Acceptance: A Novel (The Southern Reach Trilogy)

by Jeff VanderMeer

  From the lip of the dunes, they came up to the level ground next to the lighthouse without incident, lingered at the edge of the overgrown, long-wild lawn beside it. Where nettle weed and snarls of blackberry plants grew: a thorny thicket for them, but a natural shelter for the wrens and sparrows that darted betwixt, between, their cheerful song a discordant element against the overcast quality of the light. The ever-present thistles looked to Ghost Bird like some kind of natural microphone, the stickery domes there to pick up and transmit sound instead of disseminate seeds.

  A broken door yawned, beckoned to them with darkness, while the gray sky above, the way it could glint or waver at odd moments, made Control in particular jittery. He could not stand still, did not want Ghost Bird or Grace standing still, either. Ghost Bird could see the brightness flaring out from him like a halo of jagged knives, wondered if he would still be himself by the time they reached the tower. Perhaps he would, if nothing preternatural stitched its way through that sky.

  “No point in going up,” Grace said.

  “Not even the least bit curious?”

  “Do you like walking through charnel houses and cemeteries, too?”

  Still evaluating her, and Ghost Bird unable to tell what she was thinking. Had Grace thrown in her lot with them, hoping Ghost Bird was indeed a secret weapon, or for some other purpose? What she did know was that with Grace there she’d had little time to talk to Control in private—any conversations were of necessity between the three of them. This disturbed her, because she knew Grace even less than she knew Control.

  “I don’t want to go up,” Control said. “I don’t. I want to cover the open ground as fast as possible. Get to where we’re going as fast as possible.”

  “At least no one appears to be here,” Grace said. “At least it appears as if Area X may have thinned out the opposition.”

  Yes, that was good, if a cold thing to say, but the look Control gave Grace indicated he could not jettison some essential sentimentality that was of no use here, some mechanism that belonged to the world outside.

  “Well, let me add to the collection,” Grace said, and tossed the biologist’s island account and her journal through the open front door.

  Control stared into that darkness as if she had committed a terrible act that he was thinking of setting right. But Ghost Bird knew that Grace was just trying to set them free.

  * * *

  “Never has a setting been so able to live without the souls traversing it.” A sentence Ghost Bird remembered from a college text, one that had lingered with the biologist after her transition to the city, come back to her as she stood in the empty lot, following the silent launch of a sugar glider from one telephone pole to another. The text had been referring to urban landscapes, but the biologist had interpreted it as applying to the natural world, or at least what could be interpreted as wilderness, even though human beings had so transformed the world that even Area X had not been able to completely reduce those signs and symbols. The shrubs and trees that constituted invasive species were only one part of that; the other, how even the faint outline of a human-made path changed the topography of a place. “The only solution to the environment is neglect, which requires our collapse.” A sentence the biologist had excised from her thesis, but one that had burned bright in her mind, and now in Ghost Bird’s, where, even analyzed and kept at arm’s length like all received memories, it had a kind of power. In the presence of the memory of a thousand eyes staring up at her.

  As they headed inland, the larger things fell away, revealing the indelible: the dark line of a marsh hawk flying low over the water, the delicate fractures in the water where a water moccasin swam, the strangely satisfying long grass that cascaded like hair from the ground.

  She was content with silence, but Grace and Control were less so.

  “I miss hot showers,” Control said. “I miss not itching all over.”

  “Boil water,” Grace said, as if it provided the solution to both problems. As if Control’s misses were wishes, and he should think bigger.

  “Not the same thing.”

  “I miss standing on the roof of the Southern Reach and looking out over the forest,” Grace said.

  “You used to do that? How did you get up there?”

  “The janitor let us go up. The director and me. We would stand up there and make our plans.”

