Authority(67)

“Stop trying,” Control repeated. “You’re doing harm to me—she knows you’re trying. Just stop.”

“Again, I don’t report to you, Control. Don’t tell me what to do. You asked me to fix it, and I’m trying to fix it.” Feedback made Control take the phone away from his ear.

“You know I saw the video of the first expedition this morning,” he said. “It threw me.” By way of halfhearted apology. Grandpa had taught him that: Redirect while seeming to address the other party’s grievance. It’d been done enough to him in the past.

But for some reason that set the Voice off. “You think that’s a fucking excuse for not doing your goddamn job. Seeing a video? Get your head out of your asshole and give me a real report next time—and then maybe I’ll be a lot more willing to do your bidding the way you want me to do your bidding. Got it, fuckface?”

The swear words were delivered in a peculiar, halting way, as if the Voice were completing a Mad Lib where the only scripted parts were the words fucking, goddamn, asshole, and fuckface. But Control got it. The Voice was a shithead. He’d had shithead bosses before. Unless the real Voice was taking a break and this was the sub’s attempt at improv. Megalodon mad. Megalodon not happy. Megalodon have tantrum.

So he gave in and made some conciliatory sounds. Then he elaborated and told the tale of his “progress,” the story structured and strung together not as the plaintive, halting start-stop of what-the-hell that it was, but instead as an analytical and nuanced “journey” that could only be interpreted as having a beginning and a middle pushing out toward a satisfying end.

“Enough!” the Voice said at some point.

* * *

Later: “That’s better,” the Voice said. Control couldn’t really tell if the severity of that rushed cheese-grater-on-cheese-grater tone had lightened. “For now, continue to collect data and continue to question the biologist, but press her harder.” Had already done that, and it had gone poorly. Uncovering useful intel was often a long-term project, a matter of listening for what didn’t matter to fall away for just a moment.

After another pause, the Voice said, “I have that information you asked for.”

“Which information?” Plant, mouse, or…?

“I can confirm that the director did cross the border.”

Control sat up straight on the toilet seat. Someone was knocking timidly at the door. They’d have to wait.

“When? Right before the last eleventh expedition?”

“Yes. Completely unauthorized and without anyone’s knowledge or permission.”

“And she got away with it.”

“What do you mean?”

“She wasn’t fired.”

A pause, then the Voice said, “No doubt she should have been terminated. But, no, she got probation. The assistant director took her place for six months.” Impatient, as if it didn’t matter.

What was he supposed to do with that? Probably a question for his mother. Because surely someone higher up must have known the director was going across the border and then someone had protected her when she came back.

“Do you know how long she was gone? Is there a report of what she found?”

“Three weeks. No report.”

Three weeks!

“She must have been debriefed. There must be a record.”

A much longer pause. Was the Voice consulting with another Voice or Voices?

Finally the Voice conceded the point: “There is a debriefing statement. I can have a copy sent to you.”

“Did you know that the director thought the border was advancing?” Control asked.

“I am aware of that theory,” the Voice said. “But it is no concern of yours.”

How was that no concern of his? How did someone go from calling him a fuckface to using a phrase like “no concern of yours”? The Voice was a bad actor, Control concluded, or had a bad script, or it was deliberate.

At the end of their conversation, for no good reason, he told a joke. “What’s brown and sticky?”

“I know that one,” the Voice said. “A stick.”

“A turd.”

Click.

* * *

“Go ahead and check the seats for change, John.” Control, back in his office, exhausted, ambushed by odd flashes of memory. A colleague at his last position coming up to him after a presentation and saying in an accusing tone, “You contradicted me.” No, I disagreed with you. A woman in college, a brunette with a broad face and beautiful brown eyes that made him ache, whom he’d fallen for in Fundamentals of Math but when he’d given her a poem had said to him, “Yes, but do you dance?” No, I write poetry. I’m going to be some kind of spy. One of his college professors in political science had made them write poetry to “get your juices flowing.” Most of the time, though, he’d been studying, going to the shooting range, working out, using parties to get in practice for a lifetime of short-term relationships.