The Cloud Atlas (13 page)

By now, of course, I could hardly breathe. It took me a moment to remember what I wanted to ask. “I need to know where this-thing- will-” I stopped. “I need to know where something's going to be.”

But that wasn't good enough for her. She shook her head, again and again, no matter how I phrased the question, until she finally said, “I need a place to start. A detail. Without that, it's just dreaming.” I thought of all the things I could tell her: places where we knew balloons had landed and exploded; the map in Gurley's office; the eyes of those men in that private ward. Or I could just tell her my secret- Gurley's secret, our country's secret, or Japan's-I could tell her that high above the Pacific, even now, clearly visible if you only knew where to look, floated balloons laced with powdered fire. All you had to do to catch them was give up a hand, an arm, a face, a leg-or find out first where they were landing and when.

“Are
you dreaming?” she asked.

“I'm trying to think where to start,” I said.

“Here's an easy detail,” she said. “What's your name, Sergeant Belk?”

I blinked.

“Your first name, brother of Bing.”

“Louis,” I said, relieved I could give up such an easy secret.

“Louis,” she said. “See, I'm not good at this at all. ‘Louis’ I never would have guessed. Okay, what do you want to know, Louis?”

I looked around the room. No one was looking at us, but it seemed as though everyone was listening to us. Intently. I said nothing. Her feet left mine.

“Next time, then,” she said. “Your wallet have anything in it tonight?”

“Please don't leave,” I said.

“Louis, I told you my secret,” she said. “I'm not a palm reader.”

“But you didn't tell me how you-why you-know things.”

“What
do
you do?” she asked. “Or what don't you do? Me, I don't read palms.”

“I don't read palms, either,” I said. She looked at me, waited. “And I don't read feet,” I added. She smiled and clamped her feet back around mine. “And I don't…”

I went through a whole litany of jobs, both military and civilian, that I didn't do. This was much easier than lying, this circling, joking. She seemed to enjoy it, too, protesting every now and then that some task I said I didn't do-blow reveille on a bugle each morning-I actually did do. Slowly, invisible to everyone but me, her hands crept closer to mine, until they were almost touching, then they were touching, and then resting on top of mine, contented and relieved.

By then, the whole of me was humming. Maybe she wasn't a palm reader, maybe she had no special powers at all, but she could do this: tap something inside of me-more than hormones, perhaps blood- and seize it, take charge of it. Change the direction of its flow, or arrest the circulation altogether. Part of me believed I was allowing this to happen, part of me thought I was powerless, but most of me didn't care. I wanted to sit there, be held, touched, like that, and never move. I would have done anything to stay.

“What do you do, Louis?” she said quietly.

“Bombs,” I said, the word out before I even realized it.

“Yes,” she said. “But what kind?” she asked, leaning closer, the shade of a new look in her eyes, but not enough of a new look to spook me, not yet.

“Bal-loons,” I said, my mind rising in alarm with the second syllable, but by then it was too late. Gurley's thumbnail slid down, and across, and up my neck.

Lily closed her eyes, slowly. And then her shoulders sank, her head sank, my blood began its nervous flow again, and my heart pounded at the secret it had just disclosed.

“I didn't say anything,” I said, looking down to find my hands uncovered.

“Not a thing,” Lily said, expectant.

“I have to go,” I said.

“So soon?” she said. She waited a moment, and then appeared to make up her mind.

“Lily, you can't tell
any
one,” I said. “You have to swear.”

She waited a moment, then smiled.

“You came in with a question,” she said. “Now, I have an answer.”

She leaned over, put her lips to my ear. I swear she kissed me. I felt the brush of a touch, a breath, and when I looked up, she was standing by me, smiling, and then leaving.

It was a fine way to deliver a secret, because I heard nothing, not then. Oh, she'd whispered the name of the place-Shuyak-but I didn't realize that, not until later. At that moment, I was consumed with the way her breath found my ear, the way her face grazed my hair, the way her lips were moving-
Shu
-yak
-so that it felt like (it must have looked like) a kiss. Even now, when I say the name of that place-
Shu
-yak
-when I'm lonely or nostalgic or some unrelenting, everlasting Alaskan summer twilight has me pinned, sleepless, to the sheets, I can give myself chills when that first syllable, that
sh
, draws my lips forward, just so, like lips set to kiss.

When I came to, she was gone, the counterman was gone. Al that remained was the bill, which I paid, and the whispered word, which started echoing in my head, louder and louder, as I made my way back to base.

