Cloud Atlas (18 page)

“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.

Fay Li wonders if she’s wasting her time.
Wasting your time? Mexxon Oil upped their offer to one hundred thousand dollars for the Sixsmith Report. And if they’re serious about a hundred thousand, they’ll be serious about a million. For discrediting the entire atomic energy program into an adolescent grave, a million is a snip. So keep searching
.

The phone buzzes four times: a warning that Luisa Rey is in the lobby, waiting for the elevator. Li ensures nothing is amiss and leaves, taking the stairs down. After ten minutes she rings up to Luisa from the front desk. “Hi, Luisa, it’s Fay. Been back long?”

“Just long enough for a quick shower.”

“Productive afternoon, I hope?”

“Very much so. I’ve got enough material for two or three pieces.”

“Terrific. Listen, unless you’ve got other plans, how about dinner at the golf club? Swannekke lobster is the best this side of anywhere.”

“Quite a claim.”

“I’m not asking you to take
my
word for it.”

35

Crustacean shrapnel is piled high. Luisa and Fay Li dab their fingers in pots of lemon-scented water, and Li’s eyebrow tells the waiter to remove the plates. “What a
mess
I’ve made.” Luisa drops her napkin. “I’m the slob of the class, Fay. You should open a finishing school for young ladies in Switzerland.”

“That’s not how most people in Seaboard Village see me. Did anyone tell you my nickname? No? Mr. Li.”

Luisa isn’t sure what response is expected. “A little context might help.”

“My first week on the job, I’m up in the canteen, fixing myself a coffee. This engineer comes up, tells me he’s got a problem of a mechanical nature, and asks if I can help. His buddies are sniggering in the background. I say, ‘I doubt it.’ The guy says, ‘Sure you can help.’ He wants me to oil his bolt and relieve the excess pressure on his nuts.”

“This engineer was how old? Thirteen?”

“Forty, married, two kids. So his buddies are snorting with laughter now. What would you do? Dash off some witty put-down line, let ’em know you’re riled? Slap him, get labeled hysterical? Besides, creeps like that enjoy being slapped. Do nothing? So any man on site can say shit like that to you with impunity?”

“An official complaint?”

“Prove that women run to senior men when the going gets tough?”

“So what did you do?”

“Had him transferred to our Kansas plant. Middle of nowhere, middle of January. I pity his wife, but she married him. Word gets around, I get dubbed Mr. Li. A real woman wouldn’t have treated the poor guy so cruelly, no, a real woman would have taken his joke as a compliment.” Fay Li smooths wrinkles in the tablecloth. “You run up against this crap in your work?”

Luisa thinks of Nussbaum and Jakes. “All the time.”

“Maybe our daughters’ll live in a liberated world, but us, forget it. We’ve got to help ourselves, Luisa. Men won’t do it for us.”

The journalist senses a shifting of the agenda.

Fay Li leans in. “I hope you’ll consider me your own insider here on Swannekke Island.”

Luisa probes with caution. “Journalists need insiders, Fay, so I’ll certainly bear it in mind. I have to warn you, though,
Spyglass
doesn’t have the resources for the kind of remuneration you may be—”

“Men invented money. Women invented mutual aid.”

It’s a wise soul
, thinks Luisa,
who can distinguish traps from opportunities
. “I’m not sure … how a small-time reporter could ‘aid’ a woman of your standing, Fay.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself. Friendly journalists make valuable allies. If there comes a time when you want to discuss any matters weightier than how many french fries the Swannekke engineers consume per annum”—her voice sinks below the clinking of cutlery, cocktail-bar piano music, and background laughter—”such as data on the HYDRA reactor as compiled by Dr. Sixsmith, purely for example, I guarantee you’ll find me
much
more cooperative than you think.”

Fay Li clicks her fingers, and the dessert trolley is already on its way. “Now, the lemon-and-melon sherbet,
very
low in calories, it cleanses the palate, ideal before coffee. Trust me on this?”

The transformation is so total, Luisa almost wonders if she just heard what she just heard. “I’ll trust you on this.”

“Glad we understand each other.”

Luisa wonders:
What level of deceit is permissible in journalism?
She remembers her father’s answer, one afternoon in the hospital garden:
Did I ever lie to get my story? Ten-mile-high whoppers every day before breakfast, if it got me one
inch
closer to the truth
.

36

A ringing phone flips Luisa’s dreams over and she lands in the moonlit room. She grabs the lamp, the clock radio, and finally the receiver. For a moment she cannot remember her name or what bed she is in. “Luisa?” offers a voice from the black gulf.

“Yeah, Luisa Rey.”

“Luisa, it’s me, Isaac, Isaac Sachs, calling long distance.”

“Isaac! Where are you? What time is it? Why—”

“Shush, shush, sorry I woke you, and sorry I was dragged away at the crack of dawn yesterday. Listen, I’m in Philadelphia. It’s seven-thirty eastern, it’ll be getting light soon in California. You still there, Luisa? I haven’t lost you?”

He’s afraid
. “Yeah, Isaac, I’m listening.”

“Before I left Swannekke, I gave Garcia a present to give to you, just a
dolce far niente.”
He tries to make the sentence sound casual. “Understand?”

What in God’s name is he talking about?

“You hear me, Luisa? Garcia has a present for you.”

A more alert quarter of Luisa’s brain muscles in.
Isaac Sachs left the Sixsmith Report in your VW. You mentioned the trunk didn’t lock. He assumes we are being eavesdropped
. “That’s very kind of you, Isaac. Hope it didn’t cost you too much.”

“Worth every cent. Sorry to disturb your beauty sleep.”

“Have a safe flight, and see you soon. Dinner, maybe?”

“I’d love that. Well, got a plane to catch.”

“Safe flight.” Luisa hangs up.

Leave later, in an orderly fashion? Or get off Swannekke right now?

37

A quarter of a mile across the science village, Joe Napier’s window frames the hour-before-dawn night sky. A console of electronic monitoring equipment occupies half the room. From a loudspeaker the sound of a dead phone line purrs. Napier rewinds a squawking reel-to-reel. “Before I left Swannekke, I gave Garcia a present to give to you, just a
dolce far niente…
. Understand?”

Garcia? Garcia?

Napier grimaces at his cold coffee and opens a folder labeled “LR#2.” Colleagues, friends, contacts … no Garcia in the index.
Better warn Bill Smoke not to approach Luisa until I’ve had the chance to speak with her
. He flicks his lighter into life.
Bill Smoke is a difficult man to find, let alone warn
. Napier draws acrid smoke down into his lungs. His telephone rings: it’s Bill Smoke. “So, who the fuck’s this Garcia?”