Cloud Atlas

general terms—every fabricant in Nea So Copros?

I did not know, and did not learn that until the following nite in Pusan. But by now breakfast pans were banging in the courtyard. The Abbess looked at the cleft to the courtyard and changed her tone. “And who might this young coyote be?”

The mute boy padded over and sat by the Abbess’s feet. Sunlite bent around the world, lending fragile color to wildflowers.

So day two as a fugitive got under way.

Yes. Hae-Joo breakfasted on potato cakes and fig honey; unlike the previous nite, no one pressed me to eat the pureblood food. As we said our farewells, two or three of the teenage girls, tearful to see Hae-Joo depart, shot me hateful glances, much to my guide’s amusement. Hae-Joo had to behave like a hard-bitten revolutionary, but he was still a boy in some respects. As she embraced me, the Abbess whispered in my ear, “I shall ask Siddhartha to grant your wish.” Under his gaze we left that rarefied height and hiked down through the noisy forest, where we found our ford, untouched.

Progress toward Yongju was fair. We passed upbound timber rigs driven by burly same-stem fabricants. But the rice plain north of Andongho Lake is laced with xposed timber tracks, so we stayed inside the ford most of the day, hidden from EyeSats until hour fifteen or so.

Crossing an old suspension bridge above Chuwangsan River, we got out to stretch our legs. Hae-Joo apologized for his pureblood bladder and pissed into the trees two hundred meters below. Over the other side, I studied the monochrome parrots who roost there on guano-stained chasm ledges; their flapping and honking reminded me of Boom-Sook Kim and his xec friends. A ravine wound upstream; downstream, the Chuwangsan River was channeled thru leveled hills before disappearing under Ulsong’s canopy for sewage duty. Aeros clustered over the conurb: black-and-silver dots.

The bridge cables groaned under the strain of a gleaming xec ford, without warning. It was an xpensive auto to encounter on such a rustic road, suspiciously so. Hae-Joo reached into our ford for his colt. He returned to me, hand in his jacket pocket, murmuring, “Let me do any talking, and get ready to dive down.”

Sure enough, the xec ford slowed to a stop. A stocky man with a facescaped sheen swiveled out from the driver’s seat with a friendly nod. “Beautiful afternoon.”

Hae-Joo nodded back, observing it was not too sultry.

A pureblood woman unfolded her legs from the passenger door. Her thick wraparounds revealed only a pixie nose and sensual lips. She leaned on the opposite railing, with her back to us, and lit a marlboro. The driver opened the ford trunk and lifted out an airbox, one suitable for transporting a medium-size dog. He unlocked its clickers and lifted out a striking, perfectly formed, but tiny female form, about thirty centimeters in height; she mewled, terrified, and tried to wriggle free. When she caught sight of us her miniature, wordless scream became imploring.

Before we could do or say anything, the man swung her off the bridge, by her hair, and watched her fall. He made a plopping noise with his tongue when she hit the rocks below and chuckled. “Cheap riddance”—he grinned at us—“to very xpensive trash.”

I forced myself to remain silent. Sensing the effort this cost, Hae-Joo touched my arm. One scene from the Cavendish disney, when a pureblood gets thrown off a balcony by a criminal, replayed itself in my head.

I presume he had discarded a fabricant living doll.

Yes. The xec was keen to tell us all about it. “The Zizzi Hikaru Doll was the must- have the Sextet before last. My daughter didn’t give me a moment’s rest. Of course, my official wife”—he nodded at the woman on the other side of the bridge—“put her all in, morning, noon, and nite. ‘How am I supposed to look our neighbors in their faces if our daughter is the only girl in our carousel to not have a Zizzi?’ You got to admire the marketers of these things. One junky toy fabricant, but genome it like some glitzy antique idol and up goes its price by fifty thousand; that’s before you shell out for designer-ware, dollhouse, accessories. So what did I do? I paid for the damn thing, just to shut the women up! Four months later, what happens? Teencool surfs on and Marilyn Monroe dethrones poor, passe Zizzi.” He told us, digustedly, that a registered fabricant xpirer cost three thousand dollars, but—the man jerked a thumb over the railing—an accidental plunge comes free. So why chuck good dollars after bad? “Pity”—he winked at Hae-Joo—“divorces aren’t as hitchless, eh?”

