Air

by Geoff Ryman

  “It’s terrible.”

  “You are nearly dead! The hill outside this house is moving, whole and entire.”

  There was a sharp breath; Sunni spun into the dark, wisps of white twirling after her, and went back to her husband. “Wake up! Wake up!” Sunni shook Mr. Haseem’s bright-red face by the ears. She looked back at Mae.

  “I know him when he is like this. He won’t wake up,” she said.

  “Leave him,” said Mae.

  “Oh, you would say that—you hate him.”

  Mae limped forward. “I don’t, Sunni, but it is too late for all but final things. Do you want to die with him?”

  Sunni looked at her, blankly.

  “It’s come to that. If he doesn’t wake up now, you either love him enough to die with him, or you go with me now. Now!”

  “You hear her? You hear her?” Sunni shouted. She slapped Faysal hard on the face. He snorted.

  “Wake up!” She slapped him again. He turned over. Sunni said to Mae, “Okay, let’s go.”

  Mae turned and clattered down the steps.

  “Don’t hit your head on the beam,” Sunni said. Too late. Mae’s eyes watered a second time.

  Sunni grasped two tins of food as she soared through the kitchen.

  Out into moonlight.

  “Okay, we’re together,” Sunni said. “If one of us goes, the other tries to pull them free, but only for so long. We promise each other, ah. We save ourselves, but we try to help the first.”

  “Right,” said Mae. “But I’m going to Lower Street.”

  “Madwoman!” said Sunni, again.

  “I have to see if Siao has come back, if Mr. Chung got out, if Sezen is okay!”

  “Okay, but I’m not coming with you,” said Sunni.

  “At last you are talking sense.”

  “It will make a change, I admit,” said Sunni. The moving earth was unstable. Both of them fell into the mud. They thrashed their way to their feet, and held each other up.

  “The flashlight!” said Sunni.

  “I’ve got it, it’s covered in mud.” Mae wiped it on her coat, and the light shone dimly again.

  She pointed the light ahead.

  On one side of the Dohs’ house, the river had risen up. On the other, mud was mounting the back of the house like an unwanted lover. Mae and Sunni would have to cut down through the gap between the Dohs’ and the Alis’. There was no other way down. Mud and water carried them down into Upper Street.

  At some point the calling of the Muerain had fallen silent.

  “Zeynap,” panted Sunni, thinking of her friend Zeynap Ali. They tumbled together onto the street. Mae shone the light. The doorway of the Alis’ house was open.

  “They’re out,” said Mae.

  From inside the house of the Dohs came yells and shouts. Mae cried, “Dohs! I have a flashlight.” She ran. Inside the kitchen Young Miss Doh was flinging food into bags amid unwashed glasses and crumbs.

  “Go upstairs, get my parents down!” Miss Doh raged—as if Mae were stupid, standing still.

  Mae turned and ran up the stairs. In the upper corridor, Old Mrs. Doh spun into the flashlight beam, waving her arms as if fighting cobwebs.

  “This way!” said Mae.

  “Who’s that?” wailed Old Mrs. Doh.

  “Chung Mae.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Trying to help. These are the steps. Come on.”

  Mrs. Doh felt like a loose bunch of sticks in strong wind. She shook. “What,” she said. Not even a question. Mae passed her to Sunni at the foot of the stairs.

  “Here we are, dear,” said Sunni, as if it were a party.

  Mae turned and ran through each of the rooms. She heard the river’s roar. She heard a creaking, in the walls, in the wooden beams, and she felt the weight of the mud leaning against the house.

  “This house is going to go!” she shouted to anyone who could hear her. She went from bedroom to bedroom. The good fairy of the flashlight blessed the walls of each room.

  In the last of them, Old Mr. Doh stood, sobbing. He was trying to button his shirt and could not.

  Mae imitated Sunni. “Oh, good Mr. Doh. This is Mrs. Chung. It’s time to go.”

  He flung off her hand, impatient, sobbing, still fighting his way into his best shirt.

  “No, no,” she cooed, and laughed. “You look wonderfully elegant. Come down now.”

  “My wife,” he said, dazed.

  “She’s waiting.”

  The whole house groaned and listed forward.

