The biologist shrugged. “I don’t know.”
He read from the transcript: “‘The thistles there have a lavender bloom and grow in the transitional space between the forest and the swamp. You cannot avoid them. They attract a variety of insects and the buzzing and the brightness that surrounds them suffuses Area X with a sense of industry, almost like a human city.’ And it goes on, although I won’t.”
She shrugged again.
Control didn’t intend to hover, this first time, but instead to glide over the terrain, to map out the extent of the territory he wanted to cover with her. So he moved on.
“What do you remember about your husband?”
“How is that relevant?”
“Relevant to what?” Pouncing.
No response, so he prompted her again: “What do you remember about your husband?”
“That I had one. Some memories before I went over, like I had about the linguist.” Clever, to tie that in, to try to make it seem part and parcel. A vagueness, not a sharpness.
“Did you know that he came back, like you?” he asked. “That he was disoriented, like you?”
“I’m not disoriented,” she snapped, leaning forward, and Control leaned back. He wasn’t afraid, but for a moment he’d thought he should be. Brain scans had been normal. All measures had been taken to check for anything remotely like an invasive species. Or “an intruder” as Grace put it, still unable to say anything to him remotely like the word alien. If anything, Ghost Bird was healthier now than before she’d left; the toxins present in most people today existed in her and the others at much lower levels than normal.
“I didn’t mean to offend,” he said. And yet she was disoriented, Control knew. No matter what she remembered or didn’t remember, the biologist he’d come to know from the pre-expedition transcripts would not have so quickly shown irritation. Why had he gotten to her?
He picked up the remote control from beside the file, clicked twice. The flat-screen TV on the wall to their left fizzled to life, showing the pixelated, fuzzy image of the biologist standing in the empty lot, almost as still as the pavement or the bricks in the building in front of her. The whole scene was awash in the sickly green of surveillance-camera noir.
“Why that empty lot? Why did we find you there?”
A look of indifference and no answer. He let the video continue to play. The repetition in the background sometimes got to the interviewee. But usually video footage showed a suspect putting down a bag or shoving something into a trash bin.
“First day in Area X,” Control said. “Hiking to base camp. What happened?”
“Nothing much.”
Control had no children, but he imagined that this was more or less what he’d get from a teenager asked about her day at school. Perhaps he would circle back for a moment.
“But you remember the thistles very, very well,” he said.
“I don’t know why you keep talking about thistles.”
“Because what you said about them suggests you remember some of your observations from the expedition.”
A pause, and Control knew the biologist was staring at him. He wanted to return fire, but something warned him against it. Something made him feel that the dream of falling into the depths might take him.
“Why am I a prisoner here?” she asked, and he felt it was safe to meet her gaze again, as if some moment of danger had come and gone.
“You aren’t. This is part of your debriefing.”
“But I can’t leave.”
“Not yet,” he admitted. “But you will.” If only to another facility; it might be another two or three years, if all went well, before they allowed any of the returnees back out in the world. Their legal status was in that gray area often arbitrarily defined by the threat to national security.
“I find that unlikely,” she said.
He decided to try again. “If not thistles, what would be relevant?” he asked. “What should I ask you?”
“Isn’t that your job?”
“What is my job?” Although he knew perfectly well what she meant.
“You’re in charge of the Southern Reach.”
“Do you know what the Southern Reach is?”
“Yesss.” Like a hiss.
“What about the second day at base camp? When did things begin to get strange?” Had they? He had to assume they had.
“I don’t remember.”
Control leaned forward. “I can put you under hypnosis. I have the right to. I can do that.”
“Hypnosis doesn’t work on me,” she said, disgust at his threat clear from her tone.
“How do you know?” A moment of disorientation. Had she given up something she didn’t want to give up, or had she remembered something lost to her before? Did she know the difference?