I have made a mistake, thought Mae. I should have spoken to him, and got him to agree. This mistake will take time to undo. Her fingers were burrowed into her uncombed hair.

'Teacher Shen. We have always been friends.'

'Yes!' he insisted.

'I am an impulsive person. I see something needs doing, I do it. I should have talked to you first and explained.'

'You should not set yourself up. You let your rivalry with Sunni carry you too far.'

Ow. That was true.

'Teacher Shen. Do you know any thing about Info?'

He resented that, though his expression did not change.

'We all need to learn about it. We need to learn about it, because soon we will spend half our lives in Info. And no one, not one of us, knows a thing about it. We will all become like little children again. We will all be lost unless we learn.'

His expression had not changed, but there was something helpless, frozen, about him. A poor peasant boy who fought and fought to learn, who gave everything to be allowed to be a Teacher.

And he was her friend – kind Shen, wise Shen, poor Shen. She saw in his face that he feared he had lost everything. He lived in a hovel in a village on a hill; he had given his life to trying to teach the children.

'You are right about Sunni,' she said softly. 'Sunni tries to take my farm, my business. She wants to take everything I have.'

His chin started to tremble. He knew the feeling well. 'They can't even read most of them,' he said, finally, and looked up at the ceiling. 'What did you show them today?'

'Bay Toh Vang. We heard a part of a symphony, and we had "Info" on him. I knew nothing about Bay Toh Vang.'

'They do not know their multiplication tables! And you are telling them, everything will be easy, just wish into the machine. You don't have to work. You don't have to learn.' Teacher Shen glared at her. 'You will make slaves of them.'

'No,' Mae said quietly. 'I will do the reverse of that.'

'Who puts Air into their heads? Who controls it? Who makes the things they see there? Do they? No. The great, huge, powerful things in the world do. You know how computers work, woman? By numbers. In the end, all those pictures, all those words, are just numbers. And these children cannot even add.'

Shen got up to go, sick at heart and unable to bear her and what she was bringing. 'Do you think any of my children went home and learned their arithmetic last night? Or were they humming the songs that Yu Op Pah wanted them to hum?' He had an old socialist hatred for the West.

'Tell them that, Shen,' said Mae. 'Tell them they must learn their numbers to control the machine.'

'When you call up Bay Toh Vang by toggling your right ear, by calling yourself "Madam Owl"?' He looked hunted, destroyed, and powerless. 'You talk about Sunni to get my sympathy. You have done what Sunni would do. That's what you have done to me, Teacher Owl.'

Shen stood up. Mae thought: I have lost a good friend.

'I don't want us to be enemies,' she called after him.

He was already in the courtyard.

She went after him. 'Shen, Teacher Shen, we are on the same side! We both want the same things!' She ran across the courtyard. 'Shen, please. Come to my school, use it yourself. You must find out about it, too!'

That was of course entirely the wrong thing to say. He spun on his heel and snarled at her like a dog, baring fangs, beyond words.

Mae stopped, her breath halted by the shock. And suddenly he was gone, down the street.

Stumbling back into her kitchen, she saw what he had flung at her. Her leaflet, of which she had been so proud.

Kuei was by the table, towel around his waist.

'That sounded terrible,' he said.

'Oh! I should have talked to him. But there wasn't time. There never seems to be enough time!' She was near to weeping. She went to her Kuei, and leaned against him, and he put an arm around her. Her head turned around and looked at her room.

Then she saw. She had not pulled the curtain fully shut behind her. Mr Ken's shoes were beside the bed, fully visible, and the pillow with two head marks. Mr Ken had hidden behind the curtain, but the curtain had a gap on either side of it.

Had he seen? Teacher Shen was both a friend and an enemy. Would he say anything? When and why would he say it?

Later that night, asleep in bed, Mae heard applause.

She lifted up her head. The sound came from all around the house, as if the hills were a theatre thronged with people. She got up and, half asleep, stepped out her front door.

Bam.

Mae was shaking with terror and up to her thighs in mud in her own courtyard. She was wringing with sweat and panic. Mud and water were pouring through the open gate. Part of her had to pause to check: Yes, this is my house, my house in a flood.

Everything else in her danced – fingers, knees, bladder. For some reason her first thought was for Ken Kuei's mother.

Somehow this Mae was carrying a flashlight. She shone light across the courtyard at the battened windows and the closed doorway. Mae had to fight through the mud towards Mr Ken's house. The mud was a heavy, slow evil, and there were sharp rocks inside it. What… when?

Flood, said a voice. It was Old Mrs Tung.

Mae could see shelves of water moving over the surface of the mud, each one a millimetre deeper than the last.

I told you there would be a flood.

'Mrs Ken!' Mae called again. If there were no one left in the old house, she would run. Where was Mr Ken? Where was anyone?

Behind her, outside, she heard the entire hillside move.

'The terraces are going!' Mae screeched.

Then she dropped back again, to some version of now. Sweat trickled from her, and she knew she had seen the future.

The Flood was coming again.

CHAPTER 10

Sunni hired a minibus with rows of seats to take her customers to Green Valley City.

Mae was in her terraces working and saw the van drive out of the village. It stopped on the road below her.

Mae's eyes were sharp. So were Sunni's. Sunni leaned out of the window and stared up at Mae over the top of sunglasses. Sunni's hair was perfect under a blue scarf. She said something. Inside the van, Mrs Ali looked around Sunni to see Madam Owl at work in her fields. Mrs Nan, Miss Ping… all peered up at her.

This is stupid, thought Mae. She keeps trying to poop on me in such tiny ways.

Mae grinned and smiled and waved as if at friends. She felt like turning and pointing her arse at them. Did they really take such delight in knowing that she had to work?

Mrs Ali said something and patted Sunni on the shoulder. Having exposed Madam Death as a mere peasant, the van of the other party drove off towards the City.

Mae found she really didn't care. She chuckled and went back to work. Her hills were beautiful.

Her husband had found work; whatever happened, she would have some kind of business; her school was a success. Joe would come home, and then, perhaps like childbirth or mourning, the thing with Mr Ken would have to end.

The rice whispered in the wind as it had done for two thousand years. At times the world seemed good and at peace and happy. Mae knew this was only a respite, for life was a constant struggle. Bird eats worm, bird has its eggs, and those eggs are eaten. The rice is beautiful and then cut down. People melt into the earth while yearning for the sky.

In the afternoon, Mae taught her school. At sunset, walking home from teaching the children, Mae saw a van come jostling up Lower Street.

Oh, this is Sunni's circus, she thought. Well, I can wave just as prettily again.

The van squealed to a halt at the tight corner. The driver did not know the road. The sunset light made everything look golden, but his van actually was a beautiful flaked metallic gold.