Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

by Jeff VanderMeer

  “Water can behave like a person,” his father used to say. Treacherous. Tides and swirls and eddies. Sucking boats down with them.

  The past didn't seem like another world. The past seemed like it had never happened. Couldn't have happened. The leap to this too hideous, too nightmarish. Better to have no past at all. Suddenly, he needed Sintra. Needed her badly. Could almost smell her perfume. Wanted to be back in his apartment, next to her.

  “Where do you live?”

  “A place with four walls, and a ceiling.”

  “What are the neighbors like?”

  “Noisy. Sad. Temporary ...”

  Resented Wyte irrationally for a moment. As if Sintra could've replaced him on the boat. Backed him up. Except she couldn't.

  “What can you hear from your window, Sintra?”

  “The sound of detectives asking questions.”

  “Finch.” Wyte made it sound like a warning, jolting him from his thoughts. “Over there.” Pointing, like he wanted a distraction, too.

  Just behind them: another boat. Much larger, coming in from the southeast. Flat-bottomed. Lagging in the water.

  Finch had brought his gun against his own better instincts. Drew it now. Then looked closer and holstered it.

  “Just prisoners,” he said. Could as well be us.

  Wyte took a second look, nodded.

  Soon the boat slid past their prow, heading for the towers. It held about thirty people from the camps. Guarded by two gray caps and a Partial. The men and women dressed in the dull sack robes of their status. Some wearing old-fashioned masks that might or might not work. Heads bowed not from prayer but from hopelessness. Thin, with light-green skin. Shoulders slumped.

  “During the day?” Wyte said, almost pleading to be told he was wrong.

  “During the day,” Finch said, annoyed. Best just to be thankful not to be in the camps.

  The Truffidian priest in the back of the boat caught Finch's attention. In full regalia, down to the golden chains. The same priests had walked side by side with Ambergrisian infantry invading Kalif lands. The gray caps had broken them. Treated them almost like pets now. Their eyes locked, the older man bowing his head to avoid Finch's stare. Noted the hooded look. The slight shake. He was on the gray caps' drugs. Did this in return for his fix. Turncoat.

  Wyte: “In the old days, he'd have died for that. And not quickly.”

  And so would we.

  “What?” Wyte said.

  “Nothing.”

  Against his will, pulled to it by the immensity, Finch's gaze slid beyond the work camp boat. To the towers in mottled green, with darker blues writhing through. Protected by scaffolding, they seemed to flutter and be alive. Portions like lungs. Breathing. The tops, two hundred feet high or more, lost in clouds and rain and odd magenta shards of lightning. A wide pontoon bridge led out to the towers. A semi-permanent island at the base housed the workers. Several boats had docked there. Dozens of gray caps stood guard.

  Past the towers, back the way they'd come, Finch could just make out the hunched group of buildings that included the apartment with the dead man and gray cap. Was the Partial there, staring out at him? Talking to Heretic? Hiding something from Heretic?

  “When will they know the towers are finished?” Finch wondered aloud.

  “Roofs, Finchy. When you see roofs on top. That means it's done.”

  Joking? Serious? Didn't know anymore when Wyte was lucid and when not. Didn't know what to encourage.

  The wrongness of the railing at the prow suddenly got through to Finch. Should be grainy, splinters needling his hands. Instead: soft, fleshy. He took his hand away like the railing was boiling hot.

  Through the rain, the Spit was revealing itself. Gone with surprising quickness from abrown line in the distance to something with substance and texture. Rows of boats moored side by side by side, twenty or thirty deep. Still floating, bobbing, even as they were falling apart and half-sinking. A leaky sovereignty. A chained-together legion of convicts treading water. All of it shoved up against the shore, against the remains of the Religious Quarter. If the gray caps ever decided they wanted to truly cut off citizen from citizen, they'd burn the Spit, place a wall between it and the Religious Quarter. They'd root out the dogghe and nimblytod from the Quarter like so many weeds. Shove them all into the HFZ and be done with it.

  Limits to what they can do? Or to what they want to do?

