Finch

by Jeff VanderMeer

  At least you've had a change of scenery.

  When he remained silent, she said, “Tell me the name of the man in the apartment. Think of it as an exercise in trust.”

  They already knew. He had no leverage.

  “It's a man named Duncan Shriek. Except he died a hundred years ago. That's what I don't understand.”

  The dead man sat in the chair next to him, smiling.

  “Was there anyone with him?”

  “Half of a dead gray cap.”

  Falling through cold air and couldn't feel his legs.

  “Is the body still in the apartment?”

  “Not the gray cap, but Shriek's is.”

  “Is there any visible sign of injury to Shriek?”

  “Not really.”

  “How did he die?”

  “I don't know. He looks like he might have fallen. Twisted his neck a bit.”

  “Don't you feel better, telling the truth?”

  “Yes,” he said. Meant it.

  She paused for a moment, as if marshaling hidden forces. Then said, “While we're telling the truth, Finch, I should let you know something: I knew John Crossley. John Marlowe Crossley.”

  A sharp intake of breath he couldn't control. Too long since he'd heard that name spoken. Hadn't uttered it in years, either. Had tried to unthink it.

  The Lady in Blue continued: “John had a strange idea of honor. He had genuine disagreements with us. With everyone, really. That's why he fell so hard. Why no one could protect him. It would have been easier if he'd been a simple spy, one side against another, not working for the Kalif.”

  “I don't know what you're talking about,” Finch said. Although he knew it was hopeless. He felt like a hermit crab being pulled from its shell.

  The Lady in Blue nodded, but not to Finch.

  A slamming blow came down on Finch's bad shoulder. He cried out, fell from his seat into the grass. Moaning in pain. Turning to protect his shoulder.

  The Lady in Blue had risen. Stood next to him. Suddenly more threatening, more terrible, than anyone he had ever seen. “You do know what I'm talking about, James Scott Crossley. You do know.”

  Like looking in a mirror and seeing a double that didn't really match up. He'd been Finch for so long that he didn't know James Scott Crossley anymore. Not really. Some stranger who hadn't survived the Rising. Some poor bastard who'd never made it back, like so many others.

  She pulled the chair away from the table and sat down. “Do I have your attention?”

  Through gritted teeth. “Yes.” He didn't want to remember Crossley. Crossley was dead. Both of them.

  “You've changed your look. Your hair is lighter, and you've shaved the beard. You're heavier. Older, of course. But it's still you. What would people do if they knew? With your father's reputation for treachery? Even now, maybe they'd be firmer with you. Maybe they'd stop what they're up to long enough to settle old scores. One thing to protect the key to a weapon. Another to find out the key has close ties to someone who betrayed the city to a foreign power. Maybe you'd wake up to a bullet in your brain. And know this, too, John: your father brought it on himself. Don't delude yourself about that.”

  “Fuck you,” Finch said. “Fuck you, Alessandra Lewden.”

  Got a kick in the ribs for that. Lay there, saying nothing. Pinned to the ground by her words. Shoulder knifed through with broken glass.

  She relented then. Said in something close to a kindly tone, “But that's not why you're here, `Finch,' if that's what you'd prefer I call you. A year ago? Maybe. But now? No.”

  Through gritted teeth, “What do you want, then?”

  “We've time enough to talk about that,” she said. “Soon we'll be leaving here. It's never safe to stay in one place for long. Get up.”

  Finch stood. Holding his shoulder.

  “Look,” the Lady in Blue said, pointing out past the ruined hulks of tanks. Toward the dull orange dome.

  “What am I looking for?”

  “Just wait.”

  As she spoke, the dome exploded. A thousand streamers rising in intense shades of red and orange. Like some kind of land-bound sun. The tendrils arched into the sky. Hung there. Then disintegrated into a vast cloud. A roiling mass of particles. Discharging light until a steady humming glow suffused the city in a kind of dawn. There came in reply from the city a hundred-fold bestial roar. Strange fractal creatures began to grow at a frenetic pace across every surface. Straining up toward the light. While the orange dome, much reduced, seemed to breathe in and out. Beyond the particle cloud the darkness continued unabated.

