"The Cloud Atlas" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mitchell David)

CHAPTER 10

RONNIE RETURNED EARLY AS WELL. AND WHEN HE AWOKE, he was angry and scared and breathless. This was a couple hours ago-not long, actually, after he’d finished explaining how an angalkuq traveled the tundra. He’d closed his eyes, his breathing deepened and slowed, and I assumed he was reentering his trance-or his coma-or simply falling asleep, exhausted from the actual or imagined journeys he was making in and out of consciousness.

And I felt guilty. Here was a poor man trying to get some rest and here I had been rattling away at his bedside, taking grateful advantage of a confessor deaf and dumb with sleep. I stopped talking. My decades-only stories, secrets, and sins could wait.

But Ronnie could not. I had been silent for a minute, perhaps not even that, when his eyes blinked wide. His hands, which had been lying quietly at his side, sprang open as well. Perhaps he’d met his fearful wolf, I thought, and the nightmare had awakened him.

“Lou-is,” he said, and though his voice was barely louder than the whisper it had been, it was enough change in volume to make it seem like he was shouting. I jumped. “You stopped,” he said. I started to ask what he meant, but he cut me off. “Talking. You stopped talking. You must not stop talking. I have told you this. I have told you the story of the boy and his mother. You must not stop talking.”

“Ronnie,” I said. “I was just trying to let you sleep.”

He glared. “Not sleep. I have told you this. I have told you of my journeys. I have told you the story of the boy and his mother.”

Now I interrupted him. “You didn’t,” I said, forcing a patient smile as guilt turned to anger-at Ronnie, and myself. Ronnie was a friend, but not a believer. How could I justify sitting here, by his side, around the clock, when others-the faithful-needed me, as they surely did? Ronnie had not asked me to pray with him. He’d not asked me for much of anything, in fact, other than twenty dollars and a promise to help him die. What should have followed, then, was not an endless vigil of two old men exchanging stories, but rather a priest administering what sacraments he could-baptism, if the man was interested, confession, communion, and the anointing of the sick. At which point, the talking should stop, and the priest should leave, and the dying man should do his best to die.

I prepared to ask Ronnie if, as the hour of his death grew near, he wanted to be baptized with the waters of everlasting life, in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ. I prepared to be rejected. I prepared to stand, say a short, defiant prayer, give a curt nod, and leave.

But none of this happened, because I hadn’t prepared for what Ronnie was about to tell me.

“You must not stop talking,” Ronnie said again. “You may speak softly, but your voice must be clear to me. Your voice, your human, kass’aq, priest-voice, it worries the wolf. This tuunraq, he circles me, he circles you, but he is afraid to move closer while you are here. This is good. I am not ready for him yet. You must keep speaking.” He took a deep breath and let his head rest back on the pillow. “Not just because of the tuunraq, but also because that is how I find my way home. Hearing you. I have to travel far this time, to where the dead live. I was not sure I had to go.” He looked at me and shrugged, as though we were discussing an unexpected need to visit Anchorage, or the grocery store. He settled back again. “But this is what I think. This is why I told you the story of the mother and the boy.”

“Ronnie,” I interrupted once more, no longer hiding my anger.

His face was completely open, as though he were indulging me and not the other way around. “Then I tell it again. This was not long ago. This was when the kass’at brought the great sickness to our land.” I wanted to stand, then, and leave, rather than be excoriated-as I’d been a dozen times before-for being of that tribe, that world, that introduced smallpox and tuberculosis and worse to the Yup’ik Eskimo. Disease: the Outsiders’ invisible, potent weapon. Within years, we had killed thousands. One out of every three died from TB. More babies died than lived. It didn’t matter that we later stormed the tundra with nurses, doctors, and drugs. It was too late. “And this was a mother with a new child. A boy. He was very small, this boy. A baby. He rushed out of his mother too early, and into the sickness. The other wives all scooped him up and held him close and waited for him to die. But he surprised them. He lived. It was the mother who died. The baby had come too soon. She was too tired.” Ronnie took a long breath, tired himself. “They took the mother to be buried. The baby too. No one wanted this boy who had killed his mother. Into the grave he went, placed beside his silent mother, wailing all the while.” He paused, took another long breath, and I realized he was about to reproduce the baby’s cry. But the sound that came out-it was unbearable, a terribly thin and eerie wail. If I had never known Ronnie until that minute, if I had simply walked into the room and encountered him there, that sound spewing out of him, I would have said without reservation that this was a man who spoke with spirits. This sound came from far, far beneath him. He caught his breath and continued. “He would not stop crying. He sobbed. This is what babies do. But he cried on and on, and his voice carried, through the dirt, through the grass, through the walls of their homes, through their skulls. He cried so long and so loud that his mother awoke. He had distracted her on her journey to the land of the dead. She heard him, as any mother would, and she knew the villagers had abandoned him. She arose and walked to the village. The people begged her to leave. The shamans begged her. But the mother was confused. She had risen for the baby, but he had fallen silent. What was she to do? She was angry. Why had she died? Why had they buried her boy? She broke things. Stole things. She told the animals to stay away. The hunters could not hunt. She would not leave. Where was her husband? Why had he allowed this? She looked for him, but he hid,” Ronnie finished abruptly. “This is what they say.”

