The Cloud Atlas

by David Mitchell

  “What the hell can a balloon tell you about weather, Sergeant?” he asked, still staring after it.

  “I don't know, sir,” I mumbled, adjusting the focus. Finally, I found the curious soldiers. I scanned up the hill ahead of them, along the path the balloon had torn through the grass and brush, until I reached the balloon itself.

  Something had pierced the envelope, and the balloon now lay on its side, seemingly gasping, as if it had beached itself.

  “Look like rain?” the colonel asked, and answered himself by laughing once. “Sunny and seventy through the weekend?” he added, checking his watch. “Weather. Five bucks says this is a Navy toy.”

  I held my breath as I followed the balloon's shroud down to its pay-load. I'd never seen a hot-air balloon other than in photographs, and if anything, this balloon looked more incredible on the ground than in the air. The soldiers were almost upon it now, and I frowned, realizing that they would soon obstruct my view.

  That's when I saw the fuse.

  And then another, and another. And then a whole tangle of them came into view as I studied the payload more closely, and realized that each was a carefully wired charge-

  “It's-a-bomb-sir,” I said. I couldn't be sure-the soldiers were in the way now, milling about, but-it had to be. I'd never seen a weather balloon, but I'd seen plenty of bombs in the classroom, and they-

  “Sergeant?” the colonel asked, as if I'd reported sighting a seagull.

  “A bomb, a bomb, a bomb,” I said, the words tumbling out so rapidly, it felt as though they were causing me to fall forward-and then I was-falling, running down the hillside toward the balloon.

  I hadn't saved Gottschalk, hadn't even had a chance to.

  As I ran, I stumbled, the binoculars caught me in the jaw; I tore them off and threw them away, yelling all the while. Behind me, the colonel must have been yelling, too, but I don't remember that. I only remember thinking, for a split second, that I had indeed fooled time, and that I was the only one moving. The soldiers, the bomb-laden balloon, the colonel-everyone was still, awaiting my intercession.

  The first blast-just the noise, not the force-sent me to the ground. When I got up, I saw flames, and heard screams so fierce it was like I could see the sound. I began running even faster until I heard the second blast, tripped again, and lying there, finally realized I was too late.

  One of the balloon's incendiaries must have detonated. It was later determined that the first blast had only wounded one or two of the soldiers, but the fire ended up claiming them all. The fire would have caught up with me as well, except that within a minute or so more of scrambling toward the crash, I was stopped by a steep, sharp ravine that had been invisible when I first started out. I picked my way down into it, but then discovered I couldn't climb the other side. Eventually I had to follow the ravine all the way down to the beachhead, watching the smoke billow just above me, out of reach.

  ANOTHER RAVINE, on the far side of the crash site, and a fire road- a hopeful name for a swath of bare earth-did more to contain the blaze than anything else. By the time they had figured out a way to pump water up the hillside, the fire was mostly out. That night, the bodies of the soldiers were recovered, and around midnight, a pair of military policemen pulled me from my bunk and drove me as far up the hillside as their jeep would take us.

  They delivered me into the care of the colonel. Earlier in the day during the cleanup, I'd offered my services but had been rebuffed. I wasn't sure if the colonel had summoned me now for apologies or blame.

  “Turns out we lost two of our three bomb disposal guys in the fire,” he said. “Third's on leave. So we've got you.” He jerked his head up the hill, where gas-powered floodlights illuminated a still-smoking black field. Now I would say that it looked like lava, but back then, I'd never seen hot lava, not even pictures. Back then, it looked like what it was-scorched earth, a little piece of hell. “What happened?” he asked.

  “Sir,” I said, looking up the hill, “I'm guessing it was some kind of incendiary-”

  “That's pretty fucking brilliant, Sergeant. What was your clue? The six-acre brush fire?”

  Another jeep, and then another, arrived.

  “Wait here,” the colonel said, and I did, because it looked for all the world like aliens were stepping out of the jeeps. Six men in silver flash-suits and gas masks finished zipping up, checking gear. I'd seen fire-retardant clothing during my bomb disposal training-but nothing like these outfits, this late at night, lit by lights high on a hill.

  “Who's in charge here?” said the only one of them not suited in silver.

