Air

by Geoff Ryman

  “Under the terms, you will notice that Madam Chung has the full backing of the TW Initiative, with extendable credit. If she verifies any overdrafts are for the Initiative-sponsored business, then the government will make good any losses.” Mr. Oz paused. “The credit is therefore to be extended when she asks.”

  The director’s eyes widened slightly, then he nodded. “Hmm,” he said, the implications sinking in.

  “Uh. This means the government will also have full and regular access to Info on this funded, guaranteed account.”

  “Of course,” said the Director, arms held open.

  “We will need to discuss security and coding.”

  “I have a full report,” replied the Director. He had a copy for Mae.

  He strolled with them to the front door.

  “An honor, Madam,” Mr. Saatchi Saatchi said. “Such enterprise gladdens the hearts of all.” He shook hands with all of them. He smelled of pine, and through the white shirt was the brighter outline of his perfumed vest.

  When he had gone, Sezen seized Mae’s hand. “Oh, Mae,” she said, lost for words.

  Mae felt like chuckling. “If only he knew who we were!”

  Sezen shrugged. “Did you notice,” she said, “the Director was not wearing a wedding ring? Perhaps I can marry him if you cannot.”

  Mr. Oz and Mr. Wing went off together to admire computers. Mae wanted to get her hair done. She went to Halat’s. The little hussy was even busier and ruder than ever. She snapped her fingers and sent Mae and Sezen to her assistants. The young girls showed them on screens how Mae and Sezen would look with their new hair. The young girls looked very smug, expecting Mae to be knocked sideways by science. “Tuh,” said Mae. “I do that on the top of Red Mountain.”

  As the girls cut and trimmed, they looked all the while at the screens for instructions.

  “How can Halat be so foolish?” wondered Mae as they left.

  “How do you mean?” Sezen asked.

  Mae shook her head. “She makes it too plain that she herself adds nothing.”

  Fashion had shifted again. There was more garish color, not less, particularly on the young women. Fashion had gone crazy, in all different directions at once.

  But the ice cream shop was there, and the old streaked cinema showing Hong Kong movies, and the tiny shops offering acupuncture, healing herbs, fortune-telling. Lined up outside the tiled wall of a butcher’s shop was a row of severed goat’s-heads.

  The shop of the disabled seamstress was closed. Mae had wanted to buy her stock of oatmeal cloth. Its green door had a hastily hammered board across it.

  Mae went into the next shop, which sold various sweets, walnuts on thread in dried fruit juice. A rather sour, slumped-looking woman ran it.

  “What happened to Miss Soo?” asked Mae.

  “Oh! She left to be with her boyfriend.”

  Mae was silent. She remembered the girl’s staring eyes, the twisted limbs, and she wanted to know: how did she get the money, what did she find when she got there?

  The woman was blunt. “They didn’t stay together, but she found a job anyway and stayed in Balshang. Tuh. I had to board her shop up myself to keep out the vermin.”

  “What happened to her stock?”

  The woman was not that interested. “I think it was sold at auction.”

  Mae paused. The oatmeal cloth. She saw it now with different eyes. It had been finely woven, with white mixed in, tight warp and weft, and it would hang so well, so well when weighted down with fine embroidery.

  “Was anything left over?”

  “Oh! You will have to ask around. Hold on. Hakan? Hakan?” The woman called her husband, a Karzistani. “A lady here wants to know if Miss Soo had any stock left over.”

  There was a bellow from behind the curtain, and a murmur from a TV. “How should I know?”

  The woman did not like to be shown to be lower-class, poor. She felt herself to be showed up by her husband’s response. “You are a man in business, I assumed you knew.”

  Mae was surprised how sorry she was not to see Miss Soo, sorry not to be able to follow her story. She looked at the boarded-up shop, and its closed and shuttered windows. The plywood was already streaked and cracked. Mae discovered that she had liked Miss Soo very much, and admired her. And it would have been useful to have a friend in the Balshang fashion business.

  “If she ever comes back,” said Mae. “Do tell her that Mrs. Chung sends affectionate regards.”

