Authority (21 page)

“Not at all,” Whitby said, a smile finally fitted in place, and Control hoped the
man was responding to the first part of what he had said. “What can I help you with?”

Control went along with this fiction Whitby continued to offer up, if only because
he had noticed that the inside lock on the door had been disabled with a blunt instrument.
So Whitby had wanted privacy, but he had also been utterly afraid of being trapped
in the room, too. There was a staff psychiatrist—a free resource for Southern Reach
employees. Control didn’t remember seeing anything in Whitby’s file to indicate that
he had ever gone.

It took Control a moment longer than felt natural, but he found a reason. Something
that would run its course and allow him to leave on the right note. Preserve Whitby’s
dignity. Perhaps.

“Nothing much, really,” Control said. “It’s about some of the Area X theories.”

Whitby nodded. “Yes, for example, the issue of parallel universes,” he said, as if
they were picking up a conversation from some other time, a conversation Control did
not remember.

“That maybe whatever’s behind Area X came from one,” Control said, stating something
he didn’t believe and not questioning the narrowing of focus.

“That, yes,” Whitby said, “but I’ve been thinking more about how every decision we
make theoretically splits off from the next, so that there are an infinite number
of other universes out there.”

“Interesting,” Control said. If he let Whitby lead, hopefully the dance would end
sooner.

“And in some of them,” Whitby explained, “we solved the mystery and in some of them
the mystery never existed, and there
never was
an Area X.” This said with a rising intensity. “And we can take comfort in that.
Perhaps we could even be
content
with that.” His face fell as he continued: “If not for a further thought. Some of
these universes where we solved the mystery may be separated from ours by the thinnest
of membranes, the most insignificant of variations. This is something always on my
mind. What mundane detail aren’t we seeing, or what things are we doing that lead
us away from the answer.”

Control didn’t like Whitby’s confessional tone because it felt as if Whitby was revealing
one thing to hide another, like the biologist’s explanation of the sensation of drowning.
This simultaneous with parallel universes of perception opening between him and Whitby
as he spoke because Control felt as if Whitby were talking about
breaches
, the same breaches so much on his mind on a daily basis. Whitby talking about breaches
angered him in a territorial way, as if Whitby was commenting on Control’s past, even
though there was no logic to that.

“Perhaps it’s your presence, Whitby,” Control said. A joke, but a cruel one, meant
to push the man away, close down the conversation. “Maybe without you here we would
have solved it already.”

The look on Whitby’s face was awful, caught between knowing that Control had expressed
the idea with humor and the certainty that it didn’t matter if it was a joke or serious.
All of this conveyed in a way that made Control realize the thought was not original
but had occurred to Whitby many times. It was too insincere to follow up with “I didn’t
mean it,” so some version of Control just left, running down the hall as fast as he
was able, aware that his extraction solution was unorthodox but unable to stop himself.
Running down the green carpet while he stood there and apologized/laughed it off/changed
the subject/took a pretend phone call … or, as he actually did, said nothing at all
and let an awkward silence build.

In retaliation, although Control didn’t understand it then, Whitby said, “You have
seen the video, haven’t you? From the first expedition?”

“Not yet,” as if he were admitting to being a virgin. That was scheduled for tomorrow.

A silent shudder had passed through Whitby in the middle of delivering his own question,
a kind of spasmodic attempt to fling out or reject … something, but Control would
leave it up to some other, future version of himself to ask Whitby why.

Was there a reality in which Whitby had solved the mystery and was telling it to him
right now? Or a reality in which he was throttling Whitby just for being Whitby? Perhaps
sometimes, at this moment, he met Whitby in a cave after a nuclear holocaust or in
a store buying ice cream for a pregnant wife or, wandering farther afield, perhaps
in some scenarios they had met much earlier—Whitby the annoying substitute teacher
for a week in his freshman high school English class. Perhaps now he had some inkling
as to why Whitby hadn’t advanced farther, why his research kept getting interrupted
by grunt work for others. He kept wanting to grant Whitby a localized trauma to explain
his actions, kept wondering if he just hadn’t gotten through enough layers to reach
the center of Whitby, or if there was no center to reach and the layers defined the
man.

