Sunni hired a minibus with rows of seats to take her customers to Green Valley City.
Mae was in her terraces working and saw the van drive out of the village. It stopped on the road below her.
Mae's eyes were sharp. So were Sunni's. Sunni leaned out of the window and stared up at Mae over the top of sunglasses. Sunni's hair was perfect under a blue scarf. She said something. Inside the van, Mrs Ali looked around Sunni to see Madam Owl at work in her fields. Mrs Nan, Miss Ping… all peered up at her.
This is stupid, thought Mae. She keeps trying to poop on me in such tiny ways.
Mae grinned and smiled and waved as if at friends. She felt like turning and pointing her arse at them. Did they really take such delight in knowing that she had to work?
Mrs Ali said something and patted Sunni on the shoulder. Having exposed Madam Death as a mere peasant, the van of the other party drove off towards the City.
Mae found she really didn't care. She chuckled and went back to work. Her hills were beautiful.
Her husband had found work; whatever happened, she would have some kind of business; her school was a success. Joe would come home, and then, perhaps like childbirth or mourning, the thing with Mr Ken would have to end.
The rice whispered in the wind as it had done for two thousand years. At times the world seemed good and at peace and happy. Mae knew this was only a respite, for life was a constant struggle. Bird eats worm, bird has its eggs, and those eggs are eaten. The rice is beautiful and then cut down. People melt into the earth while yearning for the sky.
In the afternoon, Mae taught her school. At sunset, walking home from teaching the children, Mae saw a van come jostling up Lower Street.
Oh, this is Sunni's circus, she thought. Well, I can wave just as prettily again.
The van squealed to a halt at the tight corner. The driver did not know the road. The sunset light made everything look golden, but his van actually was a beautiful flaked metallic gold.
'Excuse me,' said the driver. Balshang face, Balshang accent. 'Can you tell me where lives Mr Wing?'
Mae thought quickly. 'Yes, indeed, but it will be easier if I show you. May I?'
The man's face did not change. For a moment, he was silent, and then said, 'Please.' He pushed open the door for her.
The back of the van was jammed with tools, books, a suitcase, and a hastily rolled-up blue tent. The metal pegs had earth jammed into their grooves.
He asked her, 'How soon to harvest here?' He was young – very young indeed, to own such a fine van. He was incredibly skinny. The biggest thing about him was his hair: young, thick, springy, and forced under a hat. It was a completely useless hat. It was soft and khaki-green and had no brim. It would not keep off the sun, but it would make the head hot. He wore tiny glasses and smiled benignly. There was a gentle air about him that made Mae want to warn him: Be careful where you choose to sleep alone in that tent.
'It is just under a month,' said Mae. 'The men will be back soon.'
'They try to find work. Ah,' he said. His mouth jerked in a strange downward motion.
The van revved up the sudden steep slope towards Mr Wing's house. 'Why – is there a problem with work?' Mae asked.
'Huh,' said the man. It was a kind of a laugh. 'Haven't you heard?'
'We get no news up here,' said Mae.
'Ho. Just that there is none. The entire country is moving, looking for work.'
He eased the van into Mr Wing's courtyard. Dashboard lights flashed and he flipped something off and swung himself out of the van. Mae followed. He stood, hands on hips, regarding the house.
'These old mountain houses are very fine,' he said. 'It is lovely to be so cool. Mr Wing keeps his television outside?'
'That is so the village can use it. I teach on it.'
He turned. He was very young, but with a crease down either side of his mouth that only skinny men get. 'What do you teach?'
'How to use the TV. What Air will be like. I call it Swallow School. So people can fly in the Air.'
'Hmm,' he said. 'What's your name?'
'Mae,' she said.
'No,' he said. 'Your full name.' He paused. 'I'm from the government.' He seemed to think this would reassure her.
Mae did not answer. 'There is Mrs Wing.'
Kwan was coming down her steps, a question on her face.
'He's from the government,' warned Mae, wincing.
'Mrs Wing? Is your husband here?' the man asked.
'My husband is visiting his many farms, to see how things progress,' said Kwan.
'I…' he began and thought better of it. I did not expect an Eloi, is what he wanted to say. 'I am from the Central Bureau of Information Technology,' he announced. 'We are very concerned to see how the Test went.'
Kwan maintained a faultless exterior. 'That was some months ago.'
'Yes. There are many villages. I am visiting them all, to inspect the damage, and to help prepare people for what is coming next year.'
'We are doing that for ourselves,' said Mrs Kwan. She inclined her head towards Mae. 'Mae has been helping us all.'
'So I hear,' said the Central Man. He beamed and nodded approval. 'It is not so in other places.'
'It is so here,' said Kwan.
'Good. And your TV. It works well?'