Then his tone changed, from storyteller to teacher. “This is why you must never cry at a funeral,” he said. “You must be quiet when death is near, or the dead will not complete their journey. And this is why you must speak to me. Because I do not want to lose my way in the land of the dead. Keep talking. Your voice will call me back.”

He smiled before adding one more thing. “It is nice that it is an annoying voice. Easier to follow.” But I missed the joke: the story had stunned me.

Gone were baptism and communion and the anointing of the sick. Gone was the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Gone even the hospital. There was only that room, that shaman and this priest and legions upon legions of dead pressing ever nearer.

I knew this because I knew Ronnie’s story. I had heard it before, once before, years before.

It has haunted me ever since, both because of the circumstances of the telling and of what happened to the storyteller. Ronnie’s version was slightly different, and I wanted to ask him why. But I was so scared or disoriented by what he said that I focused on what I-me, a man of God-now truly believed was the immediate danger: “But if I speak,” I whispered, “if my voice follows you on your journey-what if others hear it? What if others have their journey disrupted? Will they return, too?”

But Ronnie was done talking. He hardly glanced at me before shutting his eyes and mouthing just the one word: speak.

I LEFT MY BARRACKS for the Quonset hut at 7:30 A.M., half an hour, at least, after the time Gurley usually expected me. But since I’d seen him driving into town so late, I didn’t expect him to arrive for an hour or more. Surely-I tried to block the thought, but it arrived, pounding, all the same-he and Lily would have busied themselves throughout the predawn hours.

There was a jeep idling outside the Quonset hut when I walked up. I didn’t pay much attention; I was busy rehearsing an answer to the question Gurley would ask first: just how had I known about Shuyak Island?

Suddenly, he was right in front of me.

“Kirby-fucking-Wyoming,” he said, clanging out of the compound gate. “Was that your next guess?” He bumped past me and into the jeep. As it drove away, he turned around and shouted, “Walking to Kirby?” I stared after him. “Run, you sot!” Gurley bellowed. I looked at the sentry, who refused to look at me. At the sound of a gunshot, I turned back around to find Gurley firing into the air. I ran. Gurley had the driver slow down enough to keep me close, but not close enough. After a half a mile or so, the jeep stopped and I climbed aboard.

“Why didn’t you just get in the jeep back at the hut?” Gurley said, shaking his head, and then dug into a briefcase between his legs. “We have problems, Sergeant,” he said.

“But we’ve got two weeks,” I said.

Gurley looked up with a blank face. “Until what?”

“Two weeks, you said. We have two weeks to prove ourselves.”

“Oh hell,” Gurley said. “It’d be nice to return to that fairyland, when all our problems were so simple.” He burrowed back into the briefcase, then bumped his head against the dash when the driver stopped at an intersection. “Fuck!” he shouted, and then pulled out his gun, which he put to the driver’s head. “This is an emergency, not traffic school. You stop at any more traffic signs, and—”

The jeep launched forward with such force, Gurley almost landed in the backseat with me. When he’d resettled, I had to ask: “What’s the problem, Captain?”

“The problem, Sergeant, is a downed balloon.”

“In Wyoming?” I said.

“Correct,” he said, and burrowed into his briefcase.

“So?” I tried to sound like an old hand. “Who found it?”

Gurley appeared to find his paper and sat up. “That,” Gurley said, “is part of the problem.” He pointed to the page before me. “Kirby Wyoming. Balloon found intact. By the Associated Press.”

I read the transcription as we pulled up to the terminal.

KIRBY, WY (AP)____________________ A mysterious aircraft crashed just outside Kirby Tuesday. Local resident Gertrude Cleary, 68, said she saw what looked like the remains of a large helium balloon tangled in a line of trees at the far border of the town park, and reported it immediately to police. Police and civil defense officials refused to comment on the balloon, prompting much speculation and concern among the local citizenry. Cleary and others believe the balloon is from a nearby POW camp. Said Cleary: “So some Nazi is on the loose now, and nobody’s talking. You got a lot of scared people here.”

“So word is out,” I said, though it didn’t seem that bad. Who read the Cheyenne paper outside of Wyoming?

Gurley had the driver circle around the terminal and deposit us directly before the plane. “Things are actually a bit more fucked up than that, Sergeant,” he said, anxiously scanning the tarmac. “A lot more.”

The plane’s propellers were already lazily spinning, but Gurley didn’t board. I hung back as well, wondering if this was another invitation-only flight. Gurley asked a crewman nearby if a particular crate of gear had been loaded. The man looked confused; Gurley started yelling. Nothing would be fast enough today. The man left in a trot for the passenger terminal. Gurley followed him at his slower pace, and the two met beside a waist-high box. I was too far away to hear what they were saying, but I could see-anyone could see-that the box was labeled with skull and crossbones. While the crewman loaded the box, Gurley returned. I asked him what was inside. He shook his head and then frowned. The sincere, sympathetic look that followed it was alarming, both for its rarity and for the speed with which it had completely replaced the raw red fury of moments before.

