The Word Exchange (52 page)

Because I’d had a relatively minor case,
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I’d gone in the hole for just three days. The longest language fast they’d imposed to date had stretched to a week, for one of their colleagues, Alistair Payne, who’d been out in the field helping at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s after the mass infections. He’d managed to get his hands on an infected Nautilus, and after experimentally subjecting himself to the virus, he’d suffered severe damage: seizing, violent, nearly psychotic, raving.
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When he’d arrived at the Glass a week later, escorted by an armed guard and a nurse—and aided in his travel by several influential people who’d interceded on his behalf—no one knew whether seven days would be enough. But experts had agreed that it would have to do. A week was considered the limit of what was safe; longer periods of solitary confinement might backfire, producing bad outcomes—perhaps even Silencing, it was speculated. Fortunately, in Alistair’s case it had worked; he’d recovered.

In fact he’d just served as one of the guards who’d escorted me to Doug’s office. When Doug reached this part of the story, Alistair removed his balaclava, his hair flurrying in a flaxen tumult. Then the other guard took off his mask, too. It was Vernon.

“Vern!” I bayed, face igniting with joy. I leapt from my chair. Caught him off-guard in a quick, unscripted hug. His bony body was an affirmation: it was true. We were all okay.

Startled, Vernon batted gently at my back. “Good to see you, too, Anana,” he said with a laugh, frowning down, his skinny neck somehow begetting a double chin. In his glasses I saw my tiny twinned reflection. How had I not noticed his limp as he’d walked me down the hall? “Sorry,” I murmured, smiling, overcome with giddy shyness and relief.

But Vernon was oddly stiff. Awkward. Twisting away from me, he said, “I’m going to go check on … that,” which seemed to mean something to Doug, who nodded briskly back. Then Vernon dipped his rigid nimbus of hair under the lintel and ducked out.

In the choppy wake of silence that trailed his exit, Doug also acted agitated—clearing his throat, looking toward the door. He started explaining distractedly that news of Alistair’s successful treatment seemed to have spread through certain circles. In the week since, they’d seen a small but steady stream of desperate visitors at the Glass—part of the reason security was so high.

He also began describing the virus. More than one virus, in fact, Doug explained, each of which—replicating in the Internet, Memes, and human cells—has had devastating implications for language and communication. Perhaps because they seem to share the same source: the Germ, designed to corrupt or erase words.

On that night that I got out of quarantine, he told me only some of what I’ve come to learn. What I wanted to confirm was who was behind all of it, and why.

Doug sighed, haskily scratching the dense beard that had grown thick on his neck. Then he explained that some of the “engineers” Synchronic and Hermes had hired to develop Meaning Master and its attendant virus were in fact hackers. “Not just hackers,” he clarified. “Mercenaries, or worse. Terrorists, maybe.”

It was a word I’d heard so much growing up that it had lost a lot of significance. And even in that moment, part of me bucked against it. But I also felt again right then what it meant.

What he was saying was very hard for me to take in, which Doug must have sensed. I’m not good at hiding my feelings, especially from him. “Are you sure … You really want me to keep going?” he asked
softly, looking very doubtful and concerned. But after a moment I nodded grimly, and he gently gripped my arm. Then he said very carefully, “I don’t think anyone at Hermes or Synchronic wanted this.” I knew we were both thinking of Max.

Vernon reappeared then, leaning watchfully against the doorframe. When Doug looked up, I thought I saw them share a strange, strained look that I couldn’t decipher.

Then Doug abstractedly picked up what he’d been saying. At first he’d wondered if the hackers might be abroad. He noted the transliterated Russian and Chinese roots of many fabricated “money words.” And he pointed out that most Memes were manufactured outside the States; it seemed possible that viruses might have been installed during assembly, or tampered with to make them easy to breach.

But during the five and a half weeks that he’d been in the U.K., analysis undertaken by the Diachronic Society, with help from Oxford postdocs, had revealed a fascinating finding: they’d discovered that in fact most hackers were in the U.S., scattered in different affluent suburbs. For very good money, Synchronic and Hermes had recruited brilliant, disaffected young men—and they were nearly all men—some as young as their teens. Gamers, slackers, crackers, mathletes. One, in Santa Barbara, who went by Roquentin,
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was rumored to be a high school freshman.