  That catch in Grace’s throat, that invisible connection, Ghost Bird contemplated it. What did she miss? There had been so little time to miss anything. Their conversation existed so apart from her that she wondered again what she might do when she met the Crawler. What if she was a sleeper cell for a cause much older than either the Southern Reach or Area X? Did her allegiance lie with the former director, or the director as a child, playing on those black rocks near the lighthouse? And what master did the lighthouse keeper serve? It would have been better if she could have thought of each person in the equation as just one thing, but none of them were that simple.

  Perhaps the biologist’s final response was the only response that mattered, and her entire letter a sop to expectations, to the reaction human beings were hardwired to have. A kind of final delay before she had come to embody that correct answer? Perhaps so many journals had piled up in the lighthouse because on some level most came, in time, to recognize the futility of language. Not just in Area X but against the rightness of the lived-in moment, the instant of touch, of connection, for which words were such a sorrowful disappointment, so inadequate an expression of both the finite and the infinite. Even as the Crawler wrote out its terrible message.

  Back on the island, there had been one last, unanswerable question, and the weight of it had settled over each of them in different ways. If they now traversed a landscape transplanted from somewhere far remote, then what existed within the coordinates of the real Area X, back on Earth?

  Grace had put forward the idea, had clearly been thinking about it, possibly for years now, haunted and frustrated by it.

  “We are,” Control had replied—distant, coming to her from afar with an unfocused stare. “We are. That’s where we are.” Although he wasn’t stupid, must know Grace was right.

  “If you go through the door, you come to Area X,” Grace said. “If you walk across the border, you go to the other place. Whatever it is.”

  Grace’s tone did not admit to doubt, or that she cared whether they believed her or not, an essential indifference to questions, as if Area X had worn her down. A pragmatism that meant she knew the conclusions she had reached would please no one.

  But Ghost Bird knew what she had seen in the corridor leading into Area X, the detritus and trash she had seen there, the bodies, and wondered if it might be real and not summoned from her mind. Wondered what might have come through the twenty-foot door that Control had described to her, the door lost to them. What might still come through such a door? And her thought: Nothing, because if so, it would have happened long ago.

  The marsh lakes had become such a deep, perfect blue in that uncertain light that the reflections of the surrounding scrub forest on that surface seemed as real as their root-bound doppelgängers. Their mud-encrusted boots churned up amid the rich sediment and plant roots a smell almost like crisp hay.

  Control leaned against Ghost Bird more than once to keep his balance, almost pulling her down in the process. Ahead of them now came the smell of burning, and from above, something the others could not see stitched its way through the overcast sky, and Ghost Bird was not surprised.

  0017: THE DIRECTOR

  One spring day at the Southern Reach, you’re taking a break, pacing across the courtyard tiles as you worry at a problem in your head, and you see something strange out by the swamp lake. At the edge of the black water, a figure squats, hunched over, hands you cannot see busy at some mysterious task. Your first impulse is to call security, but then you recognize the slight frame, the tuft of dark hair: It’s Whitby, in his brown blazer, his navy slacks, his dress shoes.

&
nbsp; Whitby, playing in the mud. Washing something? Strangling something? The level of concentration he displays, even at this distance, is of working on something that requires a jeweler’s precision.

  Instinct tells you to be silent, to walk slow, to take care with fallen branches and dead leaves. Whitby has been startled enough in the past, by the past, and you want your presence known by degrees. Halfway there, though, he turns long enough to acknowledge you and go back to what he’s doing, and you walk faster after that.

  The trees are as sullen as ever, looking like hunched-over priests with long beards of moss, or as Grace says, less respectfully, “Like a line of used-up old drug addicts.” The water carries only the small, patient ripples made by Whitby, and your reflection as you come close and lean over his shoulder is distorted by widening rings and wavery gray light.

  Whitby is washing a small brown mouse.

  He holds the mouse, careful but firm, between the thumb and index finger of his left hand, the mouse’s head and front legs circled by this fleshy restraint, the pale belly, back legs, and tail splayed out across his palm. The mouse seems hypnotized or for some other reason preternaturally calm while Whitby with his cupped right hand ladles water onto the mouse, then extends his little finger and rubs the water into the fur of the underbelly, the sides, then the furry cheeks, followed by anointment of the top of the head.

