Authority by Jeff VanderMeer Read Free Book Online Page A

his family, he had become an outlaw: The dropout art-school student who
     went wandering and only later got a proper degree.
    Whitby was dressed in a blue blazer with a white shirt and an oddly unobtrusive burgundy
     bow tie. He looked much younger than his age, with eternal brown hair and the kind
     of tight, pinched face that allows a fifty-something to look a boyish thirty-two from
     afar. His wrinkles had come in as tiny hairline fractures. Control had seen him in
     the cafeteria at lunch next to a dozen dollar bills fanned out on the table beside
     him for no good reason. Counting them? Making art? Designing a monetary biosphere?
    Whitby had an uncomfortable laugh and bad breath and teeth that clearly needed some
     work. Up close, Whitby also looked as if he hadn’t slept in years: a youth wizened
     prematurely, all the moisture leached from his face, so that his watery blue eyes
     seemed too large for his head. Beyond this, and his fanciful attitude toward money,
     Whitby appeared competent enough, and while he no doubt had the ability to engage
     in small talk, he lacked the inclination. This was as good a reason as any, as they
     threaded their way through the cafeteria, for Control to question him.
    “Did you know the members of the twelfth expedition before they left?”
    “I wouldn’t say ‘know,’” Whitby said, clearly uncomfortable with the question.
    “But you saw them around.”
    “Yes.”
    “The biologist?”
    “Yes, I saw her.”
    They cleared the cafeteria and its high ceiling and stepped into an atrium flooded
     with fluorescent light. The crunchy chirp of pop music dripped, distant, out of some
     office or another.
    “What did you think of her? What were your impressions?”
    Whitby concentrated hard, face rendered stern by the effort. “She was distant. Serious,
     sir. She outworked all of the others. But she didn’t seem to be working at it, if
     you know what I mean.”
    “No, I don’t know what you mean, Whitby.”
    “Well, it didn’t matter to her. The work didn’t matter. She was looking past it. She
     was seeing something else.” Control got the sense that Whitby had subjected the biologist
     to quite a bit of scrutiny.
    “And the former director? Did you see the former director interact with the biologist?”
    “Twice, maybe three times.”
    “Did they get along?” Control didn’t know why he asked this question, but fishing
     was fishing. Sometimes you just had to cast the line any place at all to start.
    “No, sir. But, sir, neither of them got along with anyone.” He said this last bit
     in a whisper, as if afraid of being overheard. Then said, as if to provide cover,
     “No one but the director wanted that biologist on the twelfth expedition.”
    “No one?” Control asked slyly.
    “Most people.”
    “Did that include the assistant director?”
    Whitby gave him a troubled look. But his silence was enough.
    The director had been embedded in the Southern Reach for a long time. The director
     had cast a long shadow. Even gone, she had a kind of influence. Perhaps not entirely
     with Whitby, not really. But Control could sense it anyway. He had already caught
     himself having a strange thought: That the director looked out at him through the
     assistant director’s eyes.
    *   *   *
    The elevators weren’t working and wouldn’t be fixed until an expert from the army
     base dropped by in a few days, so they took the stairs. To get to the stairs, you
     followed the curve of the U to a side door that opened onto a parallel corridor about
     fifty feet long, the floor adorned with the same worn green carpet that lowered the
     property value of the rest of the building. The stairs awaited them at the corridor’s
     end, through wide swinging doors more appropriate for a slaughterhouse or emergency
     room. Whitby, out of character, felt compelled to burst through those double doors
     as if they were rock stars charging onto a stage—or, perhaps, to warn off