Air

by Geoff Ryman

  “That means going to Green Valley City,” said Mae. Her heart leapt. The City! She had not seen it since spring.

  “Mmm-hmm,” Mr. Oz said, oblivious again to what that meant for her. “And that is good, too, because there is a big seminar there this week. For people in the Taking Wing Initiative. It will be good. The Wings have also been invited.”

  “Can we take Sunni with us?” asked Mae.

  SUNNI RAN OUT OF HER HOUSE TO THE GOVERNMENT VAN.

  She was immaculate in city-woman oatmeal, with a beige scarf on her head. She darted down the hill to the bridge, quickly so that no one would see her. She squashed into the backseat next to Mae, and greeted Mae, Mr. Oz, and Mr. Wing. Plainly, she wanted to be away.

  “Hello, Mrs. Sunni-ma’am.” Sezen beamed at her. Pleased to see me? Sezen’s eyes were spiked with merriment like a dog’s collar against wolves. Mae gave Sezen a little warning with her eyes.

  “Good morning, Sezen,” Sunni managed. She flinched at Sezen’s graduation dress, mounds of shiny lemon-yellow. Sunni put on her sunglasses as if against the glare.

  “Mrs. Haseem-ma’am.” Mr. Wing replied with dignity from the front seat. Mr. Oz nodded and backed the van back into Upper Street.

  Sunni turned to Mae, and her smile was from the old days. “It was very kind of you to ask me,” she said to Mae.

  Mae said, “I felt it would be good for old friends in the party of progress to go together to see what they are doing in the City.”

  “And it is such a beautiful morning!” said Sezen, reaching around Mae to touch Sunni on the shoulder. “We can stop and wave to all your friends, working in the fields.”

  “If those who are friends of progress are not friends of each other, then disaster awaits,” said Mae, and glared.

  “Indeed,” murmured Sunni. “Those are my feelings.” Protected by sunglasses, Sunni looked fragile in defeat, uncertain and frightened by the need for trust.

  Impulsively, Mae took her hand. “It is good to be with friends.”

  “Where is the Lady An?” chirped Sezen.

  Sunni found enough heart to reply. “An is studying for a qualification in fashion studies. She does this through the Net on my TV. She is enjoying it. Perhaps you should talk to her, Sezen, and see if the course interests you. You could study together.”

  “I would love to do that!” enthused Sezen, so brightly that it was plain she could think of nothing worse. “She would teach me how to improve my pronunciation.”

  And improve your manners, thought Mae. She gave Sunni’s hand a little squeeze. To her surprise, Sunni squeezed back.

  Sunni persisted. “Such a terrible thing that people do not understand the uses of the TV. To think! There are people who want it turned off!”

  “People who try to destroy others,” said Sezen, her voice now simple, hard and dark.

  “Indeed,” said Sunni, simply. Mae twisted around and her eyes said to Sezen: Enough.

  Sezen’s smile was one of contentment. She gave Mae a little salute and looked away, honor satisfied.

  Already their little village was gone. Just alongside Mr. Oz’s window, there was a brutal falling-away of stone. “Music?” Mr. Wing asked, and turned on the radio.

  Full of echo and sounds of machinery was something like a song for Sezen’s generation. She was drawn, silenced by what to her was a mating call, a cry to be joined with the modern. The old folk fell silent.

  Fluttering past like insubstantial scarves went rice fields, misty terraces, fat men riding donkeys, women in broad straw hats considering harvest.

  They went down into the Desiccated Village. Mae was shocked to see gray dishes and wires on most of the houses.

  “They’ve had those since summer,” said Sunni, turning. “Perhaps we are not so advanced in Kizuldah.”

  “Installing sat ho lih tuh,” said Mr. Oz, shaking his head, as if they all shared his amusement. “Still, it’s reliable old technology.”

  Mae felt unable to ask: What is a satellite?

  “Look,” said Sunni, suddenly pointing. “They are already threshing!”

  Going down the hill was like plunging into their future. On the burnished-yellow threshing ground were big rented machines and wagons loaded with chickpeas. The men were pitchforking them raw into the threshers. The jets of straw, the waiting reed baskets to collect the peas, the women and boys bearing them off to plastic matting, the little girls herding the geese away from the mats—it was all as it always had been.