  “Mae!” screamed Sunni, from the street outside.

  Mae simply seized him and pulled.

  “Oh, oh,” he said, fighting the dark. She hauled him towards the stairs. The walls suddenly snapped forward, leaning, dust puffing out where the floorboards joined them. Everything was looser underfoot. She pulled him down the stairs, he lost his footing, and they skidded together in the dark, slammed vengefully by gleeful wooden steps, until they both tumbled into the kitchen.

  “Leave me!” he said. He started to fight Mae, the light careering over the walls. Someone entered, seized him, and pulled. Out they all went, clattering against chairs, slipping on oil spilled from bottles, as if all the contents of the house had been upended. In the street, the Dohs waited.

  “I told you he was not outside,” raged Miss Doh, to the others. “It took Chung Mae, as always.” Miss Doh pushed the old man, turned in the darkness, seized Mae, and pushed her tongue into Mae’s mouth.

  “In case one of us dies,” Miss Doh said, and darted back.

  All the world was careering like the light; the stars themselves seemed to threaten to fall.

  Over the sound of water Mae heard a grinding rumble. She turned and saw headlights trailing up the road. Against the lights she saw water gushing up against tires.

  Siao, she thought. That could be Siao.

  “You go on,” Mae said to Sunni.

  “Where are you going, fool?”

  “Back home.”

  “Okay.” Sunni was suddenly in front of her. “Mae. You were right,” she said. Mae began to move. Sunni gripped her. “You heard me say that, didn’t you? You were right!”

  “Sunni! Yes. I heard. Go!”

  “You go! And come back quickly!”

  Nothing else was said.

  Mae ran past the backs of the houses of the Hos, the Matbashsuluks and the Kemals. She held on to the corner of Mr. Kemal’s house to wrench herself around into Lower Street.

  A sound like applause. If you hear it above you, you are dead.

  This is it, Mae; one check on the house, and then you go yourself.

  Her old house glowed white, like a cake under the stars. In front of it rested one of Mr. Pin’s old vans, empty and dark. The courtyard door was open. Mae ran in.

  Her courtyard was knee-deep in mud.

  “Siao? Siao?”

  Mae shone the light. The door to the barn was shut firmly, mud already pushing against it. Across the surface of the mud, rivulets of water flowed. If there were no one here, she would run.

  From inside Mr. Ken’s house someone wailed, “I can’t get out!” It was Old Mrs. Ken.

  Above them something hissed, like water on a skillet.

  “The terraces are going!” Mae screeched. And she felt a click.

  I have been here before, she thought.

  Mrs. Ken began to pound on the inside of the kitchen door, the weight of mud pushing it shut.

  “The window. Break the window!” Mae called. She waded forward. Mud was a slow and heavy evil. It sucked at her feet, and held her back like glue. She could not advance. “I can’t get any closer.”

  A chair was punched through the glass, which sparkled like snow, in the air on the liquid earth.

  “Mae!” someone called, from by the courtyard gate. Mae turned and it was Kuei. He surged forward, pushing through the mud up to his waist. “Mother! Mother!” He jerked, thrashed, tossed himself from side to side, rocking through the
mud towards the broken window. Suddenly the mud heaved him forward and off his feet.

  For the first time the thought came to Mae: We’ve left this too late. We could die.

  A head, arms, then legs came through the kitchen window. “Oh. Oh. Kuei! Help me out!”

  The mud gripped Kuei and held him fast. His mother was out of reach.

  “Kuei,” called another man. “Walk on this board.”

  Siao? Mae turned. Three men were carrying the lid from the coal-bunker.

  There was Siao.

  And there, helping him, was Joe. Joe! Where? How?

  The three of them flung the broad plywood lid on top of the mud under the window.

  “Jump down onto it. Maybe it will take your weight for long enough. Try to walk forward to us.”

  “Mother,” Kuei said. “Just fall forward. I’ll catch you.”

  Old Mrs. Ken without another word, pulled herself through the jagged window frame, and fell gently forward onto the raft. It listed down into the mud and she scuttled forward towards her son’s hands. Kuei grabbed her and pulled her forward. Joe and Siao rocked forward and pulled as well. Kuei cradled his mother, who juddered out a single sob.