  The boat began to slow. Soon they bumped up against the docks, gently. Prow kissing wood. Finch jumped off the boat as it lay wallowing there, followed by Wyte. Took off their masks. Breathed in the metallic air. Tossed their masks back in the boat. The boat sighed, shutting down until their return. Didn't know what would happen to anyone who tried to board it while they were gone. Knew it would be bad.

  No sign of Davies. An avalanche of other boats before them, a scattering of tall buildings, natural and not, dull-glistening far beyond, through the rain. Buckets tied to the dock gurgled and filled, emptied. A blue dinghy. Oily water. Rotting planks.

  “Got a plan if Davies doesn't show up, Wyte?”

  Wyte didn't answer.

  A bald man appeared at the edge of the empty docks, weapon holstered. Just appeared. Finch couldn't tell where he'd come from. Wyte drew his gun for both of them.

  Face like a boxer's, the nose wide from repeated blows. Scar over the left eye, under the right eye. Same knife stroke? Barrelchest. Thick arms. Wearing a blood-red vest over a dark-green shirt. Black pants, blacker boots.

  The man came forward with hands held in front of him. Like he wanted to be handcuffed. Something was in his hands, though. An offering?

  He dropped what he'd been holding onto the ground. A wooden carving of a lizard caught in some kind of trap.

  The man said, in some misbegotten blend of accents, “I'm Bosun. Davies couldn't make it.”

  Close enough now that his face was like a carved oval bone. Scrubbed clean of anything except directness. Some sort of spice on his breath. A smirk Finch didn't like any more than the name.

  Wyte gave Finch a glance. Knew Wyte was thinking the same thing. Bliss had named Bosun as Stark's right-hand man. Someone who didn't flinch from torture. Who seemed to enjoy it. Who'd helped wipe out Bliss's whole team.

  “What happened to Davies?” Wyte asked, stepping back to create a little space. Finch faded to the right, so he'd be out of Wyte's line of fire. Kept his hand on his belt. Near his holster.

  “Davies couldn't make it,” Bosun repeated. “Stark's waiting. Come. Now.”

  Bosun started walking back toward the maze of gathered boats. Didn't seem to care about Wyte's gun. Finch wondered who might be watching from the row of dark glass windows that formed the first wall of boats.

  “What guarantees do we have?” Finch called after Bosun. Wanted to ask, “What's with the lizard, you fucking lunatic?”

  Bosun, without looking back: “None, beyond this: We won't hurt you unless you try to hurt us. And we won't try to fuck you, either. Unless you try to fuck us.” A deep rasp similar to laughter. Him receding further toward the maze while the two detectives stood there.

  Finch stared at Wyte. Wyte stared at Finch.

  “Are we really going to go in there?” Wyte asked.

  Finch looked back across the bay, saw how far they'd come. Who on the Spit would risk angering the gray caps? Thought about the skery. About how easy it would've been for them both to go down in a hail of bullets if someone waited behind the windows of the first line of boats.

  Shrugged. “Just think of him as Davies if it makes you feel better.” Hiding his own unease.

  They stepped around the lizard carving like it might do harm. On impulse, Finch went back and stooped with a muttered curse. Picked it up. As Bosun had no doubt intended him to do from the beginning.

  Followed Bosun into the darkness.

  Once, Finch's father had shown him an old tobacco pipe. “This pipe contains the world,” he said. Finch might've been fourteen, still running
errands like a loyal son. His father was ten years removed from the campaigns against the Kalif, and rising fast within House Hoegbotton. They sat at his ornate desk in the study of the old house. Dad on his soft red silk chair. Finch on a stool to his left. Souvenirs his father had brought back from the desert served as grace notes. A rifle used by the Kalif's men. The steering wheel from a tank. A scimitar that he had promised would one day be his son's.

  A sunny spring morning, mottled shadow coming into the room from the long bank of windows against the far wall. Faint honey smell from the tiny white flowers that came with the manicured bushes that lined the avenue in front of the house.

  “A pipe?” Finch said. Incredulous. Expecting a trick. Maybe a magic trick.

  His father pointed to a hole in the side of the pipe. “Look inside.”

