Air

by Geoff Ryman

  He finally remembered formalities and offered Mae his name. It made Mae close her eyes and smile, embarrassed for him.

  His name was Oz Oz.

  Last names had been adopted only in the last century. People chose their own for good luck. Oz in the Turkic language of the Karz meant “real” and “genuine,” and sometimes, “naive.” The Central Man’s name meant “Mr. Genuinely Sincere.”

  Mr. Sincere tapped the top of the table. “The Test was far too soon,” he said. “And Karzistan is not a powerful enough country to stop it. And,” he sighed, “it would have been wrong to stop it, because the Test would have come, but it would have been run by big companies.”

  She stared back at him.

  “Big companies, owned by very rich people. They would have run the Test instead. You have heard of the Yu En? United Nations?”

  She shook her head. I am an ignorant peasant.

  “They decided to have the Test. The world’s governments. I know: Governments are not people. But they are better than big companies. Do you know how the Air works?”

  “It depends what you mean.”

  “All right. In a computer, there is a plate. And that plate holds Info.” He took one of her dishes as an example. “Now, to hold any Info, it must be patterned.”

  “Like embroidery?”

  “It must be divided into circles, Like this. And sections, like a pie, like this, and then certain kinds of areas must be created.”

  “Like the pens,” she said. “You mean the Format.”

  “Exactly!” he said. “The Format. So. The question was this: Did we want big companies, rich men, making the shapes of people’s minds?”

  Mae grew solemn. “I see,” she said, sitting forward.

  His strange long monk’s face looked at hers. Did she?

  “The Yu En felt it had to prevent that. So it came up with a different Format. It was a Format that … that would allow more companies, more countries to join.”

  “You didn’t want the big companies to run people’s brains,” said Mae.

  “Yah,” he nodded.

  “So you pushed through the Yu En Test to be first.” And, Mae thought, that’s what killed people.

  “I didn’t push it,” he said quietly.

  All you Central Men. You never say anything is your fault.

  “Tuh. The big men behave like the little villages,” said Mae.

  THEY WALKED BACK TO KWAN’S HOUSE.

  Mae tried to delay the Central Man as long as she could, by talking about the deaths of Mrs. Ken Tui and Old Mrs. Tung, until he began to show signs of exasperation. As they walked, the village children, out well past bedtime, flocked around him.

  Pin Soon yelped, “You work for the government?” He gazed up at the Central Man in something like admiration.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you rich?”

  “No.” Mr. Oz chuckled. “No one who works for the government is rich.”

  “My brother is in the army and he is rich.”

  “Ah. The army. That is a different thing. What rank is he?”

  Pin Soon looked blank, a bit ashamed. He didn’t know. “He drives a truck!” he announced proudly.

  The Central Man asked, “Do you go to Mrs. Chung’s school?”

  “Yes, yes,” he piped. “‘Old Madam Death,’ we call her.”

  The Central Man looked uncertain. “Why is that?”

  “Because the ‘Education’ sign is an owl!” giggled Dawn, who still could not believe the stupidity of such a thing.

  Mae watched for it, and saw the quick downward jerk of the mouth. An embarrassment at a certain kind of awkwardness in the world. It reminds him of himself, Mae thought.

  “I asked them to call me Madam Owl, so that they would come to think in a different way about the owl.”

  “Let’s hope it helps,” he replied. He stopped at Kwan’s gate, and turned towards the children. “Okay. I am now visiting with Mrs. Kwan, and she will not want to be bothered with so many children. So you all go home now.”

  “We want to ask you more questions,” said Dawn, and put her hand experimentally into his pocket. He pulled it out, but did not slap it.

  “No candy,” he said, his smile going thin. “I have none.”

  Dawn giggled. “I was looking for money.”

  He was useless. “Dawn. I will box your ears,” warned Mae.

  Dawn was laughing too hard, twisting in the Central Man’s grip.

  “Dawn,” said Mae, her voice darkening.

  “Okay, okay,” Dawn chuckled, and pulled back.

  Mae said, in her best Madam Owl voice, “All of you go home and go to bed. Go on!”

