Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

by Jeff VanderMeer

  Teetered on the edge of an abyss.

  Shriek's voice brought him back: “Let it wash over you. Let it wash out of you. It's not real. It's like a dam breaking.”

  Finch nodded. Vague resentment: How could Shriek know how it felt?

  Shriek wrapped his nakedness in the blanket. Muted the strobing. A shimmer across the face. The arms.

  “What now?” Finch couldn't stop staring at himself.

  “Just what Bliss gave you. Just that.”

  The piece of metal was still in his jacket pocket. He handed it to Shriek.

  Shriek nodded. “Perfect.”

  Perfect for what? An unease in Finch. That he hadn't thought it all through. An urge to pick up his gun and shoot Shriek.

  A spark in Shriek's eyes that originated there. Not a reflection from the light.

  “What are you?” Finch asked.

  A low, wheezy laugh from Shriek. As if his lungs were filled with spores.

  “Just someone who knows too much.”

  Finch watched Shriek assemble the metal strip. Must've been some button or other mechanism hidden in the symbols. Because in Shriek's hands the strip of metal clicked, and like some kind of magician he began to pull more metal out of it. Until he had a length of metal as tall as a man. As tall as Shriek.

  “Whoever created this also created the doors,” Shriek said as he worked. “But I've never found them. Granted, I was more interested in the gray caps.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “Bliss found it. Somewhere far, far away.”

  Bliss, again. Finch beyond surprise.

  “What does it do?”

  Shriek pulled it sideways, with a motion almost like pulling apart something soft, crumbly. A piece of bread or a biscuit. A frame began to appear.

  “It focuses my abilities. Like a lens.”

  When he had persuaded it into a rectangular shape, roughly doorlike, Shriek knelt. Pressed the frame into the air like he was hanging a painting.

  Let go of it.

  It didn't fall. Made a snapping sound and it stayed there. About two feet off the ground. No flicker or waver. Static. Solid. Still. An intense but narrow gold-green light invested the edges of the metal. Made the symbols glow. The space inside the frame continued to show the window beyond it.

  “It will be a minute or two before I can leave,” Shriek said. Finch said. As Finch had watched, it had almost been like watching himself do it. A ghost watching its body move about the apartment.

  “What happens next?” Finch asked.

  “I complete the mission. Time doesn't work the way we think it works. Not really. I'll go into the HFZ to pick up the trail. From there, I will journey years and worlds away and return. An army gathered with me. I will be the beacon, the light, that guides them.”

  Words came tumbling out Finch hadn't known were there. “Why? Why do it? What does it matter to someone”-something-“so old. Who is so ... removed”-alien-“from all of this.”

  The intensity of his need to know shocked him.

  A sad, lonely smile. “The truth? None of my books ever changed anything. Nothing I did changed anything. I always tried, and I always failed. But Bliss helped me to see that failing a hundred times didn't mean you had to fail every time.”

  “And you trust Bliss?”

  “About this? Yes. Even if I am just an echo, this is the last chance.”

  “It's too late to put things right,” Finch said. “Too much has gone wrong.” Ruined neighborhoods. The vacant stares of the people from the camps. The fighting in the streets. The effects of decades of nearconstant war.

  “As much as they can be put right, Finch,” Shriek said.

  “And after? What then?”

  Shriek's dark gaze, from a dark place. The rectangle hanging in the air like a magic trick. A terrible power. Something in between.

  “After? After, I'll be gone. Somewhere. Everywhere. Nowhere. A pile of ashes at the base of the towers ...”

  “And I'll still be here,” Finch said. It came out like an ache.

  Shriek, forceful: “You are a man who did the best he could in impossible circumstances. That's all.”

  After Shriek left, he would be alone. Terrribly injured. In an apartment with two dead bodies. In a war zone.

  The door lit up. Became a reflecting mirror.

  “I'm leaving now, Finch,” Shriek said.

  “Wait!” A last burst of curiosity. “Tell me what happened. How did you end up in this apartment?”

