Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

by Jeff VanderMeer

  Same gray cap symbol glowing on the door.

  Same hesitation, but more pain behind it. The light in the hall flickered crazily.

  Finally mastered his fear. Held the gun in one hand while he turned the doorknob and pushed with the other. The door was unlocked. A prickle of unease up his spine.

  He walked into the darkened hall with the empty bedroom ahead. A yellow, artificial light leaked into the hall from the doorway on the left.

  No sound but his tread on the wooden floor. Just an expectant pause. Realized he was holding his breath. Let it out. An absurd whistling through his nose that was worse.

  He came out into the living room. A lantern on a chair by the balcony window provided the light. Cast everything in buttery shadows.

  The sofa. The chairs. The empty kitchen behind. A shape on the rug. As his eyes adjusted, he saw it was the familiar shape of Shriek, under the blanket. The rebels' great hope. A weapon. A beacon. A human being.

  He walked into the living room.

  A movement from behind. Before he could turn, the muzzle of a gun had been shoved into his back. Flinched. Felt like something alive was crawling onto him from the gun.

  “Drop your weapon, Finch. The bag, too.” A familiar voice. The Partial.

  “I'm here on official business,” Finch snapped.

  “We both know that's a lie. Drop it now.”

  Heard the click of the safety.

  Finch dropped the gun.

  “Now the sword. Undo the belt. Let it drop.”

  Finch obeyed, trying to breathe slowly, not let panic take him. What moment should he choose? This one? The next?

  The sword made a dull clank against the floor. The slap of the belt leather.

  The gun muzzle withdrew from his back. “Now turn and face me.”

  He turned. Fast. Meant to rush the Partial. Get under his guard. Too late. Saw the Partial's gun coming down for far too long. The thin white wrist behind it. A thudding pain in his forehead. The buttery light became death-white, intense. Then faded out.

  He woke facing the window and the lantern, the end of the couch to his right. Tied to a chair. Wrists and ankles burned from the tightness of the rope. Shoulders ached from having his arms wrenched behind his back. Head throbbed. Could taste blood. The jacket with the piece of metal and the vial had been tossed to the side.

  The balcony was empty. So was the kitchen. What he could see of it. A series of knives had been set out on the counter. A pot of water boiled on the burner. A hammer had been tossed onto the couch.

  Tested the rope, but it just bit in deeper. Tried rocking, but could tell he'd never get to his feet. He'd just fall over.

  Heard footsteps. Winced. Expecting Heretic and the skery. But only the Partial walked into view. Started rehearsing lines in his head.

  “Hello, Finch,” the Partial said. He'd brought a second lantern, placed it to the side.

  The same sneer. Same recording eye. Same ugliness. As thin and pale as something dead.

  “I've disabled the cameras in here, Finch,” the Partial said. “I've told the other Partials to give us some privacy, too.”

  “Why? We're on the same case,” Finch said. “Untie me and we can go our separate ways, no harm done.”

  The eye clicked and clicked. The Partial moved to his left. Finch could see the gun now. Held in the Partial's right hand. A nasty hybrid. An older Hoegbotton revolver altered to fire fungal bullets. The faint red-green tips of the bullets naked in the barrel. Seemed to breathe as they expanded, contracted.

  “You should have checked the bedroom first, Finch. You would have found me,” the Partial said. “But I'm not surprised. You've been very sloppy. Take the shoot-out at the chapel. A lot of my people died there.”

  “That was Heretic's decision, to send us there. And this is still an open investigation. I'm the lead detective on it. Untie me and I won't mention this to Heretic.”

  “But it's not open, Finch,” the Partial said. “You closed it yourself. I have your final report. Or bits of it. It doesn't mention a lot of things. Killing Wyte, for example.”

  Making Stark eat a memory bulb.

  “Wyte was dying,” Finch said. “It was a mercy.”

  “Convenient you weren't at the station when the bomb went off.”

  “I wouldn't call it that.” Struggling with the ropes. Getting nowhere again. Had to get free. Reach the pouch. Help Shriek.

  “When does Heretic get here?”

