Air (or Have Not Have)

by Geoff Ryman

  Your guardian angel,

  Hikmet Tunch

  ____________________

  audio file from: Mrs Chung Mae

  12 December

  Bugsy, I was pleased to hear about your new apartment. I understand how lovely it is to have a place of your own and how living even with best friends produces sadness. I was so happy for you, to think of my good friend in her own place. Please send me pictures of your apartment. It will ease my heart. Oh, woman, I am avoiding telling my news because I do not know how to begin. It is so strange, the workings of life. I do not say the workings of God, because I am not sure He would do anything like this! Last night, the electricity was shining in Kwan's barn. The Circle has been sewing our beautiful collars late into the night. Naughty girl Sezen brought in some rice wine from her boyfriend's village. Why not? Her mother Hatijah, who was frightened to join the Circle at first, is becoming lively and outgoing. It is now Hatijah who warms up the wine, and it warms us, and soon we are all singing. Then the door is thrown back with a loud bang, and in comes Mr Hasan Muhammed. He is strict Muslim gentleman, white lace cap and long beautiful beard, but he is carrying a whip. He strikes the whip against the walls of the barn, and we all scream and clutch our work, for we never lose our embroidery place. There could be an earthquake and none us would lose a stitch. So we all are pressed against the wall and he prowls and curses us as wicked women all – little singing old women who sip a bit of wine.

  Well, Kwan is courageous and she arrives and says, 'Mr Muhammed, have you left your brain behind? Why do you frighten guests in my barn as they work so hard?' And he says, This all the work of Shytan, all of the women have gone mad since this thing has come, most especially that bride of Shytan,' and he points at me. I hardly need say that this is not an amusing thing. But listen to how destiny plays like a cat with your friend Mae. Mr Muhammed still jabs his finger like a knife towards me and says: 'That devil woman leaves her husband, and now my wife has left me to live with him.' And he cracks his whip. And all us women try hard not to laugh, even Kwan. For you see, we all know his wife Tsang. Tsang is a pincushion, she has had every man she can get. She is plump, ripe, shameless, lots of fun, and about as devoted a wife, and devout a woman, as a gerbil. In my fashion-expert days, I was always giving Tsang a makeover for her latest paramour. Poor old Mr Muhammed has finally discovered what the rest of the village knows. So there is now a closing of Tsang's always-welcoming doorway. That Tsang finally should have taken wing with my dull old husband strikes our humble peasant sense of humour like a blow to the elbow. Poor Mr Muhammed yells like a character in an old play, They have run off to live together in Balshang!' It is terrible but we all have to fight not to laugh, though the poor man is in agony. Kwan says kindly, 'It is not Mae's fault that your wife strayed, we are all scandalized by such behaviour.' And Mr Muhammed points again at me and says, 'Why, then, do you welcome that viper into your midst?' And Kwan answers him: 'Because though she strayed, she helps the whole village build business.' He screams back, 'She is the mother of all whores! My sweet and faithful wife has had her mind poisoned by that creature and her machine!' And Kwan puts her hand on his shoulder and says, gently, 'It was not Mae who corrupted her. Your wife just this spring lured my young son and had sex with him until I asked her to stop, for my son was growing confused. And she had both Mr Alis before that, and before that, Mr Pin's eldest boy, just before his marriage. Tsang corrupted herself. Mae had nothing to do with it.'

  And poor old Mr Muhammed's face melts like candlewax. 'You all knew?' he says, and drops his whip. 'Didn't you?' asks Kwan. He does not answer but, hollow like an old crisp pinecone, he goes out of the barn. So we all wonder, Did he know as well?