  “I am,” said the colonel.

  “You were,” said the man, a captain, closing the distance. “We'll take it from here.”

  “I lost five men,” the colonel said. “Is this your goddamn weather balloon?”

  The captain nodded his men up the hill, and they began a surprisingly rapid ascent. Then he turned back to us. “It's mine now.”

  “Whose was it? Where did it come from? Why wasn't I alerted?” the colonel asked.

  “That,” the captain said, “is confidential.” That clearly wasn't good enough for the colonel, but before the colonel could blurt out another question, the captain looked at me and asked, “Who's this?”

  The colonel drew himself up. “This asshole, supposedly a bomb man, was the first to figure out that the balloon was booby-trapped.”

  “Bomb disposal?” the captain said, peering through the dark. “What's your name?”

  “He was a little damn slow,” the colonel said. “A few minutes earlier, he could have saved some lives.”

  I looked at the captain: “Belk, sir.”

  The captain barked a little laugh. “You don't say? Sergeant Louis A. Belk?” I nodded. “How do you like that? You're mine, too. Wait for me in the jeep.”

  I was glad to leave the colonel to him, and watched from a distance as the two officers argued. Finally, the colonel offered up a bit of a smile, and the two of them walked over.

  The colonel regarded me, savored, and smirked. “You poor sap,” he said. “Whose ass did you forget to kiss?”

  I looked to the captain. He looked at the colonel and then at me. “I am carrying orders to remove you from Camp Sunshine here, immediately, and deliver you to Elmendorf Field, Fort Richardson, Alaska,” he said, and then hiked up the hill toward his men.

  “ Alaska,” the colonel repeated, very pleased.

  I watched the captain exchange words with his men, who now had their masks off. Then he walked back toward us and climbed into the jeep.

  “Bon voyage,” the colonel said to me.

  “I'd keep clear of the area,” the captain said. “Just in case.” We all looked back up the hill, where the men now had their masks back on. The jeep sputtered to life and the captain steered us down the track he'd come up.

  Hands on hips, feet apart, the colonel watched us drive away. I stared back at him for as long as I could, until I couldn't be sure if I was seeing or imagining him.

  WHAT NEITHER THE colonel nor I knew at the time was that one of the most closely guarded secrets of World War II had exploded right in front of us.

  The Japanese were bombing mainland North America. And the attack was far more widespread, and had gone on much longer, than the infamous raid on Pearl Harbor. In many ways, it was much more audacious. Certainly the censorship campaign that surrounded the bombing campaign was audacious: American authorities ordered nothing be reported. In the months to come, I would learn a little more, but only a little. The complete history-such as it is-I have come to learn only over the course of many years.

  In mid-1944-not long after I enlisted, as it happens-a Navy ship made a curious discovery just off the coast of Southern California. The lookout first reported a downed pilot; what he could see through his binoculars had all the looks of a parachute. But there had been no word of any sorties being flown in their sector that day, and certainly no word of any mishaps. Upon drawing closer, the sh
ip found no evidence of a pilot or plane, and when the material was hauled on board, it appeared to be a large hot-air balloon of rubberized silk. Instead of a basket, it contained a peculiar sort of crate, to which were affixed various instruments. One of the communications officers said it looked like a weather balloon. Thus mollified, the ship's captain brought the balloon and its crate home, where it was packed off to a warehouse in Long Beach. Word was sent to the weather bureau to come collect their fallen star.

  The bureau had yet to reply when the authorities learned of an explosion outside Thermopolis, Wyoming (I'm fuzzy on some details, but not that one; my Alaskan missionary mind refuses to forget such a warm-sounding place). Residents had seen what appeared to be a parachute, rocketing toward earth with fatal speed. Shortly after came a tremendous explosion, and bright flames of a bizarre red hue leapt in answer to the sound. The next morning, locals set out to discover what had happened, and there, fifteen miles northwest of town, they came upon a great crater littered with shrapnel. There was talk of comets and flying saucers. The police notified the military.

  Not long after, the Fourth Air Force, responsible for the air defense of the western United States, learned of a gigantic paper balloon that had crashed outside Kalispell, Montana. Its construction, though elaborately conceived, was somewhat makeshift, and authorities initially believed it had been assembled and launched from a nearby German prisoner-of-war camp or one of the Japanese internment camps.

