The Cloud Atlas

by David Mitchell

  “He's not ready to go, Louis,” Lily said quietly.

  “Well, I don't know,” I said. “You've got that splint on him and-”

  Gurley had begun to growl after Lily spoke, and now reached a roar. “She means me, you idiot!” He and Lily exchanged a long, silent look. Lily finally broke away and knelt down before the boy.

  “Fuck!” Gurley shrieked, and I really mean shrieked-a high, piercing, birdlike noise. He tottered over to the boy and stood over him. “You don't know how lucky you are, young man,” he said, in English. “You've found yourself in the clutches of two-no, three-fools.” Gurley struggled into a crouch. “So here is our deal: if you survive till morning, off we all go to Bethel to face God knows what repercussions.” Gurley then turned to us; the boy turned his head, too. “And if he does survive, that will be evidence indeed of magic. Pretty damn strong magic.”

  Lily looked at me. “Stay with him,” she said, and I wasn't sure if she meant the boy or Gurley. “I'm going to get some things from the boat.”

  “That's cheating,” Gurley called after as she walked. “I want to see magic alone get him through the night.” Lily raised an arm and waved off Gurley's words. It actually relieved the tension a bit; her weary wave seemed less the act of a mortal enemy than a long-suffering but indulgent spouse.

  But Gurley quickly ended the respite. “It's been nice knowing you, Sergeant,” he said, staring after her.

  “Sir,” I said, not meeting his eyes. I was busy looking for his hands, his gun.

  “I know you think it heartless. Or I think you do. I know Lily does. But leaving the boy here, yes, killing him, would spare everyone a lot of misery.”

  “Sir,” I said, not sure if he still had a mind you could reason with, or if I was better off just leaping on him, and sparing everyone a lot of misery. “Just wait. She'll surprise you. I bet he'll surprise you. Kids are-”

  “He's already surprised me,” said Gurley. “He flew across the fucking ocean. And that's not all. Come.” Gurley went to the boy, knelt, and then roughly tore open his coveralls. The boy fought him weakly. When he started to cry out, Gurley raised a hand as if to hit him, and looked to see if Lily had heard. She hadn't. The boy went silent with fear and looked to me for help. I screwed up what courage I could and stepped next to Gurley. But before I could lay a hand on him, he spoke: “Surprise,” he said.

  I looked down. The boy's exposed chest and stomach were a mottled purple. The skin just above his collarbone was raw and red. I knew what Gurley was doing; he was diagnosing plague. “I saw it when I was working on the crash site,” Gurley said, and stood. “I didn't look in the groin area yet, but I don't have to. You've got lymph nodes here, too,” he said, fingering his neck. “You see why we have to get out of here? They sent the best germ weapon container possible: a human. A human rat. Which means he was dying anyway. Hell, he's lost enough blood he may not even survive long enough to die of plague. But we've got to get back. Get away from him. So we got a vaccine: like the major said, What if this is a new strain?”

  I didn't know. I didn't know enough about plague or enough about how much Gurley knew about medicine to know if he was lying The boy looked ill, but he'd just come across the Pacific in an open balloon. The rash on his neck could have been from the coveralls. Where were the blown lymph nodes, the buboes? I saw Gurley glance back toward the boat. Lily was walking back toward us.

  “You've got to tell her, Belk,” he said. “She's not listening to me right now.”

  “Sir, I don't think-”

  “Redo the math, son,” Gurley said. “You thought you were just risking the boy's life when you sided with her before. Now you're risking yours. And mine. And hers.” I didn't answer. I just stared at the boy then at Lily. When she finally reached us, she gave Gurley a look that caused him to rethink whatever he was about to say and stalk off instead. He looked back just once, and then loped away, hands flying about, swatting mosquitoes.

  Lily turned to me. I hadn't had enough time to decide what to say or how. But Lily didn't wait for me to speak. “Louis,” she said, and we both looked down at our very ill charge. “Can you pick him up?”

  CHAPTER 19

  I TOOK A BREATH, I KNELT, I LIFTED HIM UP. AND THEN I carried the boy back to the spot where we'd beached the boat. It was a longer trip than we thought-I'd estimate a mile, but trudging through the tundra was such slow going, it could have been ten. The mosquitoes clotted around his open wounds like shifting scabs.