  But oh, woman, there was further news to come. Joe has sold our house. He has sold it to Mr Haseem and taken the money to live with Tsang in Balshang. The house and lands I fought all this year to pay for and save, those are deserted. The kitchen I cleaned for years, it is dark, with only moonlight for lighting. The brazier I kept alight for thirty years is now cold and full of dust. The chairs and tables are lonely, the cupboard hastily emptied, as if by thieves. I sit wearing all my clothes in Kwan's unheated attic, listening alone to the happiest time of year, to the harvest, the parties, and the various Circles. I hear life waft up like smoke from the village below. My life has been unstitched, cousin, like embroidery needing to be reworked. Oh. Joe. Joe. You always thought money was quick, because you were slow. So you have quick money to make new life in the city with Tsang. That old mattress, she will be bouncing with other men the instant your back is turned. You will be a dolt in the city. You will lose tools, you will not get work. And you will come back here, and be surprised when your friend Mr Haseem does not give you back your house. And your father and your brother Siao – what of them, Joe? They now have the indignity of living with your first wife's brother, Mr Wang Ju-mei. Oh, Joe, what will you tell the spirits of your fathers? You sold their land? For how much, Joe? Would your good friend Mr Haseem, knowing you were desperate to be away, be so generous as to give you half of what it is worth? Oh, Joe, you will go to live near your beloved and clever son Lung. You should love and honour him, for the son is far wiser than the father. But you do not understand him. Your son is Army Officer. Your son is Balshang Fox, who has married the Western world. He does not want a dolt of a country father embarrassing him, staying all weekend long when he has to be entertaining the Colonel and his lady wife. Oh, Joe. You will return lost and befuddled with no money, no woman, no son, and wondering, wondering where it all went. Now I know what a man's chin feels like. It gets shaved clean, everything scraped away, with everything needing to grow back. What else, I wonder, can happen in this year of shaving away? To speak of business: Eye of the Beholder is getting fewer visitors. We have no new orders for the collars, which is great relief and worry at the same time. What can I do to speak to my friends in the world?

  ____________________

  e-mail from: Mr Ken Kuei

  13 December

  Hello.

  I am very proud, for I have sent you a message like this. You see, I am learning. I have taken your words to heart, and so I learn on Sunni's machine. I have had to learn without you.

  I am good at learning. And good at waiting. Your friend, Mr Ken Kuei

  ____________________

  e-mail from: Miss Soo Ling

  13 December

  Mae,

  I hear that many houses here are imitating your success, selling collars, etc. In

  any case, all fashions come and go. Have you been thinking what you will do next? There is a Western phrase used by all: Live the change. It means, 'Get in first and get out first.'

  ____________________

  e-mail/videomail: no sender

  They have found the Eloi site. They will raid. Get your business off Kwan's machine now. Move it onto Mr Haseem's if you can – now, tonight – but move it in any case.

  CHAPTER 16

  Who would send her such a message?

  Mae's mind raced as her slippered feet slid in the dark on Kwan's polished wooden floors. Mr Oz? Hikmet Tunch?

  She went into Kwan's bedroom and smelled the savour of husband and wife and sleep.

  'Kwan,' she whispered. 'Kwan, wake up.'

  There was a groan.

  'Kwan, please, this is urgent, it must be done. Please wake up.'

  The movement, the sound, ceased and a calm, alert voice said: 'What is it, Mae?'

  'I just got an audio file. Came on looking like a packet from America, only it was just a scramble of, you know, symbols. Then it started to wake up as words. It said it was a self-decoding cipher. So whoever sent it would have to know the watermark on your hard disk.'

  'What did it say?'

  'That they know about the Eloi home, that they will raid. It said, "Get your business off Kwan's machine." '

  'Can I see the message?'

  'No, it burned itself up.'

  There was quiet. Outside, a nightjar
was singing.

  Mr Wing spoke next: 'If they know about the minority site, there is not much point removing it now,' he said, with the same cool voice he used when repairing plumbing. 'What does it say, Kwan?'

  'It tells what is being done to my people,' said Kwan.

  Wing breathed heavily, once, in and out. 'You are a woman. Perhaps they will treat you gently. Pretend you are foolish and emotional. Mae, whoever your friend is, they are clever, and you must upload all your data to Sunni's machine, and wipe it from ours.'

  'Do you know how to do that?'

  'Not if you don't.'

  The TV was now kept in the diwan. Already secretive, they did not turn on the lights, but huddled in quilted coats around the screen.

  Mae tried to copy her business onto Sunni's machine. She kept repeating different, likely instructions. Finally she found one that worked.

  The TV said, 'Making contact with htvl/sunni/takingwing.htvl.'

  Mae told it, 'Volume down! Can you make it look as if the files have always been on her machine?'

  The TV made noises like mice were at work inside it. Then it murmured, 7 can make it look as if your site has an alias on htvl/sunni.'