The boy would have survived had Lily been with us. I knew that the morning of the second day, which would be our last with adequate food, water, and fuel. The day before, we'd picked our way west through the delta in dense fog. I had no idea we'd made the Bering Sea until I realized I couldn't smell the tundra's mud and grass, just water and salt. I turned north. I had a map; it showed a tiny Red Cross symbol near a mission settlement just up the coast. I had a map, but Lily would have known a better, mapless route. She would have gotten us where we needed to go.

And she could have told me more about the boy. I wanted to know his name, his real name. I wanted to know what chain of events had left him in my care. When he was awake, he looked at me with fear and barely spoke. When he was asleep-and he seemed to sleep, or slip from consciousness, more and more-he would often shout and screech, delirious. Sometimes it sounded like words, sometimes notes of music, high and thin.

If he lay silent for too long I noticed that the seabirds-they looked more eagle than gull-would float down closer to us. If they got too close, I would bark and yell. Sometimes that was enough to get the boy raving again. But it was never enough to get him to open his eyes, fix them on me, and tell his story.

THURSDAY. RONNIE HAS SURVIVED FOR AN ENTIRE DAY, and so have I. Maybe it's not right to compare our conditions? But in some ways mine is more dire: he's only dying, whereas I'm being asked to live out my days Outside, divorced from my Alaskan life.

Having been through extended hospital stays a half dozen times before with Ronnie, though, I can tell you what the second day is like: busy, hopeful, anxious. There is still some carryover of that day-one-type relief-
he got here in time!
-that's usually counterbalanced by day-two anxiety:
what's
really
wrong?
There are other milestones, like day six, when you realize, it's only a night away from an entire
week;
surely that's not a good sign. And then, of course, there's the Last Day, which is always a surprise.

But today's surprise arrived shortly after breakfast. Ronnie awoke. Or, as he put it, returned.

His eyes opened, slowly, and he scanned the room. Then he found me. We watched each other silently for a full minute, maybe more.

“They thought you were in a coma,” I said at last. “Not a ‘classic coma,’ mind you.” Ronnie considered this a moment; he was still coming to. Then he rolled his eyes, coughed, and declared he was hungry. I handed over several items I'd gotten from the vending machines for my breakfast, and he devoured them as he explained where he'd been.

“Not a coma,” he said, shaking his head. “The ocean,” he declared, and then asked for my coffee. I handed him the cup. “I've been to the bottom of the ocean. Here and there. I went to where the seals live, the whales.”

“They send their best?” I asked. This wasn't the first time that Ronnie had told me he'd “traveled.” While the rest of the world thought he'd passed out in a bar or fallen into a semi-coma in a hospital, Ronnie would later claim that he had been swimming to the depths of the sea, or summiting the sky, en route to the moon. Shamans were known for such journeys; and indeed, they resembled comas. Long ago, the
angalkuq
would gather everyone in the
qasgiq
, a village's largest building, which served as both the men's quarters and communal hall. He (not always, but usually a he) would lie in the center of the floor, often bound. Sometimes the light would be extinguished, and witnesses would be left to deduce what was happening from the sounds they heard. Loud grunts, a struggle, then quieter and quieter as the
angalkuq
flew farther away, then loud again once he'd returned, perhaps with a crash or thump. Sometimes the
angalkuq
would narrate the journey, other times detail it upon his return.

Ronnie only ever spoke upon his return, and his accounts were so fanciful I ascribed them to spirits more alcoholic than otherworldly. One time, I was sure Ronnie was plagiarizing the plot of a Disney movie that had recently played at the library. (We'd all seen it, every one of us: it was an actual, first-run
movie
, after all.) But then, I'd fallen asleep halfway through the movie myself. I was no more judge of what was real than Ronnie.

This time, though, was different. He ignored my crack about the seals sending greetings and instead spoke rapidly: “I saw the boy,” he said. “I saw him.” He looked both excited and nervous. “Not the mother. Did you see her? There's a mother in the story. I can't remember. I can't remember if she's there.” He raised the cup I'd given him. “It's the coffee. Caffeine. This is a drug. I am telling you this.”

“I'd blame alcohol, Ronnie,” I said. “Demon rum.”

But he had already handed the cup back to me. “Wait here,” he said. “I'll be right back. Tell you what I find.” He lay back, closed his eyes, and then jerked awake. “The wolf, Louis-you'll watch for him.” He extended a hand toward me-hard to imagine, Ronnie actually reaching for help, for me-but as he fell back, I slipped out of his grasp.

I didn't move to pick his hand back up. Because maybe he was traveling. I didn't want to hold him back. I didn't want to be dragged any further out of my world, away from my God. Maybe that's it. Or maybe it's just that I didn't want to feel the wolf's teeth sinking into my hand.

