Finch by Jeff VanderMeer (12 page)

Third, whatever the gray caps knew about Bliss, if they knew about
Bliss. Finch couldn't remember pulling the file on him. He'd have to put
in a request. Which he hated doing. Couldn't know what Heretic would
"request" in return.

Took out the form anyway. Wrote in what he needed. Under "subject,"
he filled in Ethan Bliss's name and a few others. For cover. If Finch
put in his report that he'd seen Bliss in the dead man's memories, Bliss was as good as dead. Or would want to be. And Finch couldn't be sure
what it all meant until he questioned Bliss. Which wouldn't happen if
Heretic got hold of him first.

Why the hell was Ethan Bliss in the memories of the dead man?

Typed:

Perhaps a fannarcesitti would be more useful in
reading the man's memories?

What would a gray cap see? Baiting Heretic gave Finch a grim
satisfaction. Gray caps hated eating human memories. Almost as
if there were a taste, a smell, that repulsed them. Finch couldn't
recall Heretic ever eating one. Could human memories harm a
gray cap?

It is not entirely clear that these deaths are
murders, rather than accidental. The two may
have died somewhere else and been brought to the
apartment. Residents of the apartment building
have no additional information. Rumors that two
people lived in apartment 525 cannot be confirmed.

Just covering himself in case whatever game the Partial was playing
went south. Yet, stubbornly, couldn't bring himself to mention the scrap
of paper. Despite the fact the Partial knew about it. Had the Partial told
Heretic? Maybe. Maybe not.

Finch pushed his chair away from the typewriter, hands behind his
head. The report made no sense. Composed of smoke and shadows.
Doubted Heretic would find it convincing. What did it mean that
the dead man had spoken to him? Another thing he hadn't put in the
report. Some instinct had warned him against it.

Ripped the paper out of the typewriter carriage. A mechanical
tearing sound loud enough to make all the other detectives turn
toward him in one motion that seemed choreographed.

What the hell are you looking at?

Realized he'd said it out loud.

Jammed his report into a pod, along with the request for files.
Shoved that down the memory hole gullet. Choke on it.

A minute later: a sound coming from the damn thing. Incoming.

The pod. The tendrils. Hammer. Egg. Extraction. A message from
Heretic.

"Fuck," Finch said.

"Is it bad?" Wyte asked.

"Why do you always ask that question?"

"Why is the answer always yes."

"Then you shouldn't ask it."

Staying late always unnerved him.

Have to get out of here.

"Come on," he said to Wyte. It would do Wyte some good, too.
"We're going to go talk to Ethan Bliss."

If they could find him.

On a table near the desk in his apartment, Finch has a map of
Ambergris from before the Rising. It covers the whole table, renders
the city in perfect detail. He has no idea what it's made of. Never
tears. Never wrinkles. His father had given it to him when he was
thirteen. "You'll never need another." Made a mark on it with a green
pen every time he sent his son on an errand to a new location. Insisted
Finch take the map with him everywhere. Even though it was heavy.
Even if Finch had been to a place before. "The streets are shifty. I
want to make sure you don't get lost."

The errands? Collect letters. Drop off packages. Say a single word or
phrase. "Shipping lanes." "The weather is too cold for this time of year."
"Mr. Green says you are a lucky man." Never to the same people. Old,
young, male, female, each one with secrets behind their eyes. He
played it like a game. Delighted in the mystery of not really knowing
the rules. Then he'd return, a human homing pigeon, to their house.

"Official business," his father said. He held an important position
for H&S because he was a war hero. Anyone could tell that from all
of the photographs of him fighting against the Kalif, and from the people who came over to visit. Some of them wearing funny hats and
uniforms.

But by the time Finch was seventeen, his father had stopped
sending him on these errands. He'd felt discarded. Hadn't understood
then that his father had turned to others when Finch began to ask
questions. When he began to have a sense of the secrecy behind his
missions. A tallish, dark-haired, serious boy with few close friends his age,
taught at home by his father. Those journeys across the city had meant
a lot to him.

But he'd kept the map, used it for his new job, which his father had
gotten for him. Courier for Hoegbotton business interests. Running
invoices and shipping inventories between the main offices and the
warehouses at the docks. Sometimes, if the conflict heated up, if
F&L cut off certain roads, he had to find alternate routes.

Trade "has to keep on an even keel, no matter what," his boss Wyte
liked to say. Wyte, seven years his senior, with an office in the brick
building on Albumuth they'd both work at after the Rising. Even then
Wyte had seemed too large for the world around him. Desk too small.
Him too clumsy. But to Finch he'd been the height of authority.

The map shows that brick building, with a green mark by it. It
also has detailed views of the Bureaucratic Quarter, the Religious
Quarter, and what had unofficially been known as the merchant
district before the wars. Albumuth Boulevard, the great snake
wending its way through almost every part of the city. The valley
that had been the home of so many citizens. The docks. The
swampland to the north.

A view of Ambergris that had remained essentially unchanged
for centuries. Had survived early incursions by the Kalif, the cavalry
charges of Morrow back when it had a king instead of the F&L. Had
even survived the Silence.

But could not survive the Rising.

The gray caps have a kind of see-through paper. A slight greenish tint,
barely noticeable. It feels light as a leaf, but is very strong. Finch has
stolen two sheets of it, taped them together to form an overlay to his
old map. On this overlay he charts the changes he has observed, using
a dark pencil that he can erase at will.

