Mae got her money.
She was working at three a.m., on Kwan's TV, when it announced that she had mail.
'I will read it for you,' the machine said. By now it knew that Mae avoided reading herself.
'The Republic of Karzistan, Ministry of Development, under the terms of the Taking Wing Initiative, is pleased to inform you that it will grant funding in full as requested in your recent application, under the following conditions…'
Mae was numb. The government was talking to her. The government knew who she was. They had just given her the money?
What conditions? Her mind went dark, ready to be hurt.
First, they wanted her to keep records of both sales and replies.
'The Taking Wing Initiative needs to know how successfully you have unrolled your mat. Please save the attached suite of Customer Care software. It will automatically record the data we need…'
It was a Question Map. The same information was recorded over and over – any letters she got, any orders she fulfilled, would be analyzed by country, referral, and type of business.
Mae kept listening for serious conditions. But there were none. No interest? No percentage?
Mae was enraged. What kind of foolish government was that, to arrange its business so badly? How could it prosper? Were they all children, like Mr Oz?
But praise the gods – Luck, Happiness, whatever – for giving them masters who were so naive. She had her money; she had her business back. Oh, could she ride this life like a leaf bobbing up and down on the river in a storm!
Mae needed to tell someone, but who could she tell at three in the morning? Poor Kwan who had nursed her but was now asleep? The Central Man, yes, but that would mean going back to her old house, to Joe, to Mr Ken… Who?
Mae went to Sezen's house. She knocked on the door. Then, beyond politesse, Mae pummelled it. This was good news.
There were hissed voices, shuffling, a child's cry, a shushing, slippers on the floor.
Sezen answered. She wore a little girl's nightdress and the spots on her cheeks had gone blue-black from merciless squeezing.
May seized her hands. 'I got the money!' she whispered. 'Sezen. It was as you said, the government gave us the cash!'
'This is a joke. This is madness,' said Sezen.
'They gave me every last riel of it. I asked for too much!'
'You mean we are going to do it?'
'Yes, yes, they loved it!'
Sezen squealed and hugged her, spun on her heel, and said, 'Let's get drunk. You have any booze?'
Mae shook her head.
'Rich woman, you will have whisky. You will have silks.'
You will build your mother a new house.'
'Tuh!' said Sezen. 'No. I will buy a motorcycle. Of my own.'
Mae pronounced her, 'Wild girl.'
'Look who is calling people wild. Eh? You? Adventuress. Madam Death. The man in her family. All these things people call you.'
Sezen bundled Mae into her own poor house. She threw cushions in abandon into a heap. In the middle of the night at the end of summer, the fleas were at their hungriest. They nipped about Mae's ankles in a mist.
Sezen knelt in front of a small keep in the wall. 'Here,' she said, pulling out a bottle. 'This is disgusting, but strong. Father made it. It is the only thing he does well.' Its creator snored behind the curtain, like a boozehouse accordion.
Rice wine. Amid the filth of Sezen's house, Mae sat and drank, and told Sezen everything about the grant application and the answer.
'Who needs the village?' Mae said. The rice wine was milky and tasted like chalk, but it seemed to creep up her spine, numbing it vertebra by vertebra.
'Ptoo! to the village,' said Sezen, and pretended to spit. 'Only their clothing holds them together.'
'Are we naked, then?' asked Mae.
'The naked are brave,' said Sezen, and raised her glass.
'To the naked!' said Mae, and raised her glass.
'To Mr Ken,' added Sezen. 'Oh! I want to be fucked.'
Mae was too drunk to be shocked. 'Musa,' she managed to say.
Sezen held out a graphic little finger. 'All you Chinese…' she said. 'He's a Muslim, but Chinese father.' She shook her head, and then suddenly laughed, and shook her head again. Still laughing, Sezen put down the glass suddenly, as if it were a great weight she could no longer bear.
'I am a pig and my family are pigs. All the men I meet are pigs and I shall have piggy children.' She picked up the glass and toasted her helplessness, or the house, or her fate.
The fleas around Mae's ankles rose and fell like flames. Abstracted by the wine, Mae hazily swatted and scratched. She watched helplessly, as she realized Sezen was no longer laughing.
