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For Ann

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Part One: Incantations

000

001: Falling

002: Adjustments

003: Processing

004: Reentry

Part Two: Rites

005: The First Breach

006: Typographical Anomalies

007: Superstition

008: The Terror

009: Evidence

010: Fourth Breach

011: Sixth Breach

012: Sort of Sorting

013: Recommendations

014: Heroic Heroes of the Revolution

015: Seventh Breach

016: Terroirs

017: Perspective

018: Recovery

Part Three: Hauntings

000

020: Second Recovery

021: Repeating

022: Gambit

023: Break Down

00X

Part Four: Afterlife

Acknowledgments

Also by Jeff VanderMeer

A Note About the Author

Copyright

INCANTATIONS

000

In Control’s dreams it is early morning, the sky deep blue with just a twinge of light. He is staring from a cliff down into an abyss, a bay, a cove. It always changes. He can see for miles into the still water. He can see ocean behemoths gliding there, like submarines or bell-shaped orchids or the wide hulls of ships, silent, ever moving, the size of them conveying such a sense of power that he can feel the havoc of their passage even from so far above. He stares for hours at the shapes, the movements, listening to the whispers echoing up to him … and then he falls. Slowly, too slowly, he falls soundless into the dark water, without splash or ripple. And keeps falling.

Sometimes this happens while he is awake, as if he hasn’t been paying enough attention, and then he silently recites his own name until the real world returns to him.

001: FALLING

First day. The beginning of his last chance.

“These are the survivors?”

Control stood beside the assistant director of the Southern Reach, behind smudged one-way glass, staring at the three individuals sitting in the interrogation room. Returnees from the twelfth expedition into Area X.

The assistant director, a tall, thin black woman in her forties, said nothing back, which didn’t surprise Control. She hadn’t wasted an extra word on him since he’d arrived that morning after taking Monday to get settled. She hadn’t spared him an extra look, either, except when he’d told her and the rest of the staff to call him “Control,” not “John” or “Rodriguez.” She had paused a beat, then replied, “In that case, call me Patience, not Grace,” much to the stifled amuse