The Cloud Atlas

What I want now is another chance, just one more chance to live this life over. To make the right choice back when I stepped off that train in San Diego, or all the way back, when I left my mother's womb for someone else's arms. To answer the right way when Lily asked a final time, Tonight?, to not hear myself say, I can't, to not hear her say quietly, I know you can, or knew.

Instead I'm just left with the memory of her drawing close a final time, and picking up my hand, my left. She held it to her mouth, I could feel her breaths, tiny and rapid. She drew her lips along the back of my hand. I leaned forward. But she was already backing away. In two paces, she was gone into the dark, and for a horrible moment, I thought she'd leapt off the rock into the rapids, but then I heard someone, something, beating through the brush.

I followed her, the sound of her, for as long as I could hear her. An hour, longer. I had the right answer for her now.

But by the time the sky had gone light again, I had nothing left to follow. No sound, no sign. The forest floor was a trackless carpet of pine needles. I stopped, looked around. Overhead, I heard the first morning planes in and out of Elmendorf Field. I was about to turn and head back the way I had come when I saw something hanging on a tree. It was a tiny mask of weathered gray wood, no bigger than my palm. The face was simple-two eyes, a nose, a mouth set in a line. A small feather dangled from the chin. I took down the mask and turned it over. Then I lifted it to my face, peered through one of the eyeholes, and saw-another feather? I lowered the mask. Sure enough, not twenty yards away. Not far away, I found another feather, and not far from that, another. They were tiny, and easy to miss, but what they led me to was not. A clearing with a giant boulder in the center like a bull's-eye.

The balloon had missed its target, though. It dangled from a tall tree nearby, explosive payload intact, the whole mess swaying and creaking with each gust of wind.

The first day, it was still possible. The hospital was just a few hours away, I was sure. I could see it plainly on the map: on the coast of the Bering Sea, just below the mouth of the Yukon. We would make it there in time, the boy would live. We'd used up most of the morphine, but I administered what was left in order to keep him comfortable, especially as we'd soon be in open water. He didn't like the needle, but he was too tired to cry.

I left most of the gear behind. I hadn't wanted to waste time packing, and thought the trip ahead would be brief. I avoided portages. I ran the throttle wide open whenever I could and tried to let all that was invisible guide me. I listened; I tried to remember how to concentrate. I prayed. But all that came to me was the roar of the motor and, occasionally, the crying and raving of the boy.

Then the clouds came, at first soft and high above us, then lower and thicker until they surrounded the boat and it was no longer clear which way to go. I looked at the map; it was useless. It showed the land and sea: we needed one for clouds.

We spent a day in those clouds, and then another. And when the mission infirmary materialized around noon that third day, I was more angry than relieved. Never finding it would have meant absolution, that I'd gone in search of something that wasn't there.

CHAPTER 15

I DID NOT SLEEP HERE LAST NIGHT-I HAD PREPARATIONS to attend to-but it seems as though I missed little. Ronnie is still unconscious.