  Whitby has draped a little white towel across his left forearm; it is monogrammed with a large cursive W in gold thread. Brought from home? He pinches the towel from his forearm and, using a single corner, delicately daubs the top of the mouse’s head while its tiny black eyes stare off into the distance. There’s a kind of febrile extremity of care here, as Whitby proceeds to wipe off one pink-clawed paw and then the other, before moving to the back paws and the thin tail. Whitby’s hand is so pale and small that there is a sort of symmetry on display, an absurd yet somehow touching suggestion of a shared ancestry.

  It has been four months since the last member of the last eleventh expedition died of cancer, six weeks since you had them exhumed. It has been more than two years since you came back across the border with Whitby. Over the past seven or eight months, you have had a sense of Whitby recovering—fewer transfer requests, more engagement in status meetings, a revival of self-interest in his “combined theories document,” which he now calls “a thesis on terroir,” evoking a “comprehensive ecosystem” approach based on an advanced theory of wine production. There has been nothing in the execution of his duties to indicate anything more than his usual eccentricity. Even Cheney has, grudgingly, admitted this, and you don’t care that the man often uses Whitby as a wedge against you now. You don’t care about reasons so long as it brings Whitby back closer to the center of things.

  “What do you have there, Whitby?” Breaking the silence is sudden and intrusive. Nothing you say will sound like anything other than an adult talking to a child, but Whitby’s put you in that position.

  Whitby stops washing and drying the mouse, throws the towel over his left shoulder, stares at the mouse, examining it as if there might still be a spot of dirt here or there.

  “A mouse,” he says, as if it should be obvious.

  “Where did you find her?”

  “Him. In the attic. I found him in the attic.” His tone like someone about to be reprimanded, but defiant, too.

  “Oh—at home?” Bringing the safety of home to the dangerous place, the workplace, in physical form. You’re trying to suppress the psychologist in you, not overanalyze, but it’s difficult.

  “In the attic.”

  “Why did you bring him out here?”

  “To wash him.”

  You don’t mean for it to seem like an interrogation, but you’re sure it does. Is this a bad thing or a good thing in the progression of Whitby’s recovery? There is no base score assigned to owning a mouse or washing a mouse that can confer an automatic rating of fit or unfit for duty.

  “You couldn’t wash him inside?”

  Whitby gives you an upturned sideways glance. You’re still stooping. He’s still hunched. “That water’s contaminated.”

  “Contaminated.” An interesting choice of words. “But you use it, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do…” Relenting, giving in a little, relaxing so that you’re less concerned he’s going to strangle the mouse by accident. “But I thought maybe he’d like to be outside for a while. It’s a nice day.”

  Translation: Whitby needed a break. Just like you needed a break, pacing the courtyard tiles.

  “What’s his name?”

  “He doesn’t have a name.”

  “He doesn’t have a name?”

  “No.”

  Somehow this bothers you more than the washing, but it’s an unease you can’t put into words. “Well, he’s a handsome mouse.” Which sounds stupid even as you say it, but you’re at a loss.

  “Don’t talk to me like I’m an idiot,” he says. “I’m aware this looks strange, but think about some of the things you do for stress.”

  You’d gone across the border with this man. You’d sacrificed his peace of mind on the altar of your insatiable fascination, your curiosity, and your ambition. He doesn’t deserve condescension on top of that.

  “Sorry.” You awkwardly lower yourself in the dead leaves and half-dried mud next to him. The truth is you don’t want to go back inside yet, and Whitby doesn’t seem to want to, either. “The only excuse I’ve got is that it’s been a long day. Already.”

  “It’s okay,” Whitby says after a pause, and returns to cleaning his mouse. Then volunteers, “I’ve had him about five weeks. I had a dog and a cat growing up, but no pets since.”