  “Dawn, Finch,” the Lady in Blue said. “That's the kind of dawn they have here.”

  “Yes, but what is this place?” Finch asked, almost pleading. “Where am l?”

  “It's a place where the echo of the HFZ-just the echo of it-destroyed a city. Subjected it to this perpetual artificial dawn. There's no one living down there now. No one. Just flesh that serves as fertile soil ... for something else. The HFZ is like a wound where the knife cut through more than one layer. And that's really all you needed to see. No, it hasn't been fun out here for six years, Finch. Not really.”

  She nodded to someone behind him. A man came up and got Finch in a choke hold. He struggled against it. Kicked his legs. Frantic. The woman came around front. Stuck a needle in his arm.

  The stars swirled into a circle, then a haze.

  The world disappeared all over again.

  James Crossley had been callow, self-absorbed, impatient, a ladies' man. Finch was none of those things. Finch was direct, brusque, had a dark sense of humor. Crossley had been, for awhile, finicky about food. Finch had cured him of the last of that during the worst times, with stew made from leather belts, made from dogs and rats.

  Crossley never swore. Finch had trained himself to swear to fit in. To break up the rhythm of his normal speech patterns. Crossley liked the river. Finch kept waiting for something to leap out of it. Both liked cigars and whiskey. Both were as dependable as they could be, indifferent to music, and hated small talk. Although Crossley had had more chances to hate it than Finch.

  Crossley had been part of his father's network as a youth, something he'd only known later. Even if he'd had an inkling.

  His father passed information on Frankwrithe to Hoegbotton, and information on Hoegbotton to Frankwrithe. Built things for Hoegbotton only to give Frankwrithe the intel to blow them up. Used the contacts to feed Hoegbotton sensitive information on troop movements from supposed “sources.” Neither side having any sense of the level of betrayal until they came together to fight the gray caps. After which it became clear John Crossley had been given his orders by someone working for the Kalif. Creating chaos while providing the Kalif's secret service with an inside look at both factions.

  And why? Why? Neither James Crossley nor John Finch had any idea. Their father had never told them. Just said once that being a powerful man meant you made enemies. “Too many people get the wrong idea,” he'd said. While he hid out in an abandoned mansion in northern Ambergris. Coughing up blood from the sickness he'd first contracted while on campaign in the Kalif's territory.

  “Look,” he'd said to Finch, showing him, “I never knew my face would be printed on playing cards.” One of fifty most-wanted men and women. On the rebels' list.

  Remembered again the pipe his father had shown him.

  Crossley was the past. Finch was the present, waiting for the future. For the air to clear. For all of this to go away.

  But two things they agreed on.

  Both still trusted in their father, couldn't bring themselves to shun him. Even knowing what he had done.

  Both had loved him.

  Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

  8

  inch woke with an uneven, sharp surface cutting into his back. Above, a wavery light showed a shelf of rippling black rock. Glittering stalactites pointed down at him.

  “We're in an underground cave system,” a voice said from nearby.


  He sat up. The walls of the cavern glowed a deep, dark gold. Traveling across them, in the waves of illumination, Finch saw what looked like strobing starfish. A smell like and unlike brine came to him. Colder, more muted. He still didn't have his gun. Felt vulnerable, small. She knows I'm Crossley. And she doesn't care. Which meant she was going to ask him for something big.

  The Lady in Blue stood beside him. Wearing the plain uniform of a private or Irregular, all in muted green. Short-sleeved shirt. Tapered pants. Holding a lantern, staring across an underground sea. It stretched out into a horizon of swirling black shadows and glints like newborn stars. A rowboat was tethered to the shore.

  “Stop drugging me,” Finch said. He felt sluggish.

  “The less you know, the better.”

  “How long was I out for?”

  “It doesn't matter.”

  “It does to me.”

