Authority (Southern Reach, #2)(32)

“Yeah, there’s a lot of enabling of each other’s dip-shittery. It’s almost all we’ve got.”

“We don’t even understand how every organism on our planet works. Haven’t even identified them all yet. What if we just don’t have the language for it?”

“Are we obsolete? I think not, I think not. But don’t ask the army’s opinion of that. A circle looks at a square and sees a badly made circle.”

“As a physicist, what do you do when you’re faced by something that doesn’t care what you do and isn’t affected by your actions? Then you start thinking about dark energy and you go a little nuts.”

“Yeah, it’s something we think about: How do you know if something is out of the ordinary when you don’t know if your instruments would register the progressions? Lasers, gravitational-wave detectors, X-rays. Nothing useful there. I got this spade here and a bucket and some rubber bands and duct tape, you know?”

“Hardly any scientists at Central, either. Am I right?”

“I guess it’s kind of strange. To practically live next to this. I guess I could say that. But then you go home and you’re home.”

“Do you know any physics? No of course you don’t. How could you?”

“Black holes and waves have a similar structure, you know? Very, very similar as it turns out. Who would’ve expected that?”

“I mean, you’d expect Area X to cooperate at least a little bit, right? I’d’ve staked my reputation on it cooperating with us enough to get some accurate readings at least, an abnormal heat signature or something.”

Later, a refinement of this statement: “There is some agreement among us now, reduced though we may be, that to analyze certain things, an object must allow itself to be analyzed, must agree to it. Even if this is just simply by way of some response, some reaction.”

These last two utterances, jostling elbows, Cheney had offered up a bit plaintively because, in fact, he had staked his reputation to Area X—in the general sense that the Southern Reach had become his career. The initial glory of it, of being chosen, and then the constriction of it, like a great snake named Area X was suffocating him, and then also what he had to know in his innermost thoughts, or even coursing across the inner rind of his brain. That the Southern Reach had indeed destroyed his career, perhaps even been the reason for his divorce.

“How do you feel about all of the misinformation given to the expedition?” Control asked Cheney, if only to push back against the flood of Cheneyisms. He knew Cheney had had some influence in shaping that misinformation.

Cheney’s frown made it seem as if Control’s question were akin to criticizing the paint job on a car that had been involved in a terrible accident. Was Control a killjoy to want to snuff out Cheney’s can-do, his can’t-help-it brand of the jowly jovial? But jovial grated on Control most of the time. “Jovial” had always been a pretext, from the high school football team’s locker room on—the kind of hearty banter that covered up greater and lesser crimes.

“It wasn’t—isn’t—really misinformation,” Cheney said, and then went dark for a moment, searching for words. Possibly he thought it was a test. Of loyalty or attitude or moral rigor. But he found words soon enough: “It’s more like creating a story or a narrative to guide them through the narrows. An anchor.”

Like a lighthouse that distracted them from topographical anomalies, a lighthouse that seemed by its very function to provide safety. Maybe Cheney told himself that particular story about the tale, or tale about the story, but Control doubted the director had seen it that way, or even a biologist with only partial memory.

“Jesus, this is a long drive,” Cheney said into the silence.





009: EVIDENCE

Finally they had addressed the mouse in the room, and the plant, during their meeting about the wall beyond his door.

“What about this mouse, this plant?” Control had demanded, to see what that shook loose. “Is this a memorial, too?”

Plant and mouse still resided inside the pot, had not yet leapt out and gone for their throats even though Hsyu had kept a keen eye on the pot during the entire meeting. Whitby, though, wouldn’t even acknowledge it with a glance, looked like a cat ready to leap off in the opposite direction at the slightest sign of impending pot-activated danger.

“No, not really,” Grace conceded after a pause. “She was trying to kill it.”

“What?”

“It wouldn’t die.” She said it with contempt, as if breaking the natural order of things wasn’t a miracle but an affront.

The assistant director made Whitby embark upon a summary of hair-raising attempts at destruction that included stabbings, careful burnings, deprivation of soil and water, introduction of parasites, general neglect, the emanation of hateful vibes, verbal and physical abuse, and much more. Whitby reenacted some of these events with overly manic energy.

Clippings had been rushed to Central, and perhaps even now scientists labored to unlock the plant’s secrets. But Central had sent no information back, and nothing the director had done could kill it, not even sticking it in a locked drawer. Except, someone had taken pity on the plant and watered it, perhaps even stuck in a dead mouse for nutritional value. Control looked with suspicion upon both Whitby and Grace. The idea that one of them had been merciful only made him like them both a little more.