  Sezen asked as they walked back to the van. “So what now?”

  Mae sniffed. “I have credit now. I will order cloth online.”

  Everything ends, said Old Mrs. Tung.

  THE MEETING WAS HELD IN THE MUDHARET, THE TOWN HALL, WITH ITS CRACKED TILES AND FILTHY TOILETS.

  The meeting room was laid out like a theater, with a stage and rows of seats. It was crowded, unbearably hot, and roaring with sustained talk. On the wall was a blank panel of patterned teak with some twist of black iron pinned to it, like an ugly brooch. Sculpture.

  There were no seats left except in the very front row, as if the participants were schoolchildren wanting to avoid the teacher’s gaze.

  Mae walked down the aisle and along the front row and saw faces. A young, sharp eagle of a man sat in a suit that looked expensive and cheap at the same time. He smiled slightly while his eyes glared. He is a shark, thought Mae. He eats people.

  Beside the Shark, a masculine-looking woman with no makeup, short hair, a sleeping-bag jacket, and army boots was talking to herself into some kind of microphone.

  A fat man with pink hair was blowing his nose. The boy next to him provocatively pulled up his T-shirt to display tattoos.

  All these people, Mae realized, have new faces. I can only just read them. She began to feel a tremor again, the tremor of fear.

  The Talent who read the local news walked onto the stage, to a mixture of polite applause and boos. She was immaculate in fire-engine red. She was prettier than she looked on TV, and far more steely. She gave a television smile and welcomed them, but there was no polite silence. If anything, the noise from the crowd got worse.

  “Good afternoon. I am pleased to welcome you to the afternoon session of today’s important discussions…” She explained that they had been enlightened and enthralled by the first set of speakers. They were now to usefully discuss and come to some conclusions about the use that the Green Valley should make of new technology.

  Someone shouted at her. “Don’t bother with all of that: Why has the government accepted an outmoded Format for Air?” Mae looked around to see a scrawny middle-aged man.

  The Talent’s smile did not falter. “The U.N. Format is the agreed international standard. Karzistan is not in a position to choose a different Format than everyone else.”

  There was a groan of protest mingled with raucous laughter.

  A scrawny man who was all white city teeth grinned. “Not in Tokyo.”

  “This is not Tokyo,” said the Talent with icy forbearance.

  “In Tokyo they use both!”

  “Just don’t make it practically illegal!” shouted the Army Boot Woman.

  “Please,” said the Talent, holding up her hands. “This meeting can do nothing about the U.N. Format!”

  “They are running the Gates Format at the same time, in New York!” another Head shouted.

  “Look. This meeting is to review local efforts here in the Happy Province.”

  “What efforts?” the fat man yelled, still eating. He was enjoying the atmosphere.

  “This, among them—” began the Talent.

  “This is supposed to be a discussion, give us Focus!”

  “Focus!” someone else yelled.

  The Talent turned and snapped her fingers. Mae found herself admiring her. The Talent’s voice was suddenly louder. “Okay, we each have the Focus in turn, but please stand up and say who you are. You first, sir.”

  The fat pink-haired man stood up. “Ali Bey Turkoman. I ask again, what
efforts? There is only one Taking Wing officer for all of the Red Mountain area. Is there a single e-mail address for all those villages yet? Is this a concerted government effort?”

  He wants to sell us things, thought Mae.

  “It is precisely the lack of e-mail that Air and related technologies are meant to address. Next question!”

  The Talent, tense, pointed to someone else. A scholarly-looking man, bow-backed, spectacles unfolded upwards from his chair. “Professor Li Ho, Department of Medical-Computer Interface.”

  He took out a written statement, and there was another squawk of laughter.

  He droned. Mae wanted to understand. It was the first time she had heard a professor talk, and she expected wisdom, and it was no surprise to her that she could not follow what was said.

  But she did begin to find it difficult to breathe.

  There was something called Juh-ee Em. Another English word. Was all the world English? GM was something about very small things. It was about growing things. It was also, somehow, about making people smarter. The professor wanted to change things in people.

