Air (or Have Not Have)

The voice from inside her spoke. 'There has always been one big change after another. But we always think our first world was permanent. Shen, my little bright boy. Your world came just after the Russians drove out the Chinese. Before you were born, the Eloi were fighting a war against the Chinese. Guerrillas would take over our houses. Our husbands were shot as rebels for sheltering them. We had to give our grain to the Red Guards. Before that it was the village strongman. There is no old way to go back to, Shen. My brightest little boy, are you still too young to see that?'

Shen was looking at a ghost. The tears seemed to have frozen on his face, going creamy with salt in the sunlight.

Mae began to feel giddy, divorced from her own body. Her fingers were numb. 'You cannot bring back the old world. Which old world do you want?'

The Central Man was staring at her. Mack, Doh, they all looked at their shoes.

Mae's forehead was covered in thick sweat. The corner of her vision went dark and gritty. 'I have to sit down,' she said, and fainted.

Mae woke up in Kwan's guest room, lined with cushions.

Grim-faced, Kwan was mopping her brow.

'We saved the TV,' she said.

There was business at hand. Mae responded: 'We had Sunni's people on our side.'

Kwan nodded briskly. 'I fight against my brother, until my cousin attacks him.'

'The Central Man frightened them.'

'Everything frightens them,' said Kwan, with real scorn. 'I never had any respect for Teachers.'

Mae chuckled. 'You hid it well at school.'

Kwan shrugged. 'They held the keys.'

'What are you and Mrs Shen up to?'

Kwan paused, worked her mouth. 'I should have told you,' she said.

Mae was ready. Info Lust. It made people hide things.

Kwan sighed. 'Suloi and I have put screens on the Net.'

Mae didn't know what she meant.

'We put screens about our people. On TV.'

Mae sat up in wonder.

'You did what?'

Kwan stared back at her, a little bleary with guilt, a little obstreperous: What business was it of Mae's? 'You sit up, you're well enough now to see,' she said. She stood up, not waiting for Mae to follow.

Mae walked through the shuttered room, following Kwan out into the porch. The TV had been moved up from the courtyard to the landing. Something had scratched its side. Below on the courtyard stones a dark stain sweltered. Blood? Grease?

Kwan's fingers danced on a keyboard. Words in English rattled on the screen.

'Audio. Karz output, Eloic input,' Kwan ordered. 'Volume down.'

Then she gave orders in the language of her people. Her language flapped and cawed like a raven and seemed to make Kwan into a different person, less considered, more urgent.

Up came a photograph of Eloi embroidery.

The television murmured as if it had a secret. 'The Eloi people are an ancient race, now living in the mountainous region of Karzistan. Karzistan is on the borders of China, Tibet, and Khazakstan. These screens have been created by the Eloi people themselves.'

The screens offered 'Arts.' Under 'Arts,' Suloi and Kwan sang in high straining voices. In video, they told old stories, while English words danced around them. There were screens of tattoo patterns. Kwan's patient voice explained their meaning. Mae recognized the neatness and complexity of the tattoo outlines. Kwan had drawn them. The patterns, like Kwan, were restrained and somehow private.

Next, the meaning of the embroidered Eloi breastplates was explained. These collars were worn by courting men and their betrothed. Note, the television said, that the beads all form straight parallel lines symbolizing two lives in conjunction.

Photographs of the old forts, tales of Eloi heroes against the Cossacks, the Turks, and the Chinese. A history of war.

A section on the 'Heroes,' meaning the men who fought against the Communists.

'Few people in the West even knew of the conflict. It lasted for generations and ended in defeat for the Communists and the creation of a new republic. We thought it would be for all the people, not just the Karzistani majority.'

Behind Kwan's voice, shepherds began to sing. They sang of heroism, about living in the hills and praying to all their various gods, smoking thin cigarettes in freezing winds under clear stars. Heroes rolled rocks down onto the heads of troops, only to find that the crushed bodies were those of their cousins conscripted into the Communist armies.

Photographs, in smeared black-and-white, were shown. Handsome young Eloi dead stared up at the sky, their chins missing. Handsome young Eloi, alive around fires, their eyes burning with this message: I may die, but it will be worth it. We are the people who stopped the Chinese, who stopped the Arabs. The Eloi are the world's great secret force against tyrants.

Where did Kwan get these photos?

Then Mae remembered: Kwan's father, dear Old Mr Kowoloia.

Dear Old Mr Kowoloia must have been a terrorist. Kwan had these photos. She has kept them secret from all of us.

So this is why she wanted the Central Man gone.

'Kwan, is this wise?' Mae asked.

'The site is locked against any instructions in Karzistani. Only in Eloi or in English.'

On came the video of the Karzistani woman in her new Balshang apartment. Kwan's recorded voice grew harsher.

'Listen closely to the Eloi woman, torn away from her people, praising refrigerators. Her voice is rehearsed, her eyes fearful. For she knows: Her people are being destroyed.'

Mae looked over her shoulder. What if the government man should hear? She looked back, and saw: Kwan's hands were two pale fists, the skin over the knuckles dead white. With rage.

'We appeal to the world. Do not let this great and graceful people disappear from history. All you need do is show that you are interested in us, as you once were when we controlled the passes through which wound the Silk Road to China.'

'Sleep,' ordered Kwan.

Mae breathed out. 'I'll keep that spy away.' No wonder you had not told me. Tell the truth, Mae.

'I am jealous,' said Mae. 'I had vague plans to learn how to do that. You went and did it. How?'

'After you left,' said Kwan.

'From four a.m. to seven a.m., every day?'

Kwan nodded. 'Suloi and me together.'

'Wing did not know?'

'He did not care,' said Kwan, and stood up, graceful, dignified. Eloi, thought Mae. Every particle of her soul is Eloi, and I did not know that, so I did not know her. Like her screens, she is locked away. You must speak Eloi, to have the key.

'Will… Will you teach me how to do that?' Mae burned to know.

Kwan looked bleary now from confession and the exhaustion that follows. 'The TV will do a better job of that than I can,' she said. She took Mae's hand and slapped it as if in apology. Do not be surprised -you are my dear Mae, but you are also Chinese in the end: the enemy.

Kwan lit a cigarette. She pulled a bit of stray tobacco from the tip of her tongue. 'The real question is: What is the nature of our alliance with Sunni?'

Mae shook her head. This was all moving very quickly. 'Not very strong,' she replied.

Kwan turned to Mae. 'Do you want to destroy Sunni?'

'She tries to destroy me,' said Mae.

'Do you wish to see her destitute?'

Mae shrugged. 'No. I don't wish anyone in the village to be destitute. Why?'

Kwan was really very strange. She seemed to uncoil like a serpent, pushing herself away from the TV box.

Kwan sighed. 'TV does not come free, you know.'

Mae waited.

'It comes like calls on a mobile phone. Every time you choose something, you pay. Our government subsidy pays Mr Wing's telephone bills so the TV gets used for the entire village. But the telephone company will charge everyone else. We administer for them.'