The Cloud Atlas

“Right,” the airman said. “But who's going out there to check on them these days? Thing is, the Japs have been sneaking on and off all those islands out there for a long time now.” He raked down a strap. “Thing is, a hundred miles out of Anchorage, you don't know whose side you're on.”

“You could be anywhere,” I said.

“You could be following some idiot's hunch to go to Shuyak,” the airman said, stepping back.

I climbed aboard.

THE PLANE BUFFETED along through a constantly changing sky that seemed to have leaked from the pages of Gurley's captured atlas. The sunrise chased us as we flew south and slightly west, the sky going from sooty gray to a strange, soupy green, and then improbably into pink. One of the PBY's stranger features was a pair of bubble windows, or “blisters,” that bulged out just forward of the tail. Each was manned with a spotter, neither of whom seemed much interested in spotting anything. I offered to take over for one of them and soon found myself staring slack-jawed at the celestial show while the rest of the crew snoozed or snickered.

By the time we reached Shuyak, it was just before six. During the last forty-five minutes of the flight, I had come to my senses; that is to say, I had realized that I had endangered my life and the lives of a brave, if surly, crew because I had a-what? A hunch? Based on a woman's whisper? Or a hand's promise?

From Anchorage, we'd flown southwest over the waters of Cook Inlet, skirting the coast of the Kenai Peninsula. Looking out the right side of the aircraft, I watched a series of volcanic peaks stretch along the coast. Snowy and distant, they looked like mountains you might visit in a dream. I wondered if Lily's island lay beneath them.

A crew member elbowed me and then handed over his headset. As I fumbled to put it on, he shouted something above the plane's roar that I did not understand.

The sudden arrival of voices via the headset brought on a flash of recognition. Voices in my head: now, this was madness. “We're here, Sergeant,” the pilot said. “Now, just where on Shuyak is this balloon going to land?” I had, of course, assumed that Shuyak was an island as big, and featureless, as a soccer field, and that it would reveal its secrets to us in a single flyby

It did not. Shuyak was not an island but a wild, tiny continent. It was, in fact, flat as a soccer field-flatter than any other scrap of land in sight-but its surface was a dense paisley of Sitka spruce and pothole lakes. A half dozen balloons could land here and never be found.

Suddenly short of breath, I pulled my head out of the blister, only to see the entire crew staring at me, expectant. I crouched in the narrow space and, so I wouldn't have to look at them, pretended to be studying some emergency ditching instructions printed on the cabin wall.

Before I could respond to the pilot, I heard another voice on the radio: “Whaddya know, balloon, two o'clock.” Everyone darted for one of the blisters; I managed to wedge my head in alongside another man's.

I stared at my balloon.

The pilot brought the plane into a wide swoop, and we all watched, transfixed, as if we'd just entered the orbit of the moon. This balloon looked precisely like the one that had crashed into that California hillside, and for a moment, my mind insisted it was that balloon, resurrected and airborne once more.

I wanted it.

“Not too close now,” I muttered, and then realized I was speaking into the headset's microphone. “They're armed with explosives,” I said, speaking up. “There's no telling what sets them off.”

“Trees,” said a sarcastic voice.

“Rocks,” said another.

“Bomb disposal sergeants,” said a third.

“Remember, Sergeant, we've been on this patrol for a few months now. We know what kind of animal this is.”

“Which explains why you've had such success figuring out where and when they're going to land,” I thought, and without thinking further, said.

“Okay, folks, let's take her down,” the pilot said. I looked around to see where we might touch down, but saw nothing. One of the crew tapped me on the shoulder and nodded to a small canvas sling seat that folded down from the wall. Once we were seated, I asked him via hand gestures-he didn't have a headset-just how we would land. I understood the concept of floatplanes, but the island's coast didn't look hospitable to us bobbing alongside and hopping out.

My seatmate shook his head, and then pretended to shoot me with his thumb and index finger. Boom. The balloon exploded between his hands.

“We need to save it!” I shouted. Part of me wanted a scalp to bring back to Gurley; part of me was curious what magic had wrought: an island, a balloon. This was Lily's prize as much as it was mine.

The pilot came back on. “Thanks, Sergeant, we'll take it from here.”

“We have standing orders, don't we, to recover all we can?”

“I have standing orders to preserve the lives of my crew,” he replied.