'A computer,' said Mr Oz. 'Part of it is embedded in his head.'

The two older women hissed in pain.

'No wonder he was such a mess,' said Sunni, shaking her head.

'Yah, but imagine if it was someone handsome and clever and not a fool,' said Sezen.

'Imagine clean streets,' said Mae. The town was richer, but that just generated drifts of crushed tin and old papers in the gutters.

'Yeshibozkent? Clean?' Sezen was scornful. 'We still think garbage rots. We will never be clean.'

'We are a very clean people,' said Sunni, in outrage. 'There are only two dirty families in our village!' One of them was Sezen's.

Sezen just laughed. 'To someone from the West, we all look like pigs.'

The van beeped furiously. A donkey had suddenly swerved from the side of the road into its path. The van screeched and slid helplessly, shifting sideways as the wheels locked. The van slammed into the animal.

Mae could feel the donkey's ribs, its fur, the knobby knees, all communicated through the front of the truck.

'Oh!'

Mr Wing jumped out. The animal, dazed, kicked itself back up onto its feet and blinked.

'Who owns this animal?' Mr Wing demanded of the street. Plump ladies in shiny purple pantsuits looked mildly surprised.

Sezen was helpless with laughter. 'Does it have cameras for eyes, too? Airhead donkey?'

Mae was not sure why Sezen found it so funny.

No one answered. No one claimed the donkey. It twitched its ears and wandered off as if nothing were wrong. Perhaps, like them, it was dead and didn't know.

The main market square no longer had a public-address system.

The familiar sound of town-coming had been silenced. The smells were the same; vegetables in sunlight laced with city drains. The gabble of trading seemed strangely muted and the square curiously spacious.

'There aren't the people,' said Sunni, mystified.

Mae looked around. 'It is a Saturday. Where are they all?'

'At the hypermarket,' said Sezen, sniffing, collecting her volumes of lime-yellow cloth.

'What's that?'

'The big new store, outside town. "Just-in-Time Rescue.'''

The name alone made Sunni and Mae chuckle as they stepped out of the van, braving public view and the eyes that dismissed them as peasants.

'It sounds like a newspaper headline…'

'A cheap romance…'

Sezen was not to have her modernity fazed. She shrugged and managed to step down from the van like a princess.

Sezen belonged.

'They call it that because they know everything that is bought, and can predict exactly what is needed. They sell out every day.

'So does a good trader here,' sniffed Sunni.

Perhaps no longer. There were grannies, some middle-aged women, some potbellied men come to sit on folding deck-chairs and chat with friends who stayed by their unrolled mats. There were few customers to distract them from their open tins of beers. Mae felt disappointment. She had always loved stepping out into the market, the heart of the town.

No fires or spangled trucks, no drunken Cossacks dancing.

Around the square a forest of bright new plastic signs danced, opening and closing like flowers.

Akai. Sony. Yeshiboz Sistemlar…

A far cry from the dingy restaurants, the boys running with trays bearing glasses of tea.

You are dead, the Airhead said.

'Right, what is the plan?' Sunni asked.

'Mr Oz and I will go to the bank…' began Mae.

'Me too,' said Sezen, and the hunger in her eyes said: I want to learn about money.

Sunni adjusted her sunglasses. 'I have some errands.' Fashion work she did not want Mae to know about.

Fair enough, thought Mae.

Mae suggested, 'Shall we meet by the van at, oh, two hours from now? For lunch?'

'That will be lovely!' exclaimed Sunni. 'We can go to the temple gardens.'

'Ugh,' said Sezen.

Mr Oz intervened. 'We don't have time, if we are to get to the congress. I'll just order lunch now.'

He keyed in the address of Just-in-Time Rescue.

The Central Man escorted Mae to the bank.

They were welcomed with great politesse. Mae had expected to feel uncomfortable, but found herself immune to feeling inferior. She found that money made her as good as anyone else.

They sipped tea in the Director's office, and he was friendly and polite in white shirt and tie. He was full-blooded Karz, big, with hairy arms and a moustache like a trimmed broom and he had a full-blooded Karz name: Mr Saatchi Saatchi.

I am here, thought Mae. I am where I always wanted to be. I am a businesswoman, modern, respected. Sezen sat clenched like a fist with admiration. Mae felt her eyes swell. Don't cry, she warned herself.

'Madam Chung will need a cellular account. She will be doing business with you always through mobile services.'

'We have had such facilities for over ten years, so it is good to see them in more general use,' the Director said, determined the government should know how advanced they were. Mr Oz had enough wisdom to nod approval.

'Under the terms, you will notice that Madam Chung has the full backing of the TW Initiative, with extendable credit. If she verifies any overdrafts are for the Initiative-sponsored business, then the government will made good any losses.' Mr Oz paused. 'The credit is therefore to be extended when she asks.'

The director's eyes widened slightly, then he nodded. 'Hmm,' he said, the implications sinking in.

'Uh. This means the government will also have full and regular access to Info on this funded, guaranteed account.'

'Of course,' said the Director, arms held open.

'We will need to discuss security and coding.'

'I have a full report,' replied the Director. He had a copy for Mae.

He strolled with them to the front door.

'An honour, Madam,' Mr Saatchi Saatchi said. 'Such enterprise gladdens the hearts of all.' He shook hands with all of them. He smelled of pine, and through the white shirt was the brighter outline of his perfumed vest.

When he had gone, Sezen seized Mae's hand. 'Oh, Mae,' she said, lost for words.

Mae felt like chuckling. 'If only he knew who we were!'

Sezen shrugged. 'Did you notice,' she said, 'the Director was not wearing a wedding ring? Perhaps I can marry him if you cannot.'

Mr Oz and Mr Wing went off together to admire computers. Mae wanted to get her hair done. She went to Halat's. The little hussy was even busier and ruder than ever. She snapped her fingers and sent Mae and Sezen to her assistants. The young girls showed them on screens how Mae and Sezen would look with their new hair. The young girls looked very smug, expecting Mae to be knocked sideways by science. 'Tuh,' said Mae. 'I do that on the top of Red Mountain.'

As the girls cut and trimmed, they looked all the while at the screens for instructions.

'How can Halat be so foolish?' wondered Mae as they left.

'How do you mean?' Sezen asked.

Mae shook her head. 'She makes it too plain that she herself adds nothing.'

Fashion had shifted again. There was more garish colour, not less, particularly on the young women. Fashion had gone crazy, in all different directions at once.

But the ice cream shop was there, and the old streaked cinema showing Hong Kong movies, and the tiny shops offering acupuncture, healing herbs, fortune-telling. Lined up outside the tiled wall of a butcher's shop was a row of severed goat's-heads.

The shop of the disabled seamstress was closed. Mae had wanted to buy her stock of oatmeal cloth. Its green door had a hastily hammered board across it.

Mae went into the next shop, which sold various sweets, walnuts on thread in dried fruit juice. A rather sour, slumped-looking woman ran it.

'What happened to Miss Soo?' asked Mae.