  “It is the same everywhere,” the Central Man smiled.

  Then why haven t you learned how to handle it? Mae thought. She pulled the gate shut and barred it.

  Then the Central Man said an unexpected thing: “Would you say that the opposition here falls along religious lines?”

  Mae’s eyes boggled in the dark. You had to be very careful raising questions like that, even with no one around.

  “‘Religious lines?’” she asked.

  He laughed aloud. “All right. It has in many places. Some of the minority tribes are very superstitious about it. They think the voices are ghosts or demons or something. Some of the Muslims are very welcoming.”

  “We have had no trouble like that,” said Mae.

  “Hmm. Well, this village is one of the best I’ve seen,” said Mr. Oz.

  Kwan was settled on her floor, sitting cross-legged. It looked as though she was writing letters. She gathered them up quickly. Mae caught her gaze and Kwan’s eyes twinkled. She had done whatever it was needed doing to the TV. She went to make tea, cheerful and expansive.

  The Central Man asked questions, one after another after another. They were as many as grains of rice in a terrace. Kwan yawned.

  “Look, you want answers to all of these things, Mae has done a Question Map.”

  “What?” He sat forward.

  Oh, many thanks, Kwan.

  “It was nothing,” said Mae, and she glared at Kwan.

  “What do you mean, it was nothing? What did you do?” the Central Man asked.

  Kwan realized her mistake: “Oh it was a trifle.”

  “A Question Map means that you go and ask everyone in the village the same questions. Is that what you did?”

  Mae still could not lie. “Yes,” she admitted. “But it was about fashion.”

  “But did it deal at all with the Test? What people felt about it? Can I see it?”

  Mae’s eyes narrowed and she let them drill into Kwan’s. Unseen behind him, Kwan did a quick, abject bow of apology.

  “I gave it to Kwan,” said Mae, still angry.

  “Oh, that’s right. Now, where did I put it? You know, I think Luk must have thrown it out. He thought it was just useless paper.”

  The Central Man begged. “Please let me see it, please!” The young man was very earnest. “You don’t know how important it is. No one talks to me, I am supposed to do research, but if I do it the way they want, no one will talk to me. But we need to know. We need to know, if we are to help you!”

  He looked back and forth between them. I almost think I should believe you, thought Mae. But you are a government spy.

  He was in despair, he ran his hand across his forehead. “Most people are pretending it did not happen,” he said. “They are learning nothing. They are not making ready. It will come again, as sure as winter comes. It will come next April.”

  He twisted in his chair. “And I have to be able to tell the government. They must spend money; they must send teachers out into the villages to prepare. The Test was a disaster. A disaster, but going on Air will be an even bigger one!” His fists clumsily punctured the air in frustration.

  All right, so I believe you, thought Mae. You are a nice, sad, powerless boy. Why should I trust the government?

  He was a boy, but not a stupid one. “I won’t te
ll anyone you showed it to me. I know, I know, your neighbors will think you betrayed them to a government spy. But let me see it, so I know how it affected them, I don’t need their names. But I do need to be able to go back and say to the government: ‘They need help.’ We need to listen to people to them to find out how to help them!”

  His two fists were bunched together.

  Mae relented. “We feel the same way, you and I.”

  He breathed out in relief.

  “But governments never help the likes of us, we are too far away from everything.”

  “That is why I need to see what you have done! Look, the people in government have sons in the army. You all have sons in the army. Do you think your sons wish the people harm? Or do they want the Karzistani people to succeed?”

  “Not all of us are Karzistani,” said Kwan. Her face and voice were pinched.

  Mr. Oz had no argument against that. He slumped slightly. “A terrible mistake has been made. If the government won’t help you, who will?”

  “We help ourselves,” said Kwan.

  “You’re about the only ones who have,” he muttered, more to himself than to them.

  “My Question Map was about fashion,” said Mae. The very idea now struck her as absurd, silly. “I did it to find out how the Air would change my business.”

  “What did you find out?” he asked quietly.

  “That the village has died,” Mae said, equally quietly.