  “We drug you because there are things we can't let you know.”

  “You mean if I'm interrogated. By someone else.”

  She ignored him, indicated the cave with a sweep of her hand. “This is where the gray caps left Samuel Tonsure,” she said. “You know who Tonsure is? Not everyone does.”

  He nodded. “The monk Shriek was obsessed with. The one who disappeared.”

  “They took his journal from him right here. Left him to make his own way in their world.”

  Duncan, in his book: “I became convinced that the journal formed a puzzle, written in a kind of code, the code weakened, diluted, only hinted at, by the uniform color of the ink in the copies, the dull sterility of set type.”

  “And where exactly is that?” Finch managed with a thick tongue. His head felt heavy. Whatever they'd drugged him with had quieted the pain in his shoulder.

  “You might be better off asking when, but it's your question. Answer: we're everywhere. But at this moment, we're deep beneath the city. Or, at least, a city.”

  The Lady in Blue stepped into the boat, hung the lantern on a hook in the prow. “Come on,” she said. “We're going on a journey.”

  Finch hesitated. Suffered from too many journeys. From a shoot-out on an Ambergris street to falling through a door in time and space. Stepping onto the boat felt like a kind of slow drowning. Into yet another dream.

  “You don't have a choice,” the Lady in Blue growled. “I don't want to have to force you. But I will.”

  She was alone. Finch couldn't see a weapon, though she'd picked up a long pole from the boat. But he didn't doubt she could hurt him.

  Awkwardly, he got to his feet. Stepped into the boat behind the Lady in Blue. It wobbled beneath his weight.

  “Sit down,” she said. He sat.

  She began to pole them across the little sea, with a strength he hadn't noticed before. He could see the outline of her triceps as she pushed off with the pole.

  Over the side, by the lantern light, needle-thin fish with green fins shot through the water. More starfish. A couple of delicate red shrimp. It wasn't very deep; he could see the silver-gold flash of the bottom. The unreal translucent light confounded him. A glimpse of a kind of peace. Fought against relaxing. Was still in danger.

  “Where are we going?” he asked. “What does this have to do with Duncan Shriek?”

  “Eat something,” she said. “Drink something.”

  Sandwiches and a flask by his feet. He unwrapped a sandwich. Chicken and egg. Ordinary. Normal. Tasted good. The flask had a refreshing liquor in it. It warmed him as it spread through his body.

  “And while you eat, listen to me. Don't talk. Just listen ...”

  [She said:] For a moment, imagine everything from the gray caps' point of view, John Finch. James Scott Crossley.

  In the beginning. Once upon a time. A small group of you became separated from your world while on an expedition. In a word, lost. A problem or mistake in the doors between places. Suddenly there are hundreds or thousands of doors between you and home. Suddenly you're adrift. You find yourselves washed up on an alien shore, along the banks of a strange and magnificent river. You can't find your way back to where you came from, even though at first all you do is try. And try and try.

  After awhile of trying and failing, you decide to settle down where you are, establish a colony that we will later call “Cinsorium.” It's a better place for you than other choices for exile. You live a long time but procreate slowly so the isolation is good. No competition. No real threats. You create buildings that remind you of home. No corners. All circles. You bend the local fungus to your will, because you're spore-based and everything you do is based on this fact. Plenty of raw material to use in and around Cinsorium.

  But, still, you're always looking for a way back, a way out. You might even have been close at one point-right before Cappan Manzikert sails upriver with his brigands. Because as soon as Manzikert appears, it's back to square one for you. Even less than square one. He destroys your colony, drives you underground. He burns your records, all of the information in your library. Not just the clues you've gathered of how to get home, but your whole knowledge base. Essential things.

  Ironic, really, Finch. Because Manzikert's a barbarian. Yet as far as I can tell, he saved us all with that one brutal act. Something even Duncan Shriek didn't understand.

  So you stay underground to rebuild. You're cautious, you're far from home, and there aren't very many of you. Will never be very many of you, no matter what you do. You let the people above become comfortable. You lie low, so to speak.

