The Cloud Atlas

I know what I wanted to say, but I hadn't heard the noise I'd been waiting for yet. So instead of answering her directly, I explained what I'd done. I'd protected them, her and the boy, and by extension, Saburo. Gurley had wanted me to wire the balloon to explode. He'd planned to place the boy in the balloon, retreat to a little tuft of tundra where I'd placed the hell box. Then he'd depress the plunger, the charge would go down the wire, and all his problems, save Lily, would disappear.

I'd placed the hell box on the small patch of dry land, as requested. I'd run the wires out to the balloon, as requested. The wires disappeared under the balloon, as though that were where they connected to the invisible charges. But they actually continued on past the balloon, hidden in the grass, and looped all the way back, still hidden, to the tuft of land where Gurley now stood.

Evil as I was, or am, I could not kill a man. I knew this even then. The granting and taking of life is best left to fate, to God, and I had left it so. I could lay the wire, attach it to charges (not a stick or two, but all we had) buried in the grass beneath the spot where Gurley would have to stand, but only God could see to it that Gurley did what he did. That is, if Gurley chose to kill the boy, he would kill himself. If he spared the boy, he would spare himself.

But Lily did not fall into my arms, sad and relieved. Instead, she cried: “What have you done?”

“Protected you,” I said, quiet with shock. “Both of you.”

“Didn't you see him?” she said. I nodded. “He was going out there to get the boy.”

“He was going out there to kill him,” I said. “He was going to-he talked about-he was going to kill you. He said, ‘Change of…’- he-I thought he had.”

“Louis!” she cried, and began to run.

During the past hours, we'd worn a path from our landing spot to the balloon, and for a while, Lily stayed on it. But as we grew closer, she left the path for the most direct route, sloshing through the water and brush straight to Gurley.

I stayed on the path. It would be faster.

I saw Gurley stoop and pick up the hell box. Even before crying a warning to Lily, I wanted to yell to her, See what he's doing? He was going to kill the boy!

The morning was just breaking, and we were close enough now to see everything-the balloon resting lightly on the soggy tundra, as though it might inflate and fly once more; Gurley, hell box in hand, surveying the scene.

“Stop! Stop!” Lily screamed.

I kept along the path, not saying a word, calculating how large the blast zone would be and when I would enter it.

Stop, stop!

She loved him.

The boy: she needed the boy.

But Gurley: she loved him.

And when Gurley looked back and saw her, I had to hope he saw this. I couldn't see, I couldn't see his eyes, I could only see him turn to face her as she staggered out of the last stretch of water. I wish I had been closer! To see Gurley, to see if he was angry, or bemused, if his cheeks were flushed or if he rolled his eyes. To see if when their eyes finally met, he realized that he had been in love, had been loved.

Or to see whether, in that moment before Gurley pressed the plunger, they touched, whether their hands met, or their lips, whether it was their lives, whole and complete, that flashed before their eyes, or whether it was merely the flash of the blast itself.

But I wasn't closer. If I had been, I might have been killed instead of merely deafened. Thrown by the blast, I was flat on my back in an inch-deep puddle that had already been there or that I had created. I may have blacked out; I'm not sure. I could feel my fingers tangled in the ayuq, I could feel the tundra ooze pulling at my boots, my shoulders, my scalp. I could smell and taste the salt of the far-off ocean, and for some moments, I thought the water was high enough that it had entered my ears-all I could hear was a dull, muffled rustling somewhere inside my head. But when I finally stood, my ears didn't clear.

I stared at the blast site waiting for my hearing to return. It never has completely, but in a minute or two, some sounds returned. The rush of wind, a mosquito that sounded miles distant but appeared on my palm after I'd absently slapped at my ear, and after that slap, a high wail, also distant. I'd forgotten about the boy: even though I'd made sure that his spot in the balloon wreckage would be well clear of the explosion, the blast must have frightened him, and now he was crying.

But he was closer, too.

A few yards up the path, in fact, in a patch of salmonberries that were growing beneath a stunted cottonwood, where he was keening, choking, screaming, not having moved an inch from the spot where Gurley had safely placed him.

CHAPTER 20

THE SMOKE AND NOISE OF THE BLAST HAD ALREADY DISSIPATED. The sky, incredibly, was just as it had been before. The birds that must have shrieked into flight were long gone or had already returned.