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village. She tugged the sheet up to her chest.
    “Dr. Kim is the woman who has brought us all together.” Dr. Tae Sun leaned forward, his round face suddenly looking anxious. “I mentioned the scientist to you in your village. Do you remember what I said? What I asked you to do for Dr. Kim?”
    Mee Hee nodded. “Yes, I remember,” she whispered, and her heart trembled briefly, as it had in the rice paddy behind her hut when she was showing Dr. Tae Sun the graves: the fresh mound covering her mother-in-law’s shrunken body, and the turtle stone above the tiny sack that held her son. There, out of sight of the village, he had explained about the food-aid truck, and offered her the chance to come away, to help him and his employer, Dr. Kim. She hadn’t exactly understood what he’d wanted, or even really believed him, and yet her heart had stirred for the first time since her baby had died.
    “I know why I am here,” she said in a louder voice.
    “Good, good.” Dr. Tae Sun patted her hand, and when she remained motionless, he awkwardly withdrew and fiddled with his watch.
    “Dr. Kim was very brave at the conference,” Dr. Dong Sun continued vigorously.
    Dr. Tae Sun nodded in agreement. “She passed me a note saying she worked with my brother, and she told me to be patient, that she would communicate with me somehow. Later, while we were standing in an elevator, she slipped her name-card and a satellite handi-phone into my pocket.”
    “A what phone?” Mee Hee whispered.
    “A handi-phone—the best in the world.” With a flourish, he drew a small silver object out of his coat pocket. He did something to itand it opened up, displaying buttons on one side and a colorful screen on the other. “Made in Japan, powered by solar energy. With it you can call anyone you like, from anywhere in the world.”
    “Ah.” She didn’t dare touch it. He deftly snapped it shut again and replaced it in his pocket.
    “My brother has also been extremely courageous,” Dr. Dong Sun announced, standing up as straight as the Wise Young Leader awarding a medal. “He smuggled the handi-phone back into North Korea and for the past two years he has been calling Dr. Kim and me from Pyongyang. Just owning the phone is illegal, so he took a great risk, and endangered his own life many times to bring you and all your sisters into China. We can never repay him.”
    Dr. Dong Sun regarded Mee Hee expectantly, as if waiting for her to break into applause, but she was barely listening anymore. She closed her eyes as she leaned back against her pillow. Did she really know nothing at all? First, in the rice paddy, the doctor had told her that the ramyon he had brought to the village in the truck was not a gift from the Wise Young Leader but food-aid from the South and other Western nations. Now he had shown her what he said was a telephone, but looked like a metal clamshell, and he had happily told her it was made in the land of the kidnappers, the rapists of Korean women, the colonizers . A damp chill stole over her body. Who had put her in this nightdress? Why hadn’t they given her a yo to sleep on instead of this dizzying metal bed? And how did she even know where she was?
    Fearfully, she peeked up at the doctors, half-expecting them to be grinning with the sharpened teeth of the Japanese soldiers in her schoolbooks, but instead they were nervously exchanging glances, with identical—almost comical—expressions of dismay. She loosened her grip on the sheet.
    “Am I in Beijing?” she whispered weakly.
    Dr. Dong Sun made another note on his chart. “She’s tired,” he said sternly to his brother. “We mustn’t strain her with our stories.”
    “Yes, you are safe in Beijing,” Dr. Tae Sun declared. “You are in a small hotel, which we’ve rented entirely for you and your sisters and your caretakers. You are sharing the room with another woman from your province. You must sleep now, we’ll return