Geoff Ryman - Air (or Have Not Have)

Lung relaxed; he felt he had done his job. 'Who would have thought you could do all this? The site, the business? Where did you learn all this?'

Mae was narrow-eyed in the darkness. What was he trying to find out now? 'Oh,' she said airily. 'Your mother is not so stupid. It is all available on the TV.'

'And from Hikmet Tunch,' said Lung, lightly.

'Indeed.'

'How did you find him?'

'He found me.'

It was strange being interrogated by her own son, in a dark and unheated room, as if they had both died and come back as Evil Dead.

Her dead son gave a short, slightly edged laugh. 'No. I mean, what did you think of him?'

'What do you think of him?'

'I think you should stay away from him.'

Mae decided not to ask him: Is that what the army thinks? She decided to deceive him, to protect Kwan, herself, her Circle. 'Why?' she asked in innocence.

'Look. The government likes him being here, he brings in money, but he does things in that place that are illegal everywhere else. You know how he started?'

'As a computer student?'

'Oh, Mother, he was the country's biggest drug smuggler. They let him off because he runs a computer business.'

'Our government would do such a thing?' Mae sounded shocked.

'Our government does many things,' said Lung, quietly.

And you are its servant, thought Mae. You look at what you do full in the face, and you still serve it so that you can be a lieutenant. And Kwan will never put up a site to do what you want.

We could all end up looking at you, my son, from the wrong end of a gun.

Come, Air, and blow governments away.

Then her son said, 'What are you going to do about the pregnancy?'

Mae's whole face pulled back until it was as tight as a mask. 'The usual things.'

'It is not a usual pregnancy.'

Mae watched the wreathing of her icy breath. 'Who told you that?'

Lung blew out. 'That man Tunch. Well…'

'A nurse called Fatimah.'

Lung jerked with a chuckle, amused by his mother's quickness. 'Yes. She at least seems very concerned for you.'

'Yes she is. Perhaps we should both avoid that man Tunch.'

She couldn't read Lung's reaction. He shrugged and laughed and nodded. 'No disagreement there.' Then concern. 'Are you okay, well?'

Mae decided not to let him off the hook. 'No. I feel sick and as you can see I am not welcome many places in the village.'

His eyes could not meet hers. He ducked and ran a hand over his hair.

Mae asked him, 'How is your father?'

'Ugh,' said Lung, involuntarily.

'Seeing a lot of him? He visits you often?' she asked.

'I can't hide from you, Mama. He is there all weekend, every weekend. Sometimes I have to say to him, look, Dad, I am having all the officers over for dinner.'

Dark, dark, and cold, in this attic room not her own.

'And the officers, do they find him interesting?'

'Don't, Mama. No, they don't find him interesting. He gets drunk, and tries to talk up what he has done, and pretends to be a businessman.'

And Tsang, thought Mae, I wonder how you like the overripe peach that people must mistake for your mother.

'But he also visits your sister Ying.'

'Yes, yes, he bounces between the two of us. But she is married to an officer too.'

Mae saw it all: poor Joe, desperate, helplessly in love with his son, yearning only to see Lung and how strong and smart he was, and trying, also desperately, to avoid seeing that he was in his son's way, his daughter's way.

You are not so smart, Lung. You are enough of your father's son, I saw that somehow tonight. This is as far as you will go, and then you too will start, unaccountably, to fade.

'You want some advice, son?' Mae moved through the winter silk of the night. She took the hard band of muscle beside his neck and worked it. 'The army will not like it that you have a Western wife. They will be disappointed in your father. You know what you should do? Though this pains me, I cannot think only of myself. You should be your wife's husband, and go back with her to Canada.'

Lung sighed. 'I know.'

And then, thought Mae, you will not be a spy on all of us.

____________________

audio file from: Mr Hikmet Tunch

16 December

New York Times? How useful. For whom? For me, certainly. Thank you for making such an emotional case against the UN. The government will also be pleased to be shown in such a good light. And your friend Bugsy. How do you serve her? You bring visitors to her superficial and decadent magpie. Do you really think American ladies – for whom a shift from chiffon pastel to black cotton is big news – are capable of being one with your Circle? Remember, Mae, that 2020 is an election year. Your friend is a Democratic journalist. She is using you and your praise of government subsidy to attack the Republican president. You are not a stupid woman, Mae, so it interests me to find that you allow yourself to be acted upon. Finally, you may be wondering who supplied that interesting code that arrived so happily a few nights ago. You should avoid thanking anyone else for it. So who is watching whom?

Breakfast was late and boisterous and prolonged.

Lung was still pumped full of love from the night before and didn't want to go. He joked and kicked his big-booted feet, and accepted one cup of tea after another. He and his men had gone out before anyone was up, and repaired the powerline.

'We found a frame for the wires just hanging in midair. The wires were holding it up and not the other way around. We just stared!' Lung mimed a village dolt scratching his head. 'Then we saw burn marks. Some old farmer had been burning off straw and burned the pole as well!'

Kwan scraped dishes, her lips drawn. There was a vertical grey line down the middle of her cheeks and her hands suddenly looked thin, frail and veined.

'I'll do that,' said Mae. Lung was merry, and oblivious. His cheeks still glowed from freezing morning air. He looked like a polished apple. Kwan sat arms folded, her eyes dim and small.

Finally Mr Wing came in, bundled in sheepskin, his eyes measuring like lasers. 'It's started to snow,' he said.

The little private looked anxious. 'We could get snowed in.'

Lung moved slowly, regretfully. Kwan stood up and delicately shook his hand and could not look him in the face. She was scared.

The sergeant and the private flew up to their rooms and hopped back down, swinging khaki bags. Mae speeded things along by getting Lung's bag for him.

In the courtyard, Lung recovered his poise. Sergeant Albankuh already had the engine running, and Lung had begun to understand that he was not quite at home. He spent time thanking the Wings handsomely for their hospitality, and also – his hand covering Kwan's – for their kindnesses to his mother.

Kwan had recovered as well. She replied with exquisite politeness, knowing that he had come to warn her off and, perhaps, to report on her.

Mae marvelled at them all, the maintenance of form and the retention of humanity.

It is the village that allows us to do this, she thought. We know each other, and we all hope that that knowledge keeps us each in balance, within limits.

Then Lung turned to Mae and both of them seemed to relent. They collapsed into a hug. For Mae it was like hugging some huge stranger. He kissed her forehead, called her his Clever Little Mama. Then he stepped back from her. He shoved on his army hat, and that was somehow heartbreaking. It was a boy's gesture, innocent and eternal. All the soldiers throughout history had pushed on some kind of boot or glove just before they left their mothers to die or to come back for ever changed.

This was the last of her boy. He would swell even bigger, like a great fat boil, and she saw how he would coarsen as he aged until his astounding beauty could not be credited.