Finch by Jeff VanderMeer (10 page)

A desert fortress. An army of silent gray caps. And Ethan Bliss,
Frankwrithe & Lewden's top man for so many years.

Pushed the thoughts aside. Sintra would have to leave soon. The place
on the back of her neck where she liked to be kissed. Soft brown hairs. Crisp
salt taste.

"How was your work yesterday?" he asked her, holding her tightly to
him. Skin so warm against his body.

"The same as always."

What did that mean?

"The same as always," Finch echoed. "That's good."

"I guess," she said. She sounded distracted.

Still didn't know what Sintra did, or even where she lived. Remnants
of the dogghe and nimblytod had carved out a defiant kingdom for
themselves in the ruined Religious Quarter. But Sintra might not
even think of herself as one of them, integrated into the city. He'd
never asked. Sometimes he daydreamed of her being a rebel agent.
Comforting. Utterly unreal. But that didn't matter.

"I'm lonely. Even with you."

"Someday, it will be different . . . "

That she preferred him not knowing hurt him. Even though he
understood the sense of it. Even though they made a game out of it.

"Where do you work?"

"In the city."

"And what do you do?"

"Answer questions. Apparently."

He'd known everything about his past girlfriends. But even in their
lovemaking Sintra seemed to change from week to week.

Exhausting. Exciting. Dangerous.

Still missed the normalcy of the one time she'd stayed long enough
to make breakfast. A surreal, sublime morning. They'd met at a black
market party the night before. Taken off his detective's badge, gone as
a civilian wanting some fun. Bumped into each other on the makeshift
dance floor. In someone's basement. Everyone there expecting the gray
caps to blast up through the tiles and send them to the work camps.

"Your day wasn't as good, I can tell," she said now. Bringing him back.

"I have a difficult case."

"How difficult?"

He sat on the chair and talked to me. The cat was as big as a pony and
the lizard was as big as a cat. And me, I was as tiny as a reflection in Feral's
eye. A perverse nursery rhyme.

"Difficult enough. A gray cap cut in half. A dead man. In an
apartment. But they seem to have fallen from the sky ..."

Sintra sat up, looked at him. "Where were they found?"

Finch stared back at her. Surprised by her sudden interest. Sometimes
he shared details as an act of faith. But not on something that might
pull her down with him.

"Down by the bay," he said. Waited.

Sintra considered him as he'd considered her. Then changed the
subject. "Is that why you were crying? Because of what the memory
bulbs showed you?"

"Yes." Propped himself up on an elbow. Shuddered, winced. An
aftershock? Pressure in his head. Like his brain had outgrown his
skull.

Sintra hugged him. Kissed him. He laid his head against her chest.
She scared him sometimes. Both from her presence and her absence.

"Maybe it was a bad reaction to a drug," she said. "Maybe you
inhaled a bad spore."

Back before the Rising, Sintra said she had been a doctor's aide.

"Unlikely." He and his fellow detectives got fed antidotes every few
months. One perk of working for the gray caps. He stole extras for Sintra
and Rathven. Sintra always took them with her. Never used them in
the apartment.

"But it's over now."

"Yes. It's over."

He broke off the embrace. Feral was cleaning himself in a shaft
of light by the window. Sidle was motionless on the windowsill.
Drunk on the new sun.

Sintra wrapped the sheets around her and stood up, walked toward
the window. Leaving Finch naked and exposed on the bed. Watching
her as he put his underwear back on. Remembering the first time they
had made love. How he'd checked the sheets, the pillows after she'd
left. Wanting to breathe in more of the smell of her. How there had
seemed to be no trace of their sex. Only his memory of the act. As if
he had entered a ghost.

She turned to stare at him, framed by the window.

"I'll come back in a night or two," Sintra said. "That's not long."

"No, it's not long," Finch said. Thinking of the station. The other
detectives. Work fatigue washed over him.

Memory holes and Wyte and Heretic and wanting to scream, to just start
shooting.

"Maybe I'll even spend the night. If I can," she said. A curious look on
her face, like she was testing him. She held her hands behind her back,
one leg slightly bent, her body bronzed and perfect to him. "What do you
think of that?"

Must have been obvious what he thought, because she couldn't
take the weight of his gaze. Looked away. Leaned down to pick up her
knapsack, retrieve her clothes.

Not that he doubted she felt the same. He knew why she kept her
distance. The same reason he did.

Except, it's not working for me.

A long kiss. A final hug.

And she was gone.

All he could feel was the ache in his thighs. The damp spot on the
front of his underwear, colder now than before.

Just once, Sintra left something behind. Finch keeps it hidden in a desk
drawer. No reason for him to keep it. But no reason to get rid of it.

Written in longhand, Sintra's concise notes are about mushrooms,
which no longer come with any field guide. Ignorance can lead to
death, even though since the Rising the gray caps have kept the streets
clear. Personal curiosity? Something to do with the black market? Has
she helped someone she shouldn't help? Given aid to some group the
gray caps are hunting down?

Does it make her a spy to have this information, or just pragmatic?
Does it make him complicit to keep it, or just sentimental?

