by Max Barry
The waitress jerked forward, clutching a notepad. Her eyes were huge.
“Two men. One dark, one white. You know who I’m talking about?”
The waitress’s head bobbed.
“Tell me everything you saw and heard.”
The waitress began to talk. A minute later, the farmer began to fish a cell phone from his jeans pocket. He was trying to be surreptitious, but his wide checked shirt telegraphed every twitch. She found it fascinating: Did he think she was blind? She let him go awhile, until he got the phone out and opened its lid as carefully as if it contained an engagement ring. Then she said, “Put your hand in your mouth.”
“And I poured him another refill,” said the waitress. “He was real nice and we got to talking and I asked if he was from L.A. or New York or somewhere like that, and he said yes, he’d been all over, he’d seen fireworks in London and riots in Berlin, and I should go, he said. He said the world was closer than I imagined. Those were his words.” The farmer began to gag. “And then he wanted to talk to his friend, the Australian, and after he asked if he could borrow a car. I said sure, and gave him the keys to my car, and I felt bad, because I hadn’t cleaned it for like a year and I wished I had something nicer. I thought—”
“I don’t care what you thought.”
“I asked where he might be going and he said where did I recommend, and I said anywhere but here, and he smiled at that. Then we talked about places I had been, and I said when I was a girl my mom once took me to El Paso, just the two of us, and—”
“Right,” she said. “Stop.” She pondered. The farmer made a sound like gwargghh and threw up around his hand. He had wedged the whole thing in there. She wouldn’t have thought that was possible. She watched him twitch and gag. She should tell him to take that out. There was no benefit in a dead farmer. “Did you hear any talk of towns? States? Airports?”
“No.”
“You have no idea where he’s going?”
“Wherever he wants,” said the waitress. “A man like that.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Okay.” Outside, her people would have gleaned which direction Eliot had gone, east or west. With the registration information, they would locate the car within a few hours. It would be abandoned, of course, at a gas station or on a side street, but that would be the start of a new trail. The fact was Eliot could not keep moving forever. He could not move faster than the net she could draw around him. Nothing personal, Eliot, she thought. She wanted to shoot him. As in, do it personally. She felt quite strongly about that. Also, before she did it, she wanted a few minutes to talk things over. That was probably a pipe dream. It was hard to imagine circumstances in which she would be able to capture Eliot without killing him. But if she did, she would like to tell him that she appreciated the guidance he had given her, in the beginning. She wanted to say, I wouldn’t be who I am without you, Eliot, and have him see she meant it.
The farmer jerked. His head hit the table. Vomit dripped to the floor. “Take . . .” she said, but it was too late. She had meant to tell him to take out his hand. But she had forgotten. Or something like that. Hey, Emily, you know what stars do? They eat. They burn everything around until there’s nothing left. Then they start eating light. You realize that’s what you’re doing, right? Eating everything?
She looked at the waitress. The sensible thing to do here was to kill her. The girl had exchanged words with Eliot; she was potentially loaded with instructions. The possibility was small but there was no sense in taking chances.
It’s not getting any better, is it? I mean, that’s been obvious for a while now, right? That the star isn’t going anywhere?
“Forget we were here,” she told the waitress. “That guy choked on his breakfast and you couldn’t save him.” She turned to leave. “But you tried as hard as you could.”
• • •
They drove until dark, stopping only to eat and persuade people to trade vehicles. Wil didn’t want to watch but couldn’t help it. At first, the person who Eliot approached would look guarded. Then Eliot would say something and their face would break into a smile. Like they didn’t want to but couldn’t help it. It was fascinating how much they changed in that moment. From stranger-person to friend-person. They showed a completely different face. And then a minute later their expression would change again, becoming intimate and unarranged, and Wil would turn away, because watching that felt wrong.
Embedded in a pink Mini, a bobbling plastic cat on the dashboard, he said, “So you have a plan now?”
“Yes.” Eliot jiggled the gearshift. He was not happy with fifth. Wil had offered to drive, but Eliot had refused. He was beginning to think Eliot didn’t sleep at all.
“Do I get to hear it?”
“We go to Broken Hill, get the bareword, and use it to defeat our enemies.”
“It’s just sitting there? In Broken Hill?”
“That’s my theory.”
“You’re not sure?”
“No.”
“What, no one thought to check? You didn’t swing by, see if there’s this, what, Bible-grade weapon lying around?”
“It wasn’t quite as simple as swinging by. After Woolf, anyone who swung by didn’t swing out again.”
“But we’re going in.”
“Yes.” Eliot glanced at him. “You’ll be fine.”
“When you say we are going in . . .”
“I mean you. Since I’m not immune.”
He watched them pass a family sedan. A happy dog looked at him and he felt jealous. “What if you’re wrong and I’m not immune?”
“Well, that would be bad. But let’s not get hung up on every little thing that might go wrong. I’m not saying the plan is foolproof. I’m saying it’s preferable to driving aimlessly until our luck runs out.”
“Then what happens? I give you the word?”
“No. You must not speak it around me, show it to me, or describe it even in general terms. I can’t emphasize this enough.”
“Are you serious?”