  Warily, Finch put the pipe to his eye. Gasped in delight. Because the glass magnified the image revealed through the hole. And the world did indeed exist there. A whole map of the known world. There was a dot for Ambergris. The line of the River Moth. The city of Morrow marked to the north, Stockton some fifty miles south, on the other side of the river. The Southern Isles down below the Moth Delta. The Kalif's empire covering the whole west beyond the Moth. Exotic city after city marked in that vast desert, the plains and hills beyond. To the east, jungle and mountains that remained uncharted.

  “There's a hole on the other side, too,” his father said.

  Finch turned the pipe around. Stared into another tiny piece of magnifying glass. Black-and-white photos of twelve men and women confronted him.

  “Who are they?”

  “Spies,” his father said. “The owner of this pipe ran a network of spies. The map on the other side is really a code. It tells the owner something about the spies whose pictures you're looking at. Each one lives in a different city marked on the map. But you have to know the code to know which goes with which city. And what other information is being given to you.”

  Finch took his eye away from the pipe to look at his dad. “How fun!” he said, because he didn't know what to say.

  “No,” his father said, frowning. “No, it's not fun. Not really. It's deadly serious.” A look like he was trying to tell Finch something Finch just couldn't understand at the time.

  Finch remembers that pipe when he's working on his overlay. That tiny view of a huge world, which makes him realize the limitations of his map. That beyond it, beyond Ambergris, there's something more. Though it's easy to forget.

  It's the pipe he's thinking about as he enters the Spit with Wyte. About those spies, who had led exciting, dangerous lives all across the world. But who were still, at the end of the day, captured inside a pipe.

  Bound by rules.

  Moved around a board against their will.

  Or thought they were.

  What's the difference?

  Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

  2

  hrough the doors of boats. Through many doors. Always with sudden water between them. Gray, blue, black, depending on the shifting clouds above. The distance wide enough to make them jump. Then narrow as a line of blue. As the boats rocked, lashed together by rope that groaned. A marsh smell. A fish smell. Mixed with the odd old-new smell of paint curled back in a snarl or crisply flat.

  Into spaces seeping water from old wounds, the texture of warped planks beneath their feet weathered in a hundred ingenious ways. Across decks that announced them through the creak caused by their weight, wood singing a dull protest. Up or down steps always too deep or too shallow.

  Following the wide back of their silent guide, Wyte the worse off for being taller, having to contort his frame into whatever shape awaited him. The doors got smaller then larger, then smaller again. Oval. Rectangular. Square. Inlaid with glass. Gone, leaving only gaping doorway and a couple rusted hinges. Once, a flapping triangle of canvas with an eye painted on it in green and red that seemed to follow Finch's stumbling progress.

  And what in Truff's name is this supposed to represent? The thought came to Finch more than once, looking down at the whittled wood from Bosun. The trap. The lizard caught in it. The carving brought his thoughts to Sidle, made him feel, absurdly, like Bosun had been inside his apartment. Who created such things? Who had the time?

  Bosun stopped suddenly, turned back to look at them from just inside a doorway.

  Wyte ran into Finch before he could stop himself. Lulled by the stilted rhythm of their progress. Finch just able to stop falling.

  “What? Are we there already?” Wyte asked, peering over Finch's shoulder. Could feel his breath, hot and thick.

  Bosun smiled. A thin smile. Nothing humorous about it.

  They stood precariously outside the doorway, on a tiny deck, backs to a cabin wall. A trough of water lapping between boats. A heron croaking through the slate-gray sky.

  “Toss your guns,” Bosun said.

  “Why should we?” Wyte asked.

  “No guns allowed with Stark.”

  “Too bad,” Wyte said.

  Bosun said, “Drop them in the water. Or I'll leave you here.”

  Framed by the doorway, gray water shadows leaking all over him, Bosun didn't look human. Didn't look real. Seemed to be receding from them while all around the sounds of the Spit became stronger. Like a drumbeat that faded in one place, picked up with a different tempo in another.

  Wyte said, “Again, why the fuck should we do that?”

  “Because,” Finch said, “we don't know where we are.” And if he'd wanted to kill us, he'd have done it already.

  Bosun's smile widened while Wyte cursed, said, “Do you know who we work for?”

  We work for monsters. We work for ourselves.

