by Max Barry
• • •
From there it was a bus ride, the world outside draining green until it was the color of snakeskin. The air-conditioning barely worked and she kept being woken by little trickles of sweat. There was only one other passenger, a woman with skin like coral who nodded off before they were even out of Adelaide and slept like she was dead. Emily wriggled around in her seat, seeking escape from her own body heat.
Eventually she opened an eye to a passing sign: BROKEN HILL, POP. 10,100. One corner was missing and the rest was peppered with gunshot. It flared in the afternoon sun, leaning drunkenly out of the baked red earth. She sat up and saw a gas station, abandoned, and a tin structure with no windows that was she didn’t know what, also abandoned. A flat, sagging house with a dirt yard full of disemboweled cars. She glimpsed a tall iron structure, vaguely Soviet, but it was on the other side of the bus and she couldn’t see it properly. A thin dog scratched in the dirt. Another low store, this one advertising CHEAP PARTS, although for what she didn’t know. The windows of the stores on either side were blank. Everything was widely spaced, the center of its own little wasteland, and why not, because, she was quickly realizing, that was all there was out here: land, land, and land. She passed signs that said SULPHIDE ST and CHLORIDE ST, because they had named their streets after minerals, apparently, and the bus turned onto OXIDE ST and began to slow. She saw a sign that said CITY CENTER and thought, You have to be kidding me. When she stepped off it was into burning air, the heat crawling into her nostrils and down her throat, and they hadn’t updated that population sign in a long time, like maybe twenty years, because there might be ten thousand flies here but not people. Definitely not people. She was standing at a crossroads; the streets were single lanes in each direction but still as wide as highways. There were a handful of buildings like they had fallen from above. The sky felt oppressively low, as if it were pressing down, combining with the blasted earth below to crush this town to nothing, and it made her feel as if she were expanding, like her insides wanted to crawl out of her body like supposedly happened in space, where there was nothing to hold you in. “Home,” she said. It was supposed to be funny, but she felt like crying until she died.
CONFUSION OF TONGUES
Event in which a common language is abruptly replaced by many disparate ones. Considered mythical; see: origin tales.
Prominent examples:
1. Tower of Babel • Judaic myth
i. construction
ii. dividing of speech
2. Enki • Sumerian deity
i. divides speech
ii. “The Deluge”
3. Great Dividing • Kaska origin myth
4. Hermes • Greek deity
i. conflict with Zeus
ii. divides speech
iii. punishment
5. Jabbering Madness • Wa-Sania myth
i. famine
6. Tongues of a Thousand Corpses • Kaurna myth
i. cannibalism
7. Vatea • Polynesian deity
i. construction of tower
ii. divides speech
8. The Sun of Wind • Aztec myth
i. construction of Zacualli (tower)
ii. dividing of speech
iii. crossover mythology: Mayan, Nahuati
More >>
THE STORY OF TAJURA’S NAME
Myth (Confusion of Tongues): Indigenous Australian
In the Dreaming the land was flat. There were no gorges and no hills, and no rivers. The animals lived in one tribe and spoke with one tongue, so they could understand one another.
One day Tajura, the Rainbow Serpent, carved his name in the bark of a coolabah tree. He said to the other animals, “Look what I have done, I have written my name on this tree, so you must do what I say.”
The animals were impressed and did as Tajura said. They offered their food and made him a great shelter. They brought dirt from the land together and put it beneath the coolabah tree so that it was raised up, so they could admire Tajura’s name, and that was the first hill.
But Borah, the kangaroo, was not impressed. “Why should we give Tajura our food, our best bark, and work for him?” he asked. He climbed the hill and tore the bark from the coolabah tree where it spoke Tajura’s name and buried it in the ground.
The animals were ashamed and said, “We shall speak in our own tongue, so we will not be impressed by Tajura’s words.” They went away, some north, some east, some west, some south, and that is why today the dingo howls, the frog croaks, the cockatoo screeches, and none can understand the other.
INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN LANGUAGES
At the time of European arrival, the indigenous peoples of Australia are estimated to have spoken between 250 and 400 languages, making it one of the most linguistically diverse places in the world.
Almost all indigenous languages share several distinctive phonological features (e.g., lack of fricatives), which suggests the existence of a relatively small set of ancestors, or perhaps even a single common language. Why this would have been abandoned, given its utility to intertribal communication, is unclear.
[THREE]
The waitress brought food and coffee and instructed them to enjoy. Wil watched Eliot spread a napkin across his lap, pick up his cutlery, and begin to dissect his eggs. He popped bacon into his mouth and chewed.
“Go on,” Eliot said through bacon. “Eat.”
Wil picked up his knife and began to push food around. It was beyond him how Eliot could shoot people dead and fly all night and then tuck into a hearty breakfast. It was wrong. Because Eliot had known those people at the ranch, including a woman he’d shot dead, Charlotte Brontë, and you shouldn’t have an appetite after something like that. It suggested that Eliot really was psychopathic—not the crazy, voices-told-me-to-kill way, but actually, medically psychopathic, in the sense of lacking the ability to feel anything. But even this bothered Wil less than the way Eliot was eating, which was with quick, purposeful movements, his eyes sectioning up the plate for maximum efficiency. This was wrong because Eliot hadn’t slept since Wil had met him. He should be exhausted.
