Air

by Geoff Ryman

  Mae saw her body strike the predator in the face, a tiny dogged woman hitting a City operator. She could even smile at it. It amused her. The smile was metaphoric, because she was not longer in touch with her body.

  Mr. Wing held her by the arms and was pulling her back. The body started to sing. It bellowed an old war song, loud and defiant, a song of war against the Communists. Sezen and Sunni stood between her and the man, who held his bruised face. They stroked Mae’s hair. Distracted, wild-eyed, the face continued to sing, the old songs, the dead songs, the songs her beloved warrior had taught her fifty years before.

  Old Mrs. Tung was fighting to live. The only life she had was Mae’s.

  14

  MAE WOKE UP IN A STRANGE BED.

  The walls were pale blue with white cornices. Sitting patiently at the foot of her bed was a man. His face was familiar.

  It was Mr. Tunch. The name meant “Bronze.” He seemed to be made of something burnished. He was wearing a different suit, zigzag black on beige. Like the other one, it was shiny.

  “Good morning,” he said pleasantly.

  Mae sat up. The hotel room had flowers, a TV and a chest of drawers made of polished red wood.

  “Where are my friends?” asked Mae.

  “They have gone home. You have been somewhere else for many days.”

  “What do you mean, ‘somewhere else?’”

  “Ah.” He shrugged. “Mrs. Tung has been here instead.”

  “For what? Days? Days?”

  Mr. Tunch nodded. He tried to look sorry, but instead looked rather excited.

  Mae was prickled with terror. “How did I come back?” It was the most urgent thing to know.

  “She wandered off,” said Mr. Tunch. “Or rather, she simply could not understand what she was doing here. She couldn’t remember where she was, so she kept trying to leave. And finally she did.”

  He chuckled. “She got very frustrated.”

  Mae murmured, “They do.”

  After Mae’s father was killed, her family moved, along with the bloodstained diwan cushions, to the house of the Iron Aunt, Wang Cro. At first Mae did not understand what was wrong or why the adults whispered. The Iron Aunt was nearly eighty and strong enough to move oil jars, but she always thought it was Thursday, cooked dinner at nine in the morning, and could not remember that Mae was not her mother. The children could tease her into a fury.

  Mr. Tunch explained: “Your friends thought it was best if we did what we could here.”

  “Yes. Yes, I can see that,” murmured Mae. Yes, I can see you now, in your Bronze suit playing the big man. You even soothed Sezen into leaving me.

  “Can you do anything?” Mae demanded.

  Mr. Tunch leaned towards her and put a hand on her shoulder and made a slight gesture of helplessness. “We need to know more.”

  “You can’t help.” In some ways, Mae was relieved.

  Mr. Tunch smiled. “Not yet.”

  “In that case,” said Mae, “I want to go home. I have business to do.”

  “What business?” chuckled Mr. Tunch, with something too much like scorn. “Look. There is nowhere else in Karzistan that has as much knowledge about the Air Formats as my company. We are experts in Human-Computer Interface Medicine. Do you know what that is?”

  With a sudden chill, Mae knew. “You put cameras in Airheads’ eyes.”

  Tunch blinked. Gotcha, thought Mae. I don’t like you.

  He recovered. “Right now we are far more concerned about the damage the Test did. We are very concerned about the Format that was used in that Test, and we are horrified at what happened to you. Mrs. Chung, we all have business interests, but your health is more important. Forgive me, but you did not do much business these last three days.”

  You oil your words like Dr. Bauschu, thought Mae. You do everything for reasons of your own. But perhaps, just perhaps, I need you.

  MAE WAS DRIVEN TO YESHIBOZ SISTEMLAR ALONG A NEW EMPTY ROAD.

  Suddenly there was a wire mesh fence, with what looked like a white airport hangar beyond. Mae noted that it was built just outside the jurisdiction of the city.

  Gates were raised and lowered. Bright young people, the brightest Mae had yet seen in Yeshibozkent, looked as scrubbed as the painted metal walls of the hangar and somehow just as cheap. They performed the function of people without the solidity or the beauty. They would age badly.

