civilization? Don’t you mean some kind of spooky thing
that we know nothing, absolutely fucking nothing about, to go with everything else
we don’t know?” Just a shadow on a blurred photo, a curling nightmare expressed by
the notes of a few unreliable witnesses—made more unreliable through hypnosis, perhaps,
no matter Central’s protestations. A spiraling thread gone astray that might or might
not be made of something else entirely—not even as scrutable in its eccentricity as
a house-squatter of a snail that stumbled around like a drunk. No hope of knowing
what it was, or even just blasting it to hell because that’s what intelligent apes
do. Just some thing in the ground, mentioned as casually, as matter-of-factly, as manhole cover or water faucet or steak knives . Topographical anomaly .
But he had said most of this to the bookshelves in his office on Tuesday—to the ghost
of the director while at a snail’s pace beginning to sort through her notes. To Grace
and the rest of them, he had said, in a calm voice, “Is there anything else you can
tell me about it?” But they couldn’t.
Any more, apparently, than could the biologist.
* * *
Control just stared at her for a moment, the interrogator’s creepy prerogative, usually
meant to intimidate. But Ghost Bird met his stare with those sharp green eyes until
he looked away. It continued to nag at him that she was different today. What had
changed in the past twenty-four hours? Her routine was the same, and surveillance
hadn’t revealed anything different about her mental state. They’d offered her a carefully
monitored phone call with her parents, but she’d had nothing to say to them. Boredom
from being cooped up with nothing but a DVD player and a censored selection of movies
and novels could not account for it. The food she ate was from the cafeteria, so Control
could commiserate with her there, but this still did not provide a reason.
“Perhaps this will jog your memory.” Or stop you lying. He began to read summaries
of accounts from prior expeditions.
“An endless pit burrowing into the ground. We could never get to the bottom of it.
We could never stop falling.”
“A tower that had fallen into the earth that gave off a feeling of intense unease.
None of us wanted to go inside, but we did. Some of us. Some of us came back.”
“There was no entrance. Just a circle of pulsing stone. Just a sense of great depth.”
Only two members of that expedition had returned, but they had brought their colleagues’
journals. Which were filled with drawings of a tower, a tunnel, a pit, a cyclone,
a series of stairs. Where they were not filled with images of more mundane things.
No two journals the same.
Control did not continue for long. He had begun the recitations aware that the selected
readings might contaminate the edges of her amnesia … if she actually suffered from
memory loss … and that feeling had quickly intensified. But it was mostly his own
sense of unease that made him pause, and then stop. His feeling that in making the
tower-pit more real in his imagination, he was also making it more real in fact.
But Ghost Bird either had not or had picked up on his tiny moment of distress, because
she said, “Why did you stop?”
He ignored her, switched one tower for another. “What about the lighthouse?”
“What about the lighthouse?” First thought: She’s mimicking me. Which brought back
a middle school memory of humiliation from bullies before the transformation in high
school as he’d put his efforts into football and tried to think of himself as a spy
in the world of jocks. Realized that the words on the wall had thrown him off. Not
by much, but just enough.
“Do you remember it?”
“I do,” she said, surprising him.
Still, he had to pull it out of her: “What do you remember?”
“Approaching it from the trail through the reeds. Looking in
that we know nothing, absolutely fucking nothing about, to go with everything else
we don’t know?” Just a shadow on a blurred photo, a curling nightmare expressed by
the notes of a few unreliable witnesses—made more unreliable through hypnosis, perhaps,
no matter Central’s protestations. A spiraling thread gone astray that might or might
not be made of something else entirely—not even as scrutable in its eccentricity as
a house-squatter of a snail that stumbled around like a drunk. No hope of knowing
what it was, or even just blasting it to hell because that’s what intelligent apes
do. Just some thing in the ground, mentioned as casually, as matter-of-factly, as manhole cover or water faucet or steak knives . Topographical anomaly .
But he had said most of this to the bookshelves in his office on Tuesday—to the ghost
of the director while at a snail’s pace beginning to sort through her notes. To Grace
and the rest of them, he had said, in a calm voice, “Is there anything else you can
tell me about it?” But they couldn’t.
Any more, apparently, than could the biologist.
* * *
Control just stared at her for a moment, the interrogator’s creepy prerogative, usually
meant to intimidate. But Ghost Bird met his stare with those sharp green eyes until
he looked away. It continued to nag at him that she was different today. What had
changed in the past twenty-four hours? Her routine was the same, and surveillance
hadn’t revealed anything different about her mental state. They’d offered her a carefully
monitored phone call with her parents, but she’d had nothing to say to them. Boredom
from being cooped up with nothing but a DVD player and a censored selection of movies
and novels could not account for it. The food she ate was from the cafeteria, so Control
could commiserate with her there, but this still did not provide a reason.
“Perhaps this will jog your memory.” Or stop you lying. He began to read summaries
of accounts from prior expeditions.
“An endless pit burrowing into the ground. We could never get to the bottom of it.
We could never stop falling.”
“A tower that had fallen into the earth that gave off a feeling of intense unease.
None of us wanted to go inside, but we did. Some of us. Some of us came back.”
“There was no entrance. Just a circle of pulsing stone. Just a sense of great depth.”
Only two members of that expedition had returned, but they had brought their colleagues’
journals. Which were filled with drawings of a tower, a tunnel, a pit, a cyclone,
a series of stairs. Where they were not filled with images of more mundane things.
No two journals the same.
Control did not continue for long. He had begun the recitations aware that the selected
readings might contaminate the edges of her amnesia … if she actually suffered from
memory loss … and that feeling had quickly intensified. But it was mostly his own
sense of unease that made him pause, and then stop. His feeling that in making the
tower-pit more real in his imagination, he was also making it more real in fact.
But Ghost Bird either had not or had picked up on his tiny moment of distress, because
she said, “Why did you stop?”
He ignored her, switched one tower for another. “What about the lighthouse?”
“What about the lighthouse?” First thought: She’s mimicking me. Which brought back
a middle school memory of humiliation from bullies before the transformation in high
school as he’d put his efforts into football and tried to think of himself as a spy
in the world of jocks. Realized that the words on the wall had thrown him off. Not
by much, but just enough.
“Do you remember it?”
“I do,” she said, surprising him.
Still, he had to pull it out of her: “What do you remember?”
“Approaching it from the trail through the reeds. Looking in
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