Finch by Jeff VanderMeer (43 page)

"I wouldn't call it that." Struggling with the ropes. Getting nowhere
again. Had to get free. Reach the pouch. Help Shriek.

"When does Heretic get here?"

"Interesting question, Finch. When will Heretic get here? He's
already been here. With his fucking skery. I killed them both."

"What?" At sea. In a new country. One where he didn't know the rules.

"You may be stupid, Finch, but you're not deaf."

"I don't believe you." And he didn't.

The Partial put the gun down. Picked up the hammer. Leaned
forward. Brought it down on Finch's left knee. Fracturing pain. Finch
screamed. Cursed. Jerked up and down in the chair.

"Fuck! All right! I believe you. I believe you." Rode through the
aftershocks.

The Partial said, "It's easy enough to kill a gray cap. If you can just
find a way to push them off a five-story balcony. It's all about breaking
down what's inside them. Just pretend they're a sack full of meat and
wineglasses. Then imagine that crashing down five stories. Banging into
fire stairs. Smacking hard against the pavement. There's a good chance
they won't get up again. It's the damn skery that was the hard part."

Pointed to the corner nearest the kitchen. Finch saw something
long and black. Half-hidden by the drawn-back window curtain. Still
twitching. Relief that the skery was dead. Followed again by panic. No
time. There wasn't time.

"Imagine this, Finch," the Partial said. "Those things were going to
replace us."

"Untie me. Untie me and I'll leave. Like I was never here."

The Partial slapped Finch across the face. It stung, but nothing like
the pain in his knee.

"Bad idea, Finch," the Partial said. Went over to the kitchen. Took
the pot of water off the burner. "I think that's hot enough."

"Why are you doing this? Why kill Heretic?"

"You know, Finch, we're almost on the same side," the Partial said,
cheerily. Pulled up the side table. Set the pot on it. A hissing sound.

"I don't understand," Finch said. Still in shock.

"Heretic's a disappointment. All of his kind are. Traitors to our
cause. Not committed to it, Finch." He went back for the knives.
"They can travel by uncanny means. But won't tell us how. They can
make spores do whatever they want. But won't tell us how. We only get
to be walking, talking cameras. That wasn't the deal. Now they plan
to abandon us. Having first made us. Heretic said as much. And I am
not interested in letting it happen."

"I still don't get it."

The Partial looked for a second like he would slap Finch again.
Instead, he placed the knives on the table. Next to the pot of water. "They're bringing more of their kind here. They've already begun
to abandon us. We have no orders. We're having to create our own
purpose, our own orders. Because they don't care anymore. They have
no need of us. Any more than they need Unrisens like you."

"Is that what you call us?" Trying not to look at the boiling water.
The knives. The hammer.

The Partial sat back. "You should thank me. Heretic would have
killed you outright. But I want you alive. I want you alive to tell me
what you really know. To tell me what Heretic would never tell me.
What you've found out. All those times you went missing this week.
Where I couldn't see you."

"I don't know anything that can help you."

The Partial frowned. "That's not true. I think you're just stalling.
Maybe you still don't really believe me about Heretic. Maybe you think
he's going to come walking through that door."

"No, I believe you!" Anticipating the hammer.

But the Partial stood up anyway. Got behind Finch. Pulled his chair
around until he was facing Shriek's body under the blanket.

Stooped. Pulled the blanket away.

Revealing Heretic, and a couple of pillows. The hat missing. A head
stippled with tiny mauve mushroom caps. His neck twisted. His face
crumpled and torn. Eyes closed. One of his feet was on the wrong way.
As if he'd fallen from a great height.

From a suffocating distance, Finch heard the Partial say, "See? Just
like I told you."

Heard someone say, "Where's the body? Of the dead man."

Heard the response through the singing of the blood in his ears:
"Oh, we destroyed that yesterday. Too big a risk to their plans. Heretic's
orders. When he was still giving orders. We spread the ashes over the
base of the towers."

Then, thankfully, the Partial was hitting him with the hammer
again.

And he was losing the thread again.

Going under.

Going deep under.

I: Try to see it from my point of view. Because I'm trying to see it from
theirs. They've got a vision that's extraordinarily deep and wide. A
long view.

F: How you must admire that.

I: Does an ant mourn the passing of another ant?

F: Maybe. I don't know.

I: They see everything, everywhere, over thousands of years. And they
work with spores and things smaller than spores-on a microscopic
level. What's it to them if they reduce a life from a macroscopic to
microscopic level. To its different parts. It's just life in a different form.
Nothing's been killed. Nothing's ended because something else has
begun. I find it liberating. If only they'd kept their word.

F: Does that excuse them?

I: After all you've done over the past week, Finch. Do you really think
they need an excuse? Believe me, it's nothing personal. Now, I'm going
to have to hurt you again.

oke to a sack over his head. Woke to the Partial whittling a
tattoo into his leg. Woke to his own shrieks. Wondered if the
Lady in Blue had spirited him away. Waking and drugging him.
Waking and drugging him. Never lost.

And always, the Partial asking him questions. Who was Ethan Bliss?
How did the doors work? Had he met the Lady in Blue? Kept answering
sideways, but after awhile didn't remember what he'd said. Or not said.

After midnight. Maybe. Pitch black except for the lanterns. Except
for the pale face of the Partial.