“Sergeant,” he said, and stopped. “I-yes. I have to ask you a question.” He looked nervous, even scared, and he didn’t look like he was acting at all. Then he gave a little smile, which made things even worse. He tried again. “And here we are,” he said. “Now then, I have to ask you a question, but it’s not really a fair one. The thing is, Sergeant, our war has changed. It may change for everyone, soon, but today, it starts with us. And it starts with me asking if you will volunteer to join me on this flight to Wyoming.”

“Of course,” I interrupted. I couldn’t bear Gurley, human. It was disorienting, and oddly frightening. If wild, towering, vengeful Gurley could be spooked, then there could be little hope for the rest of us.

“Hear me out, Sergeant,” Gurley said curtly, almost relieved to be back in the position of scold. “I’ve been told to formally ask if you will volunteer for this mission because of the hazards involved—”

“A balloon is a balloon, sir,” I said, and then stopped speaking when I saw Gurley’s face.

“Inside the crate are gas masks and suits,” Gurley said. “We have word-too damn late word, if you ask me, but no one ever does-that one, or a dozen, or all of the balloons now approaching the United States may carry a new kind of bomb. Not incendiaries. Not antipersonnel. Bacteriological. Germs.”

And I really didn’t know what he was talking about. Germ wasn’t that scary a word to me then. Germs gave you colds. That’s why people covered their noses when they sneezed. I would eventually learn just how naïve I was, but before Gurley explained anything else, he first had to get me aboard the plane.

“This information is so new that-we-well, they’re not sure if the gear we have is really, you know, up to the task. We just don’t know. So I’m supposed to ask if, knowing the risks, which you really don’t, you’ll volunteer to go. And I’m supposed to let you stay behind if you want.” He took a step toward the plane. “But I can’t really do that, Belk, you know why?”

The officer defuses the bomb. I looked at him a moment. “Because you need help with-? Because I will, sir,” I said. “Even though I didn’t really train for—”

Gurley smiled. “Yes, Belk,” he said. “I need you for that. But I also need you for the simple reason that, when the question was asked of the NCOs present at the meeting I flew to yesterday-well, there were no volunteers.”

“Sir,” I began.

“Good man,” Gurley said, his actor’s smile and flourish returning as he swung himself aboard.

GURLEY GAVE ME MORE background on the flight. The supposedly weeklong meeting he’d been summoned to in Juneau during my Shuyak convalescence had been cut short when word of the Wyoming balloon arrived.

At first, he tried to summarize the briefing he’d received, but I interrupted him with so many questions that he finally gave up and handed his top secret briefing packet to me. He put a finger to his lips, as if to say “shh,” and then raised his thumb. He didn’t have to draw it across my throat, or his. I began reading.

Evidence of Japan ’s germ weapons program was arriving from an increasing number of credible sources, the report said, even as the information relayed was becoming increasingly incredible. A highly specialized and extremely secretive Japanese army medical corps named Unit 731 had set up shop-factories, really-in Manchuria, where they were conducting horrifying experiments on local peasants, as well as whomever else they might come upon-White Russians, Koreans, Gypsies, missionaries. Men’s chests were split open and their organs removed while they were still alive. Limbs of men, women, even infants were frozen, then beaten or thawed and refrozen to examine the process of frostbite.

The authors of Gurley’s report, however, were not worried about frostbite.

There had been reports from a Chinese informer that Unit 731 was experimenting with germ warfare. Typhoid, cholera, plague, syphilis, and anthrax were injected into patients and the results examined: depending on the disease, body parts might turn black, hands fall off. The informer swore he had seen this. And more: prisoners had been taken to a remote area and staked to the ground in a great circle. A specially modified tank had driven to the middle of the circle and begun… spraying.

There was also an active breeding program of rats and fleas; the fleas were infected with disease, the rats infested with the fleas. It was thought that these fleas, or possibly gnats and even mosquitoes, were candidates for balloon travel, to be sent aloft in special porcelain canisters that—

“Did you get to the part about the fleas?” Gurley shouted at me. I nodded. “Fleas!” he repeated.

“Rats,” I said, for lack of a better response.

“Yes, well, rats” Gurley said. “Now, there’s a troublesome threat,” he added. He grabbed the papers back from me. “It’s bad enough I get saddled with balloons, while other men are off battling warships or rockets or desert armies. But now I find I am enlisted to fight fleas.”

“This unit-sir-dissecting men alive? Babies?” I stared at the papers in his lap.

