Cloud Atlas

Visiting hours end at ten o’clock. “One more for the road, Margo?” The visitor glances at her comatose friend, then leafs through her Anthology of American Poetry. “A little Emerson? Ah, yes. Remember this one? You introduced it to me.

If the red slayer thinks he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanish’d gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode, 
And pine in vain—

“Margo? Margo? Margo!” Margo Roker’s eyelids vibrate as if in REM. A groan squirms in her larynx. She gulps for air, then her eyes are wide open, blinking in confusion and alarm at the tubes in her nose. Hester Van Zandt is also panicky, but with hope. “Margo! Can you hear me? Margo!”

The patient’s eyes settle on her old friend, and she lets her head sink into her pillow. “Yes, I can hear you, Hester, you’re shouting in my goddamn ear.”

70

Luisa Rey surveys the October 1 edition of the Western Messenger amid the steamy clatter of the Snow White Diner.

LLOYD HOOKS SKIPS $250,000 BAIL

PRESIDENT FORD VOWS TO “ROOT OUT CROOKS WHO BRING IGNOMINY TO CORPORATE AMERICA”

A BYPD spokesman confirmed the newly appointed CEO of Seaboard Power Inc. and former Federal Power Commissioner Lloyd Hooks has fled the country, forfeiting the quarter-million-dollar bail posted Monday. The latest twist to “Seaboardgate” comes a day after Hooks swore to “defend my integrity and the integrity of our great American company against this pack of nefarious lies.” President Ford entered the fray at a White House press conference, condemning his former adviser and distancing himself from the Nixon appointee. “My administration makes no distinction between lawbreakers. We will root out the crooks who bring ignominy to corporate America and punish them with the utmost severity of the law.”

Lloyd Hooks’s disappearance, interpreted by many observers as an admission of guilt, is the latest twist in a series of revelations triggered by a Sept. 4 incident at Cape Yerbas Marina Royale in which Joe Napier and Bill Smoke, security officers at Seaboard Inc.’s controversial Swannekke Island atomic power stations, shot each other. Eyewitness Luisa Rey, correspondent to this newspaper, summoned police to the crime scene, and the subsequent investigation has already spread to last month’s killing of British atomic engineer and Seaboard consultant Dr. Rufus Sixsmith, the crash of former Seaboard CEO Alberto Grimaldi’s Learjet over Pennsylvania two weeks ago, and an explosion in Third Bank of California in downtown B.Y. which claimed the lives of two people. Five directors at Seaboard Power have been charged in connection with the conspiracy, and two have committed suicide. Three more, including Vice CEO William Wiley, have agreed to testify against Seaboard Corporation.

The arrest of Lloyd Hooks two days ago was seen as vindication of this newspaper’s support for Luisa Rey’s expose of this major scandal, initially dismissed by William Wiley as “libelous fantasy culled from a spy novel and wholly unworthy of a serious response.” .?.?. Cont. p. 2, Full Story p. 5, Comment p. 11.

“Front page!” Bart pours Luisa’s coffee. “Lester would be mighty proud.”

“He’d say I’m just a journalist doing my job.”

“Well, exactly, Luisa!”

Seaboardgate is no longer her scoop. Swannekke swarms with reporters, Senate investigators, FBI agents, county police, and Hollywood scriptwriters. Swannekke B is in mothballs; C is suspended.

Luisa gets Javier’s postcard out again. It shows three UFOs zooming under the Golden Gate Bridge:

Hi Luisa, it’s OK here but we live in a house so I can’t jump across balconies when I visit my friends. Paul (that’s Wolfman but Mom says I can’t call him that anymore though he kind of likes it when I do) is taking me to a stamp fare tommorrow, then I can choose what paint I want for my bedroom and he cooks better than Mom. Saw you again on TV last night and in the papers. Don’t forget me just because you’re fameous now, OK? Javi

The other item of mail is an airmailed package from Megan Sixsmith, sent in response to Luisa’s request. It contains the final eight letters Robert Frobisher wrote to his friend Rufus Sixsmith. Luisa uses a plastic knife to slit the package open. She removes one of the yellowed envelopes, postmarked October 10, 1931, holds it against her nose, and inhales. Are molecules of Zedelghem Chateau, of Robert Frobisher’s hand, dormant in this paper for forty-four years, now swirling in my lungs, in my blood?

Who is to say?

Letters from Zedelghem

ZEDELGHEM

10^th—X—1931

Sixsmith,

Ayrs in bed for three days, fogged with morphine, calling out in pain. V. distracting and distressing. Dr. Egret warns J. and me not to confuse Ayrs’s newfound joie de vivre in music with actual health and forbids V.A. to work from his sickbed. Dr. Egret gives me the creeps. Never met a quack whom I didn’t half-suspect of plotting to do me in as expensively as he could contrive.

Buried in music of my own. Cruel to say it, but when Hendrick arrives at breakfast and tells me, “Not today,