Acceptance (Southern Reach, #3)

by Jeff VanderMeer

“They don’t like me,” she said. “And I don’t like them.” That did make him chuckle, especially the brazen, arms-folded way she said it, like she’d decided they were her eternal enemy. “Are you laughing at me?” “No,” he said. “No, I’m not. You’re a curious person. You ask questions. That’s why they don’t like you. That’s all.” People who asked questions didn’t necessarily like being asked questions. “What’s wrong with asking questions?” “Nothing.” Everything. Once the questions snuck in, whatever had been certain became uncertain. Questions opened the way for doubt. His father had told him that. “Don’t let them ask questions. You’re already giving them the answers, even if they don’t know it.” “But you’re curious, too,” she said. “Why do you say that?” “You guard the light. And light sees everything.”

Bodies could be beacons, too, Saul knew. A lighthouse was a fixed beacon for a fixed purpose; a person was a moving one. But people still emanated light in their way, still shone across the miles as a warning, an invitation, or even just a static signal. People opened up so they became a brightness, or they went dark. They turned their light inward sometimes, so you couldn’t see it, because they had no other choice.

Sometimes, too, other people gave you their light, and could seem to flicker, to be hardly visible at all, if no one took care of them. Because they’d given you too much and had nothing left for themselves.

“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.

“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 take a tissue sample from me.”

She knew where it would all lead, what it always led to in human beings—a decision about what to do. What are we going to do? Where do we go from here? How do we move forward? What is our mission now? As if purpose could solve everything, could take the outlines of what was missing and by sheer will invoke it, make it appear, bring it back to life.

You could know the what of something forever and never discover the why.

Perhaps so many journals had piled up in the lighthouse because on some level most came, in time, to recognize the futility of language. Not just in Area X but against the rightness of the lived-in moment, the instant of touch, of connection, for which words were such a sorrowful disappointment, so inadequate an expression of both the finite and the infinite.

“If you don’t know your passion, it confuses your mind, not your heart.”