Authority (Southern Reach, #2)(44)

Some other things were unnecessary, but with any luck Grace would waste time and energy fighting him on them.

“That was fast,” she said finally, tossing the paper-clipped pages of his list back across the desk at him. The pages slid into his lap before he could catch them.

“I did my homework,” Control said. Whatever that meant.

“A conscientious schoolboy. A star pupil.”

“The first part.” Control half agreed, not sure he liked the way she said it.

Grace didn’t bother wasting even an insincere smile in response. “Let me get to the point. Someone has been interfering with my access to Central this week—making inquiries, poking around. But whoever is doing you this favor has no tact—or whatever faction is behind it doesn’t have quite enough pull.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Control said, his nonverbal mannerisms sagging in surprise along with the rest of him, despite his best efforts.

Faction. Despite his daydream about the Voice having a black-ops identity, it had not occurred to him that his mother might be heading up a faction, which led him automatically to the idea of true shadow ops—along with an opposition. It threw him, a little, that Central might be that fragmented. Just how elephantine, how rhinoceroscrutian, had the Voice’s efforts been in following up on Control’s request? And: What did Grace use her contacts for when she wasn’t turning them against him?

Grace’s look of disgust told him what she thought about his answer. “Then, in that case, John Rodriguez, I have no comment on your recommendations, except to say that I will begin to implement them in as excruciatingly slow a fashion as possible. You should begin to see a few of them—like, ‘buy new floor cleaner,’ in place by next quarter. Possibly. Maybe.”

He had a vision, again, of Grace spiriting away the biologist, of multiple mutual attempted destructions, until somewhere up in the clouds, atop two vast and blood-drenched escalators, they continued to do battle years from now.

Control’s stiff nod—gruffly acknowledging defeat—wasn’t the mannerism he’d been hoping to use.

But she wasn’t done. Her eyes glittered as she opened a drawer and pulled out a mother-of-pearl jewelry box.

“Do you know what this is?” she asked him.

“A jewelry box?” he replied, confused, definitely back on his heels now.

“This is a box full of accusations,” Grace said, holding it toward him like an offering. With this jewelry box, I thee despise.

“What is a box of accusations?” Although he didn’t want to know.

With a clink-and-tinkle, the yawning velvet mouth sent a handful of bugs Control recognized all too well rolling and skittering across her blotter at him. Most of them came to a stop before the edge, but a couple followed the list onto his lap. The rotting honey smell had intensified again.

“That is a box of accusations.”

Attempting a comeback, aware it was feeble: “I see only one accusation there, made multiple times.”

“I haven’t emptied it yet.”

“Would you like to empty it now?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. But I will if you continue to interfere with Central. And you can take your spies with you.”

Should he lie? That would defeat the purpose of sending the message.

“Why would I bug you?” With a look that he knew undercut his innocence, even as indignation rose in him as ardently as if he were innocent. Because in a way he thought he was innocent: Action bred reaction. Lose a few expedition members, gain a few bugs. She might even recognize some of them.

But Grace persisted: “You did. You also rifled through my files, looked in all of my drawers.”

“No, I didn’t.” This time his anger was backed by something real. He hadn’t ransacked her office, only placed the bugs there, but now even that act troubled him the more he thought about it. It was out of character, had served no real purpose, had been counterproductive.

Grace continued on patiently. “If you do it again, I’ll file a complaint. I’ve already changed the pass-key combination on my door. Anything you need to know, you can just ask me.”

Easily said, but Control didn’t think it was true, so he tested it: “Did you put the director’s cell phone in my satchel?” Couldn’t bring himself to ask the even more ludicrous question “Did you squash a mosquito in my car?” or anything about the director and the border.

“Now, why would I do that?” she asked, echoing him, but she looked serious, puzzled. “What are you talking about?”

“Keep the bugs as souvenirs,” he said. Put them in the Southern Reach Olde Antique Shoppe and sell them to tourists.

“No, I mean it—what are you talking about?”

Rather than respond, Control got up, retreated into the corridor, not sure if he heard laughter from behind him or some distorted echo through the overhead vent.





014: HEROIC HEROES OF THE REVOLUTION

Later, as he was wallowing in the notes, plugging his ears and eyes with them, to forget about Grace—if he hadn’t ransacked Grace’s office who had?—the expedition wing buzzed him and an excitable-sounding male voice told Control that the biologist was “not feeling good at all—she says she’s not up for an interview today.” When he asked what was wrong, the man told him, “She’s been complaining of cramps and fever. The doctor says it’s a cold.” A cold? A cold was nothing.