Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

by Jeff VanderMeer

  Bliss nodded. “Nothing ever happens the way we think it will. Now, where's that piece of metal?”

  “I have a few questions first.”

  “Questions?”

  “I've been doing a lot of thinking,” Finch said. “In between passing out. When I haven't been pissing blood. About things like whether or not you really work for the rebels. Maybe Ethan Bliss does, but not Dar Sardice.”

  A pause, then, as if deciding whether or not to play along with him. Then: “Very good, Finch.” “Keep going.”

  “You share information with the rebels, yes, but you don't work for them. Even if they think so.”

  “Excellent, Finch!” A kind of forced cheeriness. “So who do I work for?”

  “You were Dar Sardice before you were Ethan Bliss. It's the oldest name you're known by. You knew my father. You said you worked with him. My father was deep in Kalif territory during much of the campaign. Working on engineering projects for the Ambergris army. Often shuttling back and forth behind the front lines. You met him then, I think, not after he returned to Ambergris.”

  Bliss gave him a look of mingled regret and triumph. “You're right, of course. I gave him that, actually.” Nodded at the scimitar on the table behind Finch, beside its scabbard. “A reward for his good service. I was also your father's control in Ambergris. I ran him, along with other sources. But he was the best.”

  “Ran him for who?” Wanted to hear Bliss say it.

  “For the Kalif, of course. Always for the Kalif. The Kalif has a long memory, Finch. And the Kalif never forgets anything. We turned your father in the desert, and he stayed turned. But you knew that.”

  The question he'd been homing in on, the one he'd never been able to ask his father: “Why did he do it?”

  “He never told you? Why does anyone do anything? For money. For love. For our children. Because we think it's right. Your father, he met a woman. He had reservations about the war by then. He'd seen some of the excesses of the Ambergrisian army, had never felt comfortable with the power of the Hoegbottons before the war. And he'd lived in the desert for a couple of years. Observed the traditions of a culture thousands of years old. He was ready to fall in love-with all of it.”

  “And then what?”

  An impassive gaze. “The woman died. Brutalized and killed by Ambergrisian soldiers, apparently. Her body burned in a fire.” A kind of triumphant smile. “But you, Finch. You were saved from that fire. You were less than a year old at the time.”

  A shifting feeling in his stomach. A distant sense of confusion. Stared at Bliss across the maps. “That's a lie. My mother died in childbirth. She was from Stockton. She had no family.”

  Bliss shrugged. “Believe what you like. Hoegbotton, Frankwrithe- both right. Both wrong. Does it matter in the long run? Your father worked for the Kalif. As for why, look around you, Finch. This is a city founded on an attempted genocide, and everything that came out of that. The Silence. The Wars of the Houses. The Rising. This place is dangerous, Finch. Its people are dangerous. Ambergris will always need a counterweight. First through Morrow and Frankwrithe & Lewden. Now through the rebels, because the gray caps are in control. Either that, or Ambergris tries to take over the world. One way or the other. That's what the Kalif learned repulsing your offensive.”

  “Is that what my father believed?”

  “That's what I believe. Your father believed that by playing both sides against each other he was serving a greater good. I've never been under that delusion.”

  Searching Bliss's guarded face for what was true. Trying to reject the idea of further treacheries.

  “You abandoned him, then. You let him take the fall when Hoegbotton and Frankwrithe joined forces. I was there. He died alone. Except for me.”

  Bliss shrugged. “I couldn't stop him from being found out. Just from being found. Too many people on each side were talking, suddenly. But, Finch, he wouldn't let me help him. Wouldn't let me take him out of Ambergris. Because of you. And because he was dying.”

  “But you made sure nobody got to him so he wouldn't talk.”

  “I did what I could.”

  Something clicked. Even on the run, when his father was dying, he hadn't wanted Finch to contact anyone. No help from anyone. Because he didn't trust anyone.

  “He didn't want you getting near me,” Finch said.

  “I could've found you at any time, James Crossley,” Bliss said, leaning back.