'You only come to me because you are fallen,' accused Sezen, grumpy.
'If you want more people to come, just… clean up,' Mae said.
Sezen looked back at her bleakly. 'This is cleaned up.' She sputtered into laughter. 'I have just cleaned up, this is as clean as it gets! Listen, even the fleas are disgusted with this place.' Laughter ached out of her. A string of sticky spittle clung between her lips. 'I am such a lady, you see, I get bored cleaning. It is beneath me.' Sezen was not really ashamed.
In the future, there will be no ladies, thought Mae. All of the old channels we pour down will be blocked. Ladies, peasants, men, women, children, rich, poor, clean, dirty, we will all be churned up together. We will be churning clouds in the air, blown by wind, pierced by swallows…
'I'm drunk,' Mae managed to say.
'Poisoned, more like,' said Sezen, looking at the milky wine. She poured it onto the beaten-dirt floor. 'Maybe it will kill the fleas.'
'Welcome to the Mae-Sezen Fashion Emporium,' said Mae.
' New York… Paris… Singapore… Tokyo… Kizul-duh.' Hazily, Sezen stood up and did a model's turn. Her nightrobe was eaten at the hem and knees. 'Sezen-ma'am displays the fine cut and design features of her latest creation.' Sezen held up the rotten hem. 'Air ventilation for summer wear, illustrates the holes in Miss Ozdemir-ma'am's head through which Air seeps.' She grinned like a tigerish Talent, and batted her eyes. 'This year's fashion adventure.'
Mae was chuckling. Calmly, she noticed that she had knocked over her glass.
'That will burn a hole in your heart,' said Sezen, of her father's wine.
'Holes in the heart are this year's fashion adventure,' said Mae.
Sezen stopped. 'You're crying,' she accused, suddenly young and let-down.
Am I? wondered Mae. She felt her cheeks. They were wet. 'Just from laughter,' she promised Sezen, who only wanted escape. 'Just from laughter,' Mae said again, and reached forward and patted Sezen's hand.
'Uh! We need a radio,' said Sezen. 'Then we could dance.'
'When the Air comes,' said Mae. 'We will have music whenever we want it. Any kind of music.'
'When the Air comes!' sighed Sezen, with sudden feeling. 'Oh, when Air comes I shall put the music in my head on Air so everyone can hear it.' Sezen sat and closed her eyes, and Mae realized she was seeing something new.
Sezen was someone who wanted Air. Mae was afraid of it. She regarded it as Flood, Fire, Avalanche, something to be faced up to and controlled. This was different.
Sezen sat with her eyes closed and whispered. 'When the Air comes, we can sing to each other, only we will sound like the biggest band in the world.' She swayed, as if to music.
Mae joined in: 'When the Air comes, we can dress each other in Air clothes.'
'Light as spiderwebs…'
'When the Air comes, we can see all the naked men we want…'
Mae expected Sezen to give a wicked, wild-girl chuckle; instead she whispered, 'So many beautiful men, that it will grow as normal as birds.'
'When the Air comes…' Mae began.
'We will all be birds, we will all be naked, all be brave.'
Sezen said that?
Sezen kept speaking, in a trance. 'The clothes will drop away, the fleas and the fur, and we'll jump out of our bodies and fly, and the world will all be dream, and dream will be all of the world.'
Her voice trailed away. She was asleep. Mae felt a curtain descend behind her forehead, a curtain of sadness and exhaustion. I will sleep here amid the fleas, she thought. Because I have just seen a miracle. A miracle comes when someone speaks, really speaks, because when someone does that, you also hear God.
Air will be wonderful. I didn't know that.
Mae leaned her head down onto the earthern floor. It smelled of spice and corn, not garbage. Sezen was snoring. Mae took her hand and managed to blow out the candle. Anaesthetized, Mae fell asleep.
It was still dark when the smells of the filthy house woke her up – stale vegetation, drying shitcakes, and sour old rice in the bins. The voracious fleas were sticking needles into her. There was slippery, queasy stirring below, in addition to a blinding hangover headache.
Mae was bleeding, below.
