Authority (37 page)

*   *   *

During the nights of his journey farther north, tied up as best he could where the
coastline allowed it—the lee of a rock island large enough to shield him, the bottom
able to hold the anchor despite slippery kelp—he began to see strange lights far behind
him. They rose and fell and glided across the sea and the sky, some white and some
green or purple-tinged. He could not tell if they were searching or defined a purpose
less purposeful. But the lights broke the spell and he turned on the radio that night,
holding it to his ear to keep the volume down as he huddled in his sleeping bag. But
he only heard a few unintelligible words until static set in, and he did not know
if this was because of some catastrophe or the remoteness of his location.

The stars above were large and fixed. They existed against a fabric of night as vast
and deep as his sleep, his dream. He was tired now, and hungry for something beyond
cans and protein bars. He was sick of the sound of the waves and the sound of his
boat’s engine. It had been three days since leaving Rock Bay, and he had caught no
sign of her along the coast, would soon come to the most remote part of the area.
He had long since passed the point where anything inland could be reached by road,
but only by hiking trail or helicopter or boat. The very edge of anything that could
be called Rock Bay.

If he kept conserving food and water, he had enough to last another week before he
had to turn back.

*   *   *

The morning of another day. In a lull, drifting, he rowed into an inlet surrounded
by black rocks as sharp as shark fins, as craggy as any mountainside. He’d decided
to get close because it looked similar to the coastline sketched in the biologist’s
field entries.

The rocks were covered in limpets and starfish, and in the shallows the hundred bristling
dark shapes of sea urchins like miniature submerged mines. He had seen no one for
two days. His arms were sore and aching from rowing. He wanted a hot meal, a bath,
some landmark to tell him for certain where he was. The boat had begun to take on
water; he spent some time now bailing, his fear of moving even a little ways from
shore greater than that of running aground on something jagged.

The rocks formed a rough line or ridge all the way back to shore, and it was hard
to navigate around them. A swell carried him too close, and he rammed up against them,
felt the jarring in his bones. He put out an oar to push off; it slid off smoothly
at first, and he had to try again, then frantically rowed until he was a safe distance
from the suck and roll.

It took him a moment to realize why his oar had slid, why there had been no usual
grinding crunch. Someone had been eating the limpets and mussels. The rock had been
almost bare except for some kelp. He looked through his binoculars, saw that rocks
a little farther in were bare, too, and closer to shore, a few showed pale circular
marks where the limpets had resisted their picking.

No sign of a fire or of habitation nearby, but someone or something had been grazing
on them. If a person, he knew it could have been anyone. Yet it was more than he’d
had to go on yesterday. Trepidation and relief and a certain indecisiveness warred
within him. If a person, whoever it was might have already seen the boat. He thought
to make landfall there, then reversed himself and rowed back the way he’d come, back
down the coast by just one cove, hidden by another of the huge rocks that rose from
the ocean to form an inhospitable island.

By then, the boat had taken on more water and he realized that he was going to spend
most of his time bailing, not rowing, or worrying about sinking, not rowing. So he
brought the boat up close to shore, dropped anchor, and waded to a little black sand
beach sheltered by overhanging trees, sat there gasping for long minutes. This was
his last chance. He could try to fix the boat. He could try to turn back, limp back
down the coast to Rock Bay. Be done with this, be done with the idea of this forever.
Leave the vision of the biologist in his head, never manifesting in front of him,
and then just face whatever had been growing there, behind him. He wondered what his
mother was doing in that moment, where she was. Then a flash of Whitby reaching out
a hand from the shelf struck him sideways, and of Grace at the door, waiting for the
director.

He went back out to the boat, took everything useful he could fit into the backpack,
including Whitby’s terroir manuscript. Staggering a little under the weight of that,
he began to make his way back toward the line of black rocks, trying to stay concealed
by the tree line. Soon the boat was just a memory, something that had once existed
but not any longer.

