Geoff Ryman - Air (or Have Not Have)

'Protocols can break down in the event of illness or extremes of emotion. If you find your mind in contact with more than the Airmail area of the person you are contacting, first find your own Airmail address. Concentrate on that area as if in meditation. Repeat your address like a mantra …'

Her address? Mae remembered. 'Mae, Mae, Mae, Mae…'

Something brushed past her. Darling child, it seemed to say.

'Mae, Mae, Mae, Mae, Mae…'

That was what Mae was saying, over and over when she woke up, lying on the floor, holding Mrs Tung.

Mae knew then why the old woman had laughed through the last sixty years of her life. It was not to keep up her spirits. Mrs Tung had hooted all her life from heartbreak.

And the dear old creature was dead.

Mae was finding everything funny.

She lay in bed, pushing herself into the corner of the alcove, her face stretched into a grin she could not explain. Her family and friends were crowded around. They knew Mae had been inside Mrs Tung when she died.

Mae's mother sat beside the bed in state and that was funny. 'Allah!' her mother said, calling on the God of the Prophet with hands raised. Mae's mother was a Buddhist.

'A terrible thing,' said Mae's brother Ju-mei, shaking his head. He had put on his best city suit and long city coat for the occasion. He sweated, steaming for his respectability.

Kwan passed Mae tea, and that was funny. Someone dies and so you make a cup of tea?

Kwan intoned, 'Many people say that they did not find death so terrible.'

Mae laughed. It was the soft, hooting sound of heartbreak that was part of her now. 'How can they say anything if they're dead?'

Kwan said, calmly, 'Sometimes the doctors bring them back.'

'Isn't science wonderful?' Mae chuckled. 'Did they ask the people if they wanted to come back?'

Mae's mother cursed the devil. 'It is Shytan, the work of Shytan!'

'We will take care of you now,' promised Mae's brother, heavy-faced.

That made Mae laugh, too. More like you want me to go on taking care of you, she thought.

Mae remembered Mr Ken's wife, lying in the courtyard. 'How is Mrs Ken Tui?' Mae asked.

Everything went silent. Joe, sitting at the kitchen table, lifted up his baseball cap and scratched his head.

Kwan answered. 'Tui is dead, too.' Mae's brother leaned forward and took her hand. Kwan hesitated, then spoke. 'She ran out of the yard. She was crying that she was going mad. She threw herself down into the well.'

Mae squawked with laughter. It was terrible, but she did. 'You all went to see an opera and meanwhile the rest of us lived one.' She was still chuckling when she asked the next question. 'Do they count the Test as a success?'

Mr Wing looked grim. 'No,' he said.

Mae found that funny, too, and chuckled again and waved her hand. 'It would seem not,' she replied.

Mr Wing said, 'They said that the process was proved physically safe but there were still many instances of panic and injury.'

'And no one can drink from their wells, they are so stuffed with the bodies of neighbours.' Mae laughed again, and alarmed herself. She was laughing too much.

Mr Wing kept doggedly informing her, to calm her, which only made things funnier. 'They will not begin Aircasting for another year.'

'So, we have a year to live,' Mae said.

'There is to be an international program of education.'

Mae imitated the voices, out of pure, hilarious rage. You all now have a pigpen inside your head and we do not know how to clean it up. 'The Pig' is called 'Terror.' You also have another area marked 'Death.' Please do not choose 'Death.' You can choose 'Terror' and 'Panic' whenever you like.

'There is also,' Kwan said calmly, 'a world of the spirit. And you have travelled that.'

Mae stopped laughing, abruptly.

The next morning, Mae tried to go back to work.

She tried once more to boil the clothes. It took all morning. She kept dropping things, distracted. She was aware that as a fashion expert she should look her best. She put on a best dress, but it wouldn't hang right, as though it were on backwards. She started to apply makeup in the mirror and burst into tears.

The face was alive but alone.

The brazier was moved outside the kitchen. Mae found herself standing outside in the courtyard, with the long wooden laundry spoon still in her hand, remembering.

She was remembering all the children who had run in that yard, the girls in dirty flowered trousers, the littlest boys in shorts, the biggest lads in sweatshirts, sports gear. She saw them in waves, coming and going. She found herself remembering children like Woo, who had died, caught in a thresher.

Before Mae was born.

Mae was remembering what Old Mrs Tung had seen.

She remembered a farming village owned by a landlord who the Communists later killed. She remembered his car, all polished cream metal, too large and fast for local roads. It was pulled by oxen and the landlord waved from its back seat. He was fat, childish. He gave little Miss Hu a bonbon. Hu Ai-Ling had been Mrs Tung's name once.

Mae remembered weaving pots from reed. She remembered women whose faces were almost familiar, whose names she could almost recall, and she heard them agree that it was best to be a middle wife. First wives were supposed to lead, and lived in fear of being usurped. The youngest wife would always be the lowest in the house. 'So how can you be a middle wife without being the youngest first?' someone asked.

Mae remembered how to make cucumber pickles that would survive crisp and free from vinegar taste for three years. She remembered bean harvests, sitting in groups sorting good from bad, shelling, grilling, drying, pickling. The women had worn quilted jackets, no makeup, and they all smoked chervil in their soapstone pipes. They tried to get rid of teeth; teeth just caused trouble and pain.

Mae remembered the poems.

'Tis the fire of Love that is in the reed, it is the fervour of Love that is in the wine

'Mrs Chung?' It was Mr Ken, standing in front of her.

The reed is the comrade of everyone who has been parted from a friend

His neatly trimmed hair, his round face, all seemed newly widowed and alone. She saw his face as a boy, as a grandmother would see it, the face of the future. Now grown up, now bereft, now without her. The chasm of the future into which we all fall, and decline, and disappear. The hollow that is left in the world by our own missing shape.

'Oh,' she said, and hugged him.

She wept into his shoulder.

'Mrs Chung,' he said again, and gingerly patted her back.

'I… have… your grandmother's memories!' Mae blurted it out all in a rush, fearful, terrified, and she covered her mouth.

'You had a blue plastic truck, I remember that, and you drove the family crazy making truck noises. You wanted to be a truck driver.' Her face was stained with tears. She was shaken with the mystery and sadness of life. 'Why did you never become a truck driver?'

Ken Kuei's round and handsome face was slack, unmanned by the sudden intimacy. The question was a good one. His grandmother had never asked it.

'The farm,' he murmured. The shrug said there was much more to be said. He glanced about the courtyard. Mae was still in her morning robe.

'Come inside, Mrs Chung,' he said, and began to lead her. 'Do you want me to get Joe?'

'I don't know.' She wanted Mr Ken. She wanted to talk to him about his childhood. She had a terribly strong sense of who he was. She had held him as a baby. She had known that even as a baby he was a reserve of quiet, calm strength. He never wept or wailed. He could fight, but only when he needed to. He had been so good at football.