A low black marble desk with glints of Formica stood in front of the television, old-fashioned buttons and joy sticks allowing for manipulation of the video content—almost like an antiquated museum exhibit or one of those quarter-fed séance machines at the carnival. A phalanx of four black leather conference chairs had been tucked in under the desk. Cramped quarters with the chairs pulled out, although the ceiling extended a good twenty feet above him. That should have alleviated his slight sense of claustrophobia, but it only reinforced it with some minor vertigo, given the slant of the console. The vents above him, he noticed, were filthy with dust. A sharp car-dashboard smell warred with a rusty mold scent.
The names of twenty-four of the twenty-five members of the first expedition had been etched on large gold labels affixed to the side walls.
If Grace denied that the wall of text written by the lighthouse keeper was a memorial for the former director, she could not deny either that this room did serve as a memorial for that expedition or that she served as its guardian and curator. The security clearance was so high for the video footage that of the current employees at the Southern Reach only the former director, Grace, and Cheney had access. Everyone else could see photo stills or read transcripts, but even then only under carefully controlled conditions.
So Grace served as his liaison because no one else could, and as she wordlessly pulled out a chair and through some arcane series of steps prepped the video footage, Control realized a change had come over her. She prepared the footage not with the malicious anticipation he might have expected but with loving devotion and at a deliberate pace more common to graveyards than AV rooms. As if this were a neutral space, some cease-fire agreed to between them without his knowledge.
The video would show him dead people who had become darkly legendary within the Southern Reach, and he could see she took her job as steward seriously. Probably in part because the director had, too—and the director had known these people, even if her predecessor had sent them to their fates. After a year of prep. With all of the best high-tech equipment that the Southern Reach could acquire or create, dooming them.
Control realized his heart rate had leapt, that his mouth had become dry and his palms sweaty. It felt as if he were about to take a very important test, one with consequences.
“It’s self-explanatory,” Grace said finally. “The video is cued up to the beginning and proceeds, with gaps, chronologically. You can move from clip to clip. You can skip around—whatever you prefer. If you are not finished by the end of one hour, I will come in here and your session will be over.” They had recovered more than one hundred and fifty fragments, most of the surviving footage lasting between ten seconds and two minutes. Some recovered by Lowry, others by the fourth expedition. They did not recommend watching the footage for more than an hour at any one time. Few had spent that long with it.
“I will also be waiting outside. You can knock on the door if you are done early.”
Control nodded. Did that mean he was to be locked in? Apparently it did.
Grace relinquished her seat. Control took her place, and as she left there came an unexpected hand on his shoulder, perhaps putting more weight into the gesture than necessary. Then came the click of the door lock from the outside as she left him alone in a marble vault lined with the names of wraiths.
Control had asked for this experience, but now did not really want it.
* * *
The earliest sequences showed the normal things: setting up camp, the distant lighthouse jerkily coming into view from time to time. The shapes of trees and tents showed up dark in the background. Blue sky wheeled across the screen as someone lowered the camera and forgot to turn off the camcorder. Some laughter, some banter, but Control was, like a seer or a time traveler, suspicious already. Were those the expected, normal things, the banal camaraderie displayed by human beings, or instead harbingers of secret communiqués, subcutaneous and potent? Control hadn’t wanted the interference, the contamination, of someone else’s analysis or opinions, so he hadn’t read everything in the files. But he realized right then that he was too armored with foreknowledge anyway, and too cynical about his caution not to find himself ridiculous. If he wasn’t careful, everything would be magnified, misconstrued, until each frame carried the promise of menace. He kept in mind the note from another analyst that no other expedition had encountered what he was about to see. Among those that had come back, at least.
A few segments from the expedition leader’s video journal followed at dusk—caught in silhouette, campfire behind her—reporting nothing that Control didn’t already know. Then about seven entries followed, each lasting four or five seconds, and these showed nothing but blotchy shadow: night shots with no contrast. He kept squinting into that murk hoping some shape, some image, would reveal itself. But in the end, it was just the self-fulfilling prophecy of black dust motes floating across the corners of his vision like tiny orbiting parasites.