That night, he noticed lights in the sky, again distant but coming nearer. He imagined
he could hear the sound of a ship’s engine, but the lights faded, the sound faded,
and he went to sleep to the hush and whisper of the surf.

*   *   *

At dusk of the next day, John saw a movement on the rocks, and he trained his binoculars
on it. He wanted to believe that the figure was the biologist, that he knew her outline
against the worn sky, the way that she moved, but he had only seen her captive. Inert.
Deactivated. Different.

The first time, he lost her almost immediately from his vantage some distance from
the rocks, couldn’t tell if she was coming back in or going farther out. Rocks and
form merged and blurred, and then it was night. He waited for the appearance of a
light or a fire, but saw neither. If it was the biologist, she was in full survivalist
mode.

Another day passed, and he saw nothing except seagulls and a gray fox that came to
an abrupt halt when it saw him and then evaporated into the mist that coated everything
for far too long. He worried that whoever he had seen had passed on, that this wasn’t
an outpost but just another marker on a longer journey. He ate another can of beans,
drank sparingly from the water canteen. Huddled, shivering, beneath deep cover. He
was reaching the edge of his woodcraft again, was made more for back roads and small-town
surveillance than for living out in the wild. He thought he’d probably lost about
five pounds. He kept taking in deep breaths of cedar and every green, living thing
as a temporary antidote.

*   *   *

The figure came out at dusk again, crawling and hopping across the sheets of black
rock with an expertise John knew would be beyond him. As he identified her as the
biologist through the binoculars, his heart leapt and his blood stirred and the little
hairs on his arms rose. A flood of emotion came over him, and he stifled tears—of
relief or of something deeper? He had been existing inside himself for long enough
now that he wasn’t sure. But he righted himself immediately. He knew that if she got
back to shore, she’d disappear into the rain forest. He did not like his odds of tracking
her there.

If she saw him clambering after her, though, and he didn’t get a chance to confront
her, she’d slip through his fingers and he’d never see her again. This, too, he knew.

The tide had begun to come in. The light was dull and flat and gray. Again. The wind
had become harsh. Out at sea, there was nothing to indicate human beings existed except
for the rising and falling figure of the biologist, and a deep vein of black smoke
opening up into the sky from some vessel so far out at sea that it wasn’t visible
even with the binoculars.

He waited until she was more than halfway out, wondering if she’d lost some natural
caution because it was still easier to cut her off than it should have been. Then
he snuck along the other side of the ridge of rock, hunched over, trying to keep his
silhouette off her horizon, although he’d be framed by forest, not the fading light.
He had brought the knapsack with him out of paranoia that she or someone else might
steal it while he was gone. Although he had stripped it down somewhat, it threw off
his balance, made it harder to hold his gun and climb the rocks. He could have left
Whitby’s manuscript behind, but this had seemed more and more important to keep in
view at all times.

He tried to keep his steps short and to bend his knees, but even so slipped many times
on the uneven rocks, slick with seaweed and rough and sharp from the edges of the
shells of limpets and clams and mussels. Had to reach out to keep his balance and
cut himself despite the cloth he’d tied over his palms. Very soon his ankles and knees
felt weak.

By the time he was halfway out, the ridge of rocks had narrowed, and he had no choice
but to clamber atop them. When he looked up from that vantage for the first time,
the biologist was nowhere to be seen. Which meant she had either found some miraculous
way back to shore, or she was hidden somewhere ahead of him.

No matter how he hunched and bent, she was going to have a clear line of sight at
him. He didn’t know what options she had—rock, knife, homemade spear?—if she wasn’t
glad to see him. He took off his hat, shoved it in the pocket of his raincoat, hoping
that if she was watching she would at least recognize that it was him. That this recognition
might mean more to her than “interrogator” or “captor.” That it might make her hesitate
should she be lying in wait.