  The vision was withdrawn behind a flurry of fencing and gates. A good harvest.

  “Ah!” sighed Sunni, as if the relief were her own. “They will have a good party, then.”

  “High feasting,” agreed Mae. “It is useful that they are so dry compared to us. We grow rice, they grow chickpeas.”

  “Mmm, we can just exchange,” Sunni agreed. It was what they always said.

  Suddenly the road stopped complaining under them. Suddenly it was smooth, humming like a song. The clouds of white dust died away in trails behind them, like the silver tracks of aircraft.

  Sunni and Mae looked at each other in wonder: Paved? Our road is paved?

  Then they both broke out in laughter.

  Sunni held her plump tummy. “Who … Who thought it was worthwhile paving a city road here?”

  “Make it easier for the donkeys!” chuckled Mae.

  They thought of all the fat old farmers, their bewildered wives, the barefoot children, the brown-toothed brigands with ancient rifles. Oh, indeed, how they needed a highway.

  “You need it for motorcycles,” said Sezen, sharply. The radio played another Balshang song. “We will all have motorcycles.”

  Mae placated her. “I know, Sezen, but it just seems strange.”

  “Remember when grass grew between the wheel tracks?” Sunni said.

  “Yes! I’d forgotten that.”

  “And the first time down each year, there was no track at all.”

  “Yes, yes, the wheels spun on the spring grass, and you were always frightened the tractor would slide off the road!”

  “My father always made us get out and walk. He would cast lye behind him to kill the grass.”

  Mae turned to tell Sezen. “You went to the town, oh, only if your father was buying a horse…”

  “… or parts for the tractor…”

  “And we would pile all of us, oh, six or seven children, in the trailer behind. It would take all day to get down. We would sleep in the trailer overnight.”

  “You remember the fires?”

  “Everyone set up camp in the market square.”

  “You would cook soup over the fires.”

  “And the lutes…”

  “The lutes came out, particularly the Horsemen, and they would sing. Remember the Cossacks! So handsome with their mustaches, they would sing.…”

  The truck seemed to lurch and sway as if on green grass. Mae turned to warn Mr. Oz about his driving, but as she leaned forward, everything lurched, swayed, and suddenly she smelled smoke …

  … and saw the fires.

  THE COSSACKS WORE SPOTLESS WHITE SHIRTS, WITH HIGH COLLARS.

  They smelled of smoke. It clung to their huge mustaches. Like thieves, they had wicked faces but they were lit up with kindly smiles, and the little girl was sitting on the knee of one of them. His face was lit up with love, tender love.

  “I … have … a … little … girl,” the Cossack said, slowly, in Karz. “She is pretty. Like you.” His truck full of horses sweltered even though it was night. His mates smoked pipes, and her father sat drinking with them, ramrod straight and slightly twitchy. He was frightened of Cossacks.

  It was not Mae’s father. The little girl was not Mae.

  The Cossack said, “I send presents to my little girl. She does not always get them. Things are so bad, the postmen take them.” The Cossack shrugged. “Oh, I miss my little girl. You are happy to live with you father. You are far from the war.”

  What war?


  The Cossack patted little Miss Hu on her head and let her run back to her father. Her father was plump, smooth-skinned, beardless. He smelled of chives and garlic, not smoke. Miss Hu climbed onto his lap and was covered in kisses as hot and damp as new leaves on tender shoots.

  “Ai-ling,” breathed out Mr. Hu.

  World War Two. This would be, say, 1941.

  The town square was dark, except for one streetlight, and there were no tall buildings. Indeed, the square was a terrace of shacks, with men sitting out front, in worn, torn, dusty clothes. Barbershops, bars, spare-parts shops, teahouses. There was a traffic light, and Mae remembered. There was only one traffic light in the whole town.

  The Cossack grinned, picked up his viola: It was tiny, unvarnished, with loose wood holding up the strings. The bow was made of horsetail hairs. “For pretty little girls,” he said.

  He played something high, sweet, sad, simple.

  “Song says, ‘Red children, Red children, play …’” he explained, and began to sing.

  It was a jolly song that made Ai-ling want to dance, jolly but somehow sad. She thought it was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard. She wanted to remember it forever and ever. She beamed up in delight, wonder, at her father, who smiled down indulgently.