  “I wouldn't have worked for you. You couldn't have recruited me.”

  “Haven't I already?” Then shrugged. “But this is all beside the point. Where's the piece of metal, Finch?”

  A gun had appeared in Bliss's hand. His regretful look said, just in case.

  “Maybe I left it in the apartment. Maybe you should look there.”

  “Maybe you should just give it to me,” Bliss said. “It's not the kind of thing you want to leave lying around.” Acid in his voice. A hard glitter to the eyes that chilled Finch. But it didn't stop him.

  “Mostly, though, Bliss, I keep thinking about how good you are at finding things. You never told me that you were the one who found Shriek. Gave him to the rebels. Do you want to explain that?”

  Bliss sat back, tapping his foot against the floor. “You want the truth? Shriek was dumb luck. A wild card. Something to hold in reserve. He was like a spigot once I found a way to pry him out of his protective shell. Like a man left on a desert island for a hundred years. He would've talked to anyone.”

  “And you found him next to Samuel Tonsure's bones, of all people. And then you `found' that magical strip of metal. The one that wasn't made by us or by gray caps. You even found the doors before the rebels did. Did you also tell them the soldiers in the HFZ weren't all dead, just lost?”

  A sly smile. “It's a skill, Finch. Finding things. Leveraging them. My goals and the goals of the rebels are the same. For the moment. Although it's a very long game we're playing here.” The eyes not smiling at all.

  “Where did you find the metal?”

  A hiss of impatience from Bliss. “I understand, Finch. I really do. You won't be working for me. You don't care who your mother is. Your father is a hero, not a traitor. Now just give me that fucking piece of metal, or we'll do it the hard way. We'll do it the hardest possible way.”

  Finch turned away from a thought that truly terrified him. That Bliss didn't work for the Kalif at all. That Dar Sardice was just the first of the masks he knew about. That the “long game” was beyond comprehension.

  The sounds of oars from beyond the open doors. Of a boat thudding up against the steps.

  “That'll be Rathven,” Bliss said. “Do you really want to involve her in this?”

  No, he didn't.

  “I don't have it. Sintra took it from me in the apartment,” Finch said. Almost triumphant. Almost proud of Sintra. “There was nothing I could do. The dogghe have it now. I couldn't stop her.”

  Bliss erupted from his seat. Suddenly seemed twice as tall. Mouth open in an expression of rage beyond any caricature Finch had ever seen.

  Flinched before it. Pushed back in his chair. Waited for the blow, but couldn't look away.

  Bliss's eyes were dead. Something else shone through. Something hostile. Something alien. Like a mask had slipped. Peering out through the urbane little man's face was something other.

  Then it was gone. Bliss was just Bliss. “No matter,” he said, with a smile that cut. “A complication soon solved.” But Finch didn't think it would be that easy. Hoped it wouldn't.

  Footsteps walking up the stairs.

  A reptilian smile from Bliss.

  “You're just a spectator now, Finch. Just another pawn. But I'll leave you with this: Did you ever stop to think that maybe Wyte represents the future of this city? That maybe you're the past. Still living, but the past nonetheless. There will be a day you'll remember this conversation in a much different light.”

  Then he was walking into the bookshelves. Which turned into a door fri
nged with green and gold.

  Which he stepped into.

  And was gone.

  Rathven came in, holding her gun and a disgruntled Feral.

  “Was someone in here with you, Finch?” She let Feral down. The cat ran to him, rubbed up against his legs.

  Finch shook his head. “Talking to myself.” Leaned over to pet Feral. Felt like he'd escaped some great danger. Had come across the edge, the outline, of something that his map could not encompass. That neither Finch nor Crossley could ever understand.

  Somewhere out there the Lady in Blue was readying for invasion.

  Somewhere Sintra was bringing the strange piece of metal to her superiors.

  Somewhere Shriek was trying to come home.

  And he was in a secret room surrounded by books, petting a cat.

  From far above, he heard the mutter of mighty engines coming to life. A groaning, rending roar. A rising hum behind it. A metallic scream like the cry of a raptor.