  Shriek's features softened. “I tried something dangerous. Something impossible. I tried to use the nexus at Zamilon to go back in time. I tried to change the past so I wouldn't have to change the future. But you can't do that. And the past caught up with me. The attempt almost killed me.”

  The door had begun to hum. An intense white light shot from it, silhouetting Shriek. The hum became a kind of unearthly music.

  “And the gray cap?”

  “He got caught in the door I'd made.”

  “What does that mean? I don't know what that means,” Finch said.

  “You might ask yourself who Samuel Tonsure really was,” Shriek said. Then nodded at Finch, and stepped through the door. Disappeared into the light.

  The light went out.

  The rectangle clattered to the floor.

  The metal fell in on itself.

  Just a bar of metal again, as before.

  Finch knew he would never be able to make it do what Shriek had done. Knew that he would never see Shriek again.

  Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

  4

  unlight. Warm against his battered face. Curled up on the couch. His ankles and wrists seemed made of broken glass. Could feel the fragile bones shifting. Sending the glass up into his arms, his legs. His whole body hurt. Ached. His jaw was sore. Couldn't feel his nose anymore.

  A vast and formless rush of city sounds from beyond the window. Sporadic gunfire. The thud and shift of something heavier. Like a giant striding across Ambergris. But distant. So distant.

  Someone had applied field dressings to the stumps of finger and toe using torn fabric.

  Tried to get up. A hand held him down. A voice he knew said, “Don't get up yet.” The accent more pronounced. As if she were no longer acting.

  An arm propped up his head so he could drink from a cup of water. It tasted good. Even though he had trouble getting it down. Even though it mixed with the blood inside his mouth.

  Sintra's face came into view. He looked up at her with what he knew was a stupid, childlike dependence. Everything stripped away from him. Couldn't raise his arm far enough to wipe his eyes.

  “Just lie there,” she said. An oddly clinical concern in her voice. She wore forest green. Camouflage pants and shirt. Brown boots made out of something soft. A long knife sheathed at her waist. A rifle in the crook of her left arm, muzzle pointed toward the floor.

  “Sintra,” he said. Turned his stiff neck to follow her as she got up for more water. Saw again the bodies on the floor. A moment of disorientation. A man and a gray cap. Looking like they'd fallen from a great height. Except the Partial, face down, was sporling the remains of his fungal eye out across the floor. An army of tiny, black, fernlike mushrooms with golden stems had traveled from the eye to colonize the back of his head.

  A croaking raven's laugh at the unexpected sight. Even as he realized there'd still be a recording there, somewhere, in the mess.

  Tried to say to Sintra, “How did you find me?” Wasn't sure it came out right.

  Sintra gave him more water to drink. Perched beside him on the armrest. “The city is catching its breath this morning. There is no one in this building now. Not a single Partial. No eyes left in this apartment. Their attention is elsewhere.”

  “How did you know? To look here.”

  Her voice from above him, matter-of-fact: “I've followed you here before.”

  “When?”

  He felt her shrug. “I've followed you everywhere. Especiall
y the last few months. Before the towers started firing on the Spit. I have followed you so much I know more about you than you do.” Not said like a joke. More like she was weary of it. Tired of being a shadow.

  The words lay there, in the sunlight. Finch picked over them again and again. Didn't find what he was looking for.

  “Did you kill them?” she asked. Motioning toward the bodies.

  “One of them.”

  “But not before he got to you.” Said it like he was a problem to be solved. Like a threat.

  Finch thought for the first time about the sword on the floor. Looked toward it.

  His own gun appeared in her hand. Again.

  “Finch ...”

  “Are you here to finish me off?”

  “No, just to stop you from doing anything stupid.” She held out a pill to him. “You'll feel better if you take it. Maybe long enough to get back to your apartment.”

  Took the pill gladly. Willingly. A test both of him and of her. Swallowed. A vague warmth spread through his limbs.

  The old absurd idea crept up on him with the warmth. It still isn't too late. We can get out of Ambergris. Cross the river. Make it to Stockton or Morrow ... Readying himself to make the argument again. That if they left together they could leave their old selves behind, too. But he couldn't get the words out. Dust on his tongue. To say them would mean he was delusional. That he was pursuing a ghost.

