Lexicon (32 page)

“How ridiculous,” he said.

De Castro watched him. Goethe said, “There is no denying you have been making efforts to retrieve it. However, the more time that passes, the more one wonders whether one is witnessing not
efforts
so much as
charades
.”

“I do not have the bareword,” Yeats said. “For proof, please note the obvious fact that if I did, I would be using it to spare myself this conversation.” His phone buzzed again. “Excuse me.”

He turned away, plucked the phone from his pants, glanced at the screen, and repocketed it. He gazed into the distance, digesting the words: SIGHTING [email protected] IN 24 POI 665006.

The message was automated, sent by a computer whenever a person of interest—a PoI—was sniffed out by one of the vast number of surveillance systems to which he had access. Because those systems were less than perfectly reliable, possible sightings became messages only when the computer had accumulated sufficiently many of sufficient quality to pass a particular confidence level. In this case, they were informing him of three sightings in the past twenty-four hours, plus one from earlier, which were ninety-five percent likely to be Person of Interest number 665006, which, he knew from memory, was Virginia Woolf.

He returned to Goethe and de Castro. “Frankly,” said de Castro, as if no time had passed at all, “I see little point sitting down to discuss digital interconnectedness and social media when such an overwhelming issue remains unresolved.”

“It is resolved,” he said. “I honestly don’t know what else I can tell you.” It struck him as remarkably suspicious that there would be a Woolf sighting at this moment, in this meeting. He wondered which delegate was responsible.

“You can tell me the current location of Virginia Woolf,” said de Castro. “That troubles me, also.”

“We looked. We didn’t find her. It seems likely she is dead.”

Goethe looked at de Castro. “He claims not to know.”

“William, I hear things,” said de Castro, “from people in your organization, as you no doubt hear things from people in mine. And the most disturbing tale has reached me. In it, Virginia Woolf steals the bareword and brings it to Broken Hill not out of some adolescent fit of pique, as you described, but rather at your command, as part of a test of the word’s effectiveness. Clearly, given the current population of Broken Hill is now zero, this test was a resounding success. Which is alarming in itself, William, for as much as we hold you in the highest regard, we are all undermined by your possession of a kind of persuasion against which there is no defense. But the part of this tale that troubles me most is the idea that Virginia Woolf, as your agent, is out there somewhere, engaged in some activity that serves your purpose. I cannot imagine what that might be. And that makes me most uncomfortable.”

Throughout this, Yeats’s phone had continued to vibrate. He had developed the uncomfortable suspicion that the coincidence of Woolf’s sighting during this meeting might not be due to a delegate. It might be due to Woolf.

“Confide in us,” said Goethe. “We are your allies, William.”

“I do not have the word,” he said. “And Virginia Woolf is dead. Now, I am terribly sorry, but I will not be able to attend our meeting after all. Something unavoidable has come up.”

•   •   •

He took a chopper cross-town and set down on the DC office helipad. This occupied thirteen minutes. In the meantime, he attempted to coordinate people via his phone. This proved difficult because every few seconds it wanted to tell him about an incoming message, which required a tap to dismiss, and by the time the building was in sight this was what Yeats was spending the majority of his time doing, tapping to return his phone to a useful state. When a computer server became so busy acknowledging incoming requests that it had no time to respond to them, it was called a Denial of Service attack, a DoS. Yeats was being DoSed. He surrendered and put his phone away.

Freed from the helicopter, he considered the elevator but opted for the flexibility of stairs. One flight later, he emerged into tastefully muted lighting. His assistant rose from her desk, mouth opening, full of messages. “Not now, thank you, Frances,” he said, and closed the double doors behind him. The lights brightened in response to his presence. This month, his office was a paean to eighteenth-century feudal Japan: paper dividers, low, simple furniture. On the wall behind his desk a samurai sword hung under lights. Yeats had chosen none of this; it was periodically redecorated in a random style, to avoid betraying personal aesthetics. He planted himself behind his desk and tapped the keyboard to wake his screens.