“Look at me,” Eliot said. “If you get this thing and drop so much as a hint about what it looks like, I will feed you your own fingers. Do you believe me?”
“Yes.” They passed through a town advertising a beet festival from three years ago. “I still don’t understand how it’s a word. Words can’t kill people.”
“Sure they can. Words kill people all the time.” He wrestled the gearshift. “Granted, this one is more direct about it.”
“What makes this one special?”
“Well, that’s difficult to explain without referencing some fairly advanced linguistics and neurochemistry.”
“Give me an analogy.”
“There’s a tree in a park. A tree you want cut down, for some reason. You phone the city and ask which department you need to contact and which forms you need to fill out. Your application goes to a committee, which decides whether it makes a good case, and if so, they send out a guy to cut down the tree. That’s the brain’s regular decision-making process. What I do, which you call ‘word voodoo,’ is I bribe the committee. It’s the same process. But I’m neutralizing the parts that can say no. With me so far?”
“Yes.”
“All right. What’s in Broken Hill is a bareword. A bareword, in this analogy, is me getting out my chainsaw and cutting down the tree.”
Wil waited.
“It’s a separate pathway to the same outcome. I don’t use the committee. I skip it. Does that make sense?”
“It does for trees.”
“It’s no different. Your brain has multiple pathways to action. You see a hot stove, you consciously decide to stay clear of it. But if you stumble onto it, you’ll jerk back without conscious thought.”
“So it’s the difference between a voluntary action and a reflex,” Wil said.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you just say that?”
“Because that’s not an analogy. That’s exactly what fucking happens. You asked for an analogy.”
“Okay,” he said. “Although I still don’t understand how a reflex can be triggered by a word.”
“Words aren’t just sounds or shapes. They’re meaning. That’s what language is: a protocol for transferring meaning. When you learn English, you train your brain to react in a particular way to particular sounds. As it turns out, the protocol can be hacked.”
“Can you teach me?”
“What?”
“What you do. The word voodoo.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s complicated.”
“It doesn’t look complicated.”
“Well,” Eliot said, “it is.”
“I don’t see why you couldn’t teach me a little.”
“We don’t have time to train you into a competent poet. If we did, it still wouldn’t work, because you’re not naturally compelling. If you were, I still wouldn’t, because you have very little discipline, and we’ve learned recently that giving immensely powerful words to people with self-control issues is a very bad idea.”
“I’m not naturally compelling?”
Eliot glanced at him. “Not really, no.”
“I’m compelling.”
“You’re the only known outlier to a bareword,” said Eliot. “Hang your hat on that.”
He was silent. “What makes me immune?”
“Your brain doesn’t process language quite like other people. Why that is, I have no idea.”
“I have a superior brain?”
“Uh,” Eliot said, “I wouldn’t go that far.”
“I can resist persuasion; sounds like an improvement to me.”
“I once had a coffee machine that wouldn’t add milk no matter how I pressed the buttons. It wasn’t better. It was just broken.”
“I’m not broken. Who are you to say I’m broken?”
Eliot said nothing.
“It’s evolution,” Wil said. “You guys have been preying on us for who knows how long and I evolved a defense.”
“What was your girlfriend’s name?”
“What?”
“Cecilia, right?” Eliot glanced at the dash. “Twenty-four hours, you haven’t mentioned her.”
“What are you saying? I should be grieving?”
Eliot nodded. “That’s what I’m saying.”
“Who the fuck are . . . I’ve been trying to stay alive! People have been driving cattle trucks at my body! Forgive me for not taking a minute to cry on your shoulder about my girlfriend!”
“Solid reasons, delivered with much defensiveness.”
“You asshole! Jesus! As if you know anything about love! What do you think it is? Brain activity? Neurochemicals?”
“I suspect it’s a kind of persuasion.”
“So I’m immune to it? That’s your theory?”
“The most fundamental thing about a person is desire. It defines them. Tell me what a person wants, truly wants, and I’ll tell you who they are, and how to persuade them. You can’t be persuaded. Ergo, you don’t feel desire.”
“That’s bullshit! I loved Cecilia!”
“If you say so.”
“I’m being lectured about love by a robot! I’m broken? You’re broken! Tell me what you think love is! I seriously want to know!”
“Okay,” Eliot said. “It’s defining yourself through the eyes of another. It’s coming to know a human being on a level so intimate that you lose any meaningful distinction between you, and you carry the knowledge that you are insufficient without her every day for twenty years, until she drives an animal transport at you, and you shoot her. It’s that.”
Wil watched the road awhile.
“I’m sorry I called you broken,” Eliot said.
“Forget it.”
“Everyone’s broken,” Eliot said, “one way or another.”
• • •
He slept and woke to the windshield filled with a great metal lattice. A bridge, he realized, its steel beams splashed by yellow sodium-vapor streetlights. Eliot had one arm slung over the seat and was reversing around oncoming traffic. A car swung by them, horn blaring. A motorcycle stuttered past, the driver yelling unintelligibly. They swung around a corner and Eliot turned off the Mini’s engine.
“Traffic camera on the bridge,” said Eliot. “Almost drove through it.”