  “What happened to the man who was here before? Your case?”

  A deep, shuddering breath. “First, tell me the truth,” he said. Had no cleverness, no deception, left to him. “Whatever it is.”

  She considered the question for a moment.

  “We work with the rebels sometimes, in exchange for other favors. Who was the man in this apartment? Was it Duncan Shriek?”

  “Who is `we'?”

  “The dogghe. My people. Who was the man in this apartment?”

  The dogghe. The Religious Quarter. She was part dogghe, part nimblytod. Had no known address. Came to him in the night. Seemed to move around the city with ease. Of course she worked for the dogghe.

  “Yes, Duncan Shriek,” he told her, because it didn't matter anymore. “Someone who is an expert with ... doors. Why me? Why not Blakely or Dapple. Or even Wyte?”

  The words still came out slowly. Mangled. It took her time to recognize them and respond.

  “You had no record up until two years before the Rising, John. That made us curious ... What was Duncan Shriek's mission?”

  “To stop more gray caps coming through. What were your orders with regard to me?”

  “Coming through what?”

  “The towers. Was it always that way? Between us?” From the beginning? An ache now that wasn't from his wounds. A slow-motion treachery. A life concealed.

  “Finch, what can you tell me about Ethan Bliss?”

  “I loved you.” Let go of the words now, while she couldn't really see his face. When it didn't matter anymore. He had nothing to say to her about Bliss.

  Her slow response: “And I liked you, John. I really did. I wouldn't have slept with you, otherwise. No matter the mission.”

  A childish bitterness, but he was too weak to keep the poison out of his mind: "You left behind some of your notes once. I had suspicions, but I never went to the gray caps with them. I never told anyone.

  A mistake. He could feel the retreat in her words: “You might never have had to find out. We could have continued having our fun. The mystery of it. You liked that very much, I know. But a normal life? Like regular people? We aren't regular people. We were playing roles.”

  “What roles?”

  Her voice took on a harshness that he knew shielded her as much as him. “You were the protector. I was the exotic native girl you liked to fuck.”

  “That's not true.” Wanted no part of what she was doing.

  “Isn't it? None of you really see us, John. Only what you want to see.”

  “And what do the dogghe want? What do they want out of Ambergris?”

  Anger in her voice. Desire and need, too. Just not for him. “This was our place, John. Before your people came. Before the gray caps. And maybe it will be again.”

  “The rebels will never let that happen, no matter how you help them,” Finch said. “Neither will the gray caps.”

  “Maybe they won't have a choice. Maybe this time we will just take it.”

  Saw it now. In the chaos of conflict between gray caps and rebels and the Partials. The dogghe might hold on to the Religious Quarter. If they were lucky. If others weren't.

  “I won't answer any more of your questions,” he said. “You already know the answers, I think.”

  He sat up. Took her in while he still could. A beautiful but tiredlooking woman in her early thirties. Hair messy, face long and pinched from stress.

  “Did your father ever recover?” he asked.

  “What?” The question, after all the others, seemed to take her by surprise.

  “From his trauma. Did he recover?”

  She looked down, away from him. “Yes, he did.” Was that a tremor in her voice? “He's passed on now, but he had as good a life as anyone.”

  He reached out, touched her shoulder. Her skin warm. Like he remembered it.

  She clasped his hand. Eyes bright as she met his gaze. “Clean yourself up. Find some place safe to be, Finch. The next time I see you, I might be forcing answers from you. And I really wouldn't like that.”

  He nodded.

  A flash of those green eyes. She put his gun down on the table. “I'm leaving it for you, but I'm taking this.” Held up the metal strip Shriek had used. Unmistakable that it, ultimately, was what she'd come for.

  “You shouldn't.” But beyond caring. “It'll do more harm than good.” To me.

  “John, I don't think you really know the difference.” Then she was walking out the door, down the hallway. Gone for good.

  Finch stared after her for a moment. Then hobbled to the window. Looked out.