“If they airdrop lunatic doctors,” Gurley said, “then yes, we will have something to fear. Even more than we would have to fear from our own medical staff—”

“Sir, I—” I was surprised to find myself interrupting; I usually let Gurley babble on. But I really was afraid now, a different kind of fear than I had ever felt in bomb disposal school or ever since. I’d always seen my death as a bright, sudden event-an explosion-but what Gurley’s briefing papers promised was something much more slow and gruesome.

“Yes?” Gurley asked, less annoyed than I thought he might be.

But I didn’t really have anything to say. I had just wanted him to shut up; I had wanted him to let me sit and think through everything I’d just read; I had wanted him to ask me where I’d been the night before, so I could tell him With Lily, before you, even if it was just for dinner and talk of ghosts. I wondered now: Had Lily told him, too, that she was leaving?

I didn’t answer Gurley. I stared down at my hands, rubbed my palms together, imagined first the one and then the other swelling, rotting, turning black and falling away.

Gurley watched me for a moment before he spoke. “You have a question.” I must have looked surprised, because he added, “I know- it’s this gift I have. I’m a mind reader. Otherwise, I don’t know how I’d figure out what lay behind that impenetrable countenance of yours.”

“Sir,” I began again, having missed most of what Gurley had just said. His using words over two syllables was usually a clear cue to tune out. But the term mind reader had stuck. And Gurley saw it. I don’t know how much he saw, whether he saw Lily and I, last night’s meeting or the nights before, saw us almost holding hands, saw her smiling only for me (I was sure), but he saw Lily inside me clearly enough. I panicked, and stayed panicked, even when he started smiling.

“Ah,” Gurley said. “How soon I forget. We have a mind reader in common, do we not?” He feigned being interrupted by a private and quite enjoyable memory, or perhaps actually had one. Then he focused on me again. “Is this our boy-becomes-a-man talk? I should have known. A lad goes off to war, and-did your father sit you down before you left, young Sergeant?”

“Sir, I—”

“Oh, yes, yes-no father, no mother, a bastard raised by nuns. Delightful. Though they couldn’t be counted on to-well, now, could they? Mmm… there’s a thought.” He must have seen my impenetrable face opening to anger, because he stopped. “So,” he said. “Lily: What’s your question?”

I waited, too long, before I spoke. “That’s not my question,” I said, and it hadn’t been, though now I wasn’t sure. I tried pushing Lily out of my head. She wouldn’t go, but I pressed on. “I wanted to know why we’re flying all the way to Wyoming. Why not some guys out of Denver? Or San Francisco?”

“Or perhaps Paris -or Cairo,” Gurley said. “Why not just sit back and let the other boys do our job? Steal our medals. Win our war.” He drew himself up as best he could in the seat restraints. “Because, Belk. That’s why. Because, one, as I told you, volunteers were few and far between at the meeting yesterday. While they fret over what to do, we’ve got the chance to leap ahead and seize the initiative in what may turn out to be the most important campaign of the war. I make fun of their fleas, but make no mistake, if that report is even ten percent right, it won’t matter who wins in the Pacific-all those GIs will return home to stinking corpses strewn across the prairie.” I turned away, and he elbowed me so I’d turn back. “Because, two, there’s already been a story published, so the potential for further fuckups is pretty high. With bacteria-encrusted bombs on the way, there’s no question now of disposing with the ban. This must be kept secret.” Now he sank back. “And because, three, any chance to leave our fucking frozen Xanadu for warmer locales, even late winter Wyoming, is a chance we take.” He closed his eyes. “Really, Belk.”

I sat back, too, and thought about making a mistake when I handled our next bomb. Our next normal one. It wasn’t the first time I’d thought this, but the reason for the mistake was changing. Early on in Alaska, I’d spent some long, lonely days daydreaming about-well, blowing myself up. Maybe doing it in such a way that I’d only be injured-lose a foot maybe, a finger or two. But you couldn’t count on that. It was a safer bet to try to kill yourself outright.

But lately, I’d begun to think about Gurley.

“About the mind reader, though,” Gurley said after a few minutes, eyes still closed, and then added, “Lily is a lovely girl.” He waited. “Mmm?” I nodded, realized he couldn’t see me nodding, and then grunted in agreement. I wasn’t sure what would come out if I opened my mouth. “But you do realize,” he said, opening his eyes to catch mine, and then closing them again, “that she’s a-that she’s a busy woman. A businesswoman, in point of fact.”

“Yes,” I said. I wiped my palms on my knees.

“I’m just saying, don’t grow too attached. Not that you have. It may seem like they’re only six girls in all Anchorage, but there’s more coming, all the time.”

Now I closed my eyes and leaned back. Not to go to sleep, but just to escape, somehow: the conversation, the plane, the mission, Gurley. I opened them when Gurley tapped me on the chest. I found him leaning as close to me as he could. “I guess what I’m saying is, just between you and me, I have a unique fondness for our mutual friend. And I’m thinking of-how shall I put it?-taking her off the market. For the duration, at least. Not sure I can see her back East, let alone Princeton, but then, I’m not sure I can see myself there anymore, either.”