Three-quarters of the way and he wondered if he should just head back. His legs were
rubbery, matched the feel of the rocks where the kelp swelled over them. The waves
to either side struck with more force, and although he could still see now—the sun
a quiver of red against the far horizon, illuminating the distant smoke—he’d have
to use his flashlight going back. Which would alert anyone on the shore to his presence;
he hadn’t come all this way just to betray her to others. So he continued on with
a sense of fatalism. He’d sacrificed all his pawns, his knights, bishops, and rooks.
Abuela and Abuelo were facing an onslaught from the other side of the board.

In the tiring, repetitious work of climbing on, of continuing on and not going back,
a grim satisfaction spread in a last surge of energy through his body. He had pursued
this line of inquiry to the end. He had come very far, this thought mixed with sadness
for what lay behind, so many people with whom he’d forged such slight connections.
So many people that, as he neared the end of the rocks, he wished he had known better,
tried to know better. His caring for his father now seemed not like a selfless effort
but something that had been for him, too, to show him what it meant to be close to
someone.

At the end of the ridge, he came upon a deep lagoon of ever-rippling encircled water,
roughly cradled by the rocks. Lagoon was perhaps too gentle a word for it—a gurgling
deep hole, whose sharp and irregular sides could cut hand or head easily. The bottom
could not be seen.

Beyond, just the endless ocean, frothing to get in, smashing against the closed fist
of the rocks so that spray flecked his face and the force of the wind buffeted him.
But in the lagoon, all was calm, if unknowable in its dark reflection.

She appeared so close, from concealment on his left, that he almost jumped back, caught
himself in time by bending and putting out a hand.

In that moment, he was helpless and in steadying himself he found that she had a gun
trained on him. It looked like a Glock, like his own, standard-issue. He hadn’t expected
that. Somehow, somewhere, she had found a gun. She was thinner, her cheekbones as
cutting as the rocks. Her hair had begun to grow out, a dark fuzz. She wore thick
jeans and a sweater too big for her but heavy, and high-quality brown hiking boots.
There was a defiance on her face that warred with curiosity and some other emotion.
Her lips were chapped. In this, her natural environment, she seemed so sure of herself
that he felt awkward, ungainly. Something had clicked into place. Something had sharpened
her, and he thought it might be memory.

“Throw your gun into the sea,” she said, motioning to his holster. She had to raise
her voice for him to hear her, even this close—close enough that with a few steps
he could have reached out and touched her shoulder.

“We might need it later,” he said.

“We?”

“Yes,” he said. “More are coming. I’ve seen the lights.” He did not want to share
what had happened to the Southern Reach. Not yet.

“Toss it, now, unless you want to get shot.” He believed her. He’d seen the reports
from her training. She said she wasn’t good with guns, but the targets hadn’t agreed.

So there went Grandpa version 4.9 or 5.1. He hadn’t kept track of the expeditions.
The sea made it disappear with a smack that sounded like one last comment from Jack.

John looked over at her, standing across from him while the waves blasted the rocks
and despite the gray and despite the wet and the cold, despite the fact he might die
sometime in the next few minutes, he started to laugh. It surprised him, thought at
first someone else was laughing.

Her grip tightened on the gun. “Is the idea of me shooting you funny?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s very, very funny.” He was laughing hard enough now that he had
to bend to his knees to keep his balance on the rocks. A fierce joy or hysteria had
risen inside of him, and he wondered in an idle, distant way if perhaps he should
have sought out this feeling more often. The look of her, against the backdrop of
the swell and the fall of the sea, was almost too much for him. But for the first
time he knew he had done the right thing in coming here.

“It’s funny because there have been many other times … so many other times when I
would’ve understood why someone wanted to shoot me.” That was only part of it, the
other part being that he had felt almost as if Area X was about to shoot him, and
that Area X had been trying to shoot him for a very long time.

“You followed me,” she said, “even though I clearly don’t want to be followed. You’ve
come to what most people consider the butt end of the world and you’ve cornered me
here. You probably want to ask more questions, although it should be clear that I’m
done with questions. What did you think would happen?”