His predecessor hadn’t used a computer. They had been considered secretarial tools. Hard to imagine now. His displays filled with red boxes. Now that the computer’s thresholds had triggered, it was vomiting up sightings from days ago, even weeks, made newly plausible by more recent data. A voiceprint from a hotel in Istanbul. A woman with matching facial characteristics in Vancouver. He inspected the picture: sunglasses, hat, nothing he would bet on, but the computer liked the cheekbones. A taxicab security photo, grainy and desaturated, from a route that corresponded with what the computer was figuring out about Woolf’s movements. That was Seattle, yesterday. The notification boxes were a moving stream but Yeats managed to snag one with a recent time stamp. It was from the building’s security system. Its confidence level was ninety-nine percent. Woolf was outside, right now.

His office had a balcony. He was mildly tempted to go out and peer over the railing, see if he could pick her out. But that would be risky. That was, possibly, what Woolf wanted him to do. There could be a sniping issue. The fact was, as much as he believed he understood Woolf, she had been missing for a year and he had no idea how she had changed.

His phone chimed. He felt rising excitement and waited until it was gone. “Yes?”

“I’m so terribly sorry. But there are so many people who wish to speak to you, and they’re saying quite alarming things.”

“Is one of those people Frost?” The poet responsible for building security. Yeats had spoken to him from the chopper, in between phone notifications, and asked him to execute certain important, long-planned orders. Specifically, Frost was to fill the lobby with Environmentally Isolated Personnel, men and women with black suits and guns who saw the world through a computer-filtered display and heard nothing but white-listed words. These had proved insufficient to retrieve the word from Broken Hill—the teams sent in had rather spectacularly killed each other—but that meant nothing, because he had deliberately engineered it. He was fairly confident that they could stop Woolf.

“No, I haven’t heard from Frost.”

“I’ll speak to Frost,” Yeats said. “No one else.” He closed the speaker. Red boxes continued to slide down his monitors. He saw the word LOBBY. He leaned back in his chair.

So she’d entered the building. If all was proceeding as he’d instructed, Woolf would currently be on the floor, her hands bound in plastic, electrical tape being spread across her mouth. She would be lifted up and borne to a windowless cell. Then Frost would call.

He folded his hands and waited. A new red box slid up his screen. POI POSSIBLE SIGHTING: WOOLF, VIRGINIA. SECOND FLOOR. He looked at this awhile, trying to imagine circumstances in which Security might have decided to take Woolf up rather than down. He reached for the speaker. By the time he got the handset to his ear, a new notification had arrived. THIRD FLOOR. Was there a delay on these? A few seconds? It had never mattered before.

“Frances, would you mind putting the floor into lockdown?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And please attempt to reach Frost.”

“Right away.”

His screen blanked. The lights went out. Part of the lockdown. Nothing to be concerned about. He waited. His breathing was steady. He felt no emotion. Minutes passed. The lights came on.

He pressed for the speaker. “Frances, why has the lockdown lifted?”

“I don’t know. I’m finding out.”

Noise in the background. Quite loud; he could almost feel its low echoes through the door. “Who else is there?”

“It’s . . . how can I help you?”

A female voice spoke. Indistinct; he couldn’t identify it. The phone clicked off. He slowly put it down.

He had recognized Woolf’s natural aptitude for attack very early on. It would have been disappointing if she’d fallen to Frost and the soldiers. He would have missed his chance to test himself. Of course, there was the real possibility that she was about to walk in here and destroy him. That was a concern.

These were feelings. He didn’t need them. He would prevail or he would not.

He steadied his breathing and began to pray.
O God, be with me and guide my hand. Let me transcend this petty flesh and become Your holy force.
Warmth spread through his body. His relationship with God was his greatest resource. It had allowed him to become who he was. So many promising colleagues had fallen to temptation. They managed their physiological needs, eating and breathing and fucking deliberately and on schedule, taking care to remain in control at all times, but their social needs—their basic human desire to love, to belong, and be loved—these were simply suppressed, because there was no safe way to indulge them. And yet they were named
needs
for a reason. The human animal craved intimacy at a biological level, relentlessly, insistent. Yeats had seen many promising careers derailed by surrenders to intimacy: men who whispered confessions to whores, women whose eyes lingered on children. On such small betrayals were psyches unraveled. He had unraveled several himself.

