Cloud Atlas

my family up in San Francisco, it’s ideal. Subsidized stores and utilities, free clinic, clean air, zero crime, sea views. Even the men,” she confides, sotto voce, “come ready-vetted—in fact I can access their personnel files—so you know there won’t be any total freaks in the dating pool. Speaking of which—Isaac! Isaac! You’re being conscripted.” Fay Li grabs Isaac Sachs’s elbow. “You’ll remember bumping into Luisa Rey the other day?”

“I’m one lucky conscript. Hi, Luisa, again.”

Luisa feels an edginess in his handshake.

“Miss Rey is here,” says Fay Li, “to write an article on Swannekke anthropology.”

“Oh? We’re a dull tribe. I hope you’ll meet your word count.”

Fay Li turns her beam on full. “I’m sure Isaac could find a little time to answer any of your questions, Luisa. Right, Isaac?”

“I’m the very dullest of the dull.”

“Don’t believe him, Luisa,” Fay Li warns her. “It’s just a part of Isaac’s strategy. Once your defenses are down, he pounces.”

The alleged lady-killer rocks on his heels, smiling at his toes uncomfortably.

31

“Isaac Sachs’s tragic flaw,” analyzes Isaac Sachs, slumped in the bay window across from Luisa Rey two hours later, “is this. Too cowardly to be a warrior, but not enough of a coward to lie down and roll over like a good doggy.” His words slip like Bambi on ice. A mostly empty wine bottle stands on the table. The bar is deserted. Sachs can’t remember when he was last this drunk, or this tense and relaxed at the same time: relaxed, because an intelligent young woman is enjoying his company; tense, because he is ready to lance the boil on his conscience. To Sachs’s wry surprise, he is attracted to Luisa Rey, and he sorely regrets they met in these circumstances. The woman and the reporter keep blurring into one another. “Let’s change the subject,” Sachs says. “Your car, your”—he does a Hollywood SS officer accent—“?‘Volkswagen.’ What’s its name?”

“How do you know my Beetle has a name?”

“All Beetle owners give their cars names. But please don’t tell me it’s John, George, Paul, or Ringo.” God, Luisa Rey, you’re beautiful.

She says, “You’ll laugh.”

“I won’t.”

“You will.”

“I, Isaac Caspar Sachs, solemnly vow not to laugh.”

“You’d better not with a middle name like Caspar. It’s Garcia.”

They both shake, noiselessly, until they burst into laughter. Maybe she likes me too, maybe she’s not just doing her job.

Luisa lassos her laughter in. “Is that all your vows are worth?”

Sachs makes a mea culpa gesture and dabs his eyes. “They normally last longer. I don’t know why it’s so funny, I mean, Garcia”— he snorts—“isn’t such a funny name. I once dated a girl who called her car Rosinante, for Chrissakes.”

“An ex-Berserkeley Beatnik boyfriend named it. After Jerry Garcia, y’ know, the Grateful Dead man. He abandoned it at my dorm when its engine sent a gasket through the back around the time he dumped me for a cheerleader. Cheesy, but true.”

“And you didn’t take a blowtorch to it?”

“It’s not Garcia’s fault his ex-owner was a swindling sperm gun.”

“The guy must have been mad.” Sachs didn’t plan to say so, but he’s not ashamed he did.

Luisa Rey nods in gracious acknowledgment. “Anyway, Garcia suits the car. Never stays tuned, prone to flashes of speed, falling to bits, its trunk won’t lock, it leaks oil, but never seems to give up the ghost.”

Invite her back, Sachs thinks. Don’t be stupid, you’re not a pair of kids.

They watch the breakers crash in the moonlight.

Say it. “The other day”—his voice is a murmur and he feels sick—“you were looking for something in Sixsmith’s room.” The shadows seem to prick up their ears. “Weren’t you?”

Luisa checks for eavesdroppers and speaks very quietly. “I understand Dr. Sixsmith wrote a certain report.”

“Rufus had to work closely with the team who designed and built the thing. That meant me.”

“Then you know what his conclusions were? About the HYDRA reactor?”

“We all do! Jessops, Moses, Keene .?.?. they all know.”

“About a design flaw?”

“Yes.” Nothing has changed, except everything.

“How bad would an accident be?”

“If Dr. Sixsmith is right, it’ll be much, much worse than bad.”

“Why isn’t Swannekke B just shut down pending further inquiry?”

“Money, power, usual suspects.”

“Do you agree with Sixsmith’s findings?”

Carefully. “I agree a substantial theoretical risk is present.”

“Were you pressured to keep your doubts to yourselves?”

“Every scientist was. Every scientist agreed to. Except for Sixsmith.”

“Who, Isaac? Alberto Grimaldi? Does it go up to the top?”

“Luisa, what would you do with a copy of the report, if one found its way into your hands?”

“Go public as fast as I possibly could.”

“Are you aware of?.?.?.” I can’t say it.

“Aware that people in the upper echelons would rather see me dead than see HYDRA discredited? Right now it’s all I’m aware of.”

“I can’t make any promises.” Christ, how feeble. “I became a scientist because .?.?. it’s like panning for gold in a muddy torrent. Truth is the gold. I—I don’t know what I want to do?.?.?.”

“Journalists work in torrents just as muddy.”

The moon is over the water.

“Do,” says Luisa finally, “whatever you can’t not do.”

32

In blustery early sunshine Luisa Rey watches golfers traverse the lush course, wondering what might have happened last night if she’d invited Isaac Sachs up. He’s due to meet her for breakfast.

She wonders if she should have phoned Javier. You’re not his mother, you’re not his guardian, you’re just a neighbor. She’s not convinced, but just as she didn’t know how to ignore the boy she found sobbing by the garbage chute, just as she couldn’t not go down to the super’s, borrow his keys, and pick through a garbage can for his precious stamp albums, now she doesn’t know how to extricate herself. He hasn’t got anyone else, and eleven-year-olds don’t do subtlety. Anyway, who else have you got?

“You look like you got the weight of the world,” says Joe Napier.

“Joe. Have a seat.”

“Don’t mind if I do. I’m the bearer of bad news. Isaac Sachs sends his sincere apologies, but he’s got to stand you up.”