Lexicon

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,”