Authority (Southern Reach, #2)(49)

* * *

At a quarter past six, Control felt a compulsion to wander out into the corridor for a good stretch. Everything lay under a hush and even a distant radio sounded like a garbled lullaby. Roaming farther afield, he was crossing the end of the now-empty cafeteria when he heard sounds coming from a storage room close to the corridor that led to the science division. Almost everyone had left, and he’d planned to leave soon himself, but the sounds distracted him. Who was in there? The elusive janitor, he hoped. The horrible cleaning product needed to be switched out. He was convinced it was a health hazard.

So he grasped the knob, receiving a little electric shock as he turned it, and then wrenched outward with all of his strength.

The door flew open, knocking Control back.

A pale creature was crouched in front of shelves of supplies, revealed under the sharp light of a single low-swinging lightbulb.

An unbearable yet beatific agony deformed its features.

Whitby.

* * *

Breathing heavily, Whitby stared up at Control. The look of agony had begun to evaporate, leaving behind an expression of combined cunning and caution.

Clearly Whitby had just suffered some kind of trauma. Clearly Whitby had just heard that a family member or close friend had died. Even though it was Control who had received the shock.

Control said, idiotically, “I’ll come back later,” as if they’d had a meeting scheduled in the storage room.

Whitby jumped up like a trap-door spider, and Control flinched and took a step back, certain Whitby was attacking him. Instead Whitby pulled him into the storage room, shutting the door behind them. Whitby had a surprisingly strong grip for such a slight man.

“No, no, please come in,” he was saying to Control, as if he hadn’t been able to speak and guide his boss inside at the same time, so that now there was a lip-synch issue.

“I really can come back later,” Control said, still rattled, preserving the illusion that he hadn’t just seen Whitby in extreme distress … and also the illusion that this was Whitby’s office and not a storage space.

Whitby stared at him in the dull light of the low-hung single bulb, standing close because it was crowded with the two of them in there, narrow with a high ceiling that could not be seen through the darkness above the bulb, a shield directing its light downward only. The shelves to either side of the central space displayed several rows of a lemon-zest cleaning product, along with stacked cans of soup, extra mop heads, garbage bags, and a few digital clocks with a heavy layer of dust on them. A long silver ladder led up into darkness.

Whitby was still composing his expression, Control realized, having to consciously wrench his frown toward a smile, wring the last clenched fear from his features.

“I was just getting some peace and quiet,” Whitby said. “It can be hard to find.”

“You looked like you were having a breakdown, to be honest,” Control said, not sure he wanted to continue playing pretend. “Are you okay?” He felt more comfortable saying this now that Whitby clearly wasn’t going to have a psychotic break. But he was also embarrassed that Whitby had managed to so easily trap him in here.

“Not at all,” Whitby said, a smile finally fitted in place, and Control hoped the man was responding to the first part of what he had said. “What can I help you with?”

Control went along with this fiction Whitby continued to offer up, if only because he had noticed that the inside lock on the door had been disabled with a blunt instrument. So Whitby had wanted privacy, but he had also been utterly afraid of being trapped in the room, too. There was a staff psychiatrist—a free resource for Southern Reach employees. Control didn’t remember seeing anything in Whitby’s file to indicate that he had ever gone.

It took Control a moment longer than felt natural, but he found a reason. Something that would run its course and allow him to leave on the right note. Preserve Whitby’s dignity. Perhaps.

“Nothing much, really,” Control said. “It’s about some of the Area X theories.”

Whitby nodded. “Yes, for example, the issue of parallel universes,” he said, as if they were picking up a conversation from some other time, a conversation Control did not remember.

“That maybe whatever’s behind Area X came from one,” Control said, stating something he didn’t believe and not questioning the narrowing of focus.

“That, yes,” Whitby said, “but I’ve been thinking more about how every decision we make theoretically splits off from the next, so that there are an infinite number of other universes out there.”

“Interesting,” Control said. If he let Whitby lead, hopefully the dance would end sooner.

“And in some of them,” Whitby explained, “we solved the mystery and in some of them the mystery never existed, and there never was an Area X.” This said with a rising intensity. “And we can take comfort in that. Perhaps we could even be content with that.” His face fell as he continued: “If not for a further thought. Some of these universes where we solved the mystery may be separated from ours by the thinnest of membranes, the most insignificant of variations. This is something always on my mind. What mundane detail aren’t we seeing, or what things are we doing that lead us away from the answer.”

Control didn’t like Whitby’s confessional tone because it felt as if Whitby was revealing one thing to hide another, like the biologist’s explanation of the sensation of drowning. This simultaneous with parallel universes of perception opening between him and Whitby as he spoke because Control felt as if Whitby were talking about breaches, the same breaches so much on his mind on a daily basis. Whitby talking about breaches angered him in a territorial way, as if Whitby was commenting on Control’s past, even though there was no logic to that.