Geoff Ryman - Air (or Have Not Have)

They ran straight into the rusting bedding now washed into the roadway. Blindly they bobbed and bounded their way over the springs. On the moonlit hill, Sunni's house was dark.

Out onto the bare slope, all trails gone. The stars glistened on the sheen of water. Ahead of them the white walls of the mosque glowed.

They reached the door of the mosque. Mae waited, panting. The Muerain suddenly slapped his own forehead.

'I've left the key behind,' he said.

'You what?' Mae felt like the water – torn, broken, swept away.

The Muerain stood back, raised a leg, and kicked at the lock. He was tall, strong, a herdsman. With a splintering sound and a shuddering of wood, the door chuckled its way backwards.

The floor was flooded. He grasped the wooden railing of the prayer stall, splashed across the floor to a staircase, and ran up the steps to the tower. Mae ran after him. The flashlight licked hungrily over the back of the speaker down to the batteries. Mr Shenyalar bent and kissed the batteries, tasting them to see if they still worked. He flicked a switch; there was amplified crackling. He began, low and dark, to sing.

Mae grabbed his arm.

'Muerain. Please!'

The flashlight glared angrily at her.

'I'm sorry, Muerain-sir. But most people sleep through a call to prayer.'

Pause.

'They turn over in their beds.'

Pause.

And his voice, rich and deep, said, 'The Flood has come. For our sins, our godlessness, the Flood is upon us.' It was strange. Mae could hear his voice, which was so close to her, roll and fall away all across the valley.

Then he said, 'Follow the advice of Mrs Chung. Take food, take blankets, and go to Mr Wing's. Do not go on Lower Street. Already you will not get past. Go on Upper Street. Now. The Flood is here.'

He turned.

'You go,' the Muerain said.

She paused. Somehow she had pictured herself calling the faithful.

'You must go and wake people. I can stay here.'

'Not too long,' Mae warned him.

'I have a duty,' Mr Shenyalar said. 'Go.' He passed her back the second flashlight. She turned and the Muerain's voice ballooned out over the sound of the water. 'The Flood has come.'

Mae staggered down the steps and then had to lean over. Acids shot like venom up from her stomach and out of her mouth. The fumes were acrid; she had difficulty breathing. Her throat was raw and sore. She knelt down and scooped up some of the water and drank.

Where could she do the most good? Sezen would have roused the plain, the houses in the low south. It was Sunni who had farthest to go; she was high, but next to the river. She would need to go down to the bridge to cross. Mae looked across and saw Sunni's house, high and alone. She blinked, and thought she saw it move on its foundations.

So Mae ran to save Sunni.

The hill between the high mosque and the high house was no longer flowing with water. It was pouring mud; the mud stirred around her like porridge, but porridge with teeth, for it was also full of stone. I will have to give up soon, Mae thought, I will have to save myself.

Already.

Another voice spoke, unbidden:

The hillsides dissolve like sugar in tea. That undermines the terraces and they fall. The houses fill with mud or are crushed by stone.

Ahead, the river leapt up, white and snarling. The river had become a kind of dragon, rearing up over its banks, leaping, challenging, and opening its maw.

Mae thought of Sunni, of their delicate chats in the ice cream parlour, of adjusting each other's hair. The stones nibbled her ankles, the mud tugged playfully. A boot was pulled free from her foot. Mae forged on, against what was becoming a tide of mud.

Sunni's high stone front step was already an island. Mae pounded on the door. She shouted. The river was louder.

The door was not locked. Mae ran into the darkened house. It looked so calm and normal and safe, with its rack of kitchen pots and new pool table in the living room.

'Sunni! Sunni! Mr Haseem! Wake up!'

Mae ran up the stairs – narrow, steep, unfamiliar. She had never been upstairs. She bashed her head on a beam. There were many doors. Which one? She pushed her way into a bedroom full of snores and reeking of booze. Starlight through the window fell over the bed, making chessboard squares.

'Wake up, wake up!' Mae cried.

Sunni jerked and sat up and then wailed and covered herself with the bedding, her face full of fear.

'What are you doing here? Get out!' Sunni wailed.

Her husband snored, fully clothed, still in his boots.

'Sunni, the Flood is here.'

'Get out of my bedroom!'

'Sunni, please, just listen. The snow has melted. Listen to the river.'

'Madwoman!'

Sunni was in a rage. She tried turning on a light. Nothing, no power. She got up and threw on a robe and stormed towards Mae and pushed her. 'Madwoman, get out of here!'

Mae pushed her back.

'Ow!' shouted Sunni, scandalized. 'Husband, wake up, she will kill us both!'

'Stupid cow, I don't know why I bother with a woman with cowshit instead of brains!' Mae raged, and seized Sunni by the wrist and pulled her out of the room.

'Husband! I am assaulted. Help!'

Mae's strength surged out of panic and anger, and Sunni was dragged to a corridor window.

'There,' said Mae.

Outside, the river was full and white. It filled the gully; it was pouring all around the bridge. It hauled itself over the top walls of Lower Street and down, a waterfall now. Under the steaming moon, they saw the entire valley. It glittered like a sea.

'My God,' whispered Sunni.

'See! See!' raged Mae. 'Who is the madwoman now!'

'It's terrible.'

'You are nearly dead! The hill outside this house is moving, whole and entire.'

There was a sharp breath; Sunni spun into the dark, wisps of white twirling after her, and went back to her husband. 'Wake up! Wake up!' Sunni shook Mr Haseem's bright-red face by the ears. She looked back at Mae.

'I know him when he is like this. He won't wake up,' she said.

'Leave him,' said Mae.

'Oh, you would say that – you hate him.'

Mae limped forward. 'I don't, Sunni, but it is too late for all but final things. Do you want to die with him?'

Sunni looked at her, blankly.

'It's come to that. If he doesn't wake up now, you either love him enough to die with him, or you go with me now. Now!'

'You hear her? You hear her?' Sunni shouted. She slapped Faysal hard on the face. He snorted.

'Wake up!' She slapped him again. He turned over. Sunni said to Mae, 'Okay, let's go.'

Mae turned and clattered down the steps.

'Don't hit your head on the beam,' Sunni said. Too late. Mae's eyes watered a second time.

Sunni grasped two tins of food as she soared through the kitchen.

Out into moonlight.

'Okay, we're together,' Sunni said. 'If one of us goes, the other tries to pull them free, but only for so long. We promise each other, ah. We save ourselves, but we try to help the first.'

'Right,' said Mae. 'But I'm going to Lower Street.'

'Madwoman!' said Sunni, again.

'I have to see if Siao has come back, if Mr Chung got out, if Sezen is okay!'

'Okay, but I'm not coming with you,' said Sunni.

'At last you are talking sense.'

'It will make a change, I admit,' said Sunni. The moving earth was unstable. Both of them fell into the mud. They thrashed their way to their feet, and held each other up.

'The flashlight!' said Sunni.

'I've got it, it's covered in mud.' Mae wiped it on her coat, and the light shone dimly again.

She pointed the light ahead.

On one side of the Dohs' house, the river had risen up. On the other, mud was mounting the back of the house like an unwanted lover. Mae and Sunni would have to cut down through the gap between the Dohs' and the Alis'. There was no other way down. Mud and water carried them down into Upper Street.