“Is
this
the room you wanted to show me?” Control asked, to change the subject.

“No. Why would you think that?” Whitby’s cavernous eyes and sudden expression of choreographed
puzzlement made him into an emaciated owl.

Control managed to extricate himself a minute or so later.

But he couldn’t get the image of Whitby’s agony-stricken face out of his head. Still
had no idea why Whitby had hidden in a storage room.

*   *   *

The Voice called a few minutes later, as Control was trying desperately to leave for
the day. Control was ready despite Whitby. Or, perhaps, because of Whitby. He made
sure the office door was locked. He took out a piece of paper on which he had scribbled
some notes to himself. Then he carefully put the Voice on speakerphone at medium volume,
having already tested to make sure there was no echo, no sense of anything being out
of the ordinary.

He said hello.

A conversation ensued.

They talked for a while. Then the Voice said, “Good,” while Control kept looking,
at irregular intervals, at his sheet. “Just stabilize and do your job. Paralysis is
not a cogent option, either. You will get good sleep tonight.”

Stabilize. Paralysis. Cogent. As he hung up, he was alarmed to realize that he did
feel as if he
had
been stabilized. That now the encounter with Whitby seemed like a blip, inconsequential
when seen in the context of his overall mission.

016: TERROIRS

At the diner counter the next morning, the cashier, a plump gray-haired woman, asked
him, “You with the folks working at that government agency on the military base?”

Guarded, still shaking off sleep and a little hungover: “Why do you ask?”

“Oh,” she said sweetly, “they all have the same look about them, that’s all.”

She wanted him to ask “What look is that?” Instead, he just smiled mysteriously and
gave her his order. He didn’t want to know what look he shared, what secret club he’d
joined all unsuspecting. Did she have a chart somewhere so she could check off shared
characteristics?

Back in the car, Control noticed that a white mold had already covered the dead mosquito
and the dried drop of blood on his windshield. His sense of order and cleanliness
offended, he wiped it all away with a napkin. Who would he present the evidence of
tampering to, anyway?

*   *   *

The first item on his agenda was the long-awaited viewing of the videotape taken by
the first expedition. Those video fragments existed in a special viewing room in an
area of the building adjacent to the quarters for expedition members. A massive white
console sat against the far wall in that cramped space. It jutted more sharply at
the top than the bottom and mimicked the embracing shape of the Southern Reach building.
Within that console—dull gray head recessed inside a severe cubist cowl—a television
had been embedded that provided access to the video and nothing else. The television
was an older model dating back to the time of the first expedition, with its bulky
hindquarters recessed into an alcove in the wall. Control’s back still retained the
groaning memory of a similar ungainly weight as a college student struggling to get
a TV into his dorm room.

A low black marble desk with glints of Formica stood in front of the television, old-fashioned
buttons and joy sticks allowing for manipulation of the video content—almost like
an antiquated museum exhibit or one of those quarter-fed séance machines at the carnival.
A phalanx of four black leather conference chairs had been tucked in under the desk.
Cramped quarters with the chairs pulled out, although the ceiling extended a good
twenty feet above him. That should have alleviated his slight sense of claustrophobia,
but it only reinforced it with some minor vertigo, given the slant of the console.
The vents above him, he noticed, were filthy with dust. A sharp car-dashboard smell
warred with a rusty mold scent.

The names of twenty-four of the twenty-five members of the first expedition had been
etched on large gold labels affixed to the side walls.

If Grace denied that the wall of text written by the lighthouse keeper was a memorial
for the former director, she could not deny either that this room
did
serve as a memorial for that expedition or that she served as its guardian and curator.
The security clearance was so high for the video footage that of the current employees
at the Southern Reach only the former director, Grace, and Cheney had access. Everyone
else could see photo stills or read transcripts, but even then only under carefully
controlled conditions.