  Mr Wing told Mae, 'Do that. You can say you had it on two machines in case one of them went down.'

  'Okay, go ahead,' said Mae. The machine made nibbling noises as if mice were at work. Mae turned to Kwan. 'After this, we wipe the Eloi site.'

  'The site stays up,' said Kwan.

  Mae protested. 'Kwan! The site will be wiped anyway. But perhaps if it's not here when they arrive, we can have some story ready!'

  Kwan's face shone as white and cold as the moon. 'It is too late, Mae. I have e-mail from professors about the site; I have answered them. If the government are reading my e-mail, they will have all that, too. They have me, Mae.'

  The two women stared at each other in silence. Blows are like this, thought Mae. At first you are dazed and do not feel the pain. Mae found she was listening for the stealthy rumble of an army truck.

  The TV murmured low: 'Permission denied.'

  'Mae,' said Mr Wing, 'let's at least save your business. We'd better go and ask Sunni for permission now.'

  'Right, okay, I do that. But both of you go, get away!'

  'Where to, Mae?' demanded Kwan. 'You think we should hide?'

  'We'll take care of ourselves, but first we will go with you,' said Mr Wing. 'Mr Haseem may not talk to you.'

  They threw stones against Mr Haseem's shutters to wake him. He threw the window open and they heard the click of a safety catch. Mr Haseem had a gun.

  Mr Haseem rumbled, 'Get away from my house, Mae. I bough: your husband's place fairly.'

  'Of course you did,' Wing intervened. 'This is trouble with the government. Let us in, Faysal.'

  They were allowed only as far as the kitchen. Sunni automatically bowed to Kwan, sleepily mistaking this for a social call.

  'The government has found our Eloi site,' said Kwan.

  Mr Haseem looked unmoved. That was their problem, raising stuff like that. Sunni looked alert, and watchful.

  Mae spoke: 'I need to copy my business site onto your machine.'

  'Tuh!' said Haseem. 'After all that has passed between us?' His heavy face assumed its most natural expression of scorn.

  And Sunni? Her eyes met Mae's and something passed between them. Sunni turned to her husband and shrugged. 'It will cost us nothing. And Mae told us about the wire charges and saved us much money. It is a simple favour to return.'

  'I don't want trouble with the government,' grunted Haseem.

  'Have you seen Mae's screens? She has a link to one government office, and another government office, and there is a part on it in which Mae sings gratitude to the government. Having such a site on our machine will be protection against the government.'

  Mae and Sunni exchanged a long look: Now you are repaid, Sunni seemed to say.

  Mae pressed her advantage. 'Your server is running, but my machine needs permission to download.'

  Sunni nodded once. 'Who sent you the message?'

  'Someone who masters privacy. Either Mr Oz or my friend Mr Tunch.'

  'We better move, Mr Haseem, Sunni-ma'am,' said Mr Wing.

  Mr Haseem's leaden face looked up at him, appraising, challenging, but not triumphing. 'What will happen to you?' he asked Wing. Haseem regarded himself as a man, and men were serious. The villagers were seriously against the government, as they were against blight on crops.

  Wing's eyes brows flickered and he gave a brief, buccaneer's smile. 'Inshallah,' he said. Men were also brave.

  'Many thanks, Sunni-ma'am,' said Mae.

  Kwan spoke: 'We'd better leave. We have enemies who might say they saw us conspiring.'

  Later, Kwan's TV spoke: 'Permission extended. Uploading begins.'

  They waited, listening to the very faint sounds of moving heads inside the machine. The wind and the future whispered in shadow.

  Kwan was calm. 'I could move into the hills. Go visit Suloi's relatives until all this is past.' She turned to Mr Wing and smiled. 'You could say I became a wild woman and left you.'

  Mr Wing shrugged. 'You are allowed three books in prison,' he said. 'The Koran, the Buddhist texts, and the Mathnawi of the Mevlana. I have been saving myself for them. I will do a comparison of all three and learn thereby the truth.'

  'They are long enough for a life sentence,' said Kwan, with grim humour.

  'Then I hope my life will be long enough,' said Wing. 'I would prefer a life sentence to death.'

  'Swear,' said Mae, suddenly swept up in superstition. 'Swear now that if you are not sent to prison, you will begin to read them now anyway.'

