The Cloud Atlas

fuze,” I said, “and then call Lieutenant-” Redes shook his head. I exhaled. “Remove the gaine?”

“Good boy,” he said. He leaned forward to look at it a little more closely. He shifted to the side a bit, and motioned me over. “Let's hope it's not damaged. So what you're going to do now-” The sound of the lieutenant's voice, angry, cut him off. Redes yelled up a quick apology, changed his mind about something, and turned back to me: “-is watch me work very quickly.” He slowly drew the fuze out of the bomb, found the gaine, unscrewed it, and delicately set it all beside the case.

“You see all that?” he said. “Get a good look?” I nodded. “Because you're not likely to see that again, something that rare. A precision-crafted German fuze, just falling out of a bomb like that, the gaine spiraling off it. Damnedest thing.” He winked and then gave me a lift out of the hole just as the lieutenant looked over the edge.

“What's the problem here, Sergeant?” The lieutenant looked worse than before, if that was possible. His face was drawn and pale, his eyes sad and angry both. I almost thought he was going to spit on me as I climbed out.

“Well, sir, this is a funny one…” I heard Redes start to say as the lieutenant climbed down. I could hear their voices go back and forth after that, softer and softer, until I couldn't make out any words at all. Then it fell silent, and a long moment later, Redes's head appeared above the hole.

He put on an angry face for me. “What're you doing here, Belk? Why haven't you cleared to safety? Lieutenant's in the hole.” He walked me back to where the group was waiting. When we were within earshot, he shouted out, “Nothing too tricky, boys, but the lieutenant's going to need a little time, little quiet before he's ready for us.” A couple of the guys exchanged looks. One went over to talk with the internees. The sergeant stared back toward the building.

“Well, British bombs-to answer your question,” he said. “They're respectable enough. Their bomb disposal crews? The best, no question. They have more experience than a man would want. But I tell you what: I'm glad I'm not over there clearing their beaches. Damn English land mines could kill a man.” He allowed himself a smile. The other guys, catching a word or two, drifted closer to hear better.

But the sergeant stopped when he saw the lieutenant emerge, blinking, from the building. Redes told us to stay where we were and went out to meet him. After a minute's discussion, the lieutenant started off in the direction of the camp administration building, and Redes returned to us. He dispatched three men back to the building to figure out some way we could hoist the bomb out safely. Two others were sent to retrieve our specially outfitted truck, whose winch would provide most of the required muscle. That left me with no other job than to stand there, beside the sergeant.

“Careful- and correct,” he said, pleased. “That's what we learned today, right?”

“Right, Sarge,” I said.

He watched our guys file into the building. “Wasn't pleased about coming here,” he said, “if you can believe that. Who doesn't like California? Me. I don't like California. Because it's too close to goddamn Japan. And if there's a bomb you don't want to mess with, it's a Jap bomb.” We started walking over to the building. “Because they build a shitty bomb. Japanese military command, if you want to call it that, they don't exactly have the most respect for a man's life. Take your suicide planes, for example. Kids who don't know how to fly, screaming down into our ships.” He cleared his throat. “So your Jap bombmaker, he's not thinking safety when he makes his bomb. He's ready to lose a man here and there. At the factory. On the runway. In the plane. You come across one of those bombs on the ground, you don't know what kind of shit you're getting into.”

We were at the door to the building now, and he paused. He took a long look around the camp. “Now, then,” he said quietly, “I've never handled a Japanese bomb. Course, that's probably why I'm still here.” He looked around the camp one more time, and then ducked inside.

CHAPTER 5

RONNIE IS NOT IN A COMA, OR “NOT A CLASSIC COMA,” AS A doctor just put it to me, as though there were comas one might treasure and frame.

After Ronnie had awoken to tell me about the wolf, he slipped away again, this time submerging so deep, I thought he had died. I held his hand, I called for him, and then called for the nurses. Ronnie didn't wake up, the nurses didn't come. I had to leave Ronnie there and go chasing down the hall for someone to attend to him. No one quite understood my concern-wasn't this why he'd come to the hospice?- and I tried to explain all the reasons why it was too soon for him to die. He had something to tell me, I said, and they smiled sympathetically. It was urgent, I said, and they began to look nervous. When I finally blurted out something about a wolf, they called the doctor.

But everyone at the hospital was busy with a snowmachine accident. Two kids were hurt, a third had died. No one could come to see the old, alcoholic angalkuq in his room at the hospice, not for hours.

Part of the problem was that Ronnie insisted on breathing, his heart insisted on beating. “Both pluses,” the doctor said when he finally got to his bedside. Never mind the big minus, unconsciousness. The doctor didn't understand my concern, or why he'd been summoned. “I thought I'd been called to pronounce,” he said, looking hopefully at the clock, as though there might still be a need to note the time of death. Then he looked at me, professionally, and asked how I was feeling.

I ignored him. The doctor didn't know Ronnie, or me-he's one of these hotshots from Seattle who come up here once or twice a year, get community service hours, and think they're saving the world. Some of them are good; this one was not. When he switched back to small talk and asked if I was a relative of Ronnie's, I knew he hadn't been examining him-or me-that closely. I was wearing my collar, for once. I pointed that out, plus the fact that I was white, and then the fact that I also served as the hospice chaplain. Now he looked truly surprised. Said he'd expect me to be a bit more “sophisticated,” then, about “these things.”

I made the mistake of telling him, sophisticated as I was, that I still needed a little help with fancy medical terms like “these things.”

Then he got right to the point. Ronnie wasn't sick: he was dying.

What about the two pluses?

“He's not dying,” I said, because Ronnie would have said the same if he'd been able to. He had something to tell me. And I him. “He can't.”

“He can,” the doctor said. “He will.”

“Not on my watch,” I said, trampling over what may have been an empathetic “sorry” dribbling from the doctor's mouth. I couldn't hear him very well.

“Then keep watching,” the doctor said, and started for the door. “As for me, I'm on the eight o'clock flight.”

“Godspeed,” I said. When the doctor had gone, I turned to Ronnie and said something different. “Run,” I whispered. “But don't outrun me.”

EVERYONE IN ALASKA had a secret in World War II; most, like me, still do. There were plenty of men who had made their way to Alaska long before war had broken out. I imagine some came for a love of the wilderness, but more came for the vastness of it. Long before its official motto became “The Last Frontier,” Alaska was just that, an outpost on the edge of the Arctic, the edge of the earth. Nowadays, people flock to remote places to “find themselves,” but in the 1930s and 1940s, men, and some women, went to Alaska to do just the opposite: disappear.

Maybe you'd robbed a bank. Maybe you'd killed a man-maybe by accident or on purpose, maybe you couldn't say. Maybe you'd caught a man sleeping with your wife. Maybe a man had caught you with his. Maybe you were the wife. Maybe you were nothing more than a middle-grade con man, running out