by Max Barry
Oh, Christ, he thought. I’m in Broken Hill.
He explored his surroundings with his hands. Something tugged on his arm, which turned out to be a tube. He was attached to something. He levered himself up his pillow, inch by inch, and saw a hat stand, draped with tubing and three bags. One of the bags bulged with clear fluid, one had dark fluid, and one appeared to have contained dark fluid until recently but was now mostly empty. He felt bewildered, because he didn’t remember any of this.
A second crack. This time he identified it as a gunshot. A rifle. His thoughts began to order themselves. He had driven to Broken Hill with the outlier, Wil. A farmer had shot him. When he’d realized the wound was fatal, he’d told Wil to leave him. But Wil hadn’t wanted to. It had been one of those frustrating situations where Eliot had needed to convince Wil of something but couldn’t, because the guy was an outlier. Also, stupidly stubborn. Eliot had passed out before this was really resolved. It seemed that in the meantime, Wil had saved his life.
He heard footsteps. He lay still until he was sure they were approaching, then began to feel around for a weapon. As Eliot saw it, there were two plausible scenarios. In one, Wil had driven away with the bareword, as Eliot had instructed, and the footsteps belonged to someone from the organization, coming to kill him. In the other, they belonged to Wil, who had been too cowardly to leave, and instead hung around hoping Eliot would wake up and tell him what to do. Either way, Eliot felt the need to shoot someone.
The deadliest object he could see was the hat stand, which could possibly serve as a club. He tugged at the covers to free his legs. He hadn’t progressed very far with this when a man appeared in the doorway. The man had a rifle slung over his shoulder and for a second Eliot didn’t recognize him.
“Lie down,” Wil said. He crossed the room and peered out the window.
Eliot sunk into the pillow, crushed by the weight of his own bitter disappointment. He shouldn’t have expected any different. Wil had done nothing Eliot asked of him from the moment they met. Eliot had been foolish to think he would start now just because everything depended on it. He plucked at the blanket. “We . . . leave. Now.”
Wil ignored him. He was looking at something outside. Eliot couldn’t tell what.
“Listen, you . . . fuck,” said Eliot. “Woolf . . . is coming.” He tried to say more, but it degenerated into coughing. When he opened his eyes, Wil was holding a cup of water. Eliot took it. There was something different about Wil’s manner. The reason Eliot hadn’t recognized Wil before: Wil was different somehow. Eliot had the odd, discombobulating thought: That isn’t Wil Parke.
The Wil-person watched him drink without expression. When Eliot finished, he said, “Lie down.”
“Have to—”
“You’re about to pass out again,” said the Wil-person. “Lie down.”
He felt the truth of this but fought it anyway. “Woolf.”
“You mean Emily. Emily Ruff.”
Oh, God, Eliot thought.
“Don’t think you mentioned that. You talked a lot about Woolf. But you never mentioned that I knew her. Knew her pretty well, as it turns out.”
“I . . . can . . . explain.”
“Yeah,” said Wil. “You’ll explain. But first, you’re going to sleep.” He hefted the rifle. “I need to shoot some guys.”
What guys? Eliot tried to say. But unconsciousness got him first.
• • •
He fell into sleep, but not far. He remembered a phone ringing in the dark. It had been a while ago. But he had been lying down, like this, feeling Broken Hill all around him. He had opened his eyes and seen curtains. A bedside clock. Hotel, he’d remembered. I’m in a bed, in a hotel, in Sydney. The phone rang and rang but he hadn’t moved in case it dissolved, revealing that he was back on that road, his face in the dirt, lying still.
He picked up the phone. “Your wake-up call, Mr. Eliot. It’s four thirty.”
“Thank you.” He placed the receiver back on the cradle, carefully, and it did not dissolve. He rose and drew back the curtains. Beyond was the city: the famous Sydney Opera House wreathed in light; behind that, the hulking steel bridge. A few boats on the bay, lights bobbing. These things were comforting to him, the water, the steel, because they proved it was not three weeks ago, when Broken Hill had died around him.