“This is even better than I expected,” Eliot said. He pointed at Wil’s plate with his knife. “You need to eat.”
Wil ate without enthusiasm. His bacon tasted like nothing. Like a dead animal, fried. His eggs, aborted chickens.
“I’ll say this for the Midwest,” Eliot said. “They know how to do a breakfast.”
Wil poked a bacon strip with his fork. In its rufescent flesh he saw the man he’d shot on the overturned pickup. The way he’d folded up. He put down his cutlery.
“Are you all right?” No concern in Eliot’s voice, of course. It was just a question. An inquiry after facts. Wil rose and tottered to the rear of the diner. He found a single, dirty toilet, lowered himself to his knees, and vomited. When he was done, he sat back against the wall, eyes closed, sweat popping all over his body. He decided to stay here awhile. You were safe in a bathroom. It was a four-by-six cubicle of sanctuary, for as long as you wanted.
When he could no longer believe this, he washed and reentered the diner. A man in a trucker cap with hollow cheeks and serial killer glasses eyed him over hash browns. Wil could read his face clearly: He thought Wil had been doing drugs. The waitress was sneaking looks at him, too. And there was a red-cheeked man wedged into a booth seat, who was watching a burbling TV bolted into the ceiling corner but hadn’t been a moment ago. He felt an urge to explain himself. It’s not what you think. I’ve just had a really rough day. But that would be crazy. He would convince no one.
He shuffled back to the booth. Eliot had finished his own breakfast and switched plates with Wil. “Hey,” he said. “Order more. I’m paying.”
“Are you?”
“Well, no,” said Eliot. “But you know what I mean.”
Wil sat.
“You could use the protein,” said Eliot, chewing.
“What’s your plan?”
“Hmm?”
“No doubt.”
“So we need a plan.”
Eliot nodded. “True.”
“Do you have one?”
“No.”
“You don’t?”
“I have a short-term plan,” Eliot said. “I plan to finish your eggs.” Wil said nothing. “Food is important. I’m serious about the protein.”
“Do you have a plan or not?”
“No.”
“Shouldn’t you, I don’t know, be concerned about that?”
“I am concerned about that.”
“You don’t look concerned.”
“Would it make you feel better if I were sweating? Running to the bathroom to blow my cookies? It shouldn’t. A panic state is not helpful to good decision making.”
“It would make me feel better if we were moving,” Wil said. “Like if you got your eggs to go.”
“Well, I like to know where I’m going before I try to get there. It’s a mistake to try to execute a plan before you’ve thought of one, in my experience.”
Wil exhaled. “Can you call them?”
“Pardon me?”
“Get a poet on the phone. You used to be one of them. Call them.”
“And say what?”
“I don’t know. Persuade them to stop chasing us. That’s what you do, isn’t it?”
“Yes. But it’s also what they do.”
“Then offer them something. Make a deal. Give them something they want.”
“But what they want is you.”
“Something else.”
Eliot retired his cutlery. “You’re the key to an object of biblical power. They’re not interested in substitutes.” He stretched his arms. “And when I say biblical, I mean literally from the Bible.”
He rubbed his face. Every time Eliot spoke, Wil felt that he knew less.
“Keep talking, though,” Eliot said. “I feel like it’s helping, in a process of elimination kind of way.”
“We should hide, then. Go somewhere, you do your poet thing, make people hide us. That’s possible, right?”
“Before yesterday, I would have said yes. We thought we were hiding. In light of recent events, though, it seems what we were actually doing was being observed until we led Woolf to you.”
“So we can’t hide.”
“We can try. But to date it hasn’t been very successful.”
The waitress arrived to refill Eliot’s coffee. She was young and pink cheeked. Her name tag said SARAH. She seemed to be in awe of Eliot, although Wil didn’t know why. “Thank you, Sarah,” said Eliot, and she flushed.
“So we can’t hide,” Wil said, once she’d left, “and we can’t negotiate, and we can’t stay here, and you don’t want to leave until we know where we’re going, is that about right?”
“Yes,” Eliot agreed. “That’s about right.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
“I believe our only option is confrontation. Specifically, the kind of confrontation that leaves them dead and us alive.”
“Okay,” he said. “This sounds like a plan.”
“It’s not. It’s a goal.”
“Jesus!” Wil said. “Talking to you is like herding cats.”
Eliot raised his coffee and blew at it. “The problem is that Woolf and I are evenly matched, but she is excellently resourced and supported by skilled poets, while I have nothing and no one but you, and you’re useless. That’s not a personal commentary. It’s a statement of fact. So I’m finding it hard to imagine any scenario wherein we confront Woolf and survive. It also means our enemies will continue to pursue us rapidly and relentlessly, since we represent little danger. It’s more or less the same problem that those of us who left the organization have faced for some time. Our enemies have a bareword and we don’t.”
“They have a what?”
