Annihilation Read Free Page A

known any one of us
     might have been tasked with observing her own reactions to stimuli. Perhaps the idea
     that a surveyor, an expert in the surface of things, might have been chosen, rather
     than a biologist or anthropologist, amused her. “I must admit to feeling a great deal
     of unease at the moment. But I am unsure whether it is because of the effect of the
     overall environment or the presence of the tunnel. Personally, I would like to rule
     out the tunnel.”
    Tower.
    “Three to one, then,” the anthropologist said, clearly relieved that the decision
     had been made for her.
    The surveyor just shrugged.
    Perhaps I’d been wrong about curiosity. The surveyor didn’t seem curious about anything.
    “Bored?” I asked.
    “Eager to get on with it,” she said, to the group, as if I’d asked the question for
     all of us.
    We were in the communal tent for our talk. It had become dark by then and there came
     soon after the strange mournful call in the night that we knew must have natural causes
     but created a little shiver regardless. As if that was the signal to disband, we went
     back to our own quarters to be alone with our thoughts. I lay awake in my tent for
     a while trying to turn the tower into a tunnel, or even a shaft, but with no success.
     Instead, my mind kept returning to a question: What lies hidden at its base?
    *   *   *
    During our hike from the border to the base camp near the coast, we had experienced
     almost nothing out of the ordinary. The birds sang as they should; the deer took flight,
     their white tails exclamation points against the green and brown of the underbrush;
     the raccoons, bowlegged, swayed about their business, ignoring us. As a group, we
     felt almost giddy, I think, to be free after so many confining months of training
     and preparation. While we were in that corridor, in that transitional space, nothing
     could touch us. We were neither what we had been nor what we would become once we
     reached our destination.
    The day before we arrived at the camp, this mood was briefly shattered by the appearance
     of an enormous wild boar some distance ahead of us on the trail. It was so far from
     us that even with our binoculars we could barely identify it at first. But despite
     poor eyesight, wild pigs have prodigious powers of smell, and it began charging us
     from one hundred yards away. Thundering down the trail toward us … yet we still had
     time to think about what we might do, had drawn our long knives, and in the surveyor’s
     case her assault rifle. Bullets would probably stop a seven-hundred-pound pig, or
     perhaps not. We did not feel confident taking our attention from the boar to untie
     the container of handguns from our gear and open its triple locks.
    There was no time for the psychologist to prepare any hypnotic suggestion designed
     to keep us focused and in control; in fact, all she could offer was “Don’t get close
     to it! Don’t let it touch you!” while the boar continued to charge. The anthropologist
     was giggling a bit out of nervousness and the absurdity of experiencing an emergency
     situation that was taking so long to develop. Only the surveyor had taken direct action:
     She had dropped to one knee to get a better shot; our orders included the helpful
     directive to “kill only if you are under threat of being killed.”
    I was continuing to watch through the binoculars, and as the boar came closer, its
     face became stranger and stranger. Its features were somehow contorted, as if the
     beast was dealing with an extreme of inner torment. Nothing about its muzzle or broad,
     long face looked at all extraordinary, and yet I had the startling impression of some presence in the way its gaze seemed turned inward and its head willfully pulled to the left
     as if there were an invisible bridle. A kind of electricity sparked in its eyes that
     I could not credit as real. I thought instead it must be a by-product of my now slightly
     shaky hand