Geoff Ryman - Air (or Have Not Have)

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.