Authority Read Online Free PDF

whose authority?”
    “Your authority. You clearly indicated to me that this was what you wanted. If you
     meant something else, my apologies.”
    A tiny seismic shift occurred inside of Control, an imperceptible shudder.
    They were gone. He couldn’t have them back. He had to put it out of his mind, would
     feed himself the lie that Grace had done him a favor, simplified his job. Just how
     much pull did she have at Central, anyway?
    “I can always read the transcripts if I change my mind,” he said, attempting an agreeable
     tone. They’d still be questioned, and he’d given her the opening by saying he didn’t
     want to interview them.
    She was scanning his face intently, looking for some sign that she’d come close to
     hitting the target.
    He tried to smile, doused his anger with the thought that if the assistant director
     had meant him real harm, she would have found a way to spirit the biologist away,
     too. This was just a warning. Now, though, he was going to have to take something
     away from Grace as well. Not to get even but so she wouldn’t be tempted to take yet
     more from him. He couldn’t afford to lose the biologist, too. Not yet.
    Into the awkward silence, Grace asked, “Why are you just standing out here in the
     heat like an idiot?” Breezily, as if nothing had happened at all. “We should go inside.
     It’s time for lunch, and you can meet some of the admin.”
    Control was already growing accustomed to her disrespect of him, and he hated that,
     wanted an opportunity to reverse the trend. As he followed her in, the swamp at his
     back had a weight, a presence. Another kind of enemy. He’d had enough of such views,
     growing up nearby as a teenager after his parents’ divorce, and, again, while his
     father slowly died. He’d hoped to never see a swamp again.
    “Just close your eyes and you will remember me.”
    I do, Dad. I do remember you, but you’re fading. There’s too much interference, and
     all of this is becoming much too real.
    *   *   *
    Control’s father’s side of the family came originally from Central America, Hispanic
     and Indian; he had his father’s hands and black hair, his mother’s slight nose and
     height, a skin color somewhere in between. His paternal grandfather had died before
     Control was old enough to know him, but he had heard the epic stories. The man had
     sold clothespins door-to-door as a kid, in certain neighborhoods, and been a boxer
     in his twenties, not good enough to be a contender but good enough to be a paid opponent
     and take a beating. Afterward, he’d been a construction worker, and then a driving
     instructor, before an early death from a heart attack at sixty-five. His wife, who
     worked in a bakery, passed on just a year later. His eldest child, Control’s father,
     had grown up to be an artist in a family mostly composed of carpenters and mechanics,
     and used his heritage to create abstract sculptures. He had humanized the abstractions
     by painting over them in the bright palette favored by the Mayans and by affixing
     to them bits of tile and glass—bridging some gap between professional and outsider
     art. That was his life, and Control never knew a time that his father was not that
     person and only that person.
    The story of how Control’s father and mother fell in love was also the happy story
     of how his father had risen, for a time, as a favorite in high-end art galleries.
     They had met at a reception for his work and, as they told it, had been enamored with
     each other right from the first glance, although later Control found that difficult
     to believe. At the time, she was based in New York and had what amounted to a desk
     job, although she was rising fast. His father moved up north to be with her, and they
     had Control and then only a year or two later she was reassigned, from a desk job
     to active duty in the field, and that was the start of the end of it all, the story
     that anchored Control as a