  And little Ai-ling began to dance. She held out her arms and spun, wearing her best town dress, a stiff froth of lace, her hair in ribbons, so pretty, little princess, spinning and spinning. The Cossacks, as hard as the roads, melted as if in rain. “Ahhhh!” they sighed, for all things homely and beautiful. The moment came that Miss Hu loved, when she ceased to be shy. Then she could really dance.

  So she really danced, knowing herself to be little and pretty and sweet. All the Cossacks all began to sing the song together, enraptured by the sight of a pretty little girl, of home. Some of them came from other fires, with mandolins. The music mounted. Little Ai-ling fell back into shyness, and stopped, and hid her head in her father’s trousers. The Horsemen laughed with love.

  Mae was rocked like a little paper boat cast out onto the ocean.

  The music changed. It rattled. It was Balshang music on the radio, with a roar of engine and harsh sunlight.

  Mae was sick again, waves of nausea. She wanted to say: Stop, I need to be sick.

  See? See? said Old Mrs. Tung. See what you are destroying?

  A young person was crowded close to her with concern. Mae did not know who she was at first. “Are you all right?” Sezen asked, an arm on hers.

  “Hmm,” said Mae, not quite saying yes. “I was sleeping.”

  “You were singing,” corrected Sunni, her eyes hidden in the sunglasses. “In another language.”

  THEY ROARED DOWN INTO GREEN VALLEY CITY.

  Yeshibozkent was flung like a soiled handkerchief onto the lay of the land. There was much new building now on the outskirts. Raw concrete in irregular frames held panels of barely mortared brick. They would fall in the next earthquake. The air was blue and gray. They were lowered into it, and heat enveloped them like a blanket, smelling of old automobiles.

  Dust and fumes and Toyota jeeps that would not stay in their lanes, and old women that walked right out onto the road.

  Mr. Oz did not slow down, but beeped frantically, continually, forcing people to jump back, or taxis to veer out of his way. Mr. Wing chuckled at his driving courage. “I always wondered how you people got through so fast,” he said.

  The city people in sharp clothes walked unconcerned as the van seared the air, passing them by inches. A light turned red and the van lurched to a halt. Pedestrians poured across the intersection.

  Sezen laughed, suddenly raucous, and pointed. “What is that?”

  A young man walked in front of the windscreen. He wore soiled, fruit-bowl colors and long braided hair, died blond streaks amid his natural black. Some sort of glasses marred his face, like an eye test or camera lenses. He turned almost blind and looked inside the van. Light flicked, inside the lenses, inside his eyes. His skinny, starveling face bared fangs at them. His teeth were bright yellow like a row of embers.

  Sezen rolled down the window. She leaned out and yelled at him, “What are you?”

  Sunni seemed to melt with shame beside Mae.

  He yelled back, answering another agenda: “I just took your photograph.” He staggered slightly, for no reason. “Dih zee toh el.”

  Mr. Oz spoke: “He’s an Ay oh het.”

  Mr. Wing jerked with a superior grin. “Or he thinks he is.”

  The man still yelled at them. “It is a photograph of peasants!” The smile was nasty. “You are all dead!”

  “It means Airhead.” continued Mr. Oz. “He can’t be an Airhead—the Air has not come here yet—but he has read about it in some magazine.”

  “You are a fool,” Sezen shouted back, laughing at him. “The Air is not here yet.”

  “My eyes are cameras!” he shouted, as the van pulled away.

  Sezen was agog with both scorn and excitement. “Did you see what he was wearing! What did he have on his eyes?”

  “A computer,” said Mr. Oz. “Part of it is embedded in his head.”

  The two older women hissed in pain.

  “No wonder he was such a mess,” said Sunni, shaking her head.

  “Yah, but imagine if it was someone handsome and clever and not a fool,” said Sezen.

  “Imagine clean streets,” said Mae. The town was richer, but that just generated drifts of crushed tin and old papers in the gutters.

  “Yeshibozkent? Clean?” Sezen was scornful. “We still think garbage rots. We will never be clean.”

  “We are a very clean people,” said Sunni, in outrage. “There are only two dirty families in our village!” One of them was Sezen’s.

