She leaves him to it. She has done what touch can do, and what words can do. The only other variable is time.
Greaves watches her rejoin Dr. Sealey and the others. The weight and import of the moment make her forget herself enough to reach out and take Dr. Sealey’s hand. They look into each other’s eyes, enjoying some wordless communion. Greaves would find that combined touch and gaze unbearable, but he knows that for lovers, meaning people who share physical intimacy, such things are an important means of overcoming the isolation of monadic consciousness. Or seeming to.
We’re going home empty-handed. He replays the words in his mind, three times over. It was true yesterday, but it’s not true now.
The contents of freezer cabinet ten.
The slender cylinder of cortical tissue in the biopsy needle.
He can still make this right.
23
Dr. Fournier is afraid that he may have overreached his authority.
In the engine room, with the door closed and locked, he tries once again to raise Brigadier Fry on his secret radio, which despite its tiny size has always out-performed the main cockpit radio in terms of reach and signal strength. But yet again the brigadier fails to pick up.
Fournier wishes very fervently that he had been able to ask her before he gave the order to turn around.
It wasn’t fear. He didn’t do it because he was afraid, although he is. Afraid of dying, and even more afraid of not dying—of being bitten and left abandoned up here in the north while Rosie rolls home; a living but Cordyceps-ridden scarecrow standing out in a field for ever while the seasons wheel and turn.
But it was anger, in the end, that pushed him over the precipice of decision. He is going to be judged on what the expedition has achieved, and he will be judged harshly because they have achieved nothing. They left Beacon to cheers and fanfares, bottles of bootleg liquor smashed across their bows. The twelve of them in their tin can, carrying the blessings of the million and a half they were meant to save. Now they will sneak home through the back door and be forgotten. Suddenly, seeing that shame and blame vividly in his head, he found in himself an unexpected eagerness to face it full on and answer it. You could have done no better. Nobody could have done better. We didn’t find an answer because there isn’t one!
And perhaps there was a part of him that was thinking: Lutes is probably only the first. He’s proved that it’s eminently possible for us to die out here. And after the proof, you can expect to find more and more instances that support it.
Perhaps, yes. But it doesn’t really matter now.
He found his voice. He found his authority. He made his decision and he carried it. This—squatting over the radio, teasing its tiny frequency controls with cold and clumsy fingers, waiting once again to be put in his place—is the price he has to pay for that.
After three failed attempts to raise the brigadier, he decides to wait a while. Rosie is stationary, of course, so there is no chance of moving into an area with better reception, but the fall of night sometimes sharpens the signal all by itself.
This digging in was at Carlisle’s insistence, and Fournier didn’t argue. For Rosie to move at night is a hazardous proceeding. Most of the roads are blocked with rusting cars, the poignant remains of a ten-year-old exodus. The going is hard, even with full visibility. The colonel has decreed that they will bivouac for the night and move out in the morning.
It seems to be so easy for the colonel to constitute himself as an authority when other authorities fail. For Fournier it’s very hard. His natural mode is submission.
His relationship with Brigadier Fry fits very well into this pattern, and always has since the first time he ever met her. It was before his status as civilian commander was officially confirmed. He had been interviewed by three representatives of the Main Table and he felt he had done well, portraying himself as a safe pair of hands, a man who would stick to his orders no matter what. But then the brigadier, as senior officer in the Military Muster, asserted a right to interview him, too. After some toing and froing, she won her point.
In her command tent between the second and third of Beacon’s seven perimeter fences, she welcomed him without using his name and poured him a whiskey without asking him whether he drank. She had some questions about his relevant experience, both as a scientist and as a team leader, but they were generic enough that they didn’t even prove she had read his file. She seemed a lot more interested in talking about Colonel Carlisle. “The colonel is an important man, and he’s going to be away from Beacon and the Main Table for a long time. He’ll be missed here.”
Fournier had no opinion about this, but he nodded emphatically. “Oh yes. I’m sure of it. The mission will be lucky to have him.”
That seemed to him to be the answer that was required, but the brigadier didn’t appear overly enthused by it. “I would like to think,” she went on with cold and careful emphasis, “that the civilian and military commanders will form a mutually supportive team. Watching each other’s backs, as it were. Assessing each other’s competence, even, and stepping in as necessary to provide whatever assistance or corrective might be needed.”
This time Fournier said nothing, but only nodded. A safer bet all round.
“We here in Beacon—in the Muster, I mean—are quite keen to keep track of the colonel while he’s outside the fence. Not just where he is, but what he’s thinking and feeling. We’re concerned for his well-being.”
Dr. Fournier chewed this over for a few tense seconds. Would another nod be enough of a response? He was pretty sure that it wouldn’t.
“May I be frank?” he asked, too late to keep the pause from becoming noticeable.
“By all means.”
“Are you asking me to spy on the colonel?”
Fry breathed in and out, audibly. Not quite a sigh, but most of the way along. “Morale here in Beacon is volatile at the moment,” she said, which seemed to Fournier to be no answer at all. “The Muster works at the behest of civilian authorities who often don’t entirely understand our workings, or share our priorities. Hence the double command for this mission, and hence our being allowed to vet you, even though your role—if you were accepted—would be civilian commander.”
“I understand that,” Fournier said.
“I’m glad. The candidate we interviewed before you—and if I may return your frankness, the preferred candidate for the position—didn’t. She seemed determined to misunderstand us, and to define her role entirely in terms of the mission’s scientific objectives. We felt that this was too narrow a point of view. That to ignore the political dimensions of what’s happening here was obtuse.”
Fournier tried to hold back, but couldn’t. The feminine pronoun was a deliberate tease, dangled in front of him to see whether he had enough self-control to keep from guessing. He didn’t.