Old Mrs Tung was fighting to live. The only life she had was Mae's.

CHAPTER 14

Mae woke up in a strange bed.

The walls were pale blue with white cornices. Sitting patiently at the foot of her bed was a man. His face was familiar.

It was Mr Tunch. The name meant 'Bronze.' He seemed to be made of something burnished. He was wearing a different suit, zigzag black on beige. Like the other one, it was shiny.

'Good morning,' he said pleasantly.

Mae sat up. The hotel room had flowers, a TV and a chest of drawers made of polished red wood.

'Where are my friends?' asked Mae.

'They have gone home. You have been somewhere else for many days.'

'What do you mean, "somewhere else?" '

'Ah.' He shrugged. 'Mrs Tung has been here instead.'

'For what? Days? Days?

Mr Tunch nodded. He tried to look sorry, but instead looked rather excited.

Mae was prickled with terror. 'How did I come back?' It was the most urgent thing to know.

'She wandered off,' said Mr Tunch. 'Or rather, she simply could not understand what she was doing here. She couldn't remember where she was, so she kept trying to leave. And finally she did.'

He chuckled. 'She got very frustrated.'

Mae murmured, 'They do.'

After Mae's father was killed, her family moved, along with the bloodstained diwan cushions, to the house of the Iron Aunt, Wang Cro. At first Mae did not understand what was wrong or why the adults whispered. The Iron Aunt was nearly eighty and strong enough to move oil jars, but she always thought it was Thursday, cooked dinner at nine in the morning, and could not remember that Mae was not her mother. The children could tease her into a fury.

Mr Tunch explained: 'Your friends thought it was best if we did what we could here.'

'Yes. Yes, I can see that,' murmured Mae. Yes, I can see you now, in your Bronze suit playing the big man. You even soothed Sezen into leaving me.

'Can you do anything?' Mae demanded.

Mr Tunch leaned towards her and put a hand on her shoulder and made a slight gesture of helplessness. 'We need to know more.'

'You can't help.' In some ways, Mae was relieved.

Mr Tunch smiled. 'Not yet.'

'In that case,' said Mae, 'I want to go home. I have business to do.'

'What business?' chuckled Mr Tunch, with something too much like scorn. 'Look. There is nowhere else in Karzistan that has as much knowledge about the Air Formats as my company. We are experts in Human-Computer Interface Medicine. Do you know what that is?'

With a sudden chill, Mae knew. 'You put cameras in Airheads' eyes.'

Tunch blinked. Gotcha, thought Mae. I don't like you.

He recovered. 'Right now we are far more concerned about the damage the Test did. We are very concerned about the Format that was used in that Test, and we are horrified at what happened to you. Mrs Chung, we all have business interests, but your health is more important. Forgive me, but you did not do much business these last three days.'

You oil your words like Dr Bauschu, thought Mae. You do everything for reasons of your own. But perhaps, just perhaps, I need you.

Mae was driven to Yeshiboz Sistemlar along a new empty road.

Suddenly there was a wire mesh fence, with what looked like a white airport hangar beyond. Mae noted that it was built just outside the jurisdiction of the city.

Gates were raised and lowered. Bright young people, the brightest Mae had yet seen in Yeshibozkent, looked as scrubbed as the painted metal walls of the hangar and somehow just as cheap. They performed the function of people without the solidity or the beauty. They would age badly.

Mr Bronze was king. Inside the front lobby, girls smiled and, modern as they were, dipped their heads in traditional respect.

'This is Madam Chung Mae. Our patient,' he said to a woman at the first desk, with a quick grin.

No covered heads here. No broad straw hats with the rims white from dried sweat. The people looked as though they had come from Florida. Disney World, thought Mae. I bet the offices at Disney World look just like this.

'You'll excuse me, Mrs Chung. Like you, I have business to attend to. But Madam Akurgal will take excellent care of you.'

Madam Akurgal was not yet thirty and dressed like a nurse with a rubber tube around her neck. She kept calling Mae by her first name, as if she were a servant.

'Just come through here, Mae. We need to disinfect you,' she said, with a winning smile and a TV-Talent accent that came from nowhere specific. She led Mae into a corridor and there was a blast of air, and a sound like vacuum cleaners, and purple lights that made the white nurse's uniform glow white.

She sat Mae in a chair and told her to relax and lowered a kind of metal hat on her head. Mae waited for a sensation. None came. They sucked blood from her arm. Like at the hairdresser's, Mae was given a magazine to read.

Doctors looked at paper being printed and shook their heads and called each other over to look. They ignored both Mae and the nurse. Finally one of them tore off a sheet of the paper and showed it to Mae.

He was a Chinese gentleman, one of her own, probably a Buddhist, and she hoped for understanding. 'We have found nothing,' he said, beaming, pointing.

The paper was printed with jagged lines.

'So Mrs Tung is not here.' He jabbed a finger at the paper. 'Everything is working as usual. Except see, here, this line covers activity in the area of the cortex we think corresponds to communication with Air. We think you are constantly checking for Airmail.'

He was rather pleased. 'This is very encouraging. It means we speedily learn to use Air even without realizing it.'

'What does it mean for me?'

He shrugged. 'It means that things are basically okay in your physical brain. It confirms what we had all thought, that the problem is with your imprint in Air. Somehow yours is linked with another imprint.'

'Well, okay then, just wipe out those imprints in Air.'

'Ah,' he said, delighted with the beauty of the thing. 'Everything in Air is permanent.'

Another doctor entered, and the first greeted him effusively, waving the paper. Then he turned back, nodding politely.

'Oh, and one thing to cheer you up. Your blood test shows that you are expecting a joyful event. It will be a son. Good day.'

Madam Akurgal shook her head. 'Stupid men,' she hissed, and looked, stricken, into Mae's eyes.

'What does he mean, I'm pregnant? I can't be pregnant.'

The woman looked serious. 'Oh, yes you can.'

'I've had my period.' Mae was whispering frantically but even so, the male doctors turned. 'Do you understand? I had a normal period!'

The woman shook her head. 'Then there must be real problems. Is the bleeding just today, recently?'

'I have not miscarried! It was just a period and now it's over!'

The woman stroked her forehead. 'Then there may be something really wrong. We can have you tested.'

'I don't want to be tested again, I have had too many tests!'

'Just give yourself time to think. My name is Fatimah. Fatimah Akurgal. I will always be nearby.'

'What does it mean that they found nothing wrong with my head?'

Fatimah sagged under the weight of so much evidence of things gone awry. 'It means that you are the first of a kind. There is little that we know.'

'I don't want her taking over!' Mae was nearly in tears. 'She is trying to take over!'

'We will be looking at the Format to see if there is a way we can control it, even stop its communicating with you.' Fatimah paused. 'I am so sorry. I wish I had better news.'

Mae did begin to weep then. She hid her eyes. The doctors kept talking about her.