Authors: Jeff VanderMeer
“
That
is a box of accusations.”
Attempting a comeback, aware it was feeble: “I see only one accusation there, made
multiple times.”
“I haven’t emptied it yet.”
“Would you like to empty it now?”
She shook her head. “Not yet. But I will if you continue to interfere with Central.
And you can take your spies with you.”
Should he lie? That would defeat the purpose of sending the message.
“Why would I bug you?” With a look that he knew undercut his innocence, even as indignation
rose in him as ardently as if he
were
innocent. Because in a way he thought he was innocent: Action bred reaction. Lose
a few expedition members, gain a few bugs. She might even recognize some of them.
But Grace persisted: “You did. You also rifled through my files, looked in all of
my drawers.”
“No, I didn’t.” This time his anger was backed by something real. He hadn’t ransacked
her office, only placed the bugs there, but now even that act troubled him the more
he thought about it. It was out of character, had served no real purpose, had been
counterproductive.
Grace continued on patiently. “If you do it again, I’ll file a complaint. I’ve already
changed the pass-key combination on my door. Anything you need to know, you can just
ask me.”
Easily said, but Control didn’t think it was true, so he tested it: “Did you put the
director’s cell phone in my satchel?” Couldn’t bring himself to ask the even more
ludicrous question “Did you squash a mosquito in my car?” or anything about the director
and the border.
“Now, why would I do that?” she asked, echoing him, but she looked serious, puzzled.
“What are you talking about?”
“Keep the bugs as souvenirs,” he said. Put them in the Southern Reach Olde Antique
Shoppe and sell them to tourists.
“No, I mean it—what are you talking about?”
Rather than respond, Control got up, retreated into the corridor, not sure if he heard
laughter from behind him or some distorted echo through the overhead vent.
014: HEROIC HEROES OF THE REVOLUTION
Later, as he was wallowing in the notes, plugging his ears and eyes with them, to
forget about Grace—if he hadn’t ransacked Grace’s office who had?—the expedition wing
buzzed him and an excitable-sounding male voice told Control that the biologist was
“not feeling good at all—she says she’s not up for an interview today.” When he asked
what was wrong, the man told him, “She’s been complaining of cramps and fever. The
doctor says it’s a cold.” A cold? A cold was nothing.
“Hit the ground running.” The notes and these sessions were still firmly within his
domain. He didn’t want to postpone, so he’d go to her. With any luck, he wouldn’t
bump into Grace. Whitby he could’ve used help from, but even though he’d buzzed him,
the man was making himself scarce.
As he said that he’d stop by soon, Control realized that it might be some ploy—the
obvious one of not playing along, but also that by going he might be giving up some
advantage or confirming that she held some power over him. But his head was full of
scraps of notes and the puzzle of a possible clandestine trip by the director across
the border and the deadly echo of muffled interiors of jewelry boxes. He wanted to
clear it out, or fill it up with something else for a while.
He left his office, headed down the corridor. Of the smattering of personnel in the
hall beyond some were actually in lab coats for once. For his benefit? “Bored?” a
pale gaunt man who looked vaguely familiar murmured to the black woman walking beside
him as they passed. “Eager to get on with it,” came the reply. “You prefer this place,
you really do, don’t you?” Should he be playing it by the book more? Perhaps. He couldn’t
deny that the biologist had gotten lodged inside of his head: A faint pressure that
made the path leading to the expedition wing narrower, the ceilings lower, the continuous
seeking tongue of rough green carpet curling up around him. They were beginning to
exist in some transitional space between interrogation and conversation, something
for which he could not quite find a name.
“Good afternoon, Director,” said Hsyu, head rising unexpected from a water fountain
to his left so that it was as if a large puppet or art installation had come to life.
“Is everything okay?”
Everything had been fine just a second before. Why would anything be different now?
“You just looked very serious.” Perhaps
you’re
not very serious today; couldn’t that be it? But he didn’t say it, just smiled and
continued on down the hall, already leaving the Lilliputian domain of the linguistics
subdepartment.