He showered and dressed. A newspaper lay outside his hotel room door and he stepped over it. Downstairs, a limo idled for him, the bellhop already moving to open its door. The city’s winding streets slid by, tinted dark, then the bay, as they crossed the bridge and navigated the zoo. On a narrow road, dark waves lapped at rocks. The limousine finally drew to a halt beside a set of steep steps and the driver indicated that Eliot should ascend them.
At the top was a colonial house. There was a terra-cotta plaza, lit by a dozen craftily concealed garden lights, with a small ornate table and chairs, and on one of these was Yeats.
“Before you come any closer,” Yeats said, “take a look at the water.”
He turned to look. The bay was a black mirror; he wasn’t sure what he was supposed to notice. He turned back to Yeats.
“It’s good to see you.” Yeats had risen silently while Eliot’s back was turned and was now coming at him with a hand outstretched. Eliot took it. As always, Yeats was about as readable as a wooden fence. Within the organization, there was conjecture as to whether he’d had cosmetic surgery to paralyze his face. Eliot tended to think yes, because he knew Yeats had a personal surgeon, but occasionally he saw a contracting procerus or occipitofrontalis and doubted himself. “How are you?”
“I was briefly paralyzed three weeks ago,” he said. “Since then, I’ve been fine.”
Yeats gestured to a seat. “No lingering effects?”
“Not since sunrise on the second day.”
“As she instructed. Fascinating. To be honest, I remain shocked that a poet of your caliber could succumb to it.”
“‘It.’” He sat. “Let’s call it what it is. A bareword.”
“Apparently so.”
“You’ll excuse me,” Eliot said, “but I’m feeling somewhat put upon.”
“How so?”
“You sent me to Broken Hill without telling me what I was dealing with.”
“I believe I told you it was high-testing.”
“There’s high testing,” Eliot said, “and then there’s that thing.”
There was silence. “Well,” said Yeats, “obviously its efficacy took us by surprise.”
A woman appeared and began to generate tea and coffee. Eliot waited. When she left, he said, “Are we going to talk plainly?”
Yeats spread his palms.
“You arrived in Broken Hill within hours. Clearly, you were nearby. Clearly, information has been kept from me. I want to know why. Because I’m having trouble understanding what I did to deserve less trust than Plath.”
“What was it like?”
“What was what like?” he said, although he knew.
“Quick, I imagine. But you must have perceived something. A split second of vanishing awareness. A grasping at a shrinking light.”
“It was like being fucked in the brain.”
“I wonder if you can be more specific.”
“You had this thing in DC. I’m sure you have plenty of data from those poor fucks you put through the labs.”
“Some. But I wish to hear it from you.”
He looked out at the black water. “Regular compromise feels like sharing the cockpit. Like there’s someone else in there with you, flipping switches behind your back. This gave me no sensation of being able to regain control. None at all. It felt like being worn. By something primal.”
Moments passed. “Well,” said Yeats. “For that I apologize. It was not my intention to sacrifice you. Indeed, I selected you precisely because I consider you my most able colleague, and most likely to stop her. As for why I kept my whereabouts from you, I confess that was insurance against the possibility that Woolf wo
uld turn you against me. A selfish decision. But I have no wish to square off against you, Eliot. The very idea terrifies me.”
He let this pass. In the distance, an animal, unidentifiable, made a very Australian sound. “So we have a bareword.”
“The first in eight hundred years,” Yeats said. “It’s rather exciting.”
“Where is it now?”
Yeats shrugged slightly. “Where she left it.”
“Pardon me?”
“We haven’t recovered it,” Yeats said. “It’s still in the hospital somewhere, apparently.”
“Apparently?”
“Local authorities have sent in several teams, none of which have made it out. I presume it’s the word that’s killing them.”
He took a moment to compose himself. “It’s surprising to me that you haven’t taken all necessary steps to recover it. I cannot express how surprising that is.”