Apparently the reason so many money words were initially adapted from pinyin and Cyrillic had more to do with the sweatshop laborers first hired to manufacture them, before Meaning Master had been invented (and obviated their employment). These workers were people who, for various reasons, couldn’t afford excessive scruples in following best U.S. business practices. (He also pointed out that while their labor may have been relatively cheap, and in a certain sense discreet, when you don’t pay your workers a living wage and then abruptly fire them, you’d be wise to consider that they may find other ways to make ends meet.) Many of them, as it happened, were Russian or Chinese. Maybe
that was chance. Maybe not. “After all,” said Doug, “their governments spent decades perfecting language-manipulation methods.”
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“Like ours,” I pointed out.

Doug nodded soberly. “Yes,” he said. “I’m afraid that’s true. I think there are quite a few similarities.” Which was perhaps the reason, he explained, that Synchronic was able to find such seemingly like-minded foreign business partners—several in Moscow and Beijing, e.g.—who claimed to have an interest in adapting Synchronic’s business model and developing language exchanges in their own countries.

Doug shifted in his seat. Groped at his shirt pocket as if for the cigarettes he’d given up when I was eight. “But we now think that some of these foreign partners hired hackers of their own—most likely some of the same young men—and may have paid them to disseminate these very destructive viruses. Timed their release to the Future Is Now gala, when a huge number of people would be logged on to the same websites, and used the devices to perpetrate attacks.”

“You really think they’d do that?” I asked, mouth salt-lick dry. “The hackers, I mean. Conspiring with enemies. Isn’t that … treason?” What I was saying felt fake, as if it were from a game. Something I might have played as a kid with my Wyoming cousins, our guns made of wood and glue.

“We don’t know,” Doug maintained. But it was the same tautly calm tone he’d used when I’d asked the year before if he and Vera were getting a divorce. “It’s not entirely impossible that they’ve done at least some of it on their own,” he said. “There’s still a lot more we need to learn.” Somberly he cracked his knuckles, the sound like whiskey poured over ice.

Then Vernon, who’d strode back into the room while Doug was talking, said something that disturbed me maybe even more. From the perch he’d taken up on the edge of Doug’s desk, he said, “Whoever’s responsible, it seems they’ve gotten more than they bargained for.” He confirmed that word flu had spread. The UN and WHO had gotten heavily involved. Just that morning Doug had received a report announcing overflowing quarantines in Belgrade, São Paulo, Lisbon, Seoul. Not to mention Beijing and Moscow.

“The fact is,” Vernon said, clearing his throat, “whether by design or simply
gross
negligence, tremendous harm has been caused. Harm that for many has been fatal.”

When he uttered that word, fatal, it had a very strong effect on me. It conjured Max’s sweaty green face, gleaming with gold-filing stubble. Cracked tooth. Tumified purple eye. And the mean beam of my mind lighted on him, trembling but defiant, standing in the dirty SoPo bathroom, ringed by men in black. Then the light flickered out, sparing me what happened next.

But the flare kept groping my dark cave of fear until it found something else to illumine: Bart, pale as a marble frieze. I missed him. So much it startled me. I pictured the packet of pills I’d pushed under his door. Wondered if he’d ever found them. If they’d worked. With a deep pain, like the ache of an old broken bone, I saw him in a cold, crowded hospital room. Or worse: prostrate on his floor. Alone. Sick and speechless. Terrified.

“Dad,” I interrupted, clutching the arms of my chair. A white light had started erasing my vision and was closing in on his face.

“That’s enough,” Doug said gruffly to Vernon, holding up a hand.

“It’s true,” Alistair said from the corner where he’d been standing guard, so quietly I’d nearly forgotten him. “After three days in the hole, it’s a lot to hear.”

Doug nodded, a little sharply. And as I closed my eyes, taking tiny sips of air, Vernon murmured an apology—something about a morning press conference in London, how he’d thought they wanted me to be briefed. But my ears were buzzing; the words could barely get through.

When I blinked back into the world a minute later, the white cloud had burned off and I could see Doug clearly, scowling with concern. Then I saw him notice me, and he tried to smile. “I’m just so glad you’re all right,” he said, eyes wetly sparkling.

