Air

by Geoff Ryman

  Shen was pointing. It was hard to tell if he pointed at Wing or Kwan. “You … stay … away from my wife!” he demanded.

  All the laughter stopped. What?

  Wing looked perplexed. “What madness now, Schoolteacher?”

  Silence. From the western reaches of the village came the roaring of a motorcycle.

  Kwan stepped out from her diwan, onto the landing. “He means me,” she said. “Suloi and I are working together on a project.”

  Mae felt a stirring of misgiving. Kwan and Shen’s wife? When? What were they doing?

  There is something my friend Kwan has chosen not to tell me.

  The roar of the motorcycle grew louder. Sezen’s boyfriend came through the open gate, on his cycle, Sezen riding behind. Another Bad Boy from the Desiccated Village Kurulmushkoy followed, his machine black with grease. Sezen’s boyfriend hopped off, pudgy and carrying a length of pipe.

  Sezen’s boyfriend said, “The machine stays.”

  Shen was helpless. He looked to the old men of his party. “You see the elements who will triumph from this thing.” Shen started to weep. “Look at them! They think this is a Hong Kong movie. Guns and motorcycles! This is how the world will now be. With women running rampant with foolish ideas. Bad children, running wild.”

  A division seemed to break inside Mae’s head, as if blood had found a fresh way to flow. She suddenly remembered the angry driven child within Teacher Shen. She saw him as a little soul, to be protected. Her eyes blurred over as if milk were inside them, and her throat felt gnarled, rumbly.

  “It has always been thus,” Mae heard herself say, as if she were setting back and listening to someone else.

  The voice from inside her spoke. “There has always been one big change after another. But we always think our first world was permanent. Shen, my little bright boy. Your world came just after the Russians drove out the Chinese. Before you were born, the Eloi were fighting a war against the Chinese. Guerrillas would take over our houses. Our husbands were shot as rebels for sheltering them. We had to give our grain to the Red Guards. Before that it was the village strongman. There is no old way to go back to, Shen. My brightest little boy, are you still too young to see that?”

  Shen was looking at a ghost. The tears seemed to have frozen on his face, going creamy with salt in the sunlight.

  Mae began to feel giddy, divorced from her own body. Her fingers were numb. “You cannot bring back the old world. Which old world do you want?”

  The Central Man was staring at her. Mack, Doh, they all looked at their shoes.

  Mae’s forehead was covered in thick sweat. The corner of her vision went dark and gritty. “I have to sit down,” she said, and fainted.

  MAE WOKE UP IN KWAN’S GUEST ROOM, LINED WITH CUSHIONS.

  Grim-faced, Kwan was mopping her brow.

  “We saved the TV,” she said.

  There was business at hand. Mae responded: “We had Sunni’s people on our side.”

  Kwan nodded briskly. “I fight against my brother, until my cousin attacks him.”

  “The Central Man frightened them.”

  “Everything frightens them,” said Kwan, with real scorn. “I never had any respect for Teachers.”

  Mae chuckled. “You hid it well at school.”

  Kwan shrugged. “They held the keys.”

  “What are you and Mrs. Shen up to?”

  Kwan paused, worked her mouth. “I should have told you,” she said.

  Mae was ready. Info Lust. It made people hide things.

  Kwan sighed. “Suloi and I have put screens on the Net.”

  Mae didn’t know what she meant.

  “We put screens about our people. On TV.”

  Mae sat up in wonder.

  “You did what?”

  Kwan stared back at her, a little bleary with guilt, a little obstreperous: What business was it of Mae’s? “You sit up, you’re well enough now to see,” she said. She stood up, not waiting for Mae to follow.

  Mae walked through the shuttered room, following Kwan out into the porch. The TV had been moved up from the courtyard to the landing. Something had scratched its side. Below on the courtyard stones a dark stain sweltered. Blood? Grease?

  Kwan’s fingers danced on a keyboard. Words in English rattled on the screen.

  “Audio. Karz output, Eloic input,” Kwan ordered. “Volume down.”

