Long, meditative silence. Monsoon thunder rolled in from, offshore.

"I like the idea," Laura said meekly.

Ali tugged at his lower lip. "Safe from voodoo terrorists, in jail."

"Also less chance that the fascist Army might accidentally shoot us on purpose, Ia. "

"We must decide for us. We can't ask Atlanta," Suvendra pointed out.

They looked unhappy. Laura had a brainstorm. "'Atlanta-it has a famous jail. Martin Luther King "stayed there."

They broke into eager discussion.

"But we shan't do any good from jail, la."

"Yes, we can. Embarrass the government! Martial law can't last."

"We do no good here anyway, if Parliament is spoilt. "

Distant echoed shouting rose from the streets. "I'll go look," Laura told them, standing up.

She strode across the hot, flat rooftop to the parapet again.

The noise grew louder: it was a police bullhorn. For a mo- ment she glimpsed it, two blocks away: a red-and-white police car moving cautiously across a deserted intersection. It stopped before the ragged burlap heap of a street barricade.

Ali joined her. "We voted," he told her. "It's jail."

"Okay. Good."

Ali studied the police car, listening to it. "It's Mr. bin

Awang," he said. "Malay M. P. from Bras Basah. "

"Oh, yeah," Laura said. "I remember him from the hearings. "

"Surrender talk. Go peacefully, back to families, he says."

Rebels emerged from the shadows. They swaggered toward the car, lazily, fearlessly. Laura could see them shouting at the bulletproof glass, gesturing to the cop behind the wheel- turn around, go back. Verboten. Liberated territory .. .

The roof-mounted bullhorn bleated arguments.

One of the kids began spray-painting a slogan onto the hood. The prowl car emitted an angry siren wail and began backing up.

Suddenly the kids pulled weapons. Short, heavy swords, hid- den in their shirts and pants. They began hacking furiously at the prowl can's tires and door hinges. Unbelievably, the car gave way, with tortured screeches of metal audible for blocks around....

Laura and Ali shouted in astonishment. The rebels were using those deadly ceramic machetes, the same as she'd seen in Grenada. The long high-tech knives that had chopped a desk in half.

The other Rizomians ran up. The rebels hacked the hood off in seconds and efficiently butchered the engine. They wrenched the door off with ear-torturing screeches.

They were pulling the car apart.

They fished out the astonished cops, rabbit-punching them into submission. They got the M. P., too.

But then, suddenly, there was a chopper overhead.

Tear-gas canisters fell, shrouding the scene in up-rushing columns of mist. The rebels scattered. A burly longshoreman, wearing a diving mask, lifted a stolen police blunderbuss and fired tangle-rounds upward. They splattered harmlessly on the chopper's undercarriage in wads of writhing plastic, but it backed off anyway.

More siren howls and three more backup prowl cars rushed into the intersection. They skidded to a halt before the shat- tered car. Kids were still running from the wreckage, doubled over, clutching stolen tangle-ammo and stenciled canisters.

Some wore rubber swim goggles, giving them a weirdly squinty, professorial look. Their surgical masks seemed to help against the tear gas.

Doors flung open and the cops deployed, wearing full riot gear: white helmets, perspex face shields, tangle-guns, and lathi sticks. Kids scuttled for cover into the surrounding buildings. The cops conferred briefly, pointing at a doorway, ready to charge.

There was a sudden feeble whump from the wreckage of the prowl car. The car seats belched flame.

In a few moments, a Molotov column of burning uphol- stery was rising over the waterfront.

Ali yelled in Malay and pointed. Half a dozen rebels had appeared a block away from the fight, hauling an unconscious cop through a rathole in the side of a warehouse. They had chopped their way through the concrete blocks with their machetes.

"They have parangs!" Ali said with a kind of horrified glee. "Like magic kung-fu swords, la!"

The cops looked unhappy about charging the doorways. No wonder. Laura could imagine it: dashing bravely forward with tangle-gun drawn ... only to feel a sudden pain and fall down and find that some rat-faced little anarchist behind the door had just razored your leg off at the knee.... Oh, Jesus, those fucking machetes! They were like goddamned lasers.... What kind of stupid short-term-thinking bastard had invented those?

She felt cold as the implications mounted... . All that stupid theatrical kung-fu, the dumbest idea in the world, that silly-ass martial artists with no tanks or guns could resist modern cops or trained soldiers... . No, the A-L.P. couldn't fight cops head-on, but room-to-room, with walls riddled with holes, they could sure as hell weasel up from ambush and .. .

People were going to die here, she realized. They meant it.

Razak meant it. People were going to die... .

The cops got back into their prowl cars. They retreated. No one came out to yell or jeer, and somehow it was worse that they didn't... .

The rebels were busy elsewhere. Dramatic columns of smoke were rising all along the waterfront. Black, foul, billowing towers, bent like broken fingers by the monsoon breeze. No television, maybe, no phones-but now the whole of Singapore would know that hell was breaking loose. Smoke signals still worked. And their message was obvious.

Down on the docks behind the Rizome godown, three activists sloshed a ribbed jerry can over a heap of stolen truck tires. They stood well back and threw a lit cigarette. The untidy heap went up with a whump, tires jumping like a dropped plate of doughnuts. The tires settled to roast and crackle and spew... .

Derveet wiped at her eyes. "It stinks...."

"For me, I like up here better than down in those streets, definitely!"

"We could surrender to a helicopter," Suvendra said practi- cally. "There is room here up on the roof for setdown, and if we signal white flag, they could arrest us, quickly."

"Very good idea, la!"

"Getting a bed sheet if they have left us any.

Mr. Suvendra and an associate named Bima left for a raid downstairs.

Long, tiring minutes passed. There was no violence for the moment, but the quiet didn't help at all. It only made them feel more paranoiac, more besieged.

Down in the loading docks, groups of rebels clustered around their walkie-talkies. The radios were mass-produced kid's toys, Third World export, costing a few cents. Who the hell needed walkie-talkies when you could carry a telephone on your wrist? But the A-L.P. didn't think like that... .

"I don't think the cops can handle this," Laura said.

"They'll have to call in the Army."

Mr. Suvendra and Bima returned at last, with wadded bed sheets and a few packs of junk food overlooked by the looters. The rebels hadn't bothered them; they had scarcely, seemed to notice.

The crew spread a sheet out on the roof. Kneeling, Suvendra broke open a fibertip pen and smeared a thick black SOS

across the fabric. They tore up another sheet for a white flag and white armbands.

"Crude, but efficient," Suvendra said, rising.

"Now we flag up chopper, la...."

The kid monitoring the television yelled. "The Army is in

Johore!"

They dropped everything and rushed to the TV.

The, Johore announcers were stunned. Singapore's Army had blitzkrieged across the causeway into Johore Bahru. An armored column was racing through the city, meeting no resistance-not that Maphilindonesia could put up much, at the moment. Singapore described it as a "police action."

"Oh, God," Laura said, "how could they be so fucking stupid?"

"They are seizing the reservoirs," said Mr. Suvendra.