Sunni's husband barked out a laugh. 'We are peasants!' Then he added, 'You do it for the money.'

Sunni sighed in embarrassment. And Mae smiled a hard smile to herself in the darkness. You give yourself away, Sunni's-man. You want my husband's land. You want him to be your dependant. And you don't like your wife's money coming to me to prevent it. You want to make both me and my husband your slaves.

It is a strange thing to spend four hours in the dark listening to an engine roar with a man who seeks to destroy you.

In late May, school ended.

There were no fewer than six girls graduating and each one of them needed a new dress. Miss Soo was making two of them; Mae would have to do the others, but she needed to buy the cloth. She had a mobile phone, a potent fashion symbol. But she needed another trip to Yeshibozkent.

Mr Wing was going to town to collect a new television set for the village. It was going to be connected to the Net. Mr Wing was something of a politician in his way. He had applied for a national grant to set up a company to provide information services to the village. Swallow Communications, he called himself, and the villagers said it would make him rich.

Kwan, Mr Wing's wife, was one of Mae's favourite women: She was intelligent and sensible; there was less dissembling with her. Mae enjoyed the drive.

Mr Wing parked the van in the market square. As Mae reached into the back for her hat, she heard the public-address system. The voice of the Talent was squawking.

'… a tremendous advance for culture,' the Talent said. Now the Green Valley is no farther from the centre of the world than Paris, Singapore, or Tokyo.'

Mae sniffed, 'Hmm. Another choice on this fishing net of theirs.'

Wing stood outside the van, ramrod-straight in his brown-and-tan town shirt. 'I want to hear this,' he said, smiling slightly, taking nips of smoke from his cigarette.