Geoff Ryman - Air (or Have Not Have)

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!'

'I want 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.

Mae woke up in a strange bed.

The walls were pale blue with white cornices. Sitting patiently at the foot of her bed was a man. His face was familiar.

It was Mr Tunch. The name meant 'Bronze.' He seemed to be made of something burnished. He was wearing a different suit, zigzag black on beige. Like the other one, it was shiny.

'Good morning,' he said pleasantly.

Mae sat up. The hotel room had flowers, a TV and a chest of drawers made of polished red wood.

'Where are my friends?' asked Mae.

'They have gone home. You have been somewhere else for many days.'

'What do you mean, "somewhere else?" '

'Ah.' He shrugged. 'Mrs Tung has been here instead.'

'For what? Days? Days?

Mr Tunch nodded. He tried to look sorry, but instead looked rather excited.

Mae was prickled with terror. 'How did I come back?' It was the most urgent thing to know.

'She wandered off,' said Mr Tunch. 'Or rather, she simply could not understand what she was doing here. She couldn't remember where she was, so she kept trying to leave. And finally she did.'

He chuckled. 'She got very frustrated.'

Mae murmured, 'They do.'

After Mae's father was killed, her family moved, along with the bloodstained diwan cushions, to the house of the Iron Aunt, Wang Cro. At first Mae did not understand what was wrong or why the adults whispered. The Iron Aunt was nearly eighty and strong enough to move oil jars, but she always thought it was Thursday, cooked dinner at nine in the morning, and could not remember that Mae was not her mother. The children could tease her into a fury.

Mr Tunch explained: 'Your friends thought it was best if we did what we could here.'

'Yes. Yes, I can see that,' murmured Mae. Yes, I can see you now, in your Bronze suit playing the big man. You even soothed Sezen into leaving me.

'Can you do anything?' Mae demanded.