Acceptance: A Novel (The Southern Reach Trilogy) by Jeff VanderMeer Page B

much—intriguing, fascinating, but not quite real, or not quite real to him. Even if the effects had not yet manifested, he was being invaded, infected, remade. Was it his fate to become a moaning creature in the reeds and then food for worms?
    “There was a lot about fakes in Whitby’s notes,” he said a little later, slyly, to test her. Especially as her attention seemed elsewhere, always glued to the sky. To perhaps see just how dispassionate she could be about her own condition. With, he knew, just a sliver of payback in there, too, which he couldn’t help. Because it made no sense to go to the island.
    When she said nothing, he made up a quote, feeling guilty even as the words left his mouth: “‘The sense in which the perfect fake becomes the thing it mimics, and this through some strange yet static process reveals some truth about the world. Even as it can’t, by definition, be original.’”
    Still no response. “No? How about ‘When you meet yourself and see a double that is you, would you feel sympathy, or would the impulse be to destroy the copy? To judge it unreal and to tear it down like any cardboard construct?’” Another fake, because Whitby hadn’t discussed doubles—not once in the whole damn document.
    She stopped walking, faced him. As ever, he had trouble not looking away.
    “Is that what you’re afraid of, Control?” She said it with no particular cruelty or passion. “Because I could use hypnosis on you.”
    “You might be susceptible, too,” he said, wanting to warn her off, even as he knew there might come a time when he would need her to use hypnosis just as she had in the tunnel leading into Area X. Take my hand. Close your eyes. It had felt as if he were continually crawling out of the mouth of a vast inky-black snake, that he could “see” a rasping sound from deep in its throat, and from all sides, through the infinite dark bruise that encircled him, leviathans stared in at him.
    “I’m not.”
    “But you’re the double—the copy,” he said, pressing. “Maybe the copy doesn’t have the same defenses. And you still don’t know why.” This much she had told him.
    “Test me,” she said, a snarl from deep in her throat. She stopped, faced him, threw down her pack. “Go ahead and test me. Say it. Say the words you think will destroy me.”
    “I don’t want to destroy you,” he said quietly, looking away.
    “Are you sure?” she said, coming very close. He could smell her sweat, see the rise of her shoulders, the half-curled left hand. “Are you sure?” she repeated. “Why not inoculate me, if you’re unsure? You’re already caught between wanting me and not being sure I’m all human, is that it? Made by the enemy. Must be the enemy. But can’t help yourself anyway.”
    “I helped you back at the Southern Reach,” he said.
    “Don’t thank people for doing what they’re supposed to. You told me that.”
    He took a stumbling step back. “I’m out here, Ghost Bird, traveling to a place I didn’t want to go. Having followed someone I’m not sure I know.” A beacon to him still, and he resented that, didn’t want it. Couldn’t help it.
    “That’s bullshit. You know exactly who I am—or you should have. You’re afraid, just like me,” she said, and he knew that he was. Had no defenses out here, for anything.
    “I don’t think you’re with the enemy,” he said, enemy sounding harsh and unreasonable now. “And I don’t think of you as a copy. Not really.”
    Exasperation, even as she was relenting, or he thought she was: “I am a copy, John. But not a perfect one. I’m not her. She’s not me. Do you know what I’d say if I came face-to-face with her?”
    “What?”
    “I’d tell her, ‘You made a lot of fucking mistakes. You made a lot of mistakes, and yet I love you. You’re a mess and a revelation, but I can’t be any of that. All I can do is work out things myself.’ And then, knowing her, she’d probably look at me funny and