Finch by Jeff VanderMeer (14 page)

They passed addicts with the familiar purple stains across their
skin. Men in the ill-fitting uniforms of janitors for the camps.
Somebody pissing in an alley. Faded posters on a long crumbling
wall, showing pictures of members of the short-lived puppet
government. Another blood-red mushroom looming over them big
as a tree. Every week there seemed to be more of them. Next to it,
a blossoming flower of a building atop the squashed remains of the
local grocery store. Soft humming sounds came from an interior
obscured by fleshy window flaps.

Where had Bliss gone-and how was he involved?

Finch replayed that moment over and over. Bliss running for the
kitchen. Bliss in his memory bulb dream. Trying to reconcile those
versions with the Bliss he remembered from before the Rising. The
way Bliss's gaze couldn't settle on one thing. As if his mind worked
faster now. A growing sense that this new Bliss hadn't been stripped of
prestige and security but had traded it for something else.

Wyte seemed agitated, and Finch thought he knew why. So he said,
"It's my fault. We should've taken him in from the beginning, like you
suggested. I didn't need to question him first. And I forgot to check
out the rest of the apartment."

Wyte's neck had an orange stain on it. Fingernails that had turned
black. A smell like a distant sewer drain. But he'd been worse.

"I hit him, and I spooked him," Wyte said. "I'm as much to blame
as you. Maybe more. But that's not the point, Finchy."

Here it comes.

Wyte stopped walking, faced him. Finch had his back to a crumbling
wall veined through with fungus so blue it looked black. An overlay
of scattered bullet holes. Across the street, a laughing pack of Partials
shoved a couple of prisoners ahead of them. A middle-aged bearded
man with a bandage across his forehead and angry rips in a shirt
discolored pink. A woman who could have been the man's wife, her
long black hair being used as a leash by one of the Partials. Just a jaunt
around the block before getting down to business.

"Look, Finch," Wyte said. "I'm your partner. And you keep keeping
things from me. I hadn't even seen the photo of the dead man until
you showed it to Bliss. And where's the list Heretic gave you?"

Wyte will never adjust. It made Finch sick deep in his stomach.

Finch pulled Wyte back to the wall with him. The Partials had
moved on ahead, oblivious to anything but their prisoners, but he
didn't want to take any chances. In a whisper: "Listen to me. I'm just
trying to protect you."

Wyte stared at him for so long that Finch had to look at the ancient
dislodged stones of the sidewalk. A sudden hunger for a past when Wyte
hadn't been this way. A feeling so strong he felt water in his eyes.

Each word meant to wound, Wyte said: "I don't need protecting, like
I've told you. Back in the day, I protected you." Then self-importantly,
when Finch said nothing: "I'm going to work for the rebels soon. I
know someone who knows someone."

This shit again. Once every few weeks.

Something snapped in Finch. Felt it in his head like the sudden
eruption of a migraine.

He shoved Wyte up against the wall. Didn't care who was watching.
Felt the air go out of the older man's lungs. Those eyes scared by
what they saw in Finch. Skin clammy. Some of Wyte's shirt wasn't
really a shirt.

Finch said as calmly as he could: "You are not going to be a fucking
spy for the rebels. You are not going to be a fucking spy for the rebels.
Ever. Do you understand?"

"Get the fuck off of me!" Wyte hissed. Twisting in Finch's grip.
Head angled toward the sky. Shoulders arched back like he was trying
to take off his coat but had gotten his arm stuck.

"You're not. And do you know why not? Because you've been colonized.
And it's gone too far. And they'll never take you." Never take you back.
Never want you now. Too late. "And if they did, you'd probably be spying
on them. For the gray caps. Without even knowing it. Which is why you
can't." And you'd be leaving me with a station full of detectives who hate me
because I didn't abandon you.

He released Wyte, pushing off of him. Creating space between them
in case it turned into a fight.