  The towers were complete. They shone with green fire in the light. Between them, impossible scenes flashed so fast he caught only glimpses. A vast blue dome like an observatory. Replaced by a mountain topped by a tower. A city of gleaming buildings taller than any he'd ever seen. A forest of vine-like trees. A roiling sea over which egg-shaped balloons floated, trailing lines of shimmering light. And on it went. Almost beyond comprehension.

  At some point soon, the scenes would stop changing. They would settle in on one scene. They would settle in on the gray caps' home.

  Would he know by then if he'd done the right thing?

  Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

  5

  he way home. So heavy, so light, he almost didn't feel the pavement. Wearing one shoe. Only a sock over his other foot because it hurt too much. Somehow easier to hold the sword. The gun shoved into his belt. Head felt like a balloon stuffed with rags. Ached all over, with eruptions of pain in the places most sorely used by the Partial.

  Through a haze, saw:

  Partials gathered in a black squadron, marching toward a barricade manned in part by a truck weighted down by a cannon that had to be a century old at least. Two anemic mules whose ribs stuck out stood placidly behind the barricade. Along with the pale, uncertain faces of the defenders.

  Gray caps approaching, at their back a huge cloud of spores, gliding and shifting, a thousand shades of green. Of red. Of blue. Suffocating the street. A last few stragglers running out before them, anonymous in their gas masks.

  The huge drug mushrooms transformed. Hoods drawn down to the ground, the red surface once so soft become hard as brick. Wavering lines of green energy sparked from their minaret-like tops. Shot out toward the green towers. Gray caps stood watch from tiny circles of windows. Across the sides of each stem, unending repetitions of the symbol Shriek had carried with him on the scrap of paper. Over and over again in a kind of madness. No flow of food or drugs now. No pretense of even caring. Just a sense of waiting. For what?
/>
  He took a side street, then an alley. Crept through a courtyard and walked into an apartment complex as a shortcut. Kept his face turned to the wall. If someone wanted to kill him, they could.

  Finally reached the hotel steps. The madman lay sprawled there. Someone had slit his throat. His arms were thrown out to either side as if in welcome. Just another body. Already a sly fringe of tiny greenand-white mushrooms had sprouted up through his pant legs, his shirt, his face. In another day, he'd be a fucking flower bed.

  Next to the madman's left hand Finch saw a little round carving. He picked it up. Crudely drawn, but unmistakably Stark's face, with its sharp features. The deep-set eyes.

  Rathven telling him,“You have to choose a side, Finch. Eventually you have to choose a side, even if you pretend to be neutral. Even if you think giving out information is like selling smokes or food packets.”

  Through his fuzziness, a terrible thought.

  Dropped the carving. Hobbled fast up the steps.

  At Rathven's door. One more time. Only it was open now. Had forced the Lewden Special into his left hand, over the bandaged finger. Held the sword in his right.

  Hobbled inside, trying to focus his fading attention. Through the hallway. Entered the room ringed by bookshelves. In one chair, facing him, Bosun. He'd abandoned his custom-made revolvers. Held a fungal gun on Rathven. Her back was to him, but he could see her raised arms. The glint of her own monstrous revolver. A standoff.

  “You are fucking late,” Bosun said. “We've been waiting for awhile.”

  Didn't reply. Just walked around until he stood to the right side of them both. Bosun's bald head was bloodstained. Other people's blood? A yellowing bandage over his shoulder where Finch had clipped him. A nervous tic working its way across the corner of his left eye. Wore a dark shirt and darker pants, tucked into boots. Taken from a Partial? Some perverse form of camouflage?

  Rathven was pale but composed. Gaze never wavering from Bosun. The battered old gun trembled only a little in her grip. A smell of sweat and fear came from both of them.

  “Finch!” Relief in Rathven's voice. That someone was there. That she wasn't alone with the madman. “I didn't let him in. He took me by surprise.” As if Finch might, even now, accuse her. Stress crackling into her voice as she glanced over. “But he didn't know I had the gun...” Her look turned to dismay at his condition.