Lexicon

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 would 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?