  Mr. Bronze was king. Inside the front lobby, girls smiled and, modern as they were, dipped their heads in traditional respect.

  “This is Madam Chung Mae. Our patient,” he said to a woman at the first desk, with a quick grin.

  No covered heads here. No broad straw hats with the rims white from dried sweat. The people looked as though they had come from Florida. Disney World, thought Mae. I bet the offices at Disney World look just like this.

  “You’ll excuse me, Mrs. Chung. Like you, I have business to attend to. But Madam Akurgal will take excellent care of you.”

  Madam Akurgal was not yet thirty and dressed like a nurse with a rubber tube around her neck. She kept calling Mae by her first name, as if she were a servant.

  “Just come through here, Mae. We need to disinfect you,” she said, with a winning smile and a TV-Talent accent that came from nowhere specific. She led Mae into a corridor and there was a blast of air, and a sound like vacuum cleaners, and purple lights that made the white nurse’s uniform glow white.

  She sat Mae in a chair and told her to relax and lowered a kind of metal hat on her head. Mae waited for a sensation. None came. They sucked blood from her arm. Like at the hairdresser’s, Mae was given a magazine to read.

  Doctors looked at paper being printed and shook their heads and called each other over to look. They ignored both Mae and the nurse. Finally one of them tore off a sheet of the paper and showed it to Mae.

  He was a Chinese gentleman, one of her own, probably a Buddhist, and she hoped for understanding. “We have found nothing,” he said, beaming, pointing.

  The paper was printed with jagged lines.

  “So Mrs. Tung is not here.” He jabbed a finger at the paper. “Everything is working as usual. Except see, here, this line covers activity in the area of the cortex we think corresponds to communication with Air. We think you are constantly checking for Airmail.”

  He was rather pleased. “This is very encouraging. It means we speedily learn to use Air even without realizing it.”

  “What does it mean for me?”

  He shrugged. “It means that things are basically okay in your physical brain. It confirms what we had all thought, that the problem is with your imprint in Air. Somehow yours is linked with another imprint.”

  “Well, okay then, just wipe out those imprints in Air.”

  “Ah,” he said, delighted with the beauty of the thing. “Everything in Air is permanent.”

  Another doctor entered, and the first greeted him effusively, waving the paper. Then he turned back, nodding politely.

  “Oh, and one thing to cheer you up. Your blood test shows that you are expecting a joyful event. It will be a son. Good day.”

  Madam Akurgal shook her head. “Stupid men,” she hissed, and looked, stricken, into Mae’s eyes.

  “What does he mean, I’m pregnant? I can’t be pregnant.”

  The woman looked serious. “Oh, yes you can.”

  “I’ve had my period.” Mae was whispering frantically but even so, the male doctors turned. “Do you understand? I had a normal period!”

  The woman shook her head. “Then there must be real problems. Is the bleeding just today, recently?”

  “I have not miscarried! It was just a period and now it’s over!”

  The woman stroked her forehead. “Then there may be something really wrong. We can have you tested.”

  “I don’t want to be tested again, I have had too many tests!”

  “Just give yourself time to think. My name is Fatimah. Fatimah Akurgal. I will always be nearby.”

  “W
hat does it mean that they found nothing wrong with my head?”

  Fatimah sagged under the weight of so much evidence of things gone awry. “It means that you are the first of a kind. There is little that we know.”

  “I don’t want her taking over!” Mae was nearly in tears. “She is trying to take over!”

  “We will be looking at the Format to see if there is a way we can control it, even stop its communicating with you.” Fatimah paused. “I am so sorry. I wish I had better news.”

  Mae did begin to weep then. She hid her eyes. The doctors kept talking about her.

  Mae spent the rest of the morning having magazines passed to her. She could not read them. She thought about what these people had said, and the way they had said it.

  Fatimah took her to the bright noisy canteen and bought her a lunch of spicy red leaves that Mae had never seen before. “We’ll see about getting a car to drive you back to the hotel,” Fatimah said.