  'I would swear to do that, Mae,' chuckled Wing, 'if I thought it would do any good.'

  Mae felt a gathering in her mind as if a tree had sent down roots into it, and then bloomed. She had an idea.

  She asked the television, 'Can you do the same thing as that message? Arrive and then disappear?'

  There was a whisper inside. 'Huh?' the TV replied. A technical term, meaning it did not understand the request.

  Mr Wing shook his head. 'They would be able to see through such doctoring, Mae.'

  'What I want to do is send the whole site to Bugsy and get her to host it. That way it stays up, but off your machine. So we can wipe it, yes?'

  'Thank you,' said Kwan. 'But Bugsy does business with you. That will get you into trouble. And Mae, you do not have the encryption code, so that is that.'

  Mae kept on: 'Look, at least wipe the site! Maybe it will be enough for them if you take the site down.'

  Mr Wing started to rub her back. 'Mae, Mae.'

  'I would only put it back up, after they left,' said Kwan. 'The world has to know about the Eloi.'

  'So, you've had the site up and now the world does know!'

  'Not enough of them.'

  Mr Wing was smiling with quiet pride. 'Mae, Kwan will never give up fighting. She will never rest until justice is done.

  'Why must it be you who fights?'

  Wing's smile extended slightly. 'Because we cannot let the goons who run this country stop us telling the truth. What are we supposed to do? Run and hide and say, "Oh, wondrous masters, we owe you so much for letting us live and battle the land for grain which you take from us as tax"?'

  Mae had never heard such talk. She recognized the constriction around her chest for what it was: fear. This was genuinely dangerous talk.

  'They are destroying an entire people, only because their own ancestors failed to conquer them. The Eloi show it is a lie to say that this country can be called Karzistan, that it is a Muslim country of Turkic peoples. So they try to make the Eloi disappear.'

  Mae felt a little bit sick. She thought she was brave, but she did not have that kind of courage. To face the men who controlled the torturers, the lists, the surveillance, and say: I am going to do the very thing you say I must not do.

  And yet they were right. How were things to get better
if no one fought?

  She looked at Mr Wing and thought: this man could become a terrorist. If there were more of him, my son Lung might be sent to fight him. They might kill each other through a screen of dust and smoke.

  And Mae felt a dull buzz inside the core of her head. The echoing. All this had triggered another attack. 'It's coming on again,' said Mae.

  'The old lady feels the same way?' he said, still looking amused.

  'She has strong memories of the war…'

  Mae took a grip.

  She began to chant to herself things Mrs Tung would never believe: Thank heavens for the machines, they give us an ear of the world and then save us from our masters…

  Something in her head opened up, a bit like a flower, a bit like a radio tuning.

  If this is starting up again, you must hide! If you fight them directly, they send in their soldiers!

  And Mae told it: The government will change itself; its very soul will be blown by the Air…

  They come and cart you off in the middle of the night, or pay the neighbours to turn on you!

  We will be a world of people beyond governing…

  Both sides end up eating their dead.

  The rice wine when it came was as transparent as water, but it burned. They sipped in silence. Mae could think of nothing to say.

  From the television came a sound like a rooster, faint and faraway.

  'Mae,' said Kwan. 'Something's coming up on the screen.'

  Words on the screen read, EMAIL/VIDEOMAIL: NO SENDER.

  There was an Egyptian dance of hieroglyphs which suddenly resolved into letters and words and sideways V signs.

  'That's computer code,' said Kwan.

  Mae sat forward. She knew what it was. Someone had sent her the encryption code. She told the machine to save it, use it, and kept talking to send a message.

  'Audio file to bugsy@nouvelles. Bugsy, sorry to arrive in this way, but this is no laughing matter. Clipped to this message is an entire site. It is very political, very dangerous, about the Eloi people. The world must know what is happening to them, but it is too dangerous to hold here. Please find a machine other than your own, and put the site up there. Do not – do not – put it on your machine, okay? And never talk of it, and do not reply to this e-mail in any way, okay? Sometimes you will get encrypted message like this. It will be an update for the site. Like this message, it will then eat itself. And please, do not put anything about this in an article! And don't reply! Your chum. Okay endmail.'