SPIN

Her accent was lilting Indonesian but her diction was primly correct. "You speak very well," I said, the only compliment I could come up with on short notice.

"Thank you. I studied at Cambridge."

"English?"

"Medicine."

The rice was bland but good. I made a show of finishing it.

"Perhaps more, later?" Ibu Ina said.

"Yes, thank you."

Ibu was a Minangkabau term of respect used in addressing women. (The male equivalent was Pak.) Which implied that Ina was a Minangkabau doctor and that we were in the Sumatran highlands, probably within sight of Mount Merapi. Everything I knew about Ina's people I had learned from the Sumatran guidebook I had read on the plane from Singapore: there were more than five million Minangkabau living in villages and cities in the highlands; many of Padang's finest restaurants were operated by Minangkabau; they were famous for their matrilineal culture, their business savvy, and their blend of Islam and traditional adat customs.

None of which explained what I was doing in the back room of a Minang doctor's office.

I said, "Is Diane still asleep? Because I don't understand—"

"Ibu Diane has taken the bus back to Padang, I'm afraid. But you'll be safe here."

"I was hoping she'd be safe, too."

"She would be safer here than in the city, certainly. But that wouldn't get either of you out of Indonesia."

"How did you come to know Diane?"

Ina gri

This was startling in almost too many ways. "You know about Jason?"

"I know of him—unlike you, I have never had the privilege of speaking to him. Oh, but I was a great follower of the news about Jason Lawton in the early days of the Spin. And you were his personal physician! And now here you are in the back room of my clinic!"

"I'm not sure Diane should have mentioned any of that." I was certain she shouldn't have. Our only protection was our anonymity, and now it was compromised.

Ibu Ina looked crestfallen. "Of course," she said, "it would have been better not to mention that name. But foreigners with legal problems are terribly commonplace in Padang. There is an expression: a dime a dozen. Foreigners with legal and medical troubles are even more problematic. Diane must have learned that Jala and I were both great admirers of Jason Lawton—it could only have been an act of desperation for her to invoke his name. Even then, I didn't quite believe her until I sought out photographs on the Internet. I suppose one of the drawbacks of celebrity must be this constant taking of pictures. At any rate, there was a photograph of the Lawton family, taken very early in the Spin, but I recognized her: it was true! And so it must be true what she told me about her sick friend. You were a physician to Jason Lawton, and of course the other, the more famous one—"

"Yes."

"The small black wrinkled man."

"Yes."

"Whose medicine is making you sick."

"Whose medicine, I hope, is also making me better."

"As it has already Diane, or so she said. This interests me. Is there really an adulthood beyond adulthood? How do you feel?"

"Could be better, frankly."

"But the process is not finished."

"No. The process is not finished."

"Then you should rest. Is there anything I can get for you?"

"I had notebooks—paper—"

"In a bundle with your other luggage. I'll bring them. Are you a writer as well as a physician?"

"Only temporarily. I need to put some thoughts down on paper."

"Perhaps when you're feeling better you can share some of those thoughts with me."

"Perhaps so. I would be honored."

She rose from her knees. "Especially about the little black wrinkled man. The man from Mars."

* * * * *

I slept erratically through the next couple of days, waking up surprised by the passage of time, the sudden nights and unexpected mornings, marking what I could of the hours by the call to prayer, the sound of traffic, by Ibu Ina's offerings of rice and curried eggs and periodic sponge baths. We talked, but the conversations washed through my memory like sand through a sieve, and I could tell by her expression that I occasionally repeated myself or had forgotten things she'd said. Light and dark, light and dark; then, suddenly, Diane was kneeling next to Ina beside the bed, both of them giving me somber looks.

"He's awake," Ibu Ina said. "Please excuse me. I'll leave the two of you alone."

Then it was just Diane beside me.

She wore a white blouse, a white scarf over her dark hair, billowy blue trousers. She could have passed for any secularized mall-dweller in downtown Padang, though she was too tall and too pale to really fool anyone.

"Tyler," she said. Her eyes were blue and wide. "Are you paying attention to your fluids?"

"Do I look that bad?"

She stroked my forehead. "It isn't easy, is it?"

"I didn't expect it to be painless."

"Another couple of weeks and it'll be over. Until then—"

She didn't have to tell me. The drug was begi

"But this is a good place to be," she added. "We have antispasmodics, decent analgesics. Ina understands what's going on." She smiled sadly. "Still… not exactly what we'd pla

We had pla

What we had not counted on was the vindictiveness of the Chaykin administration and its determination to make examples of us—both for the secrets we had kept and the secrets we had already divulged.

"I guess I made myself a little too conspicuous in the wrong places," Diane said. "I had us booked with two different rantau collectives, but both deals fell apart, suddenly people weren't talking to me, and it was obvious we were drawing way too much attention. The consulate, the New Reformasi, and the local police all have our descriptions. Not entirely accurate descriptions, but close enough."

"That's why you told these people who we are."

"I told them because they already suspected. Not Ibu Ina, but certainly Jala, her ex. Jala's a very ca

"Sounds like a man who would be glad to sell us to the New Reformasi."

"But we pay better. And present fewer legal difficulties, as long as we're not caught."

"Does Ina approve of this?"

"Approve of what? The rantau gadang! She has two sons and a daughter in the new world. Of Jala? She thinks he's more or less trustworthy—if you pay him he stays bought. Of us? She thinks we're next door to sainthood."