  But within the next few weeks, dozens more balloons were sighted. Some as far north as Saskatchewan and others just south of Santa Barbara. And while evidence of some of the early landings had disappeared in explosions, more balloons began to be recovered intact. (One western sheriff bravely, or comically, leapt after a balloon's trailing line as it near ed the ground; it bounced and dragged him across the desert for several miles before he finally managed to stop and anchor it.)

  The balloons found intact dispelled much of the mystery that had initially surrounded them. Since the Japanese had assumed any evidence of the balloon weapon would be destroyed in an explosion, they had done little to mask the weapon's source: serial numbers and other designations, written in Japanese, were printed directly on the balloon. Further evidence was found in the sandbags that served as ballast: government geologists determined the sand used was particular to the east coast of Japan 's mainland, or largest island, Honshu.

  Slowly, it became clear what was happening. Japan had developed and was deploying the world's first intercontinental warheads. And so far, America 's defense consisted of tall trees and wide-open spaces.

  CHAPTER 3

  WE WERE IN THE AIR BEFORE SUNRISE, THE CAPTAIN, HIS men, their prize, and me all onboard a C-47 bound north. We refueled at first light in Seattle, and then started up to Anchorage. What takes three hours today took nine back then-or more, depending on whether the pilot had ever flown to Alaska before.

  I wish the trip had lasted even longer. Three hours, nine hours- one hundred hours probably wouldn't be enough transition time from the Outside world to Alaska. But these are the illusions planes perpetuate: the intimacy of great distances, the seeming absence of life below, and worst of all, the notion that by flying over the land, you have somehow conquered it. I rely on planes now; we all do. But there is an aspect to them that I hate, and it is the distance they put between you and the ground. The view, of course, is gorgeous, but it is completely sanitized, static beyond the glass, sometimes hidden beneath clouds. It allows you to think of Alaska the way the rest of the world does, a gigantic, postcard-perfect park, its mountains and trees and glaciers, however distant, reassuringly reachable and safe.

  I still remember that first trip, how strangely soft everything below looked, the towering peaks buried in snow and clouds. I would have stayed at the window the entire time, but the captain called me forward to hear my explanation of how I'd ended up at Fort Cronkhite. He offered no explanations of his own in return, other than to say that my leave had been canceled. He said I'd find out what I needed to know soon enough-both about my posting and our odd cargo. I asked if I could take a look at the wreckage stowed in the cargo bay, and for a moment, he looked ready to agree, but then shook his head and told me to catch some sleep. I went to my jump seat and closed my eyes, but all I could see was that balloon, floating there, closer and closer, bigger and bigger. I wanted to reach out and touch it, but I couldn't, even while dreaming. I finally fell back, frustrated, and let the balloon hang there in my mind, my arm lifted, hand outstretched.

  WHAT I CAUGHT, instead, was a message delivered to me directly by the empire of Japan.

  I'd gone downtown into Anchorage after we landed, and was standing on Fourth Avenue, screwing up my courage to enter a bar. I had plenty of choices. A low-flying plane buzzed overhead. No one looked up; enough planes were flying in and out of Elmendorf Field those days that the skies above were noisier than the streets below. But then we heard the rumble of antiaircraft guns, the whine of more planes. While my fellow passersby dove for the sidewalk-or the safety of a bar entrance-I stood there, stupidly, staring up, watching the sky fall.

  The plane had dropped a barrage of leaflets, printed on very thin, rose-colored paper. For a few minutes, the air was full of them, thousands of slips dancing between those of us still standing, as though human speech had hardened with the chill and become visible.

  SSURRenndderr, it began, and I remember the spelling very specifically, because it seemed like the writer was drunk-or that it had been written for drunks, in which case, it had found its target on Fourth Avenue. As other people bent to pick up the slips, I tried sounding out the word as it was written, but my efforts were drowned out by a tremendous explosion. I dropped.

