Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1)(17)

An image began to form in my mind, of the anthropologist creeping down in the dark to observe the creator of the script. The glittering glass tubes strewn around her body made me think that she had hoped to take a sample. But how insane or oblivious! Such a risk, and the anthropologist had never struck me as impulsive or brave. I stood there for a moment, and then backtracked even farther up the stairs as I motioned to the surveyor, much to her distress, to hold her position. Perhaps if there had been something to shoot she would have been calmer, but we were left with only what lingered in our imaginations.

Another dozen steps up, right where you could still have a slit of a view of the dead anthropologist, I found two sets of boot prints, facing each other. One set belonged to the anthropologist. The other was neither mine nor the surveyor’s.

Something clicked into place, and I could see it all in my head. In the middle of the night, the psychologist had woken the anthropologist, put her under hypnosis, and together they had come to the tower and climbed down this far. At this point, the psychologist had given the anthropologist an order, under hypnosis, one that she probably knew was suicidal, and the anthropologist had walked right up to the thing that was writing the words on the wall and tried to take a sample—and died trying, probably in agony. The psychologist had then fled; certainly, as I walked back down I could find no trace of her boot prints below that point.

Was it pity or empathy that I felt for the anthropologist? Weak, trapped, with no choice.

The surveyor waited for me, anxious. “What did you find?”

“Another person was here with the anthropologist.” I told the surveyor my theory.

“But why would the psychologist do that?” she asked me. “We were going to all come down here in the morning anyway.”

I felt as if I were observing the surveyor from a thousand miles away.

“I have no idea,” I said, “but she has been hypnotizing all of us, and not just to give us peace of mind. Perhaps this expedition had a different purpose than what we were told.”

“Hypnotism.” She said the word like it was meaningless. “How do you know that? How could you possibly know that?” The surveyor seemed resentful—of me or of the theory, I couldn’t tell which. But I could understand why.

“Because, somehow, I have become impervious to it,” I told her. “She hypnotized you before we came down here today, to make sure you would do your duty. I saw her do it.” I wanted to confess to the surveyor—to tell her how I had become impervious—but believed that that would be a mistake.

“And you did nothing? If this is even true.” At least she was considering the possibility of believing me. Perhaps some residue, some fuzziness, from the episode had stuck in her mind.

“I didn’t want the psychologist to know that she couldn’t hypnotize me.” And, I had wanted to come down here.

The surveyor stood there for a moment, considering.

“Believe me or don’t believe me,” I said. “But believe this: When we go up there, we need to be ready for anything. We may need to restrain or kill the psychologist because we don’t know what she’s planning.”

“Why would she be planning anything?” the surveyor asked. Was that disdain in her voice or just fear again?

“Because she must have different orders than the ones we got,” I said, as if explaining to a child.

When she did not reply, I took that as a sign that she was beginning to acclimate to the idea.

“I’ll need to go first, because she can’t affect me. And you’ll need to wear these. It might help you resist the hypnotic suggestion.” I gave her my extra set of earplugs.

She took them hesitantly. “No,” she said. “We’ll go up together, at the same time.”

“That isn’t wise,” I said.

“I don’t care what it is. You’re not going up top without me. I’m not waiting there in the dark for you to fix everything.”

I thought about that for a moment, then said, “Fine. But if I see that she is starting to coerce you, I’ll have to stop her.” Or at least try.

“If you’re right,” the surveyor said. “If you’re telling the truth.”

“I am.”

She ignored me, said, “What about the body?”

Did that mean we were agreed? I hoped so. Or maybe she would try to disarm me on the way up. Perhaps the psychologist had already prepared her in this regard.

“We leave the anthropologist here. We can’t be weighed down, and we also don’t know what contaminants we might bring with us.”

The surveyor nodded. At least she wasn’t sentimental. There was nothing left of the anthropologist in that body, and we both knew it. I was trying very hard not to think of the anthropologist’s last moments alive, of the terror she must have felt as she continued trying to perform a task that she had been willed to do by another, even though it meant her own death. What had she seen? What had she been looking at before it all went dark?

Before we turned back, I took one of the glass tubes strewn around the anthropologist. It contained just a trace of a thick, fleshlike substance that gleamed darkly golden. Perhaps she had gotten a useful sample after all, near the end.

* * *

As we ascended toward the light, I tried to distract myself. I kept reviewing my training over and over again, searching for a clue, for any scrap of information that might lead to some revelation about our discoveries. But I could find nothing, could only wonder at my own gullibility in thinking that I had been told anything at all of use. Always, the emphasis was on our own capabilities and knowledge base. Always, as I looked back, I could see that there had been an almost willful intent to obscure, to misdirect, disguised as concern that we not be frightened or overwhelmed.