  You’ve tried to imagine what Whitby’s house looks like, and failed. You can only imagine an endless white space with white, modern furniture, and a computer screen in the corner as the only spot of color. Which probably means Whitby’s house is an opulent, decadent free-for-all of styles and periods, all offered up in bright, saturated colors.

  “The plant bloomed,” Whitby says into the middle of your musings.

  The sentence has no meaning at first. But when it takes on meaning, you sit up straighter.

  Whitby looks over at you. “There’s no emergency. It’s already over.”

  You’re quelling the impulse to pull Whitby to his feet and march him back inside to show you what no emergency means.

  “Explain,” you say, putting just enough pressure on the word to hold it there like an egg about to crack. “Be specific.”

  “It happened in the middle of the night. Last night,” he says. “Everyone else had left. I work very late sometimes, and I like to spend time in the storage cathedral.” He looks away, continues as if you’ve asked him something: “I just like it in there. It calms me down.”

  “And?”

  “And last night, I came in and I just decided to check on the plant”—said too casually, as if he always checked on the plant—“and there was a flower. The plant was blooming. But it’s gone now. It all happened very fast.”

  It’s important to just keep talking, to keep Whitby calm and answering your questions.

  “How long?”

  “Maybe an hour. If I had thought it would disintegrate, I would have called someone.”

  “What did the blossom look like?”

  “Like an ordinary flower, with seven or eight petals. Translucent, almost white.”

  “Did you take any photographs? Any video?”

  “No,” he says. “I thought it would still be there for a while. I didn’t tell anyone because it’s gone.” Or because, with no evidence, it would be more evidence against him, against his state of mind, his suitability, when he is just now getting out from under that reputation.

  “What did you do then?”

  He shrugs, the mouse’s tail twitching, as he transfers the animal to his right hand. “I scheduled a purification. Just to be sure. And I left.”

  “You were in a suit the whole time, right?”r />
  “Sure. Yes. Of course.”

  “No strange readings after?”

  “No, no strange readings. I checked.”

  “And nothing else I need to know?” Like, the possible connection between the plant having bloomed and Whitby, the next day, coming out here with his mouse.

  “Nothing you don’t already know.”

  A shade defiant again, a lifting of his gaze to tell you he’s thinking about the trip into Area X, the one he can’t tell anyone about, the one that made him unreliable to the rest of the staff. How to evaluate hallucinations that might be real? A paranoia that might be justified? Right after you came back, you remember Whitby saying wistfully to himself, as if something had been lost, “They didn’t notice us at first. But, then, gradually, they began to peer in at us … because we just couldn’t stop.”

  You get to your feet, look down at Whitby, say, “Give me a more extensive report on the plant—for my eyes only. And you cannot keep sneaking a mouse into the building, Whitby. For one thing, security will catch you eventually. Take it home.”

  Whitby and the mouse are both looking up at you now, Whitby harder to read than the mouse, which just wants to get out of Whitby’s grasp and be on its way.

  “I’ll keep him in the attic,” Whitby says.

  “Do that.”

  * * *

  Back inside, you visit the storage cathedral, putting on a purification suit so you don’t contaminate that environment or it doesn’t contaminate you. You find the plant, which has a false tag that designates it as belonging to the first eighth expedition. You examine the plant, the area around it, the floor, searching for any evidence of a dried-up flower. You find none, just a residue beside it that later comes back from testing as pine resin from some other sample that had sat there previously.

  You look at those test results in your office and you wonder if the plant had only blossomed in Whitby’s mind, and, if so, what that meant. Wonder for a good long while, before the thought becomes buried in the memos and the meeting minutes and the phone calls and a million minor emergencies. Should you ask Whitby if the mouse came with him into the storage cathedral? Perhaps. But what you do instead is put the immortal plant under round-the-clock surveillance, even though both Cheney and Grace give you grief about it.