But Wyte stayed up against the wall. What was the look on his face?
Didn't matter. It was the way he stood. Finch had seen the same tired
stoop in workers from the camps. Seen it at times in Rath.

Continued on now that it made no difference: "The closest you'll
get to working for anyone is wringing intel out of that ragged bunch
of Stockton contacts you call a network." Trailed off.

Wyte's self-disdain when he turned to Finch made him look angry
or righteous. A darkness there that might have been spores coming up
through his skin.

"Better than doing nothing, like you."

"I don't do nothing. I do what I can. There's a difference." Hands
clenched into fists. Face contorted. Close to being out of control.
What if he's right?

Stood there while Wyte opened his mouth to say something.

But Wyte didn't say anything, just let out his breath with a shudder.
Finch watched warily as Wyte reached into his overcoat pocket with
a hand that trembled slightly and took out a flask made of battered
silver and tin, the once-proud H&S insignia marred by fire burns.

Finch had given it to Wyte on his birthday ten years ago. Emily
hadn't liked it. Thought her husband drank too much anyway.
Didn't need to "make it into a ritual" as she put it. But that didn't
stop her from joining them when they'd stood on the step outside
of the house to share a smoke and whatever Wyte had put in the
flask. Remembered its quick glint as it picked up the sun or a
streetlight.

"It's got good brandy in it, Finchy," Wyte said. "The last bit I've
been hoarding."

"You're not going to hit me?"

"What for, Finchy? What'd be the point?"

Finch grimaced. Managed to transform it into a thin smile. "Some
brandy might be a good idea." He patted Wyte's ruffled overcoat back
into place. "I'm sorry, Wyte. I'm sorry."

And he meant it. Turned away. Disgusted with himself. Who had
the bigger burden? The one who had to watch the other person endure
or the one who endured?

Wearily, Wyte said: "How could you know? What it's like living with
something else inside me. While on the outside I keep changing."

Worse than a dead man talking to me?

Finch didn't want to think about it. Took the flask. Downed half of it
in a gulp. Felt the liquid rage through his capillaries. Like a forest fire that
left ice behind it. He handed the flask back. "Good stuff." They started
walking again.

Wyte laughed. "Still can't really hold it, can you? Any more than
you could when you were working for me."

Slapped Finch on the back hard enough to make him stagger.

Fair enough.

Wyte. The story.

He'd gone to investigate a death about a year ago. By himself.
No one else in the station. The call sounded simple. A man found
dead beneath a tree, beginning to smell. Could someone take a look?
Most days, not worth bothering with. But it was a slow morning, and
Wyte took the job seriously. The woman seemed upset, like it was
personal.

The body was down near the bay. Beside a cracked stone sign that used
to welcome visitors to Ambergris. Holy city, majestic, banish your fears. No
one was around. Not the woman who had called it in. No one.

The man lay on his back. Connected to the "tree," which was a huge
mushroom. Connected by tendrils. The smell, vile. The man's eyes open
and flickering.

Wyte should have left. Wyte should have known better. But maybe
Wyte was bored. Or wanted a change. Or just didn't care. He hadn't
seen his kids since they'd been sent out of the city. He'd been fighting
with his wife a lot.

He leaned over the body. Maybe he thought he saw something
floating in those eyes. Something moving. Maybe movement meant
life to him.

"Who knows? Just know that it's a dumb move."

A dumb move. That's how the detectives would say it during
the retell. At their little refuge, not far from the station. Blakely
had discovered the place. In front of what used to be the old
Bureaucratic Quarter. Looks like a guard post. Nondescript. Gray
stone. Surrounded by a thicket of half-walls, rubble hills, and stunted
trees. With a moat that's really just a pond that collects rainwater.
From the inside, it's clear the structure is the top of a bell tower
pulled down and submerged when the gray caps Rose.

Always half out of their minds with whisky or homemade wine, or
whatever. When they told the story. A dumb move. Like they were
experts.

