Authority (Southern Reach, #2)(16)
The video the scientists showed him had no sound, just a voice-over, but Control knew from the records that an awful screaming had risen from the herded rabbits once the first few had been driven across the border. A kind of keening and a mass panic. If the video had continued, Control would have seen the last of the rabbits rebel so utterly against being herded that they turned on the herders and fought, leaping to bite and scratch … would have seen the white of the shields stained red, the researchers so surprised that they mostly broke ranks and a good two hundred rabbits went missing.
The cameras were perhaps even less revealing. As if the abandoned rushes from an intense movie battle scene, they simply showed the haunches and the underside of the hind paws of desperately running rabbits and some herky-jerky landscape before everything went dark. There were no video reports from rabbits that had crossed over the border, although the escapees muddied the issue, the swamps on either side looking very similar. The Southern Reach had spent a good amount of time in the aftermath tracking down escapees to rule out that they were receiving footage from across the border.
Nor had the next expedition to Area X, sent in a week after the rabbit experiment, found any evidence of white rabbits, dead or alive. Nor had any similar experiments, on a far smaller scale, produced any results whatsoever. Nor had Control missed a finicky note in one file by an ecologist about the event that read, “What the hell? This is an invasive species. They would have contaminated Area X.” Would they have? Would whatever had created Area X have allowed that? Control tried to push away a ridiculous image of Area X, years later, sending back a human-size rabbit that could not remember anything but its function. Most of the magicians were all snickering at inappropriate places anyway, as if showing him how they’d done their most notorious trick. But he’d heard nervous laughter before; he was sure that, even at such a remove, the video disturbed many of them.
Some of the individuals responsible had been fired and others reassigned. But apparently adding the passage of time to a farce left you with an iconic image, because here was the noble remnant of the science division, showing him with marked enthusiasm what had been deemed an utter failure. They had more to show him—data and samples from Area X under glass—but it all amounted to nothing more than what was already in the files, information he could check later at his leisure.
In a way, Control didn’t mind seeing this video. It was a relief considering what awaited him. The videos from the first expedition, the members of which had died, save one survivor, would have to be reviewed later in the week as primary evidence. But he also couldn’t shake the echo of a kind of frat-boy sensibility to the current presentation, the underlying howl of “Look at this shit we sent out into the border! Look at this stunt we pulled!” Pass the cheap beer. Do a shot every time you see a white rabbit.
When Control left, they had all stood there in an awkward line, as if he were about to take a photograph, and shook his hand, one by one. Only after he and Whitby were back on the stairs, past the horrible black gloves, did he realize what was peculiar about that. They had all stood so straight, and their expressions had been so serious. They must have thought he was there to cull yet more from their department. That he was there to judge them. Later still, scooping up some of the bugs from his desk on his way to carry out a bad deed before calling the Voice, he wondered if instead they were afraid of something else entirely.
* * *
Most of this Control told the Voice with a mounting sense of futility. Not a lot of it made much sense or would be news; he was just pushing words around to have something to say. He didn’t tell the Voice that some of the scientists had used the words environmental boon to describe Area X, with a disturbing and demoralizing subtext of “Should we be fighting this?” It was “pristine wilderness,” after all, human-made toxins now absent.
“GODDAMMIT!” the Voice screamed near the end of Control’s science report, interrupting the Voice’s own persistent mutter in the background … and Control held the cell phone away from his ear for a moment, unsure of what had set that off, until he heard, “Sorry. I spilled coffee on myself. Continue.” Coffee somewhat spoiled the image of the megalodon in Control’s head, and it took him a moment to pick up the thread.
When he was done, the Voice just dove forward, as if they were starting over: “What is your mental state at this moment? Is your house in order? What do you think it will take?”
Which question to answer? “Optimistic? But until they have more direction, structure, and resources, I won’t know.”
“What is your impression of the prior director?”
A hoarder. An eccentric. An enigma. “It’s a complicated situation here and only my first full da—”
“WHAT IS YOUR IMPRESSION OF THE PRIOR DIRECTOR?” A howl of a shout, as if the gravel had been lifted up into a storm raining down.
Control felt his heart rate increase. He’d had bosses before who had anger-management issues, and the fact that this one was on the other end of a cell phone didn’t make it any better.
It all spilled out, his nascent opinions. “She had lost all perspective. She had lost the thread. Her methods were eccentric toward the end, and it will take a while to unravel—”
“ENOUGH!”
“But, I—”
“Don’t disparage the dead.” This time a pebbled whisper. Even with the filter, a sense of mourning came through, or perhaps Control was just projecting.