  “Be sure to tell Mr. Tunch for me,” Mae said, “that I will be going straight back home to Kizuldah.”

  Fatimah protested.

  “Just ask Mr. Tunch to talk to me,” said Mae.

  MR. TUNCH DROVE MAE BACK TO THE HOTEL HIMSELF.

  The car was bronze-colored and inside it smelled like a toilet, all false pine.

  “You are going to have to give me something else to keep me,” said Mae.

  “I beg your pardon!” coughed Mr. Tunch.

  “You can’t cure me, why should I stay?”

  “Why should I want you to stay?” Mr. Tunch’s eyes twinkled. It was cool in the car, air-conditioned. People outside squinted against the sun, walking on empty, baking streets.

  “You want information from me. And information is like sugar, it is to be sold.”

  “How very wise,” replied Mr. Tunch, sounding very pleased, as if she were a clever pupil.

  “You always sound surprised when I am not stupid. That’s insulting.”

  He dipped his head in respect. “I’m sorry. But I would have thought that a possibility of a cure was reason enough for you to stay.”

  “Possibility of a cure. That’s not a lot. What do you get?”

  “I get to understand your unusual situation. That will tell me a lot about how Air works.”

  “Then,” she sighed, “I am afraid this is not a fair trade. I do not want to spend time here being explored by you, only to find that there is no cure. I have work to do.”

  “What else do you want?” he asked blandly.

  “To learn everything you know,” she said. “About what is coming.”

  He chuckled. “My dear woman, why would you want to know that?”

  “So I can prepare my people.” Mae paused. “Not your people. My people. There is a difference.”

  His face did not lose a mote of its benevolence. “You could not possibly learn all the things I know.”

  “I want to know about this ‘Juh-ee’ stuff. And what these Gates are. And what will really happen inside people’s heads. What the great powers are using Air for, what they are going to get out of it.”

  Mr. Tunch smiled. “Is that all?” he said, his irony losing its airy touch.

  “One other thing. What is your full name?”

  She almost saw his tongue flick. “Surely a modern woman such as yourself does not believe in the Wisdom of Names?”

  You do, Mae realized. That’s why you don’t want to give it to me.

  “I am just a peasant,” she said. “It is not good to do business without knowing your client’s name.”

  He shook his head slightly. “I am your client, am I? In your professional hands?” He relented. “My full name is Mr. Hikmet Tunch.”

  Mr. Wisdom Bronze. A wise criminal has no need to soil his hands and so stays shiny. People mistake the polished bronze for gold. A wise criminal can sometimes even help his people, but always for a price.

  Mae, you are flying with hawks. Watch out for their talons.

  “So. Okay. The deal is this. I stay here one week. Not one day longer. We spend three hours a day finding out what you want, and three hours a day finding out what I want. Okay?”

  “Agreed,” he said after a moment.

  “I have the mornings,” she said.

  DOORS BLEEPED AND BLEW AND SAID HELLO TO MR. TUNCH.

  “Sorry about all this, but we try to get rid of all the dust,” he said.

  His office walls were covered in wood, and it was cool, without windows, and the electric lights were phony, made of bronze to look old-fashioned.

  The surface of his desk was covered in glass. Mr. Tunch touched it and spoke to it and it came alive with the familiar Interface.

  “In order,” he said. “‘Intro background briefing on genetics, cosmology, and Air history.’ ‘Resistance to GM and its relevance to the development of Air.’ ‘The nature of the U.N. Format and background history.’ ‘The nature of the Gates Format and background history.’ ‘Speculative futures.’” He paused. “Is that what you want to know?”

  “I will check my list.”

  “Good. I will be back here at lunchtime.” He caught her scowl. “I did not agree to teach you myself. That machine is far more used to teaching than I am. And much more patient. But please let me know if there is anything it cannot tell you.”

  “I don’t know how it works.”

  “No. But it knows how you work. Good morning, Mrs. Chung-ma’am.”

  And he was gone, through another jet of air.