“Mmm,” said Yeats. He gazed into the darkness awhile. “Let me ask you a question. If the word is so powerful, why did those who wielded it fall? For they did fall; the stories are united on that. In every case, the appearance of a bareword is followed by a Babel event, in which rulers are overthrown and a common tongue abandoned. In modern terms, it would be like losing English. Imagine the sum total of our organization’s work, gone. Our entire lexicon wiped out. And yet apparently this has happened. Apparently it happens following each discovery of a bareword, without fail. Is that not curious?”
“All empires fall, eventually.”
“But why? It’s not for lack of power. In fact, it seems to be the opposite. Their power lulls them into comfort. They become undisciplined. Those who had to earn power are replaced by those who have known nothing else. Who have no comprehension of the need to rise above base desires. Power corrupts, as the saying goes, and the bareword, Eliot, is not only absolute power, but worse: It is unearned. I need do nothing to possess it other than pick it up. This troubles me. I ask myself: If I seize the bareword, do I remain as I am? Or does it corrupt me?”
“I have no idea,” he said. “But I’m pretty certain we can’t leave it in the fucking desert.”
Yeats was silent.
He leaned forward. “Bring it back home. Seal it up. Christ, sink it in concrete. Bury it for another eight hundred years.”
Yeats glanced away.
“We don’t need it,” Eliot said. “Unless you have an urge to build a tower.”
“There is another issue. Woolf escaped.”
He closed his eyes. It was unprofessional but he needed to do it. “How is that possible?”
“She’s quite resourceful,” Yeats said. “As I believe you know.”
“The newspapers said nobody made it out alive.”
“Surely you didn’t trust them.”
“Where is she?”
“I have no idea.”
“You have no idea?”
“As I said,” said Yeats, “resourceful. She managed to get someone out, too.”
“Who?”
“Presumably, the man she went back for.”
“Harry?”
“Yes, that name sounds familiar.”
“So let me get this straight,” he said. “There’s a bareword in Broken Hill. The whereabouts of the poet who used it to kill three thousand people remain unknown. Am I missing anything?”
“No,” said Yeats. “I believe that’s everything.”
“I feel I must be missing something,” he said, “since this situation is insane.”
Yeats was silent.
“The bareword must be recovered. Woolf must be neutralized. Surely you see that this is indisputable.”
Yeats tested his tea. “Yes. You are correct, of course. It shall be done.”
For some reason, Eliot didn’t believe him. “I’ll find Woolf.”
“Actually, you will return to DC. Your flight is booked. You depart this afternoon.”
He shook his head. “I want to stay.”
“How are you, Eliot?”
“You already asked me.”
“I ask again, because this is the second time in our conversation that you have used the word want. Were you a third-year student, I would be appalled.”
“I’ll rephrase. It’s important to neutralize Woolf and I’m the best we have.”
“But how are you?” Yeats’s eyes held his. “She has shaken you. I see it plainly. Was it the bareword? No. Something else. You were always too close to her. You developed affection. Why, I have no idea. But it clouded your judgment then and continues to do so now. You feel betrayed. You are infected with the desire to atone for your failure to stop her in Broken Hill.”
“That’s how you see what happened? As my failure?”
“Of course not. I speak of how you see it.” Yeats gazed across the bay, to where soft fingers of sunlight edged over forested hills. “A tragedy like this, we all blame ourselves.”
Do we, Eliot thought. “I strongly believe I should stay.”
“That is why you cannot.” The sun bloomed along the tree line of the far hill, throwing spears into the bay. “Ah,” said Yeats. “Here we are. Watch.”
A menagerie of animal voices rose to greet the light, hooting and cawing. Where sunlight touched it, the water flared bright blue. It took Eliot a moment to realize that the glittering wasn’t a visual effect: The waters were moving.
“Kingfish,” said Yeats. “The light draws the plankton, the plankton draws smaller fish. The minnows draw the kingfish. More precisely, the kingfish are already there, waiting, since they are intelligent enough to perceive patterns and draw inferences.”
Eliot didn’t respond.
Yeats sighed. “Stay. Search this country for Woolf, if that is what’s required to regain control of your conscience.”
