Air (or Have Not Have)

So you get something, too. Just as well.

'How do I become an Info Horseman?' Mae asked.

He looked around at her and for once, his eyes were adult. 'You would need to know very much more than you do now,' he replied.

'Can I learn it?'

He sighed. 'You would need to know how wires work. And money. And banking.'

Mae thrust out her chin. 'I have my Kru.'

'And the people – most of all you need to know the people, the people in those worlds. It is not for me to say that you can learn.'

We are who we are.

'Thank you,' she said. The Central Man had said no in a way that she could understand and accept.

'Right,' she said. 'Now, teach me how to make screens.'

Mr Oz crumpled. 'It is late-'

Mae cut him off: 'And I risked my life to come here, and I cannot do it often. You say you want to help, then fine. Help. Helping people costs; you've got to do it when you're tired. Go on! Do your job!'

Mr Oz paused. The muscles in his face worked like biceps. His face seemed to swim up through anger to the placid surface of a smile. 'This is very good for me,' he said. Then he grinned.

'Right. You make screens with something old called html, xml makes it work on TV and aml will even make it work on Air.'

'That means nothing to me.'

'You'll have to learn the words,' said Mr Oz. In the realm of Info, he could command.

The next day Mr Ken came to ask Mae to live with him.

Mae was sweeping Kwan's diwan, the carpets rolled up. The men were already at the television, already there were sports results. A voice behind her said, 'Shouldn't you rest?'

Mae turned and saw Mr Ken. He looked terrible, abject and sleepless.

'Did they say anything to you?' Mae asked jerking her head down towards the landing. Ken Kuei would have had to walk past all the men.

'Some things,' Kuei said.

'I can imagine,' she said. 'When you leave they will ask if your dick is wet.'

'I have come for a serious discussion,' he said.

Kuei's wonderful good behaviour disguised a lack of intelligence. He was diligent, kind, silent, and sympathetic. Just not very bright. Or were all men stupid? Or only the ones she knew?

His ballooning broad shoulders, his round face like a peach, his lips like something soft and chewable. If he were to start on her now, here in the sun-drenched guest room on the swept flagstones, pulling down her trousers, she would dampen, open, admit him.

But no, he wanted a serious discussion.

Mae sniffed. 'Okay. We talk.'

'It is impossible for us to stay in the village,' he said.

'It is impossible for me to go,' she said, very quietly.

He coughed, gently. 'I… propose,' he said. 'That we leave. Together. Take my children with us. We would go wherever you like. But I would suggest Green Valley City.' He looked helpless, proud. 'I would hate Balshang,' he said.

'I want to stay here,' she repeated.

He nodded. 'Okay. Okay,' he said, trying to absorb what she meant. 'I will need to find us a new house. It would not be possible to live so close to Joe.'

'Which house? Whose, Mr Ken? Is there an empty house here? I thought they were all crowded with too many children, and children's children. And oh, such a difference, Mr Ken, to be two minutes away from one's husband. Passing him every day in the fields. Weeding his fields instead of yours by mistake.'

'I know, I know,' Kuei nodded.

'I want this to stop,' Mae said.

'It has not been good,' he admitted. He looked at her, his eyes that wanted to stay a child and that wanted her. 'But it could be good. If we just say, 'Yes, it is true, but now we will live together, open.' We could do that, and in a year they will get used to it.'

'You don't understand,' she said. 'That night – huh! The night before last, it seems a year ago. That night, as I walked home, I had made up my mind. That this would stop. I decided then.'

She heard the men and their laughter, the birds in the fields, and the very slight noise of the river that flowed right across the heart of the village. She looked into his dark eyes.

'I have been doing too much. I know what I want to do. I have to do just that, if I am to do it at all. And I cannot bear to give up.'

'Info,' he said, almost in scorn.

'This village,' she answered him. 'What your grandmother showed me is that everything dies. It is not good enough just to live. You have to know that death is certain. Not… Not just of the person, but of whole worlds. Ours is going to die. It is dead now. The only thing I can do is help it be reborn, so we can survive.'

Kuei was picking at something on the windowsill next to her. 'Mother to us all,' he said, in some bitterness.

'If it were a different time…' she said.

'If we were younger…' he said.

'If it were as it should be…'

'If we were as we once were…'

He shook himself like a dog, shivered. ' Urggh,' he said, partly in anger, partly in casting anger off. 'Will you go back to Joe?'

She paused in order to think, but found she did not have to. 'No,' she answered. 'No, I will concentrate on this.'

'On what?' Mr Ken yelped. 'You will concentrate on loneliness, Mae? On an empty house? A room in someone else's house, working like a servant in order to say thank you?'

Mae sucked in air through her nose, in a thin, focused stream that hissed, but was not a sigh. It was a gathering of strength.

'On clearing the floor for work.'

Kuei stared back at her, helpless. 'What work?' he asked again. He really didn't know. She wanted to hug him then, hold him, comfort him, for he was one of the dead. But it would be misinterpreted.

'Teaching us how to use that thing,' she said. Each word was like a brick that she could barely carry.

'You can do both!'

She held up her hands. 'No. I can't. I don't sleep, I hardly eat, I work in the house, I work in the fields, and then I work on that, and there is almost nothing left of me.' Suddenly she was shouting, 'I'm tired!'

The only thing in his face was sympathy for her.

'Maybe when all of this is done,' she said, more quietly, relenting.

'I will be waiting,' Kuei said helplessly. 'I waited before.'

A year from now? Maybe the change would come, and after that a time of calm. After the massacre, stillness?

Mae nodded yes, but said nothing further, to avoid giving him too much hope. He nodded yes as well, and made no move to kiss her, for both of them had agreed to end, not to begin. He turned and went down the stairs to the kitchen. The diwan seemed full of fine white dust.

And she ran up the wooden stairs to look out of a high window through bleached-blue sunlight over bleached-blue rooftops. Mae looked down and saw Kuei as if through a mist. He walked tall, straight, holding his jacket against the heat, the back of his T-shirt stained with sweat and nerves, past the men, who ignored him. They turned, grinning, to look at his back.

There goes my young man, thought Mae.