Acceptance(20)

That was Saul’s question, too.

“It’s just for our records,” Suzanne said, with a wide, devouring smile. “We’re creating a photo map of the area, and a record of the people who live here. And, you know, it’s such a beautiful day.” Except it was a little overcast now, the encroaching gray from clouds that would probably rain inland, not here.

“Yes, how about a photograph of you, your assistant—and the girl, I guess,” Henry said, ignoring Gloria. He was studying Saul with an intensity that made him uncomfortable.

“I’m not sure,” Saul said, reluctant if for no other reason than their insistence. He also wanted to find a way to extricate himself from Brad, who wasn’t anything as formal as an “assistant.”

“I’m sure,” Gloria muttered, glaring at them. Suzanne tried to pat her head. Gloria looked at first as if she might bite that hand, then, in character, just growled and leaned away from it.

Henry stepped in close to Saul. “What would a photograph of the lighthouse be without its keeper?” he asked, but it wasn’t really a question.

“A better picture?”

“You used to be a preacher up north, I know,” Henry said. “But if you’re worrying about the people you left behind, don’t—it’s not for publication.”

That threw him off-balance.

“How do you know that?” Saul said.

But Brad had gotten a kick out of this revelation, waded in before Henry could answer. “Yeah, that Saul, man. He’s a real desperado. He’s wanted in ten states. If you take his picture, it’s all over for him.”

Did a picture really matter? Even though he’d left unfinished business up north, it wasn’t like he’d fled, exactly, or as if this photo would wind up in the newspapers.

The wind had taken to gusting. Rather than argue, Saul pulled his cap out of his back pocket, figured wearing it might disguise him a bit, although why did he need a disguise? An irrational thought. Probably not the first irrational thought from a lighthouse keeper on the forgotten cost.

“Say ‘cheese.’ Say ‘no secrets.’ Count of three.”

No secrets?

Brad had decided to assume a stoic pose that Saul supposed might be a way of poking fun at him. Gloria, seeking the dramatic, made them wait while she drew the hood of her jacket over her head and then ran to the rocks as her protest, certain Suzanne wouldn’t be able to get her in the frame. Once at the rocks, she climbed away from them, and then turned around and began to climb back, shrieking with delight and shouting, for no good reason, “I’m a monster! I’m a monster!”

The count of three came, Suzanne grown still and silent, bending at the knees as if she were on the deck of a ship at sea. She gave the signal.

“No secrets!” Brad said prematurely, with an enthusiasm he might regret, given his drug record.

Then came the flash from the camera, and in the aftermath black motes drifted across the edges of Saul’s vision, gathered there, lingered for longer than seemed normal.





0005: CONTROL

They had exploded through and up out of that terrible corridor between the world and Area X into a lack of air that had shocked Control, until the solid push of Ghost Bird’s body against his, the weight of his backpack pulling him down, forced him to fight against the slapping pressure of what his burning eyes, strangled throat, told him was salt water. He had managed to shut his mouth against his surprise, to ignore the rush of bubbles pushing up and around the top of his head. Managed to clamp down on both his panic and his scream, to adjust as well to the ripping feel of a thousand rough-smooth surfaces against him, too much like the door that had become a wall cutting through his fingers, slashing against his arms, his legs, sure he had materialized into the middle of a tornado of shining knives—Whitby and Lowry and Grace and his mother the spy, the whole damned congregation of the Southern Reach calling out the word Jump! through those thousand silvery reflections. Even as his lungs flooded with water. Even as he struggled to lose the treacherous knapsack but still hold on to Whitby’s document inside it, grappling, flailing for the pages, some of which exploded out into the water, the rest plummeting into the murk below with the knapsack: a slab of pulp, a soggy tombstone.

Ghost Bird, he recognized dimly, had already shot up and past him, toward a kind of glistening yellow egg of a reflected halo that might, or might not, be the sun. While he was still sucking water among the converging circles of the many swirling knives that stared at him with flat judgmental eyes. Confused by the swirl of pages that floated above or below, that stuck to his clothes, that came apart in miniature whirlpools to join the vortex. For a fading second, he was peering at a line of text and suffocating while blunt snouts bumped up against his chest.