Air (or Have Not Have)

Down below, the crowd sounds roared towards a crescendo. 'No!' shouted one of the men. Their team was losing. They would be in a bad mood.

'That's okay, we can use mine,' said the government man, enthusiastic and oblivious. 'My van has a computer.'

They would have to walk out through the landing. The sound of the men, drunken below, rose up like the odour of a stew.

Mae climbed down the ladder from the loft, to the staircase and from there into the carpeted diwan that led to the landing. Her stomach was a knot of nerves. She felt as if a layer of skin had been stripped from her.

Just past the stone arch, the men were crowded onto the narrow landing. The barking voice finished and there was a swelling of jolly music. The game had just ended.

Allah! Please make them all decide to go home!

The men yawned. Chairs scraped on stone. Mr Oz started to walk. Mae grabbed his sleeve and he looked back at her in surprise. He finally understood that she was afraid.

'Okay, now a movie?' someone said. Chairs scraped again, and suddenly there was Bollywood music. Mae gave in and nodded yes to Mr Oz. She tried to be invisible. She tried to waft forward like a ghost onto the landing.

Men were crowded around the TV. Mae glimpsed among them Mr Ali, Mr Pin, and both Old and Young Mr Dohs. Joe was not there. Mae tried to slip around the backs of the chairs. The air seemed full of thick, half-cooked bread to delay her.

'Tuh,' chortled Mr Doh, in something like disgust. Mae did not look around.

'There's a funny smell,' said Mr Ali. ' Kwan should not keep pigs in her house.'

Mr Pin agreed. 'Ah. You should keep pigs in the basement. They like rolling in shit.'

The men chuckled. Mae was nearly at the head of the stairs. It would be easy to push her down them.

'The heat of their bodies warms the house,' said Mr Ali.

'It seems hot pigs fuck even government men.'

'Hot pigs must be killed,' said Old Mr Doh.

The very air seemed to shudder. Mae had to glance back then, in case the time had come to run.

Young Mr Doh had a hand on his father's arm. He looked at Mae in alarm and jerked his head towards the gate: Get out of here quick! Mae thought: You are Joe's best friend, and yet it is you who still treats me like a human being.

Mae scurried forward, her feet bouncing down the steps like a ball.

'Gentlemen,' said Mr Oz, Mr Sincere. 'Good evening. I am glad to see that you make such good use of the TV.'

Mr Oz stood with his legs planted apart and across the top of the stairs. Mae ran.

Mae waited in her old courtyard, trembling in the dark.

She had bolted her gate and crouched behind it. She had to hope that Joe did not come outside. Or Mr Ken.

There was a knock. 'It is me,' murmured Mr Oz.

'Ssh!' said Mae, and lifted the latch more gently than if it had been a blanket over a baby.

They tiptoed to the barn and closed the door.

Inside his van, Mr Oz said, 'I will drive you back home. If those dolts are still there, you can sleep here in the van.'

Mae slumped into the seat. She felt a weakness in her belly and had to hold her head for a moment as nausea passed over her.

She knew the signs. Yes, she was pregnant.

'Are you all right?' Mr Oz asked.

Mae was outraged. This… This youngster had only just noticed that she had been beaten, bruised, and cast out. 'No! I am not all right!' she said, angry.

Oz was used to kindness being returned, and was confused. He scowled.

'Oh, for heaven's sake, stop being such a child and help me if you are going to!'

He jerked somewhere just under his lungs, and leaned forward. He plugged in wires, and something whined to life. There was a tiny box with a flip-up screen, a kind of mini-TV.

'Go to 'Info,' ask for 'Government,' ' he said.

Mr Oz took Mae into new provinces of Info. There were rules, regulations, advice, offers of service, all from her own government. Up came a voiceform.

The voiceform kept asking impertinent questions. Are you over forty? How many children do you have? All over twenty years old? Any dependants? What is your annual income? 10,000 riels! 1,000 riels? It offered no figure that was low enough. Mae murmured: 500 riels.

'Is that true?' asked Mr Oz, quietly. 'If you say too much, you may be disqualified for some things.'

So she told the truth: One hundred riels a year. The Central Man looked sad, but his eyes did not catch hers.

'Okay, let me take over here,' he said. 'What do you want the money for?'

And Mae told him: To buy modern oatmeal cloth that rich people like, and to pay others to embroider it with Eloi patterns and then tell the West and the Big East that the cloth was a statement about Third World issues. Mr Oz chuckled at that, and looked around at her face.

Then he spoke into the machine, translating what she had told him into official talk. It sounded to Mae like a news item, terribly important, like the way rich people talked about themselves. But it didn't move or excite her.

'That's boring,' she said.

He shrugged. Mae imagined someone at the other end, listening bored to her answers.

And she reached into the patterns, reached into the new glowing links inside her head, and spoke with the knowledge of the Kru, without being the Kru.

'The proposal is to use the power of the Net to extend the reach of local crafts skills to specialist niche markets, most especially America, Singapore, and Japan.'

Mr Oz turned around and blinked at her.

'This will not be traditional direct marketing. Efforts will be focused on information finders of various types, particularly fashion or craft networks…'

He warned her. 'Don't use the word 'Eloi.' 'Traditional local crafts,' that's what these are. Do you have a Horseman?'

Horsemen in Karzistan had traded for centuries in the most mobile currency of all: horseflesh. They used their commodity also to bear news, where there were shortages of horses or any other goods. Other traders paid them for such news.

Horsemen, like fashion experts, had always been in the information business.

Now they were people who were paid to sell and sort Info. They were called something else in English, but in Karz, they were called Info Horsemen.

Mr Oz had names and addresses ready. 'You have to give an address for a Horseman. They don't think you've done your homework otherwise.'

He added an official report to her application. It was a separate file attached to her application. His voice validated his identity.

'This is a core project for the Green Valley/Red Mountain area,' he said. 'Its proponent has taken a lead in instructing the village people on the Net and the coming of the Air. She has founded the Swallow School, a project to train locals in Info skills. She has also used a well-constructed Question Map to determine the views of local people on Air. The proposed scheme will demonstrate to this community the value of the Net. It will be the best possible advancement for the aims of both the Yu En Air project and the Central Bureau of Information Technology/Ministry of Development's Joint Declaration of the Taking Wing Initiative.'

Then he sent the form.

'I think we'll get it,' Mr Oz said. 'I cannot imagine a better case.'

He looked calm, sated, knowing how fine it would look on his own record.