A pause. “It might have come into play, yes, but only with strict rules and safeguards—and only in the subject’s absolute best interests.”
“The subject might have preferred to have had the choice. The subject might’ve preferred not to be a drone.” The subject might prefer to know that his hopes and desires and impulses were all definitely his own hopes, desires, impulses.
“The subject might not have had the intel or perspective to be involved in that decision. The subject might have needed an inoculation, a vaccine.”
“Against what?”
“Against any number of things. Although at the first sign of something serious happening, we would pull you out and send a team in.”
“Like what? What would you consider serious?”
“Whatever might happen.”
Infuriatingly opaque, as always. Making decisions for him, as always. He was channeling his father’s irritation now as much as his own, the specters of so many arguments at the dinner table or in the living room. He decided to take the conversation onto the street after all, stood in the mouth of the alley just to the left of the coffee shop. Not many people were out walking around—most of them were probably still in church, or scoring drugs.
“Jack used to say that if you don’t give an operative all the information they need, you might as well cut your own leg off,” he said. “Your operation is screwed.”
“But your operation isn’t screwed, John,” she said, with some force. “You’re still there. You’re still in touch with us. Me. We’re not going anywhere.”
“Good point, except I don’t think that ‘we’ means Central. I think you mean some faction within Central, and not an effective one. Your Voice made a mess trying to take the assistant director out of the mix. Give her another week and I’ll be Grace’s administrative assistant.” Or was the point to waste a lot of Grace’s time and attention?
“There are no factions, just Central. The Voice is under a lot of stress, John. Even more now. We all are.”
“The hell there aren’t factions.” Now he was Jack, hard to throw off topic. “The hell there aren’t.” “The hell there isn’t.” “The hell you say.”
“You won’t believe me, John, but I’ve done you a favor placing you at the Southern Reach.”
Everyone had forgotten the definition of favor. First Whitby, then Grace, now his mother. He didn’t trust himself to respond, so he didn’t.
“A lot of people would’ve killed for that position,” she said.
He had no answer for that, either. While they’d been talking, the woman had disappeared, and the storefront was deserted. Back in the day the liquor store had been a department store. Long before Hedley was built, there had been an indigenous settlement here, along the river—something his father had told him—and the remains of that, too, lay beneath the facade of the liquor store.
Down below the store, too, a labyrinth of limestone cradling the aquifer, narrow caves and blind albino crawfish and luminescent freshwater fish. Surrounded by the crushed remains of so many creatures, loamed into the soil, pushed down by the foundations of the buildings. Would that be the biologist’s understanding of the street—what she would see? Perhaps she would see, too, one possible future of that space, the liquor store crumbling under an onslaught of vines and weather damage, becoming akin to the sunken, moss-covered hills near Area X. A loss she might not mourn. Or would she?
“Are you there, John?”
Where else would he be?
* * *
For a long time now, Control had suspected his mother had taken someone else under her wing as a protégé—it seemed almost inevitable. Someone sculpted, trained, and deployed to correct the kinds of mistakes made by Control. The thought reoccurred whenever he was feeling particularly insecure or vulnerable, or sometimes just because it could be a useful mental exercise. Now he was trying to visualize the perfectly groomed protégé walking in and taking over the Southern Reach from him. What would this person have done differently? What would this person do right now?
While his mother continued to talk, plunging ahead with what seemed like a lie.
“But I was mostly calling for an update, to see if you think you’re making progress”—this his mother’s attempt to subvert his silence with an apology. Slight emphasis on progress.
“You know exactly how it’s going.” The Voice would have told her everything It knew up to the point he had derailed It.
“True, but I haven’t heard your side.”