David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

Nancy O’Hagan has conservative clothes, a pickled complexion, and giraffe-size eyelashes that often come unstuck. “My trusty mole got a picture of the bar on the president’s airplane. ‘Wing-dings and gin slings on Air Force One.’ The dumb money says the last drop’s been squeezed out of the old soak, but Auntie Nance thinks not.”

Grelsch considers. Telephones ring and typewriters clack in the background. “Okay, if nothing fresher comes up. Oh, and interview that ventriloquist puppet guy who lost his arms for It Never Rains … Nussbaum. You’re up.”

Jerry Nussbaum wipes dewdrops of choco-Popsicle from his beard, leans back, and triggers a landslide of papers. “The cops are chasing their own asses on the St. Christopher case, so how about a ‘Are You St. Christopher’s Next Slaying?’ piece? Profiles of all the snuffs to date and reconstructions of the victims’ last minutes. Where they were going, who they were meeting, what thoughts were going through their heads …”

“When St. Chris’s bullet went through their heads.” Roland Jakes laughs.

“Yeah, Jakes, let’s hope he’s attracted to flashy Hawaiian colors. Then later I’m seeing the colored streetcar driver the cops had on the rack last week. He’s suing the police department for wrongful arrest under the Civil Rights Act.”

“Could be a cover story. Luisa?”

“I met an atomic engineer.” Luisa ignores the indifference chilling the room. “An inspector at Seaboard Incorporated.” Nancy O’Hagan is doing her fingernails, driving Luisa to present her suspicions as facts. “He believes the new HYDRA nuclear reactor at Swannekke Island isn’t as safe as the official line. Isn’t safe at all, in fact. Its launch ceremony is this afternoon, so I want to drive out and see if I can turn anything up.”

“Hot shit, a technical launch ceremony,” exclaims Nussbaum. “What’s that rumbling sound, everyone? A Pulitzer Prize, rolling this way?”

“Oh, kiss my ass, Nussbaum.”

Jerry Nussbaum sighs. “In my wettest dreams …”

Luisa is torn between retaliation— Yeah, and letting the worm know how much he riles you —and ignoring him— Yeah, and letting the worm get away with saying what the heck he wants .

Dom Grelsch breaks her impasse. “Marketeers prove”—he twirls a pencil—”every scientific term you use represents two thousand readers putting down the magazine and turning on a rerun of I Love Lucy.”

“Okay,” says Luisa. “How about ‘Seaboard Atom Bomb to Blow Buenas Yerbas to Kingdom Come!’?”

“Terrific, but you’ll need to prove it.”

“Like Jakes can prove his story?”

“Hey.” Grelsch’s pencil stops twirling. “Fictitious people eaten by fictitious fish can’t flay every last dollar off you in the courts or lean on your bank to pull the plug. A coast-to-coast operation like Seaboard Power Inc. has lawyers who can and, sweet Mother of God, you put a foot wrong, they will.”

9

Luisa’s rust-orange VW Beetle travels a flat road toward a mile-long bridge connecting Yerbas Cape to Swannekke Island, whose power station dominates the lonely estuary. The bridge checkpoint is not quiet today. A hundred-strong demonstration lines the last stretch, chanting, “Swannekke C over our dead bodies!” A wall of police keeps them back from the line of nine or ten vehicles. Luisa reads the placards while she waits. YOU ARE NOW ENTERING CANCER ISLAND, warns one, another, HELL, NO! WE WON’T GO! and, enigmatically, WHERE OH WHERE IS MARGO ROKER?

A guard taps on the window; Luisa winds it down and sees her face in the guard’s sunglasses. “Luisa Rey, Spyglass magazine.”

“Press pass, ma’am.”

Luisa gets it from her purse. “Expecting trouble today?”

“Nah.” He consults a clipboard and hands back her pass. “Only our regular nature freaks from the trailer park. The college boys are vacationing where the surf’s better.”

As she crosses the bridge, the Swannekke B plant emerges from behind the older, grayer cooling towers of Swannekke A. Once again, Luisa wonders about Rufus Sixsmith. Why wouldn’t he give me a contact number? Scientists can’t be telephobic. Why did no one in the super’s office in his apartment building even know his name? Scientists can’t have aliases .

Twenty minutes later Luisa arrives at a colony of some two hundred luxury homes overlooking a sheltered bay. A hotel and golf course share the semiwooded slope below the power station. She leaves her Beetle in the R & D parking lot and looks at the power station’s abstract buildings half-hidden by the brow of the hill. An orderly row of palm trees rustles in the Pacific wind.

“Hi!” A Chinese-American woman strides up. “You look lost. Here for the launch?” Her stylish oxblood suit, flawless makeup, and sheer poise make Luisa feel shabby in her blueberry suede jacket. “Fay Li”—the woman offers her hand—”Seaboard PR.”

“Luisa Rey, Spyglass magazine.”

Fay Li’s handshake is powerful. “Spyglass? I didn’t realize —”

“—our editorial scope includes energy policy?”

Fay Li smiles. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a feisty magazine.”

Luisa invokes Dom Grelsch’s reliable deity. “Market research identifies a growing public who demand more substance. I was hired as Spyglass’s highbrow face.”

“Very glad you’ve come, Luisa, whatever your brow. Let me sign you in at Reception. Security insists on bag searches and the rest, but it’s no good having our guests treated like saboteurs. That’s why I was hired.”

10

Joe Napier watches a bank of CCTV screens covering a lecture theater, its adjacent corridors, and the Public Center grounds. He stands, fluffs up his special cushion, and sits on it. Is it my imagination, or are my old wounds aching more of late? His gaze flits from screen to screen to screen. One shows a technician doing a sound check; another, a TV crew discussing angles and light; Fay Li crossing the parking lot with a visitor; waitresses pouring wine into hundreds of glasses; a row of chairs beneath a banner reading SWANNEKKE B—AN AMERICAN MIRACLE.

The real miracle , Joseph Napier ruminates, was getting eleven out of twelve scientists to forget the existence of a nine-month inquiry . A screen shows these very scientists drifting onstage, chatting amicably. Like Grimaldi says, every conscience has an off switch somewhere . Napier’s thoughts segue through memorable lines from the interviews that achieved the collective amnesia. “Between us, Dr. Franklin, the Pentagon’s lawyers are itching to try out their shiny new Security Act. The whistle-blower is to be blacklisted in every salaried position in the land.”

A janitor adds another chair to the row onstage.

“The choice is simple, Dr. Moses. If you want Soviet technology to burn ahead of ours, leak this report to your Union of Concerned Scientists, fly to Moscow to collect your medal, but the CIA has told me to tell you, you won’t be needing a round-trip ticket.”

The audience of dignitaries, scientists, think-tank members, and opinion formers take their seats. A screen shows William Wiley, vice CEO of Seaboard Inc., joking with those VIPs to be honored with a seat onstage.

“Professor Keene, the Defense Department brass are a little curious. Why voice your doubts now? Are you saying your work on the prototype was slipshod?”

A slide projector beams a fish-eye aerial shot of Swannekke B.

Eleven out of twelve. Only Rufus Sixsmith gets away .

Napier speaks into his walkie-talkie. “Fay? Show starts in ten minutes.”