Air (or Have Not Have)

Geoff Ryman

Air (or Have Not Have)

Dedicated to Doris McPherson and what is left of (the original) Meadowvale, Ontario, Canada

CHAPTER 1

Mae lived in the last village in the world to go online.

After that, everyone else went on Air.

Mae was the village's fashion expert. She advised on makeup, sold cosmetics, and provided good dresses. Every farmer's wife needed at least one good dress.

Mae would sketch what was being worn in the capital. She would always add a special touch: a lime-green scarf with sequins; or a lacy ruffle with colourful embroidery. A good dress was for display. 'We are a happier people and we can wear these gay colours,' Mae would advise.

'Yes, that is true,' her customer might reply, entranced that fashion expressed their happy culture. 'In the photographs, the Japanese women all look so solemn.'

'So full of themselves,' said Mae, and lowered her head and scowled, and she and her customer would laugh, feeling as sophisticated as anyone in the world.

Mae got her ideas as well as her mascara and lipsticks from her trips to the town. It was a long way and she needed to be driven. When Su

Su

Mae smiled and whispered, promising much. 'I hope my source will be present today,' she said. 'She brings me my special colours, you ca

A dubious gesture, meaning that perhaps the goods were stolen, stolen from – who knows? – supplies meant for foreign diplomats? The tips of Mae's fingers rattled once, in provocation, across her client's arm.

The town was called Yeshibozkent, which meant Green Valley City. It was now approached through corridors of raw apartment blocks set on beige desert soil. It had billboards, a new jail, discos with mirror balls, illuminated shop signs, and Toyota jeeps that belched out blue smoke.

The town centre was as Mae remembered it from childhood. Traditional wooden houses crowded crookedly together. Wooden shingles covered the roofs and gables. The shop signs were tiny, faded, and sometimes hand-lettered. The old market square was still full of peasants selling vegetables laid out on mats. Middle-aged men still played chess outside tiny cafes; youths still prowled in packs.

There was still the public-address system. The address system barked out news and music from the top of the electricity poles. Its sounds drifted over the city, a

Mr Haseem parked near the market, and the address system seemed to enter Mae's lungs, like cigarette smoke, perfume, or hairspray. She stepped out of the van and breathed it in. The excitement of being in the city trembled in her belly. The address system made Mae's spirits rise as much as the bellowing of shoppers, farmers, and donkeys; as much as the smell of raw petrol and cut greenery and drains. She and her middle-aged client looked at each other and gasped and giggled at themselves.

'Now,' Mae said, stroking Su

Mae took her client to Halat's, the same hairdresser as Su

All of this allowed the hairdresser to charge more. Mae had never pressed her luck and asked for a cut. Something beady in Halat's eyes told Mae there would be no point. What Mae got out of it was standing, and that would lead to more work later.

With cucumbers over her eyes, Su

Mae ran to collect the dress. A disabled girl, a very good seamstress called Miss Soo, had opened up a tiny shop of her own.

Miss Soo was grateful for any business, poor thing, ski

Yet Miss Soo had a boyfriend in the fashion business – genuinely in the fashion business, far away in the capital city, Balshang. The girl often showed Mae his photograph. It was like a magazine photograph. The boy was very handsome, with a shiny shirt and coiffed-up hair. She kept saying she was saving up money to join him. It was a mystery to Mae what such a boy was doing with a cripple for a girlfriend. Why did he keep contact with her? Publicly Mae would say to friends of the girl: It is the miracle of love, what a good heart he must have. Otherwise she kept her own counsel which was this: You would be very wise not to visit him in Balshang.

The boyfriend sent Miss Soo the patterns of dresses, photographs, magazines, or even whole catalogues. There was one particularly treasured thing; a showcase publication. The cover was like the lid of a box, and it showed in full colour the best of the nation's fashion design.

Models so rich and thin they looked like ghosts. They looked half asleep, as if the only place they carried the weight of their wealth was on their eyelids. It was like looking at Western or Japanese women, and yet these were their own people, so long-legged, so modern, so ethereal, as if they were made of air.

Mae hated the clothes. They looked like washing-up towels. Oatmeal or grey in one colour, and without a trace of adornment.

Mae sighed with lament. 'Why do these rich women go about in their underwear?'

The girl shuffled back with the dress, past piles of unsold oatmeal cloth. Miss Soo had a ski

'Ah, yes,' Mae sighed. 'But my clients, you know, they live in the hills.' She shared a conspiratorial smile with the girl. 'Their taste! Speaking of which, let's have a look at my wedding cake of a dress.'

The dress was actually meant to look like a cake, all pink and white sugar icing, except that it kept moving all by itself. White wires with styrofoam bobbles on the ends were surrounded with clouds of white netting.