Annihilation Read Online Free PDF Page A

contaminants. Was there any reason to
     relay this information to the others when it would only alarm them? No, I decided,
     perhaps selfishly. It was more important to make sure they were not directly exposed
     until we could come back with the proper equipment. Any other evaluation depended
     on environmental and biological factors about which I was increasingly convinced I
     had inadequate data.
    I came back up the stairs to the landing. The surveyor and the anthropologist looked
     expectant, as if I could tell them more. The anthropologist in particular was on edge;
     her gaze couldn’t alight on any one thing but kept moving and moving. Perhaps I could
     have fabricated information that would have stopped that incessant search. But what
     could I tell them about the words on the wall except that they were either impossible
     or insane, or both? I would have preferred the words be written in an unknown language; this would have presented less of a mystery for us to solve, in a way.
    “We should go back up,” I said. It was not that I recommended this as the best course
     of action but because I wanted to limit their exposure to the spores until I could
     see what long-term effects they might have on me. I also knew if I stayed there much
     longer I might experience a compulsion to go back down the stairs to continue reading
     the words, and they would have to physically restrain me, and I did not know what
     I would do then.
    There was no argument from the other two. But as we climbed back up, I had a moment
     of vertigo despite being in such an enclosed space, a kind of panic for a moment,
     in which the walls suddenly had a fleshy aspect to them, as if we traveled inside
     of the gullet of a beast.
    *   *   *
    When we told the psychologist what we had seen, when I recited some of the words,
     she seemed at first frozen in an oddly attentive way. Then she decided to descend
     to view the words. I struggled with whether I should warn her against this action.
     Finally I said, “Only observe from the top of the stairs. We don’t know whether there
     are toxins. When we come back, we should wear breathing masks.” These, at least, we
     had inherited from the last expedition, in a sealed container.
    “ Paralysis is not a cogent analysis? ” she said to me with a pointed stare. I felt a kind of itchiness come over me, but
     I said nothing, did nothing. The others did not even seem to realize she had spoken.
     It was only later that I realized the psychologist had tried to bind me with a hypnotic
     suggestion meant for me and me alone.
    My reaction apparently fell within the range of acceptable responses, for she descended
     while we waited anxiously above. What would we do if she did not return? A sense of
     ownership swept over me. I was agitated by the idea that she might experience the
     same need to read further and would act upon it. Even though I didn’t know what the
     words meant, I wanted them to mean something so that I might more swiftly remove doubt,
     bring reason back into all of my equations. Such thoughts distracted me from thinking
     about the effects of the spores on my system.
    Thankfully the other two had no desire to talk as we waited, and after just fifteen
     minutes the psychologist awkwardly pushed her way up out of the stairwell and into
     the light, blinking as her vision adjusted.
    “Interesting,” she said in a flat tone as she loomed over us, wiping the cobwebs from
     her clothing. “I have never seen anything like that before.” She seemed as if she
     might continue, but then decided against it.
    What she had already said verged on the moronic; apparently I was not alone in that
     assessment.
    “Interesting?” the anthropologist said. “No one has ever seen anything like that in
     the entire history of the world. No one. Ever. And you call it interesting ?” She seemed close to working herself into a bout of hysteria. While the surveyor
     just stared at both of them as if