Air (or Have Not Have)

'I asked them to call me Madam Owl, so that they would come to think in a different way about the owl.'

'Let's hope it helps,' he replied. He stopped at Kwan's gate, and turned towards the children. 'Okay. I am now visiting with Mrs Kwan, and she will not want to be bothered with so many children. So you all go home now.'

'We want to ask you more questions,' said Dawn, and put her hand experimentally into his pocket. He pulled it out, but did not slap it.

'No candy,' he said, his smile going thin. 'I have none.'

Dawn giggled. 'I was looking for money.'

He was useless. 'Dawn. I will box your ears,' warned Mae.

Dawn was laughing too hard, twisting in the Central Man's grip.

'Dawn,' said Mae, her voice darkening.

'Okay, okay,' Dawn chuckled, and pulled back.

Mae said, in her best Madam Owl voice, 'All of you go home and go to bed. Go on!'

'It is the same everywhere,' the Central Man smiled.

Then why haven't you learned how to handle it? Mae thought. She pulled the gate shut and barred it.

Then the Central Man said an unexpected thing: 'Would you say that the opposition here falls along religious lines?'

Mae's eyes boggled in the dark. You had to be very careful raising questions like that, even with no one around.

' "Religious lines?" ' she asked.

He laughed aloud. 'All right. It has in many places. Some of the minority tribes are very superstitious about it. They think the voices are ghosts or demons or something. Some of the Muslims are very welcoming.'

'We have had no trouble like that,' said Mae.

'Hmm. Well, this village is one of the best I've seen,' said Mr Oz.

Kwan was settled on her floor, sitting cross-legged. It looked as though she was writing letters. She gathered them up quickly. Mae caught her gaze and Kwan's eyes twinkled. She had done whatever it was needed doing to the TV. She went to make tea, cheerful and expansive.

The Central Man asked questions, one after another after another. They were as many as grains of rice in a terrace. Kwan yawned.

'Look, you want answers to all of these things, Mae has done a Question Map.'

'What?' He sat forward.

Oh, many thanks, Kwan.

'It was nothing,' said Mae, and she glared at Kwan.

'What do you mean, it was nothing? What did you do?' the Central Man asked.

Kwan realized her mistake: 'Oh it was a trifle.'

'A Question Map means that you go and ask everyone in the village the same questions. Is that what you did?'

Mae still could not lie. 'Yes,' she admitted. 'But it was about fashion.'

'But did it deal at all with the Test? What people felt about it? Can I see it?'

Mae's eyes narrowed and she let them drill into Kwan's. Unseen behind him, Kwan did a quick, abject bow of apology.

'I gave it to Kwan,' said Mae, still angry.

'Oh, that's right. Now, where did I put it? You know, I think Luk must have thrown it out. He thought it was just useless paper.'

The Central Man begged. 'Please let me see it, please!' The young man was very earnest. 'You don't know how important it is. No one talks to me, I am supposed to do research, but if I do it the way they want, no one will talk to me. But we need to know. We need to know, if we are to help you!'

He looked back and forth between them. I almost think I should believe you, thought Mae. But you are a government spy.

He was in despair, he ran his hand across his forehead. 'Most people are pretending it did not happen,' he said. 'They are learning nothing. They are not making ready. It will come again, as sure as winter comes. It will come next April.'

He twisted in his chair. 'And I have to be able to tell the government. They must spend money; they must send teachers out into the villages to prepare. The Test was a disaster. A disaster, but going on Air will be an even bigger one!' His fists clumsily punctured the air in frustration.

All right, so I believe you, thought Mae. You are a nice, sad, powerless boy. Why should I trust the government?

He was a boy, but not a stupid one. 'I won't tell anyone you showed it to me. I know, I know, your neighbours will think you betrayed them to a government spy. But let me see it, so I know how it affected them, I don't need their names. But I do need to be able to go back and say to the government: "They need help." We need to listen to people to find out how to help them!'

His two fists were bunched together.

Mae relented. 'We feel the same way, you and I.'

He breathed out in relief.

'But governments never help the likes of us, we are too far away from everything.'

'That is why I need to see what you have done! Look, the people in government have sons in the army. You all have sons in the army. Do you think our sons wish the people harm? Or do they want the Karzistani people to succeed?'

'Not all of us are Karzistani,' said Kwan. Her face and voice were pinched.

Mr Oz had no argument against that. He slumped slightly. 'A terrible mistake has been made. If the government won't help you, who will?'

'We help ourselves,' said Kwan.

'You're about the only ones who have,' he muttered, more to himself than to them.

'My Question Map was about fashion,' said Mae. The very idea now struck her as absurd, silly. 'I did it to find out how the Air would change my business.'

'What did you find out?' he asked quietly.

'That the village has died,' Mae said, equally quietly.

Mae realized that she had been hearing a clock ticking for some time. What clock, where?

'How do you mean?' he asked.

'I mean… I mean our children will become like children everywhere else. They will play computer games and learn everything and the very last of the old ways will go. Absolutely everything we know and love will go. They will have supermarkets here, and streetlights, and the men will drive Fords, not vans or tractors.'

Mae looked around Kwan's room. There definitely was no clock. But it ticked.

Mae heard the sirens again. She turned slowly and looked and saw that outside Kwan's window the air was full of orange light as if their village life were burning. She knew she was staring at the future again. She stood and walked, as if on a ship at sea, and stared out from Kwan's high window.

There was a blimp with neon lights advertising an electronic address, tethered to the courtyard gate. There were tables full of people in the courtyard. This house was now a restaurant. The streetlights were yellow and they fell far away, all across the valley and up the other side, and there were moving lights of cars all over the valley, and drifting music, from everywhere.

'Mae?' Kwan's voice was anxious. 'Mae!' Her hand was on Mae's shoulder.

Mae started to speak, in a voice that was not entirely her own. It was partly Old Mrs Tung's.

'All the old songs,' she said, 'and the old good manners – all that will go.'

From down below, in the restaurant, a drunk laughed loudly.

'We used to work all together in Circles, and take turns to bring the lunches, and all of us who could read, we'd recite the poems for the ladies. Not… not pop songs… not some song in English, but our own great, great poetry, words that had meaning. We would read the Mevlana.'

And Mae or Mrs Tung or someone started to cry. '"Listen to the reed, how it tells a tale…"'

'Mae, Mae!' Kwan was saying over and over. 'Mae, come back.'

'We made our own clothes, we smoked our own tobacco, we didn't worry about hairspray and makeup. What counted was how strong a woman was, how much she could lift. In winter, wives cooked in teams, one set of wives making the soup all day, another set of wives making the goulash all day, everybody ate, no one was lonesome. On the first day, the Muerain would call on God and give us wisdom, and the next day the priest in his robes would bless the food, and on the third day, the Communist read from his little red book. And in Kizuldah all three were the same man!'