“The word that killed Broken Hill,” Eliot said. “They have that.”
“And it’s a bareword.”
“Yes.”
“Which is what?”
“Useful.” He gazed at Wil. “Hence our attempt to lift it from your brain. Still a good plan, if it’s in there.”
“You wanted it to use? I thought you wanted my immunity. You said you wanted to stop it.”
“Mmm,” said Eliot. “Some untruths were told, in the interests of acquiring your compliance. I was actually somewhat concerned at the time that you might use the word against me.”
“But I don’t remember it.”
“No.”
“If I did . . .”
“Oh, things would be different.”
“Woolf wouldn’t be chasing us?”
“She would,” Eliot said, “but more cautiously.”
Wil looked out the window, at snow and clouds like granite. He could not imagine living in dirt and desert. “I really don’t remember anything about Broken Hill.”
“Well,” Eliot said. He drained his coffee. “That’s a shame.” The waitress, Sarah, descended on them, refilling his cup. “Aren’t you a peach,” Eliot said.
“Are you from the East Coast?” She reddened. “It’s just, your accent.”
“You’re right!” Eliot said. “Well, I am. He’s from Australia.”
“Really,” Sarah said, looking at Wil in a new way. “I’d love to travel, one day.”
“Oh, you should,” Eliot said. “The world is closer than you think.” Wil looked out the window again. He felt tempted to rise, toss his napkin on the table, and walk out. Just walk on down the road, snow falling in his hair, until something happened. One way or the other. At least it would be doing something. Something stupid, most likely. But something. “Now that necklace is truly beautiful,” Eliot said. “Did you make it?”
“It’s my grandmother,” said the waitress. A carved piece of wood, a woman in profile. A relief, was that what you called it? The woman looked stern. “I carved it from a photo.”
“I think you’re very talented,” Eliot said. “Sarah, I apologize, but would you give me a few minutes? I’ve just thought of something I need to discuss with my colleague.”
“Oh, sure. No problem.”
She left. Wil looked at Eliot.
“Fuck me,” Eliot said. “The fucking necklace.” Wil waited. From now on when Eliot said something he didn’t understand, he was going to wait. “We’re going to Broken Hill.”
“Why?”
“We thought she got it out. But she didn’t. She made a copy.”
Wil waited.
“Fuck!” Eliot said. “We need to move.” He rose.
• • •
The chopper sat above the road, billowing snow, making the power lines dance. Below them sat a small plane. It had been abandoned; she could see the steps hanging out of its side. The pilot’s voice crackled through her headphones. He was sitting right next to her, but sounded like he was dialing in from Mars. “You want to set down?”
She shook her head. The pilot pulled back on the stick. The world below dropped away. They flew over snowfields that were like a million brilliant daggers, and she turned away, because it hurt the star in her eye. She had a little supernova searing her retina. That was how it felt. It never really went away but was always worse in the light. Anyplace she could see the sun. Sometimes she thought she could see it: a little white hole in the world.
“Two minutes,” said the pilot. “We have a diner. Center of town. We’ve encircled but haven’t approached. How do you want to do this?”
“Safely,” she said. “Have them sweep it, please.”
The pilot nodded. She heard him passing on the instruction: Sweep it; we’re staying airborne. The town emerged as a smudge in the snowscape. It had one road in and one road out, perhaps a dozen buildings. As they hovered, she watched black cars rocket up from each direction and disgorge tiny figures. They moved from building to building, gesturing and sometimes stopping to consult e
ach other. The chances of them finding Eliot and the outlier here were a thousand to one. But she had to be careful. The thing to remember was that all the power in the world didn’t stop a bullet. She had been taught chess at the school, years ago, and the point was the pieces differed only in terms of their attacking power. They were all equally easy to kill. Capture. It was called capturing. The lesson was that you should be cautious about deploying your most powerful pieces, because it only required one dumb pawn to take them down.
The pilot got the signal and began to settle the chopper toward the street. She watched the town tilt toward her through the bubble windshield. Now’s your chance, Eliot. I’m just sitting here. Eliot was a bishop, she figured, prone to sneaky long-range attacks, and more mobile than you expected. She had never liked bishops.
“We’re green,” said the pilot. She unbuckled. A young man with long hair, Rosenberg, opened the door and offered her his hand, which she found kind of insulting and ignored. The chopper’s blades pulled at her hair. She studied the street, trying to sense trace elements of Eliot.
“Diner’s clear,” said Rosenberg. “I’m guessing they acquired a car here, maybe a couple hours ago. Three proles inside, segmented and compromised, instructed to obey. We haven’t questioned them.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll take it from here.”
She made for the low diner. A few poets moved toward her and Rosenberg waved them away. Inside, behind the counter, was a young, scared waitress in a green apron. In a booth was a red-cheeked man she presumed was a farmer. A skinny guy in big glasses was manning a table. The door wheezed closed behind her. The man with glasses rose unsteadily from his table. “I ain’t cooperating with the government. You want to—”
“Sit down, shut up.” He dropped into his seat. She pointed to the waitress. “You come here.”