  Sezen just laughed. “To someone from the West, we all look like pigs.”

  The van beeped furiously. A donkey had suddenly swerved from the side of the road into its path. The van screeched and slid helplessly, shifting sideways as the wheels locked. The van slammed into the animal.

  Mae could feel the donkey’s ribs, its fur, the knobby knees, all communicated through the front of truck.

  “Oh!”

  Mr. Wing jumped out. The animal, dazed, kicked itself back up onto its feet and blinked.

  “Who owns this animal?” Mr. Wing demanded of the street. Plump ladies in shiny purple pantsuits looked mildly surprised.

  Sezen was helpless with laughter. “Does it have cameras for eyes, too? Airhead donkey?”

  Mae was not sure why Sezen found it so funny.

  No one answered. No one claimed the donkey. It twitched its ears and wandered off as if nothing were wrong. Perhaps, like them, it was dead and didn’t know.

  THE MAIN MARKET SQUARE NO LONGER HAD A PUBLIC-ADDRESS SYSTEM.

  The familiar sound of town-coming had been silenced. The smells were the same; vegetables in sunlight laced with city drains. The gabble of trading seemed strangely muted and the square curiously spacious.

  “There aren’t the people,” said Sunni, mystified.

  Mae looked around. “It is a Saturday. Where are they all?”

  “At the hypermarket,” said Sezen, sniffing, collecting her volumes of lime-yellow cloth.

  “What’s that?”

  “The big new store, outside town. ‘Just-in-Time Rescue.’”

  The name alone made Sunni and Mae chuckle as they stepped out of the van, braving public view and the eyes that dismissed them as peasants.

  “It sounds like a newspaper headline.…”

  “A cheap romance.…”

  Sezen was not to have her modernity fazed. She shrugged and managed to step down from the van like a princess.

  Sezen belonged.

  “They call it that because they know everything that is bought, and can predict exactly what is needed. They sell out every day.”

  “So does a good trader here,” sniffed Sunni.

  Perhaps no longer. There were grannies, some middle-aged women, some potbellied men com
e to sit on folding deck-chairs and chat with friends who stayed by their unrolled mats. There were few customers to distract them from their open tins of beers. Mae felt disappointment. She had always loved stepping out into the market, the heart of the town.

  No fires or spangled trucks, no drunken Cossacks dancing.

  Around the square a forest of bright new plastic signs danced, opening and closing like flowers.

  Akai. Sony. Yeshiboz Sistemlar.…

  A far cry from the dingy restaurants, the boys running with trays bearing glasses of tea.

  You are dead, the Airhead said.

  “Right, what is the plan?” Sunni asked.

  “Mr. Oz and I will go to the bank…” began Mae.

  “Me too,” said Sezen, and the hunger in her eyes said: I want to learn about money.

  Sunni adjusted her sunglasses. “I have some errands.” Fashion work she did not want Mae to know about.

  Fair enough, thought Mae.

  Mae suggested, “Shall we meet by the van at, oh, two hours from now? For lunch?”

  “That will be lovely!” exclaimed Sunni. “We can go to the temple gardens.”

  “Ugh,” said Sezen.

  Mr. Oz intervened. “We don’t have time, if we are to get to the congress. I’ll just order lunch now.”

  He keyed in the address of Just-in-Time Rescue.

  THE CENTRAL MAN ESCORTED MAE TO THE BANK.

  They were welcomed with great politesse. Mae had expected to feel uncomfortable, but found herself immune to feeling inferior. She found that money made her as good as anyone else.

  They sipped tea in the Director’s office, and he was friendly and polite in white shirt and tie. He was full-blooded Karz, big, with hairy arms and a mustache like a trimmed broom and he had a full-blooded Karz name: Mr. Saatchi Saatchi.

  I am here, thought Mae. I am where I always wanted to be. I am a businesswoman, modern, respected. Sezen sat clenched like a fist with admiration. Mae felt her eyes swell. Don’t cry, she warned herself.

  “Madam Chung will need a cellular account. She will be doing business with you always through mobile services.”

  “We have had such facilities for over ten years, so it is good to see them in more general use,” the Director said, determined the government should know how advanced they were. Mr. Oz had enough wisdom to nod approval.