She felt her breath like a candle flame. Blood means I am not pregnant. I can't be pregnant. She needed to check, to be sure. She would not risk feeling her female wound with dirty hands. She could not do that here. She could not sleep here now either, sober. The house did stink.
Forgive me, Sezen, I did keep you company for a while.
Sezen stirred, murmuring. 'Good night,' Mae whispered.
Mae stumbled out onto the cobbles, and looked up at the mountain sky, a river of stars across it as milky as Sezen's father's wine. The air was sweet, it cleared everything. Yes, Sezen was right, the Air was wonderful. She, Mae, was not pregnant. Good things were still to come, good things to do.
She listened again to her village – to the far dogs, the wind in reeds, and the sounds of their river leaping over stones.
Pregnant? demanded a voice in her head.
The nausea came again, in a wave.
In the morning, Mae was still nauseous, but told herself it was the wine.
If she was bleeding, she could not be pregnant. And if she were ill, badly ill, she found, she did not mind.
All that she asked was that she lived long enough to get the village on Air.
Downstairs, in the kitchen, Kwan was worried. 'Where did you go?' Kwan asked her.
'I went drinking with Sezen,' said Mae, abstracted by hangover.
Kwan looked horrified.
'She is very bright, brighter than you would think.'
'She would have to be. Perhaps you could teach her to wash.'
Mae felt like a truck on a bad road. There was need of repair. 'We all need to improve in some ways,' she said.
Kwan rumpled her lips, as if to say: Don't be so mealymouthed and pious.
'I'm not pregnant,' Mae said.
Kwan blinked, for a moment. 'That at least is a blessing.'
'In some ways. Who is to say what is a blessing these days?' Mae sat up. 'I need to see my government man.'
Things were still too bad for her to walk in daylight through the village. Certainly not to be seen returning to the home of Mr Ken.
Kwan sighed.
Mae said, 'I fear I am proving to be a trouble to you.'
Kwan gave her head a dismissive twitch. 'I will send a child with a message.'
It was only after Kwan had gone that Mae realized: I did not tell her about the government money. She will think I am hiding it from her. Maybe I was.
Mae washed. She was still bleeding. The blood smelled of woman. She pushed a clean rag up herself, and went downstairs. She told Kwan about the government money, after giving an apologetic dip at the knees. 'I was more relieved at the other news.'
'Both are good,' said Kwan, blandly.
The government man came, Mae told him about the grant. He smiled, but he did not look overjoyed. 'That quick.' He shook his head. 'That means there have been few applications. They have spare funding; they need to use it.' Mae tried to read the hand across his forehead, the distracted look.
'You are worried?' she asked.
'It means no one else is finding anything,' he said. 'It's not working.'
From down below came the sound of the men and the TV. Do women and children ever get to watch it now? They were watching snooker. Of all the pointless things to waste a morning on.
'Stay here,' Mr Oz told her.
He turned and went down Kwan's whitewashed steps. Mae listened, hidden behind the doorway. The staircase smiled white in the sunlight.
Suddenly there were howls from the men, protests.
'Quiet,' demanded Mr Oz. 'This is more important than sports.'
A roar of protest from the men.
Mr Oz continued: 'What do you care about snooker scores in Balshang? Balshang doesn't care that you burn shit for fuel. Balshang doesn't even know you exist!'
Mae blinked. Fighting words from such a frail boy. Who would have thought it? The men suddenly fell silent. The screen made a trumpeting sound, the sound of government. Humbled, silent, made small by the weight of society above them, the village men waited. Mae could feel them wait.
Then she heard a spreading mumble.
They know, she realized. They know about the money. He's shown them on TV.
'Thank you, gentlemen,' said Mr Oz.
Naked but brave. A harlot funded by the government to make herself richer than the men. That's what they will call me. I will have to have a face of stone, now. I will have to be as enduring as the mountain. Mountains hold up air.
Oblivious as always, the Central Man bustled back in with paper. Kwan emerged, concerned, curious, wiping her hands. The paper had printed out all the terms and conditions.
'Right,' he explained. 'The funding is in the form of bank credits. Do you know what those are?'
Mae shook her head. 'Believability Card?'
'Better than that. But I need to go with you to ratify them. That will set up a business account in the bank. We then need to set up a Question Mark account, so that you can use it on the Net. Then… you are in business.'