“You’re going to get… married?” I asked.

He looked at me. “In a gold carriage pulled by four white horses. You’ll be a ringbearer, or flower girl.” He rubbed his forehead. “Jesus, Belk. If you were about ten years older and a hundred years more mature, we could manage a conversation on this topic. As it is, I don’t know what’s going to happen. And I don’t want this to get around- but, yes, I have a soft spot for the girl. I care for her, and would like to take care of her.” He looked up toward the cockpit. “Which is why I want to take care of this mess, as quickly as possible.”

“Have you told her this?” I asked, probably sounding a bit too desperate. Why hadn’t she told me this? Or was this why she was leaving Anchorage? To escape Gurley? Or elope with him?

“Yes,” he said, and thought for a moment. “Yes, I have. Which is the war’s biggest surprise so far, Belk, if you’re keeping track-bigger than Pearl Harbor, bigger than balloons and bigger than fleas. If you’d have told me before I enlisted that I’d return from the war with an Eskimo bride, tall enough to look me in the eye and-have you ever noticed, Belk? She has the most remarkable eyes. Jet black, almost. You look in those eyes, you’re liable to forget your name, the date. And legs like- well, suffice to say, she’s not the type you meet over punch at the Vassar mixer.” He pulled himself up. “Of course, I understand your meetings don’t give you the opportunity to learn such details. She tells me you just consult her for palm readings.” He delivered this as both statement and question.

But I was thunderstruck that Lily had told him about me. She and I were the only ones with secrets. “She told you?”

“Don’t be embarrassed, Belk,” Gurley said. “Or do be-I’m sure the nuns back home would be horrified. I, for one, find your interest in astrology or whatever it is… affecting. A trifle immature, but harmless.” I heard in that harmless a word of warning, and one look at his face told me I’d heard right. Then he broke into an almost giddy smile and dove into his satchel of papers again. I tensed for what terror would emerge this time: perhaps blue foxes gone rabid. Maybe Lily herself.

“All right, all right,” he said, needlessly looking around to see if anyone was watching, and then handed a torn piece of newsprint to me. “Now, I’d always fancied myself the kind of suitor who’d stride down Fifth Avenue to Tiffany’s for the robin’s-egg-blue box, but—” He stopped. “You have no idea what I’m talking about.” I didn’t, but I wasn’t listening, either: he’d handed me an ad for an engagement ring. “I went by, you know. You’d think it’s just a little small-town glitter shop, but the man’s an old pro. Gets his gold from right here in Alaska, diamonds from wholesalers back East. Once he realized I wasn’t the same sort of army rube he’s used to getting, he took me in back-you know, the pieces reserved for special customers.” The ad showed a gaudy diamond ring on a hand with long, delicate fingers that looked nothing like Lily’s.

“Will she—” marry you? is, what I wanted to ask, but only the first two words come out.

Gurley took the clipping back. “Wear it? I know what you’re thinking. Not that type of girl. Not for her, china and lace. But here’s a secret, Belk: they all like pretty things. Hell, the Indians sold Manhattan for a bag of beads. And the rings I’m considering. Well.” He returned the ad to his satchel, paused a moment, and then drew out a single sheet of paper. “That’s not the problem. But Alaska – Alaska is. I’m not sure she’d leave. I have the loveliest spot picked out, too. Some land, north of San Francisco. Hillside, overlooking the ocean. Found it when I did a brief tour at the Presidio. But Alaska has this hold on her.” He looked absently at the sheet he’d pulled out. I couldn’t read what was on it. “And I don’t know-I don’t know if I could make it here. After the war.” He tapped his leg. “They’ve civilized Anchorage, Juneau, Fairbanks, a few other spots, but she’s no city girl. She’d want to be out-in the bush, on the tundra. I don’t know, Belk.” He finally handed the paper to me, but I didn’t look at it immediately-I was fascinated with his face. Gurley, who ruled all, was betraying an honest sense of longing. Even regret.

I was sure I knew why. It wasn’t Lily he’d miss. No, he’d stay in Alaska, in the bush, but forever be isolated from his old world. His Princeton classmates. Their clubs. A night at the theater. The opera. Museums. He was displaying a prissy softness, and I looked down, embarrassed for him. The sheet he’d handed me was titled “Germ Warfare Balloon Protocol.” But I was so surprised by what he said next that I looked back up at him.

“It’s not safe, Belk. When the war’s over and the shooting stops, the world, most of it, will be safe. Safer. That’s what we’re fighting for, right? Al of us? But Alaska, after the war? It will be as dangerous as it always was. And if you lived here, you’d be fighting along, alone, you versus the weather, wildlife, the wild. Fights you can’t win. Not with one leg. Not with two hands trained for banking or books.” He rubbed his face and then stared straight ahead, an old man of twenty-five. “It’s just so easy to die up there.”

