Acceptance(74)

“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?”

“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.

Whitby just needs a companion. Whitby needs someone who won’t judge or interrogate him, someone or something that depends on him. And as long as Whitby keeps the creature at home, in the attic, you won’t tell anyone about the breach—have recognized by now that just as Lowry’s tethered to you, you’re chained to Whitby.

Playing pool with the Realtor and the veteran on an expedition to the Star Lanes a week later, you’re listening to the Realtor describe some couple that had been squatting in a model home and refused to give her their names when you think again about Whitby not naming the mouse. As if he’d been following Southern Reach protocol for expeditions.

“They thought that so long as I didn’t know their names, I couldn’t call the police. Peering out from behind the curtains like ghosts. There was so much fail in that, not that I felt good about kicking them out. Except I have to sell the place—I’m not running a charity. I give to charities, sure, but why do they have homeless shelters anyway? And if I let them stay then someone else might get the same idea. Turns out the police had a file on them, so I made the right decision.”