  “Interesting question, Finch. When will Heretic get here? He's already been here. With his fucking skery. I killed them both.”

  “What?” At sea. In a new country. One where he didn't know the rules.

  “You may be stupid, Finch, but you're not deaf.”

  “I don't believe you.” And he didn't.

  The Partial put the gun down. Picked up the hammer. Leaned forward. Brought it down on Finch's left knee. Fracturing pain. Finch screamed. Cursed. Jerked up and down in the chair.

  “Fuck! All right! I believe you. I believe you.” Rode through the aftershocks.

  The Partial said, “It's easy enough to kill a gray cap. If you can just find a way to push them off a five-story balcony. It's all about breaking down what's inside them. Just pretend they're a sack full of meat and wineglasses. Then imagine that crashing down five stories. Banging into fire stairs. Smacking hard against the pavement. There's a good chance they won't get up again. It's the damn skery that was the hard part.”

  Pointed to the corner nearest the kitchen. Finch saw something long and black. Half-hidden by the drawn-back window curtain. Still twitching. Relief that the skery was dead. Followed again by panic. No time. There wasn't time.

  “Imagine this, Finch,” the Partial said. “Those things were going to replace us.”

  “Untie me. Untie me and I'll leave. Like I was never here.”

  The Partial slapped Finch across the face. It stung, but nothing like the pain in his knee.

  “Bad idea, Finch,” the Partial said. Went over to the kitchen. Took the pot of water off the burner. “I think that's hot enough.”

  “Why are you doing this? Why kill Heretic?”

  “You know, Finch, we're almost on the same side,” the Partial said, cheerily. Pulled up the side table. Set the pot on it. A hissing sound.

  “I don't understand,” Finch said. Still in shock.

  “Heretic's a disappointment. All of his kind are. Traitors to our cause. Not committed to it, Finch.” He went back for the knives. “They can travel by uncanny means. But won't tell us how. They can make spores do whatever they want. But won't tell us how. We only get to be walking, talking cameras. That wasn't the deal. Now they plan to abandon us. Having first made us. Heretic said as much. And I am not interested in letting it happen.”

  “I still don't get it.”

  The Partial looked for a second like he would slap Finch again. Instead, he placed the knives on the table. Next to the pot of water. “They're bringing more of their kind here. They've already begun to abandon us. We have no orders. We're having to create our own purpose, our own orders. Because they don't care anymore. They have no need of us. Any more than they need Unrisens like you.”

  “Is that what you call us?” Trying not to look at the boiling water. The knives. The hammer.

  The Partial sat back. “You should thank me. Heretic would have killed you outright. But I want you alive. I want you alive to tell me what you really know. To tell me what Heretic would never tell me. What you've found out. All those times you went missing this week. Where I couldn't see you.”

  “I don't know anything that can help you.”

  The Partial frowned. “That's not true. I think you're just stalling. Maybe you still don't really believe me about Heretic. Maybe you think he's going to come walking through that door.”

  “No, I believe you!” Anticipating the hammer.

  But the Partial stood up anyway. Got behind Finch. Pulled his chair around until he was facing Shriek's body und
er the blanket.

  Stooped. Pulled the blanket away.

  Revealing Heretic, and a couple of pillows. The hat missing. A head stippled with tiny mauve mushroom caps. His neck twisted. His face crumpled and torn. Eyes closed. One of his feet was on the wrong way. As if he'd fallen from a great height.

  From a suffocating distance, Finch heard the Partial say, “See? Just like I told you.”

  Heard someone say, “Where's the body? Of the dead man.”

  Heard the response through the singing of the blood in his ears: “Oh, we destroyed that yesterday. Too big a risk to their plans. Heretic's orders. When he was still giving orders. We spread the ashes over the base of the towers.”

  Then, thankfully, the Partial was hitting him with the hammer again.

  And he was losing the thread again.

  Going under.

  Going deep under.

  Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

  SATURDAY

  I: Try to see it from my point of view. Because I'm trying to see it from theirs. They've got a vision that's extraordinarily deep and wide. A long view.

  F: How you must admire that.

  I: Does an ant mourn the passing of another ant?

  F: Maybe. I don't know.

