Air (or Have Not Have)

and blue around them.

'I need to think,' was all that Mae could say.

'You won't be given much of a chance for that, said Fatimah.

The rest of the afternoon session consisted of qualitative research. Mae was introduced to a bald, eager stranger with spectacles. This is Mr Pakansir, he will ask you questions. Hello, Mrs Chung-ma'am. Please answer the questions quickly, no need for deep consideration.

The name Pakan meant 'Real Man.' Mae sat, legs crossed, arms crossed trying to find cover. The questions began easily enough: occupation… marriage… was she a happy woman? How did things change after Formatting? After the Test, how did things change?

'Would you say that your sexual habits changed after Formatting?'

'No,' said Mae.

'But… uh… you are pregnant. In an unusual way.'

'No one knows how such a thing is possible,' replied Mae.

'We understand, however, that your marriage broke down.'

Mae sat silent.

'Is that true? You have just said that you were happily married. How did it become unhappy?'

Mae smiled silently.

Mr Real Man's grin went a bit fierce. 'Mr Tunch has said to remind you, perhaps, of your bargain. That you will help us understand, in return for training. Your mind was interfered with by the UN Format. We are trying to understand what happened. To help others.'

Mr Real Man went back to his sheet of papers. They were printed, but not entirely square on the paper. 'Did you find yourself performing sexual acts that were not part of your previous repertoire?'

Silence.

'Please, Mrs Chung. These are medical questions.'

Poor man. You do not know who you are dealing with, thought Mae.

'Had you ever heard of or known about oral sex before the Formatting?'

Mae couldn't help but answer, 'How on earth do you think peasant women avoid being pregnant all the time?'

He looked disappointed. 'Oh. So you knew about sex with the mouth before the Formatting. There is no chance that the Formatting planted the idea?'

Mae did not answer. Her heart was growing as tight as her masklike little smile.

'Was it something that you practised frequently?'

Mr Pakan slouched forward, groin thrust out. Unconsciously he began to rock back and forth as if having sex with the tip of his long tie. Mae stood up, thinking of Mr Haseem, and kicked Mr Real Man between the legs.

He groaned and doubled over. She struck him in the face. His glasses slipped lopsided, and he slumped forward on his knees. He crawled out of the room. Mae kicked him on the bottom and sent him sprawling over the polished padded floor outside the room and then she slammed the door behind him.

She waited, her breath quivering as though it were fire.

She was not an ignorant peasant or some farm animal made to reproduce as they wished. They were going to have to learn to treat her as a person of consequence.

Mr Tunch came early. He looked amused. 'You are confirming important data for us.'

'Am I really?' said Mae. She felt as though her teeth had been filed into a saw.

'You were not violent before the Formatting, were you?'

Mae paused. 'I never met such bastards until the Formatting.'

Mr Tunch was still smiling. He was amused. 'I wish I could have seen it – poor old Mr Real Man. Asking his neat little machine questions, and meeting Real Life by mistake.'

Mae was unmoved, unfooled. 'He was doing your bidding.'

'Are you going to hit me?' Tunch asked in mock alarm.

Mae considered. 'I might kill you if you go too far.'

Even Mr Tunch blinked. 'Oh,' he said, darkening.

'I am a direct person. Are you going to blame that on the UN as well?' Mae batted her eyelashes at him.

It was his turn to grin, masklike.

Mae sat back, feeling hearty, like she was surrounded by friends and picking on an enemy. 'That's why you do this, Mr Tunch. You want to sell the Gates Format. You have to say the UN Format is bad. It is bad because it gives away too much to people like me. Is the Gates Format paying you?'

Mr Tunch closed his eyes and his smile went gentler, amused, and rueful. He looked at her in something like affection and said, 'Unexpected Flower.'

Mae felt a chill. Just how much had Mr Wisdom Bronze penetrated, with his machines and Question Maps?

He sighed. 'Whenever I despair for our people and think there is no hope, with the ignorance, the poverty, the deep divisions, the lack of resources, someone like you surprises me, and I know, I know Karzistan could take on the world.'

The two looked at each other, both surprised.

'You are very damaged, you know,' he added.

You want to rifle through the pages of my life, hold my underwear in the sun to show stains.

Mae gathered herself up and asked brightly, 'Did you make the money for all of this from drugs?'

His face hung suspended.

She shrugged. 'Look, you can't shock me. A wise man makes money where he can. You are not from Yeshibozkent. I can tell that from your accent. You are from far down the valley, where soil, sun, everything is hard. The poppies grow there.'

He was staring at her, almost wary.

'Am I still your Unexpected Flower?' she asked.

His face had recovered, but at least he no longer looked amused by her. 'Even more so,' he said.

'You see, I know you. You are Wise Gangster. Godfather.' Mae mimed a rat-a-tat-tat. 'So. Yes. I am afraid of you. I know what you could do to me.'

'I do what I have to do,' he said, then he added hastily, 'That was not a threat to you. I meant: I do what I have to do to help our people.'

Mae was considering.

Wisdom Bronze said, 'How else was I to build this?'

She believed him. 'How else. And you hate the foreigners even more than you hate us.'

He looked uncertain.

'After all, we are ignorant, poor, deeply divided.' Mae sighed. 'So many of us must get in your way.'

'I am trying to be your friend,' he said softly.

'Ah,' said Mae, looking at the floor. 'Do you know how terrifying that idea is?'

He smiled one last smile before leaving her. But he also pointed a warning finger.

Mae found that she knew his story. She could see it.

Fate and his father's seed, his mother's egg, conspired to give birth to someone very smart indeed.

Hikmet Tunch would have been a clever clownish farm boy, wickedly sharp and sometimes brutal. She could see him scowling with thought as he forked chickpeas into the mill, or kicked geese away from the grain.

This is for fools, he would have thought, seeing the hard work that produced only pennies a day. He saw the daredevil thugs in their shiny track suits and heavy jewellery. He joined them. Volunteering, asking for the most dangerous jobs. He carried the stuff across borders. He did this so he could see how the rest of the world worked.

Hikmet Tunch at seventeen would have looked like a truck driver, stumpy, hard, unshaven, smiling ingratiatingly to the guards at the borders. All the time he spoke to them, his merry eyes would be innocent, even though he knew the gas tank was half full of white paste.

Hikmet would have seen Berlin, Prague, and St Petersburg. He would have studied the world by screwing its women, to discover from them their languages, how they thought, what they valued.

He would have come back and hated the way the buildings in Karzistan did not sit straight, the way the dust