The Cloud Atlas

He looked up, saw me, and gave a tiny groan. Then he screwed his face tight and, biting his lip, began to struggle to stand. I shouted for him to stop, and his eyes snapped open. I started speaking rapidly, explaining how he had to be careful how he moved, or else he might set off some of the charges. He frowned and replied in Japanese, and the two of us went on conversing like that for another minute, each of us oblivious to our inability to communicate.

Finally, I pantomimed an explosion, and told him, as best I could, to sit tight. He did. I studied things, walked around the balloon, decided on the best route to disarm the balloon and safely free the boy. I told the boy I would be right back, and then returned to Gurley

He and Lily were sitting now. She was staring after the balloon, tears in her eyes, but no longer crying. Gurley was still whispering into her ear, her hands in his. I stood at a distance waiting for them to turn to me. I tried to blot Gurley out of the picture and just take in her eyes, imagine that she was looking only at me, had only ever looked at me, but I couldn't. Gurley was there, and Saburo before him, and now, somehow, this boy, too. They were all there, all claiming a piece of her.

“Too complicated?” said Gurley, looking up. He began to disentangle himself from Lily while still holding her hands.

“No, sir, I-”

“Because I thought it might be,” Gurley said quickly. He gave Lily a squeeze and stood. He made a sour face and looked at the balloon. “Bastards. Can you believe-” he said, facing me, but really speaking to Lily. “Can you believe people would do this? Send children into war? Tie them to a balloon? And for what ungodly purpose? The cruelty-unspeakable. Cruel to him, but also to saps like us, called upon to witness the slaughter of a child.”

“I think we can-”

“I assume it's booby-trapped, Sergeant,” Gurley said, fixing his attention on me more sturdily now.

“Well, sir, it looks a bit like-”

“I mean-my word,” Gurley said, more confident with the direction his performance had taken. “Is it more humane to shoot him and then detonate the balloon, or-?”

Lily gave a half-cry and rose. “There has to be a way,” she said, looking at Gurley and then me. I looked at Gurley, too, unable to decode the strange signals he was sending. He wanted to do the bomb disposal job himself, for once? He wanted to impress Lily.

“Well, I think-sir, I think there is a way,” I said. “Some of the worst stuff you find on these balloons-well, on this one, it looks like that's all gone already, never put on or maybe dropped in the ocean.” I stopped. “As you know,” I quickly added. “All that's left are a couple of firebombs, the little charges, maybe the flash bomb on the balloon, but-”

“You trust there's no booby trap, Sergeant?” Gurley said, looking at me very carefully now.

If Sergeant Redes had been quizzing me, I would have said hell no, never trust a bomb about anything, especially a Japanese one, but instead I said, “This looks as safe as safe gets.” Then I looked at Lily, eager to win her favor. “And, well-the boy. Sir. It's worth a try.” But Lily was staring at Gurley waiting to hear what he would say.

“The boy,” Gurley said. “Well.” He looked around the tundra, as though searching for other balloons, other boys. Then he looked at me. “I wonder if you'd be so quick to dismiss a booby trap if it were you who were doing the disarming.” He gave a tight smile, and when I started to protest that I would be happy to help-I wanted to impress Lily, too, and moreover, I didn't want Gurley to kill us all-he waved me away. “Officers' work, Sergeant,” he said. “You know that,” he added, pinning me with a look that I'm sure he hoped would keep me from mumbling something about all the previous times I'd done the work of an officer. He stood, hands on hips, and surveyed the balloon. “Get the kit,” he said, “prepare the site.” Lily looked at him with such renewed fascination I almost felt ill; in the next moment, I almost grabbed for his damn gun.

PREPPING THE SITE consisted of checking it once more for any obvious booby traps-which, Sergeant Redes forgive me, I now dearly hoped to find and keep secret. I dug a small pit not far from the balloon to place the bombs in for safe detonation. It quickly filled with water, but there seemed to be no other option, so I let it be. I said what I could to calm the boy, tried to explain that Gurley would soon come to free him, and then laid out some of the tools from the kit. I made sure not to unpack the explosives, blasting wire, or hell box, afraid of what Gurley might do with them.

I then returned to Gurley and Lily and explained what I had seen. He nodded with a practiced weariness: yes, yes, Sergeant, you have told me all you know, which is, of course, so very little. Then he nodded to Lily, told me to take her back a safe distance, and proceeded toward the balloon.