  Lily and I eventually decided the best thing was to undo the mess of bandages Gurley had applied and apply a proper tourniquet, or as proper a one as we could manage. We also resplinted the arm and bound it to his side to immobilize it completely. But we only came to these decisions gradually, after several painful false starts. The boy's screams grew louder and louder. Several times I found myself wondering if Gurley was right: it would be better if the boy had died, or could die, quickly.

  There were moments when he seemed he would. I've seen it happen to enough others in the hospital to know he was going into shock. The boy's red, windburned face somehow managed to lose all its color-or rather, soak up a new color, the blank white of the endlessly cloudy sky. At times, his color returned, but then I couldn't be sure- perhaps it was just that the light was failing and it was no longer easy to tell what he looked like.

  Lily paid no attention to the sky or me or Gurley whom we could now see, back at the crash site, sticking out of the horizon like the last post of some abandoned fence. Lily gave the boy water and fed him broken bits of cracker. When he shivered, she found a blanket, wrapped it around him tightly. And when night finally did come, she had me set up a tent and help her move the boy inside. Then she crawled in herself. I tried to stop her before she went into the tent.

  “Lily,” I said, and she twisted around to shush me.

  “What?”

  “Lily,” I said again. I still hadn't told her about Gurley's diagnosis. The more I'd seen of the boy, the more I thought Gurley was wrong. I didn't want to tell Lily about any of this, but I didn't want her to expose herself any more than she had, either.

  I said nothing.

  “Louis,” she said. “Will you keep watch?”

  “Lily-”

  “Please, Louis. I'm worried about Gurley. I'm worried about the boy. I'm worried about him and the boy, what he'll do. Just wait.”

  She disappeared into the tent for several minutes. I heard some whispers, tears, and then nothing at all. Finally, her face reappeared.

  “Where is he?” she asked, squinting toward the crash site. But it was too dark now to see, or to tell Gurley apart from the lonely stunted trees that cropped up here and there. She climbed out and stood up.

  “I don't know,” I said. “I thought he was staying out there to defuse or detonate the remaining bombs, but I never heard anything.” What I'd really been listening for was the sound of a single shot from Gurley's sidearm, his skull perhaps muffling the sound if he held the barrel close. But there had been nothing. Just the wind, and when it paused, the whine of mosquitoes finding an ear.

  “Did Gurley find out his name?” she said.

  “His name?”

  “I can't read the writing on his coveralls.”

  I stared at the tent. “Lily, I don't know. No, if he did, he didn't say. I-I don't know Japanese either. Didn't Saburo-your Saburo-teach you any?”

  “This is my Saburo,” she said. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them once more, they were full of tears. “I-I think I killed him.”

  “Lily, what's happened?” I moved for the tent, but she stopped me. From inside the tent, the boy gave a little moan, and Lily winced. More than winced, really-she buckled slightly, grabbing her elbows, hunching her shoulders. “Can't you hear him?” she said. “I killed him,” she said softly.

  I grabbed her. “Lily, the boy? You killed the boy? Right now? Jesus, Lily. What are you doing? Gurley would've-”

  Another tiny moan came from the tent.
>
  The Yup'ik say the tundra is haunted. But haunted is a white man's word, and it doesn't mean what the Yup'ik mean. The spirits found in the bush-animal and human, living and dead-do not haunt, they exist, as real and present as any other aspect of life: water, breath, food.

  I didn't understand this for a long time. When I was a young priest, I would tell people that ghosts only haunted those who believed in them. Don't put your faith in specters, I would say, put your faith in God: that faith will be returned.

  Only later, too late, did I learn what is really true, a truth that, in some ways, has nothing to do with God: ghosts only haunt those who do not believe. Someone who already believes can never be surprised to see something he knows already exists. The shadow that disappears into a corner of the community center one winter night is doubtless your cousin who drowned the year before. The creaking floor that wakens you is your husband, finally returned from the hunt. The face outside the hospital window is an angalkuq, pulling rain from the skies.