  Mae realized hat she had been hearing a clock ticking for some time. What clock, where?

  “How do you mean?” he asked.

  “I mean … I mean our children will become like children everywhere else. They will play computer games and learn everything and the very last of the old ways will go. Absolutely everything we know and love will go. They will have supermarkets here, and streetlights, and the men will drive Fords, not vans or tractors.”

  Mae looked around Kwan’s room. There definitely was no clock. But it ticked.

  Mae heard the sirens again. She turned slowly and looked and saw that outside Kwan’s window the air was full of orange light as if their village life were burning. She knew she was staring at the future again. She stood and walked, as if on a ship at sea, and stared out from Kwan’s high window.

  There was a blimp with neon lights advertising an electronic address, tethered to the courtyard gate. There were tables full of people in the courtyard. This house was now a restaurant. The streetlights were yellow and they fell far away, all across the valley and up the other side, and there were moving lights of cars all over the valley, and drifting music, from everywhere.

  “Mae?” Kwan’s voice was anxious. “Mae!” Her hand was on Mae’s shoulder.

  Mae started to speak, in a voice that was not entirely her own. It was partly Old Mrs. Tung’s.

  “All the old songs,” she said, “and the old good manners—all that will go.”

  From down below, in the restaurant, a drunk laughed loudly.

  “We used to work all together in Circles, and take turns to bring the lunches, and all of us who could read, we’d recite the poems for the ladies. Not … not pop songs … not some song in English, but our own great, great poetry, words that had meaning. We would read the Mevlana.”

  And Mae or Mrs. Tung or someone started to cry. “‘Listen to the reed, how it tells a tale…’”

  “Mae, Mae!” Kwan was saying over and over. “Mae, come back.”

  “We made our own clothes, we smoked our own tobacco, we didn’t worry about hairspray and makeup. What counted was how strong a woman was, how much she could lift. In winter, wives cooked in teams, one set of wives making the soup all day, another set of wives making the goulash all day, everybody ate, no one was lonesome. On the first day, the Muerain would call on God and give us wisdom, and the next day the priest in his robes would bless the food, and on the third day, the Communist read from his little red book. And in Kizuldah all three were the same man!”

  Mae watched her hands wringing a tea towel over and over. “And we’re destroying it! We have to destroy it to live!”

  Kwan was speaking quietly, but she was turned towards the Central Man. “You asked me if anyone else died during the Test. Mae did. She was in someone else’s head and they died, and Mae came back a different person. She gets like this, she joins the dead, she loses herself. She was always so beautiful. Your Test did that to my friend. I’m very angry at your Test. I’m very angry at all you people.”

  And Mae saw on Kwan’s stern face a single, slow tear.

  The Central Man sat with a hand covering his mouth.

  Was that true, what Kwan had said? Was she—Mae—in that condition?

  “I’m sorry,” the Central Man managed to whisper.

  “Huh,” said Kwan. A lot of use that is.

  The noise from the restaurant below faded. This room became clearer, as if someone had turned on many extra lights.

  Mae decided something. “I will let you see my Question Map,” she said.

  BACK IN MAE’S HOUSE, MR. OZ READ THE QUESTION MAP, SHAKING HIS HEAD OVER AND OVER.

  Mae said, “I will let you have it to take away, if you tell me everything you know about Air.”

  Mr. Oz read the Question Map, shaking his head over and over.

  Mae kept on: “Yu En. Gates. All that stuff.”

  He looked up at her. “How?” he said. “The quantitative data has been entered into a spreadsheet and computed. The qualitative material … How did you know how to do this? This is a structured piece of research.”

  “In Air. There is a Kru in Air.”

  The Central Man went very still indeed. “You go back into Air? You are not supposed to be able to do that.”

  “When … I had my accident. To get out, I made myself an Airmail address.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “It’s my name.”

  “They’re not still Aircasting,” he said, perplexed.

  “The Kru is still there.”

  “He shouldn’t be. He’s copyright, he agreed to do it only for the Test.” His mouth did its downward twist.

  “You people,” said Mae, “you don’t really know what Air is, do you?”