“I’m glad you’re okay, too, Dad,” I said, reaching for his hand. “I didn’t know what happened to you.”

Doug squeezed my fingers, let go, and sighed. “You know, Phineas lied to me, too,” he said, voice stretched thin like an old rubber band. “He’s a good but very complicated man. He and I have a long history. And he’s always done right by me before. But I don’t know why I believed him this time, without speaking to you.” He squeezed my hand again. “It wasn’t until Susan Janowitz faxed Bill here the notice of my
disappearance that I started getting a clearer picture of what was happening back in New York. Even before I reached Phineas to ask him to keep an eye on you, I asked Susan, too, just in case. You met her, didn’t you?”

I nodded, a vision of her red glasses glowing in my face. The scent of almonds, the sensation of her arm on my shoulders almost palpable.

“And say what you will about Susan”—Doug raised his brows—“she took the job to heart. Still, if I’d known Phineas was lying …” He looked down at his hands.

Some of the lies I already knew; I guessed what another might have been.

“Did you believe him?” I asked gently. “About Max and me?”

Maybe seeing Doug safe freed my heart to feel other things. A very tiny, tea-light part of me missed Max right then. I still do. But right away I pressed Doug’s arm and shook my head, telling him not to answer. Because suddenly it struck me: Doug was alive—thriving. And I seemed to be all right. Everyone I loved had made it through. And if I also felt some sadness and guilt about those not covered by the canopy of fortune, I felt, too, that we would find a way to save them all. But I was wrong.

In the hall, Alistair gave me my bags. “Thought you might like these back,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said, grateful. I’d been wearing the same clothes for three days. But as I took my backpack, I noticed the zipper open on the pocket where I’d kept the Aleph. Thought again of how strangely Doug had acted when I’d asked who’d brought it from my hotel. Wondered aloud how they’d gotten my things.

But Alistair avoided my eyes. “Bart,” he said, looking uneasy.

“Bart?
He’s
here
?” I said, shocked. And my stomach fluttered like a wind-torn plastic bag.

Alistair nodded. Glanced at the carpet.

“Where is he? Can I see him?” My mouth twitched into an anxious smile.

Alistair shook his head. “He’s in the hole,” he said.

Disappointed, I said, “So he’ll be out—when?” Silently counted. “Saturday?”

But Alistair kept his gray eyes trained on the floor. Pressed his thin
lips together. “We don’t know,” he confessed softly. “He might be in there longer.”

“How much longer?” I asked, voice rising. “A week?”

Alistair shrugged. When he glanced up, there was no light in his eyes.

“Even when he comes out, we’re not sure he’ll be able to talk.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, mouth dry. “For how long?”

When he didn’t respond, I said, “Ever?”

And he said, “Maybe not.”

At dinner I couldn’t eat. Couldn’t stop picturing Bart locked in a spartan room, mute, sick, and suffering. Why had he come? Had Doug brought him? Was it for work? Maybe—and I hated to think it—for Hermes or Synchronic? Or was there a chance he’d come looking for me? The thought was like tonguing a loose tooth, twin shocks of pleasure and pain. With it came an almost-awareness that also felt bodily; my bones and blood knowing before I did what Bart meant to me. Had meant, for some time. And now he was in the hole. Thoughts of Bart bled into other fears. How many were sick, I wondered. How many dead.

Doug watched me, worry creasing his face, until the end of the meal. Then he took me to the first-floor reading room. And as he’d promised, it was spectacular: like nothing I’d ever seen. Rows and rows of leather-bound books. Ladders to reach them, some on wheels. Newspapers draped like ladies’ delicates over wooden dowels. I hadn’t held a paper paper in years. There was a cabinet with tiny drawers, like the one at the Merc. A grand piano. And as I slowly spun in the center of the room, I felt awed and overcome, and more than ever like Alice, on the wrong side of the mirror.

“Dad,” I mumbled, “I don’t feel so well.” He led me by the elbow to the nearest chair, and I got a good look at the red carpet with its gold fleurs-de-lis, my head bent between my knees. By then Doug had learned what had upset me. And as a distraction he began to narrate the whole, improbable story of his escape from the Dictionary.
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