  Then she gave orders in the language of her people. Her language flapped and cawed like a raven and seemed to make Kwan into a different person, less considered, more urgent.

  Up came a photograph of Eloi embroidery.

  The television murmured as if it had a secret. “The Eloi people are an ancient race, now living in the mountainous region of Karzistan. Karzistan is on the borders of China, Tibet, and Khazakstan. These screens have been created by the Eloi people themselves.”

  The screens offered “Arts.” Under “Arts,” Suloi and Kwan sang in high straining voices. In video, they told old stories, while English words danced around them. There were screens of tattoo patterns. Kwan’s patient voice explained their meaning. Mae recognized the neatness and complexity of the tattoo outlines. Kwan had drawn them. The patterns, like Kwan, were restrained and somehow private.

  Next, the meaning of the embroidered Eloi breastplates were explained. These collars were worn by courting men and their betrothed. Note, the television said, that the beads all form straight parallel lines symbolizing two lives in conjunction.

  Photographs of the old forts, tales of Eloi heroes against the Cossacks, the Turks, and the Chinese. A history of war.

  A section on the “Heroes,” meaning the men who fought against the Communists.

  “Few people in the West even knew of the conflict. It lasted for generations and ended in defeat for the Communists and the creation of a new republic. We thought it would be for all the people, not just the Karzistani majority.”

  Behind Kwan’s voice, shepherds began to sing. They sang of heroism, about living in the hills and praying to all their various gods, smoking thin cigarettes in freezing winds under clear stars. Heroes rolled rocks down onto the heads of troops, only to find that the crushed bodies were those of their cousins conscripted into the Communist armies.

  Photographs, in smeared black-and-white, were shown. Handsome young Eloi dead stared up at the sky, their chins missing. Handsome young Eloi, alive around fires, their eyes burning with this message: I may die, but it will be worth it. We are the people who stopped the Chinese, who stopped the Arabs. The Eloi are the world’s great secret force against tyrants.

  Where did Kwan get these photos?

  Then Mae remembered: Kwan’s father, dear Old Mr. Kowoloia.

  Dear Old Mr. Kowoloia must have been a terrorist. Kwan has these photos. She has kept them secret from all of us.

  So this is why she wanted the Central Man gone.

  “Kwan, is this wise?” Mae asked.

  “The site is locked against any instructions in Karzistani. Only in Eloi or in English.”

  On came the video of the Karzistani woman in her new Balshang apartment. Kwan’s recorded voice grew harsher.

  “Listen closely to the Eloi woman, torn away from her people, praising refrigerators. Her voice is rehearsed, her eyes fearful. For she knows: Her people are being destroyed.”

  Mae looked over her shoulder. What if the government man should hear? She looked back, and saw: Kwan’s hands were two pale fists, the skin over the knuckles dead white. With rage.

  “We appeal to the world. Do not let this great and graceful people disappear from history. All you need do is show that you are interested in us, as you once were when we controlled the passes through which wound the Silk Road to China.”

  “Sleep,” ordered Kwan.

  Mae breathed out. “I’ll keep that spy away.” No wonder you had not told me. Tell the truth, Mae.

  “I am jealous,” said Mae. “I had vague plans to learn how to do that. You went and did it. How?”

>   “After you left,” said Kwan.

  “From four A.M. to seven A.M., every day?”

  Kwan nodded. “Suloi and me together.”

  “Wing did not know?”

  “He did not care,” said Kwan, and stood up, graceful, dignified. Eloi, thought Mae. Every particle of her soul is Eloi, and I did not know that, so I did not know her. Like her screens, she is locked away. You must speak Eloi, to have the key.

  “Will … Will you teach me how to do that?” Mae burned to know.

  Kwan looked bleary now from confession and the exhaustion that follows. “The TV will do a better job of that than I can,” she said. She took Mae’s hand and slapped it as if in apology. Do not be surprised—you are my dear Mae, but you are also Chinese in the end: the enemy.

  Kwan lit a cigarette. She pulled a bit of stray tobacco from the tip of her tongue. “The real question is: What is the nature of our alliance with Sunni?”