  He started talking about children who could read after six months, who were doing advanced mathematical work at thirteen. That, she could understand. That, she could picture. He was saying that people were stupid, but they could be cured.

  He was having to raise his voice. “GM is one area in which Karzistan could push ahead, becoming a new center of advancement for the world.”

  “More like a playground for crooks!” someone shouted.

  “Karzistan is not a garbage pail for the rest of the world!”

  The professor was shouted down.

  “We’re here to talk about Air. Go play with your own Juh Nee Sus!”

  An Airhead got overexcited. He leapt up, like a dancer, and he didn’t need the Focus. He yelled, voice breaking, “Air can do anything GM could do! In New York, they merge minds for a hobby to make new music! We are still talking about it as if it were television! We still use the word ‘screens’!”

  “The blind could see!” roared the Army Boot Woman next to Mae.

  “School’s out. No more need for Teachers!”

  “Or Talents! That’s her real problem.”

  Is this a war? Mae wondered. The shouting was so unlike the Karzistani way. It was ugly, showed lack of control, lack of harmony, even lack of Islamic discipline. Lack of everything. Who were these … these … children? In their goggles and crazy clothes?

  And were people so very stupid that they all were to be erased, made better?

  The Shark stood up. He smiled slightly and flicked a finger toward the Talent. The air around him seemed to brighten.

  “Hikmet Tunch, Green Valley Systems.” His voice, typically Karz, was gravelly, but surprisingly high, almost like a woman’s. He said nothing else, but immediately the noise in the hall reduced.

  “Professor Li Ho is correct, of course. GM is a technology with immense potential and one that Karzistan must not ignore. At Green Valley Systems we are looking at all aspects of Medical Interface. We have a program to see how the Gates Format could be used in our cultural setting, perhaps alongside the U.N. Format. One of the applications we are looking at is the use of Air to artificially augment intelligence, which does avoid some of the ethical issues surrounding GM.”

  There was an admiring murmur and a scattering of applause.

  The next question was respectful, from a colorless young man in a loose gray shirt and not a trace of Airhead finery. “I would like to ask Mr. Tunch-sir what is he finding out about the Gates Format and the ways it differs from the U.N. Format.”

  That, thought Mae, is someone who was told to ask him that question. Sharks have little fish that follow them for scraps.

  For some reason people chuckled. The Army Boot Woman gave a kung fu kick of joy.

  “The Gates Format is very … confusing,” began Mr. Tunch-sir, and there was a fresh wave of comment as if there had been some kind of admission. The Talent gave the same embarrassed grimace as Mr. Oz.

  Mr. Tunch seemed very aware of the effect he was having. His face became hooded, hazy somehow, smiling like a mask, his eyes screened. “Once you are beyond the Gates, everything merges, with no neat divisions. It is a little bit slower than the U.N. Format, but once the Gates are open, it becomes very intuitive. For all of those reasons we hope that augmented functions will be able to merge invisibly with the user’s own functions.” He smiled again and Mae saw teeth.

  Mae felt vertigo. She understood none of it, not the words, not the disputes, not what people wore, or even how they moved. Her future had seemed settled and in order. It had felt like a staircase up to a door that was clearly labeled: Air. You only had to make that climb once.

  Instead the future was a pit. It went down in layers, each layer stranger than the next. And there was no bottom to it.

  The Talent intervened, smiling, embarrassed, heightened in the Focus. “I am sure that we are very interested in Mr. Tunch’s insights into the Gates Format. Which, of course, he has never entered himself, as the creation of second imprints is illegal.”

  A murmur of laughter and collusion. Panic gripped Mae. Here, a scant thirty miles from Red Mountain, people were talking a new language, about things she had never heard of, dreamed of. All of them were lazily familiar with it. It was a whole Way of which she knew nothing. Nothing except that it was death to her village. Death not only to her village, but to all human beings, as they once had been. Blood seemed to drain from Mae’s head.

  Did none of them love being human? Did they all so badly want to become machines, to be measured? Mae’s fingers and knees buzzed.

  “Why do you want us all to die?”

