David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

“All Beetle owners give their cars names. But please don’t tell me it’s John, George, Paul, or Ringo.” God, Luisa Rey, you’re beautiful .

She says, “You’ll laugh.”

“I won’t.”

“You will.”

“I, Isaac Caspar Sachs, solemnly vow not to laugh.”

“You’d better not with a middle name like Caspar. It’s Garcia.”

They both shake, noiselessly, until they burst into laughter. Maybe she likes me too, maybe she’s not just doing her job .

Luisa lassos her laughter in. “Is that all your vows are worth?”

Sachs makes a mea culpa gesture and dabs his eyes. “They normally last longer. I don’t know why it’s so funny, I mean, Garcia”— he snorts—”isn’t such a funny name. I once dated a girl who called her car Rosinante, for Chrissakes.”

“An ex-Berserkeley Beatnik boyfriend named it. After Jerry Garcia, y’ know, the Grateful Dead man. He abandoned it at my dorm when its engine sent a gasket through the back around the time he dumped me for a cheerleader. Cheesy, but true.”

“And you didn’t take a blowtorch to it?”

“It’s not Garcia’s fault his ex-owner was a swindling sperm gun.”

“The guy must have been mad.” Sachs didn’t plan to say so, but he’s not ashamed he did.

Luisa Rey nods in gracious acknowledgment. “Anyway, Garcia suits the car. Never stays tuned, prone to flashes of speed, falling to bits, its trunk won’t lock, it leaks oil, but never seems to give up the ghost.”

Invite her back , Sachs thinks. Don’t be stupid, you’re not a pair of kids .

They watch the breakers crash in the moonlight.

Say it . “The other day”—his voice is a murmur and he feels sick—”you were looking for something in Sixsmith’s room.” The shadows seem to prick up their ears. “Weren’t you?”

Luisa checks for eavesdroppers and speaks very quietly. “I understand Dr. Sixsmith wrote a certain report.”

“Rufus had to work closely with the team who designed and built the thing. That meant me.”

“Then you know what his conclusions were? About the HYDRA reactor?”

“We all do! Jessops, Moses, Keene … they all know.”

“About a design flaw?”

“Yes.” Nothing has changed, except everything .

“How bad would an accident be?”

“If Dr. Sixsmith is right, it’ll be much, much worse than bad.”

“Why isn’t Swannekke B just shut down pending further inquiry?”

“Money, power, usual suspects.”

“Do you agree with Sixsmith’s findings?”

Carefully . “I agree a substantial theoretical risk is present.”

“Were you pressured to keep your doubts to yourselves?”

“Every scientist was. Every scientist agreed to. Except for Sixsmith.”

“Who , Isaac? Alberto Grimaldi? Does it go up to the top?”

“Luisa, what would you do with a copy of the report, if one found its way into your hands?”

“Go public as fast as I possibly could.”

“Are you aware of …” I can’t say it .

“Aware that people in the upper echelons would rather see me dead than see HYDRA discredited? Right now it’s all I’m aware of.”

“I can’t make any promises.” Christ, how feeble . “I became a scientist because … it’s like panning for gold in a muddy torrent. Truth is the gold. I—I don’t know what I want to do …”

“Journalists work in torrents just as muddy.”

The moon is over the water.

“Do,” says Luisa finally, “whatever you can’t not do.”

32

In blustery early sunshine Luisa Rey watches golfers traverse the lush course, wondering what might have happened last night if she’d invited Isaac Sachs up. He’s due to meet her for breakfast.

She wonders if she should have phoned Javier. You’re not his mother, you’re not his guardian, you’re just a neighbor . She’s not convinced, but just as she didn’t know how to ignore the boy she found sobbing by the garbage chute, just as she couldn’t not go down to the super’s, borrow his keys, and pick through a garbage can for his precious stamp albums, now she doesn’t know how to extricate herself. He hasn’t got anyone else, and eleven-year-olds don’t do subtlety. Anyway, who else have you got ?

“You look like you got the weight of the world,” says Joe Napier.

“Joe. Have a seat.”

“Don’t mind if I do. I’m the bearer of bad news. Isaac Sachs sends his sincere apologies, but he’s got to stand you up.”

“Oh?”

“Alberto Grimaldi flew out to our Three Mile Island site this morning—wooing a group of Germans. Sidney Jessops was going along as the technical support, but Sid’s father had a heart attack, and Isaac was the next choice.”

“Oh. Has he left already?”

“Afraid so. He’s”—Napier checks his watch—”over the Colorado Rockies. Breast-feeding a hangover, shouldn’t wonder.”

Don’t let your disappointment show . “When’s he due back?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Oh.” Damn, damn, damn .

“I’m twice Isaac’s age and three times uglier, but Fay’s asked me to show you around the site. She’s scheduled a few interviews with some people she thinks’ll interest you.”

“Joe, it’s too kind of you all to give me such generous slices of your weekends,” says Luisa. Did you know Sachs was on the verge of defection? How? Unless Sachs was a plant? I’m out of my depth here .

“I’m a lonely old man with too much time on my hands.”

33

“So R & D is called the Chicken Coop because the eggheads live there.” Luisa jots in her notebook, smiling, as Joe Napier holds open the control-room door two hours later. “What do you call the reactor building?”

A gum-chewing technician calls out: “Home of the Brave.”

Joe’s expression says funny . “That’s definitely off the record.”

“Has Joe told you what we call the security wing?” The controller grins.

Luisa shakes her head.

“Planet of the Apes.” He turns to Napier. “Introduce your guest, Joe.”

“Carlo Böhn, Luisa Rey. Luisa’s a reporter, Carlo’s a chief technician. Stick around and you’ll hear plenty of other names for him.”

“Let me show you around my little empire, if Joe’ll give you up for five minutes.”

Napier watches Luisa as Böhn explains the fluorescent-lit chamber of panels and gauges. Underlings check printouts, frown at dials, tick clipboards. Böhn flirts with her, catches Napier’s eye, when Luisa’s back is turned, and mimes melon-breasts; Napier shakes his sober head. Milly would have clucked over you , he thinks. Had you over for dinner, fed you way too much, and nagged you on what you need to be nagged about . He recalls Luisa as a precocious little six-year-old. Must be two decades since I saw you at the last Tenth Precinct Station reunion. Of all the professions that lippy little girl could have entered, of all the reporters who could have caught the scent of Sixsmith’s death, why Lester Rey’s daughter? Why so soon before I retire? Who dreamed up this sick joke? The city?

Napier could cry.

34

Fay Li searches Luisa Rey’s room swiftly and adeptly as the sun sets. She checks inside the toilet cistern; under the mattress for slits; the carpets, for loose flaps; inside the minibar; in the closet. The original might have been Xeroxed down to a quarter of its bulk. Li’s tame receptionist reported Sachs and Luisa talking until the early hours. Sachs was removed this morning, but he’s no idiot, he could have deposited it for her. She unscrews the telephone mouthpiece and finds Napier’s favored transmitter, one disguised as a resistor. She probes the recesses of Luisa’s overnight bag but finds no printed matter except Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance . She flicks through the reporter’s notepad on the desk, but Luisa’s encrypted shorthand doesn’t reveal much.