In the minimalist foyer and rec rooms that served as preamble to the suites you could also find a novel’s worth of photographs and portraits that had no relationship to reality. The photographs had been carefully chosen to suggest post-mission success, complete with grins and cheers, when they actually depicted pre-mission prep, often for expeditions gone disastrously wrong, or actors from photoshoots. The portraits, a long procession of them ending at the suites, were worse, in Control’s estimation. They depicted all twenty-five “returning” members of the first expedition, the triumphant pioneers who had encountered the “pristine wilderness” that in fact had killed all but Lowry. This was the alternative reality any staff that came into contact with expedition members had to support. This was the fiction that came with its own made-up or tailored stories of bravery and endurance meant to evoke these same qualities in the current expedition. Like some socialist dictatorship’s glorious heroes of the revolution.
What did it mean? Nothing. Had the biologist believed it all? Perhaps. The tale wanted to be believed, begged to be believed: a story of good old national can-do pride. Roll up your sleeves and get down to work, and if you try hard enough you’ll come back alive and not a broken-down zombie with a distant gaze and cancer in place of a personality and an intact short-term memory.
* * *
He found Ghost Bird in her room, on her cot—or, someone other than him might have reported back, her bed. The place combined the ambiance of a whitewashed barracks, a summer camp, and a failing hotel. The same pale walls—although here you could see painted-over graffiti, the same as in a prison cell. The high ceiling included a skylight, and on the side wall a narrow window, too high for the biologist to peer out of it. The bed had been built into the far wall, and opposite it a TV with DVD player: approved movies only and a couple of approved channels. Nothing too realistic. Nothing that might fill in the amnesia. It was mostly ancient science-fiction and fantasy movies or melodramas. Documentaries and news programs were on the No list. Animal shows could go either way.
“I thought I would visit you this time, since you don’t feel well,” he said, through his surgical mask. The attendant had already said she had given her permission.
“You thought you’d crash my sickness party and take advantage of me not being at full strength,” she said. Her eyes were bloodshot and hooded with shadow, her face drawn. She was still wearing the same odd janitorial-military outfit, this time with red socks. Even sick, she looked strong. She must do push-ups and pull-ups at a ferocious rate, was all he could think.
“No,” he said, spinning an ovoid plastic chair so, before he’d thought through the visual, he could lean against the back, legs awkwardly splayed to either side. Did they not allow real chairs for the same reason airports only had plastic knives? “No, I was concerned. I didn’t want to drag you to the debriefing room.” He wondered if the medication for her sickness had made her fuzzy, if he should come back later. Or not at all. He had become uncomfortably aware of the power imbalance between them in this setting.
“Of course. Phorus snails are known for their courtesy.”
“If you’d read further in your biology text, you would have discovered this is true.”
That earned him half a laugh, but also her turning away from him on the bed-cot as she hugged an extra yellow pillow. Her V of a back faced him, the fabric of her shirt pulled tight, the delicate hairs on the smooth skin of her neck revealed to him with an almost microscopic precision.
“We could go into the common area if you would prefer?”
“No, you should see me in my unnatural environment.”
“It seems nice enough,” he said, then wished he hadn’t.
“The Ghost Bird has a usual daily range of ten to twenty square miles, not a cramped space for pacing of, say, forty feet.”
He winced, nodded in recognition, changed the subject. “I thought maybe today we’d talk about your husband and also the director.”
“We won’t talk about my husband. And you’re the director.”
“Sorry. I meant the psychologist. I misspoke.” Cursing and forgiving himself at the same time.
She swiveled enough to give him a raised eyebrow, right eye hidden by the pillow, then fell back into contemplating the wall. “Misspoke?”
“I meant the psychologist.”
“No, I think you meant director.”
“Psychologist,” he said stubbornly. Perhaps with too much irritation. There was something about the casualness of the situation that alarmed him. He should not have come anywhere near her private quarters.