  The machine began to speak and show pictures.

  They had, apparently, unthreaded humanity like a carpet.

  Inside the beautiful white semen, nestled inside the warm home of the womb, were threads, one from the male, one from the female. They now knew what made the threads, and the meaning of each stitch, as if it were Eloi embroidery.

  They could place each stitch. Or replace it with better ones.

  This was miraculous stuff to learn. Mae could imagine the souls of the unborn blossoming in new forms like flowers bred for new colors or perfumes.

  They could make people prettier, stronger, and smarter. Mr. Tunch’s desk repeated the arguments against doing this. Favorable modifications would be available only for the rich. An even greater gap would open up between Haves and Have-nots.

  Air, however, would make everyone a Have. So they said.

  These Everyone-Haves would have their memory, their knowledge, and their skills increased. Their ability to calculate figures and link previously unrelated information would all be enhanced by using Info through Air.

  It all sounded so calm and clear and reasonable, a briefing for the Disney people of Yeshiboz Sistemlar.

  Mae knew when she was being sold something. You are trying to scare me with all this talk of rich people buying smarter babies. You want me to buy Air instead.

  She sat forward. Already the bland neutral voice was slipping in warnings. Like old village gossips trying to get their way. Unplugged security problems that might mean the U.N. Format may not be controllable.

  Like her Kru. They put him in Air and they can’t turn him off, and all that knowledge goes away for free.

  No money to be made. What you need me for, Mr. Tunch, is to learn how to turn off Mrs. Tung and turn off my Kru.

  There was a tickle somewhere. The tickle was a way of looking at the world, a narrative. It was impatient.

  “The benefits of Air for social inclusion are evident,” said Mr. Tunch’s desk. “But questions of safety for users must be paramount. And intellectual property must be protected.”

  The tickling grew as insistent as a headache. It was fear. It was hopelessness. It was a dread of the world beyond Kizuldah.

  The desk said, “Liberal economists wanted to open up Air to the competitive marketplace. Others argued that there could only be one Air, and that it would be wrong to grant a monopoly to any purely business interest. With two competing Formats, users could choose.”

  They want to own our souls.

 
You see! You see?

  Her. She’s here.

  The desk said, “An international consortium of software houses agreed to set standards. The anti-monopolists soon claimed that the consortium was in fact controlled by the Company.”

  It’s always the same with these people.

  Showdown, thought Mae. It’s you or me.

  “Tension increased when the Director of the International Air Consortium resigned, charging the Company with bad faith.” The Desk still spoke.

  Before there was time for conscious thought to signal what she was doing, Mae said, “It is so sad about your daughter-in-law’s death.”

  What? The old one did not like surprises.

  “It was then that the director-general of the U.N. founded a new consortium to continue development of Air.”

  “Tui. She died. The same day you did.”

  Someone answered Mae aloud: “What? That’s a horrible thing to say!”

  Mae replied, “She threw herself down a well, don’t you remember? I know you’re dead, but you have been told about it many times. The day of the Air Test—it was months ago. She died. By the way, who are you speaking to?”

  The desk said, “But the new consortium struggled for lack of funds.”

  “This is a terrible thing to do, to try to scare an old lady this way!”

  “Scare? All I asked was, who are you talking to?”

  “I … I … Well, Mae, of course!”

  Mae remembered Aunt Wang Cro. She would pretend and pretend that everything was fine. There were no mirrors in the room. “Mae? Where is Mae? Can you see her in this room?”

  Mae leaned back in case the old one could see her reflection in the desk.

  The desk stopped teaching. “Excuse me, was that an instruction? I do not understand.”

  Mae pushed again. “Okay. Who are you?”

  “I am…” The thing stopped. For a moment, it had no identity. “I am … I am Madam Tung Ai-ling!”

  “Then who are you talking to?” Mae thrust words like a knife.

  “Excuse me, was that an instruction?”

  “I don’t know! I can’t see! I’m blind. This is terrible to do to an old blind lady—make fun of her! Why are you doing this?”