Cloud Atlas

hundred-strong demonstration lines the last stretch, chanting, “Swannekke C over our dead bodies!” A wall of police keeps them back from the line of nine or ten vehicles. Luisa reads the placards while she waits. YOU ARE NOW ENTERING CANCER ISLAND, warns one, another, HELL, NO! WE WON’T GO! and, enigmatically, WHERE OH WHERE IS MARGO ROKER?

A guard taps on the window; Luisa winds it down and sees her face in the guard’s sunglasses. “Luisa Rey, Spyglass magazine.”

“Press pass, ma’am.”

Luisa gets it from her purse. “Expecting trouble today?”

“Nah.” He consults a clipboard and hands back her pass. “Only our regular nature freaks from the trailer park. The college boys are vacationing where the surf’s better.”

As she crosses the bridge, the Swannekke B plant emerges from behind the older, grayer cooling towers of Swannekke A. Once again, Luisa wonders about Rufus Sixsmith. Why wouldn’t he give me a contact number? Scientists can’t be telephobic. Why did no one in the super’s office in his apartment building even know his name? Scientists can’t have aliases.

Twenty minutes later Luisa arrives at a colony of some two hundred luxury homes overlooking a sheltered bay. A hotel and golf course share the semiwooded slope below the power station. She leaves her Beetle in the R? &?D parking lot and looks at the power station’s abstract buildings half-hidden by the brow of the hill. An orderly row of palm trees rustles in the Pacific wind.

“Hi!” A Chinese-American woman strides up. “You look lost. Here for the launch?” Her stylish oxblood suit, flawless makeup, and sheer poise make Luisa feel shabby in her blueberry suede jacket. “Fay Li”—the woman offers her hand—“Seaboard PR.”

“Luisa Rey, Spyglass magazine.”

Fay Li’s handshake is powerful. “Spyglass? I didn’t realize—”

“—our editorial scope includes energy policy?”

Fay Li smiles. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a feisty magazine.”

Luisa invokes Dom Grelsch’s reliable deity. “Market research identifies a growing public who demand more substance. I was hired as Spyglass’s highbrow face.”

“Very glad you’ve come, Luisa, whatever your brow. Let me sign you in at Reception. Security insists on bag searches and the rest, but it’s no good having our guests treated like saboteurs. That’s why I was hired.”

10

Joe Napier watches a bank of CCTV screens covering a lecture theater, its adjacent corridors, and the Public Center grounds. He stands, fluffs up his special cushion, and sits on it. Is it my imagination, or are my old wounds aching more of late? His gaze flits from screen to screen to screen. One shows a technician doing a sound check; another, a TV crew discussing angles and light; Fay Li crossing the parking lot with a visitor; waitresses pouring wine into hundreds of glasses; a row of chairs beneath a banner reading SWANNEKKE B—AN AMERICAN MIRACLE.

The real miracle, Joseph Napier ruminates, was getting eleven out of twelve scientists to forget the existence of a nine-month inquiry. A screen shows these very scientists drifting onstage, chatting amicably. Like Grimaldi says, every conscience has an off switch somewhere. Napier’s thoughts segue through memorable lines from the interviews that achieved the collective amnesia. “Between us, Dr. Franklin, the Pentagon’s lawyers are itching to try out their shiny new Security Act. The whistle-blower is to be blacklisted in every salaried position in the land.”

A janitor adds another chair to the row onstage.

“The choice is simple, Dr. Moses. If you want Soviet technology to burn ahead of ours, leak this report to your Union of Concerned Scientists, fly to Moscow to collect your medal, but the CIA has told me to tell you, you won’t be needing a round-trip ticket.”

The audience of dignitaries, scientists, think-tank members, and opinion formers take their seats. A screen shows William Wiley, vice CEO of Seaboard Inc., joking with those VIPs to be honored with a seat onstage.

“Professor Keene, the Defense Department brass are a little curious. Why voice your doubts now? Are you saying your work on the prototype was slipshod?”

A slide projector beams a fish-eye aerial shot of Swannekke B.

Eleven out of twelve. Only Rufus Sixsmith gets away.

Napier speaks into his walkie-talkie. “Fay? Show starts in ten minutes.”

Static. “Copy that, Joe. I’m escorting a visitor to the lecture theater.”

“Report to Security when you’re through, please.”

Static. “Copy. Over and out.”

Napier weighs the set in his hand. And Joe Napier? Has his conscience got an off switch? He sips his bitter black coffee. Hey, buddy, get off my case. I’m only following orders. Eighteen months till I retire, then it’s off to fish in sweet rushing rivers until I turn into a goddamn heron.

Milly, his deceased wife, watches her husband from the photograph on his console desk.

11

“Our great nation suffers from a debilitating addiction.” Alberto Grimaldi, Seaboard CEO and Newsweek Man of the Year, is king of the dramatic pause. “Its name is Oil.” He is gilded by the podium lights. “Geologists tell us, just seventy-four billion gallons of this Jurassic ocean scum remain in the Persian Gulf. Enough, maybe, to see out our century? Probably not. The most imperative question facing the USA, ladies and gentlemen, is ‘Then what?’?”

Alberto Grimaldi scans his audience. In the palm of my hand. “Some bury their heads in the sand. Some fantasize about wind turbines, reservoirs, and”—wry half smile—“pig gas.” Appreciative chuckle. “At Seaboard we deal in realities.” Voice up. “I am here today to tell you that the cure for oil is right here, right now, on Swannekke Island!”

He smiles as the cheers subside. “As of today, domestic, abundant, and safe atomic energy has come of age! Friends, I am so very, very proud to present one of the major engineering innovations in history .?.?. the HYDRA-Zero reactor!” The slide screen changes to show a cross-section diagram, and a primed section of the audience applauds wildly, prompting most of the theater to follow suit.

“But hey, now, enough of me, I’m only the CEO.” Affectionate laughter. “Here to unveil our viewing gallery and flick that switch to connect Swannekke B to the national grid, the Seaboard family is deeply honored to welcome a very special visitor. Known on Capitol Hill as the president’s ‘Energy Guru’?”—full smile—“it gives me profound pleasure to welcome a man who needs no introduction. Federal Power Commissioner Lloyd Hooks!”

An immaculately groomed man strides onstage to great applause. Lloyd Hooks and Alberto Grimaldi grasp each other’s forearms in a gesture of fraternal love and trust. “Your scriptwriters are getting better,” Lloyd Hooks murmurs, as both men grin broadly for the audience, “but you’re still Greed on Two Legs.”

Alberto Grimaldi backslaps Lloyd Hooks and replies in kind, “You’ll only wrangle your way onto this company’s board over my dead body, you venal sonofabitch!”

Lloyd Hooks beams out at the audience. “So you can still come up with creative solutions, Alberto.”

A cannonade of flashes opens fire.