David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

I’ve done my duty, I’m dying, for Chrissakes .

Hey. Go tell Lester Rey about duty and dying .

Napier’s right hand inches to his buckle. He wonders if he is a baby in his cot or a man dying in his bed. Nights pass, no, lifetimes. Often Napier wants to ebb away, but his hand refuses to forget. The butt of a gun arrives in his palm. His finger enters a loop of steel, and a flare of clarity illuminates his purpose. The trigger, this, yes. Pull her out. Slowly now …

Angle the gun . Bill Smoke is just yards away.

The trigger resists his index finger—then a blaze of incredible noise spins Bill Smoke backwards, his arms flailing like a marionette’s.

In the fourth to last moment of his life, Napier fires another bullet into the marionette silhouetted by stars. The word Silvaplana comes to him, unasked for.

In the third to last moment, Bill Smoke’s body slides down the cabin door.

Second to last, an inset digital clock blinks from 21:57 to 21:58.

Napier’s eyes sink, newborn sunshine slants through ancient oaks and dances on a lost river. Look, Joe, herons .

69

In Margo Roker’s ward in Swannekke County Hospital, Hester Van Zandt glances at her watch. 21:57. Visiting hours end at ten o’clock. “One more for the road, Margo?” The visitor glances at her comatose friend, then leafs through her Anthology of American Poetry . “A little Emerson? Ah, yes. Remember this one? You introduced it to me.

If the red slayer thinks he slays ,

Or if the slain think he is slain

They know not well the subtle ways

I keep, and pass, and turn again .

Far or forgot to me is near;

Shadow and sunlight are the same;

The vanish’d gods to me appear;

And one to me are shame and fame .

They reckon ill who leave me out;

When me they fly, I am the wings;

I am the doubter and the doubt ,

And I the hymn the Brahmin sings .

The strong gods pine for my abode ,

And pine in vain —

“Margo? Margo? Margo!” Margo Roker’s eyelids vibrate as if in REM. A groan squirms in her larynx. She gulps for air, then her eyes are wide open, blinking in confusion and alarm at the tubes in her nose. Hester Van Zandt is also panicky, but with hope. “Margo! Can you hear me? Margo!”

The patient’s eyes settle on her old friend, and she lets her head sink into her pillow. “Yes, I can hear you, Hester, you’re shouting in my goddamn ear.”

70

Luisa Rey surveys the October 1 edition of the Western Messenger amid the steamy clatter of the Snow White Diner.

LLOYD HOOKS SKIPS $250,000 BAIL PRESIDENT FORD VOWS TO “ROOT OUT CROOKS WHO BRING IGNOMINY TO CORPORATE AMERICA”

A BYPD spokesman confirmed the newly appointed CEO of Seaboard Power Inc. and former Federal Power Commissioner Lloyd Hooks has fled the country, forfeiting the quarter-million-dollar bail posted Monday. The latest twist to “Seaboardgate” comes a day after Hooks swore to “defend my integrity and the integrity of our great American company against this pack of nefarious lies.” President Ford entered the fray at a White House press conference, condemning his former adviser and distancing himself from the Nixon appointee. “My administration makes no distinction between lawbreakers. We will root out the crooks who bring ignominy to corporate America and punish them with the utmost severity of the law.”

Lloyd Hooks’s disappearance, interpreted by many observers as an admission of guilt, is the latest twist in a series of revelations triggered by a Sept. 4 incident at Cape Yerbas Marina Royale in which Joe Napier and Bill Smoke, security officers at Seaboard Inc.’s controversial Swannekke Island atomic power stations, shot each other. Eyewitness Luisa Rey, correspondent to this newspaper, summoned police to the crime scene, and the subsequent investigation has already spread to last month’s killing of British atomic engineer and Seaboard consultant Dr. Rufus Sixsmith, the crash of former Seaboard CEO Alberto Grimaldi’s Learjet over Pennsylvania two weeks ago, and an explosion in Third Bank of California in downtown B.Y. which claimed the lives of two people. Five directors at Seaboard Power have been charged in connection with the conspiracy, and two have committed suicide. Three more, including Vice CEO William Wiley, have agreed to testify against Seaboard Corporation.

The arrest of Lloyd Hooks two days ago was seen as vindication of this newspaper’s support for Luisa Rey’s exposé of this major scandal, initially dismissed by William Wiley as “libelous fantasy culled from a spy novel and wholly unworthy of a serious response.” … Cont. p. 2, Full Story p. 5, Comment p. 11 .

“Front page!” Bart pours Luisa’s coffee. “Lester would be mighty proud.”

“He’d say I’m just a journalist doing my job.”

“Well, exactly, Luisa!”

Seaboardgate is no longer her scoop. Swannekke swarms with reporters, Senate investigators, FBI agents, county police, and Hollywood scriptwriters. Swannekke B is in mothballs; C is suspended.

Luisa gets Javier’s postcard out again. It shows three UFOs zooming under the Golden Gate Bridge:

Hi Luisa, it’s OK here but we live in a house so I can’t jump across balconies when I visit my friends. Paul (that’s Wolfman but Mom says I can’t call him that anymore though he kind of likes it when I do) is taking me to a stamp fare tommorrow, then I can choose what paint I want for my bedroom and he cooks better than Mom. Saw you again on TV last night and in the papers. Don’t forget me just because you’re fameous now, OK? Javi

The other item of mail is an airmailed package from Megan Sixsmith, sent in response to Luisa’s request. It contains the final eight letters Robert Frobisher wrote to his friend Rufus Sixsmith. Luisa uses a plastic knife to slit the package open. She removes one of the yellowed envelopes, postmarked October 10, 1931, holds it against her nose, and inhales. Are molecules of Zedelghem Château, of Robert Frobisher’s hand, dormant in this paper for forty-four years, now swirling in my lungs, in my blood?

Who is to say?

ZEDELGHEM

10TH—X—1931

Sixsmith,

Ayrs in bed for three days, fogged with morphine, calling out in pain. V. distracting and distressing. Dr. Egret warns J. and me not to confuse Ayrs’s newfound joie de vivre in music with actual health and forbids V.A. to work from his sickbed. Dr. Egret gives me the creeps. Never met a quack whom I didn’t half-suspect of plotting to do me in as expensively as he could contrive.

Buried in music of my own. Cruel to say it, but when Hendrick arrives at breakfast and tells me, “Not today, Robert,” I’m almost relieved. Spent last night working on a rumbling ’cello allegro lit by explosive triplets. Silence punctuated by breakneck mousetraps. Remember the church clock chiming three A.M. “I heard an owl,” Huckleberry Finn says, “away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die.” Always haunted me, that line. Next thing I know, Lucille was ballooning sheets of bright morning by the window. Morty Dhondt was downstairs, she told me, ready for our excursion. Thought I was dreaming, but no. My face was crusted over, and for a second I couldn’t have told you my name. Grunted I didn’t want to go anywhere with Morty Dhondt, I wanted sleep, I have work to do. “But last week you arranged to go motoring today!” objected Lucille.