Authority. Jeff VanderMeer

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СКАЧАТЬ always meant to time it this way. Then everything had sped up, and he had been given the impression of urgency.

      These were among the details that had caused a kind of futile exasperation to wash over him ever since his arrival. The Voice, his primary contact in the upper echelons, had implied in an initial briefing that this was an easy assignment, given his past history. The Southern Reach had become a backward, backwater agency, guarding a dormant secret that no one seemed to care much about anymore, given the focus on terrorism and ecological collapse. The Voice had, in its gruff way, typified his mission “to start” as being brought in to “acclimate, assess, analyze, and then dig in deep,” which wasn’t his usual brief these days.

      During an admittedly up-and-down career, Control had started as an operative in the field: surveillance on domestic terror cells. Then he’d been bumped up to data synthesis and organizational analysis—two dozen or more cases banal in their similarities and about which he was forbidden to talk. Cases invisible to the public: the secret history of nothing. But more and more he had become the fixer, mostly because he seemed better at identifying other people’s specific problems than at managing his own general ones. At thirty-eight, that was what he had become known for, if he was known for anything. It meant you didn’t have to be there for the duration, even though by now that’s exactly what he wanted: to see something through. Problem was, no one really liked a fixer—“Hey, let me show you what you’re doing wrong”—especially if they thought the fixer needed fixing from way back.

      It always started well, even though it didn’t always end well.

      The Voice had also neglected to mention that Area X lay beyond a border that still, after more than thirty years, no one seemed to understand. No, he’d only picked up on that when reviewing the files and in the needless replication from the orientation video.

      Nor had he known that the assistant director would hate him so much for replacing the missing director. Although he should have guessed; according to the scraps of information in her file, she had grown up lower-middle class, had gone to public school at first, had had to work harder than most to get to her current position. While Control came with whispers about being part of a kind of invisible dynasty, which naturally bred resentment. There was no denying that fact, even if, up close, the dynasty was more like a devolving franchise.

      “They’re ready. Come with me.”

      Grace, conjured up again, commanding him from the doorway.

      There were, he knew, several different ways to break down a colleague’s opposition, or their will. He would probably have to try all of them.

      Control picked up two of the three files from the table and, gaze now locked in on the biologist, tore them down the middle, feeling the torque in his palms, and let them fall into the wastebasket.

      A kind of choking sound came from behind him.

      Now he turned—right into the full force of the assistant director’s wordless anger. But he could see a wariness in her eyes, too. Good.

      “Why are you still keeping paper files, Grace?” he asked, taking a step forward.

      “The director insisted. You did that for a reason?”

      He ignored her. “Grace, why are none of you comfortable using the words alien or extraterrestrial to talk about Area X?” He wasn’t comfortable with them, either. Sometimes, since he’d been briefed on the truth, he’d felt a great, empty chasm opening up inside of him, filled with his own screams and yelps of disbelief. But he’d never tell. He had a face for playing poker; he’d been told this by lovers and by relatives, even by strangers. About six feet tall. Impassive. The compact, muscular build of an athlete; he could run for miles and not feel it. He took pride in a good diet and enough exercise, although he did like whiskey.

      She stood her ground. “No one’s sure. Never prejudge the evidence.”

      “Even after all this time? I only need to interview one of them.”

      “What?” she asked.

      Torque in hands transformed into torque in conversation.

      “I don’t need the other files because I only need to question one of them.”

      “You need all three.” As if she still didn’t quite understand.

      He swiveled to pick up the remaining file. “No. Just the biologist.”

      “That is a mistake.”

      “Seven hundred and fifty-three isn’t a mistake,” he said. “Seven hundred and twenty-two isn’t a mistake, either.”

      Her eyes narrowed. “Something is wrong with you.”

      “Keep the biologist in there,” he said, ignoring her but adopting her syntax. I know something you don’t. “Send the others back to their quarters.”

      Grace stared at him as if he were some kind of rodent and she couldn’t decide whether to be disgusted or pitying. After a moment, though, she nodded stiffly and left.

      He relaxed, let out his breath. Although she had to accept his orders, she still controlled the staff for the next week or two, could check him in a thousand ways until he was fully embedded.

      Was it alchemy or a true magic? Was he wrong? And did it matter, since if he was wrong, each was exactly like the others anyway?

      Yes, it mattered.

      This was his last chance.

      His mother had told him so before he’d come here.

      Control’s mother often seemed to him like a flash of light across a distant night sky. Here and gone, gone and here, and always remembered; perhaps wondered what it had been—what had caused the light. But you couldn’t truly know it.

      An only child, Jackie Severance had followed her father into the service and excelled; now she operated at levels far above anything her father, Jack Severance, had achieved, and he had been a much-decorated agent. Jack had brought her up sharp, organized, ready to lead. For all Control knew, Grandpa had made Jackie do tire obstacle courses as a child, stab flour sacks with bayonets. There weren’t a whole lot of family albums from which to verify. Whatever the process, he had also bred into her a kind of casual cruelty, an expectation of high performance, and a calculated quality that could manifest as seeming indifference to the fate of others.

      As a distant flash of light, Control admired her fiercely, had, indeed, followed her, if at a much lower altitude … but as a parent, even when she was around, she was unreliable about picking him up from school on time or remembering his lunches or helping with homework—rarely consistent on much of anything important in the mundane world on this side of the divide. Although she had always encouraged him in his headlong flight into and through the service.

      Grandpa Jack, on the other hand, had never seemed fond of the idea, had one day looked at him and said, “I don’t think he has the temperament.” That assessment had been devastating to a boy of sixteen, already set on that course, but then it made him more determined, more focused, more tilted skyward toward the light. Later he thought that might have been why Grandpa had said it. Grandpa had a kind of unpredictable wildfire side, while his mother was an icy blue flame.

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