Lexicon

we’re staying airborne.
The town emerged as a smudge in the snowscape. It had one road in and one road out, perhaps a dozen buildings. As they hovered, she watched black cars rocket up from each direction and disgorge tiny figures. They moved from building to building, gesturing and sometimes stopping to consult each other. The chances of them finding Eliot and the outlier here were a thousand to one. But she had to be careful. The thing to remember was that all the power in the world didn’t stop a bullet. She had been taught chess at the school, years ago, and the point was the pieces differed only in terms of their attacking power. They were all equally easy to kill. Capture. It was called capturing. The lesson was that you should be cautious about deploying your most powerful pieces, because it only required one dumb pawn to take them down.
    The pilot got the signal and began to settle the chopper toward the street. She watched the town tilt toward her through the bubble windshield.
Now’s your chance, Eliot. I’m just sitting here.
Eliot was a bishop, she figured, prone to sneaky long-range attacks, and more mobile than you expected. She had never liked bishops.
    “We’re green,” said the pilot. She unbuckled. A young man with long hair, Rosenberg, opened the door and offered her his hand, which she found kind of insulting and ignored. The chopper’s blades pulled at her hair. She studied the street, trying to sense trace elements of Eliot.
    “Diner’s clear,” said Rosenberg. “I’m guessing they acquired a car here, maybe a couple hours ago. Three proles inside, segmented and compromised, instructed to obey. We haven’t questioned them.”
    “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll take it from here.”
    She made for the low diner. A few poets moved toward her and Rosenberg waved them away. Inside, behind the counter, was a young, scared waitress in a green apron. In a booth was a red-cheeked man she presumed was a farmer. A skinny guy in big glasses was manning a table. The door wheezed closed behind her. The man with glasses rose unsteadily from his table. “I ain’t cooperating with the government. You want to—”
    “Sit down, shut up.” He dropped into his seat. She pointed to the waitress. “You come here.”
    The waitress jerked forward, clutching a notepad. Her eyes were huge.
    “Two men. One dark, one white. You know who I’m talking about?”
    The waitress’s head bobbed.
    “Tell me everything you saw and heard.”
    The waitress began to talk. A minute later, the farmer began to fish a cell phone from his jeans pocket. He was trying to be surreptitious, but his wide checked shirt telegraphed every twitch. She found it fascinating: Did he think she was blind? She let him go awhile, until he got the phone out and opened its lid as carefully as if it contained an engagement ring. Then she said, “Put your hand in your mouth.”
    “And I poured him another refill,” said the waitress. “He was real nice and we got to talking and I asked if he was from L.A. or New York or somewhere like that, and he said yes, he’d been all over, he’d seen fireworks in London and riots in Berlin, and I should go, he said. He said the world was closer than I imagined. Those were his words.” The farmer began to gag. “And then he wanted to talk to his friend, the Australian, and after he asked if he could borrow a car. I said sure, and gave him the keys to my car, and I felt bad, because I hadn’t cleaned it for like a year and I wished I had something nicer. I thought—”
    “I don’t care what you thought.”
    “I asked where he might be going and he said where did I recommend, and I said anywhere but here, and he smiled at that. Then we talked about places I had been, and I said when I was a girl my mom once took me to El Paso, just the two of us, and—”
    “Right,” she said. “Stop.” She pondered. The farmer made a sound like
gwargghh
and threw up around his hand. He had wedged the whole thing in there. She wouldn’t have thought that was possible. She watched him twitch and gag. She should tell him to take that out. There was no benefit in a dead farmer. “Did you hear any talk of towns? States? Airports?”
    “No.”
    “You have no idea where he’s going?”
    “Wherever he wants,” said the waitress. “A man like that.”
    “Yeah,” she said. “Okay.” Outside, her people would have gleaned which direction Eliot had gone, east or west. With the registration