  “Mae!” demanded Siao. “What are you doing here!”

  “Trying to find you!”

  A current of mud pushed them back away from the gate, like some kind of living thing, a slug.

  “How do we get out through this?” Joe despaired.

  Mae remembered her washing line, strung across the courtyard. “This way,” she said, flashing her good fairy light along the rope. Then she reached up and began to pull herself along it, through the mud.

  Mr. Ken said, “Okay, Mama, pull, like Mae says.”

  All of them seized the rope and pulled themselves forward. Mae turned at the gate, and shone the light on them.

  There they were, her three men: her husband, her lover, and Siao. She looked at Siao’s steady face. “I got a message at the Teahouse,” he said. “Joe had got to the Desiccated Village.”

  Joe looked up at Mae, and then down, quickly, in shame.

  Did Mae hear applause?

  She turned to the open door, not daring to breathe, and looked behind.

  There was a sound of delight—massed clapping from the eastern slope. The sound had a shape, a shape like a blade, sharp at one end, but widening behind. A wedge of the walls had fallen.

  “That’s it!” she keened, her voice box tight, wet.

  Ssssh, said all the stones. They trickled like water, made a sound like water, were borne by it and their own weight down the hillside, one collapse knocking into the terrace below, catching it, knocking it free. Mae fought her way to the street and, glinting in the moonlight, she saw it, a flow of rocks on the eastern side of the bowl.

  A river of stone.

  “Come on!” she screeched again.

  She looked behind her wildly; Ken and Joe were up to their ankles, and pulling Mrs. Ken free.

  Mae fought forward and pulled.

  Then the applause started on the hill directly above them.

  It was so slow, the fall of stone. Above them on the hill, a terrace wall turned sideways, grumpily, forced to move by the weight of stone settling on top of it. All of it slumped forward towards the school, to Sezen’s.

  They would not be able to get back to Upper Street.

  “We’ve got to go this way,” said Mae.

  They all ran. Mae shone the light. Doors left open, doors closed, Mae found she no longer cared who had managed to escape. As if something were jamming needles into her ears, there was a terrible sensation, a shivering in the air, in the earth itself, that was not quite a noise. It was something inside her head.

  There was another sigh, in front of them this time. The hills groaned with relief, as if finally able to let loose their bladders and bowels. Three houses only, and they would come to the square.

  The beam of light teased them, showing them glimpses of the flood. The square had indeed gone. Most of the Kosals’ house had collapsed. The western corner of it still stood, but the rest was spread as rubble across the new lake. A chair stood on the stone. Beyond the rubble, the river roared.

  “We can’t get across,” said Mr. Ken.

  “We could try climbing the rubble,” Joe said.

  “Just beyond it would be the gully. We would just disappear into it.”

  “Let’s go back,” Old Mrs. Ken pleaded.

  “The house will be buried,” said Mae.

  There was grinding, as if the sky itself were being milled, as if the hill were peppercorns—and in the light of the moon and stars they saw the bridge above them come away from its foundations.

  The bridge heaved up and shrugged forward and skidded down the slope with a fall of earth and stone, down from Upper Street. There was an explosion of water, great white shooting jets of it. Wooden beams spun upwards into the air. A tangle of roots rose up, snagged itself, whiplashed down. The One Tree had fallen. The bridge moved down the hill. The bridge settled, still upright, leading nowhere.

  Another crash spread out just above them. The Dohs’ house would have finally gone.

  One of her men jerked her. Which one? All of them moved into a veil of water. It pummeled their heads. It tried to drive them down onto the ruins of the Kosal house. They had to climb up a broken wall of stone. Someone reached down for her. She looked up into his face. It was Joe’s face, looking worn, handsome, and sad. But not slow—fast, lean, and as awake as he had been when he was the leader of the young men. He hoisted her up.

  First they climbed up the Tree. They walked along its ancient oaken trunk, all rough creases.

  And then walked as if nothing were awry, across the old bridge. A waterfall thundered next to them, scented with earth and the mineral smell of freshly melted snow. A beautiful river huge and green washed under them and down onto a valley that was a sea. The Tuis’ house stood above the water, its upper stories only. Otherwise, the southern wing of the village was simply submerged. Kizuldah looked like a seaside town, as if it had always been that way, with a breakwater of stone.