GERM WARFARE BALLOON PROTOCOL

Fourth Air Force

The Presidio

San Francisco

To summarize, intelligence reports received now indicate the likelihood if not certainty that future Japanese Army balloon bombs will carry bacteriological warfare payloads. Until the first such payload is identified and more is learned, these procedures must be followed:

1. The media blackout must remain total. The mere suggestion of alien germs breaching the nation’s borders could cause panic, causing civilians to overwhelm civil and medical authorities.

2. Emergency mass quarantine plans should be reviewed and updated, and should include protocols for the use of deadly force, particularly in areas of military significance. Significant transportation throughpoints, such as highways, bridges, and train stations, should be evaluated for purposes of securing them, or, as a last, but not implausible resort, their destruction.

3. State and county agricultural agents nationwide should monitor livestock and crops for trends and vulnerabilities. A separate, detailed bulletin is being prepared for veterinary authorities.

4. Previous orders to shoot down balloons on sight are hereby rescinded. Destruction, even at sea, could result in uncontrolled release of germ warfare agents. All future sightings must be reported immediately, and the balloons then tracked and recovered with extreme care.

WHAT REMAINED OF the Kirby balloon was heaped in a corner of a truck bed.

It was dirty and gray with stiff folds, and had all the appearance- to me, as I think of it now-of a roadside heap of late winter snow. Along with the balloon was a pie-sized piece of metal that I recognized as the balloon’s gas relief valve. Also present was the control frame, seemingly intact. The incendiary and antipersonnel bombs were gone (over the Pacific, one hoped, and not in some farmer’s field-or the cab of the truck), and the demolition block was nowhere to be seen. But these all seemed like ancient and simpleminded fears now. So a bomb explodes. So someone loses a limb or dies. Show me the canister where the rats live. Show me the fleas that have carried the plague thousands of miles, across the ocean from Japan and across the centuries from the Middle Ages.

We’d landed on an empty road leading into town and had taxied into a field adjoining a small farmhouse. Within minutes, everyone was there: the widow from the farmhouse, the man whose truck now held the balloon-Will McDermott, the apparent sheriff-and lastly, via bicycle, the AP stringer, Samuel Leavit. Gurley dismissed the widow, scowled at Leavit, and finally settled on McDermott.

McDermott had raised his right hand in greeting, but it was his left arm that had caught my eye. A gentle breeze had picked up his empty left sleeve, causing it to flap momentarily back to life. I had seen Gurley take note and relax. A man he could do business with.

“That’s an entrance,” McDermott said, nodding to the plane.

“Wasn’t my choice of landing spots,” Gurley said. “But you know- pilots.”

The man’s face darkened a bit. “I do. I am one. Was one.”

“I’m sorry,” I blurted out.

Gurley winced and then turned to McDermott. “You’re the sheriff?”

“Sheriff’s somewhere in the Pacific,” McDermott said. “I’m the man with the sheriff’s truck. But I’ve got what you need.”

This is the point when he’d led us around to the back of the truck. Gurley and I had exchanged a quick glance. We’d left the germ warfare gear in the plane, assuming that we’d be led to the balloon after meeting with the local authorities. Instead, we’d had it delivered. We watched the sheriff and stringer wander back around. There was nothing we could do but follow. Gurley went first, and I watched the back of his head as he walked. The officer defuses the bomb.

“Now this,” McDermott said, reaching for the control frame, “this I don’t get at all.”

“Don’t!” I shouted. Gurley looked at me, furious one moment and anxious the next.

McDermott toppled back like he’d been shot, and then relaxed, straightened up. “Easy on me, Sergeant,” he said. “I don’t take too well to sudden noises nowadays, not that I ever did.”

He looked carefully at both of us, and read too much in our faces. “This isn’t a weather balloon.”

“Yeah,” said Leavit. “Why’s the Army need to know the weather in Wyoming?”

“Back off, AP,” Gurley growled.

“What’s going on?” Leavit asked. “This is big.”

It was, especially for me. My first performance in front of Gurley. And civilians. And germs. Now that I make my living as a priest, it would be nice to look back on moments such as this and remember how a sudden burst of prayer powered me through. But it didn’t happen that way. Nothing happened. I simply took a deep breath, and then held it, suddenly worried I’d already breathed in some deadly germ. I twitched the tiniest bit when Lily’s face flashed in my mind, but then it was gone, and I swung up into the truck bed. I could take care of this. Somehow.

“Careful, Sergeant,” Gurley said, and with that, I knew he was willing to play along. Probably because the primary risk so far was me blowing some part of my body off.

“Should I get the—” I looked at Gurley and nodded toward the plane. Gurley looked back at me, struggling to keep a perfectly blank look on his face, but still making his response perfectly clear: we’ll not be hauling out a giant crate marked with a skull and crossbones, and then donning gas masks and suits in front of a reporter.

“The what?” said Leavit.

“Cookies and milk,” Gurley said. “We so like to entertain our civilian guests. Please, gentlemen, let us step away while the sergeant makes his inspection.” Nobody moved. Gurley looked around, and then shrugged.

