The Cloud Atlas

Gurley had frightened him. Still, Father Ioasaph pleaded with him even as he moved away. “Pray with me,” he said. “We must leave to God what is His and His alone…”

But Gurley did not. He turned his back on Father Ioasaph, smiled, and began to lift a piece of the wreckage with his foot. “Speak to me, O Lord,” he muttered.

Whereupon, Gurley said, He did.

The blast was not deafening, not blinding. But it was sudden. One moment his lower left leg and foot were there, the next moment they were not. One moment Gurley was there, on Father Ioasaph's island, the next moment he was not.

He was, instead, lying down, in a hospital, eyes closed, listening to two men talk about him.

Incredible he survived.

That priest saved his life.

Not his leg.

Nothing to save, I'd imagine. Unless you wanted a souvenir.

How many days did it take to get him here?

Three.

A miracle, indeed. He should thank that priest.

Convert.

Then Gurley felt a surge of pain in his left foot. Pain, and then an equal surge of relief. He hadn't lost the foot, the leg. They were talking about someone else. He opened his eyes. The two men, doctors, it seemed, were standing beside him.

“He's awake,” one said.

The other turned to Gurley. “You made it,” he said. “Welcome back to the land of the living.” Gurley said nothing, just looked at him. “How do you feel?”

Gurley told me it took him a moment to decide he was awake and not dreaming. Then he answered the doctor's question, as truthfully as he could. He told the man he felt okay. Weak, but okay.

Then, without looking anywhere except into the doctor's eyes, he said, accurately, “My left foot's a little sore, though. Really sore, kind of a sharp, shooting sore.” The two doctors looked at each other, then they looked at his left foot, or where it should have been. Then Gurley looked as well.

“That'll happen,” said the doctor who'd first spoken to him. “Usually it's an itch, and your brain is telling you it's there. But, in your case, it's not. Nor much of anything below the knee. Now, your brain's also going to tell you the other leg hurts, and it'll be right about that. Kind of unbelievable it's still there. Or that you're here. But you are. And you'll walk, eventually. Couple weeks, they'll be by to fit a prosthetic. Two, three weeks. They've been busy, of course.”

Gurley finished his story, looked at me. “ ‘Busy,’” he repeated. “It took three months.” He looked down at his leg and shook it gently. “Then again, it took more than a quarter century to grow the one I'd had.”

GURLEY RETREATED behind the desk. “Let's finish.” He dropped into his chair, pulled forward, and then folded his hands over the small book that he'd pulled out when I'd first arrived.

“Exhibit C,” Gurley said. He opened the book, riffled through its pages, closed it, and then slid it across the desk to me with both hands. I didn't pick it up. He took it back.

The leather cover had been dyed a dark green and was well worn. There were brown smudges in several places.

“Blood,” he said. I just looked at him. “Old blood,” he added, and smiled. He flipped it over. On the back was more blood, and you could almost see, or imagine, where a bloody hand had raked across it. If Gurley hadn't said anything, though, I would have taken it for mud or grease. But that was one of his talents: to make everything sinister.

“That's what I'm told, anyway, and I choose to believe it. It makes for more of a fair trade. A bloodied book for a bloodied leg.” He considered this and then continued. “I was convalescing when this book was-acquired, let us say, by my former colleagues. As you'll see once you open it, it is a kind of atlas. A book of maps and drawings. And like Father Ioasaph's avenging angel, the book also ‘speaks’ Japanese. Certainly not Chinese, as the imbeciles who first showed it to me insisted.” He opened it, found a page. “Japanese.” Another page. “Japanese.” He looked at me. “Seven semesters of Japanese at Princeton, I know Japanese. I am, as they say, something of an Orientalist.”

He handed it to me, and I took it gingerly, trying not to touch the bloodstains. The pages were beautiful-it wasn't a book, really, as much as it was some man's private journal. The Japanese calligraphy was done in a tight, neat hand in the corners or margins of each page; in the center was usually a map or illustration, done with black ink and colored with watercolor paints or a light gray wash. The fire balloons appeared on a number of pages; sometimes in flight, sometimes lying in a wreck on the ground. The pages themselves were unusual; the paper felt brittle and had a slight sheen.

Gurley thought the book's final pages were its most curious. First, several seemed to be missing, which he found troubling. And the pages that remained-well, they looked blank. But when you looked closer you could see evidence of some color-a faint gray wash, nothing more. After a minute or two, I decided that summed up the book: pretty, but useless. I made the mistake of saying so.

“On the contrary, Belk,” Gurley said. “It is extremely useful, in fact, albeit to a small number of people.” He counted them off with his hand, starting with his thumb. “First it is useful to the spy, or spies, who created it. Should we find them and-secure-their assistance, then the book becomes useful indeed. Second, it is, and has been, useful to me. I was able to convince my former colleagues that the book, and by extension, the balloon campaign, was worthy of my personal and total focus. I admit the colonel was uncertain, initially, but I explained that I would be happy to brief his wife on all that I had discovered about the Blue Fox. He turned a shade of red that was indeed close to blue.” Gurley smiled. “He was only too happy to send me back to Alaska.”

Gurley looked at his row of clocks and stood. “It's time to go.” I started to stand as well, and Gurley pointed me back down. “This book, lastly, will prove useful, I hope, to you. I have read it, studied it, translated it, but have yet to find a balloon with it, or predict, precisely, where one will land.” I looked up. “Yes, we're quite good at finding them after they've landed. But by then it's too late: a fire has started, or worse, rumors have started among the local populace.” Gurley paused until I looked at him. “So please, Sergeant, find us our next balloon, before some lumberjack does. Find me my spy. Find the next bomb in that book, on paper, before I find it in the field, with my one remaining foot.”

He limped quite slowly around the desk to the door. I twisted around to see him go. “I'll not be back today, Sergeant. Business in town.” He smiled, broadly. “But I look forward to hearing the fruits of your labors. Tomorrow, 0700, at the airfield. Do not be late. Nor empty-handed.”

“I don't know what I can do by then, sir. That's not nearly enough time to-”

Gurley cut me off. “Sergeant,” he said, teeth bared in his favorite apparent smile. “You've seen this weapon in flight. You've seen it land. You've seen what happens when you don't move fast enough.” He spun and kicked the door with a violence that no other man who wanted to spare his foot injury could have matched. Which, when I saw his face, I realized was precisely his point.

“Boom,” he said, just the one word, quiet and slow, and then he left.

CHAPTER 8

I HAD NO IDEA WHERE GURLEY AND I WERE FLYING, SO I packed everything I