Authority (Southern Reach, #2)(60)

Control and the biologist stood together, leaning on the sturdy wooden fence that separated them from the holding pond. The Southern Reach building lay at their backs, a gravel path like a rough black river leading across the lawn. Just the two of them … and the three members of security who had brought her. They had spread out at a distance of about thirty feet and chosen angles that took into account all escape routes.

“Do they think I’ll run away?” Ghost Bird asked him.

“No,” Control said. If she did, Control would put the blame on them.

The holding pond was long and roughly rectangular. Inside the fence, on the far shore, a rotting shed lay on the side nearest the swamp. A scrawny pine tree half-throttled by rusted Christmas lights stood beside the shed. The water was choked with duckweed and hydrangea and water lilies. Dragonflies patrolled ceaselessly over the gray, sometimes black water. The frogs made such raucous forecasts of rain that they drowned out the crickets and, from the fringe of grass and bushes on the opposite side of the pond, came the chatter and bustle of wrens and warblers.

A lone great blue heron stood solemn and silent in the middle of the pond. Thunderclouds continued to gather, its feathers dull in the fading light.

“Should I thank you for this?” Ghost Bird asked. They were leaning on the top of the fence. Her left arm was too close to his right arm; he moved a little farther away.

“Don’t thank anyone for what you should already have,” he said, which brought a half turn of her head toward him and the view of one upraised eyebrow above a thoughtful eye and a noncommittal mouth. It was something his grandfather on his father’s side had said, back when he was selling clothespins door-to-door. “I didn’t make the wood storks disappear,” he added, because he had not meant to say the first thing.

“Raccoons are the worst predators of their nests,” she said. “Did you know that they pre-date the last ice age? Farther south, they roost in colonies, but in this region they’re endangered, so they’re more solitary.”

Control had looked it up and the wood storks should have returned by now if they were going to. They tended to be creatures of habit.

“I can only give you thirty or forty minutes,” he said. Bringing her here felt now like a terrible indulgence, possibly even a kind of danger, although he did not know to whom. But he also knew he couldn’t have left things as they were after the morning session.

“I hate it when they mow it and try to take out the duckweed,” she said, ignoring him.

He wasn’t sure what to say to that. It was just a holding pond, like thousands of others. It wasn’t meant to be a habitat. But, then, they’d found her in an empty lot.

“Look—there are still some tadpoles,” she said, pointing, something approaching contentment on her face. He was beginning to understand that keeping her inside had been cruel. Perhaps now she wouldn’t see the conversation between them solely as an interrogation.

“It is nice out here,” he said, just to say something, but it was nice. It felt even better than he’d thought to get out of the building. He’d had some idea of questioning her, but the strong smell of rain and the way that the distant sky formed dark curtains of downpours fast approaching had defeated that impulse.

“Ask her about the director,” the Voice said. “Ask her if the director mentioned having been across the border before.” Pushed that away. You’re a hologram. You’re a construct. I’m going to throw chum overboard until you’re so blood-enraged you can’t swim properly.

Ghost Bird nudged a large black beetle with her shoe. It was frantic, ceaselessly caroming through the links of the fence and back over. “You know why they do that?”

“No, I don’t,” Control said. Over the past four days, he had realized there were many things he didn’t know.

“They just sprayed insecticide here. I can smell it. You can see the hint of foam on its carapace. It disorients them as it kills them; they can’t breathe because of it. They become what you might call panicked. They keep searching for a way to get away from what’s already inside of them. Toward the end, they settle down, but that’s only because they don’t have enough oxygen to move anymore.”

She waited until the beetle was over a piece of flat ground and then brought her shoe down, hard and fast. There was a crunch. Control looked away. Forgiving a friend who had done something to upset him, his father had once said that she heard a different kind of music.

“Ask her about the empty lot,” the Voice said.

“Why do you think you ended up at the empty lot?” Control asked, mostly to placate the audience. Any one of the three might report back to Grace.

“I ended up here, at the Southern Reach.” A guarded note had entered her voice.

“What does it mean to you, that place?” The same as this place, or more?

“I don’t think it was where I was meant to be,” she said after a pause. “Just a feeling. I remember waking up and not recognizing it for a moment and then when I did, being disappointed.”

“Disappointed how?”

Ghost Bird shrugged.

Lines of lightning created fantastical countries in the sky. Thunder came on like an accusing voice.

Ask her if she left anything in the empty lot. Was it his question or the Voice’s?

“Did you leave anything there?”