David Mitchell - The Cloud Atlas

He was wearing khaki coveralls; they’d been labeled with a number and several Japanese characters on his chest. He had on several pairs of socks, but not shoes. I looked at the arm. It was more than broken. Mangled. Maybe Gurley was right. Splinting wouldn’t help. The boy suddenly broke out of his silent screaming and shouted something at me in a high voice. He lifted his head as best he could and looked down at the arm. I did, too, following the arm and his gaze all the way down to his hand, or where his hand should have been. Instead, there was a giant, bloody ball of bandages-someone’s socks, perhaps a torn piece of a shirt-none of it quite adding up to the tourniquet Gurley must have intended. But even the mound of bandages couldn’t hide the fact that most, or all, of the hand was missing. I turned quickly to Lily and the boy shrieked.

“He-he lost—” Lily said, and knelt beside the boy once more. She laid a hand on his good arm and he quieted.

“Blew off his damn hand when he was trying to get out, must have,” Gurley said. “Probably just one of those little squibs that helps control altitude, but still-big enough. He’s lost a lot of blood. He’s going to lose more.” Gurley broke off, looked back toward the boat. “There are other problems,” he finished.

“Just leave,” Lily said. “And there will be no problems.”

Gurley put on a thin smile. “You make a fine nurse, dear, but no soldier. I don’t want to say it, but it’s true: it would have been better if he’d died when he landed. Now, it would have been even better if he’d never found his way into the balloon, but once he had, it would have been better if everything had proceeded to-the Japs’ admittedly sick - plan. Because-here we are, he’s in pain, he’s dying, and even if he did live long enough for us to get him to-where? The corner hospital?”

“Bethel,” Lily said.

“Bethel,” Gurley repeated. “Okay, we get him to Bethel, and then what, Sergeant?”

“Transport to Anchorage?” I said.

“No, you foolish boy. Think. We bring a child into Bethel, a Japanese one, no less, one who, by all appearances, has flown here in a balloon, and what happens?” Gurley looked at us. Lily turned away. “All hell breaks loose. The entire United States Army descends on the tundra to find all the other Jap miscreants who’ve flown here in balloons.”

“There aren’t others,” Lily said quietly, and looked at me.

“There’s one other,” Gurley said, “out here somewhere. Remember? Or did you lie about that, too? The rapist?”

“He’s not—” Lily began. “Here. That man is not out here. I know.”

“You know because of your hocus-pocus Eskimo magic, or are you just saying this so I’ll give up?” Gurley said, and looked around. “Or do you want me to believe that this little boy is your Saburo? Because the lad didn’t mention you. All I got was some claptrap about his parents. Apologies, regrets, sorry, sorry, and so on.” He studied the boy like he was something he’d found washed up on the beach. “He’s some sort of weird experiment, I figure. Who knows? In any case, he’s not the point end of an invasion force. But—”

“So, bring him to Bethel,” Lily said.

“I think I just explained,” Gurley said to Lily, and turned to me. “Did I explain?”

“Well, sir, I’m not sure the entire army—”

“Jesus Christ, Belk.”

Lily looked at the boy for a long moment and then turned to us. “Okay,” she said. “We’ll camp here for the evening.” She looked at Gurley. “How’s that?”

“That’s lovely,” Gurley said, waving an arm in front of his face. “It’s just lovely here.”

“We have light left,” I said, looking at my watch. “We could probably make it a good distance of the way back—”

“He’s not ready to go, Louis,” Lily said quietly.

“Well, I don’t know,” I said. “You’ve got that splint on him and—”

Gurley had begun to growl after Lily spoke, and now reached a roar. “She means me , you idiot!” He and Lily exchanged a long, silent look. Lily finally broke away and knelt down before the boy.

“Fuck!” Gurley shrieked, and I really mean shrieked -a high, piercing, birdlike noise. He tottered over to the boy and stood over him. “You don’t know how lucky you are, young man,” he said, in English. “You’ve found yourself in the clutches of two-no, three-fools.” Gurley struggled into a crouch. “So here is our deal: if you survive till morning, off we all go to Bethel to face God knows what repercussions.” Gurley then turned to us; the boy turned his head, too. “And if he does survive, that will be evidence indeed of magic. Pretty damn strong magic.”

Lily looked at me. “Stay with him,” she said, and I wasn’t sure if she meant the boy or Gurley. “I’m going to get some things from the boat.”

“That’s cheating,” Gurley called after as she walked. “I want to see magic alone get him through the night.” Lily raised an arm and waved off Gurley’s words. It actually relieved the tension a bit; her weary wave seemed less the act of a mortal enemy than a long-suffering but indulgent spouse.

But Gurley quickly ended the respite. “It’s been nice knowing you, Sergeant,” he said, staring after her.

“Sir,” I said, not meeting his eyes. I was busy looking for his hands, his gun.

“I know you think it heartless. Or I think you do. I know Lily does. But leaving the boy here, yes, killing him, would spare everyone a lot of misery.”

“Sir,” I said, not sure if he still had a mind you could reason with, or if I was better off just leaping on him, and sparing everyone a lot of misery. “Just wait. She’ll surprise you. I bet he’ll surprise you. Kids are—”

“He’s already surprised me,” said Gurley. “He flew across the fucking ocean. And that’s not all. Come.” Gurley went to the boy, knelt, and then roughly tore open his coveralls. The boy fought him weakly. When he started to cry out, Gurley raised a hand as if to hit him, and looked to see if Lily had heard. She hadn’t. The boy went silent with fear and looked to me for help. I screwed up what courage I could and stepped next to Gurley. But before I could lay a hand on him, he spoke: “Surprise,” he said.

I looked down. The boy’s exposed chest and stomach were a mottled purple. The skin just above his collarbone was raw and red. I knew what Gurley was doing; he was diagnosing plague. “I saw it when I was working on the crash site,” Gurley said, and stood. “I didn’t look in the groin area yet, but I don’t have to. You’ve got lymph nodes here, too,” he said, fingering his neck. “You see why we have to get out of here? They sent the best germ weapon container possible: a human. A human rat. Which means he was dying anyway. Hell, he’s lost enough blood he may not even survive long enough to die of plague. But we’ve got to get back. Get away from him. So we got a vaccine: like the major said, What if this is a new strain?”

I didn’t know. I didn’t know enough about plague or enough about how much Gurley knew about medicine to know if he was lying The boy looked ill, but he’d just come across the Pacific in an open balloon. The rash on his neck could have been from the coveralls. Where were the blown lymph nodes, the buboes? I saw Gurley glance back toward the boat. Lily was walking back toward us.

“You’ve got to tell her, Belk,” he said. “She’s not listening to me right now.”

“Sir, I don’t think—”

“Redo the math, son,” Gurley said. “You thought you were just risking the boy’s life when you sided with her before. Now you’re risking yours. And mine. And hers.” I didn’t answer. I just stared at the boy then at Lily. When she finally reached us, she gave Gurley a look that caused him to rethink whatever he was about to say and stalk off instead. He looked back just once, and then loped away, hands flying about, swatting mosquitoes.