Part of his mouth didn't work right. Jutted out. Swollen. His vowels
came out slurry. Couldn't feel his feet or hands. A kind of mercy. Because
early on the Partial had cut off one of Finch's toes. Had busted up his
knee again. Cut a slit in his right cheek that bled into his mouth.

"Confess," the Partial kept saying. "Confess."

Was he ready to confess? And to what? Duncan Shriek was dead.
The mission dead with it. Changing his name, leaving Crossley
behind, now seemed as pathetic as the plan to revive Shriek. What
had he been doing but playing sides off against each other? Buying
time working for one, working for the other. For what? More of the
same? Maybe even less of it. And if he confessed that, would the
Partial do more than blink in confusion? Half the time the Partial
wanted information. Half the time he just wanted to inflict pain.

The Partial said, "My name is Thomas. You should call me Thomas.
That's my name."

Laughter gushed up from deep inside Finch at the absurdity of that.
Laughter he couldn't stop.

"I confess," he said. Screamed it. As the Partial went back to work.

The chair slowly rocking, rocking back and forth.

Rocking. Rocking. Back and forth.

Finch sat on the upper deck of a houseboat in the Spit. From the
towers across the bay, green fire gathered. It leapt out at them. Became
huge and sparkling over their heads. Burned into boats all around
them. Splintered timbers. Sent up waves of flame. A fire that never
seemed to reach them. And yet was inside him.

Wyte and Finch's father sat on a whitewashed bench opposite him.
His father was the hunched-over specter he'd been at the clinic, in
the last days. Coughing up blood. Wyte was, mercifully, as he'd been
before the vainglorious charge from the chapel.

"Getting close," his father said.

"Getting close," said Wyte.

"Hang on," his father said.

"Soon it will be your turn," Wyte said. "Will you be ready?"

"Ready for what?" Finch said.

"Never lost." Now it wasn't Wyte sitting beside his father, but Finch
as James Crossley. Youthful. Neatly trimmed beard. Eyes bright with
confidence. The James Crossley who'd worked as a courier for Wyte.

Finch smiled. "It's been a long time since I've seen you. Could've
used you earlier, James."

His father had disappeared. Duncan Shriek was sitting next to James
now. Flickering in and out like a faulty bulb.

Finch stared at them both. While the Spit burned down around them.

Shriek said, "You can't survive much more of this. You've got to find
a way out."

Finch grinned painfully. With each new bolt of green light another
part of him was disintegrating. Falling away.

"Easy for a dead man to say. I'm still in the world," he said.

Something was calling. Some noise was exploding in his head.

"You'll be back," Shriek promised, fading into darkness.

Woke, finally, to the sounds of combat. Rockets. Gunfire. The recoil
of a tank blast?

Through the window, through the blood in his eyes, Finch saw
intense flashes of light. Nothing like the gray caps' spore clouds. Or
their fungal displays. That light was more like a mist. This was harsh
and sudden. Unforgiving.

Blood tickled his throat. The Partial had taken teeth. Each a raging
agony in his mouth.

The Partial sat on the couch, tapping his foot. He'd turned the chair
so it faced him.

Finch laughed. An unhinged laugh that ended on too high a note.
Thought, "Could the interrogation be getting to the fucker?" But had
said it aloud. The Partial crept behind him. Felt a soft sawing around
his numb hand. A sudden flowing release.

Still the rockets went off. So they must be real. Not hallucinations.

No one's coming for me. No one.

The Partial placed Finch's bloody pinkie finger on the table. It
looked like a white worm.

"Don't disrespect me again," the Partial said. Breathing hard.
Something almost sexual in the way he swallowed. Let the tip of his
tongue show through his teeth. "Or there's more where that came
from."

A chuckle or the low sound of a moan? "Only eight, or nine. But
I won't. I won't. I won't. Just untie me. I can't feel my hands. I can't
feel my legs."

The Partial ignored him. Which meant slapping him a few times.

Nothing he'd told the Partial had stopped him. Nothing. Not
once. Not any more than Stark had stopped Finch. Saw Bliss at the
table in the Photographer's apartment, carefully creating the vial of
liquid. Saw Sintra's face against the wall as they made love. Rathven's
hesitant smile at their detective joke. None of it mattered anymore.

Began to cry. To weep. Slumped over. Head leaning toward his lap.

"Oh, there's nothing to cry about, Finch. Nothing at all," the Partial
said. "We're just having a conversation. A kind of meeting of the
minds. If it makes you feel any better, those sounds you hear-they're
your rebels, Finch. They've abandoned you. They're attacking the
tower. It won't work, but I almost wish it would. Except there's no
place for me in their new world, either."

"I'm sorry the gray caps. Betrayed you." Mangled the words. Parched.
As if he could drink forever and not be satisfied. But the Partial had
only given him boiling water.

"Are you?" the Partial asked. "Really? Because all I ever got from
you before was contempt. An aura of deep contempt."

"Not contempt. Ignorance."

"Ignorance?" Incredulous.

"Of what. You had to go through. To become a Partial."

At some point during the interrogation, if that's what it still was, Finch
remembered consoling the Partial. Couldn't keep it straight in his head.
His brain felt like it was outside of his body. Exposed and raw.

"It's nice of you to pretend," the Partial said.

If I ever get free, I am going to put out your eye with my hands.

Another flash. A recoil. But the attack seemed blunted. The
explosions of light less frequent. Saw the Partial's serious, pale face in
the half-light.