  It has always surprised people, especially later in life, that I am so skittish at the sound of an explosion-they think ice-cold stoicism was the first thing they'd teach someone defusing bombs. But the truth is just the opposite. You were trained to be afraid, to be cautious, to move slowly, and if you sensed a boom, to flatten yourself before the blast did. I wouldn't be surprised if they taught things differently now, but back then, we weren't really learning how to defuse bombs. In some cases, it didn't matter if we made mistakes or not-either way, the bomb would disappear. Whether or not we went with it was up to us.

  The end of the message was more curious, just three words: WOMAN! FAMILIES! FARMS!!! It summoned up some kidlike frustration in me: I wanted to know what they were saying. Surrender, yes, but what about this last bit? Why one woman? Whose families? What farms?

  I stayed down on the ground, even as I heard other folks getting up. I guess I was instinctively waiting for the all-clear signal from training days, and once I came to my senses, I slowly dusted myself off. When I heard nothing but voices, and in the distance, some sirens, I realized they'd gotten the plane. They'd shot him down, or perhaps he'd crashed-one of those then-bizarre “kamikaze dives” we'd heard happened much farther south in the Pacific theater. I read my slip again, said the word aloud, softly, felt my tongue flicker like a snake's: “SSURRenndderr.” I wasn't much of a soldier. Just hearing the word-hearing me say it-made me shiver slightly.

  Most other folks were laughing and yelling. One of the bar owners had burst onto the street shouting that he would honor the slips as coupons, each worth a penny before 5 P.M. Another door to another bar popped open with shouts of a better offer. Soon enough, the streets of Anchorage were overcome with the sort of riot that the pilot, gone to his glory had intended.

  * * *

  I USED TO JOKE-I suppose you could call it joking-that the kamikaze pilot represented the whole of my Alaskan welcoming committee. He certainly did better than the Army which did its best to ignore me during my first weeks above the sixtieth parallel, to such a degree that I eventually had wandered downtown in time for the kamikaze pilot.

  For the rest of September and the first part of October 1944, I reported each morning at Fort Richardson to a Building 100, where I was supposed to recei
ve my new orders. But each day I was told the captain I'd been assigned to was away, and I was dispatched to some service detail in his absence-unloading supplies, setting up tents, even directing traffic. Or I was simply sent back to the barracks. But I didn't like spending time there, since the barracks I'd been assigned was nothing more than a giant tent, half the length of a football field. It was dark and damp and had an odd smell that one of the guys said was mustard gas and another said was formaldehyde.

  Of course, avoiding the barracks had put me downtown during the leaflet drop. I was a good Catholic boy and thus ascribed little to chance; God was obviously displeased I'd gone to Fourth Avenue, what with all its temptations. So when the next free block of time presented itself, I stayed on base. To prove to God I was starting anew, I even sought out the chapel.

  Inside, I discovered just how upset with me God was.

  “You're late, Sergeant!” Father Pabich barked when I entered. Tall, bearlike, and every inch the longshoreman he once was, Father Pabich, I came to discover, had a vigorous faith. He mostly saw me for what I was-a kid, scared and vulnerable and misplaced-and decided to do what he could.

  “Sir,” I said, lurching forward.

  “Father,” he said.

  “Father, I-” I looked at my watch. “Late for what?”

  “For Mass,” he said, and walked back through the door he'd just come out of. He returned pushing a small cart and wearing a stole.

  “You'll serve,” he said. He looked at my name strip. “Belk?” he asked. “You're not a Jew, are you?”

  I shook my head. “Catholic.”

  “There's no rabbi here,” he said. “Shot down. Aleutians. No other rabbi for a thousand miles,” he added, ducking below the cart, and slapping whatever he found there on top: a candle, a napkin, a breviary. “Don't light the candle,” he said, and then darted back through the door. I stood there, trying to decide whether I could leave. But before I did, Father Pabich had reappeared, hands folded. He pointed me to my place with his chin and began the Latin. I didn't look up until it was my time to chime in. When I did, his voice paused as he evaluated my response, and then rolled on. At communion, he filled the chalice with wine, almost to the brim, and drank down half of it. Then he saw me out of the corner of his eye, and held the chalice out to me. I took a sip and handed it back. He looked inside and handed it back to me. I took another sip. He grabbed it back out of my hands and drank down the rest.