Authority (Southern Reach, #2)(17)

“Yes, sorry, it’s just that—”

“Next time,” the Voice said, “I expect you to have something more interesting to tell me. Something I don’t know. Ask the assistant director about the biologist. For example. The director’s plan for the biologist.”

“Yes, that makes sense,” Control agreed, but really just hoping to get off the line soon. Then a thought occurred. “Oh—speaking of the assistant director…” He outlined the issue that morning with sending the anthropologist and surveyor away, the problem of Grace seeming to have contacts at Central that could cause trouble.

The Voice said, “I’ll look into it. I’ll handle it,” and then launched into something that sounded prerecorded because it was faintly repetitious: “And remember, I am always watching. So really think about what it might be that I don’t know.”

Click.

* * *

One thing the scientists told him had been useful and unexpected, but he hadn’t told the Voice because it seemed to qualify as Common Secret Knowledge.

In trying to redirect away from the failed white rabbits experiment, Control had asked for their current theories about the border, no matter how outrageous.

Cheney had coughed once or twice, looked around, and then spoken up. “I wish I could be more definite about this, but, you know, we argue about it a lot, because there are so many unknowns … but, well, I personally don’t believe that the border necessarily comes from the same source as whatever is transforming Area X.”

“What?”

Cheney grimaced. “A common response, I don’t blame you. But what I mean is—there’s no evidence that the … presence … in Area X also generated the border.”

“I understood that, but…”

Davidson had spoken up then: “We haven’t been able to test the border in the same way as the samples taken from inside Area X. But we have been able to take readings, and without boring you with the data, the border is different enough in composition to support that theory. It may be that one Event occurred to create Area X and then a second Event occurred to create the invisible border, but that—”

“They aren’t related?” Control interrupted, incredulous.

Cheney shook his head. “Well, only in that Event Two is almost certainly a reaction to Event One. But maybe someone else”—Control noted, once again, the reluctance to say “alien” or “something”—“created the border.”

“Which means,” Control said, “that it’s possible this second entity was trying to contain the fallout from Event One?”

“Exactly,” Cheney said.

Control again suppressed a strong impulse to just get up and leave, to walk out through the front doors and never come back.

“And,” he said, drawing out the word, working through it, “what about the way into Area X, through the border? How did you create that?”

Cheney frowned, gave his colleagues a helpless glance, then retreated into the X of his own face when none of them stepped into the breach. “We didn’t create that. We found it. One day, it was just … there.”

An anger rose in Control then. In part because Grace’s initial briefing had been too vague, or he’d made too many assumptions. But mostly because the Southern Reach had sent expedition after expedition in through a door they hadn’t created, into God knew what—hoping that everything would be all right, that they would come home, that those white rabbits hadn’t just evaporated into their constituent atoms, possibly returned to their most primeval state in agonizing pain.

“Entity One or Entity Two?” he asked Cheney, wishing there were some way the biologist could have sat in on this conversation, already thinking of new questions for her.

“What?”

“Which Event creator opened a door in the border, do you think?”

Cheney shrugged. “Well, that’s impossible to say, I’m afraid. Because we don’t know if its main purpose was to let something in or to allow something out.”

Or both. Or Cheney didn’t know what he was talking about.

* * *

Control caught up with the assistant director while navigating his way through one of the many corridors he hadn’t quite connected one to the other. He was trying to find HR to file paperwork but still couldn’t see the map of the building entire in his head and remained a little off-balance from the phone call with the Voice.

The scraps of overheard conversation in the hallways didn’t help, pointing as they did to evidence for which he as yet had no context. “How deep do you think it goes down?” “No, I don’t recognize it. But I’m not an expert.” “Believe me or don’t believe me.” Grace didn’t help, either. As soon as he came up beside her, she began to crowd him, perhaps to make the point that she was as strong and tall as him. She smelled of some synthetic lavender perfume that made him stifle a sneeze.

After fielding an inquiry about the visit with the scientists, Control turned and bore down on her before she could veer off. “Why didn’t you want the biologist on the twelfth expedition?”

She stopped, put some space between them to look askance at him. Good—at least she was willing to engage.

“What was on your mind back then? Why didn’t you want the biologist on that expedition?”