Something streaked from beneath its wings. A missile. It left a pencil of smoke in the damp air. From the docklands came a sudden violent burst of white-orange fire. Tinkertoy chunks of ruptured loading crane balleted through the air.

Thunder rolled through the empty streets.

Singh swore and turned the bike around. "Enemies attack- ing! We go back to safety at once!"

They rode back down the ramp. "That was a Singaporean jet, Mr. Singh."

Singh pretended not to hear her. "Duty now is clear. You are coming with me, please."

They took an elevator up to the sixth floor. Singh was silent, his back ramrod-straight. He wouldn't meet her eyes.

He led her down the corridor to a hall apartment and knocked three times.

A plump woman in black slacks and a tunic opened the door. "My wife," said Singh. He gestured Laura inside.

The woman stared in amazement. "Laura Webster!" she said.

"Yes!" Laura said. She felt like hugging the woman.

It was a little three-room place. Very modest. Three bug- cute children bounded into the front room: a boy of nine, a girl, another boy still a toddler. "You have three children,

Mr. Singh?"

"Yes," Singh said, smiling. He picked up the littlest boy and mussed his hair. "Makes many tax problems. Working two jobs." He and his wife began talking rapidly in Bengali or Hindi maybe, something incomprehensible, but speckled with English loan words. Like fighter jet and television.

Mrs. Singh, whose name was Aratavari or something vaguely similar, took Laura into the parental bedroom. "We shall get you into some dry clothes," she said. She opened the closet and took a folded square cloth from the top shelf. It was breathtaking: emerald-green silk with gold embroidery. "A

sari will fit you," she said, shaking it out briskly. It was obviously her finest garment. It looked like something a rajah's wife would wear for ritual suttee.

Laura toweled her hair and face. "Your English is very good."

"I'm from Manchester," said Mrs. Singh. "Better oppor- tunity here however." She turned her back politely while

Laura stripped off her sopping blouse and jeans. She put on a sari blouse too big in the bustline and too tight around the ribs. The sari defeated her. Mrs. Singh helped her pleat and pin it.

Laura combed her hair in the mirror. Her gas-stung eyes looked like cracked marbles. But the beautiful sari gave her a hallucinatory look of exotic Sanskrit majesty. If only. David were here... . She felt a sudden total rush of culture shock, intense and queasy, like deja vu with a knife twist.

She followed Mrs. Singh back into the front room, barefoot and rustling. The children laughed, and Singh grinned at her.

"Oh. Very good, madam. You would like drinking something?"

"I could sure do with a shot of whiskey."

"No alcohol." "You got a cigarette?" she blurted. They looked shocked.

"Sorry," she muttered, wondering why she'd said it. "Very kind of y'all to put me up and everything."

Mrs. Singh shook her head modestly. "I should take your clothes to the laundry. Only, curfew forbids it." The older boy brought Laura a can of chilled guava juice. It tasted like sugared spit.

They sat on the couch. The Government channel was on, with the sound low. A Chinese anchorman was interviewing the cosmonaut, who was still in orbit. The cosmonaut ex- pressed limitless faith in the authorities. "You like curry?"

Mrs. Singh said anxiously.

"I can't stay," Laura said, surprised.

"But you must!"

"No. My company voted. It's a policy matter. We're all going to jail."

The Singhs were not surprised, but they looked unhappy and troubled. She felt genuinely sorry for them. "Why,

Laura?" said Mrs. Singh.

"We came here to deal with Parliament. We don't care for this martial law at all. We're enemies of the state now. We can't work with you anymore."

Singh and his wife conversed rapidly while the children sat on the floor, big-eyed and grave. "You stay safely here, madam," Singh said at last. "It's our duty. You are important guest. The Government will understand."

"It's not the same Government," Laura said. "East

Lagoon-that whole area's a riot zone now. They're killing each other down there. I saw it happen. The Air Force just fired a missile into our property. Maybe killed some of my people too, I don't know."

Mrs. Singh went pale. "I heard the explosion-but it's not on the television She turned to her husband, who stared morosely at the throw rug. They began talking again, and Laura broke in.

"I have no right to get y'all in trouble." She stood up.

"Where are my sandals?"

Singh stood up too. "I am escorting you, madam."

"No," Laura said, "you'd better stay here and guard your own home. Look, the doors are broken in downstairs, if you haven't noticed. Those Anti-Labourites took over our godown- they might wander into this place too, any time they like, and take everybody hostage. They mean business, or antibusiness, or whatever the hell they believe in. And they're not afraid to die, either."

"I'm not afraid to die," Singh insisted stoutly. His wife began shouting at him. Laura found her sandals-the toddler was playing with them behind the couch. She slipped them on.

Singh, red-faced, stormed out of the flat. Laura heard him in the hall, shouting and whacking doors with his lathi stick.

"What's going on?" she said.

The two older children rushed Mrs. Singh and grabbed her, burying their faces in her tunic. "My husband says, that it was he who rescued you, a famous woman from television, who looked like a lost wet cat. And that you have broken bread in his house. And he will not send a helpless foreign woman to be killed in the streets like some kind of pariah dog."

"He's got quite a way with words, in his own language."

"Maybe that explains it," said Mrs. Singh and smiled.

"I don't think a can of guava juice really qualifies as

`breaking bread.'',

"Not guava. Soursop." She patted her little girl's head.

"He's a good man. He's honest, and works very hard, and is not stupid, or mean. And never hits me or the children. "

"That's very nice," Laura said.

Mrs. Singh locked eyes with her. "I tell you this, Laura

Webster, because I don't want you to throw my man's life away. Just because you're a political, and he doesn't count for much."

"I'm not a political," Laura protested. "I'm just a person, like you."

"If you were like me, you'd be home with your family."

Singh burst in suddenly, grabbed Laura by the arm, and hauled her out into the hall. Doors were open up and down the corridor, and it was crowded with confused and angry

Indian men in their undershirts. When they saw her they roared in amazement.

In seconds they were all around her. "Namaste, Namaste,"

the Indian greeting, nodding over hands pressed together, palm to palm. Some touched the trailing edge of the sari, respectfully. Uproar of voices. "My son, my son," a fat man kept shouting in English. "He's A-L.P., my son!"

The elevator opened and they hustled her inside. They crowded it to the limit, and other men ran for the stairs. The elevator sank slowly, its cables groaning, jammed like an overloaded bus.

Minutes later they had hustled her out into the street. Laura wasn't sure how the decision had been made or even if anyone had consciously made one. Windows had been flung open on every floor and people were shouting up and down in the soggy midafternoon heat. More and more were pouring out -a human tide. Not angry, but manic, like soldiers on furlough, or kids out of school-milling, shouting, slapping each other on the shoulders.

Laura grabbed Singh's khaki sleeve. "Look, I don't need all this-"

"It is the people," Singh mumbled. His eyes looked glazed and ecstatic.