Cloud Atlas

The path ended down by the sea at a crumbling “ingot” of black coral, twenty yards in length & in height two men. “A marae, this is called,” Mr. Wagstaff informed me. “All over the South Seas you see ’em, I’m told.” We scrambled up & I had a fine view of the Prophetess, an easy “dip” away for a lusty swimmer. (Finbar emptied a vat over the side & I spied Autua’s black silhouette atop the mizzen, furling the fore-skysail lifts.)

I inquired after the origins & purpose of the marae & Mr. Wagstaff obliged, with brevity. “Just one generation ago, the Indians did their screaming & bloodletting & sacrificing to their false idols right on these stones where we’re standing.” My thoughts went back to the Banquet Beach on Chatham Isle. “The Christ Guards gives any Black who sets foot here now a hefty flogging. Or would do. The Native children don’t even know the names of the old idols no more. It’s all rats’ nests & rubble now. That’s what all beliefs turn to one day. Rats’ nests & rubble.”

Plumeria petals and scent enwrapped me.

My neighbor at the dinner table was Mrs. Derbyshire, a widow well into her sixth decade, as bitter & hard as green acorns. “I confess to a disrelish for Americans,” she told me. “They killed my treasured uncle Samuel, a colonel in His Majesty’s Artillery, in the War of 1812.” I gave my (unwanted) condolences, but added that notwithstanding my own treasured uncle was killed by Englishmen in the same conflict, some of my closest friends were Britons. The doctor laughed too loudly & ejaculated, “Hurrah, Ewing!”

Mrs. Horrox seized the rudder of conversation ere we ran onto reefs. “Your employers evince great faith in your talents, Mr. Ewing, to entrust you with business necessitating such a long & arduous voyage.” I replied that, yes, I was a senior enough notary to be entrusted with my present assignment, but a junior enough scrivener to be obligated to accept the same. Knowing clucks rewarded my humility.

After Preacher Horrox had said grace over the bowls of turtle soup & invoked God’s blessing on his new business venture with Cpt. Molyneux, he sermonized upon a much-beloved topic as we ate. “I have always unswervingly held, that God, in our Civilizing World, manifests himself not in the Miracles of the Biblical Age, but in Progress. It is Progress that leads Humanity up the ladder towards the Godhead. No Jacob’s Ladder this, no, but rather ‘Civilization’s Ladder,’ if you will. Highest of all the races on this ladder stands the Anglo-Saxon. The Latins are a rung or two below. Lower still are Asiatics—a hardworking race, none can deny, yet lacking our Aryan bravery. Sinologists insist they once aspired to greatness, but where is your yellow-hued Shakespeare, eh, or your almond- eyed da Vinci? Point made, point taken. Lower down, we have the Negro. Good-tempered ones may be trained to work profitably, though a rumbunctious one is the Devil incarnate! The American Indian, too, is capable of useful chores on the Californian barrios, is that not so, Mr. Ewing?”

I said ’tis so.

“Now, our Polynesian. The visitor to Tahiti, O-hawaii, or Bethlehem for that matter, will concur that the Pacific Islander may, with careful instruction, acquire the ‘A-B-C’ of literacy, numeracy & piety, thereby surpassing the Negroes to rival Asiatics in industriousness.”

Henry interrupted to note that the Maori have risen to the “D-E-F” of mercantilism, diplomacy & colonialism.

“Proves my point. Last, lowest & least come those ‘Irreclaimable Races,’ the Australian Aboriginals, Patagonians, various African peoples &c., just one rung up from the great apes & so obdurate to Progress that, like mastodons & mammoths, I am afraid a speedy ‘knocking off the ladder’—after their cousins, the Guanches, Canary Islanders & Tasmanians—is the kindest prospect.”

“You mean”—Cpt. Molyneux finished his soup—“extinction?”

“I do, Captain, I do. Nature’s Law & Progress move as one. Our own century shall witness humanity’s tribes fulfill those prophecies writ in their racial traits. The superior shall relegate the overpopulous savages to their natural numbers. Unpleasant scenes may ensue, but men of intellectual courage must not flinch. A glorious order shall follow, when all races shall know & aye, embrace, their place in God’s ladder of civilization. Bethlehem Bay offers a glimpse of the coming dawn.”

