David Mitchell - The Cloud Atlas

“Lily?” I asked.

Gurley spun around, then turned back to me, relieved. We’d reached the boat. “I thought you meant she was here.”

“No,” I said, taking a quick look for her myself. “But she’ll hear the blast.”

Gurley nodded and exhaled and said nothing for a while.

When he started speaking again, his voice had changed. Just slightly, but the effect was startling. “It’s too much,” he said. “It’s too much to ask her, too, to die-of simple heartache,” he added. “Not over me , of course,” he said, his face tight with disdain. “But dear Saburo .” I stared. “Rapist and rival, and spy.” He waited, clearly looking for a sign in me that I understood what he meant and did not need him to go on. But whatever he saw wasn’t enough, so he continued. “As you must know, hormone-besotted as you are, Fair Belk, Miss Lily has become a… difficulty, yes. ’Tis true?”

“Sir,” I said, and stopped. “My-my God—”

“Yes,” Gurley said. “Your God. Does not smile down upon this part of the world. No, tremble not, Sergeant. As convenient as it would be if Lily, too, lay beside the boy, beside the balloon, only to disappear with the rest of the mess, it is a trifle inconvenient as well,” he admitted. “Morally.”

“She-loves you,” I said. It was all I could think of to say. “She told me.”

Gurley looked at me. First his face said: a lie. Then it said: how sweet if it were true. And then he spoke. “Well, Sergeant,” he said. “You see our dilemma.”

I COULD HAVE REFUSED to set the charge against the balloon. Refused to unspool the wire, refused to attach it to the hell box. I could have refused to knife the wall of the tent where the boy and Lily lay, refused to snatch the boy through the gash-his screams instant, inhuman-and sprint for the crash site while Gurley wrestled with Lily quieting her with the force of his words and, when that didn’t work, force alone. I could have refused to set the boy in the place Gurley had designated within the balloon’s wreckage. I could have refused to bind the boy’s arms and legs to the control frame just as Gurley insisted he would tie Lily to the boat, or to stakes in the ground, or to whatever he had to in order to keep her from following us back to the balloon.

But I did as I was told, and, with Lily’s plea still echoing, a little bit more. When Gurley and I met, however-me walking back from the balloon site and him walking toward it-I realized, too late, that I could have done better.

He looked furious, on the point of weeping. He didn’t break his stride nor even turn to look at me as he spoke: “Change of plans , Sergeant.” I think my heart stopped beating. I certainly stopped walking, and turned to watch him lurch through the swampy tundra toward the balloon.

He had killed Lily. I had failed her, utterly. And now what: Was I supposed to chase after him? Leap on him, press his face into the nearest puddle and drown him? Or race to where Lily lay, apologize to whatever life of her still remained?

I ran to Lily. There’d be time enough to deal with Gurley But Saburo, Jap Sam, the girl who died in childbirth at her boarding school-all the seeing spirits might all be drawing Lily into the clouds, even now.

I said prayers as I ran. Ones I knew by heart and others I made up. Whatever I said, though, it must have been powerful. Because when I reached the camp, I found Lily, alive and upright, packing our supplies onto the boat.

“Lily,” I cried. I went to hug her, but something about the way she looked at me stopped me short.

“Where’s Gurley?” she said. I was anxious to explain away my role in hustling the boy away from camp, to mention how I needed to do so in order for the rest of the plan to work, but Lily wasn’t interested. “Where is he?” she asked again, nervous now.

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.