Cloud Atlas

“Oh?”

“Alberto Grimaldi flew out to our Three Mile Island site this morning—wooing a group of Germans. Sidney Jessops was going along as the technical support, but Sid’s father had a heart attack, and Isaac was the next choice.”

“Oh. Has he left already?”

“Afraid so. He’s”—Napier checks his watch—“over the Colorado Rockies. Breast-feeding a hangover, shouldn’t wonder.”

Don’t let your disappointment show. “When’s he due back?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Oh.” Damn, damn, damn.

“I’m twice Isaac’s age and three times uglier, but Fay’s asked me to show you around the site. She’s scheduled a few interviews with some people she thinks’ll interest you.”

“Joe, it’s too kind of you all to give me such generous slices of your weekends,” says Luisa. Did you know Sachs was on the verge of defection? How? Unless Sachs was a plant? I’m out of my depth here.

“I’m a lonely old man with too much time on my hands.”

33

“So R?&?D is called the Chicken Coop because the eggheads live there.” Luisa jots in her notebook, smiling, as Joe Napier holds open the control-room door two hours later. “What do you call the reactor building?”

A gum-chewing technician calls out: “Home of the Brave.”

Joe’s expression says funny. “That’s definitely off the record.”

“Has Joe told you what we call the security wing?” The controller grins.

Luisa shakes her head.

“Planet of the Apes.” He turns to Napier. “Introduce your guest, Joe.”

“Carlo Bohn, Luisa Rey. Luisa’s a reporter, Carlo’s a chief technician. Stick around and you’ll hear plenty of other names for him.”

“Let me show you around my little empire, if Joe’ll give you up for five minutes.”

Napier watches Luisa as Bohn explains the fluorescent-lit chamber of panels and gauges. Underlings check printouts, frown at dials, tick clipboards. Bohn flirts with her, catches Napier’s eye, when Luisa’s back is turned, and mimes melon-breasts; Napier shakes his sober head. Milly would have clucked over you, he thinks. Had you over for dinner, fed you way too much, and nagged you on what you need to be nagged about. He recalls Luisa as a precocious little six-year-old. Must be two decades since I saw you at the last Tenth Precinct Station reunion. Of all the professions that lippy little girl could have entered, of all the reporters who could have caught the scent of Sixsmith’s death, why Lester Rey’s daughter? Why so soon before I retire? Who dreamed up this sick joke? The city?

Napier could cry.

34

Fay Li searches Luisa Rey’s room swiftly and adeptly as the sun sets. She checks inside the toilet cistern; under the mattress for slits; the carpets, for loose flaps; inside the minibar; in the closet. The original might have been Xeroxed down to a quarter of its bulk. Li’s tame receptionist reported Sachs and Luisa talking until the early hours. Sachs was removed this morning, but he’s no idiot, he could have deposited it for her. She unscrews the telephone mouthpiece and finds Napier’s favored transmitter, one disguised as a resistor. She probes the recesses of Luisa’s overnight bag but finds no printed matter except Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. She flicks through the reporter’s notepad on the desk, but Luisa’s encrypted shorthand doesn’t reveal much.

Fay Li wonders if she’s wasting her time. Wasting your time? Mexxon Oil upped their offer to one hundred thousand dollars for the Sixsmith Report. And if they’re serious about a hundred thousand, they’ll be serious about a million. For discrediting the entire atomic energy program into an adolescent grave, a million is a snip. So keep searching.

The phone buzzes four times: a warning that Luisa Rey is in the lobby, waiting for the elevator. Li ensures nothing is amiss and leaves, taking the stairs down. After ten minutes she rings up to Luisa from the front desk. “Hi, Luisa, it’s Fay. Been back long?”

“Just long enough for a quick shower.”

“Productive afternoon, I hope?”

“Very much so. I’ve got enough material for two or three pieces.”

“Terrific. Listen, unless you’ve got other plans, how about dinner at the golf club? Swannekke lobster is the best this side of anywhere.”

“Quite a claim.”

“I’m not asking you to take my word for it.”

35

Crustacean shrapnel is piled high. Luisa and Fay Li dab their fingers in pots of lemon-scented water, and Li’s eyebrow tells the waiter to remove the plates. “What a mess I’ve made.” Luisa drops her napkin. “I’m the slob of the class, Fay. You should open a finishing school for young ladies in Switzerland.”

“That’s not how most people in Seaboard Village see me. Did anyone tell you my nickname? No? Mr. Li.”

Luisa isn’t sure what response is expected. “A little context might help.”

“My first week on the job, I’m up in the canteen, fixing myself a coffee. This engineer comes up, tells me he’s got a problem of a mechanical nature, and asks if I can help. His buddies are sniggering in the background. I say, ‘I doubt it.’ The guy says, ‘Sure you can help.’ He wants me to oil his bolt and relieve the excess pressure on his nuts.”

“This engineer was how old? Thirteen?”

“Forty, married, two kids. So his buddies are snorting with laughter now. What would you do? Dash off some witty put-down line, let ’em know you’re riled? Slap him, get labeled hysterical? Besides, creeps like that enjoy being slapped. Do nothing? So any man on site can say shit like that to you with impunity?”

“An official complaint?”

“Prove that women run to senior men when the going gets tough?”

“So what did you do?”

“Had him transferred to our Kansas plant. Middle of nowhere, middle of January. I pity his wife, but she married him. Word gets around, I get dubbed Mr. Li. A real woman wouldn’t have treated the poor guy so cruelly, no, a real woman would have taken his joke as a compliment.” Fay Li smooths wrinkles in the tablecloth. “You run up against this crap in your work?”

Luisa thinks of Nussbaum and Jakes. “All the time.”

“Maybe our daughters’ll live in a liberated world, but us, forget it. We’ve got to help ourselves, Luisa. Men won’t do it for us.”

The journalist senses a shifting of the agenda.