  Mae was suddenly aware that she has spoken aloud. She had spoken aloud without willing it. She tried to say, to Sunni, I did not say that. I shouted but it was not me.

  And she couldn’t. She, Mae, couldn’t speak.

  She sat frozen in her chair, unable to move, everything numbed except her mouth. Her mouth seemed to snap by itself, like a turtle’s. She heard herself shout.

  “We built you! We built this City, we put in the drains, we nurtured you. And now you want us to die? You want us to put ourselves to the knife? Fade back into the earth, to be despised by you … you automobiles. You, you, streetlamps. You, you radios, you parrot radios!”

  “It’s happening again,” Sunni said quickly.

  “It’s never been anything like this,” said Sezen, sitting up in alarm. “Look, she’s fighting it. She’s trying to stop it. Mae, Mae, it’s not you talking, is it?”

  Mae managed to make her body nod once: Yes.

  Mr. Oz looked appalled, embarrassed. Mr. Wing crouched around out of his chair and knelt in front of Mae and looked deep into her eyes.

  “We will not go without a fight! Humankind will not go without a fight!”

  “Stop it, Mae!” pleaded Sunni.

  Mae’s wide eyes tried to say, mutely, I can’t!

  And Sezen suddenly stood up, jaw thrust out, and signaled the Talent. The Talent saw they were peasants, saw it was an emergency, and yearned for order. The Talent acquiesced and passed the Focus.

  “All you city people,” said Sezen.

  Mae kept shouting. “In the old days, ancestors were worshiped!”

  “You talk as if most of your own people do not exist. I am a peasant. I live on the top of Red Mountain. My mother keeps a goat in the living room and we sit on the corncobs we eat for furniture!”

  “I want to go home! I want my home!”

  Fighting made it worse. Fighting made the thing resist. Mae decided to try to calm it. Sssh, Mrs. Tung, dear Old Mrs. Tung. Quiet, my love. I am sorry you are dead, but all things die. How many times has our village died, one people after another? You said that yourself.

  Something was halted and grew confused. “Where is this? What is this?” it asked in miserable confusion. The hall itself had fallen silent.

  Sezen had turned to the room
and was pointing at Mae. “That woman, my boss, was in your Air, when you tried your Test. And another woman died in her arms because of your Test. And the other woman’s mind still lives in her! Are you happy? Are you proud of Juh-ee Em now?!”

  The Talent grew concerned in a professional voice: “How … How was this not reported?”

  Sezen answered. “We live thirty miles up a mountain! There is no one to report to!” There was an unreadable noise of reaction in the hall. Sezen kept shouting:

  “We here are the party of progress in our village. Ah? But there is another party. It goes around destroying the TV sets. My brave boss Mrs. Chung Mae tries to teach our children, our women, our men, how to use Air when it comes, she teaches us on the TV. And the Schoolteacher prevents her! The Schoolteacher actually tries to stop us learning. He breaks the TV! That is what we face! While all of you are going to the moon!”

  Sezen stood enraged, quivering, and there was not a sound in the hall. None of them had any answer to that at all.

  Helpless in her own body, Mae felt back deep inside herself with her mind. Once more she reached back to some heavy, mighty, implacable thing in which she was rooted. And she felt herself there, felt this root, and it was gnarled, twisted, confounded. Two of us, she realized. There are two of us there, entwined like a ginger root. Mae was nearly at the point of understanding. Then she was called back.

  “Mae?” It was Mr. Wing. “Mae? Someone is here. He wants to help you.”

  The Shark in the suit, the man with the gravelly voice, was kneeling over her. His pinched face and his coiffeured hair seemed to shift inside Mae’s eyes as if a membrane had descended over them. His face seemed to turn green and twist into a sardonic grimace. She saw him suddenly as the Devil.

  Or someone did. And that person roused herself and rose up to her feet and saw in him everything that was destroying her world.

  Mae felt her own body seized from her. She felt herself pushed away and then drift upwards like a boat no longer moored. Mae floated free of herself. Everything went dim and still and calm, and she had no fear or anger. It was suddenly clear that none of this really meant anything. She viewed it all with the detachment with which she would one day view her own death.