Wil looked out at a coffee shop advertising waffles. The street was lined with tall, quaint buildings, most in pastel colors under a dusting of snow. The streetlights were trimmed with iron lacework. No people in sight. It felt late. “Where are we?”
“Grand Forks.”
“What are we doing?”
“We’re waiting,” Eliot said. “Once a little time has passed, we’re going to walk across that bridge. One at a time, I think, since I may have aroused suspicion just now. On the other side, we’re going to acquire a vehicle and continue to Minneapolis. There we’ll take passport photos in subpar lighting conditions and visit the Federal Building on Third Avenue South, which is a designated passport agency, and can issue replacement passports to people who have had theirs stolen, which we will claim has occurred. We will be asked to provide documentation proving, firstly, that we’re U.S. citizens, and, secondly, that we are the people named in the first documents. This will occur in a genial, low-pressure interview, as opposed to at the front of an airport queue with an official holding out one hand for our papers, so should allow me to compromise our interviewer into accepting our mall booth passport photos. This person will then begin the process of issuing new passports in false names with our photos on them.”
“Doesn’t that take weeks?”
“No. It takes four hours, if you pay the expedition fee. We will then take a roundabout route to Sydney, balancing the need to arrive before our false documentation is discovered against the need to avoid airports with face-recognition technology. I’m thinking Vancouver and then Seoul, since Korean Air is a good airline for our purposes. No data sharing. Does that answer your question?”
“Yes.” They waited. Wil yawned. A woman walked by who reminded Wil of someone but he didn’t know who.
Eliot opened the door. “Wait ten minutes then walk directly across the bridge. Keep your head down. That’s important. No looking up for any reason. Clear?”
“Clear,” he said. Eliot climbed out. The door went clunk. He watched Eliot’s beige coat disappear around the coffee shop.
The windows fogged. The car filled with cold. He thought about Cecilia. He’d met her in a pet store. He’d walked past and doubled back and pretended to be interested in puppies. Almost bought one, even. Just because she was selling them. On their second date, he discovered she didn’t like animals much. She only liked organizing them. Deciding what they ate. She liked putting them in cages, basically. When Cecilia had started dropping marriage hints, about three months in, Wil had thought of that.
He got out of the car. It was misty, visibility down to a few hundred feet. He stuck his hands in his pockets and started walking. Eyes down. The occasional car plumed by to his left, plowing slush. He reached the bridge and began to cross. A black river slid by below. It was a high bridge. Long, too. He hadn’t realized how long. A pickup truck made an odd note and he looked up before remembering he was not supposed to do that. About halfway across a vehicle approached from behind and slowed. He kept walking. The car’s tires crunched snow. It was keeping pace with him. He didn’t turn. He could see the far side now but no Eliot.
The world splashed red and blue. Static barked. “Sir, stop where you are.” This was a megaphone.
He stopped. A police cruiser rolled up to him. The door opened and a cop with a dark mustache climbed out. “Mind taking your hands out of your pockets, sir?”
He showed his hands.
“Sir, are you the owner of a pink Mini, registration jay cee ex one four zero?”
“No.”
“You don’t know that vehicle?”
“No, officer.” The wind blew. He looked at the end
of the bridge but still no Eliot.
“Where are you headed tonight, sir?”
“I’m just crossing the bridge.”
“I can see that. Where are you headed?”
He checked for Eliot again.
“Am I keeping you from something?”
“No, officer. I’m just cold.”
“Put your hands on the hood, sir.”
“Um,” said Wil.
“Put your hands on the hood.”
He placed his hands on the car.
“Legs apart, please.”
“I’m just out walking.”
“Legs apart.”
He obeyed.
“I’m going to pat you down now. Do you understand what that means?”
“Okay, I was in the Mini. If there’s a fine—”
“Do not turn around!”
“I wasn’t turning around,” he said. The cop grabbed him by the neck of his jacket and spread him across the hood. It was a slab of ice. He could stick to this car. The cop’s hands probed legs and hips, delving into his pockets. He felt a loosening around his buttocks and realized the cop had taken his wallet.
“Wil Parke? That’s you?”
“Look—”
“Stay on the car! You stay there until I tell you otherwise, understand? If you move again, we’re going to have a problem.”
His cheek pressed against the hood, he saw a figure approaching through the snow mist. Eliot? He couldn’t tell.
“Dispatch, four-one-three,” the cop said.
He felt alarm. A cop reporting that he’d picked up Wil Parke, that could be bad. He raised himself from the hood, keeping his hands up so the cop wouldn’t overreact, but a nightstick leaped into his throat anyway and he found himself bending backward over the hood, the cop shouting in his face. “Wait,” Wil said, but the cop wasn’t interested in what he had to say. He caught a glimpse of Eliot’s familiar coat, approaching in brisk strides. The cop’s grip on him slackened. His expression changed. As if the guy were watching TV, Wil thought. Seeing something interesting but far away. The cop unhitched his radio. “Dispatch,” he said, and there were two flat bangs and the cop pinwheeled backward. Eliot walked up to him and fired twice more.
“Fuck!” said Wil. His voice was thin and breathless. “What? What?”