But now my hand was shaking, and the idea of passing a needle through these bloody lips of flesh seemed brutal, cruel beyond countenance.
Diane put her hand on my wrist to steady it. "It's a Fourth thing," she said.
"What?"
"You feel like the bullet went through you instead of me. Right?"
I nodded, astonished.
"It's a Fourth thing. I think it's supposed to make us better people. But you're still a doctor. You just have to work through it."
"If I can't," I said, "I'll turn it over to Ina."
But I could. Somehow. I did.
* * * * *
Ina came back from her conference with Jala. "Today there was to be a labor action," she said. "The police and the Reformasi are at the gates and they mean to take control of the port. Conflict is anticipated." She looked at Diane. "How are you, my dear?"
"In good hands," Diane whispered. Her voice was ragged.
Ina inspected my work. "Competent," she pronounced.
"Thank you," I said.
"Under the circumstances. But listen to me, listen. We need very urgently to leave. Right now the only thing between us and prison is a labor riot. We have to board the Capetown Maru immediately."
"The police are looking for us?"
"I think not you, not specifically. Jakarta has entered into some sort of agreement with the Americans to suppress the emigration trade in general. The docks are being swept here and elsewhere, very publicly, in order to impress the people at the U.S. consulate. Of course it won't last. Too much money changes hands for the trade to be truly eliminated. But for cosmetic effect there's nothing like uniformed police dragging people out of the holds of cargo ships."
"They came to Jala's safe house," Diane said.
"Yes, they're aware of you and Dr. Dupree, ideally they would like to take you into custody, but that isn't why the police are forming ranks at the gates. Ships are still leaving the harbor but that won't last long. The union movement is powerful at Teluk Bayur. They mean to fight."
Jala shouted from the doorway, words I didn't understand.
"Now we really must leave," Ina said.
"Help me make a litter for Diane."
Diane tried to sit up. "I can walk."
"No," Ina said. "In this I believe Tyler is correct. Try not to move."
We doubled up more lengths of stitched jute and made a sort of hammock for her. I took one end and Ina called over one of the huskier Minang men to grab the other.
"Hurry now!" Jala shouted, waving us out into the rain.
* * * * *
Monsoon season. Was this a monsoon? The morning looked like dusk. Clouds like sodden bolts of wool came across the gray water of Teluk Bayur, clipping the towers and radars of the big double-hulled tankers. The air was hot and rank. Rain soaked us even as we loaded Diane into a waiting car. Jala had arranged a little convoy for his group of emigres: three cars and a couple of little open-top cargo-haulers with hard rubber wheels.
The Capetown Maru was docked at the end of a high concrete pier a quarter mile away. Along the wharves in the opposite direction, past rows of warehouses and industrial godowns and fat red-and-white Avigas holding tanks, a dense crowd of dockworkers had gathered by the gates. Under the drumming of the rain I could hear someone shouting through a bullhorn. Then a sound that might or might not have been shots fired.
"Get in," Jala said, urging me into the backseat of the car where Diane bent over her wounds as if she were praying. "Hurry, hurry." He climbed into the driver's seat.
I took a final look back at the rain-obscured mob. Something the size of a football lofted high over the crowd, trailing spirals of white smoke behind it. A tear gas canister.
The car jolted forward.
* * * * *
"This is more than police," Jala said as we wheeled out along the finger of the quay. "Police would not be so foolish. This is New Reformasi. Street thugs hired out of the slums of Jakarta and dressed in government uniforms."
Uniforms and guns. And more tear gas now, roiling clouds of it that blurred into the rainy mist. The crowd began to unravel at its edges.
There was a distant whoomp, and a ball of flame rose a few yards into the sky.
Jala saw it in his mirror. "Dear God! How idiotic! Someone must have fired on a barrel of oil. The docks—"
Sirens bellowed over the water as we followed the quay. Now the crowd was genuinely panicked. For the first time I was able to see a line of police pushing through the gated entrance to the port. Those in the vanguard carried heavy weapons and wore black-snouted masks.
A fire truck rolled out of a shed and screamed toward the gate.
We rolled up a series of ramps and stopped where the pier was level with the main deck of the Capetown Maru. Capetown Maru was an old flag-of-convenience freighter painted white and rust orange. A short steel gangway had been emplaced between the main deck and the pier, and the first few Minang were already scurrying across it.
Jala leaped out of the car. By the time I had Diane on the quay—on foot, leaning hard into me, the jute litter abandoned—Jala was already conducting a heated argument in English with the man at the head of the gangway: if not the ship's captain or pilot then someone with similar authority, a squat man with Sikh headgear and a grimly clenched jaw.
"It was agreed months ago," Jala was saying.
"—but this weather—"
"—in any weather—"
"—but without approval from the Port Authority—"
"—yes but there is no Port Authority—look!"
Jala meant the gesture to be rhetorical. But he was waving his hand at the fuel and gas bunkers near the main gate when one of the tanks exploded.
I didn't see it. The concussion pushed me into the concrete and I felt the heat of it on the back of my neck. The sound was huge but arrived like an afterthought. I rolled onto my back as soon as I could move, ears ringing. The Avigas, I thought. Or whatever else they stored here. Benzene. Kerosene. Fuel oil, even crude palm oil. The fire must have spread, or the unschooled police had fired their weapons in an unwise direction. I turned my head to look for Diane and found her beside me, looking back, more puzzled than frightened. I thought: I can't hear the rain. But mere was another, distinctly audible, more frightening sound: the ping of falling debris. Shards of metal, some burning. Ping, as they struck the concrete quay or the steel deck of the Capetown Maru.
"Heads down," Jala was shouting, his voice watery, submerged: "Heads down, everybody heads down!"
I tried to cover Diane's body with mine. Burning metal fell around us like hail or splashed into the dark water beyond the ship for a few interminable seconds. Then it simply stopped. Nothing fell except the rain, soft as the whisper of brushed cymbals.
We lifted ourselves up. Jala was already pushing bodies across the gangway, casting fearful glances back at the flames. "That might not be the last! Get on board, all of you, go on, go on!" He steered the villagers past the Capetown's crew, who were extinguishing deck fires and casting off lines.
Smoke blew toward us, obscuring the violence ashore. I helped Diane aboard. She winced at every step, and her wound had started leaking into her bandages. We were last up the gangway. A couple of sailors began to draw the aluminum structure in behind us, hands on the winches but eyes darting toward the pillar of fire back ashore.
Capetown Maru's engines thrummed under the deck. Jala saw me and came to take Diane's other arm. Diane registered his presence and said, "Are we safe?"
"Not until we clear the harbor."
Across the green-gray water horns and whistles sounded. Every mobile ship was making for open ocean. Jala looked back at the quay and stiffened. "Your luggage," he said.