'Oh, very well,' said Kwan, not sounding like herself at all. Her smile stiffened and her eyes glistened with meaning at Mae. She wants him away from her TV, thought Mae.
'Good. The Central Bureau of Information Technology gave him a grant, no?'
Kwan fluttered. 'I am afraid I know nothing of my husband's business.'
Mae changed the subject as if it were a rug under his feet. 'Do you need a place to stay? You see, my neighbour has spare rooms now. You could park your van in my courtyard.'
Kwan waved another flag of distraction at him. 'Oh yes, poor Mr Ken. You might like to talk to him. It is so sad. His wife was driven mad by the Test and drowned herself, and his grandmother died of shock.'
The Central Man looked stricken. He shook his head. 'Such foolishness,' he said.
'We are not educated people,' said Kwan, casting her eyes down.
'That's not what I meant,' he said. 'I mean it was foolish to have that Test.'
A Central Man, saying the government was wrong? Either he was young and foolish, or very dangerous. Kwan and Mae exchanged further anxious glances.
The Central Man looked pained. 'Were… I am sorry to have to ask, Mrs Wing-ma'am: Did anyone else in this village die in the Test?'
'No, no, those were the only people.'
'Such a terrible thing, two in one house.'
Kwan's eyes were on Mae's again.
Child voices sounded outside the gate, whispering in wonder. Mae said, 'Sir, the children have seen your van. If you want to drive anywhere, we'd better go now.'
The truth of it made Kwan and Mae laugh, as water does on a skillet. 'She's right,' said Kwan.
The Central Man made the same, embarrassed-looking downward jerk of the mouth. He nodded, put on his useless hat again, and said, 'May I come back to talk to you tonight?'
'Of course,' Kwan replied. 'But it is Mae you really need to talk to.'
'Ah,' said Mae. 'The rough little monkeys have seen us.' Dawn and Zaynab peered grinning out at them from behind the gate, and the Pins crowded behind them.
'Oops,' the man said, and broke into an ungainly hobble.
As the van bumped back down Lower Street, the perfect thing happened.
Sunni and her busload heaved up over the hill into the little square. The Central Man swerved his golden car to miss them.
Mae stuck her head out the window and grinned and waved. Ms Haseem, Mrs Ali, Miss Ping: Their faces fell to see Chung Mae in a golden car of her own. 'Hello! Hello!' she called, smiling and nodding.
The Central Man was grinning, too.
'So those are the opposition, are they?'
Mae felt endangered. 'What do you mean?'
He changed gear and his van inched forward. 'Oh. The Test has created much trouble in villages like this one. You'll have to tell me where to drive.'
How about back to Balshang? Mae thought to herself.
The government van fitted neatly through the gate of Mae's courtyard.
Mr Ken's hens scattered, the dog started to bark, and his youngest daughter came running out to stare at the golden van.
Old Mrs Ken emerged, wiping her hands.
Mae bowed to her lover's mother. She exchanged formulaic greetings and then Mae explained: This gentleman needs a spare room. Old Mrs Ken looked doubtful.
Then the Central Man said, 'I can pay you five riels a night.'
Mae was dumbfounded. My God, I could have paid back the interest on the loan!
Mae had to endure Old Mrs Ken's sunburst of a smile. She bowed and bowed again to Mae, delighted at receiving such bounty from a neighbour. 'It will be an honour and privilege!' she exclaimed. 'It will bring happiness into our house again. Dear Mrs Chung, you think of your neighbours too much, you are too kind. Oh, no, sir, let us carry your things. Kuei! Kuei!' She called her son's name.
Ken Kuei emerged, having just bathed. He puts the city man to shame, thought Mae, as Mr Ken lifted up the Central Man's case. Kuei was round like ripe fruit; the Central Man was stricken bushes on a plain.
The Central Man said, 'Mrs Chung, I must talk to you some more, once I am settled in.'
'Of course,' said Mae.
Her house was dark inside. She drank water, ate cold rice, and felt suddenly alone. It was strange having Old Mrs Ken smile on her. If Kuei's mother had known the truth, she would have beaten her breast and called down scandal from the village all around.
The thought was as cold as the rice, as the silence: how am I going to find my way out of all of this?
And then the government spy came back in.
'Excuse me,' he said.
'You are the government,' she said, and shrugged, meaning, How am I to stop the government? His golden vehicle was the colour of sunlight through her one tiny window. Poverty was shabby around her shoulders, like a moth-eaten shawl.
'I'm not the government,' he said. 'Well… I come from it, but we are all Karzistanis. We care for our country. May I?'
He indicated a chair. What would you say, Central Man, if I denied the chair to you? Probably, Mae decided, nothing.
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 now 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 tell anyone you showed it to me. I know, I know, your neighbours 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 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 our 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 that 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.