“Amen to that, Preacher,” replied Cpt. Molyneux. One Mr. Gosling (fiance of Preacher Horrox’s eldest daughter) wrung his hands in oleaginous admiration. “If I dare be so bold, sir, it strikes me as almost .?.?. yes, a deprivation to let your theorem go unpublished, sir. ‘The Horrox Ladder of Civilization’ would set the Royal Society alight!”

Preacher Horrox said, “No, Mr. Gosling, my work is here. The Pacific must find itself another Descartes, another Cuvier.”

“Wise of you, Preacher”—Henry clapped a flying insect & examined its remains—“to keep your theory to yourself.”

Our host could not conceal his irritation. “How so?”

“Why, under scrutiny it is obvious a ‘theorem’ is redundant when a simple law suffices.”

“What law would that be, sir?”

“The first of ‘Goose’s Two Laws of Survival.’ It runs thus, ‘The weak are meat the strong do eat.’?”

“But your ‘simple law’ is blind to the fundamental mystery, ‘Why do White races hold dominion over the world?’?”

Henry chuckled & loaded an imaginary musket, aimed down its barrel, narrowed his eye, then startled the company with a “Bang! Bang! Bang! See? Got him before he blew his blowpipe!”

Mrs. Derbyshire uttered a dismayed “Oh!”

Henry shrugged. “Where is the fundamental mystery?”

Preacher Horrox had lost his good humour. “Your implication is that White races rule the globe not by divine grace but by the musket? But such an assertion is merely the same mystery dressed up in borrowed clothes! How is it that the musket came to the White man & not, say, the Esquimeau or the Pygmy, if not by august will of the Almighty?”

Henry obliged. “Our weaponry was not dropped onto our laps one morning. It is not manna from Sinai’s skies. Since Agincourt, the White man has refined & evolved the gunpowder sciences until our modern armies may field muskets by the tens of thousands! ‘Aha!’ you will ask, yes, ‘But why us Aryans? Why not the Unipeds of Ur or the Mandrakes of Mauritius?’ Because, Preacher, of all the world’s races, our love—or rather our rapacity—for treasure, gold, spices & dominion, oh, most of all, sweet dominion, is the keenest, the hungriest, the most unscrupulous! This rapacity, yes, powers our Progress; for ends infernal or divine I know not. Nor do you know, sir. Nor do I overly care. I feel only gratitude that my Maker cast me on the winning side.”

Henry’s forthrightness was misconstrued as incivility & Preacher Horrox, the Napoleon of his equatorial Elba, was pinkening with indignation. I complimented our hostess’s soup (though in truth my craving for vermicide makes it difficult to ingest any but the plainest fare) & asked if the turtles were caught on nearby beaches or imported from afar.

Later, lying abed in the muggy darkness, eavesdropped by geckos, Henry confided that the day’s surgery had been “a parade of hysterical sun-baked women who need no medicine but hosiers, milliners, bonnet makers, perfumeries & sundry trappings of their sex!” His “consultations,” he elaborated, were one part medicine, nine parts tittle-tattle. “They swear their husbands are tupping the Native women & live in mortal fear they’ll catch ‘something.’ Handkerchiefs aired in rotation.”

His confidences made me uneasy & I ventured that Henry might practice a little reserve when disagreeing with our host. “Dearest Adam, I was practicing reserve, & more than a little! I longed to shout this at the old fool:—‘Why tinker with the plain truth that we hurry the darker races to their graves in order to take their land & its riches? Wolves don’t sit in their caves, concocting crapulous theories of race to justify devouring a flock of sheep! “Intellectual courage”? True “intellectual courage” is to dispense with these fig leaves & admit all peoples are predatory, but White predators, with our deadly duet of disease dust & firearms, are examplars of predacity par excellence, & what of it?’?”

It upsets me that a dedicated healer & gentle Christian can succumb to such cynicism. I asked to hear Goose’s Second Law of Survival. Henry grinned in the dark & cleared his throat. “The second law of survival states that there is no second law. Eat or be eaten. That’s it.” He began snoring soon after, but my Worm kept me awake until the stars began weakening. Geckos fed & padded softly over my