But … But I can help, yes, I can help. I can find forms, yes, I can help you fill them in. But you know, we will have to make a case to get the grant.”

  “I have a case,” said Mae.

  The Central Man, to his credit, was ready to move. “Let’s go now,” he said, beaming.

  He really was fresh from the cradle. “Mr. Oz. I am a fallen woman. I cannot go out to those men, and chase them away from the machine!”

  Down below, the crowd sounds roared towards a crescendo. “No!” shouted one of the men. Their team was losing. They would be in a bad mood.

  “That’s okay, we can use mine.” said the government man, enthusiastic and oblivious. “My van has a computer.”

  They would have to walk out through the landing. The sound of the men, drunken below, rose up like the odor of a stew.

  Mae climbed down the ladder from the loft, to the staircase and from there into the carpeted diwan that led to the landing. Her stomach was a knot of nerves. She felt as if a layer of skin had been stripped from her.

  Just past the stone arch, the men were crowded onto the narrow landing. The barking voice finished and there was a swelling of jolly music. The game had just ended.

  Allah! Please make them all decide to go home!

  The men yawned. Chairs scraped on stone. Mr. Oz started to walk. Mae grabbed his sleeve and he looked back at her in surprise. He finally understood that she was afraid.

  “Okay, now a movie?” someone said. Chairs scraped again, and suddenly there was Bollywood music. Mae gave in and nodded yes to Mr. Oz. She tried to be invisible. She tried to waft forward like a ghost onto the landing.

  Men were crowded around the TV. Mae glimpsed among them Mr. Ali, Mr. Pin, and both Old and Young Mr. Dohs. Joe was not there.
Mae tried to slip around the backs of the chairs. The air seemed full of thick, half-cooked bread to delay her.

  “Tuh,” chortled Mr. Doh, in something like disgust. Mae did not look around.

  “There’s a funny smell,” said Mr. Ali. “Kwan should not keep pigs in her house.”

  Mr. Pin agreed. “Ah. You should keep pigs in the basement. They like rolling in shit.”

  The men chuckled. Mae was nearly at the head of the stairs. It would be easy to push her down them.

  “The heat of their bodies warms the house,” said Mr. Ali.

  “It seems hot pigs fuck even government men.”

  “Hot pigs must be killed,” said Old Mr. Doh.

  The very air seemed to shudder. Mae had to glance back then, in case the time had come to run.

  Young Mr. Doh had a hand on his father’s arm. He looked at Mae in alarm and jerked his head towards the gate: Get out of here quick! Mae thought: You are Joe’s best friend, and yet it is you who still treat me like a human being.

  Mae scurried forward, her feet bouncing down the steps like a ball.

  “Gentlemen,” said Mr. Oz, Mr. Sincere. “Good evening. I am glad to see that you make such good use of the TV.”

  Mr. Oz stood with his legs planted apart and across the top of the stairs.

  Mae ran.

  MAE WAITED IN HER OLD COURTYARD, TREMBLING IN THE DARK.

  She had bolted her gate and crouched behind it. She had to hope that Joe did not come outside. Or Mr. Ken.

  There was a knock. “It is me,” murmured Mr. Oz.

  “Ssh!” said Mae, and lifted the latch more gently than if it had been a blanket over a baby.

  They tiptoed to the barn and closed the door.

  Inside his van, Mr. Oz said, “I will drive you back home. If those dolts are still there, you can sleep here in the van.”

  Mae slumped into the seat. She felt a weakness in her belly and had to hold her head for a moment as nausea passed over her.

  She knew the signs. Yes, she was pregnant.

  “Are you all right?” Mr. Oz asked.

  Mae was outraged. This.… This youngster had only just noticed that she had been beaten, bruised, and cast out. “No! I am not all right!” she said, angry.

  Oz was used to kindness being returned, and was confused. He scowled.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, stop being such a child and help me if you are going to!”

  He jerked somewhere just under his lungs, and leaned forward. He plugged in wires, and something whined to life. There was a tiny box with a flip-up screen, a kind of mini-TV.

  “Go to ‘Info,’ ask for ‘Government,’” he said.

  Mr. Oz took Mae into new provinces of Info. There were rules, regulations, advice, offers of service, all from her own government. Up came a voiceform.

  The voiceform kept asking impertinent questions. Are you over forty? How many children do you have? All over twenty years old? Any dependents? What is your annual income? 10,000 riels! 1,000 riels? It offered no figure that was low enough. Mae murmured: 500 riels.

  “Is that true?” asked Mr. Oz, quietly. “If you say too much, you may be disqualified for some things.”

  So she told the truth: One hundred riels a year. The Central Man looked sad, but his eyes did not catch hers.

  “Okay, let me take over here,” he said. “What do you want the money for?”

  And Mae told him: To buy modern oatmeal cloth that rich people like, and to pay others to embroider it with Eloi patterns and then tell the West and the Big East that the cloth was a statement about Third World issues. Mr. Oz chuckled at that, and looked around at her face.

  Then he spoke into the machine, translating what she had told him into official talk. It sounded to Mae like a news item, terribly important, like the way rich people talked about themselves. But it didn’t move or excite her.

  “That’s boring,” she said.

  He shrugged. Mae imagined someone at the other end, listening bored to her answers.