'That means going to Green Valley City,' said Mae. Her heart leapt. The City! She had not seen it since spring.
'Mmm-hmm,' Mr Oz said, oblivious again to what that meant for her. 'And that is good, too, because there is a big seminar there this week. For people in the Taking Wing Initiative. It will be good. The Wings have also been invited.'
'Can we take Sunni with us?' asked Mae.
Sunni ran out of her house to the government van.
She was immaculate in city-woman oatmeal, with a beige scarf on her head. She darted down the hill to the bridge, quickly so that no one would see her. She squashed into the backseat next to Mae, and greeted Mae, Mr Oz, and Mr Wing. Plainly, she wanted to be away.
'Hello, Mrs Sunni-ma'am.' Sezen beamed at her. Pleased to see me? Sezen's eyes were spiked with merriment like a dog's collar against wolves. Mae gave Sezen a little warning with her eyes.
'Good morning, Sezen,' Sunni managed. She flinched at Sezen's graduation dress, mounds of shiny lemon-yellow. Sunni put on her sunglasses as if against the glare.
'Mrs Haseem-ma'am,' Mr Wing replied with dignity from the front seat. Mr Oz nodded and backed the van back into Upper Street.
Sunni turned to Mae, and her smile was from the old days. 'It was very kind of you to ask me,' she said to Mae.
Mae said, 'I felt it would be good for old friends in the party of progress to go together to see what they are doing in the City.'
'And it is such a beautiful morning!' said Sezen, reaching around Mae to touch Sunni on the shoulder. 'We can stop and wave to all your friends, working in the fields.'
'If those who are friends of progress are not friends of each other, then disaster awaits,' said Mae, and glared.
'Indeed,' murmured Sunni. 'Those are my feelings.' Protected by sunglasses, Sunni looked fragile in defeat, uncertain and frightened by the need for trust.
Impulsively, Mae took her hand. 'It is good to be with friends.'
'Where is the Lady An?' chirped Sezen.
Sunni found enough heart to reply. 'An is studying for a qualification in fashion studies. She does this through the Net on my TV. She is enjoying it. Perhaps you should talk to her, Sezen, and see if the course interests you. You could study together.'
'I would love to do that!' enthused Sezen, so brightly that it was plain she could think of nothing worse. 'She would teach me how to improve my pronunciation.'
And improve your manners, thought Mae. She gave Sunni's hand a little squeeze. To her surprise, Sunni squeezed back.
Sunni persisted. 'Such a terrible thing that people do not understand the uses of the TV. To think! There are people who want it turned off!'
'People who try to destroy others,' said Sezen, her voice now simple, hard and dark.
'Indeed,' said Sunni, simply. Mae twisted around and her eyes said to Sezen: Enough.
Sezen's smile was one of contentment. She gave Mae a little salute and looked away, honour satisfied.
Already their little village was gone. Just alongside Mr Oz's window, there was a brutal falling-away of stone. 'Music?' Mr Wing asked, and turned on the radio.
Full of echo and sounds of machinery was something like a song for Sezen's generation. She was drawn, silenced by what to her was a mating call, a cry to be joined with the modern. The old folk fell silent.
Fluttering past like insubstantial scarves went rice fields, misty terraces, fat men riding donkeys, women in broad straw hats considering harvest.
They went down into the Desiccated Village. Mae was shocked to see grey dishes and wires on most of the houses.
'They've had those since summer,' said Sunni, turning. 'Perhaps we are not so advanced in Kizuldah.'
'Installing sat ho lih tuh,' said Mr Oz, shaking his head, as if they all shared his amusement. 'Still, it's reliable old technology.'
Mae felt unable to ask: What is a satellite?
'Look,' said Sunni, suddenly pointing. 'They are already threshing!'
Going down the hill was like plunging into their future. On the burnished-yellow threshing ground were big rented machines and wagons loaded with chickpeas. The men were pitchforking them raw into the threshers. The jets of straw, the waiting reed baskets to collect the peas, the women and boys bearing them off to plastic matting, the little girls herding the geese away from the mats – it was all as it always had been.
