Acceptance

0004: The Lighthouse Keeper (#u92af5fa3-efd6-583a-8422-f3598eefa15a)

0005: Control (#ucf96965c-f27b-5a7c-b85b-d1c2cef36c63)

0006: The Director (#litres_trial_promo)

0007: The Lighthouse Keeper (#litres_trial_promo)

0008: Ghost Bird (#litres_trial_promo)

0009: The Director (#litres_trial_promo)

0010: Control (#litres_trial_promo)

Part II: Fixed Light (#litres_trial_promo)

01: The Brightness (#litres_trial_promo)

02: The Moaning Creature (#litres_trial_promo)

03: The Island (#litres_trial_promo)

04: The Owl (#litres_trial_promo)

05: The Seeker & Surveillance Bandits (#litres_trial_promo)

06: The Passage of Time, and Pain (#litres_trial_promo)

Part III: Occulting Light (#litres_trial_promo)

0011: Ghost Bird (#litres_trial_promo)

0012: The Lighthouse Keeper (#litres_trial_promo)

0013: Control (#litres_trial_promo)

0014: The Director (#litres_trial_promo)

0015: The Lighthouse Keeper (#litres_trial_promo)

0016: Ghost Bird (#litres_trial_promo)

0017: The Director (#litres_trial_promo)

0018: The Lighthouse Keeper (#litres_trial_promo)

0019: Control (#litres_trial_promo)

0020: The Director (#litres_trial_promo)

0021: The Lighthouse Keeper (#litres_trial_promo)

0022: Ghost Bird (#litres_trial_promo)

0023: The Director (#litres_trial_promo)

0024: The Lighthouse Keeper (#litres_trial_promo)

0025: Control (#litres_trial_promo)

0026: The Director (#litres_trial_promo)

0027: The Lighthouse Keeper (#litres_trial_promo)

0028: Ghost Bird (#litres_trial_promo)

000X: The Director (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Jeff VanderMeer (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

000X: THE DIRECTOR, TWELFTH EXPEDITION (#ulink_abfdb55d-6db7-54b1-9935-abbf6568a8e3)

Just out of reach, just beyond you: the rush and froth of the surf, the sharp smell of the sea, the crisscrossing shape of the gulls, their sudden, jarring cries. An ordinary day in Area X, an extraordinary day—the day of your death—and there you are, propped up against a mound of sand, half sheltered by a crumbling wall. The warm sun against your face, and the dizzying view above of the lighthouse looming down through its own shadow. The sky has an intensity that admits to nothing beyond its blue prison. There’s sticky sand glittering across a gash in your forehead; there’s a tangy glottal something in your mouth, dripping out.

You feel numb and you feel broken, but there’s a strange relief mixed in with the regret: to come such a long way, to come to a halt here, without knowing how it will turn out, and yet … to rest. To come to rest. Finally. All of your plans back at the Southern Reach, the agonizing and constant fear of failure or worse, the price of that … all of it leaking out into the sand beside you in gritty red pearls.

The landscape surges toward you, curling over from behind to peer at you; it flares in places, or swirls or reduces itself to a pinprick, before coming back into focus. Your hearing isn’t what it once was, either—has weakened along with your balance. And yet there comes this impossible thing: a magician’s trick of a voice rising out of the landscape and the suggestion of eyes upon you. The whisper is familiar: Is your house in order? But you think whoever is asking might be a stranger, and you ignore it, don’t like what might be knocking at the door.

The throbbing of your shoulder from the encounter in the tower is much worse. The wound betrayed you, made you leap out into that blazing blue expanse even though you hadn’t wanted to. Some communication, some trigger between the wound and the flame that came dancing across the reeds betrayed your sovereignty. Your house has rarely been in such disarray, and yet you know that no matter what leaves you in a few minutes something else will remain behind. Disappearing into the sky, the earth, the water, is no guarantee of death here.

A shadow joins the shadow of the lighthouse.

Soon after, there comes the crunch of boots, and, disoriented, you shout, “Annihilation! Annihilation!” and flail about until you realize the apparition kneeling before you is the one person impervious to the suggestion.

“It’s just me, the biologist.”

Just you. Just the biologist. Just your defiant weapon, hurled against the walls of Area X.

She props you up, presses water to your mouth, clearing some of the blood as you cough.

“Where is the surveyor?” you ask.

“Back at the base camp,” she tells you.