What's the difference, anyway, between what Ronnie is doing- slipping in and out of consciousness, traveling from one world to another-and my falling asleep? My dreaming of flight, and then recounting my banal dream after I awake? I don't know. I don't dream of flying. I did it once, really did it, just me and my arms and legs and the air, and I've never wanted to do it again.

IT WAS LATE WHEN I got back on base after my dinner with Lily. Something-or everything-about my “goodbye” dinner with Lily made me desperate to talk with someone, even Father Pabich, though he would probably have treated the whole matter as something worthy of confession.

I couldn't find anyone to talk to, but I couldn't see myself going to sleep, either. I went over to Gurley's Quonset hut. The sentry said nothing; he didn't even look surprised. He let me in through what Gurley persisted in calling the “back door” and then locked everything behind me. I banged my away across the floor in the dark to the small office in the rear. I had been granted access to the building in Gurley's absence, but not the office. He had, however, given me a small desk outside. I sat down and felt around for the desk lamp.

Suddenly, the hut's massive overhead lights clunked on.

“Belk!” Gurley shouted as the door shut behind him. “Working in the dark? Or sleeping?” By the time he reached me, I had some paper out and was pretending to take notes. “If there's one thing I hate more than incompetence, Belk, it's incompe
tents
trying to suck up.” He clapped a hand on my back. “You've been studying?” He wasn't entirely angry. “You'll be forgiven for this shameless display-working all night, it would seem-if you actually came up with something.”

Came up with something:
maybe I'm guessing at the rest of the dialogue, but I know he said this. And “came up with something,” meant just that: invented. This was Alaska, after all, where chaplains swore like stevedores and Eskimo women could tease your entire past from your hand. It was all imaginary, all true. I thought about dinner with Lily. I thought about what Gurley wanted to hear. And then I said what I knew.

“I know where the next balloon will land.”

Gurley's presence changed the acoustics of a conversation; his being there could make your voice sound terribly small, or terribly ominous. Or in my case, both.

He didn't reply. I breathed deeply enough to get the memory of what Lily had whispered echoing in my ear once again. “Shu-yak,” I said.

“What?” he asked.

“Shuyak,” I repeated, working out the pronunciation and realizing as I did what Lily had said.

Gurley had been yawning and inattentive, but now he focused: “Along the Aleutians, isn't it?” I nodded, though I had no idea. I wasn't even sure it was a real place: perhaps Shuyak was the imaginary province of Yup'ik seers. Maybe it was simply Yup'ik for
goodbye.
I felt ill. “Easy enough to see why you guessed there,” Gurley said. But he was appreciative, not scolding. “I've guessed at that, too. Let's look.” He unlocked his office and went over to the wall map. I entered and sat. “Truth is, Aleutians don't matter to many people other than the Aleutians. Who, as it happens, are no longer there, poor dears.” He pointed to southeast Alaska. “That's why the Navy has thoughtfully relocated them here.” He frowned, pointed to a spot on the mainland. “No, here. Somewhere. There's plenty of Aleuts to go around. Apparently, the Japs took some, too, in fact. Probably carted them off to some zoo in Tokyo.” He studied his lip with his tongue as he drew his finger along to the end of the Aleutian chain. “Anyway there's nobody left out there, save some poor Jap soldiers, perhaps, hiding in caves out on Kiska.” He sat down and began studying his palms. I wondered if Lily had ever read his life through his hands, and if she had, what she made of the jagged scars that Gurley's pushpin doodles left behind. “It's American soil, but frozen, barren soil, so who cares?” Gurley continued. “I hope all their balloons land there. In any case, I can't find it. Any other ideas?”

“No,” I said, studying the map. Why had I given myself over to Lily like that? Here I was, spouting some nonsense she'd purred.

“No?” Gurley said, turning away. “Such was my supposition.”

I sat up. “Listen-Shuyak-that's where the next balloon will land,” I said, my insistence stemming more from an automatic desire to counter Gurley than anything else.

“My word, dear Sergeant. When I told you to search out incoming balloons, I was just-well, not joking, no, not joking at all, this is deadly serious-but I don't expect you, or anyone, to really know where each individual balloon is going to land. It's touching, of course, that you stayed up all night in an effort to obey my somewhat facetious order-
facetious
, Belk? Another word for your list-and if that atlas tells you something about the balloons' design or construction that we don't already know, or if you pick up something that leads you to believe you know what general areas they're targeting, or what they might be planning, okay.”