The vision was withdrawn behind a flurry of fencing and gates. A good harvest.
'Ah!' sighed Sunni, as if the relief were her own. 'They will have a good party, then.'
'High feasting,' agreed Mae. 'It is useful that they are so dry compared to us. We grow rice, they grow chickpeas.'
'Mmm, we can just exchange,' Sunni agreed. It was what they always said.
Suddenly the road stopped complaining under them. Suddenly it was smooth, humming like a song. The clouds of white dust died away in trails behind them, like the silver tracks of aircraft.
Sunni and Mae looked at each other in wonder: Paved? Our road is paved?
Then they both broke out in laughter.
Sunni held her plump belly. 'Who… Who thought it was worthwhile paving a city road here?'
'Make it easier for the donkey!' chuckled Mae.
They thought of all the fat old farmers, their bewildered wives, the barefoot children, the brown-toothed brigands with ancient rifles. Oh, indeed, how they needed a highway.
'You need it for motorcycles,' said Sezen, sharply. The radio played another Balshang song. 'We will all have motorcycles.'
Mae placated her. 'I know, Sezen, but it just seems strange.'
'Remember when grass grew between the wheel tracks?' Sunni said.
'Yes! I'd forgotten that.'
'And the first time down each year, there was no track at all.'
'Yes, yes, the wheels spun on the spring grass, and you were always frightened the tractor would slide off the road!'
'My father always made us get out and walk. He would cast lye behind him to kill the grass.'
Mae turned to tell Sezen. 'You went to the town, oh, only if your father was buying a horse…'
'… or parts for the tractor…'
'And we would pile all of us, oh, six or seven children, in the trailer behind. It would take all day to get down. We would sleep in the trailer overnight.'
'You remember the fires?'
'Everyone set up camp in the market square.'
'You would cook soup over the fires.'
'And the lutes…'
'The lutes came out, particularly the Horsemen, and they would sing. Remember the Cossacks! So handsome with their moustaches, they would sing…'
The truck seemed to lurch and sway as if on green grass. Mae turned to warn Mr Oz about his driving, but as she leaned forward, everything lurched, swayed, and suddenly she smelled smoke…
… and saw the fires.
The Cossacks wore spotless white shirts, with high collars.
They smelled of smoke. It clung to their huge moustaches. Like thieves, they had wicked faces but they were lit up with kindly smiles, and the little girl was sitting on the knee of one of them. His face was lit up with love, tender love.
'I… have… a… little… girl,' the Cossack said, slowly, in Karz. 'She is pretty. Like you.' His truck full of horses sweltered even though it was night. His mates smoked pipes, and her father sat drinking with them, ramrod straight and slightly twitchy. He was frightened of Cossacks.
It was not Mae's father. The little girl was not Mae.
The Cossack said, 'I send presents to my little girl. She does not always get them. Things are so bad, the postmen take them.' The Cossack shrugged. 'Oh, I miss my little girl. You are happy to live with your father. You are far from the war.'
What war?
The Cossack patted little Miss Hu on her head and let her run back to her father. Her father was plump, smooth-skinned, beardless. He smelled of chives and garlic, not smoke. Miss Hu climbed onto his lap and was covered in kisses as hot and damp as new leaves on tender shoots.
'Ai-ling,' breathed out Mr Hu.
World War Two. This would be, say, 1941.
The town square was dark, except for one streetlight, and there were no tall buildings. Indeed, the square was a terrace of shacks, with men sitting out front, in worn, torn, dusty clothes. Barbershops, bars, spare-parts shops, teahouses. There was a traffic light, and Mae remembered. There was only one traffic light in the whole town.
The Cossack grinned, picked up his viola: It was tiny, unvarnished, with loose wood holding up the strings. The bow was made of horsetail hairs. 'For pretty little girls,' he said.
He played something high, sweet, sad, simple.
'Song says, "Red children, Red children, play.. ."' he explained, and began to sing.
It was a jolly song that made Ai-ling want to dance, jolly but somehow sad. She thought it was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard. She wanted to remember it forever and ever. She beamed up in delight, wonder, at her father, who smiled down indulgently.
