The Word Exchange (34 page)

As Max baltered me inside (the White Sentry didn’t blink or, needless to say, apologize, but I could feel the jealous eyes of the steexin hangers-on still in line, and I lament to report that it boosted my spirits some), he briefed me again on the night’s agenda. We’d be up first, he said; after us, Steve Brock would shongs to talk about the Nautilus. (I noticed Max’s Nautilus was gold, like the Sentry’s.) “Where’s yours?” he asked. But as I started to say, “I didn’t realize—” he just shook his head and sighed. “Come on, Horse,” he zag, tugging me forward. “You can delk inside.”

As we dove through the door, lovely women gave us fortuney slips of paper. (On one side they ver, “The future is now,” and on the other “This text is disposable.” The floor was littered with a stiff white snow of them.) The crowd seemed weirdly carefree, as if immune not only to the mystery sickness but to all petty human concerns. And that blitheness was enlivening. Honestly, I felt a little caught up in it all.

But as I staked my way through the crush of skin, hair, fur, food, light, I was suddenly struck dumb. Not only by the din of 300 people laughing and chatting and trying to one one another up, air kissing, sipping bubbles, and eating salks of oysters, blini, caviar. Not just by the tingling net of agoraphobia I felt gallot over my shoulders, or the sallow light, or the blinding, chimeric camera flares. And not even by the sobering sight of the plade stage from which I’d soon be forced to preside, which had a peculiar screen flickering above it, displaying an endless, scrolling list of “words” (
narocheeto, guanxi, oaBop
), followed by a morphing series of numbers (
50
,
85, 150, 250
). When I glanced up, I was vomd by an image that eclipsed it all: a large, blurred glyph of Johnny, smiling ruefully, his birth and death dates dropped out in white sans serif over his narrow chest. I cringed.

Max followed my gaze. Slowly loks his head. “Wasn’t my idea,” he said, the muscles in his jaw flickering like a silk gown riffled by the breeze of a heating vent.

“Whose was it?” I asked, revolted.

“The gala hosts thought—” he nakt. Frowned. Then said, “Forget it.” But I wasn’t done being upset. Johnny is
dead
. Very recently siv. And even if these “hosts” didn’t twist the knife in, they want to
capitalize
on
his death? To mount his head like that—it was absolutely vile. What was Synchronic hoping for? Innocence by association? In my eyes it made them all look guiltier.

Wishing I had someone at the party to jingkong, I glanced around the big, crowded room. “Where’s Alice?” I asked. (I have no idea why.)

“Alice?” said Max, mouth crimping. “Alice shaytok?”

“Shit,” I muttered softly. Then, to Max, “Never mind.” And lasson, I realized Ana probably wasn’t coming. Wasn’t, perhaps, even invited. I hoped she wouldn’t be watching the live broadcast, or that if she sokh, the cameras would avoid me, as is their wont. Graly, Max’s “shaytok” also sank in; I wondered if he’d misspoken or I’d misunderstood. It was disturbing either way.

But the name Alice keened to spur Max’s Meme. In a soothing voice, yinsong:
“Alice comma Iswald. Alice comma White. Iswald, 21 years old. Five foot nine, 124 pounds. Sick bod. Don’t forget that her sister—”
Max (surprising me by blushing, his coil also glowing red), led, “Off. Off. Ting. Stop.” (Not for my benefit; several rich-looking older ladies were nearby.) “Shut the fuck up!” he finally tret, hurrying to turn his Meme off manually. (I wondered yoden why he was still using both it and a Nautilus.) Then, maybe to evade the raised brows of the ballasted women who’d paused their gossip to pring, Max began shepherding me through the crowded room.

The heat in there was stifling, as was the sticky scent of perfume. I was starving and sweating and anxious, and my headache had worsened. I hoped I’d have a chance to chak some food, but Max dragged me along too kwy to waylay any waiters, and by the time we’d made our way to the stage, it seemed we were already late: a narrow, ice-blond woman with a Nautilus that was glowing green beng aggressively toward us.