"Point is," Albin would say, because Albin usually told the story, "he
leaned over, and the man's head exploded into spores. And those spores got
into Wyte's head."

White spores for Wyte. Through the nose. Through any exposed cuts.
Through the ears. Through the eyes.

Although he fought it. Twisted furiously. Jumped up and down. Cursed
like the end of the world. So at least he didn't just stand there and let it
happen.

"But by that time, it was too late. A few minutes later and he's just
somebody's puppet."

Wyte became someone else. The "dead" man. Someone who didn't
understand what had happened to him. Wyte ran down the street. Taken
over. Screaming.

"Screaming a name over and over. `Otto! I'm Otto!' because that was
the dead man's name. Wyte thought he was Otto."

Or most of him did. Wyte, deep inside, still knew who he was, and
that was worse.

Sometimes, out of a casual cruelty, a kind of boredom, one of the
other detectives, usually Blakely, will call Wyte "Otto." Until Finch
makes him stop.

"Well, they found him a day later. Once they figured out who the dead
body was. Cowering in a closet. Saying `Otto' over and over again."

In the dead man's apartment.

"A caution to us all."

Then they would clink glasses and bottles, congratulating themselves
on being alive.

Truth was, they told the story less to humiliate Wyte than to keep
reminding themselves not to take any chances. Ambergris Rules. No
dumb moves.

Wyte got Otto out of his head. Eventually. Most of Otto. But not
the fungus. That became worse. The gray caps couldn't or wouldn't
help. Maybe they saw it as some kind of perverse improvement.

No one had ever found out who had lured Wyte there. Or why.

Finch knew they never would.

They split up. Wyte headed back to the station. Finch decided to return
to the apartment on Manzikert. He'd have more than his fill of the
station later.

"Do I mention Bliss?"

"If it comes up, no. His file's already being pulled. That's enough for now."

"He made us look like fools."

"We made ourselves look like fools."

Black trees. Odd fruit. Pissed-off cat. Hallways that still squeaked
from wax. The stairwell still collected darkness. But a silence had crept
in, too. An emptiness that hadn't been there before. No sounds of a
mother and child. No smells of cooking.

On a hunch, Finch stopped at the fourth floor again. Knocked on
the door of the man who had dressed up for Finch's mild interrogation.
Held his badge up to the peephole.

The door creaked open. A Partial stood there. Stockier than the
one who had catalogued the crime scene. His face even paler. Red
teeth. As if he'd been eating raw meat sloppily. Dressed in black dyed leather, but wore beige boots. Like he'd been caught trying on
someone else's clothes. In the belt around his gut, two holstered guns
and a hammer, of all things.

Finch held the badge in front of him.

"I'm the detective on the case in apartment 525," he said. "Where's
the old man who lives here?"

The Partial considered him for a moment. The glittering black eye
was flickering madly. But the rest of him was like a chilled tortoise.
Arms at his sides. Almost paralyzed.

"Gone," he said slowly. Making the syllable linger.

"Gone where?" Finch asked.

"Gone somewhere else," the Partial said with an effort.

Like you, my friend. Wondered if the flickering eye meant his
attention was elsewhere. Reviewing not recording.

A new thought, horrifying him. "Are they all gone?"

The eye stopped flickering. Blinked twice. In a more normal voice
the Partial said, "The building has been cleared."

Cleared how? Escorted out and rehoused? Sent to the camps? Liquidated?

But he didn't ask, just nodded. Smiled. Stepped back.

The Partial parroted the nod and receded from him into darkness.
Shut the door.

Finch stood there a moment. This place was now a Partial stronghold.
No witnesses.

He took the stairs to the fifth floor in leaps. As if running fast might
prevent the crime that had brought him here. Bring back the old man
in the too-tight suit.

The door. The gray cap symbol, glistening and obscene. The hallway.
The bedroom, empty. The living room; no sign of the Partial.