The Cloud Atlas

I carefully took hold of the control frame, noticed my hands were almost completely without sensation, and slowly tilted the apparatus on its side. And there it was. Not a booby trap, but the demolition block. A small tin box, about six inches long and two wide-I've got a breastpocket Bible not much bigger now. Inside would be a paper-wrapped two-pound picric acid charge, enough to destroy any evidence of the balloon. A fire would start in a forest, and no one would ever know how. Or a benumbed bomb disposal sergeant would blow himself up on a rocky shore, and no one would care how. I cut the fuse and removed the block. Then I carefully set it down at the other end of the beach. We could have safely transported it home, and Gurley would have wanted it for evidence, but I knew there was no way I could bring it on board-not after everyone had seen me take such care. Or rather, not after everyone had seen me almost forget to take care of it.

It took a bit of convincing to get the crew to finally come over, but they did. We hauled the control frame into the boat, and then onto the plane.

Within minutes, I was in dry clothes and growing warmer, though the cold I felt remains to this day. Ask anyone who has been rescued from icy waters. One's bones, cells, never forget; they need only the barest reminder of a raw, wet day, even the sight of one onscreen, and the sea's chill comes surging back.

My swim, as the crew called it, was significant not because of what we collected-a souvenir; I believe the control frame now sits in a collection of wartime artifacts in a museum in Canada-but because of that deep, cold water. I functioned differently after that. If I knew anything about biology, maybe I could tell you how-but I know everything about me felt changed. My skin, the way I moved, the insides of my eyelids, even. I'd get these flashing headaches when I sneezed, and I swear my blood flowed in reverse, or at least in some direction that allowed me to feel it. Really. Sitting there, I could feel all those molecules and cells and whatever other sludge blood ferries about inside us.

This would have made no sense to Gurley nor even the doctors at the hospital back at Fort Richardson. (The army had a large, if dwindling, corps of veterinarians, holdovers from the days of a mounted cavalry and mule trains-and since everything else about the military in Alaska was jury-rigged, we just assumed they'd been redeployed to work on humans.) So I didn't tell them. But my heart had suffered some damage, and it was to my benefit. It made me more reckless, more eager for danger.

As for what happened to the other, less physical aspect of my heart, it's obvious it froze as well. In time, one led to the other-the physical death to the death of a spirit-and I found myself willingly executing Gurley's most every demand. In time, I did worse than that-I came to anticipating his demands before he would issue them. This is not to say that I became him, that he had molded me in his image. Hardly. But the truth was far worse.

“HOW DID YOU KNOW?”

This is what Gurley asked me when I returned.

It's also what I asked Father Pabich when he found me in the hospital only minutes after I was installed there. (Who had told him I'd arrived?)

And it's what Father Pabich asked Lily when she later joined me at my bedside.

When Gurley asked his question, I didn't answer, pretending to be even more groggy than I was. And when I asked Father Pabich, he didn't answer.

But when Father Pabich asked Lily how she knew what she knew about Shuyak-and how she knew me-not answering was not an option.

After his initial visit to the hospital, I didn't see Gurley for a day or two. He'd promised as much; he said he was being summoned to yet another meeting, this time in Juneau. Might be gone for a week. He didn't look pleased. I mentioned how Shuyak at least gave him something to crow about, and he shook his head. “Something's up, Belk. Not good.” And with that, he was gone.

Father Pabich, on the other hand, checked back in on me several times. At first, I was touched-tough Father Pabich was actually a tender man. But when he returned again and again, and then once more right after dinner, I realized that what I was witnessing wasn't so much tenderness but curiosity. The man wanted to know what I had done and where I had done it.

Fat chance. The more callow the secret keeper, the more tenaciously kept the secret. The Army had told me to keep quiet. Gurley had told me to keep quiet. I wasn't going to tell Father Pabich, though the more he pressed, the more I realized I'd have to tell him something. Then an idea came to me, a fabulous one: I'd ask him to hear my confession. No priest could reveal anything told under the seal of confession. I didn't know much, but I knew that.