Finch by Jeff VanderMeer (45 page)

Lost time. Lost worlds. A man who had lived for more than a hundred
years, only to die in a crappy apartment as part of a larger game by a
species that had come from a place so distant they'd spent centuries
trying to find it again.

A giving up. A giving in. That's what Shriek was offering him. It
tempted him. He had nothing left. Nothing of worth. No master plan.
No better life waiting. Just his own death. Too much for him, and too
little, standing there on the battlements of a place re-created by a
passenger in his brain.

Finch searched the face of the dead man for honesty or deceit. Saw
himself reflected back.

"How do we start?" he asked.

"For you, it's easy," Shriek said. "A mental trick. Just think back to
the time when you went from being Crossley to being Finch. Imagine
that instant as exactly as you can. Every detail you can remember.
While you concentrate on that, I will enter through the `gap' created.
That's as simply as I can put it ... The rest you won't feel."

A hopeful expression on Shriek's face.

The thought that maybe this was happening in the seconds before
his death. That the last week had taken place in a single moment in
his head. That none of it was real. Even the parts that seemed real.
Those least of all.

Finch shuddered. Closed his eyes.

"Let's get this over with."

The creation of John Finch happened at night. Cold for once. The
flares and tracers of battle over the darkened skyline. The roar of the
tanks. The gunfire of attacking infantry. A percussive music playing
all over southeast Ambergris. Near the Religious Quarter. Heavy
losses for the Hoegbotton side. A series of tactical mistakes.

They stood on the street behind the clinic, him and his father. Next
to a burning trash can. His father was a hunched figure who kept
coughing up blood. By then his father had been very sick.

John Crossley had a folder full of documents for his son. James
had a suitcase stuffed with identity cards, certificates, incriminating
photographs. Had checked John Crossley into the clinic under the name
"Stephen Mormeck." Someone they'd picked out of the phone book.

A clinic in Frankwrithe territory. Because of the rash of refugees.
Because F&L had less reason to hate John Crossley.

"Is there anyone you want me to contact?" he'd asked his father.

A shake of the head, the great mane of gray hair. "No, no one. Make
a clean break. For both of us." A gruff laugh. By then, he was selfmedicating with whisky early in the day. That night next to the trash
can, John Crossley had been drunk for two days.

But his eyes were clear. His arm steady as he handed the folder to
his son. "Everything you'll need. For John Finch. Including a way to
rejoin the Hoegbotton Irregulars."

Two years before the Rising. Six months after Hoegbotton and
Frankwrithe had joined forces against the gray caps. Five months
since his father had been denounced as a Kalif spy and they'd had to
go on the run. The posters were everywhere. One of a row of traitors.

"I didn't do what they say I did. Not the way they say I did it. I never got
anyone killed. I never ..."

His father had never told James how they'd come to be betrayed.
Which of the many people who had come to the house in the valley
over the years. And James didn't have a clue, because his father kept
pushing him further and further away from that part of his life.

James reached down, opened the suitcase. Felt the click of the
clasps against his fingers. "It's all here. Every last document. Every last
photograph." From the old house in the valley. James had gone there
earlier that night, snuck in. Returned to the clinic in an army truck,
along with a few other civilians with ties to Hoegbotton's trading
arm. Wyte had stood watch for him, then gone out the back way and
melted into the night. Wyte knew every street in the city. He'd have
been back home with his wife before midnight.

Two in the morning now.

"What are you waiting for? Start shoveling this stuff into the fire,"
his father said.

Still, he hesitated. Watched the smoky flames rising into the
darkness, the sparks mimicking the flares in the distance.

"If we burn all of the photographs, I'll forget what you look like."

His father didn't miss a beat. "But not who I am. And if you don't
do it, there's no clean break, son."

His father reached down, picked up a handful of documents and
IDs. Shoved them into the fire. Which flared up for a moment.

"This is the best way." John Crossley had said it a dozen times
that day.

Anything else of value that couldn't tie the son to the father had
been put in a storeroom on the edge of the merchant district. A
neutral area. James could retrieve it at any time. The whisky. The
cigars. The books. The map. The ceremonial scimitar his father had
gotten while fighting against the Kalif. "Keep it hidden, son, but use it
when you have to."

After a moment, James joined him. Started tossing handfuls into
the flames. Photographs from the offensive into Kalif territory.
John Crossley on a tank. In a window. Walking through the desert.
Old journal entries. Even the little tobacco pipe he'd shown James
as a youth.

"They'll never forget, never forgive, no matter who the enemy is, son.
Better just to start a new life. Be someone else."

They'd never talked about his betrayal. The son had felt that asking
would have meant admitting that the father had done something
horribly wrong. He didn't want to let that into their world.

"Is there anyone you want me to contact," he'd asked his father. "No, no
one," the old man had insisted.

When the suitcase was empty, James stood back. Beside his father.
Watched the flames die down. Then hugged his father close. Sour
breath. Shaking arms. The rasp at the back of his throat. Knew he was
going to lose him soon.

"Welcome to Ambergris, John Finch," his father whispered in his ear.

till dark when he woke, except for the lanterns. Except for a hint
of gray from the window. He lay on the floor. Felt hungry. Thirsty.
As much as he'd ever felt in his life. Hollow, too. As if he were made
of spores. Would blow away. Over all of that, the constant complaint
of his nerves. Reporting pain. Everywhere.

The Partial lay facedown beside the gray cap. Arms out to the sides.
On the table, the bloody knives, the pot of water. The empty vial.

He sat up and saw himself, naked, propped up on two elbows
opposite. Feet almost touching. Shock. Sudden horror. Even in the
dim light, the same dark hair. The rakish yet thickening features.
The solid build on the edge of fat. But Shriek's features rose out of his
own. The cheekbones a little higher. The eyes different. This other
Finch had green eyes. This other Finch had a strange smoothness
to him, a blankness. None of Finch's scars had manifested on him.
Few of the wrinkles. Finch shuddered. Shriek-Finch looked like
a man who had reached middle age without the physical signs of
experience.

"The resemblance will fade," Shriek said. "I'll be able to take any form
I like, soon." A scratchy voice. As if getting used to his vocal cords.

Shriek rose, and Finch rose with him. An imperfect reflection.
Shriek held himself differently than Finch. Shoulders hunched from
some invisible weight. A stare less guarded. More expressive hands.
Light gathered around Shriek in unnatural ways. A gentle iridescent
strobing rippled across his body. It reminded Finch of the starfish in
the cavern by the underground sea.

"How do you feel?" Shriek asked.

"I feel light ... and yet heavy," Finch said. Could sense Shriek's
overlay lifted from his mind. Its presence only confirmed by absence. While all of those things he'd thought himself numb to came rushing
back in with a near-fatal intensity. Sintra. Wyte.

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.