Finch by Jeff VanderMeer (46 page)

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.

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. Especially 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?

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.