  Mae shook her head. This was all moving very quickly. “Not very strong,” she replied.

  Kwan turned to Mae. “Do you want to destroy Sunni?”

  “She tries to destroy me,” said Mae.

  “Do you wish to see her destitute?”

  Mae shrugged. “No. I don’t wish anyone in the village to be destitute. Why?”

  Kwan was really very strange. She seemed to uncoil like a serpent, pushing herself away from the TV box.

  Kwan sighed. “TV does not come free, you know.”

  Mae waited.

  “It comes like calls on a mobile phone. Every time you choose something, you pay. Our government subsidy pays Mr. Wing’s telephone bills so the TV gets used for the entire village. But the telephone company will charge everyone else. We administer for them.”

  Kwan unfolded a blue, official-looking piece of paper. “I told Faysal Haseem that. But you know how he is: ‘Uh, you charge twice, you try to trick me I no pay you!’” Kwan did a remarkably good job of imitating him. “So I didn’t tell him again. The first month’s bill is fifty riels.”

  Mae felt nothing; or rather, she felt a balancing that left the scales at zero. “We need him as an ally.”

  “What I was going to do, was let it get to one hundred twenty-five riels, and then say: ‘My husband’s company will cover these costs. Even though we warned you. We will do this if you write off the loan to Chung Mae.’”

  “That was very kind,” said Mae. She could imagine it: Sunni’s face held like it was fragile porcelain as Mae kept the money without paying it back. She could see Faysal Haseem glower.

  And she could see herself in debt to Wing Kwan in other ways.

  “We will drop all this rivalry,” said Mae. In the end you had to support your own against the government, or even the telephone company.

  Kwan smiled, pleased. “I thought so.”

  SUNNI’S TV SET WAS ON EVEN AT ELEVEN AT NIGHT.

  It flickered in Mr. Haseem’s courtyard, showing a fashion parade. Mae hid her smile. Is that as far as Sunni had got with it? To choose picture shows?

  Only one person was watching. Mrs. Ali turned in her chair, saw Mae, and blinked.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Chung,” Mrs. Ali said after a moment.

  “Mrs. Ali.” Mae bowed. “I wish to speak to Mrs. Haseem-ma’am.”

  Mrs. Ali considered. “I will tell her you are here.”

  “I will need to talk to her alone,” said Mae.

  Mrs. Ali did not respond, except to push her chair back and walk into Sunni’s kitchen.

  In the courtyard, the Talent chattered. “It would seem that bright colors once again adorn fashion in the West. Could it be our own local Green Valley designers are in the lead?”

  Mae heard real voices murmuring in the kitchen. She heard the rumble of Mr. Haseem, but she judged he would stay out of this unless there was some kind of argument. If there were some kind of argument, it would give him an excuse to be abusive. He would not wish to take part without that chance.

  Mae was not here to apologize. She was here to get both sides to see sense. And out of that sense, to get advantage for herself.

  Mrs. Ali was in the kitchen doorway, outlined in electric light. “Please come in,” she said in a quiet voice. She stood away from the door, and reassured Sunni’s whining dog as Mae approached. Mae gave her a polite nod, and entered Sunni’s room.

  A modern stove had replaced the old brazier. It seeped raw gas. There were new white curtains in the tiny windows and new metal top to the sink. All of these things meant fresh expense. Sunni sat behind her table, perfect as always, her hair a motorcycle helmet of crisp, hard shellac. She looked tense, insecure and arrogant. Mae found in herself a strain of pity for her, and brought that to the surface.

  “Hello, Sunni,” she said.

  “I hope it will be more of a pleasure to have you in my house than it was last time.”

  Mae gestured: May I sit? Sunni nodded yes, dismissively.

  “Last time, both of us were angry. Both of us said things. I find life moves quickly these days. That night seems years ago now.”

  Sunni made no reply. She certainly did not agree.

  “I find after the events of this morning, that we have more in common than the disagreements which divide us.”

  A brief moue flickered across Sunni’s face; it was true, but it did not please her.