  The ceiling vibrated. The floor rumbled. A plume of dust. Feral looked up, concerned.

  “I was coming to tell you, John,” Rathven said. “The towers are changing. The electricity is out. Everywhere.”

  Panic and a surge of energy. “I've got to get to the roof to see it.”

  She shook her head. “No, you don't. You're too weak. We can take the boat instead. The tunnel leads out to the bay.”

  Wincing, he settled into the boat opposite Rathven. It felt strange to be in a boat not made by the gray caps. The wood so stiff. The lack of give beneath his feet. She lurched onto the seat opposite him. Set the lantern by her feet. Two gas masks there. Binoculars, too. Feral paced on the steps, watching them leave. Rathven had left food just in case.

  Ribs of light from the lantern sent across the ceiling made it seem as if they traveled down the gullet of a great beast. Cool, under the earth. Overhead, there might be violence. There might be mobs. Street sweeps by the Partials. Poisonous clouds of fungus. Almost anything. But down here, there was just the shudder from the towers.

  Were they entering a new life? Would it be better than the last? He didn't know.

  “They'll sing your praises,” Rathven said. “If Shriek leads them back.” She stared at him as if the enormity of events had finally found her.

  Have I done what's best? Have I done the right thing or the wrong thing?

  “They won't even remember my name, Rath.”

  “I will,” she said.

  An emotion rose up in him that he didn't think he deserved to feel.

  Facing each other. Two survivors. Gliding through a dark tunnel, headed for the light.

  Now Finch can see the frailty death has lent them. Now Finch can see the vulnerability. The way the light uses them in the same way it uses him ... and looks out across the damaged face of Ambergris.

  The wide expanse of the bay confronts their boat. A stiff, hot wind rising. The Spit just a trace of black smoke. The towers shambly and green to the left. Shuddering and quaking like something alive. Debris falling off of them into the water. On the right, the north shore, and the long arm of the HFZ. Agitated. Alive. A curving hand reaching out across the water toward the towers. A wave of orange-green-red spores. Already torn and jagged at the limits of its reach. Already fading back into itself.

  From the towers, an ungodly roar and cacophony. Lines of light reach out from the tops of the towers into the city. Toward the bloodred mushroom stations. As if helping to hold them up. In front of the towers, the tiny shadows of rows of gray caps lined up on the bridge. As if in worship.

  In that space between the towers, the gate-the door-has finally found what it was searching for.

  A weak white disk in a porous pale sky, poor mimic of the sun beyond the towers. Framed in gray, gigantic living citadels rise in a swirl of glittering dust motes so tightly packed they can only be spores. Two, three hundred feet the citadels rise. Circular. Studded with tiny eyes for windows. A hundred curving causeways run between them. Rising from below, a thick forest of tendrils in constant, rippling motion. Waves of color washing across them, strobing from greens to reds to blues, and back again. Through this landscape, great beasts stride in perpetual gloom. Hunched over. Half-seen, half-heard. Cities of fungus rising from their backs.

  But at the bottom of this scene, a tear or rip. Like a photograph with a flame burning through it in a rough triangle. Turning it to ash.

  A green-gold door rising.

  They watch from the boat as it lengthens, enlarges itself. Encroaches on the forest of tendrils. A whining sound. A kind of crackling and popping that hurts his ears. And no other sound out across the bay. Or across the city behind them. As if everyone holds their breath. Waiting for this new thing.

  The background scene becomes glassy. Vague. Blurry.

  The green-gold door stops growing.

  The breath goes out of him, and then returns. As if he's been dead and now is coming back to life.

  They come in numbers. In legions. Pouring through the door. Across the bridge, overrunning the gray cap positions like an unstoppable river, into the city. He can see them, toy soldiers, through the binoculars. A never-ending torrent running across the surface of the bay. Some wear strange clothes. Carry strange weapons that discharge violet light. Some with gas masks. Some encased in great armored suits of metal sinew and tendon. Others on horses. Some looking human. Others like Wyte at his worst. Some in motored vehicles. Others on foot. A few leading creatures he has never seen before.