In the evenings, when too restless to sleep but too tired to read, Finch
will turn on the light in the study. Or use a lantern if the electricity is out.
Review the overlay. Search for what he knows has been made different
again. Then render a section bare with handkerchief and water. Build it up
again, redraw it all. A change in the lip of the bay. Or in the HFZ. A row
of houses that has burned down. A drug mushroom that erupted from the
pavement. A new gray cap house or cathedral.

Lately, he has been charting the retreat of the water. Right after
the Rising, the canals from the bay into Ambergris had been like the
fat fingers of a grasping hand. Now they are withered, the "thumb"
almost dry, the others shriveling. Like his father's blue-veined hands
in the clinic near the end. A disease he'd picked up early in life,
fighting the Kalif. It got into his lungs first, and spread. No cure
except death.

Remapping takes the kind of concentration that empties out the
mind. In the old house, before they became vagabonds together,
his father had created something similar in his locked study. Much
bigger, with even more detail, laid out across a huge table fit for
a banquet. Color-coded to show Hoegbotton and Frankwrithe
territories within the city. Green and red. Along with blue for those
narrow reefs of neutrality. Over time, his father would chart weapons
depots on that map. Troop concentrations. Hidden storehouses.
Usually Hoegbotton but some Frankwrithe positions, too. His
father's overlay was actually a black sheet that perfectly hid the
map. And a tablecloth over top of that.

How many guests invited into that place had been served drinks on
that table, never realizing what was hidden beneath?

At seventeen, mad at his father for no longer using him as a courier,
Finch had stolen the key. Started sneaking into the study when his father
was out. Found the map. He used to stand there, it naked before him, and
memorize the progress of the war in his head. It looked like lively abstract
art. Symbols in search of context.

Finch doesn't draw directly on the old map because he doesn't want
to forget the past. Hopes that one day that lost world will return.
The overlay is only temporary, he keeps telling himself. Even as the
changes become more and more permanent.

His map is a crude facsimile of the original. He has only the dark
pencil to record the changes. Nor can his map chart the changes in
the people around him. Or tell him what to do next.

One day, his father surprised him in the study. He stood at the door
with a guarded look on his face. Finch stared back, frozen. There
seemed to be nothing he could say. His father walked up. Put the
black sheet over the map. Replaced the tablecloth. Muttered, ,This
didn't happen." Took the key from him. Escorted him out.

They never talked about it again. But in that moment of shock,
when Finch heard the door open, it burned his father's map into his
head. Every detail. Every nuance. And even now, looking at his own
map, the overlay, he sees it. Sees that room.

Knows every inch of Ambergris. Even the parts he hasn't yet visited.
Even the parts still changing.

racking down Bliss took three tries. Wyte had an address for a
townhouse Bliss sometimes used for meetings, in an old Hoegbotton
stronghold southeast of Albumuth. Finch could still see the slashes of
faded paint on the pavement, left by groups of Irregulars. Who knew
how old the marks were? A code that told a secret history of the city.
Gray cap passed by here Tuesday ... Food and ammo in the second house
on the left ... Stay clear of this intersection after dark.

They found the house on a street that had once been part of a
wealthy district. Trees lined the sidewalk, but not a leaf on them.
Gravel where grass had been. Silence all around. The houses to either
side derelict husks. A burned corpse with no arms right on the steps.
Which should've told them Bliss wasn't there. Flies had settled on
the torn-up face like a congregation. A slender whiteness had begun
to push up through the black. Stalks of fruiting bodies. Rising. In
another twenty hours, nothing would be left.

"Nothing inside," Finch said, coming back out.

"Let's visit Stanton," Wyte said.

Stanton, one of Wyte's druggie snitches, lived a few blocks down.
Behind Stanton, Finch saw a tarp draped over a soot-gray alley mouth.
A bundle of his possessions to one side. A crumbling brick he used to
protect himself at night. Before the Rising, Stanton had been a banker.
Or, at least, that's what he'd told Wyte. Probably an addict then, too.

Wyte always kept a few extra purple mushrooms in his overcoat
pockets. Stanton, in a kind of makeshift robe, clung to Wyte like he
was the drug. Wyte a plank of wood in the River Moth and Stanton
trying to stop from drowning. Except all he ever did was drown.

"Where'd Bliss go?" Wyte asked Stanton.

The thirty-year-old Stanton lifted his gaunt, balding head.
Red-eyed, wrinkled face. "Down by the abandoned train station.
Four streets over. Corner of Sporn and Trillian. He was just there
yesterday."

Wyte put three purple mushrooms in Stanton's hand. Stanton
received them like they were worth more than one day's relief.
The huge red mushrooms that dispensed the drugs stuck to a strict
schedule. Monday and Friday. Stanton had already gone through
what he'd gathered the day before. Finch didn't think he'd last
another month.

When they left Stanton, he was trembling under his pathetic shelter.
Eyes wide open and dilated. Gone someplace better. Someplace
temporary.

The train station was empty. But way in the back, under the shadowed
arches populated by pigeons and bats, they found a gambling pit.
Almost a grotto, for all the fungus surrounding it. Fuzzy clumps of
muted gold and green hid the entrance. Cockfighting. Card games.
Betting black market goods.