  Then you try again. At last. And because you're cautious you build it underground. A door. A machine.

  But the door doesn't work. Something goes wrong. Who knows what? It could've been anything. Maybe it's the wrong location. Maybe it was always a long shot. Many of your own people are killed. And everyone in Ambergris disappears, except the ones in the fishing fleet. Either dead or taken elsewhere. Scattered across worlds and time. Unable to get back. (Think about that, Finch-somewhere out there, there must be a colony or two of Ambergrisians who survived. Can you imagine what they might be like now, after so long? Stranded. Vague tales of another place, one crueler, kinder, more hospitable, less so.)

  Maybe it's then that you believe, this is the end. We're doomed to die out here, in this backwater. We'll never be found. But, still, you're patient. You're clever. You're hard working. You spend a long time learning from your mistakes. Sometimes you venture out during festival nights. You do experiments related to your goal. You even kidnap humans, use them as test subjects. Always trying to convey a sense of dread in those who live aboveground, always trying to make yourself larger in their minds-like a wild cat that puffs itself up in front of an enemy.

  When the opportunity comes, it's because Hoegbotton and Frankwrithe have exhausted themselves against each other-sometimes even using weapons you provided to them-and the city lies in ruins. You take a huge gamble. Why a gamble? Because there still aren't enough of you, not compared to the human population.

  You pour all of your resources into the Rising. You're hard to kill, but you can't possibly hold a whole city for long against an armed resistance, not if it means a true occupation. But you don't need it to last for long. You just need to create the impression of overwhelming force.

  And it works. You Rise. You use your re-engineering skills and knowledge of the underground to flood the city. You use your spores like a kind of diversion, a magic show. Yes, you can kill people, but not all of them, and not as fast as the enemy thinks. Besides, fear is even more useful to you-it's how your agents have worked throughout Ambergrisian history. Preying on the imaginations of a people raised to fear you. (Often for good reason.)

  You force the combined Hoegbotton and Frankwrithe army arrayed against you to fight on your terms, on your turf. You even leave an escape route so that no one needs to fight to survive. They can just flee.

  Again, it works. The resistance retreats-and when they're far enough away, in one more spasm of energy and expertise, you cast the HFZ over your ene
my, like a net, and you disperse them across the doors. Thus ending effective armed resistance, and creating more fear.

  For the actual occupation, you are clever and resourceful. You enlist the remaining population to police itself, to govern itself-as much as it is able. When the situation is stable except for isolated pockets of unrest, you start to build your final attempt at a door. A way home. Two towers, which aren't really towers but a kind of complex gateway. Situated precisely where you need them to be for success.

  Meanwhile, you stall. You go through the motions. You provide electricity, food, drugs on the one hand. Camps, the Partials, and repression on the other. You don't need to control territory in the normal way. You don't see the city from the sky looking down, like humans. You see it from the underground looking up. And you control the underground. That's your homeland away from home. You can choose what you hold onto aboveground and what you don't. So long as you rule everything below. So long as you can block access to whatever you like.

  You leave the burnt-out tanks on the streets, don't clean up the HFZ not as a warning to the human population, but because you don't have the personnel to do that and keep working on the towers, too. And because, on some level, you don't really care about any of it. Not any of it. Especially not governing. All you care about are the two towers.

  And do you know why? Because we might have called it a door all this time. “A window. A machine.” But it's more complex than that. It's not just a door. It's a beacon. Because, you see, Finch, they don't need a huge door if they've found a way home. Not according to our intelligence. No, they only need a door this big if they're planning to use it to bring more over here. To Ambergris. To the world.

  The Silence? All of what Duncan Shriek said in those old booksit's true. Except he was wrong about this one thing. They've found they like it here. They want to stay. Permanently. In numbers.

  Now, is that exactly what happened, and how it happened? No, probably not, because we can't actually imagine how they think, or what they think about. And it might not even be a door yet. It might just be a beacon. If they haven't found their home yet.