Lexicon

sheathed in plastic, lay a scalpel.
    When he entered the cockpit, Tom was lying on his back, buried up to his elbows in the underside of the instrument panel. Wil held out the scalpel. “What is this?”
    “Not now, Wil.”
    “Look at this.”
    Tom’s head appeared. His expression did not change. He disappeared beneath the panel again.
    “What were you going to do to me?” He had to raise his voice over the rising thrumming of the chopper. “That guy said you were going to pull my head open. That’s what he said. Pull my head open. And I’m starting to wonder, Tom, whether that was an expression.”
    “Will you fuck off?”
    “
Were you going to kill me?
”
    “I’ll kill you now if you don’t get out of here.”
    Wil moved forward with the scalpel. He wasn’t going to stab Tom. He just wanted to be taken seriously. But Tom’s hand flashed out and grabbed Wil’s wrist and twisted the scalpel from it. He tossed the scalpel into the back of plane, looked at Wil condescendingly, and climbed into the pilot’s seat.
    Wil said, “You owe me an answer.”
    “We were going to do whatever was necessary.” Tom flicked a row of switches. “If we could get the word that destroyed Broken Hill from you without requiring us to crack open your head, terrific. We’d go that way. If not, the other. It’s better than what the other side wants for you.”
    “It doesn’t fucking sound better.”
    “I know Woolf,” Tom said. “I’ve known her since she was a sixteen-year-old girl. Trust me, this is better. Sit the fuck down.”
    Light burst in the windshield. Wil raised his arm. The searchlight had found the plane. Beneath its gaze, the runway looked like black glass. The thrumming overhead was like thunder.
    “Well, now I can see.” Tom thumbed the black button. The engines thumped. A low whine of power began to build. Something above Wil’s head went
thwack thwack thwack
. The plane began to trundle forward.
    “They’re shooting at us. Are they shooting at us?”
    “Yes.”
    They bumped forward, gaining speed. “You know there’s a chopper up there.”
    “I know.”
    “So even if we get off the ground, how are we going to get away from the chopper?” The plane’s momentum pressed at him. He seized the back of Tom’s chair. He was going to regret not sitting down. But he wasn’t leaving. “
How do we get away from the chopper, Tom?
”
    “Planes are faster than choppers.” Tom pulled on the yoke. They lifted off.

SUICIDE CULT CLAIMS SIX
    MONTANA: Police discovered the bodies of six people on an isolated ranch outside of Missoula on Tuesday, victims of an apparent suicide pact.
    The dead included the owner of the ranch, well-known local herder Colm McCormack, 46, and his wife, Maureen McCormack, 44. Colm McCormack ran unsuccessfully for local office last November.
    No further details were available.

[SIX]
    Word filtered around that Kerry had won New Hampshire. He was going to be the Democrat nominee for president. “There it is,” said Sashona. She played with the end of her beaded dreadlocks. “Four more years of Bush.”
    Emily sat in the back row. She didn’t join in these discussions. She was kind of a loner.
    “Why would we back Bush?” argued a boy. “Kerry’s pro-media; he’ll be better for us.”
    Because Bush is polarizing
, thought Emily. “Because Bush is polarizing,” Sashona said.
    • • •
    She had sixteen classes per week. In between, she was expected to study and practice. Not on other students. That was a rule. Her first day, wearing a uniform that still smelled of the plastic wrapping, she’d stood in Charlotte’s office and taken a lecture. There were many rules, and Charlotte took her through each of them, patiently and in detail, like Emily was retarded. At first Emily thought this was because Charlotte was carrying a grudge, but as the lecture wore on, she realized no. Charlotte just thought she was that stupid.
    “This is a nonnegotiable rule of the school,” Charlotte said. “Indeed, of the organization as a whole. Should you break it, there will be no excuses. No second chances. Am I making myself clear?”
    “You’re making yourself clear,” Emily said.
    At this point, she didn’t know what
practicing
meant. It took her months to find out. She thought they were going to teach her persuasion; instead, she got philosophy, psychology, sociology, and the history of language. Back in San Francisco, Lee had given her a little speech about how this