  As if in a dream, Finch watched himself toss his gun into the water. It entered like a diver, head first. The water parted for it. Disappeared without a splash. A kind of relief came over him. A kind of acceptance. The gun had been nothing but trouble. The gun had always caused problems.

  Wyte gave Finch a look of betrayal. Hesitated. Bosun receded further. Wyte could shoot Bosun. Then they'd be lost, in hostile territory. Or Wyte could miss and Bosun would be gone anyway. Or Wyte could get rid of his gun and Bosun would leave them. But Finch didn't think that would happen.

  He tugged the gun from Wyte's reluctant hands. Threw it in the water as Wyte muttered, “A mistake, Finch. A mistake.”

  Finch demanded it of Bosun: “Stark.”

  “Stark,” Bosun said, nodding.

  Then Bosun was just a wide back again, a kind of door himself. Leading them somewhere dangerous.

  But a few minutes later, Bosun stopped again. This time inside an old tugboat. Finch right there beside him, back sore from stooping. Wyte behind them, still in the last, much larger boat. Exuding a muddled aura of defeat.

  Then he was gone. Finch could sense it. Wyte there, behind him. Then not. A kind of wind or impact punching the air. A muffled shout. Cut off. Finch turned and saw just the outline of doorways receding in a ragged infinite number back the way they'd come. Nothing but shadow otherwise. Whirled around to Bosun, deck rising and falling beneath his feet.

  Bosun stood there. Arms folded, watching.

  Finch fought the urge to close the distance. To hurt Bosun. Fought it. Knew that self-control would save his life. Maybe save Wyte's life. Knew now, too, that Stark didn't give a shit about gray cap retaliation. Didn't care that Heretic would be after him if he snuffed out two detectives.

  “Where's my partner? Where are you taking him?” Tried to keep his voice level.

  If you hurt him ...

  Bosun shrugged, said, “Doesn't want to see him. Just you. Wyte's not safe. We don't know where he's been. You'll see him later. Take off your shoes.”

  “Take off my shoes?” It was unexpected enough to make Finch forget Wyte for a moment.

  “Shoes and socks. Need to see your feet. That going to be a problem?”

  “Why the fuck would I care about my shoes after giving up my gun?”

&
nbsp; Over the side went Finch's shoes and socks. Stood there, hopping, as he showed Bosun the bottom of first one foot, then the other. Wondering where this would end. Furious, worried, scared.

  Another part of him looked down from a great height, puzzled. When did being a detective mean this? He was investigating a double murder. He was working for an occupying force that could make Stark disappear in a burst of dandelion-like spores. And he didn't have his shoes. He didn't have his socks. He didn't have his gun.

  “Are we done?” Finch asked. “Is this almost over?”

  Impassive bullet of a head swiveling toward Finch. Dark eyes glinting. “Turn out your pockets.”

  “Why?”

  Bosun pulled out his gun. “No good reason.”

  Finch raised his left arm, palm up. “I'll do it. I'll do it.”

  There was a lot more than he'd thought. A copy of the photo of the murder victim. A folded up note from Sintra, the first and almost only thing she'd ever written to him. Dear Finch-I made you coffee. Thanks for a great night. Love, S. His current identity papers. A few semi-worthless paper bills from before the Rising. A strange coin, notched along the edges, that he'd kept for luck. A scrap of paper with nonsense words written on it, an odd symbol on the back.

  In the end, Bosun returned all of it to him.

  “Worthless.”

  But he'd lingered on the scrap of paper. Far longer than necessary to read it.

  Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

  3

  hirty minutes? Longer? Finch lost count of the doors. Lost count ar didn't care. His back throbbed from hunching over. From crawling, then climbing, Bosun's form always ahead of him. They were in the heart of the Spit now. Bigger boats-almost ships-lay near the center, places where you could forget you were on the water. Masts rose up like barren trees. Warrens of rooms, through which Bosun walked sure-footed, never losing his bearings.

  Passed through a bar of sorts, with homemade booze in reused bottles. Women flirted with dull, rumpled men with beards and strange black hats. A few loners with a calculated threadbare appearance. Beyond the bar, the sound of spirited bartering in back rooms for black market goods. Selling guns, food, maybe even information.