  “We could cooperate for the common good. We both need the village to be prepared for what is to come. A possible agreement is this: We both do all we can to help our neighbors learn to use this new thing. In the meantime, both of us are free to pursue our commercial interests.”

  Sunni was not really up to this kind of bargaining. Mae was well aware that she was talking like a man. It was the only way to avoid the pits of emotion on either side and keep all the issues separate.

  “You speak as if we were in politics,” said Sunni, finally.

  “Do you not think that we are? You and I both value the future. We are rivals, yes. But we certainly do not want the TVs destroyed. Both of us are intelligent women from the same village, and we do not want our village to fall behind.”

  “That is true,” agreed Sunni.

  “There is something else,” said Mae. “Something I did not know until today.”

  “And what might that be?” Sunni sounded unimpressed. She perhaps thought Mae was trying to be mysterious.

  “There are telephone charges for using that thing.” Mae pointed into the courtyard.

  From the courtyard, breathless commentary in a piping female voice continued: “Again we see a new trend towards color. Modern women have found time for joyful expression.”

  “I know,” said Sunni.

  “Do you know how much?”

  Sunni’s face was blank. “I am sure my husband does.”

  “They are always on the lookout for special touches, something new which makes even the simplest dress different, expressing a new facet of their personality.”

  “After a year, it could be as much as six hundred riels.” Mae paused, waited.

  Sunni was very good. She did not flinch, she gave no sign. She began to sweep nonexistent crumbs of food from the table into her cupped hand. Still in silence, she raised her eyebrows as if to say: So? What is your proposition?

  “For example, this dress expresses the model’s interest in Third World issues.”

  Mae took the plunge. “Mr. Wing can ensure that you do not have to pay them. He can arrange things so that they go to his account and the government will pay them.”

  Sunni’s visage did not alter in any respect.

  “In exchange he wants the warfare between us to stop.”

  “There is no warfare.”

  “Sunni,” warned Mae.

  “No, there is none.”

  Mae quoted Sunni’s leaflet. “‘Now that certain parties have been uncovered as offering false advice…’ That is what you wrote about me, Sunni. It is one thing to set yourself up in business. It is another to call me a fraud and to invite your friends t
o mock me.”

  “I will remind you of a certain incident on your screen,” said Sunni, darkening.

  “Indeed. I have not forgotten. That is part of the war. It must stop, Sunni. While we play village games, the world is beating down our door. While we try to destroy each other, it will destroy us.”

  “I will demand a full public apology,” said Sunni.

  “I will demand that we both apologize to each other in public. At the same time. That way everyone knows: The TV people are united.”

  “And I will need individual assessment of what you say about charges.”

  Mae nodded. “I can bring the government man here. No, Sunni, not to make trouble, please hear me out. I can make it look like a friendly visit. And you can ask him yourself: ‘The TV is new.’ I will say you have just bought it. ‘What kind of charges would I pay?’”

  More crumb-sweeping. There was hurt behind Sunni’s eyes.

  “There is one more thing, Sunni. The loan. The terms of the loan will change. It becomes interest-free.”

  And this was something Mae was keeping from Kwan. She did not want to be beholden to Kwan.

  Sunni went still altogether. “You know I cannot agree to that by myself.”

  “You can perhaps talk to your husband.”

  “I will see.”

  “Just remember, Sunni, the bills mount up, all the time that thing is on.”

  Sunni sighed. Oh, it was like wearing the wrong-size shoe, for her to be in a weak position. She was not used to cutting losses.

  Sunni said, “I could always have a word with the Central Man and mention to him whatever it is Mrs. Wing and Mrs. Shen are making.”

  “Oh!” groaned Mae, in utter weariness. “I am talking about an alliance that will benefit everyone. And you threaten me! Sunni, how can the village learn, if it has to ration the TV? Two machines will be much better than one. Can’t you see? We both win, if we agree to this. Or, yes, we can both lose. Badly, very badly. Perhaps one of us will go to jail. But which one of us will be beloved in the village, Sunni, if you are known to have betrayed Mr. Wing to the government?”

  Sunni’s gaze was not direct. “I did not say that.”