I had to believe that any live animal or insect would have bounced out and off the truck on the drive over. Or died on the flight over. But still, I kept an eye out for them, or anything else odd as I worked through my standard procedures.

First: check to see that none of the fuses is smoking. (If they are, run. They were always in such a tangle, you never had enough time to figure out which one to cut.) The truck bed was dusty, but I didn’t think I saw any smoke. Now for the demolition block, which was probably hiding in its usual spot. I was tilting the frame onto its side and had just spotted the demo block when Gurley stopped me.

“Sergeant!” I watched his face as he worked out a new strategy, one that began with a rather sick smile. “Step down for a moment, Sergeant, if you would, please.”

“There’s a story here,” Leavit replied, staring at Gurley, who was worth staring at right then. The captain was running his hands all over the truck, ducking underneath, around, like he’d forgotten something. “What’re you up to, Captain?” Leavit said. I wasn’t sure either, but I could see Gurley picking a day like today to detonate himself. He suddenly swatted the side of the truck bed so forcefully that even McDer-mott jumped. And unlike me, McDermott didn’t know that hidden in the mess in his truck was that demo block, a little two-pound brick of picric acid. Just above the gas tank, from the looks of it. And who knows what else.

A cat sidled up behind the truck and sat, expectant.

“Hop up,” Gurley said to Leavit. I wanted to back away, but I couldn’t without attracting attention. I watched as the reporter examined the balloon’s black powder-laced carcass. I suppose part of me knew there was no way the contraption could go off, not without a lit fuse, not if it had already crossed an ocean, crashed, been kicked around, and then manhandled into the back of a truck-but still, you don’t watch someone get that close to explosives and not hold your breath. We had McDermott right there, after all. The man was missing an arm. Gurley, a leg. I still had the memory of Gottschalk’s hand in mine. And Gurley and I both had our newfound fears.

“I’d join you, but…” Gurley said, stepping back, and then leaning over, rapping the wooden part of his leg with his knuckles. He completed his performance with a shrug, but Leavit missed it; he was just fascinated with what he’d found. What I saw in his eyes reminded me of the first time I’d seen a balloon, back on that hillside in California. Your face just went blank; the mind couldn’t be bothered with fixing an expression while it hungrily swallowed up everything it saw.

Gurley let Leavit have all the time he needed, hoping, I’m sure, that the reporter would get around to kicking or poking it, and then that would be that. Boom. For a moment, I wondered why Gurley didn’t realize that a reporter getting injured or killed would make our mysterious balloon an even bigger story. But then I saw the way Gurley was taking in the scene with almost leering delight, and I realized it didn’t matter how big the story got, or whether the blast killed all of us and sent the old woman’s house tumbling end-over-end onto the south lawn of the White House. To have an irritant, an enemy, obliterated: the pleasure was worth any amount of resulting pain.

Leavit looked up with half a smile on his face, the same kind of smile I’d worn when I’d spotted that balloon at Shuyak, or better yet, the same kind of smile I had when I was, what, nine? and first opened a ship model kit someone had donated to the nuns for an orphan’s Christmas. All of those pieces in there, all tiny and perfect and important, all of them adding up to something if you only had time and patience to put it all together just right. These balloons were something like that. They had that look. They didn’t look machine made; they looked handmade-little irregularities caught the eye here and there, a bolt that was a fraction too long a piece of metal that stuck up in a funny way the way a seam was joined. Sergeant Redes would have muttered something about the shoddy workmanship of Japanese bombmakers, but I was struck by something else. It looked like something you could make-and what really made you stop and stare was the realization that someone had made it. Just like I’d always wanted that ship model to come to life and really float, or heck, blast a horn and steam away from my hand in the bathtub, or just like Leavit probably wanted some kit plane he’d once worked on to really take off and fly, someone had wanted this balloon to fly.

And it had. That was the most amazing part, and Leavit didn’t even know that yet. Someone had built it, and it had really flown-all the way across the ocean, from the shores of some island far across the Pacific to a place in Wyoming that probably none of those Japanese folks who had made it had ever heard about. Didn’t matter. It was all part of a dream anyway.

Now Leavit was crouching a little lower to look at the contraption, and I awoke, incredulous that I’d let things go this long. He was a few inches from being maimed or killed, and taking a few of us with him. I scanned frantically from where I stood for an oddly shaped or colored canister, crafted of that supposedly telltale porcelain, probably with air holes, or mesh—

“It’s a remarkable device,” Gurley said, his face flushed.

“I’ll say,” Leavit said. “It’s Jap, isn’t it?”

“Well,” Gurley said slowly, rolling his eyes at McDermott, like they were two old friends who knew better. McDermott did know better. So did I. I hurried around to the other side of the truck, took a deep breath, regretted it, and climbed back up over the side.

“It’s a hell of a thing, is what it is,” I said as enthusiastically as I could. I finished scanning. It was clear. Looked just like all the others had. Except—

“Can I quote you on that?” Leavit said, not even looking up. “Need your name, rank, age, and hometown.”

