Geoff Ryman - Air (or Have Not Have)

She showed them Puccini. A voice explained that opera was about love and action, stabbings and vows and disguises. Mae showed them Collabo from New York, the music from a hundred American minds pouring into one mix. It bounced, jagged, strange, brave, bold, stupid, smart.

The children of Karzistan saw the careless faces of New York and they saw themselves. Dawn leaned forward wide-eyed, the light of the future dancing in her eyes. When they left, they made a sound Mae had not heard before. Thirty children left talking, as loudly and seriously as adults.

When Mae got back home, she found that Mr Ken had cooked her a meal. He stood, slim and broad at the same time, wearing an apron and grinning at himself.

'What are you doing? What? What?' she asked.

'I cook for you,' he said, pleased. God, he was beautiful.

'That is my job.' She was chuckling.

'Oh! And you've been working. Sit. Tea is made. Then we eat.'

Mae looked at her good man. Sometimes life was a miracle. Sometimes you found a good man to love you. Sometimes he lived next door. The only foolishness was to expect it.

Mae took off her field hat, and gave Ken Kuei a kiss. Looking at his face, Mae thought: No, true foolishness would be not to know it when you got it – and take it.

'Noodles and pig bowel,' he said, proudly, of his supper.

The size, the beauty, the miracle of the world. Fields of butterflies, thousand-year-old fields, children's faces, drifting clouds of life.

Mae dropped down onto a chair, and took her bowl of tea. Under her arm, she still had Sezen's notebook. Mae opened it again. She saw the immaculate clothes, the lean hard faces, sheet after sheet, one dream after another.

All clean, all hard, getting darker, meaner, and angrier.

Amid all that filth, she dreams of this, with that useless mother, the dirty babies. No wonder she is angry. Angry and hard as nails, and she wants, and she wants. Mae recognized that hunger. It was Info Lust.

The thought came as simply as the bursting of a bubble. Sezen wants me as a mother. How touching do I find that?

I am going to have to do something different, now that Sunni takes half my business. Do I say yes to Sezen, and do these bad-girl best clothes?

The food arrived, borne by beautiful arms, crowned by a beautiful smile.

Bubbling up from inside her came a chuckle. She pulled him to her and kissed his shirt with its slightly rounded belly. 'Where is your mother? Where are your children?'

'Didn't you hear? No, you were gone this morning, working as always. They are all visiting the other grandparents.' He smiled. 'We are truly alone.'

'Oh!' Her voice trailed away in delight.

After supper, in the alley between the houses, Mae stood nude before him.

Kuei poured cold delicious water over her. He soaped her, washing her back. She poured water over him, and washed him. Then, soapy and nude, they made love. She had never even dreamed of doing this with a man. Kuei knelt and with gentle, puppy-dog lapping, kissed her most-secret places. It was animal, doglike. A year before, shame would have overcome her. Instead she felt as though another layer of clothing had been flung free.

Mae held herself even more open for him, and soft, warm, wet, he explored her. And she saw the swollen head of his penis, round and the colour of a peach, and she knelt then, and ate. 'Oh, I am sorry,' he gasped, and the fruit burst in her mouth, and the strongest possible taste of masculinity pumped into her. He pulled her to her feet and most shocking of all, he plunged both of them into a kiss. He poured water over them, cooling, purifying. And it was her turn to crumple in the middle, and she pressed the back of her own hand against herself, as if to quell the trembling. He kissed her cheek, and stepped out to dry himself. She looked down and saw her hand was bloody.

She was menstruating. She poured water over it.

She explained she had not known. She was worried; some men were terrified that menstrual blood would weaken them.

'Then we both have the most each other has to give,' he said, and kissed her again, and she went wet again, and they made love again, this time more conventionally. I have blood and semen inside my belly, she thought. They washed again, the water like a cool, loving tongue of some creature that cared for both of them.

Dust, stickiness, their everyday selves were all washed away. Both of them tumbled into bed, darkness settling over their minds like night.

'Kuei,' she whispered. Finally, she had called him by his first name.

They were awakened by a pounding on the door.

A man was calling her name in rage.

'Joe!' gasped Mae.

Kuei was naked beside her in bed, and his clothes were in the small shed with the drain. Between the drawn curtains it was night.

'Stay here!' she whispered, pleading.

'Mae! Chung Mae!' someone bellowed.

Could it be that it was not Joe? Her heart shuddered. Anyone else would be a relief.

'I must talk with you. Open this door. I want words!'

Mae fluttered into her morning robe, her mind clearing, as if a strong wind had blown through it. She snapped the curtains shut around the alcove, and turned on the kitchen light.

Mae shouted back: 'I am coming. Who are you to be shouting so?' The kitchen was covered with unwashed pans, but betrayed no other sign of a male presence. 'Patience, patience!'

She opened the door and something was thrown in her face. It was lightweight, it fluttered, it did not hurt, but it made her turn her head. When she looked back, she was dismayed.

It was Teacher Shen.

His lean and handsome face was hard with tension; his eyes were wide with anger.

Mae was temporarily undone. She had been a friend.

Shen demanded, 'What are you about? What are you trying to do?' He was beside himself.

'I ask the same question of you. Have you gone mad, Shen, to shout at me? What is this about?'

'You know what this is about.'

'The TV.'

'You. Setting up a school!'

So that was it. This was going to be tiring, and there would be no resolution.

'Come in,' she said wearily. Mr Ken would be trapped in her alcove. 'I was in bed, I have been at work all day.'

'At that school.'

'I call it a school because that's what it is, but it is not a school-school. Everyone knows that. It is a way of teaching people.

He glowered at her. 'Teach them to watch bad movies. Teach them that it is better to live in Beijing or Bombay or any other place than here.'

I have made a mistake, thought Mae. I should have spoken to him, and got him to agree. This mistake will take time to undo. Her fingers were burrowed into her uncombed hair.

'Teacher Shen. We have always been friends.'

'Yes!' he insisted.

'I am an impulsive person. I see something needs doing, I do it. I should have talked to you first and explained.'

'You should not set yourself up. You let your rivalry with Sunni carry you too far.'

Ow. That was true.

'Teacher Shen. Do you know any thing about Info?'

He resented that, though his expression did not change.

'We all need to learn about it. We need to learn about it, because soon we will spend half our lives in Info. And no one, not one of us, knows a thing about it. We will all become like little children again. We will all be lost unless we learn.'

His expression had not changed, but there was something helpless, frozen, about him. A poor peasant boy who fought and fought to learn, who gave everything to be allowed to be a Teacher.

And he was her friend – kind Shen, wise Shen, poor Shen. She saw in his face that he feared he had lost everything. He lived in a hovel in a village on a hill; he had given his life to trying to teach the children.