Every time the biologist spoke something changed in his world, which he found suspicious
on some level, resented it for the distraction. But not a flirtation, no, nor even
the ordinary emotional bond. He knew with absolute certainty that he would
not
become overly fixated or obsessional, enter into some downward spiral, if they continued
to talk, to share the same space. That had no place in his plans, didn’t fit his profile.
The expedition wing featured four layers of obvious security, with the debriefing
room they usually used perched on the edge of the outer layer—right after you passed
through a decontamination zone that scanned you for everything from bacteria to the
ghost of that rusty nail that had risen up through your foot on the rocky beach when
you were ten. Considering the biologist had stood in a festering empty lot full of
weeds, rusted metal, cracked concrete, and dog shit for hours before arriving, this
seemed pointless. But still they did it, with an unsmiling and calm efficiency. Beyond
that, all was rendered in an almost blinding white that contrasted with the washed-out
teal-and-copper textures of the rooms off the corridor. Three more locked doors lay
between the rest of the Southern Reach and the “suites,” aka the holding areas. A
texture and tone that might once have been futurist but now felt retro-futurist clung
to white-and-black furniture that had an abstract modernist quality. This is a version
of a chair. This is an approximation of a table, a counter. The “bedeviled” glass
partitions, as his dad would have joked, had been etched and frosted into simplistic
wilderness scenes, including a row of reeds with an approximation of a marsh hawk
hovering above. Like most such efforts, all of this could have come from the set of
a low-budget 1970s sci-fi movie. It had none of the fluidity and sense of frozen motion,
either, that his father had tried to put into his abstract sculptures.
In the minimalist foyer and rec rooms that served as preamble to the suites you could
also find a novel’s worth of photographs and portraits that had no relationship to
reality. The photographs had been carefully chosen to suggest post-mission success,
complete with grins and cheers, when they actually depicted pre-mission prep, often
for expeditions gone disastrously wrong, or actors from photoshoots. The portraits,
a long procession of them ending at the suites, were worse, in Control’s estimation.
They depicted all twenty-five “returning” members of the first expedition, the triumphant
pioneers who had encountered the “pristine wilderness” that in fact had killed all
but Lowry. This was the alternative reality any staff that came into contact with
expedition members had to support. This was the fiction that came with its own made-up
or tailored stories of bravery and endurance meant to evoke these same qualities in
the current expedition. Like some socialist dictatorship’s glorious heroes of the
revolution.
What did it mean? Nothing. Had the biologist believed it all? Perhaps. The tale wanted
to be believed, begged to be believed: a story of good old national can-do pride.
Roll up your sleeves and get down to work, and if you try hard enough you’ll come
back alive and not a broken-down zombie with a distant gaze and cancer in place of
a personality and an intact short-term memory.
* * *
He found Ghost Bird in her room, on her cot—or, someone other than him might have
reported back, her bed. The place combined the ambiance of a whitewashed barracks,
a summer camp, and a failing hotel. The same pale walls—although here you could see
painted-over graffiti, the same as in a prison cell. The high ceiling included a skylight,
and on the side wall a narrow window, too high for the biologist to peer out of it.
The bed had been built into the far wall, and opposite it a TV with DVD player: approved
movies only and a couple of approved channels. Nothing too realistic. Nothing that
might fill in the amnesia. It was mostly ancient science-fiction and fantasy movies
or melodramas. Documentaries and news programs were on the No list. Animal shows could
go either way.
“I thought I would visit you this time, since you don’t feel well,” he said, through
his surgical mask. The attendant had already said she had given her permission.
“You thought you’d crash my sickness party and take advantage of me not being at full
strength,” she said. Her eyes were bloodshot and hooded with shadow, her face drawn.
She was still wearing the same odd janitorial-military outfit, this time with red
socks. Even sick, she looked strong. She must do push-ups and pull-ups at a ferocious
rate, was all he could think.