  Lower Street fell away below them to the west, and the hillside was flowing across it. Everything was moving: rocks, shrubs, earth, as if in migration. The earth looked like a herd of buffalo going to a lake to drink.

  “Oh! Oh,” sobbed Mrs. Ken. “Everything’s gone!”

  They had to jump down from the bridge, twice the height of a man, into swiftly flowing water. The current slammed into Mae, taking her breath and her strength. One of her men caught her; she caught him; they both caught Mrs. Ken and whoever was holding her. Together they pulled each other up onto the street that was gushing water, white rapids over the cobbles. Cobbles were solid underfoot.

  They were going to live. They ran up the hill towards Kwan’s.

  24

  WING HAD HIS GENERATOR RUNNING.

  The courtyard was full of light and people. The Haj, their pilgrim to Mecca, stood at the courtyard gate. He had crammed onto his head a funny hat with a teddy-bear’s face. Perhaps he wanted to cheer people up. He had a list.

  “Chung Mae,” the Haj called out. People surged forward. “Ho-ho! With all the Chungs—Old Mrs. Ken and…” He paused, ballooning out his eyes. “… Mr. Ken.” He coughed and then murmured, “Quite a family group.”

  Mrs. Shenyalar threw a blanket around Mae’s shoulders. “Mrs. Chung was first!” the Muerain’s wife shouted to the villagers. “She roused my husband!”

  Sunni’s mother, Old Mrs. al Gama, took up Mae’s hand. Sunni hugged Mae. “Are you all right, darling?” Sunni asked.

  Mae turned back around to the Haj. “Mr. Haj-sir. Where is Sezen? Miss Ozdemir—has she come in yet?”

  The Haj kept smiling, but his eyes narrowed. He said nothing.

  “Kwan has hot food for everyone.” Sunni was tugging at her shoulder.

  “Haj? You have been keeping count? Who has come? Who has not?”

  The Haj looked sweet, like a calf,
and shrugged. He was blinking. “So many have been saved,” he said, looking down at the list.

  “Where is Sezen?”

  The Haj sighed, and reached forward with his plump hands. “She has not come here.”

  “Who else?”

  “The Shens, the Chus…”

  Mae knew. “The people in the south wash.”

  The Haj shook his head. “The Macks and Pins are all right.” He sighed. “They believed you.”

  Mae found she was weeping. “Who else?”

  Sunni stopped pulling, surrendered, and hugged her.

  Mae asked, “What about Han Kai-hui? Her daughter?”

  The Haj simply shook his head and said, “Insallah.”

  “Almost everyone else is all right,” said Sunni. “You did everything.”

  Mae let herself be led through the throng. All the Soongs had survived and were huddled in one corner of the court. The cluster of grandchildren played with toys. Mr. and Mrs. Okan shuffled up to Mae and showered her with thanks.

  Sezen was gone. She had died saving An, the traitor. Han An, the last person in the world you could have seen Sezen giving her life for. Mae thought of An and their clipboards. Mae remembered Kai-hui’s face when they were little girls, both poor, catching turtles in the reeds.

  From somewhere there came a sound like thunder or fireworks, a crackling and a boom. Someone’s house had fallen. Involuntarily, the villagers groaned.

  Some of the Dohs surged around Mae now, and took hold of her hand. They were thanking her. Was their house still standing?

  “Have you seen Mr. and Mrs. Ozdemir?” Mae managed to ask. Mrs. Doh stared back at her, as if she was far too important to know or care about sharecroppers.

  “Wild girl,” said Mae, and suddenly her legs left her.

  Mae slumped down onto the ground. Siao, Joe, and Ken Kuei were ranged all around her and that was too much as well. Her brain buzzed.

  Someone else was using her mouth.

  We all go, we are all washed away, down into the dark, and no one will find us ever again.

  Sunni was making Mae sit up. “Sezen is probably cut off somewhere, Mae. You know Sezen: She’ll come roaring up here tomorrow on her boyfriend’s motorcycle.”

  Indeed, it would be just like Sezen. Mae tried to smile. Joe and Ken between them helped her to her feet. Her shins were numb.