So Grace served as his liaison because no one else could, and as she wordlessly pulled
out a chair and through some arcane series of steps prepped the video footage, Control
realized a change had come over her. She prepared the footage not with the malicious
anticipation he might have expected but with loving devotion and at a deliberate pace
more common to graveyards than AV rooms. As if this were a neutral space, some cease-fire
agreed to between them without his knowledge.

The video would show him dead people who had become darkly legendary within the Southern
Reach, and he could see she took her job as steward seriously. Probably in part because
the director had, too—and the director had known these people, even if her predecessor
had sent them to their fates. After a year of prep. With all of the best high-tech
equipment that the Southern Reach could acquire or create, dooming them.

Control realized his heart rate had leapt, that his mouth had become dry and his palms
sweaty. It felt as if he were about to take a very important test, one with consequences.

“It’s self-explanatory,” Grace said finally. “The video is cued up to the beginning
and proceeds, with gaps, chronologically. You can move from clip to clip. You can
skip around—whatever you prefer. If you are not finished by the end of one hour, I
will come in here and your session will be over.” They had recovered more than one
hundred and fifty fragments, most of the surviving footage lasting between ten seconds
and two minutes. Some recovered by Lowry, others by the fourth expedition. They did
not recommend watching the footage for more than an hour at any one time. Few had
spent that long with it.

“I will also be waiting outside. You can knock on the door if you are done early.”

Control nodded. Did that mean he was to be locked in? Apparently it did.

Grace relinquished her seat. Control took her place, and as she left there came an
unexpected hand on his shoulder, perhaps putting more weight into the gesture than
necessary. Then came the click of the door lock from the outside as she left him alone
in a marble vault lined with the names of wraiths.

Control had asked for this experience, but now did not really want it.

*   *   *

The earliest sequences showed the normal things: setting up camp, the distant lighthouse
jerkily coming into view from time to time. The shapes of trees and tents showed up
dark in the background. Blue sky wheeled across the screen as someone lowered the
camera and forgot to turn off the camcorder. Some laughter, some banter, but Control
was, like a seer or a time traveler, suspicious already. Were those the expected,
normal things, the banal camaraderie displayed by human beings, or instead harbingers
of secret communiqués, subcutaneous and potent? Control hadn’t wanted the interference,
the contamination, of someone else’s analysis or opinions, so he hadn’t read everything
in the files. But he realized right then that he was too armored with foreknowledge
anyway, and too cynical about his caution not to find himself ridiculous. If he wasn’t
careful, everything would be magnified, misconstrued, until each frame carried the
promise of menace. He kept in mind the note from another analyst that no other expedition
had encountered what he was about to see. Among those that had come back, at least.

A few segments from the expedition leader’s video journal followed at dusk—caught
in silhouette, campfire behind her—reporting nothing that Control didn’t already know.
Then about seven entries followed, each lasting four or five seconds, and these showed
nothing but blotchy shadow: night shots with no contrast. He kept squinting into that
murk hoping some shape, some image, would reveal itself. But in the end, it was just
the self-fulfilling prophecy of black dust motes floating across the corners of his
vision like tiny orbiting parasites.

A day went by, with the expedition spreading outward in waves from the base camp,
with Control trying not to become attached to any of them. Not swayed by the charm
of their frequent joking. Nor by the evident seriousness and competence of them, some
of the best minds the Southern Reach could find. The clouds stretched long across
the sky. A sobering moment when they encountered the sunken remains of a line of military
trucks and tanks sent in before the border went down. The equipment had already been
covered over in loam and vines. By the time of the fourth expedition, Control knew,
all traces of it would be gone. Area X would have requisitioned it for its own purposes,
privilege of the victor. But there were no human remains to disturb the first expedition,
although Control could see frowns on some faces. By then, too, if you listened carefully,
you could begin to hear the disruption of transmissions on the walkie-talkies issued
to the expedition members, more and more queries of “Come in” and “Are you there”
followed by static.