He turned these words over. He couldn’t tell whether they were a kindness or a threat. But there was no denying how he felt. “Thank you,” he said.
• • •
He sensed light. At first he thought it was the sunlight on the bay. Then he opened his eyes. The light was coming through windows. Between the windows stood Wil. Wil with a rifle. The walls were a pale hospital blue. He was in Broken Hill.
“Morning,” said Wil.
“What,” said Eliot. “Time. Is it.” He began to extract himself from the sheets.
“You’re going to want to stay in that bed.”
“No. Definitely. Not.” He got his legs over the side. This caused some flaring of his vision and a looseness in his head, and he took a few moments to sit quietly, eyes closed. When he opened them, Wil was pointing the rifle at something outside. Eliot remembered the noise he’d heard before: crack. “What are you doing?”
Wil didn’t answer. He was holding that rifle very naturally, Eliot noticed. The barrel followed whatever Wil was tracking in a smooth line, like an extension of his body. Then it jerked. Wil stepped back against the wall, pulling back the rifle’s bolt and reloading it with a cartridge from his jeans. “It’s about six in the morning.”
Eliot felt disbelief. If that were true, Woolf would be here already. The town would be flooded with proles, or EIPs, or poets, or all three. It couldn’t be morning because they were still alive. “We have to leave.”
“We’re not going anywhere, Eliot.”
“We—” he began, but Wil raised the rifle very quickly, and Eliot fell silent. Wil’s body became completely still. The rifle jerked. Eliot said, “Please tell me what you think you’re doing.”
“Shooting guys.”
“What guys?”
“Proles, I guess.”
“You’re shooting proles,” Eliot said. “I see. When it’s a guy in a chopper and I ask you to shoot him, you won’t. But now you’re shooting proles.”
Wil moved from one window to the other.
“There isn’t a limited supply,” Eliot said. “If you haven’t figured that out. She’ll send as many as it takes.”
“Who? Emily?”
Oh, yes, Eliot
thought. Wil had remembered. That was why he was handling a rifle like he’d used it all his life: because he had. “What do you think you’re doing, Wil?”
“Harry.”
“What?”
“My name is Harry Wilson.”
“Right,” Eliot said. “Of course, my mistake—what the fuck are you doing, Harry?”
“Waiting.”
“Waiting for . . .” His mind reeled. “For her?” Wil, or Harry, or whoever he was, didn’t answer. But clearly yes. Clearly he had a terrible, ill-informed notion of the situation, which was going to get them both killed. It was Eliot’s fault, of course. Like everything else. “She isn’t who you think.”
“Is she Emily Ruff?”
“Yes,” Eliot said, “Woolf is Emily Ruff. But—”
“You understand why I have a problem with that. The whole thing with you wanting to kill her.”
“Are you aware you’re acting like a different person? As in, a completely different person?”
“I remembered.”
“Okay,” Eliot said, “but I regret to inform you that what you’re remembering is no longer valid, because when you changed, so did she. She is no longer the girl you used to hang with in Broken Hill and share milk shakes and ride kangaroos or whatever the fuck. Now she kills people. She is coming to kill us.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Why would I lie about this?”
“Charlotte.”
He searched for the words. “You think that’s why I hate Woolf? Because of Montana?”
Harry shrugged.
“Well, fuck!” Eliot said. “You got me! Since she made me shoot the woman I loved, I’ve been carrying a grudge! Jesus fucking Christ!” He dragged a hand across his brow. Harry regarded him expressionlessly, and this absurdity, the stillness of the man he knew as Wil Parke while Eliot raged, was not lost on him. He’d been a poet, once. “There is the little fact that Woolf was a murderous bitch who was hunting us both even before that.”
“You lied to me.”
“What was I supposed to do? You’re the only outlier! I didn’t have the option of finding one who hadn’t slept with her. Wil, I get that you’re pissed. I do. But look at yourself. The instant you found out she used to be Emily, you gave up. I’m sorry I lied to you. But that doesn’t change the fact that we have to stop Woolf. We have to. What can I say to convince you?”