  And she reached into the patterns, reached into the new glowing links inside her head, and spoke with the knowledge of the Kru, without being the Kru.

  “The proposal is to use the power of the Net to extend the reach of local crafts skills to specialist niche markets, most especially America, Singapore, and Japan.”

  Mr. Oz turned around and blinked at her.

  “This will not be traditional direct marketing. Efforts will focused on information finders of various types, particularly fashion or craft networks.…”

  He warned her. “Don’t use the word ‘Eloi.’ ‘Traditional local crafts,’ that’s what these are. Do you have a Horseman?”

  Horsemen in Karzistan had traded for centuries in the most mobile currency of all: horseflesh. They used their commodity also to bear news, where there were shortages of horses or any other goods. Other traders paid them for such news.

  Horsemen, like fashion experts, had always been in the information business.

  Now they were people who were paid to sell and sort Info. They were called something else in English, but in Karz, they were called Info Horsemen.

  Mr. Oz had names and addresses ready. “You have to give an address for a Horsemen. They don’t think you’ve done your homework otherwise.”

  He added an official report to her application. It was a separate file attached to her application. His voice validated his identify.

  “This is a core project for the Green Valley/Red Mountain area,” he said. “Its proponent has taken a lead in instructing the village people on the Net and the coming of the Air. She has founded the Swallow School, a project to train locals in Info skills. She has also used a well-constructed Question Map to determine the views of local people on Air. The proposed scheme will demonstrate to this community the value of the Net. It will be the best possible advancement for the aims of both the Yu En Air project and the Central Bureau of Information Technology/Ministry of Development’s Joint Declaration of the Taking Wing Initiative.”

  Then he sent the form.

  “I think we’ll get it,” Mr. Oz said. “I cannot imagine a better case.”

  He looked calm, sated, knowing how fine it would look on his own record.

  So you get something, too. Just as well.

  “How do I become an Info Horseman?” Mae asked.

  He looked around at her and for once, his eyes were adult. “You would need to know very much more than you do now,” he replied.

  “Can I learn it?”

  He sighed. “You would need to know how wires work. And money. And banking.”

  Mae thrust out her chin. “I have my Kru.”

  “And the people—most of all you need to know the people, the people in those worlds. It is not for me to say what you can learn.”

  We are who we are.

  “Thank you,” she said. The Central Man had said no in a way that she could understand and accept.

  “Right,” she said. “Now, teach me how to make screens.”

  Mr. Oz crumpled. “It is late—”

  Mae cut him off: “And I risked my life to come here, and I cannot do it often. You say you want to help, then fine. Help. Helping people costs; you’ve got to do it when you’re tired. Go on! Do your job!”

  Mr. Oz paused. The muscles in his face worked like biceps. His face seemed to swim up through anger to the placid surface of a smile. “This is very good for me,” he said. Then he grinned.

  “Right. You make screens with something old called HTML. XML makes it work on TV and AML will even make it work on Air.”

  “That means nothing to me.”

  “You’ll have to learn the words,” said Mr. Oz. In the realm of Info, he could command.

  THE NEXT DAY MR. KEN CAME TO ASK MAE TO LIVE WITH HIM.

  Mae was sweeping Kwan’s diwan, the carpets rolled up. The men were already at the television, already there were sports results. A voice behind her said, “Shouldn’t you rest?”

  Mae turned and saw Mr. Ken
. He looked terrible, abject and sleepless.

  “Did they say anything to you?” Mae asked jerking her head down towards the landing. Ken Kuei would have had to walk past all the men.

  “Some things,” Kuei said.

  “I can imagine,” she said. “When you will leave they will ask if your dick is wet.”

  “I have come for a serious discussion,” he said.

  Kuei’s wonderful good behavior disguised a lack of intelligence. He was diligent, kind, silent, and sympathetic. Just not very bright. Or were all men stupid? Or only the ones she knew?

  His ballooning broad shoulders, his round face like a peach, his lips like something soft and chewable. If he were to start on her now, here on the sun-drenched guest room on the swept flagstones, pulling down her trousers, she would dampen, open, admit him.

  But no, he wanted a serious discussion.

  Mae sniffed. “Okay. We talk.”

  “It is impossible for us to stay in the village,” he said.

  “It is impossible for me to go,” she said, very quietly.

  He coughed, gently. “I … propose,” he said, “That we leave. Together. Take my children with us. We would go wherever you like. But I would suggest Green Valley City.” He looked helpless, proud. “I would hate Balshang,” he said.

  “I want to stay here,” she repeated.

  He nodded. “Okay. Okay,” he said, trying to absorb what she meant. “I will need to find us a new house. It would not be possible to live so close to Joe.”

  “Which house? Whose, Mr. Ken? Is there an empty house here? I thought they were all crowded with too many children, and children’s children. And oh, such a difference, Mr. Ken, to be two minutes away from one’s husband. Passing him every day in the fields. Weeding his fields instead of yours by mistake.”

  “I know, I know,” Kuei nodded.

  “I want this to stop,” Mae said.

  “It has not been good,” he admitted. He looked at her, his eyes that wanted to stay a child and that wanted her. “But it could be good. If we just say, ‘Yes, it is true, but now we will live together, open.’ We could do that, and in a year they will get used to it.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “That night—huh! The night before last, it seems a year ago. That night, as I walked home, I had made up my mind. That this would stop. I decided then.”