Free Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

seemed resentful—of me or of the theory,
     I couldn’t tell which. But I could understand why.
    “Because, somehow, I have become impervious to it,” I told her. “She hypnotized you
     before we came down here today, to make sure you would do your duty. I saw her do
     it.” I wanted to confess to the surveyor—to tell her how I had become impervious—but believed that that would be a mistake.
    “And you did nothing ? If this is even true.” At least she was considering the possibility of believing
     me. Perhaps some residue, some fuzziness, from the episode had stuck in her mind.
    “I didn’t want the psychologist to know that she couldn’t hypnotize me.” And, I had wanted to come down here.
    The surveyor stood there for a moment, considering.
    “Believe me or don’t believe me,” I said. “But believe this: When we go up there,
     we need to be ready for anything. We may need to restrain or kill the psychologist
     because we don’t know what she’s planning.”
    “Why would she be planning anything?” the surveyor asked. Was that disdain in her
     voice or just fear again?
    “Because she must have different orders than the ones we got,” I said, as if explaining
     to a child.
    When she did not reply, I took that as a sign that she was beginning to acclimate
     to the idea.
    “I’ll need to go first, because she can’t affect me. And you’ll need to wear these.
     It might help you resist the hypnotic suggestion.” I gave her my extra set of earplugs.
    She took them hesitantly. “No,” she said. “We’ll go up together, at the same time.”
    “That isn’t wise,” I said.
    “I don’t care what it is. You’re not going up top without me. I’m not waiting there
     in the dark for you to fix everything.”
    I thought about that for a moment, then said, “Fine. But if I see that she is starting
     to coerce you, I’ll have to stop her.” Or at least try.
    “If you’re right,” the surveyor said. “If you’re telling the truth.”
    “I am.”
    She ignored me, said, “What about the body?”
    Did that mean we were agreed? I hoped so. Or maybe she would try to disarm me on the
     way up. Perhaps the psychologist had already prepared her in this regard.
    “We leave the anthropologist here. We can’t be weighed down, and we also don’t know
     what contaminants we might bring with us.”
    The surveyor nodded. At least she wasn’t sentimental. There was nothing left of the
     anthropologist in that body, and we both knew it. I was trying very hard not to think
     of the anthropologist’s last moments alive, of the terror she must have felt as she
     continued trying to perform a task that she had been willed to do by another, even
     though it meant her own death. What had she seen? What had she been looking at before it all went dark?
    Before we turned back, I took one of the glass tubes strewn around the anthropologist.
     It contained just a trace of a thick, fleshlike substance that gleamed darkly golden.
     Perhaps she had gotten a useful sample after all, near the end.
    *   *   *
    As we ascended toward the light, I tried to distract myself. I kept reviewing my training
     over and over again, searching for a clue, for any scrap of information that might
     lead to some revelation about our discoveries. But I could find nothing, could only
     wonder at my own gullibility in thinking that I had been told anything at all of use.
     Always, the emphasis was on our own capabilities and knowledge base. Always, as I
     looked back, I could see that there had been an almost willful intent to obscure,
     to misdirect, disguised as concern that we not be frightened or overwhelmed.
    The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what was a map but a way of emphasizing
     some things and making other things invisible? Always, we were directed to the map,
     to memorizing the details on the map. Our instructor, who remained nameless to us,
     drilled us for six long months on the position of the