The Cloud Atlas

Gurley smiled. “Yes, Belk,” he said. “I need you for that. But I also need you for the simple reason that, when the question was asked of the NCOs present at the meeting I flew to yesterday-well, there were no volunteers.”

“Sir,” I began.

“Good man,” Gurley said, his actor's smile and flourish returning as he swung himself aboard.

GURLEY GAVE ME MORE background on the flight. The supposedly weeklong meeting he'd been summoned to in Juneau during my Shuyak convalescence had been cut short when word of the Wyoming balloon arrived.

At first, he tried to summarize the briefing he'd received, but I interrupted him with so many questions that he finally gave up and handed his top secret briefing packet to me. He put a finger to his lips, as if to say “shh,” and then raised his thumb. He didn't have to draw it across my throat, or his. I began reading.

Evidence of Japan 's germ weapons program was arriving from an increasing number of credible sources, the report said, even as the information relayed was becoming increasingly incredible. A highly specialized and extremely secretive Japanese army medical corps named Unit 731 had set up shop- factories, really-in Manchuria, where they were conducting horrifying experiments on local peasants, as well as whomever else they might come upon-White Russians, Koreans, Gypsies, missionaries. Men's chests were split open and their organs removed while they were still alive. Limbs of men, women, even infants were frozen, then beaten or thawed and refrozen to examine the process of frostbite.

The authors of Gurley's report, however, were not worried about frostbite.

There had been reports from a Chinese informer that Unit 731 was experimenting with germ warfare. Typhoid, cholera, plague, syphilis, and anthrax were injected into patients and the results examined: depending on the disease, body parts might turn black, hands fall off. The informer swore he had seen this. And more: prisoners had been taken to a remote area and staked to the ground in a great circle. A specially modified tank had driven to the middle of the circle and begun… spraying.

There was also an active breeding program of rats and fleas; the fleas were infected with disease, the rats infested with the fleas. It was thought that these fleas, or possibly gnats and even mosquitoes, were candidates for balloon travel, to be sent aloft in special porcelain canisters that-

“Did you get to the part about the fleas?” Gurley shouted at me. I nodded. “Fleas!” he repeated.

“Rats,” I said, for lack of a better response.

“Yes, well, rats” Gurley said. “Now, there's a troublesome threat,” he added. He grabbed the papers back from me. “It's bad enough I get saddled with balloons, while other men are off battling warships or rockets or desert armies. But now I find I am enlisted to fight fleas.”

“This unit-sir-dissecting men alive? Babies?” I stared at the papers in his lap.

“If they airdrop lunatic doctors,” Gurley said, “then yes, we will have something to fear. Even more than we would have to fear from our own medical staff-”

“Sir, I-” I was surprised to find myself interrupting; I usually let Gurley babble on. But I really was afraid now, a different kind of fear than I had ever felt in bomb disposal school or ever since. I'd always seen my death as a bright, sudden event-an explosion-but what Gurley's briefing papers promised was something much more slow and gruesome.

“Yes?” Gurley asked, less annoyed than I thought he might be.

But I didn't really have anything to say. I had just wanted him to shut up; I had wanted him to let me sit and think through everything I'd just read; I had wanted him to ask me where I'd been the night before, so I could tell him With Lily, before you, even if it was just for dinner and talk of ghosts. I wondered now: Had Lily told him, too, that she was leaving?

I didn't answer Gurley. I stared down at my hands, rubbed my palms together, imagined first the one and then the other swelling, rotting, turning black and falling away.

Gurley watched me for a moment before he spoke. “You have a question.” I must have looked surprised, because he added, “I know- it's this gift I have. I'm a mind reader. Otherwise, I don't know how I'd figure out what lay behind that impenetrable countenance of yours.”

“Sir,” I began again, having missed most of what Gurley had just said. His using words over two syllables was usually a clear cue to tune out. But the term mind reader had stuck. And Gurley saw it. I don't know how much he saw, whether he saw Lily and I, last night's meeting or the nights before, saw us almost holding hands, saw her smiling only for me (I was sure), but he saw Lily inside me clearly enough. I panicked, and stayed panicked, even when he started smiling.

“Ah,” Gurley said. “How soon I forget. We have a mind reader in common, do we not?” He feigned being interrupted by a private and quite enjoyable memory, or perhaps actually had one. Then he focused on me again. “Is this our boy-becomes-a-man talk? I should have known. A lad goes off to war, and-did your father sit you down before you left, young Sergeant?”

“Sir, I-”

“Oh, yes, yes-no father, no mother, a bastard raised by nuns. Delightful. Though they couldn't be counted on to-well, now, could they? Mmm… there's a thought.” He must have seen my impenetrable face opening to anger, because he stopped. “So,” he said. “Lily: What's your question?”

I waited, too long, before I spoke. “That's not my question,” I said, and it hadn't been, though now I wasn't sure. I tried pushing Lily out of my head. She wouldn't go, but I pressed on. “I wanted to know why we're flying all the way to Wyoming. Why not some guys out of Denver? Or San Francisco?”

“Or perhaps Paris -or Cairo,” Gurley said. “Why not just sit back and let the other boys do our job? Steal our medals. Win our war.” He drew himself up as best he could in the seat restraints. “Because, Belk. That's why. Because, one, as I told you, volunteers were few and far between at the meeting yesterday. While they fret over what to do, we've got the chance to leap ahead and seize the initiative in what may turn out to be the most important campaign of the war. I make fun of their fleas, but make no mistake, if that report is even ten percent right, it won't matter who wins in the Pacific-all those GIs will return home to stinking corpses strewn across the prairie.” I turned away, and he elbowed me so I'd turn back. “Because, two, there's already been a story published, so the potential for further fuckups is pretty high. With bacteria-encrusted bombs on the way, there's no question now of disposing with the ban. This must be kept secret.” Now he sank back. “And because, three, any chance to leave our fucking frozen Xanadu for warmer locales, even late winter Wyoming, is a chance we take.” He closed his eyes. “Really, Belk.”

I sat back, too, and thought about making a mistake when I handled our next bomb. Our next normal one. It wasn't the first time I'd thought this, but the reason for the mistake was changing. Early on in Alaska, I'd spent some long, lonely days daydreaming about-well, blowing myself up. Maybe doing it in such a way that I'd only be injured-lose a foot maybe, a finger or two. But you couldn't count on that. It was a safer bet to try to kill yourself outright.

But lately, I'd begun to think about Gurley.

“About the mind reader, though,” Gurley said after a few minutes, eyes still closed, and then added, “Lily is a lovely girl.” He waited. “Mmm?” I nodded, realized he couldn't see me nodding, and then grunted in agreement. I wasn't sure what would come out if I opened my mouth. “But you do realize,” he said, opening his eyes to catch mine, and then closing them again, “that she's a-that she's a busy woman. A businesswoman, in point of fact.”

“Yes,” I said. I wiped my palms on my knees.

“I'm just saying, don't grow too attached. Not that you have. It may seem like they're only six girls in all Anchorage, but there's more coming, all the time.”

Now I closed my eyes and leaned back. Not to go to sleep, but just to escape, somehow: the conversation, the plane, the mission, Gurley. I opened them when Gurley tapped me on the chest. I