And little Ai-ling began to dance. She held out her arms, and spun, wearing her best town dress, a stiff froth of lace, her hair in ribbons, so pretty, little princess, spinning and spinning. The Cossacks, as hard as the roads, melted as if in rain. 'Ahhhh!' they sighed, for all things homely and beautiful. The moment came that Miss Hu loved, when she ceased to be shy. Then she could really dance.
So she really danced, knowing herself to be little and pretty and sweet. All the Cossacks began to sing the song together, enraptured by the sight of a pretty little girl, of home. Some of them came from other fires, with mandolins. The music mounted. Little Ai-ling fell back into shyness, and stopped, and hid her head in her father's trousers. The Horsemen laughed with love.
Mae was rocked like a little paper boat cast out onto the ocean.
The music changed. It rattled. It was Balshang music on the radio, with a roar of engine and harsh sunlight.
Mae was sick again, waves of nausea. She wanted to say: Stop, I need to be sick.
See? See? said Old Mrs Tung. See what you are destroying?
A young person was crowded close to her with concern. Mae did not know who she was at first. 'Are you all right?' Sezen asked, an arm on hers.
'Hmm,' said Mae, not quite saying yes. 'I was sleeping.'
'You were singing,' corrected Sunni, her eyes hidden in the sunglasses. 'In another language.'
They roared down into Green Valley City.
Yeshibozkent was flung like a soiled handkerchief onto the lie of the land. There was much new building now on the outskirts. Raw concrete in irregular frames held panels of barely mortared brick. They would fall in the next earthquake. The air was blue and grey. They were lowered into it, and heat enveloped them like a blanket, smelling of old automobiles.
Dust and fumes and Toyota jeeps that would not stay in their lanes, and old women that walked right out onto the road.
Mr Oz did not slow down, but beeped frantically, continually, forcing people to jump back, or taxis to veer out of his way. Mr Wing chuckled at his driving courage. 'I always wondered how you people got through so fast,' he said.
The city people in sharp clothes walked unconcerned as the van seared the air, passing them by inches. A light turned red and the van lurched to a halt. Pedestrians poured across the intersection.
Sezen laughed, suddenly raucous, and pointed. 'What is that?'
A young man walked in front of the windscreen. He wore soiled, fruit-bowl colours and long braided hair, died blond streaks amid his natural black. Some sort of glasses marred his face, like an eye test or camera lenses. He turned almost blind and looked inside the van. Light flicked, inside the lenses, inside his eyes. His skinny, starveling face bared fangs at them. His teeth were bright yellow like a row of embers.
Sezen rolled down the window. She leaned out and yelled at him, 'What are you?'
Sunni seemed to melt with shame beside Mae.
He yelled back, answering another agenda: 'I just took your photograph.' He staggered slightly, for no reason. 'Dih zee toh el.'
Mr Oz spoke: 'He's an Ay oh het.'
Mr Wing jerked with a superior grin. 'Or he thinks he is.'
The man still yelled at them. 'It is a photograph of peasants!' The smile was nasty. 'You are all dead!'
'It means Airhead,' continued Mr Oz. 'He can't be an Airhead – the Air has not come here yet – but he has read about it in some magazine.'
'You are a fool,' Sezen shouted back, laughing at him. 'The Air is not here yet.'
'My eyes are cameras!' he shouted, as the van pulled away.
Sezen was agog with both scorn and excitement. 'Did you see what he was wearing! What did he have on his eyes?'
'A computer,' said Mr Oz. 'Part of it is embedded in his head.'
The two older women hissed in pain.
'No wonder he was such a mess,' said Sunni, shaking her head.
'Yah, but imagine if it was someone handsome and clever and not a fool,' said Sezen.
'Imagine clean streets,' said Mae. The town was richer, but that just generated drifts of crushed tin and old papers in the gutters.
'Yeshibozkent? Clean?' Sezen was scornful. 'We still think garbage rots. We will never be clean.'
'We are a very clean people,' said Sunni, in outrage. 'There are only two dirty families in our village!' One of them was Sezen's.
Sezen just laughed. 'To someone from the West, we all look like pigs.'
The van beeped furiously. A donkey had suddenly swerved from the side of the road into its path. The van screeched and slid helplessly, shifting sideways as the wheels locked. The van slammed into the animal.