  And the boy in the tent, the tan'gaurluq who dropped from a hole in the blue-

  “Louis,” Lily started, stopped, and then started again. “I don't know why this happened. Or how. I was so anxious to get back out here, where I thought my powers would be strong again. That's why I went on my journey the other night. To see what had changed since the last time I had been able to see that other world-that world of spirits and life and everything real. And I wanted to see Saburo, see where he had put our little boy. I didn't see anything at first-but what I saw-what I finally saw frightened me.”

  Lily had seen another child. At first she thought it was her own, but came to understand that it wasn't. It was a boy a Japanese boy who had come from beyond. And since no spirit comes into the world without another life departing it, Lily explained, she knew then that Saburo had died, and this boy had come to tell her that. The spirits- Saburo-had sent him to her, just as they had sent me. But whereas they had sent me to remind Lily that Saburo lived, they had sent this boy to let her know that Saburo was dead.

  Worse, she believed she had killed him, by falling in love or into the spell that Gurley cast-whatever it was, she had lost hold of Saburo. “I let go of his memory, Louis, and when I did, I let go of him, he sank away, he died. No one should take another lover while the first still lives, while you are still in love with him. I knew this.”

  I know: madness. Arctic hysteria. Or half a dozen newfangled names they now have for conditions like Lily's (or Gurley's, for that matter). But we had none of those names then. We had a first-aid kit with some bandages and another kit to blow up bombs. We had a boat. A balloon. A boy.

  Lily's maternal instincts already lay raw and exposed; it was easy for her-perhaps essential for her-to believe this boy from the sky had been sent by the sky. Any hope for the happy repose-and forgiveness-of the Saburo she lost now lay with this child, whatever his name was.

  She was absolutely certain, and wanted me to be, too.

  “He cannot die,” she said. “If he dies, I will die with him, and I will join Saburo, but not in a good place. In this place, we will wander, all of us, searching for good souls to take us.”

  “Lily,” I interrupted.

  “Louis, listen to me: if the boy lives, he may go on to a life of honor, he may do the work that the spirit world requires of the living. Feeding us, sheltering us, bringing us peace until that day when he has finally done enough and we may all rest.” She turned to the tent, and then to me. “Louis,” she said. “I'm not-I can't do what I once could. I'm not strong enough, not against a man with a gun. But you know Gurley You'd know how to stop him. Just don't let him take the boy. I'm afraid of what he'll do. He's just a boy. Louis? Promise me. Please. Louis. Protect him.” She clasped her hands together. “Us,” she said finally. “Protect us.”

  AND WHAT DID I say then? With Lily's eyes shining, or maybe glistening, with what faint light still held, and looking to me for help?

  I said nothing. I stepped past her, around the tent, and into the brush, toward Gurley. I was afraid I would start crying-over the childish confusion and disappointment over everything, but finally, over that us-“protect us.” She might have been talking about the boy, or Saburo, or even in some strange way, Gurley-people whom she had loved. But not me. I had been a friend, just a friend, and worse still, I was now failing at that as well.

  Stumbling in and out of holes, crashing into the brush here and there, I was making enough noise to hide any sniffling, and later, enough noise to allow Gurley to walk up and take me by surprise.

  “Sergeant?” he said, his voice not quite a whisper. He spoke as though we'd been planning to meet, just like this.

  I squinted hard to make sure my eyes hid any trace of tears and answered him: “Sir?”

  “That's a good lad,” he said softly. “You had a choice to make back there, me or her, your country or your crotch, and I'm glad to see you chose your country.”

  It started as a punch, my right fist right to his face, but I was too angry, had been imagining this for too long, and found myself following my fist with my head, plowing into him like we were brawling in a schoolyard.

  But there'd never been this much blood in the schoolyard, nor the orphanage. I'd never found myself atop a foe so quickly or easily swinging away, had never discovered how nauseating it is to beat someone who won't beat back.

  And he wouldn't. Not after blood had run into the seams between every tooth, not when his left eye had swollen into its own kind of bubo, purple and wet, not even when I-I know I didn't do this, that I couldn't have done it, but I remember it all the same-when I bit his forehead, right at the hairline, and tasted blood.