  The rending sound becomes louder. Vibrating in his ears. He is transfixed. She is transfixed. People will ask him where he was on this day. He will say, “In a small boat in the bay. With a friend.”

  The towers shake and shake but never fall. The men and women and things coming out from the door, their progress does not slacken. They keep spilling out, and as they do, the scene in the background becomes grayer and grayer. Like a smudge. The lines of force from the tops of the towers into the city begin to waver. Until one by one they erase themselves. Slowly. Then more quickly.

  Waves now in the bay, like an aftershock. Smacking against the boat. He is holding her tight against the awful wonder of it. He is holding on to her like something familiar.

  And still the rebels come, as the backdrop begins to fade. Things from the other side now touch that surface. Fall forward. Into the air. Their shapes that were in that other place graceful or translucent become crumpled and dark. Falling. Extinguished in the bay.

  And still the rebels come. Transformed and normal. Through the green-gold door.

  Something stirs in him. A hint of a feeling close to pride. Close to horror. Because he knows, and she knows, that the world has changed. And he helped change it.

  It may not be better. It may be worse. But it will be different.

  He's reached the end of being Finch. Of being Crossley. He's reached the end, and he has no idea who or what he will be next.

  He sits in the rowboat next to her and watches the end and beginning of history.

  Remembers it all.

  Forgets it all.

  Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  our people read Finch in manuscript form and provided invaluable, often brilliant feedback. Thanks in particular for comments on pacing and logic by my wife Ann (twice, in rough draft and nearfinished form), specific comments on character and situation by Tessa Kum, thoughts on Stark and the city itself by Howard Morhaim, and an analysis of and a methodology for sentence fragments (and much more) by Victoria Blake.

  Thanks to Sonya Taaffe for Latin phrases. Thanks to John Coulthart for a genius-level cover and for gray cap symbols. Thanks to Dave Larsen for gun-related advice. Thanks to Matt Staggs for many kindnesses and his battery-like energy and creativity. Thanks to J. K. Stephens and Edward Duff for testing the novel's chronology. Thanks to Heidi Whitcomb and Rachel Miller for their proofing and design help.

  Although I had the idea for this novel as early as 1998, it changed substantially a
s the result of trying to write an Ambergris story for John Klima's Logorrhea anthology in 2006, so thanks, John. Thanks also to the Turkey City Workshop, with whom I shared an early draft of the first fifty pages; the comments I received were crucial to determining my approach to the novel.

  Thanks to all of those readers who followed me through City of Saints & Madmen and Shriek: An Afterword to this point. I truly appreciate each and every one of you.

  Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  eff VanderMeer is a forty-one-year-old, award-winning writer living in Tallahassee, Florida. Major works include the previous two standalone books in the Ambergris Cycle, City of Saints & Madmen and Shriek: An Afterword, as well as Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st-Century Writer. Recent and forthcoming books include the story collection The Third Bear, the nonfiction collection Monstrous Creatures, the humor book (with his wife Ann) The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals, and “The Situation,” a graphic novel collaboration with the artist Eric Orchard. His work has also been adapted for short films by PlayStation Europe and others. VanderMeer writes book reviews for the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post Book World, The Believer, and the Barnes and Noble Review, in addition to working as a columnist for Omnivoracious, the Amazon book blog. With his wife Ann, fiction editor of Weird Tales, he has edited a number of fiction anthologies as well as taught creative writing workshops all over the world. He is currently working on the definitive visual/textual overview of the steampunk subculture for Abrams Books. For more information on his work, visit www.jeffvandermeer.com.

  Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  n addition to Finch, two of Jeff VanderMeer's other novels are set in the Ambergris universe: City of Saints & Madmen, and Shriek: An Afterword. Although each of the Ambergris novels stands alone, together they form the complete “Ambergris Cycle,” a vast 1,700-page story involving many of the same characters and themes, with Finch answering questions first posed in City of Saints & Madmen about the gray caps and about the nature of the city itself.