Robert Charles Wilson - SPIN

(She had divorced Jala, she said, because he had formed the bad habit of sleeping with disreputable women in the city. He spent too much money on his girlfriends and had twice brought home curable but alarming venereal diseases. He was a bad husband, Ina said, but not an especially bad man. He wouldn't betray Diane to the authorities unless he was captured and physically tortured… and he was far too clever to let himself be captured.)

"The men who burned your clinic—"

"They must have followed Diane to the hotel in Padang and then interrogated the driver who brought you there."

"But why burn the building down?"

"I don't know, but I suspect it was an attempt to frighten you and drive you into the open. And a warning to anyone who might help you."

"If they found the clinic, they'll know your name."

"But they won't come into the village openly, guns blazing. Things have not quite deteriorated to that degree. I expect they'll watch the waterfront and hope we do something stupid."

"Even so, if your name is on a list, if you try to open another clinic—"

"But that was never my plan."

"No?"

"No. You've convinced me that the rantau gadang might be a good thing for a physician to undertake. If you don't mind the competition?"

"I don't understand."

"I mean that there is a simple solution for all our problems, one I've been contemplating a long time. The entire village has considered it, one way or another. Many have already left. We're not a big successful town like Belubus or Batusangkar. The land here isn't especially rich and every year we lose more people to the city or other clans in other towns or to the rantau gadang, and why not? There's room in the new world."

"You want to emigrate?"

"Me, Jala, my sister and her sister and my nephews and cousins—more than thirty of us, all told. Jala has several illegitimate children who would be happy to assume control of his business once he's on the other side. So you see?" She smiled. "You needn't be grateful. We're not your benefactors. Only fellow travelers."

I asked her several times whether Diane was safe. As safe as Jala could make her, Ina said. Jala had installed her in a living space above a customs house where she would be relatively comfortable and safely hidden until the final arrangements were made. "The difficult part will be getting you to the port undetected. The police suspect you're in the highlands and they'll be watching the roads for foreigners, especially sick foreigners, since the driver who brought you to the clinic will have told them you're not well."

"I'm finished being sick," I said.

The last crisis had begun outside the burning clinic and it had passed while I was unconscious. Ibu Ina said it had been a difficult passage, that after the move to this small room in this empty house I had moaned until the neighbors complained, that she had needed her cousin Adek to hold me down during the worst of the convulsions—that was why my arms and shoulders were so badly bruised, hadn't I noticed? But I remembered none of it. All I knew was that I felt stronger as the days passed; my temperature was reliably normal; I could walk without trembling.

"And the other effects of the drug?" Ina asked. "Do you feel different!"

That was an interesting question. I answered honestly: "I don't know. Not yet, anyway."

"Well. For the moment it hardly matters. As I say, the trick will be to get you out of the highlands and back to Padang. Fortunately, I think we can arrange it."

"When do we leave?"

"Three or four days' time," Ina said. "In the meantime, rest."

* * * * *

Ina was busy most of those three days. I saw very little of her. The days were hot and sunny but breezes came through the wooden house in soothing gusts, and I spent the time cautiously exercising, writing, and reading—there were English-language paperbacks on a rattan shelf in the bedroom, including a popular biography of Jason Lawton called A Life for the Stars. (I looked for my name in the index and found it: Dupree, Tyler, with five page references. But I couldn't bring myself to read the book. The swaybacked Somerset Maugham novels were more tempting.)

En dropped in periodically to see that I was all right and to bring me sandwiches and bottled water from his uncle's warung. He adopted a proprietary manner and made a point of asking after my health. He said he was "proud to be making rantau" with me. "You too, En? You're going to the new world?" He nodded emphatically. "Also my father, my mother, my uncle," and a dozen other close relations for whom he used Minang kinship words. His eyes glittered. "Perhaps you'll teach me medicine there."

Perhaps I would have to. Crossing the Arch would pretty much rule out a traditional education. This might not be the best thing for En, and I wondered if his parents had given their decision enough thought.

But that wasn't my business, and En was clearly excited about the journey. He could hardly control his voice when he talked about it. And I relished the eager, open expression on his face. En belonged to a generation capable of regarding the future with more hope than dread. No one in my generation of grotesques had ever smiled into the future like that. It was a good, deeply human look, and it made me happy, and it made me sad.

Ina came back the night before we were due to leave, bearing dinner and a plan.

"My cousin's son's brother-in-law," she said, "drives ambulances for the hospital in Batusangkar. He can borrow an ambulance from the motor pool to take you into Padang. There will be at least two cars ahead of us with wireless phones, so if there's a roadblock we ought to have some warning."

"I don't need an ambulance," I said.

"The ambulance is a disguise. You in the back, hidden, and me in my medical regalia, and a villager—En is pleading for the role—to play sick. Do you understand? If the police look in the back of the ambulance they see me and an ill child, and I say 'CVWS,' and the police become reluctant to search more thoroughly. Thus the ridiculously tall American doctor is smuggled past them."

"You think this will work?"

"I think it has a very good chance of working."

"But if you're caught with me—"

"As bad as things may be, the police can't arrest me unless I've committed a crime. Transporting a Westerner isn't a crime."

"Transporting a criminal might be."

"Are you criminal, Pak Tyler?"

"Depends how you interpret certain acts of Congress."

"I choose not to interpret them at all. Please don't worry about it. Did I tell you the trip has been delayed a day?"

"Why?"

"A wedding. Of course, weddings aren't what they once were. Wedding adat has eroded terribly since the Spin. As has everything else since money and roads and fast-food restaurants came to the highlands. I don't believe money is evil, but it can be terribly corrosive. Young people are in a hurry nowadays. At least we don't have Las Vegas-style ten-minute weddings... Do those still exist in your country?"

I admitted they did.

"Well, we're headed in that direction as well. Minang hiking, tinggal kerbau. At least there will still be a palaminan and lots of sticky rice and saluang music. Are you well enough to attend? At least for the music?"

"I would be privileged."

"So tomorrow night we sing, and on the following morning we defy the American Congress. The wedding works in our favor, too. Lots of traveling, lots of vehicles on the road; we won't seem conspicuous, our little rantau group heading for Teluk Bayur."

I slept late and woke feeling better than I had for a long time, stronger and subtly more alert. The morning breeze was warm and rich with the smell of cooking and the complaints of roosters and hammering from the center of town where an outdoor stage was under construction. I spent the day at the window, reading and watching the public procession of the bride and groom on their way to the groom's house. Ina's village was small enough that the wedding had brought it to a standstill. Even the local warungs had closed for the day, though the franchise businesses on the main road were staffed for tourists. By late afternoon the smell of curried chicken and coconut milk was thick in the air, and En dropped by very briefly with a prepared meal for me.