  He laughed, not a sensible laugh, but an off-key cackle that I could feel-because that's where I was sitting-in his diaphragm. That's why I bit him, if I bit him. If he laughed at my fists and feet, what did I have left? My head. Those teeth. I'd learned this from Gurley this wildness.

  The bite caused his laugh to switch to a screech, but it was all part of the same wail, and when I stood, disgusted as much with myself as with him, the laugh returned. Then he felt around in the back of his mouth for something, and winced. Two crimson fingers returned with what must have been a tooth.

  “Tallyho!” Gurley chortled, or gurgled. He held up the tooth to me and I looked away. I expected him to get up, but he lay back and blinked several times and looked at the sky.

  I was about to walk away when he spoke. “She's still with the boy?” he asked, and I almost had to ask him who.

  I finally nodded, once, and he nodded in return, and struggled to sit, and then stand. The place where he had fallen had begun to fill with water, and he bent over the puddle to study his face. When he stood again, I looked him over, embarrassed. He looked both worse and better than I thought he would, like he'd been attacked by a dog, or had snapped his head against a steering wheel.

  I turned away again.

  “There, there, Sergeant,” he said. “I'm sorry. Very sorry. We should have gotten that over with long, long ago. Shouldn't we have? Shouldn't we?”

  I left him there. I walked away-away from Gurley away from the balloon, away from the tents and the boats. I walked toward nothing. But I didn't get far before I ran out of land. I waded in, stumbled, soaked myself, and retreated. I walked back toward Gurley, who was still talking-to me, to himself-and tried a different direction. Again I sank. I just wanted to leave, and leave all of them behind. I wanted to keep walking until I could no longer hear Gurley's voice, until I could no longer see anything. But wherever I stepped, the water rose around my feet. I wanted a balloon of my own.

  I returned and stood by Gurley. He kept talking, and talking, whether or not I was looking at him. Usually I wasn't. I was embarrassed with what I'd done to him. I might as well have attacked the little Japanese boy; Gurley looked almost as pathetic and wild-eyed.

  Gurley made it worse by insisting that he forgave me. He said this in a dozen different ways, cited anecdotes, quoted the B
ible, said he understood, offered consolation, commiseration. Unfortunately, I was young enough and Christian enough to want and need, and worst of all, believe, that forgiveness. Which meant that when he finally worked his monologue back around to Lily and the boy, the two of them in the tent, it was already too late for me. The most potent tranquilizing drug would not have worked on me so quickly or so well. He was planning, and I was listening. “A little awkward, a little awkward,” he concluded, “but-we'll make it work. We'll find a way. We've had bigger challenges in this war, haven't we, Sergeant?” I looked away. “And bigger yet to come. Now, let us find our way back to the boat, and I shall tell you what we-what you, in particular, have to do.”

  Gurley used what light the night provided to pick a way back to the boat that didn't lead us directly past the tent. There wasn't much of a moon, but somehow the tundra still managed a silver glow. I was too full of all that Lily had told me to stop him or even speak up. The only things I had to say in fact, were about Lily and I couldn't find a way to tell Gurley what I knew. Did he know that Lily really loved him? Actually the word probably wasn't love but it was something like that. Needed him. Had found herself bound to him. Gurley meanwhile, spoke of bombs and fuses and delays, and whether we had the equipment required to detonate something remotely. Then he stopped talking, and after a moment, I realized he was waiting for a reply.

  “I think we do-I think we have all that, sir,” I said, having trouble readjusting from the world we were in to the one we had left, where there were rules, a war, and bombs, and people like me who dealt with them. “You want to blow up the balloon after all?” I asked, mostly to get additional time to refocus. It took a moment: after Lily's frantic whispers, I'd forgotten that it had been a balloon that had brought the boy here, not spirits, not magic, not Lily.

  Gurley stopped walking and looked at me warily. “Yes,” he said. “I want to blow up-the balloon.” He looked over my shoulder in the direction of the tent. “No need to save it. We certainly have enough balloon carcasses by now,” he said. “But you see the problem, Sergeant- yes?”