Finch by Jeff VanderMeer (17 page)

Finch stood at the prow of the gray cap boat, the only kind allowed
out on the bay. Wyte beside him, skin on his arms green. Not from
being seasick. The boat was big enough for eight or ten. Empty with
just the two of them. Slight upward lurching push as it expelled water
below the surface to propel them forward. Looked like any other boat
from afar. Except it acts like it's alive. Route preplanned by the gruff
Partial who had met them on the shore. Who had shoved a mushroom
into an orifice on the hull that looked uncannily like a memory hole.
Somehow the boat knew where to go. How to return.

Finch's shoes were sinking into the loamy sponge of the "planks."
Tried to remember to bend his knees to keep his balance. But balance
was a precarious thing. Tongue dry, stomach aching. The skery had
done something to his muscles. Made him feel like he'd wrestled a
giant all night. Didn't like that. Didn't like being robbed of his natural
river-legs. Finch had liked the water, once. With childhood friends,
names now lost-Charlie? Sam?-he'd gone down to the docks to fish.
Pushed a canoe out into the current. Later, working for Wyte, he'd
gotten up close to the big ships docking to unload and take on board
H&S goods.

Ghosts of early-morning conversations with Wyte ran through
Finch's head.

"Most of my informants have gone dark. Stark's influence. Taking care
of leaks and stirring up hornets."

"You've got to know more about Stark than what you left on my desk,
Wyte."

"No. Not a thing. We don't even know if that's his real name."

"Nobody's real name is just Stark, Wyte."

Wyte had arranged for a Stockton operative named Stephen Davies
to act as a go-between with Stark. They'd approach the floating
pontoons at the northeast edge of the Spit. Much safer than from the
land side. A maze of ruins there. Ideal for ambush. No cover. No way
to retreat.

Spies came into Ambergris simple and alone, first stop the Spit. Over
the water. In the darkness, as if newly born. With nothing on them
that the gray caps might want. Nothing that their masters wouldn't
want taken. They built up their resources over time. Using whatever
money or influence they'd brought from Stockton, Morrow, or even
more distant lands. Sometimes the Spit was the last stop, too.

"Truff love foreigners, trying to take advantage of our fucked-up city."

"Stark'll be no different. Where was Stockton during the Rising?"

"Waiting to pick the bones clean."

Trying to pump themselves up. Convince themselves they were still
loyal to Ambergris. Hated how the masks made their voices tinny.

"Davies seems in awe of Stark."

"Sure it's not fear? Though most of them are probably past fear or
awe by now..."

Wyte just shrugged. Finch knew he didn't want to think about that.
Didn't want to know what shit might be waiting on the Spit.

Hints of bobbing islands in the waves now. Some of them too close
to ignore. Yet Finch ignored them. Corpse islands made from workers
who had died in the camps. Reborn as floating compost for fruiting
bodies. And far, far below them, the decaying docks, the drowned part
of Albumuth Boulevard. All of the dead, still in the buildings where
they had worked or lived, the onslaught of water so sudden. Slamming
into them. For a time lit up by the strobing of the giant squid that had patrolled the bay. Long since gone, driven out by the pollution. Finch
couldn't take it. Not this morning.

"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.