“No,” he said, spinning an ovoid plastic chair so, before he’d thought through the
visual, he could lean against the back, legs awkwardly splayed to either side. Did
they not allow real chairs for the same reason airports only had plastic knives? “No,
I was concerned. I didn’t want to drag you to the debriefing room.” He wondered if
the medication for her sickness had made her fuzzy, if he should come back later.
Or not at all. He had become uncomfortably aware of the power imbalance between them
in this setting.
“Of course. Phorus snails are known for their courtesy.”
“If you’d read further in your biology text, you would have discovered this is true.”
That earned him half a laugh, but also her turning away from him on the bed-cot as
she hugged an extra yellow pillow. Her V of a back faced him, the fabric of her shirt
pulled tight, the delicate hairs on the smooth skin of her neck revealed to him with
an almost microscopic precision.
“We could go into the common area if you would prefer?”
“No, you should see me in my unnatural environment.”
“It seems nice enough,” he said, then wished he hadn’t.
“The Ghost Bird has a usual daily range of ten to twenty square miles, not a cramped
space for pacing of, say, forty feet.”
He winced, nodded in recognition, changed the subject. “I thought maybe today we’d
talk about your husband and also the director.”
“We won’t talk about my husband. And
you’re
the director.”
“Sorry. I meant the psychologist. I misspoke.” Cursing and forgiving himself at the
same time.
She swiveled enough to give him a raised eyebrow, right eye hidden by the pillow,
then fell back into contemplating the wall. “Misspoke?”
“I meant the psychologist.”
“No, I think you meant director.”
“Psychologist,” he said stubbornly. Perhaps with too much irritation. There was something
about the casualness of the situation that alarmed him. He should not have come anywhere
near her private quarters.
“If you say so.” Then, as if playing on his discomfort, she turned again so she was
on her side facing him, still clutching the pillow. She peered up at him and said
with a kind of sleepy cheekiness, “What if we share information?”
“What do you mean?” He knew exactly what she meant.
“You answer a question and I’ll answer a question.”
He said nothing, weighing the threat of that versus the reward. He could lie to her.
He could lie to her all day long, and she’d never know.
“Okay,” he said.
“Good. I’ll start. Are you married or ever been married?”
“No and no.”
“Zero for two. Are you gay?”
“That’s another question—and no.”
“Fair enough. Now ask away.”
“What happened at the lighthouse?”
“Too general. Be more specific.”
“When you went inside the lighthouse, did you climb to the top? What did you find?”
She sat up, back to the wall. “That’s two questions. Why are you looking at me that
way?”
“I’m not looking at you in any particular way.” He’d just become aware of her breasts,
which hadn’t happened during prior sessions, and now was trying to become unaware
of them again.
“But that’s two questions.” Apparently, he’d given the correct response.
“Yes, you’re right about that.”
“Which one do you want answered?”
“What did you find?”
“Who says I remember any of it?”
“You just did. So tell me.”
“Journals. Lots of journals. Dried blood on the steps. A photograph of the lighthouse
keeper.”
“A photograph?”
“Yes.”
“Can you describe it?”
“Two middle-aged men, in front of the lighthouse, a girl out to the side. The lighthouse
keeper in the middle. Do you know his name?”
“Saul Evans,” he said without thinking. But couldn’t see the harm, was already mulling
over the significance of a photograph that hung in the director’s office also existing
in the lighthouse. “That’s your question.”
He could tell she was disappointed. She frowned, shoulders slumped. Could tell as
readily that the name “Saul Evans” meant nothing to her.
“What else can you tell me about the photo?”
“It was framed, hanging on the wall at the middle landing, and the lighthouse keeper’s
face was circled.”
“Circled?” Who had circled it, and why?
“That’s another question.”
“Yes.”
“Now tell me what your hobbies are.”
“What? Why?” It seemed like a question for the wider world, not the Southern Reach.
“What do you do when you’re not here?”
Control considered that. “I feed my cat.”