“I heard that, Fat-Ass!” His wife still did not deign to face us. “You should have taken the doll back to the franchise and had your Soul redollared. Our Zizzi was defective. It couldn’t even sing. The damn thing bit me.”

Fat-Ass replied, sweetly, “Can’t imagine why that didn’t kill it, darlingest.” His wife muttered a casual obscenity while her husband ran his eyes over my body and asked Hae-Joo if we were vacationing near that remote spot or passing thru on business.

“Ok-Kyun Pyo, sir, at your service.” Hae-Joo gave a slite bow and introduced himself as a fifth-stratum aide in Eagle Accountancy Franchise, a minor corp division.

The xec’s curiosity died. “That so? I manage the Golf Coast between P’yonghae and Yongdok. You are a golfer, Pyo? No? No? Golf isn’t just a game y’ know, golf is a career advantage!” The Paegam course, he promised, has an all-weather fifty-four holer, lickable greens, lake features like the Beloved Chairman’s famous water gardens. “We outbid the local downstrata for the aquifer. Normally you can’t get membership for love nor money unless you’re a seer, but I like you, Pyo, so just mention my name to our membership people: Seer Kwon.”

Ok-Kyun Pyo gushed gratitude.

Pleased, Seer Kwon began telling his xec life story, but his wife tossed her marlboro after the Zizzi Hikaru, climbed into the ford, and kept her hand on the horn for ten seconds. Zebra-feathered parrots cannonaded skyward. The xec gave Hae-Joo a rueful grin and advised him to pay the xtra dollars to conceive a son when he gets married. As he drove off I wished for his ford to plunge off the bridge.

You considered him a murderer?

Of course. One so shallow, moreover, he did not even know it.

But hate men like Seer Kwon, and you hate the whole world.

Not the whole world, Archivist, only the corpocratic pyramid that permits fabricants to be killed so wantonly, casually.

When did you finally reach Pusan?

Nitefall. Hae-Joo pointed at exxon clouds from Pusan refinery, turning melon pink to anthracite gray, and told me we had arrived. We entered Pusan’s northern rim on an unEyed farmtrack. Hae-Joo deposited the ford at a lockup in Somyon suburb, and we took the metro to Ch’oryang Square. It was smaller than Chongmyo Plaza but as busy, and strange after the silent emptiness of the mountains. Fabricant nannies scooted after their xec charges; swanning couples assessed couples swanning; corp-sponsored 3-Ds competed to outdazzle all the others. In a tatty back-galleria an old-style festival was taking place where hawkers sold palm-size curios, “friends for life”: toothless crocs, monkey chicklets, jonahwhales in jars. Hae-Joo told me these pets are an old cheapjack’s ruse; they die forty-eight hours after you get them home, invariably. A circusman was touting for business through a megaphone: “Marvel at the Two-Headed Schizoid Man! Gaze upon Madame Matryoshka and Her Pregnant Embryo! Gasp in Horror at the Real, Live Merican—but don’t poke your fingers into his cage!” Pureblood sailors from all over Nea So Copros sat in frontless bars, flirting with topless comforters, under the scrutiny of PimpCorp men: leathery Himalayans, Han Chinese, pale-hued hairy Baikalese, bearded Uzbeks, wiry Aleutians, coppery Viets and Thais. Comfort houses’ AdVs promised satisfaction for every peccadillo a hungry pureblood could imagine. “If Seoul is a Boardman’s faithful spouse,” said Hae-Joo, “Pusan is his no-pantied mistress.”

Backstreets grew narrower. A funneled wind bowled bottles and cans along, and hooded figures hurried by. Hae-Joo led me through a surreptitious doorway, up a glimlit tunnel to a portcullised entrance. KUKJE MANSIONS was inscribed over a side window. Hae-Joo pressed a buzzer. Dogs barked, the blind upzipped, and a pair of identical saber-tooths slavered at the glass. An unshaven woman hauled them aside and peered at us. Her gemwarted face lit with recognition at Hae-Joo and xclaimed: “Nun-Hel Han! It’s been nearly twelve months! Little