Mae could feel the donkey's ribs, its fur, the knobby knees, all communicated through the front of the truck.
'Oh!'
Mr Wing jumped out. The animal, dazed, kicked itself back up onto its feet and blinked.
'Who owns this animal?' Mr Wing demanded of the street. Plump ladies in shiny purple pantsuits looked mildly surprised.
Sezen was helpless with laughter. 'Does it have cameras for eyes, too? Airhead donkey?'
Mae was not sure why Sezen found it so funny.
No one answered. No one claimed the donkey. It twitched its ears and wandered off as if nothing were wrong. Perhaps, like them, it was dead and didn't know.
The main market square no longer had a public-address system.
The familiar sound of town-coming had been silenced. The smells were the same; vegetables in sunlight laced with city drains. The gabble of trading seemed strangely muted and the square curiously spacious.
'There aren't the people,' said Sunni, mystified.
Mae looked around. 'It is a Saturday. Where are they all?'
'At the hypermarket,' said Sezen, sniffing, collecting her volumes of lime-yellow cloth.
'What's that?'
'The big new store, outside town. "Just-in-Time Rescue.'''
The name alone made Sunni and Mae chuckle as they stepped out of the van, braving public view and the eyes that dismissed them as peasants.
'It sounds like a newspaper headline…'
'A cheap romance…'
Sezen was not to have her modernity fazed. She shrugged and managed to step down from the van like a princess.
Sezen belonged.
'They call it that because they know everything that is bought, and can predict exactly what is needed. They sell out every day.
'So does a good trader here,' sniffed Sunni.
Perhaps no longer. There were grannies, some middle-aged women, some potbellied men come to sit on folding deck-chairs and chat with friends who stayed by their unrolled mats. There were few customers to distract them from their open tins of beers. Mae felt disappointment. She had always loved stepping out into the market, the heart of the town.
No fires or spangled trucks, no drunken Cossacks dancing.
Around the square a forest of bright new plastic signs danced, opening and closing like flowers.
Akai. Sony. Yeshiboz Sistemlar…
A far cry from the dingy restaurants, the boys running with trays bearing glasses of tea.
You are dead, the Airhead said.
'Right, what is the plan?' Sunni asked.
'Mr Oz and I will go to the bank…' began Mae.
'Me too,' said Sezen, and the hunger in her eyes said: I want to learn about money.
Sunni adjusted her sunglasses. 'I have some errands.' Fashion work she did not want Mae to know about.
Fair enough, thought Mae.
Mae suggested, 'Shall we meet by the van at, oh, two hours from now? For lunch?'
'That will be lovely!' exclaimed Sunni. 'We can go to the temple gardens.'
'Ugh,' said Sezen.
Mr Oz intervened. 'We don't have time, if we are to get to the congress. I'll just order lunch now.'
He keyed in the address of Just-in-Time Rescue.
The Central Man escorted Mae to the bank.
They were welcomed with great politesse. Mae had expected to feel uncomfortable, but found herself immune to feeling inferior. She found that money made her as good as anyone else.
They sipped tea in the Director's office, and he was friendly and polite in white shirt and tie. He was full-blooded Karz, big, with hairy arms and a moustache like a trimmed broom and he had a full-blooded Karz name: Mr Saatchi Saatchi.
I am here, thought Mae. I am where I always wanted to be. I am a businesswoman, modern, respected. Sezen sat clenched like a fist with admiration. Mae felt her eyes swell. Don't cry, she warned herself.
'Madam Chung will need a cellular account. She will be doing business with you always through mobile services.'
'We have had such facilities for over ten years, so it is good to see them in more general use,' the Director said, determined the government should know how advanced they were. Mr Oz had enough wisdom to nod approval.
'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 made 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 honour, 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 colour, 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 theatre, 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 UN 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 UN 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 centre 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 programme to see how the Gates Format could be used in our cultural setting, perhaps alongside the UN 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 colourless young man in a loose grey 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 UN 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 UN 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 labelled: 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 had 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 signalled 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 olden days, ancestors were worshipped!'
'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!'
'Iwant 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.
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 no 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.