Tell me something new, thought Mae.

Something in the way Mae shifted on the bed made Fatimah stop.

'We have given you a drug that will help you keep the… other personality under control.' Fatimah was holding a foil in her hand. Her eyes said, See? We are trying to help. She was amused by something at the same time. 'These pills are so new, the paste is still drying.'

'What does the drug do?' Mae asked.

'It reduces emotional synergy.' Fatimah shrugged. The only words she had were big ones. Either she didn't want to or couldn't say clearly what it did.

But Mae knew. She could feel it. 'It scatters me like leaves,' she said.

Fatimah sighed and breathed out once, hard: That's it. 'It might have side effects like that.'

I would not be part of the harvest anyway. The village would shut me out. I have no rice to harvest; it is all Joe's rice. So I would hang around outside the threshing field. Like a ghost.

If I try to tell people what I have seen here, the drug will make me vague. Or Mrs Tung and I will rise up together, in front of them, mad.

Then I will give birth out of my mouth. And be a monster.

'You rest,' said Fatimah, and patted her arm.

Part of Mae wanted to weep and say: I want to go home. But she was blocked from that. Strong emotion or clear thought melted away.

At some point Fatimah had gone, and Mae was alone.

Where is my good dress? she wondered. I took my good dress to the city and my Talent jacket. She looked around the room and saw nothing that was hers.

The good dress and the Talent jacket faded in importance. Mae swung her feet out from the bed. She stood in a surgical shift.

There was nothing in Mae's mind as clear as a decision to escape. She simply left. She did not consciously say: Leave the drugs; better the war, the pain, and the clarity. The foil of pills remained on the table by the bed.

Mae opened the door and walked out into the corridor, and the dog was there.

'Go,' growled the dog, ears alert, teeth bared, rising up. 'Back.'

Mae assumed that for all practical purposes she was talking to Mr Tunch. 'We've completed our bargain,' she said, in a faded, weepy voice. It wasn't fair, she'd done what she said. 'Fair trade.'

'You are supposed to stay there.' His voice was even, mechanical, with strange jumps of tone and texture.

'Why?' Mae asked.

The dog cocked his head to one side. 'Because you are sick.'

'Now I'm well.'

The dog loped forward and snuffled her, and licked her hand.

'Sorry I bit you,' he said. He looked up at her, needing direction.

Mae touched the box on his head, too scattered to feel disgust. The drugs made her feel wonder. She thought of her Kru. It is like this for the dog. They imprinted him and plugged him into the skill of language. Or maybe the skills of a whole person. Maybe it was Tunch. 'You can understand things now. Do you remember what it was like before?'

'A little bit,' said the dog. 'There were only smells. I remember smells. Now I remember other things.'

'You can choose,' said Mae. 'You can decide things.'

She thought of getting back. The world swam around her; the task of leaving the building, walking across the town, finding her way back up the mountainside – it was all impossible without help.

'You can help me get back home.'

The dog cocked his head. His tail wagged suddenly, twice.

'What he's doing,' said Mae, to no one in particular, 'is things that would not be allowed in any other country. That's why they're paying him. So he can do things for them, and find things out.'

'Like me,' said the dog.

'He had to make you as smart as he could. There would only ever be one.'

The dog stepped forward, head lowered, tail still wagging.

'You can't get out that way,' the dog said. 'They will see you. This is the way.'

He put his nose to the floor and snuffled. He was following a scent.

All Mae was aware of was that it was pleasant to have a companion. When she was a child, her Iron Aunt had had a big rangy dog called Mo, who was a bit crazy.

Mo peed everywhere. He would come up and join Mae. and walk with her for a time, but only at his own choice. It felt like that now.

They turned down corridors. The dog's ears pricked up. and he spun around once and tried to bark. 'Who?' the mechanical voice said.

A man in white came up, chuckling, and scratched the dog's ears. Not Mr Pakan. 'Hello, Ling,' he said. 'Where are you going, boy?'

Mae still swam on tides of herself, and it was in both innocence and a bit of cunning that she replied: 'Ling is taking me where I am supposed to be going.'

'Oh, Very good. Wonderful isn't it? Have you talked to him about smells? It is like entering another world.'

'I have, a bit,' said Mae. 'And it is wonderful.'

'How are you feeling?'

'The drugs have taken very powerful effect,' said Mae.

His smile went a bit steely. Perhaps it was the drug, but his teeth seemed to glint. 'That's good,' he said. He bowed and left.

'We did not tell the truth,' said Ling. The mechanical voice could convey no emotion.

'We're learning,' said Mae.

There was a booming and a bashing ahead of them. Mae thought of thunder, then drums. Ling stopped and waited and inclined his head in a universal, cross-species sign: Scratch my ears. Mae unconsciously obeyed.

The sound came from huge metal barrels. Men in blue overalls rolled them past Mae. Ling growled, establishing he was a loyal guard dog.

'Good boy,' chuckled the deliverymen, gazing in blank lust, even at a middle-aged woman in a shift. 'Rather you than me, Ling,' they said, deciding Mae's lack of erotic charm made her an object of scorn.

Ling sat panting patiently. He lifted up his nose, tasting the air, lapped Mae's hand, and walked on, his claws clicking, slipping on the polished floor.

He led her to a blue door. He nudged the long metal handle with his nose.

Mae was numbly grateful. 'Thank you.'

She pushed the door and stepped out into a full parking lot in blazing sunlight, full of burnished company buses and three limousines.

Ling followed.

There was a fence. It was high and made of crisscrossed metal, and was crowned all along the top with barbed wire.

Mae was dim and detached. She felt her root into Air. It was easier to do on drugs, for she was as a calm as if she were in Air.

'This is all a joke,' she said, and suddenly smiled.

It was true. The world was a joke. It was a story, twisted by gravity out of nothing. It was an accidental by-product of Air, of the eternity where Air was.

She could feel this eternity. She could take the story into her hands. She could feel the metal fence. The fence was mere fiction.

So she tore it.

Reaching into Air, Mae seized reality, as she herself had been seized, and very simply, very easily, Mae's mind ripped the metal of the fence apart. She giggled at how funny it was that everyone should take the fence so seriously. She tore the mesh like a strip of cloth.

'This season,' she said, 'Air-aware young ladies will wear the fences they have torn down as sign of their strength.'

The torn edges of the fence danced, as if in wind.

'Sing,' she told the fence, and started to chuckle. 'Why not?'

And the snapped, sharp edges of the torn wire began to tinkle, just as lunch had done. Anything was possible.

Wind blew the dust, the fence danced and sang, and Mae stepped out, into the desert, followed by a talking dog.

Beyond the fence was hot valley scrubland, full of bracken and thorns grown to Mae's height. The thorns and bracken parted and bowed before her. She walked barefoot through them. They rose up again behind her to shield her. She heard Ling's feet behind her in the dust. Overhead was sky, unchanging, clouds as they had been in the time of the Buddha.