Lexicon

could start a new life. But she came after me and systematically murdered everyone who was in the way.”
    “She’s probably compromised.”
    “You think that makes a difference?”
    “Yes,” said Harry, “because I can
un-
compromise her, with the bareword.”
    “Can’t be done.”
    “Why not?”
    “You can’t erase an instruction. Not even with that. You would only create conflicting instructions.”
    “Which means what?”
    “It’s unpredictable.”
    “Well, that’s fucking something.”
    “The original instruction won’t go anywhere. It could reassert itself at any moment, based on situational factors, such as where she is, how she’s feeling. Do you want to take that chance when one of the instructions is
kill everyone
?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, you fucking can’t.”
    A low thrumming began outside. Harry peered out the window at the sky. “I love her.”
    He shook his head. “You’re misremembering.”
    “I remember that.”
    “Listen to me carefully,” Eliot said, “because over the last twelve months, I have been highly motivated to figure out exactly what happened in Broken Hill, and as a result I know for a fact that your movements diverged from hers shortly after she left me facedown in a ditch. What I pieced together from this was that when she went to you and asked you to leave with her, you said no. This is how I first began to suspect your existence as an outlier. And it’s how I know you didn’t love her.”
    “You said people are defined by what they want. That it’s the most important thing about them. Yes?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then I know who I am.”
    He looked out the window. “Well, terrific. That’s terrific, Wil. I’m so glad you could find your emotional core, before your ex-girlfriend murders us. Imagine what would happen if she got her hands on a bareword again. Imagine that.”
    “I’ll keep it from her.”
    “Okay,” said Eliot, “well, now we’re entering a magical fantasy land, because with all due respect to your newly regained assertiveness, you don’t have a hope in hell of keeping her from anything she wants. What’s that noise?”
    “Choppers.”
    “More than one? What do they look like?”
    “Why would she do anything to help this guy Yeats? She
must
be compromised. He’s
making
her chase us and you say she has to die for it.”
    “You think I like it?”
    “Yes. I do. Because of Charlotte.”
    He looked at the ceiling. “Well,” he said. “Maybe you’re right.”
    “So?”
    “So it doesn’t matter. Is it Woolf’s choice? Maybe not, but she is what she is. You, right now, are shooting at people for the crime of being compromised. Why is Woolf different? Also, may I add, she wasn’t made this way out of nowhere. Yeats sowed that seed in fertile ground.”
    Harry raised his voice over the din of the choppers. “Meaning what?”
    “Meaning she wiped out Broken Hill!”
    “Maybe she was compromised
then
!”
    “You’re choosing what you want to believe! Christ! I would love to believe that I didn’t let three thousand people die because I couldn’t see her for what she was. But I can’t. The truth is she was always like this and I refused to see it.”
    “I tell you what, how about we kill
Yeats
?”
    “Sure, we’ll ask Woolf to stand aside for a minute. Don’t look at me like that’s a realistic possibility. She’ll defend him to the death. And even if she could be circumvented somehow, Yeats being alive is what keeps Woolf in check. Remove him and she’s left with an instruction to
kill everyone
.”
    Harry was watching out the window. The loudness of the choppers seemed to have leveled.
    “You want a nightmare scenario? Yeats goes down, Woolf takes the bareword. Yeats cannot die. Not before Woolf.” Harry didn’t react. “What’s happening out there?”
    “Guys coming out of choppers.”
    “What kind of guys?”
    “Military. Big black helmets with goggles. Can’t see their faces.”
    “Ah,” said Eliot. “So we are completely fucked, then.”
    Harry looked at him.
    “Environmentally Isolated Personnel. They see the world through filters, to protect them against compromise.”
    “Should I shoot them?”
    “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”
    Harry raised the rifle. A part of the window frame near his head exploded. He ducked against the wall. “Shit.”
    “Yes,” Eliot said.
    Harry moved to the other window, checked outside. “They’re encircling us.”
    “I would imagine they’re landing on