Air (or Have Not Have)

For a few weeks, Mae's days settled into a pattern.

She did her housework in the early morning and worked in her fields until noon. At lunch or during the day, she might snatch some time with Mr Ken. In the early evening Mae and An would visit neighbours with their Question Map and drink tea late into the night.

After escorting An home, Mae worked to master the television. She saw there were hundreds of things she might do with the TV. She could use the television to sell or to Market Call. She could use it like a telephone to talk live or leave voicemail. In a year she would be able to use it to make material for Aircasts.

Aircasts were like films, but they were translated into the Format. They could go then direct to people's heads. So there would be Aircast versions of movies.

And Aircast version of ads, thought Mae. And all the ads, if you looked hard enough, had something called Intimacy Shields. So, Mae began to wonder, how do you do that in Air? When it's inside your head.

She tried to buy bolts of cloth online. But she still needed something called a Believability Card and that was easiest to do when you had a Clever Card.

Kwan rubbed her shoulders. 'The world out there has grown bigger. There are two worlds. There is the one you can see, and another world people have made up, and it is bigger than the real one. They call it Info.

And Mae felt lust.

Lust to be part of that world, lust to know how it worked, lust to know how the television worked, and how the Net and how the Air would give all that wings. With a lust that bordered on despair, she wanted to be first, she wanted to know all, she wanted to be mistress of all its secrets.

I will learn, she promised herself.

Kwan would leave to go to bed. Mae would keep learning and relearning how to make the accounts system work. She asked for the wrong things, the machine got stuck on the way she said certain things, she kept forgetting what fo mu lah were, and how you entered them, but she knew that it meant the numbers would add themselves up. She thought in passing of Siao, Joe's brother, and how he should see this.

She learned that she could save pictures from the Net or from video. She learned she could change their colour. She learned she could use the tiny camera to copy things from the real world and change them.

Above all else, she learned that she would no longer need to know how to read or write.

And at three a.m., her feet crossing in front of each other as she walked, she would make her way home, as sweaty as if she had been weeding the rice by night as well.

A note on the door might say, in her mother's handwriting: Your mother called. She wonders where her daughter spends her time and asked if you would be good enough to visit her. Mae would promise herself that she would. When she had time. She would fall into her bed. Mr Ken might be there, snoring gently. She might kiss him.

More usually, she would sleep alone. She would pull the pillow that smelled of him between her legs.

And she might dream, always of the past, of beautiful thank-you cakes not delivered until stale. Or a prize dress forgotten on a line until the sun bleached it. The sense of unease would persist, as she sat up. The long hot day would begin again.

The next fashion season would not be until after harvest, in October. By then she would know how much Joe and Siao had brought in. She could leave deciding about her fashion business until then.

Mae thought she was doing all that she could.

Then Sunni set herself up in the best-dress business.

Mae arrived at the Kosals to interview them.

'Oh, Mrs Haseem has just visited and asked us all the same questions,' Mrs Kosal told Mae. 'See. She has sent us a leaflet.'

Mrs Kosal went to fetch it and passed it to Mae, her watchful face and smile not entirely sympathetic.

Mae felt sick. The thing she feared most had happened. Her knowledge, her ideas, had been taken and used by her enemy before she had had a chance to complete them.

And Sunni was richer and had more time and she had a television of her own.

Mae stood reading in the street, looking at the professional print job, alarmed and unhappy. An kicked grit beside her.

'I cannot bear to read it,' said Mae, and passed it to her. Did An know she could not read? Perhaps she did. An read it aloud.

TRUE FASHION

FOR TRUE LADIES

NOW THAT CERTAIN PARTIES HAVE BEEN UNCOVERED

AS OFFERING FALSE ADVICE, THE WAY IS NOW OPEN

FOR TRUTH AND BEAUTY.

Mrs Haseem-ma'am sets the new standard for fashion.

With her eye on the world, she sees what the world of fashion really has to offer. Visit her Fashion-Doctor surgery when you have a moment. See what she can offer you as a best dress. It will be

PROFESSIONALLY MADE BY BEST FASHION HOUSES.

She will also visit to listen with clear heart and true vision to what you have to say. Do not waste words like seed grain on barren fields. Only Mrs Haseem-ma'am can make your words grow into green fields.

Sunni was trying to destroy her.

Mae forced herself to be calm in front of An. She looked at the swallows. The swallows still darted, the sky was faithful. Mae took some comfort.

'The village has never had a leaflet before,' she said. 'I have to admit, it is a bold stroke, a great compliment. It says to us: 'You are as important as rich city people, to have a leaflet printed for you.'

It was the work of a professional letter-writer. And that, Mae saw, was wrong in many ways.

'She has made a mistake,' Mae said, saving face in front of An. 'She addresses us as an employer would. And who are these fine ladies she writes for? Mrs Wing? Only Mrs Wing, who I think is still my friend.'

'Yes, I see,' said An. But she still kicked grit.

'An, can you help me this evening? Can you stay late?'

An sat at her kitchen table and wrote thirty-three letters in her beautiful handwriting on pages torn from Mae's exercise books. Mae made sure every one of them was different.

Dear Mrs Pin,

Your husband feeds his children by fixing cars and vans. How would you feel if a rich man wrote everyone saying, 'Don't use Mr Pin, he can't fix things.'

This would be unkind and untrue. Sunni gives herself airs and calls herself Mrs Haseem-ma'am. She wants you to talk to her like she is your boss.

You can call me Mae, like I am your servant. I will work hard to get you a good best dress.

Your servant,

Mae

Dear Mrs Doh,

I am not rich and do not have the money to pay someone to write letters for me. I can't pay to have them printed in the City.

I am a plain person, who likes beautiful clothes and wants her friends to be beautiful. You do not need to call me ma 'am.