  “You’re right,” said the Central Man. “We don’t.”

  He explained. The Kru was a great businessman, a rival of the company that made the Gates Format. He had donated his expertise as a demonstration for the Test of the Yu En Format. The deal wasn’t that he would go on forever, giving away everything he knew for free. Everyone had assumed it would end with the Test.

  “Mrs. Tung is always with me,” said Mae.

  Mr. Oz left, going across the courtyard. Mae heard Old Mrs. Ken greet him with all the gusto that five riels a night could purchase. Mae smelt chicken cooking for the generous guest. She sat down and wondered if Kuei would be able to visit her now, with all of his house in an uproar.

  I am like someone in mourning.

  Of course you are in mourning, said Old Mrs. Tung.

  It was a dull, kind voice.

  We all want an anchor, we all want to turn the corner to go home. But home always goes away. Home leaves us. And we get older and then older again, and farther away from home. From ourselves. We die before we die, my dear. We go from village beauties to old crones; from mischievous children to weary adults; from ripe maidens full of love to embittered, used women full of bile. And all we have is love. With nothing to love. Just the love, aching out, reaching out and never clasping love in return.

  Just the reeds, just the swallows, just the mist in the air, the sunlight in the air, just the sound of the wind. That never changes. That is all the home we have.

  Dear Old Mrs. Tung.

  Sleep, my dear.

  For all the beauty we have lost, and all the beauty we will lose.

  11

  THE NEXT MORNING MR. OZ AND MAE FOUND TWO GROUPS OF ARMED MEN IN MRS. WING’S COURTYARD.

  On one side were Mr. Shen, Mr. Koi, and Mr. Masud. They were a
ll either Eloi or old-fashioned Muslims.

  Against them stood Mr. Mack, Mr. Pin, Mr. Ali, and Old Mr. Doh.

  Shen said, “We are bringing this to a stop.”

  Mae read the two sides: Mr. Ali was of Sunni’s party. He was here to help save Kwan’s machine. An alliance against Shen, so quickly? Mr. Ali had brought his own gun: That would mean Shen had already threatened Mr. Haseem. There was a clicking sound. Lean, brown, hard, Mr. Wing stood on his steps. He held a Russian rifle with the hammer pulled back. He said, “That does not belong to you, Shen.” From out behind him stepped Enver Atakoloo. He also had a gun.

  Mae stepped forward and gave both parties a bow of respect. She said quietly, to Shen, “Bring what to a stop, Teacher?”

  Shen pointed at the TV. “We don’t want that in our village.”

  “I am sure it is for you men to decide,” Mae said, sweetly. Like a cat with humans, she had a voice she only ever used with men. “But, Teacher. Consider. You won’t be able to keep out the Air when it comes.”

  The Central Man felt the time had come for him to intervene with his full authority. “Mrs. Chung is right. The TV will help you prepare for April.”

  Mae wanted smile at him and weep at the same time. Poor boy, this is happening because you have arrived. You will be invisible to them, like an angel. Untouchable, but also invisible.

  Mr. Shen’s answer was simply to walk to the TV with his rifle-butt raised to smash it.

  The sky ripped open. Guns had always sounded like firecrackers to Mae, a pop, and a snap. She had always been surprised by how small they seemed.

  Now, trapped within the courtyard, the sound of a gunblast battered around the enclosed space. Mae jumped, covered her ears. Please, God, no one has been hurt. She looked up. The guns were pointed at the sky. From all around the village, birdcalls billowed up into the air: screeching, shrieking, and cawing.

  Everything in the courtyard was frozen. No one moved.

  Mae said, “At least that got the birds off the rice.” It was the first thing she thought.

  Mr. Doh, Mr. Ali, and Mr. Mack burst into laughter.

  “It’s true,” said Mae, confused. Mr. Mack nodded—yes, it was.

  Shen stood trembling, rifle still raised.

  Mr. Wing warned him: “Don’t be a vandal, Shen. The government man is here to see it, you will end up in court, and it will not be because anyone betrayed you to them. Eh? Don’t be foolish.”