This incomplete list doesn't include fungal weapons. These
mushrooms all perform certain tasks or "work" within the city. If
any have a secondary or tertiary purpose it is unknown at this time.

(1) Tiny white mushrooms almost like star-shaped flowers found
most often around surfaces where dead bodies have recently lain or
where some conflict has occurred. Like the chalk outlines used by
detectives pre-Rising to mark bodies? Warnings, or ... ?

(2) Green "spear" mushrooms with sharp, narrow hoods and long,
slender stems four or five will be found around a building targeted
for transformation. Three days after the appearance of these green
spear mushrooms, the building in question will begin to look moist
or spongy, due to infiltration from below. By the fourth or fifth day,
it will begin to crumble. By the sixth day, the building has blown
away in the wind. On the seventh day, a new structure has usually
blossomed, overnight. This new structure may take any of a number
of forms, all fungal-based.

(3) Red "tree" mushrooms with huge caps and strong, thick "trunks"
or stems-these can grow up to eighty feet high and are much more
resistant to storms and high winds than other kinds of mushrooms.
They appear to have a filtration system that gives them stability by letting air pass through millions of "pores." In a sense, they float.
An examination of distribution patterns from any height reveals
that they have been "planted" in regular patterns forming rough
"spokes" radiating out from the bay, interrupted only by the HFZ
and the Religious Quarter. They regularly expel from their gills a
smaller, purple mushroom with a strong euphoric effect and high
levels of digestible protein.

(4) Purple "drug" mushrooms with ball caps and almost no stemsdispensed from the red "tree" mushrooms, these purple mushrooms
are clearly meant to serve as "crowd control" by giving the people of
the city sustenance and making them dependent. These mushrooms
create a strong addiction by affecting the pleasure centers of the brain.
They also create hallucinations intended to pacify, most drawn from
happy memories.

Definitely her handwriting. She's slipped more than one message
under his door while he's out. Tells himself: I'll throw it away when I
know more about her. But nine months have passed since he found the
note. She hasn't told him anything more than what he knew before.

Yet caution loses out when she walks through the door. Remembering
how, on days when he's expecting her and she's late, the fear creeps
aching into his muscles. Finds himself gulping air like water. Thick
and heavy. Lost. Never lost.

fter Sintra had left, Finch fed the cat, grabbed a quick bite, and
.cleaned off with a couple of pails of once-used bathwater.
Fresh shirt, same pants, same jacket. Kicked Feral out to explore
on his own while he went down the stairs to the courtyard, then
the basement.

Rath's pale, angular face peered out from behind the door. Evaluating
him. Looking for something.

She let Finch in without a word. Through a hallway brightened by
walls painted light green. Probably to conceal rot. Then into a larger
area with a few chairs, her strange library to either side. Beyond, where
Finch had never gone: the start of entropy. The bruises of gray and
blue stains spread across the ceiling. Disappeared into the darkness
of a tunnel.

"Nothing new, I see," Finch said.

Rath laughed. "Not that you'd notice."

Finch brushed by her to sit in an armchair on a blue throw rug.
Rising above him, water-damaged paperbacks and hardcovers had
been stacked unevenly on warped shelves. The shelves perched on
stilts to fend off any sudden rise in the water level. The weighted
smell of moisture seemed both fresh and claustrophobic.

"Coffee?" she asked. The usual.

Hesitated, said, "No. Tea, please." Didn't know why.

Rath disappeared into the tunnel. Did she have a kitchen back
there? Maybe a bedroom. Maybe more books. A whole troupe of
clowns. The thought made him smile.

Stray pages saved from long-drowned books caught his attention
as he waited for her. Red eye peering from monstrous face. Lines
of scrawl in an unknown language. Diagrams of buildings or plants or motored vehicles. A black-and-white photograph of a gaunt
five-year-old girl in a ragged dress standing in the muddy track of
a tank.

Truff knew who had lived here before, collected the books
originally. Or how long it had taken Rath to organize it all. Or how
much she had added to it, scavenging across the city. The collection
was an ever-changing scene of preservation and dissolution. So
many things saved only to be destroyed by time. Always with the
water gurgling its way along the floor. Sometimes fish would get
trapped, their fins brushing against pipes or grillwork and making a
sound like quills over skulls.

She came out with a teapot and two cups on a tray. Set it down on the
table between them. Poured him a cup.

"You sure you want this?" she asked. Skeptical.

"Yes." Took the tea gladly. His head still hurt. The tea tasted
different. Better. Drove out the lingering taste of the memory bulb.

"I haven't looked at the lists," she said, sitting opposite him in a low
wooden chair with a green blanket atop it.

"Didn't expect you to yet," Finch replied. "What about the symbol?"

"Now, that I did get around to," she said. "If only because it was easy."

"I've seen it, I've just never known what it meant."

"You're not alone. We know more about what the symbol is associated
with than what it means."

A broken version was scrawled by the gray caps as a warning,
Rathven told him. At the beginning of the city's history, when the
gray caps sent back the eyes of Ambergris's founder, the whaling
captain John Manzikert, on the old altar now drowned by the bay.
Manzikert, who had slaughtered so many gray caps and driven them
underground.

"It looked like this," she said, drawing it for him: