Geoff Ryman - Air (or Have Not Have)

Suddenly, the guns batter so loudly that it is as if the guns are in the kitchen. Mrs Tung jumps. She hears a cry, from nowhere.

Then everything is still again, just dust turning in rays of light. Suddenly Mrs Tung is certain.

Kalaf is dead.

Something that was in the air is there no longer. Like music that is suddenly turned off. Like the sudden smell of burning food. He is dead, she thinks, and I will be getting a telegram.

She puts the sock down on the table, and ponders. It will not do for her husband to see any telegram about any man. She ponders a moment, and wonders why she is not crying when there is no doubt.

Mrs Tung goes up Lower Street to the Teahouse, and she slips sideways into the room with all the men and cigarette smoke. The men in cloth caps look up and glower. She is a woman, even if her head is covered. Only whores sit in cafes with men. Mrs Tung sits at a table and starts to darn socks. She focuses on the yarn and the thread. The morning passes. She nods yes to a glass of tea, but does not drink it.

Her cousin Mr Tui comes up and suggests she should leave. Mrs Tung just shakes her head, for she finds she does not trust herself to speak. She keeps her eyes on the socks.

Then the machine in the corner of the room chatters. Mrs Tung sees the shadow of Mr Tui turn away. Mrs Tung puts her hands in her lap and waits.

The shadow comes back. 'This is for you,' he says, leaning down, so that she has to see his walrus face looking sad.

'You should have said you were waiting,' says Mr Tui. Mrs Tung knows that if she speaks, she will start to weep. Cousin Tui stands up. 'She was waiting for this!' He shakes the telegram at the men at the bar.

He folds it flat and puts it in her limp and waiting hands.

Dear friend, beloved cousin Kalaf is dead.

'He was kind to me when I was young,' says Mrs Tung, and scrunches up the telegram as if it were her face. Her face becomes a rag to be wrung; she can feel water seeping. She stands up, and holds up, and swiftly strides out of the Teahouse. She keeps her head high, walks back home through the narrow corridor of houses, and cannot tell anyone that the father of her child is dead. She finally closes the door of the kitchen, and hides her face in her husband's wet socks.

Mrs Tung knew before she could have known.

Mrs Tung had been a traveller in Air. Before there was Air.

So Mae went to find her.

Mae went back to the day of the test.

Mae burgeoned back into her old life.

The cauldron is boiling; Joe has eaten his rice. Old Mrs Tung is led in, chuckling at herself. Kuei helps her, blind to his own future, as blind as this time-bound, work-bound Mae.

____________________

to Chung Mae Wang

CERTIFICATE OF APPRECIATION FROM THE GRADUATING CLASS OF 2019

for FASHION STUDIES

____________________

And all around them are the magnetic fields, the arcs emanating from the fire in the heart of the earth – unnoticed and of no importance to Kizuldah for two thousand years.

Until now.

There is the flash and the buzz and the inflation of the mind. Every neural pathway is jolted at once.

A kind of Question Map of the self. Every question answered, complete.

Buzzed and jolted and in that moment stamped for ever on eternity, in Air. A complete, unchanging, unloving, unnatural Map.

And, oh, murmuring, here comes the Format.

Mae has to chuckle. It was such a cheap and tinny thing, the Format, like a child's plastic space-helmet clamped on the head. A few lines of code, a bit of information added to the mix.

'Chocolate. I smell chocolate,' coos Old Mrs Tung.

Here it comes, thinks Mae-in-Air, here it comes.

The cauldron is knocked, and topples. It will fall forever. That white steaming sheet will like a shroud cling and scald the old thin flesh for an eternity.

Mae is moved by pity and jumps forward, her mind addled and stirred by the unfamiliar immanence of all-time one-time. She plucks away the scalding shroud.

Mrs Tung? another Mae demands, riding on the shoulders of her old life. Where are you, Mrs Tung?

Mae-in-Air seeks the eternal soul.

In time, Mrs Tung takes another Mae's hand. There are sticky trails across Mrs Tung's face, as if from snails. Her hands are lumpy and blue.

'I can see!' Mrs Tung whispers. Her eyes waver back and forth, skipping, leaping, but they move in unison.

Mrs Tung, it's me, Mae!

Air was saying, 'To send messages, go to the area called Airmail…'

Mae watches her early self swoop clumsily across a virtual courtyard and overshoot the graphics. She embeds herself in the blue stone. Seen from enough distance, anything is funny.

Air says, ' For an emergency configuration, simply repeat your own name several times.'

And Mae-in-Air hears her other self say over, and over, 'Mae, Mae, Mae…'

Mrs Tung cries out in unison, Mae! Mae!

Click.

That was it. That was it right there.

Such a simple thing, a mailbox address. You don't need to talk about souls, or wonder how your imprints got entangled. It's nothing to do with the Gates or the UN Format.

All you have to do is chant the same name together when they configure your mailboxes.

Mae starts to laugh. Their mailboxes had the same name! That was the problem. They would have the same name for eternity – all eternity, both past and future.

The imprint had the mailbox, but the imprint was connected always to the real self, the real person who controlled.

All I have to do, Mae realizes, is talk to the real Mrs Tung.

Water, says Granny Tung, as if in prophecy. The 1959 flood comes gurgling back, but Mae is gone.

Mae pierced and repierced air like a sewing needle, looking for the real soul of Mrs Tung.

Mae sat on her own shoulder, morning visit after morning visit to Mrs Tung's attic.

There Mrs Tung was in her chair at ninety, the wind blowing in her face as if fresh from a Cossack campfire, looking back at memories of the hills.

'Is that you, my dear Mae?' Mrs Tung would banter and then laugh again from heartbreak. 'Well, well, come and sit near me child, and tell me all your news. Hoo-hoo-hoo!'

Mae would collapse. 'Woh! Nothing Granny, just laundry.'

'Oh-ho-ho, I used to so love doing laundry. Watching it hang out in the sun all those colours. I used to love the smell of it you know.'

That's because you loved the people who wore the clothes, Granny.

And Mae-in-Air, on her own shoulder, would whisper: Granny, Granny Tung, can you hear me?

And it seemed sometimes, that the old catlike face would go still and listening, as if just catching a whisper.

Granny, Granny, I'm here.

'Hoo-hoo-hoo, strange how the mind plays tricks. I suddenly remembered – oh, I don't know why – something long before your time.'

And Mae-in-time, fresh from laundry and Joe's noodles, and the smell of Siao in the loft, would lean forward, hopeful for novelty, wanting beauty. 'Remembered what, Granny?'

'Oh!' Mrs Tung waved it away. 'I remembered… I don't know why – hoo-hoo-hoo – I remember one year, the rice fields were full of poppies. Just for no reason. And we all left them there, because so many of our young men had died. Poor souls.' Her old blind eyes still glittered with joy. As if they could see the eternity beyond.

And Mae would stand up to go, and Mae-in-Air would collapse herself back down.

Then she would huff and puff and blow herself back up to another day, another visit.

Mae followed herself, haunted herself, trying to find whenever Mae had been near Old Mrs Tung. She reasoned that there might be some closer link, the closer she got to their final relationship, their final state.