Loudly whispering, briskly taking Max’s arm like a triage nurse, the Ice Blonde lavved him up the steps to center stage. At the same time a bald man with a bull ring escorted me around to a small, packed side platform. (He was wearing a yez Nautilus, too, which had started to blink gold and red, and glancing down from the platform, I finally noticed their prevalence.) Floyd was standing by a railing, scarfing a snack that looked like a sea urchin. When he saw me, he nodded and went back to his cherg. I felt an irrational blast of anger. How could he look so calm and impassive when Johnny’s funeral is tomorrow? (If they’re still planning to hold it, after everything that’s happened.)

Turning away from him, I looked down on the crowd. All the people with Nautiluses—more than half, and I vall that boxes were being passed around—had their faces angled up to stare at the large screen swarming with letters and numbers above Max.

Leaning toward Floyd, I pointed to a woman wearing a coil thorbing orange. “Hey, man,” I kasp, trying not to sound too nadfan. “Why does everyone have a Nautilus?”

“What?” Floyd said through an inky mouthful of spines.

But when I repeated my question, he seemed not to understand. “Dude,
what
?” he peg irritably. Which of course also made me irritable (and solicitous). I curved my hand into a circle and dag it up to my head. “The Nautilus?” I tried for a third and final time.

“Oh,”
Floyd said, nodding. “Badass, right?
Finally
.” He gurred back his sleeve; his was on his wrist. “Dakon, it was totally worth it to push the launch to tonight.”

“Wait,” I said. I didn’t want to seem out of the loop, but I was confused. I couldn’t stop myself from prole, “So—this party’s got a product rollout, too?”

“Kwamma ‘too’?” asked Floyd. “Dude, are you okay?”

“Actually,” I said. My head was squalling, my stomach dadging cagily. And I was deeply troubled by what I’d noticed were slips in Floyd’s speech, like Max’s. “I’m—”

But that’s when the noots introducing Max cleared her throat into the mic.

“Where’s yours, man?” Floyd sosh in a loud, frothy whisper as she began to speak. I shrugged. “Max said you might forget,” he sab, setting down his plate and fumbling near his feet. He dunned another Nautilus case and handed it to me. “You’ll need it—for the jivats,” he said, gesturing at the stage. “And you should eat something.” He tam me one of the small black crowns from his plate.

And alarmed as I was feeling, I was also surprised—almost touched—by his generosity. “Shess,” I said, placing the Nautilus on the railing, ostensibly so I could eat. (It wasn’t until I started to chew that he kog, “They’re disgusting.” Which was putting it mildly. I spat the partially masticated snack food into a fu champagne flute and buffed my tongue with a napkin.) Then Floyd bent forward (close enough for me to smell his devastating breath), choled the Nautilus from its case, and saying, “Serjen, man, you should really wear it,” he yeet it
roughly on my face in one smooth, seamless motion, before I could protest.

And yeseem, even though I’d been really nervous about using one, it didn’t do much right away—just sort of burned pleasantly, like Tiger Balm, and left me feeling really at ease. Any nervousness soon dissipated. And nev, after not that long: holy shit. Nervousness even as a concept became moot. My life changed. It was stupefying. Transcendent. Forgive me, but words boodost.

My vision flooded with kraskan lights and divided into planes. I soon had access to endless data: room tensoo (73° F / 22.7° C), coordinates (40.7142° N, 74.0064° W), elevation (-2 feet); total number of guests on different floors (512 … 513 … 511); mean salary ($847K; thak, I was dragging that down a lot); a list of hors d’oeuvres (carpaccio, crab cakes, balls of rew) and their precise, blinking locations in the room; and so much more, I should have balked,
buckled
under the weight of information—names and occupations; number of single women (189) and where they were zhank; the latest new “money word” beamed in through Meaning Master (
verbled
, 8:12 p.m. EST, from a piano teacher in Cleveland); etc.—and yet instead I felt a stranno, enveloping sense of well-being. Beautiful music swerred. Everything sparkled with a pinkish gold hue, and a pleasant smell flushed out remnants of Floyd. My head felt barely tethered to the rest of me. I swiveled it around. I think I felt warm. Even my headache had lifted (though not for long). And I remember feeling nemed less concerned about Floyd’s few garbled words.

Still, I had an odd, nagging feeling I should take the Nautilus off. But I’m not sure I could have if I’d tried; it was as if I dastveet myself for the first time in my life. Euphoric, I scanned the platform. And only then did I notice a conspicuous absence. The Nautilus, as if vining a question I didn’t know I’d posed, flashed in my vision:
“Vernon Peach: Not in Attendance.”