He had struggled in his early years. It seemed vaguely amusing now. Infantile. But he remembered the loneliness. The way his body reacted when a woman smiled at him, the surge of desire it evoked to join with her, not merely in a physical sense but beyond that, to confide and be understood. It had been almost overwhelming. Then he discovered God.

It had been terribly alarming. The very idea, a poet succumbing to religion! He was shocked at himself. But the feeling was undeniable and grew week by week. He could no longer believe he was alone. He began to see the divine in everything, from the circumvoluted fall of a leaf to the fortuitous arrival of an elevator. Occasionally, when the sterility of his job pressed close, he felt the presence of God like a figure in the room. God was with him. God loved him. It was ridiculous, but there it was.

It was a tumor, of course. Oligodendroglioma, a cancerous growth in an area associated with feelings of enlightenment
.
The feelings it aroused could be reproduced through electrical stimulation. It wasn’t fatal, but it would need to be removed, his surgeon told him, as Yeats looked over the black-and-white scans, because it would continue to grow. Over time, there would be less and less of him and more of the tumor. His brain was being eaten by God.

He left the clinic in fine spirits. He had no intention of removing the tumor. It was the perfect solution to his dilemma: how to feed his body’s desire for intimacy. He was delusional, of course. There was no higher presence filling him with love, connecting him to all things. It only felt that way. But that was fine. That was ideal. He would not have trusted a God outside his head.

•   •   •

The door opened and a woman stepped through. She was wearing a long white coat that reached the floor. The hem was spattered black with liquid that might have been mud or dirt or might have been Frost. She had white gloves. A necklace, something on it that twisted and hurt to look at. He closed his eyes. He reached into his diaphragm for his strongest voice. “
Vartix velkor mannik wissick! Do not move!
”

There was silence. “Ow,” said Woolf. “That kind of hurt.”

He groped for his desk drawer.

“Credit to you, Yeats. I spent a long time preparing for you to say those words. And I still felt them.”

He got the drawer open. His fingers closed on a gun. He raised it and squeezed the trigger. He kept firing until the clip was empty. Then he dropped it to the carpet and listened.

“Still here.”

There was a sword on the wall behind him. Three hundred years old, but it could cut. He had no training. But that might not matter, if she came close enough. She might think it was decorative, until too late.

“So I’m here to kill you,” she said, “just in case there was any doubt.”

He breathed. He required a few moments to calm himself. “Emily.”

“Woolf,” she said. “Woolf, now.”

Interesting. Had she changed segments? It was possible. She might not have merely improved her defense but managed to alter her base personality in certain important ways. It could be done, with practice. In which case, she would be vulnerable to a different set of words. Yes. She would have rejected her previous self in order to distance herself from what she had done in Broken Hill. He needed to figure out what she had become. “How did you get here?”

“Walked, mostly.”

“The lobby was supposed to contain a fairly overwhelming number of security personnel.”

“The goggle guys? Yeah. They’re screened somehow, right? Filtered against compromise.”

“They’re supposed to be.”

“They are. But Frost isn’t.”

“Ah,” he said. “So there were no goggle guys.”

“Nope.”

Difficult to read a person you couldn’t see. The visual cues were so important. But it could be done. He could do it. The important thing was that she was still talking. “I gather you feel wronged by me?”

“You could say that.”

“Well,” he said. “I won’t demean us both by pretending to apologize. But may I point out that killing me won’t serve your interests?”

“Actually, I disagree with you there. I mean, I thought about it. Come here with the word, make you run the organization for me; that would be interesting. And I can’t deny there is a real appeal in turning you into my slave for life. But that’s not an option. I have a little problem, you see. I picked it up in Broken Hill, when you sent me to deploy that kill order. I kind of looked at it. I caught a reflection. It wasn’t enough to compromise me. Not completely. It was backward, you know. And not very clear. But I think a piece of it got in there. I call it my star. That’s what it feels like. A star in my eye. It’s not very nice, Yeats. It wants me to do bad things. But I figured out a way to control it. I just need to concentrate on killing you. When I do that, the star isn’t so bad. I don’t feel like I need to hurt anyone else. So you see, you dying is kind of a nonnegotiable at this point.”