“Shuyak,” I said.
Was
that what Lily had said? Every time I tried to replay the memory, the sound of what she said changed. But my mouth was still working, words kept coming out. “Oh-seven-hundred Alaskan War Time tomorrow morning.” Now Gurley looked at me sharply. “North-northwest corner of the island.”

“The corner?” he asked slowly. “You're making this up.” I was.

“Corner-quadrant-whatever. The northwest part of the island,” I said. It was exhilarating, lying I felt more specifics arriving-wind speed, temperature, type of blast-but what reason remained in me held my imagination in check.

He looked up at the map again. “Closer in, maybe.” He ran his hand back along the Aleutian Chain, up onto the Alaska Peninsula and over to Kodiak. “Eureka,” he said. “Shuyak? Just north of Kodiak, right?” I nodded. He tapped the map. “That's not so far from here.” He thought about this, and then asked, “Oh-seven-hundred?” I nodded. He stared at me for a long moment. “The problem is, Belk,” he said, and stopped. He started again. “The problem is, Belk, you have to be right. You know what they told me in San Francisco? They want to press ahead with their foolish plan. Blow this all wide open. Remove the censorship directive. Let every last American know about these bombs, set the masses all to looking for them. Which is a stupid idea, but that doesn't matter, Belk. We'd be out of a job, or we'd wind up with a job similar in stature and function to the clowns who sweep up elephant dung at the rear of a circus parade.” He cupped his chin and regarded Shuyak. When he turned around, he was in the midst of trading masks- Wronged Captain for Effete Ivy Leaguer, or perhaps the Brusque CO.-or else he had forgone one altogether. His voice was softer, too. Normal, pitched well below the range at which he usually delivered his lines. “But if you're right, Belk-think what this means.”

“We'll save lives,” I said, caught up in Gurley's growing excitement.

“We'll save our jobs,” he said, “and our secrets, at least for a little while longer. I asked for a month; they gave me two weeks to prove there was a compelling reason not to lift the press ban.
This
could be a reason. If I can tell them we've cooked up a way to predict arrivals, landings, well-that really changes matters. I'd be offering them a chance to stay one step ahead, of the enemy, and the public.”

He stopped and thought about this. All the while he'd been talking, I'd been trying to work up the courage to interrupt him and better rein in his expectations. But I couldn't then and I couldn't now, and so when he said, “You'll go, then,” I simply nodded and stood. Before I left, he had one more thing to add: “You'll go alone, of course. If it turns out you're wrong, it's best you fail alone.” He picked up the phone. “I'm sure you understand.”

GURLEY HAD LIMITED (and diminishing) authority over a special Army Air Corps crew that was stationed at Elmendorf Field. They had all been nominally trained in the spotting and destruction, though not recovery, of balloon bombs. More important, they had all been sworn to secrecy, to such a degree that none of the men would even talk to me when I got out to the field at first light, around 4 A.M. I wasn't sure what Gurley had told them, other than our destination and my name.

We were to take a floatplane out to Shuyak, a modified PBY Catalina that looked about as ungainly and makeshift as the balloons. It had the hull of a boat but the snout of a plane; its wings extended heavily from the top of the fuselage, like the arms of a lumbering giant. Pilots called it a two-fisted airplane; once in the air, you wrestled it more than steered it.

A young airman outfitted me with gear, including a chest-pack parachute.

“What's this for?” I asked.

“First flight over enemy territory?” he answered, not looking at me.

“We're just heading to Shuyak,” I said. “That's well behind the front lines.”

He corrected my pronunciation and said again, “Like I was saying, this your first flight?”

“I don't understand,” I said. “I thought only the two outermost Aleutian islands were ever occupied by the Japanese. And they're long gone.”

“Right,” the airman said. “But who's going out there to check on them these days? Thing is, the Japs have been sneaking on and off all those islands out there for a long time now.” He raked down a strap. “Thing is, a hundred miles out of Anchorage, you don't know whose side you're on.”

“You could be anywhere,” I said.

“You could be following some idiot's hunch to go to Shuyak,” the airman said, stepping back.

I climbed aboard.

THE PLANE BUFFETED along through a constantly changing sky that seemed to have leaked from the pages of Gurley's captured atlas. The sunrise chased us as we flew south and slightly west, the sky going from sooty gray to a strange, soupy green, and then improbably into pink. One of the PBY's stranger features was a pair of bubble windows, or “blisters,” that bulged out just forward of the tail. Each was manned with a spotter, neither of whom seemed much interested in spotting anything. I offered to take over for one of them and soon found myself staring slack-jawed at the celestial show while the rest of the crew snoozed or snickered.