  I: They see everything, everywhere, over thousands of years. And they work with spores and things smaller than spores-on a microscopic level. What's it to them if they reduce a life from a macroscopic to microscopic level. To its different parts. It's just life in a different form. Nothing's been killed. Nothing's ended because something else has begun. I find it liberating. If only they'd kept their word.

  F: Does that excuse them?

  I: After all you've done over the past week, Finch. Do you really think they need an excuse? Believe me, it's nothing personal. Now, I'm going to have to hurt you again.

  Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

  I

  oke to a sack over his head. Woke to the Partial whittling a tattoo into his leg. Woke to his own shrieks. Wondered if the Lady in Blue had spirited him away. Waking and drugging him. Waking and drugging him. Never lost.

  And always, the Partial asking him questions. Who was Ethan Bliss? How did the doors work? Had he met the Lady in Blue? Kept answering sideways, but after awhile didn't remember what he'd said. Or not said.

  After midnight. Maybe. Pitch black except for the lanterns. Except for the pale face of the Partial.

  Part of his mouth didn't work right. Jutted out. Swollen. His vowels came out slurry. Couldn't feel his feet or hands. A kind of mercy. Because early on the Partial had cut off one of Finch's toes. Had busted up his knee again. Cut a slit in his right cheek that bled into his mouth.

  “Confess,” the Partial kept saying. “Confess.”

  Was he ready to confess? And to what? Duncan Shriek was dead. The mission dead with it. Changing his name, leaving Crossley behind, now seemed as pathetic as the plan to revive Shriek. What had he been doing but playing sides off against each other? Buying time working for one, working for the other. For what? More of the same? Maybe even less of it. And if he confessed that, would the Partial do more than blink in confusion? Half the time the Partial wanted information. Half the time he just wanted to inflict pain.

  The Partial said, “My name is Thomas. You should call me Thomas. That's my name.”

  Laughter gushed up from deep inside Finch at the absurdity of that. Laughter he couldn't stop.

  “I confess,” he said. Screamed it. As the Partial went back to work.

  The chair slowly rocking, rocking back and forth.

  Rocking. Rocking. Back and forth.

  Finch sat on the upper deck of a houseboat in the Spit. From the towers across the bay, green fire gathered. It leapt out at them. Became huge and sparkling over their heads. Burned into boats all around them. Splintered timbers. Sent up waves of flame. A fire that never seemed to reach them. And yet was inside him.

  Wyte and Finch's father sat on a whitewashed bench opposite him. His father was the hunched-over specter he'd been at the clinic, in the last days. Coughing up blood. Wyte was, mercifully, as he'd been before the vainglorious charge from the chapel.

  “Getting close,” his father said.

  “Getting close,” said Wyte.

  “Hang on,” his father said.

  “Soon it will be your turn,” Wyte said. “Will you be ready?”

  “Ready for what?” Finch said.

  “Never lost.” Now it wasn't Wyte sitting beside his father, but Finch as James Crossley. Youthful. Neatly trimmed beard. Eyes bright with confidence. The James Crossley who'd worked as a courier for Wyte.

  Finch smiled. “It's been a long time since I've seen you. Could've used you earlier, James.”

  His father had disappeared. Duncan Shriek was sitting next to James now. Flickering in and out like a faulty bulb.

  Finch stared at them both. While the Spit burned down around them.

  Shriek said, “You can't survive much more of this. You've got to find a way out.”

  Finch grinned painfully. With each new bolt of green light another part of him was disintegrating. Falling away.

  “Easy for a dead man to say. I'm still in the world,” he said.

  Something was calling. Some noise was exploding in his head.

  “You'll be back,” Shriek promised, fading into darkness.

  Woke, finally, to the sounds of combat. Rockets. Gunfire. The recoil of a tank blast?

  Through the window, through the blood in his eyes, Finch saw intense flashes of light. Nothing like the gray caps' spore clouds. Or their fungal displays. That light was more like a mist. This was harsh and sudden. Unforgiving.

  Blood tickled his throat. The Partial had taken teeth. Each a raging agony in his mouth.