Now Gurley stepped closer, and when he spoke, I could tell from the tone of his voice that he was upset I’d screwed up his plan to have Leavit explode. I suppose I was a little touched; Gurley’s being upset must have meant that he didn’t want to see me blown up, and that was some kind of progress for us. “I’m afraid you can’t quote him on that,” Gurley said, rather seriously, and now I was the only one who could tell he was still acting. He turned around to include McDermott. Leavit looked up, and Gurley offered him a hand down from the truck. His other hand was a fist. Leavit took one last look at the device, then at me, and then climbed down. “You can’t quote him, or me, really, because this is very, very, secret,” Gurley said. He looked around and then announced that this was an “experimental targeting device” of the Canadian Expedition Force. McDermott’s eyes went a little wider, and mine did as well. That he’d made it Canadian was the kind of useless flourish Gurley adored.

“But I’m telling you none of this. If word gets out about what the Canadians are doing…” He looked skyward.

“There’s a story here, Captain, I’m sorry,” Leavit answered.

“There is,” Gurley said, drawing himself up, and turning Leavit by the elbow toward the plane. “But frankly, it’s not to be found in the back of this truck.” He turned to me. “Sergeant, log the serial number off it and then do whatever you like with it-box it up or burn it. But let’s go. Quickly.” I needed another second or two of Gurley’s gaze to understand what he was up to, but I didn’t get it. Certainly he didn’t want me to burn anything. I checked his shoulders, his posture, to see if he was going back into that stance; perhaps he was going to take Leavit off and pummel the memory out of him. He still had the one hand clenched in a fist.

With them safely out of earshot, McDermott turned to me. “Your captain’s a funny man, Sergeant.”

“He has a way of doing things, sir,” I said briskly.

“I never knew a man like him in my army,” McDermott said.

“There isn’t one, sir,” I said, climbing into the truck bed one more time, trying to figure out what struck me as different about this balloon. It was the control frame. The top tier. It looked different. Had it been damaged? There was an oily stain. From the demo block? Something else? I’d seen the demo block, hadn’t I, when I’d examined it the first time? Only the demo block? I looked for Gurley saw him loading Leavit into the plane, panicked, and then tilted the control frame away from me, holding my breath.

I was never so relieved to see two pounds of picric acid in all my life. Nothing else, just the block. My old fears returned in a rush. The picric acid was extremely explosive, too explosive to leave where it was as we transported the control frame. As I pried it off, the two pounds felt like two hundred. There are objects like that. Ronnie’s Comfort One bracelet, for one. The Host, for another, when I elevate it during Mass. I intone, “the Body of Christ,” and some days, I’m certain, I’m hoisting all 170-odd pounds of him.

I stepped out of the truck bed, carefully, and looked over what I’d left behind. It could travel. The demo block could travel, too, but I didn’t want it to. I wanted to leave it right here in Kirby But the rule was to recover everything now. McDermott drove it all over to the plane, with me in the passenger seat, demo block on my lap. He helped me crate the control frame, and watched suspiciously as I did all I could to render the demo block safe. Then I thanked him and climbed aboard.

McDermott stopped me. “What was that?” he asked, looking at the crate we’d just loaded.

I looked, too. If there had been any rats aboard, they’d left before we’d gotten there. Maybe they’d never gotten on.

“A relief,” I said, and shut the door.

WE SPENT AN HOUR flying Leavit around Wyoming. Gurley had told him that the Army was investigating the region for a whole new network of “intracontinental defense bases.” He pointed out one imaginary site after another. He was in full performance mode, charming and arch, though I knew he was tense-he kept that one fist clenched the entire time, at his side, or behind his back. But Leavit didn’t notice, he was too delighted with his scoop. The story he later wrote caused a bit of consternation among Gurley’s higher-ups and Wyoming ’s congressional delegation, but the matter was soon forgotten.

Not forgotten, at least by me, is the exchange Gurley and I had after we’d deposited Leavit in Cheyenne and taken off for home.

“Dodged one there, sir,” I said, flush with the success of duping Leavit, disarming the balloon single-handedly, and, most important, discovering a germ-free balloon. I assumed we’d formed a new kind of camaraderie on the way down, and thought I’d take advantage of it by needling him. “Course, sir, when you slapped the side of the truck there,” I said, “I thought that might just have been enough to get that little demo block to go—”

Gurley slowly raised his fist. I’d been mistaken about our friendship. I noticed it was the same fist he’d kept clenched all this time. But he hadn’t swung at Leavit, and he didn’t swing at me. Instead, he turned his hand over and slowly opened it. I stared down. Ribbing me for my supposed love of palm reading?

But you didn’t need to be Lily to read the story there. A smear of dried blood and two black specks, crushed carcasses of the tiny flying insects he killed. I shook my head, I held my breath. If he spoke, I didn’t hear him. I just watched him, hollow-eyed, as he fished the jewelry store clipping out of his bag and numbly scraped the fleas’ remains onto the paper.