Geoff Ryman - Air (or Have Not Have)

Mr Wing shook his head. 'They would be able to see through such doctoring, Mae.'

'What I want to do is send the whole site to Bugsy and get her to host it. That way it stays up, but off your machine. So we can wipe it, yes?'

'Thank you,' said Kwan. 'But Bugsy does business with you. That will get you into trouble. And Mae, you do not have the encryption code, so that is that.'

Mae kept on: 'Look, at least wipe the site! Maybe it willbe enough for them if you take the site down.'

Mr Wing started to rub her back. 'Mae, Mae.'

'I would only put it back up, after they left,' said Kwan. 'The world has to know about the Eloi.'

'So, you've had the site up and now the world does know!'

'Not enough of them.'

Mr Wing was smiling with quiet pride. 'Mae, Kwan will never give up fighting. She will never rest until justice is done.

'Why must it be you who fights?'

Wing's smile extended slightly. 'Because we cannot let the goons who run this country stop us telling the truth. What are we supposed to do? Run and hide and say, "Oh, wondrous masters, we owe you so much for letting us live and battle the land for grain which you take from us as tax"?'

Mae had never heard such talk. She recognized the constriction around her chest for what it was: fear. This was genuinely dangerous talk.

'They are destroying an entire people, only because their own ancestors failed to conquer them. The Eloi show it is a lie to say that this country can be called Karzistan, that it is a Muslim country of Turkic peoples. So they try to make the Eloi disappear.'

Mae felt a little bit sick. She thought she was brave, but she did not have that kind of courage. To face the men who controlled the torturers, the lists, the surveillance, and say: I am going to do the very thing you say I must not do.

And yet they were right. How were things to get better if no one fought?

She looked at Mr Wing and thought: this man could become a terrorist. If there were more of him, my son Lung might be sent to fight him. They might kill each other through a screen of dust and smoke.

And Mae felt a dull buzz inside the core of her head. The echoing. All this had triggered another attack. 'It's coming on again,' said Mae.

'The old lady feels the same way?' he said, still looking amused.

'She has strong memories of the war…'

Mae took a grip.

She began to chant to herself things Mrs Tung would never believe: Thank heavens for the machines, they give us an ear of the world and then save us from our masters…

Something in her head opened up, a bit like a flower, a bit like a radio tuning.

If this is starting up again, you must hide! If you fight them directly, they send in their soldiers!

And Mae told it: The government will change itself; its very soul will be blown by the Air…

They come and cart you off in the middle of the night, or pay the neighbours to turn on you!

We will be a world of people beyond governing…

Both sides end up eating their dead.

The rice wine when it came was as transparent as water, but it burned. They sipped in silence. Mae could think of nothing to say.

From the television came a sound like a rooster, faint and faraway.

'Mae,' said Kwan. 'Something's coming up on the screen.'

Words on the screen read, EMAIL/VIDEOMAIL: NO SENDER.

There was an Egyptian dance of hieroglyphs which suddenly resolved into letters and words and sideways V signs.

'That's computer code,' said Kwan.

Mae sat forward. She knew what it was. Someone had sent her the encryption code. She told the machine to save it, use it, and kept talking to send a message.

'Audio file to bugsy@nouvelles. Bugsy, sorry to arrive in this way, but this is no laughing matter. Clipped to this message is an entire site. It is very political, very dangerous, about the Eloi people. The world must know what is happening to them, but it is too dangerous to hold here. Please find a machine other than your own, and put the site up there. Do not – do not – put it on your machine, okay? And never talk of it, and do not reply to this e-mail in any way, okay? Sometimes you will get encrypted message like this. It will be an update for the site. Like this message, it will then eat itself. And please, do not put anything about this in an article! And don't reply! Your chum. Okay endmail.'

Mae turned and looked up. 'Kwan? Will that be okay? Can we wipe the site, if this works?'

Kwan hauled in a thick breath through thin nostrils. 'Okay,' she whispered, nodding. 'Okay.'

The sun rose.

Mae tried to sleep, despite sunshine blazing through the windows.

Kwan's warm wine had been a mistake. It burned her stomach. The acids churned like the fear of the soldiers, fear for Kwan. fearof Mrs Tung, fear of everything. Her stomach was as panicked as hersoul.

And she began to gag. She felt something tear.

My baby. My strangely nested, new-as-Air, born-from-Air child.

I'm trying to kill it.

Her stomach rose up like a fist. She could feel something heavy but alive bunch up and cram against the top of her belly.

No, no, I don't need this now!

Mae saw Mr Ken's handsome face. It will be such a beautiful child, she thought. She struggled to pull in a breath. The flesh pushed harder against her oesophagus; she felt something gulp open inside her.

As if Kwan's wine were fire, a blast of juices burned her throat and seared tender nasal tissues.

Her child slammed up against her again. Her breath was knocked away.

No!

Mae's face twisted like a rag. She wrenched herself and also something else deep in the world. She twisted and dragged and wrung it. The world felt like silk, ripping in ragged line.

From all around her came the sound of tiny bells. Was that blood in her ears?

Mae remembered the fence, the fence she had torn when she escaped Mr Tunch. The fence had sung when she tore it.

Sing! she told the air. It did. The air around her crinkled like tin foil.

And light seemed to come from the singing. Light wavered in patterns on the walls, as if reflecting from water. The light was confused with the thin tinkling sound from nowhere.

Mae thought of all of them – Tunch, Old Mrs Tung, Fatimah, the village women. No! You will not take my child from me. Soldiers, armies, people who will not learn, people who hate the future, no you will not get him, my last late Unexpected Flower. He is going to live.

Mae swallowed, and swallowed again. The room went dark. Mae's fingers went numb. Mrs Tung was coming, drawn by the fear.

Mae felt her arrive. Mrs Tung seemed to come into the room and sit on the bed next to her.

The old woman was charmed by the homeliness of babies and indigestion. Old Mrs Tung offered advice.

Yogurt is always good for an upset tummy.

The voice was as kindly and as sweet as pear drops.

Mrs Tung had always been kind. Mae remembered her sweet, blind face.

Yogurt it is, thought Mae, and remembered the tang of it. Yogurt she thought, remembering its creamy sting, and the yogurt sheds with their smell of wood smoke.

Suddenly the light and the singing smelled of yogurt. The whole room smelled like those old sheds. Mae swallowed again.

And was soothed. Like a storm at sea when the wind suddenly dropped, the acids in her stomach seemed to calm. They burned no longer.

Like a barque, clumsy on the waves, the separate flesh inside her settled calmly down into the waters of her stomach. Mae could even feel the foam of the waves.

Mrs Tung was smug. The old remedies are always the best. Now I think we should all just get some sleep, don't you? She seemed to toddle off to bed.