  The Partial sat on the couch, tapping his foot. He'd turned the chair so it faced him.

  Finch laughed. An unhinged laugh that ended on too high a note. Thought, “Could the interrogation be getting to the fucker?” But had said it aloud. The Partial crept behind him. Felt a soft sawing around his numb hand. A sudden flowing release.

  Still the rockets went off. So they must be real. Not hallucinations.

  No one's coming for me. No one.

  The Partial placed Finch's bloody pinkie finger on the table. It looked like a white worm.

  “Don't disrespect me again,” the Partial said. Breathing hard. Something almost sexual in the way he swallowed. Let the tip of his tongue show through his teeth. “Or there's more where that came from.”

  A chuckle or the low sound of a moan? “Only eight, or nine. But I won't. I won't. I won't. Just untie me. I can't feel my hands. I can't feel my legs.”

  The Partial ignored him. Which meant slapping him a few times.

  Nothing he'd told the Partial had stopped him. Nothing. Not once. Not any more than Stark had stopped Finch. Saw Bliss at the table in the Photographer's apartment, carefully creating the vial of liquid. Saw Sintra's face against the wall as they made love. Rathven's hesitant smile at their detective joke. None of it mattered anymore.

  Began to cry. To weep. Slumped over. Head leaning toward his lap.

  “Oh, there's nothing to cry about, Finch. Nothing at all,” the Partial said. “We're just having a conversation. A kind of meeting of the minds. If it makes you feel any better, those sounds you hear-they're your rebels, Finch. They've abandoned you. They're attacking the tower. It won't work, but I almost wish it would. Except there's no place for me in their new world, either.”

  “I'm sorry the gray caps. Betrayed you.” Mangled the words. Parched. As if he could drink forever and not be satisfied. But the Partial had only given him boiling water.

  “Are you?” the Partial asked. “Really? Because all I ever got from you before was contempt. An aura of deep contempt.”

  “Not contempt. Ignorance.”

  “Ignorance?” Incredulous.

  “Of what. You had to go through. To become a Partial.”

  At some point during the interrogati
on, if that's what it still was, Finch remembered consoling the Partial. Couldn't keep it straight in his head. His brain felt like it was outside of his body. Exposed and raw.

  “It's nice of you to pretend,” the Partial said.

  If I ever get free, I am going to put out your eye with my hands.

  Another flash. A recoil. But the attack seemed blunted. The explosions of light less frequent. Saw the Partial's serious, pale face in the half-light.

  “I've told you all I know,” Finch said. “Anything you needed to know.” But not Sintra. Not Rathven. Not the Lady in Blue. Hadn't given them up. Still, couldn't be sure anymore.

  She said she'd have watchers on me. She lied.

  The Partial ignored him. “Don't worry, Finch. We're almost to the end. Almost to dawn. Just another couple of hours. You might even make it.”

  Couldn't help himself. “Fuck you. Fuck you. You psychotic little prick. You cock-sucking psychotic bastard. You fucking coward!”

  Thrashing in his chair until it fell over onto its side.

  Silence then. Waiting.

  The Partial lowered himself against the floor next to Finch. Looked him in the eyes. Said, “We'll keep going until I see all of you. All of you.”

  Finch tried to spit in his face. All that came out was a trickle of blood.

  Am I dying? Is this what death is like?

  The rest dissolved into a kind of distant burning.

  A kind of despairing, raging ache.

  Back on the Spit. On the roof of the houseboat. Dusk now, the sun almost gone, but lingering.

  The Spit smoldered. Thick with flame and smoke. The towers were silent. From that angle, he couldn't see what lay between them. But strange birds flew out between them. Like parrots, but different. Flashes of green-blue-orange. Beyond that, the city, in an agony of bronzing light.

  Opposite him on the bench sat Duncan Shriek. This time he had a long gray beard, white hair down to his shoulders. His beard writhed, alive. His overcoat wasn't made of cloth at all. Concealed a mountain of a body, reminding Finch of Wyte. No shoes. Shriek's feet seemed to blend into the wood of the floorboards as if rooted there. His image flickered in and out. Could not seem to settle into flesh and blood.