Authority (Southern Reach, #2)(50)
“Perhaps it’s your presence, Whitby,” Control said. A joke, but a cruel one, meant to push the man away, close down the conversation. “Maybe without you here we would have solved it already.”
The look on Whitby’s face was awful, caught between knowing that Control had expressed the idea with humor and the certainty that it didn’t matter if it was a joke or serious. All of this conveyed in a way that made Control realize the thought was not original but had occurred to Whitby many times. It was too insincere to follow up with “I didn’t mean it,” so some version of Control just left, running down the hall as fast as he was able, aware that his extraction solution was unorthodox but unable to stop himself. Running down the green carpet while he stood there and apologized/laughed it off/changed the subject/took a pretend phone call … or, as he actually did, said nothing at all and let an awkward silence build.
In retaliation, although Control didn’t understand it then, Whitby said, “You have seen the video, haven’t you? From the first expedition?”
“Not yet,” as if he were admitting to being a virgin. That was scheduled for tomorrow.
A silent shudder had passed through Whitby in the middle of delivering his own question, a kind of spasmodic attempt to fling out or reject … something, but Control would leave it up to some other, future version of himself to ask Whitby why.
Was there a reality in which Whitby had solved the mystery and was telling it to him right now? Or a reality in which he was throttling Whitby just for being Whitby? Perhaps sometimes, at this moment, he met Whitby in a cave after a nuclear holocaust or in a store buying ice cream for a pregnant wife or, wandering farther afield, perhaps in some scenarios they had met much earlier—Whitby the annoying substitute teacher for a week in his freshman high school English class. Perhaps now he had some inkling as to why Whitby hadn’t advanced farther, why his research kept getting interrupted by grunt work for others. He kept wanting to grant Whitby a localized trauma to explain his actions, kept wondering if he just hadn’t gotten through enough layers to reach the center of Whitby, or if there was no center to reach and the layers defined the man.
“Is this the room you wanted to show me?” Control asked, to change the subject.
“No. Why would you think that?” Whitby’s cavernous eyes and sudden expression of choreographed puzzlement made him into an emaciated owl.
Control managed to extricate himself a minute or so later.
But he couldn’t get the image of Whitby’s agony-stricken face out of his head. Still had no idea why Whitby had hidden in a storage room.
* * *
The Voice called a few minutes later, as Control was trying desperately to leave for the day. Control was ready despite Whitby. Or, perhaps, because of Whitby. He made sure the office door was locked. He took out a piece of paper on which he had scribbled some notes to himself. Then he carefully put the Voice on speakerphone at medium volume, having already tested to make sure there was no echo, no sense of anything being out of the ordinary.
He said hello.
A conversation ensued.
They talked for a while. Then the Voice said, “Good,” while Control kept looking, at irregular intervals, at his sheet. “Just stabilize and do your job. Paralysis is not a cogent option, either. You will get good sleep tonight.”
Stabilize. Paralysis. Cogent. As he hung up, he was alarmed to realize that he did feel as if he had been stabilized. That now the encounter with Whitby seemed like a blip, inconsequential when seen in the context of his overall mission.
016: TERROIRS
At the diner counter the next morning, the cashier, a plump gray-haired woman, asked him, “You with the folks working at that government agency on the military base?”
Guarded, still shaking off sleep and a little hungover: “Why do you ask?”
“Oh,” she said sweetly, “they all have the same look about them, that’s all.”
She wanted him to ask “What look is that?” Instead, he just smiled mysteriously and gave her his order. He didn’t want to know what look he shared, what secret club he’d joined all unsuspecting. Did she have a chart somewhere so she could check off shared characteristics?
Back in the car, Control noticed that a white mold had already covered the dead mosquito and the dried drop of blood on his windshield. His sense of order and cleanliness offended, he wiped it all away with a napkin. Who would he present the evidence of tampering to, anyway?
* * *
The first item on his agenda was the long-awaited viewing of the videotape taken by the first expedition. Those video fragments existed in a special viewing room in an area of the building adjacent to the quarters for expedition members. A massive white console sat against the far wall in that cramped space. It jutted more sharply at the top than the bottom and mimicked the embracing shape of the Southern Reach building. Within that console—dull gray head recessed inside a severe cubist cowl—a television had been embedded that provided access to the video and nothing else. The television was an older model dating back to the time of the first expedition, with its bulky hindquarters recessed into an alcove in the wall. Control’s back still retained the groaning memory of a similar ungainly weight as a college student struggling to get a TV into his dorm room.
A low black marble desk with glints of Formica stood in front of the television, old-fashioned buttons and joy sticks allowing for manipulation of the video content—almost like an antiquated museum exhibit or one of those quarter-fed séance machines at the carnival. A phalanx of four black leather conference chairs had been tucked in under the desk. Cramped quarters with the chairs pulled out, although the ceiling extended a good twenty feet above him. That should have alleviated his slight sense of claustrophobia, but it only reinforced it with some minor vertigo, given the slant of the console. The vents above him, he noticed, were filthy with dust. A sharp car-dashboard smell warred with a rusty mold scent.