Authority by Jeff VanderMeer Read Free Book Online

drawers in the desk was locked, and he couldn’t find the key. But
     he did note an earthy quality to the locked drawer that hinted at something having
     rotted inside a long time ago. Which mystery didn’t even include the mess drooping
     off the sides of the desk.
    Ever-helpful, unhelpful spy Grandpa used to reflexively say, whether it was washing
     the dishes or preparing for a fishing trip, “Never skip a step. Skip a step, you’ll
     find five more new ones waiting ahead of you.”
    The search for surveillance equipment, for bugs, then, was more time-consuming than
     he’d thought it would be, and he buzzed the science division to let them know he’d
     be late. There was a kind of visceral grunt in response before the line went dead,
     and he had no idea who had been on the other end. A person? A trained pig?
    Ultimately, after a hellish search, Control to his surprise found twenty-two bugs
     in his office. He doubted many of them had actually been reporting back, and even
     if they had, if anyone had been watching or listening to what they conveyed. For the
     fact was, the director’s office had contained an unnatural history museum of bugs—different
     kinds from different eras, progressively smaller and harder to unearth. The behemoths
     of this sort were bulging, belching metal goiters when set next to the sleek ethereal
     pinheads of the modern era.
    The discovery of each new bug contributed to a cheerful, upbeat mood. Bugs made sense
     in a way some of the other things about the Southern Reach didn’t. In his training
     as an omnivore in the service, he’d had at least six assignments that involved bugging
     people or places. Spying on people didn’t bring him the kind of vicarious rush it
     gave some, or if it did, that feeling faded as he came to know his subjects better
     and invested in a sense of protectiveness meant to shield them. But he did find the
     actual devices fascinating.
    When he thought his search complete, Control amused himself by arranging the bugs
     across the faded paper of the blotter in what he believed might be chronological order.
     Some of them glittered silver. Some, black, absorbed the light. There were wires attached
     to some like umbilical cords. One iteration—disguised within what appeared to be a
     small, sticky ball of green papier-mâché or colored honeycomb—made him think that
     a few might even be foreign-made: interlopers drawn by curiosity to the black box
     that was Area X. Clearly, though, the former director knew and hadn’t cared they were
     there. Or perhaps she had thought it safest to leave them. Perhaps, too, she’d put
     some there herself. He wondered if this accounted for her distrust of modern technology.
    As for installing his own, he’d have to wait until later: No time now. No time, either,
     to deploy these bugs for another purpose that had just occurred to him. Control carefully
     swept them all into a desk drawer and went to find his science guide.
    *   *   *
    The labs had been buried in the basement on the right side of the U, if you were facing
     the building from the parking lot out front. They lay directly opposite the sealed-off
     wing that served as an expedition pre-prep area and currently housed the biologist.
     Control had been assigned one of the science division’s jack-of-all-trades as his
     tour guide. Which meant that despite seniority—he had been at the agency longer than
     anyone on staff—Whitby Allen was a push-me-pull-me who, in part due to staff attrition,
     often sacrificed his studies as a “cohesive naturalist and holistic scientist specializing
     in biospheres” to type up someone else’s reports or run someone else’s errands. Whitby
     reported to the head of the science division, but also to the assistant director.
     He was the scion of intellectual aristocracy, came from a long line of professors,
     men and women who had been tenured at various faux-Corinthian-columned private colleges.
     Perhaps to