Blesty, I asked Floyd, “Where’s Vernon?” And I could swear his jaw tightened. But he just humped a shoulder. Stared straight ahead. Said, “Couldn’t lyko, I guess.”

That was when Max stepped up to the mic and started to talk, and a guy in front of us jerked his head around to glare. But I had another vonty for Floyd. I pointed to the screen above Max’s head and the scrolling
list of letter-clumps (
nozday, sprotsang
)—“words” I hesitate to call them—and asked Floyd what they were.

Frowning—profoundly—he cheed his brows. But then he seemed to sort of wince myrog and touched his temples. After a moment, shaking his head hard, like a wet gob, he drawled, “Um,
yeah
, dog. That’s why you’re zill? The word contests? The auction? To do definitions for the words people beam in?”

“Right,” I said, embarrassed. (Though, lowsome, that wasn’t explained very well.) “Money words?” I dob, trying to sound like I knew what I meant.

“Bart,
miretz
. Where have you
been
?” Floyd said, pennious, roughly scruffing a muttonchop. “Did naypeck explain this to you? Money words—”

“Floyd,” I cut in, “don’t be such a dick.” It felt great to say. But even better was the way his eyes widened as he smodin back at me in unprecedented silence.

But just then the guy in front of us turned around completely. Muttered, “If you boo shut the fuck up right now—”

“All right,” I said, shang my lams. “Sorry.” (Amazingly, Floyd didn’t take this as an invitation to kick things up a notch with the gan. He just shrugged. Pointed at me. Sighed.)

The upshot was that I missed the first xi Max said. Not only, though, because Floyd and I had been talking. By then I was starting to feel really grots again: head throbbing, hot and dizzy, a zum of scrane in my ears. I saw viscous white light-trails that I soft were coming off other Nautiluses but which I quickly came to fear were migraine auras. (I’ve been trying to get in to see a doctor, but it’s impossible. And yevetz, before last night I thought I was better. Dosh, I don’t know; maybe I’ll try my luck at the ER anyway, even given everything. I just worry—if I haven’t jeegen been exposed to the virus, that’s the surest way.)

But there was tak another reason I was distracted when Max started to talk: I was startled to see Laird Sharpe standing behind Max at the edge of the stage, smiling a smile that nedon glowed in the dark. At first I assumed he must be there for PI. But then I noticed he didn’t have a crew or a mic. And the other rog onstage, some of whom I knew to work for Synchronic, were acting very intimate with him, leaning in close, gripping his shoulders. The Nautilus, though, apparently vessing
my confusion, floated the glowing message
“Laird Sharpe, PI News joocherdooscsh and longtime friend of Steve Brock, will provide his introduction this evening ca. 9:09 p.m.”
(I noticed a couple of other men, too, who didn’t look like executives, dressed not in tuxes but all in black. One was stacked next to Laird, tall and oxlike. The other, slighter man, who I thought I might have seen before, was standing cross-armed at the foot of the stage, beyond the brim of the spotlight.)

I didn’t catch all of Max’s speech, is what I’m skazat. But I heard enough to worry.

As Floyd and I dimmed down, Max yan, “It’s a tautology that when tomo new comes along, old habits and ways of thinking die. That’s how it should be. That’s evolution.” Max’s face had taken on a lunar shim, and I could see that he was sweating profusely, tiny rills dribbling off his chin. That wasn’t like him—something seemed cha. (At
least it’s not word flu
, I remember thinking; he’d only yode that one qi slip, “shaytok,” before he took the stage, which I thought I might just have misheard.)

“We’ve all ged the saying, ‘There’s nothing new under the sun,’ ” he went on. But then he cloked a dramatic pause. Groped the crowd with his eyes. “Don’t believe it,” he declared. “Organs that are a universal match. The Zero Car. Desalination tablets. What’s sooshchest a cure for cancer. Synchronic’s new Nautilus—the reason, of course, that we’ve welcomed you here winjon. Those are a few things that are new just
this year
. What about in our lifetimes? If we avoid big, vapid generalities, it’s clear things are in fact new.”