The Cloud Atlas

we had it burned, of course.” Some of the officers looked at each other and shuffled back from the bodies an inch or two. Gurley remained where he was, riveted. He looked like Frankenstein. He'd acquired an eye patch after his arrival in Fairbanks, but his Franklin Bout wound had wept through the gauze and dried. Plus the straps of his surgical mask had snapped, so he was holding it to his face.

“Men are working on decoding the notebook they had with them. Early report is that it's not a code they've been using; seems altogether unique. Could take a while. But we can tell a lot of the tale just by… reading their bodies, if you will. We'll start with Subject One, and leave number two covered for a moment, for reasons which will become obvious.”

“Whole damn thing is pretty obvious,” said a red-haired officer whom I'd heard someone call Swift. “I'm no doctor, but look at those hands. Look at those damn fingers. Look like pieces of charcoal. These boys were working on a bomb, went off too soon, boom, fire, burn, ow, ow, dead.”

At the mention of bomb, I moved a little closer. But I couldn't see those charred fingers. Just the feet, or the toes, really, which were also black. Sergeant Redes had never taught us how to defuse anything with our toes.

“Well,” said the major, scanning the crowd for a sympathetic face, and finding Gurley's. Only Gurley appreciated the art of performance, and how much the oafish Swift was screwing up this one. We all waited for the major to speak again, but I think Gurley and I were the only ones who saw the major give up: what the hell, out with it, his slumping shoulders said. But Swift interrupted yet again.

“Look, if you don't know, you don't know,” said Swift, and while he looked around the room to collect smiles, I watched the major prepare to let him have it. He spun around, and I actually flinched, so familiar was I with Gurley's theatrical roundhouse punch.

But instead of swinging at Swift, the major swept the sheet off the second subject.

I could see this body much better, which was much worse.

He was lying on his stomach. His fingers and the whole of his toes were a shiny, brittle black. And black, too-unlike a burn, unlike paint, unlike anything human-was the giant lesion that covered much of his back. What wasn't black was purple.

“I know” the major thundered, and I would have smiled at how the drama had so quickly resumed, with such hysterics, except, like everyone else, I felt nauseous. “I know whatfustinian knew. I know what medieval Europe knew. I know what a dozen spies and intercepted cables know is true.” He turned to the inhuman corpse and then back to Gurley who did something inexcusable: Gurley stole his line, the best line. But he did it with the panache of a fellow professional, and the major could not help but smile.

“The Black Death,” Gurley said softly, “is among us once more.”

As we onlookers slowly recovered, or simply found other places to look, the major found ways to draw our eyes back to the cadavers, pointing out various telltale signs of the disease. It was when he'd got ten to the men's almost egg-sized lymph nodes that Swift decided to strike again. The major was giving us the Latin etymology behind the technical term for the swollen nodes-buboes, bubo meaning groin, meaning swelling, hence the Black Death's actual name, bubonic plague

“Squirrels get bubonic plague,” said Swift. “Rats, I think. Maybe deer. Hell, when I hunt, I-”

“And humans,” said the major.

“Maybe civilians,” said Swift, businesslike and dismissive. “But I got vaccinated. We all got a plague vaccine. Standard army issue.” He looked at the major. “Maybe you're too far back from the front lines, I don't know-”

“I have been vaccinated,” said the major. “And what's more, one imagines these men, given the nature of their mission, were vaccinated, too. Which means we may have reason for concern.”

Not a sound in the room. Everyone had stopped talking; most, like me, had stopped breathing as well.

But Swift was undeterred. “Or that you got your diagnosis wrong.”

The major didn't answer. He looked at Swift, he looked at Gurley and then he looked down, studying with great interest the fingers of his own right hand, which were rosy and pink.

THE TWO “FISHERMEN” had been discovered adrift two hundred miles west- southwest of Nome, Alaska. Their fishing trawler was small, barely big enough for ocean travel. But it was big enough to hold the both of them-one lying on the floor of the bridge, the other slumped over the tiny galley table belowdecks-and their gear, which included almost nothing for fishing.

Instead, there were four wire cages, the size of milk crates-all empty. Two porcelain canisters the size of flour jars; both empty, both broken. Two large cylinders of hydrogen. And a long, bulky roll of material that the sailors who'd first found it mistook for a sail.

It was, rather, a balloon.

After we'd gratefully moved back into the conference room, there was a brief period of debate as to whether the fishermen had launched any other balloons before succumbing. But it was difficult to reach any conclusions; unfortunately, the fishing vessel had sunk not long after the boarding party had retrieved the bodies, books, and a few other items. Already waterlogged when it was discovered, the ship had given little notice before slipping completely beneath the waves.

“There is a possibility,” the major said, “that this was not some dastardly plot, that plague-carrying rats just happened to be aboard their vessel already-this, after all, is how the plague has traveled the world for years-and that they were merely bitten by the infected fleas the rats hosted.” The major shook his head. “We'll know more once we've opened them up; secondary pneumonia is supposedly a sign of… manufactured plague, if you want to call it that.” He drew himself up. “But frankly, gentlemen, with the way the war is going, with the desperate, bizarre reports we are hearing from Okinawa, with the sickening intelligence that continues to come in about this Unit 731's medical ‘experiments’ in Manchuria-”

“Yeah, sure,” said Swift, undeterred. “Experiments are one thing. Figuring out how to bomb people with it is another. Which, given the experience of those two”-he couldn't help but pause-“doesn't look like they've figured out yet.”

“Nineteen forty,” said the major crisply. “October. China. Chekiang Province, Jap plane flies over city of Ningpo dropping rice, some paper. Two days later, first plague cases ever to appear in that city.”

“But-” Swift began again, but he was already ceding the point.

“Nineteen forty-one, Hunan province. Plane flies over Changteh-”

“All right,” said Swift.

“Believe what you want,” said the major. “I believe it was Doubting Thomas who needed to probe Christ's wounds with his own hand before he'd believe. You're welcome to stick a finger in…”

Swift waved a hand in surrender.

“Gentlemen,” the major said, obviously satisfied he'd managed to salvage some of his theater, “I don't need much more evidence to know what I believe.”

Neither did Gurley: the cages had been for the rats, the rats had been for the balloons, the balloons had been for Alaska, for America, for him, and he could hardly contain himself. He stole looks at me the entire meeting- Pay attention! How about that? Isn't this something? Isn't this wonderful? I was right! I told you so!-looks that I found hard to bear, not because of their content, but because his eye had started bleeding again. I pointed to it, and he dabbed at it with a handkerchief, annoyed.

The meeting broke up with plans to reconvene in five days. Gurley was