Authority (Southern Reach, #2)(85)
The television was on, but nothing made sense. The television, except for the vaguest of footnotes about a possible problem at the “Southern Reach environmental recovery site,” did not tell the truth about what was going on. But it hadn’t made sense for a very long time, even if no one knew that, and he knew his contempt would mirror that of the biologist, if she had been sitting where he was sitting. And the light from the curtains was just a stray truck barreling by in the dark. And the smell was of rot, but he thought perhaps he’d brought that with him. Even though he was far away from it now, the invisible border was close—the checkpoints, the swirling light of the door. The way that light seemed almost beveled, almost formed an image in that space between the curtains, and then fell away again into nothing.
On the bed: Whitby’s terroir manuscript, which he hadn’t looked at since leaving Hedley. All he’d done was put it in a sturdy waterproof plastic case. He kept realizing, with a kind of resigned surprise, a kind of slow registering or reimagining meant to cushion the blow, that the invasion had been under way for quite some time, had been manifesting for much longer than anyone could have guessed, even his mother. And that perhaps Whitby had figured something out, even if no one had believed him, even if figuring it out had exposed him to something that had then figured him out.
When he was finished with the Glock, he sat in a chair facing the door, clenching the grip tight even though it made his fingers throb. It was another way to keep from being overwhelmed by it. Pain as distraction. All of his familiar guides had gone silent. His mother, his grandparents, his father—none of them had anything to say to him. Even the carving in his pocket seemed inert, useless now.
And the whole time, sitting in the chair then lying in the bed with its worn blanket and yellowing sheets with cigarette burns in them, Control could not get the image of the biologist out of his head. The look on her face in the empty lot—that blankness—and then, later, in the sessions, the warring of contempt, wildness, casual vulnerability, and vehemence, strength. That had laid him low. That had expanded until it hooked into the whole of him, no part of him not committed. Even though she might never know, could give two shits about him. Even though he would be content should he never meet her again, just so long as he could believe she was still out there, alive and on her own. The yearnings in him now went in all directions and no direction at all. It was an odd kind of affection that needed no subject, that emanated from him like invisible rays meant for everyone and everything. He supposed they were normal feelings once you’d pushed on past a certain point.
North is where the biologist had fled, and he knew where she would end up: It was right there in her field notes. A precipice she knew better than almost anyone, where the land fell away into the sea, and the sea rushed up onto the rocks. He just had to be prepared. Central might catch up to him before he got there. But lurking behind them might be something even darker and more vast, and that was the killing joke. That the thing catching up with all of them would be even less merciful—and would question them until, like a towel wrung dry and then left out in the sun, they were nothing but brittle husks and hollows.
Unless he made it north in time. If she was there. If she knew anything.
* * *
He left the motel early, just as the sun appeared, grabbed breakfast at a café, and continued north. Here it was all cliffs and sharp curves and the sense that you might dive off into the sky around each upward bend. That the little thought you always overrode—to stop turning the wheel to match the road—might not be stifled this time and you’d gun the engine and push on into the air, and snuff out every secret thing you knew and didn’t want to know. The temperature rarely rose above seventy-five, and the landscape soon became lush—the greens more intense than in the south, the rain when it came a kind of mist so unlike the hellish downpours he’d become used to.
At a general store in a tiny town called Selk that had a gas station whose antiquated pumps didn’t take credit cards, he bought a large knapsack, filled it with about thirty pounds of supplies. He bought a hunting knife, plenty of batteries, an ax, lighters, and a lot more. He didn’t know what he’d need or how much she’d need, how long he might be out there in the wilderness, searching for her. Would her reaction be what he wanted it to be—and what reaction was that? Assuming she was even there. He imagined himself years from now, bearded, living off the land, making carvings like his father, alone, slowly fading into the backdrop from the weight of solitude.
The cashier asked him his name, as part of a sales pitch for a local charity, and he said “John,” and from that point on, he used his real name again. Not Control, not any of the aliases that had gotten him this far. It was a common name. It didn’t stand out. It didn’t mean anything.
He continued the tactics he’d been using, though. Domestic terrorism had made him familiar with a lot of rural areas. For his second assignment out of training, he had spent time in the Midwest on the road between county health departments, under the guise of helping update immunization software. But he’d really been tracking down data on members of a militia. He knew back roads from that other life and took to them as if he’d never left, used all the tricks with no effort although it had been a long time since he’d used them. There was even a kind of stressful freedom to it, an exhilaration and simplicity he hadn’t known for a long time. Then, like now, he’d doubted every pickup truck, especially if it had a mud-obscured license plate, every slow driver, every hitchhiker. Then, as now, he’d picked local roads with dirt side roads that allowed him to double back. He used detailed printed maps, no GPS. He had almost wavered on his cell phone, but had thrown it into the ocean, hadn’t bought a temporary to replace it. He knew he could have bought something that couldn’t be traced, but anyone he called would no doubt be bugged by now. The urge to call any of his relatives, to try his mother one last time, had faded with the miles. If he’d had something to say, he should have picked up the phone a long time ago.