Finch by Jeff VanderMeer (37 page)

"Thanks for the reminder," Finch said. "Now fuck off."

"Cheer up," Blakely said. "I don't think Heretic's coming back. I
don't think anyone's coming back."

The clock ticked. The phone on Finch's desk rang a few times. Mostly
people scared because of the destruction of the Spit. Even though the
towers had done nothing since. Some of the people who called even
had some small hope he could help them. But they were living in the
grip of memories of the old days. A past that had never really existed.

Finch worked on his final report. Going through the motions.
Sticking to routine. Waiting for someone to tap him on the shoulder
and tell him the rest of the plan. He would call Wyte soon, too. Just
working up the nerve.

Started out with pen and paper. Wrote drivel. Fuck you . . .
Am I just the bait? . . . There's nothing here you can use . . . You're
monstrous .. .

Paralyzed for a moment by the thought of the look on Sintra's face
as she walked away from him for the last time. Clinging now to what
she'd told him even as he'd told her to stop before. "My mother had
gotten better, but my father had lost his arm to a fungal bullet. He couldn't
work for a long time he was so depressed. He'd been a journalist."

Threw away his pointless notes. Went to the typewriter. Soon had
a real report that while bland made a kind of sense. Was it good
enough to satisfy Heretic while he completed his mission? Had no
idea. Read it over one last time.

There are no definitive conclusions to be
drawn in this murder case. I have found
no information on the identity of the dead
gray cap. The man may be related to a fringe
historian, Duncan Shriek, who lived in the
apartment more than a hundred years ago,
but this appears to be a coincidence. Two
names came up repeatedly in investigating the
case: Ethan Bliss, an operative for Morrow,
and "Stark," the alias of a spy working for
Stockton. Their relationship to the case is
oblique at best, but both appear convinced
that the man carried a weapon created by the
rebels for use against Fanaarcensitii. I remain
convinced that the man fell from a great height
and was moved to the apartment-that he died
elsewhere. Both Bliss and Stark may know more,
but they remain fugitives, and we have not been
given the resources to track them down. If the
dead man was part of a rebel conspiracy, then
it appears to have failed. I would suggest
that the Fanaarcensitii put all of their
resources into tracking down Bliss and Stark.
Interrogations of both parties might provide more information. All other intelligence can be
found in the attached notes and prior reports.

--Detective John Finch

Short. Protective of those it needed to protect. Giving up those
who were asking for it.

Cowardly. Masking death, despair, destruction.

Put it aside.

Typed, pushing the keys down hard:

EVENTS ARE MOVING BEYOND YOU. THERE'S NOTHING YOU
CAN DO. YOU'RE NOT EVEN THE CRAFTIEST BASTARDS
IN THE ROOM. YOU'LL ALL GO DOWN WONDERING HOW IT
HAPPENED. I'LL NEVER UNDERSTAND YOU, BUT YOU'LL
NEVER UNDERSTAND US, EITHER.

Felt like a child. Took that message, too, and walked back to his
desk. Pondered both of them, lying there like some kind of judgment
on his integrity.

A few minutes later, still thinking, the phone rang.

"Finch." Wyte. The voice barely recognizable. As human. "You've
got to help me."

"When the time comes, right, Finch?" "Sure, Wyte. When the time comes."

"Finch. Are you there?"

"Yes."

"It's time."

Every memory of Wyte invincible the day before cracked into
pieces. Finch's throat tightened. The world around him spun, lost
focus. Blakely hunched over his desk. To the left was a splotch of ruddy
white. The windows seemed to contract.

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

"Okay, Wyte. Okay."

"And, Finch, I don't think I'm going quietly. Not like Richard Dom."

The voice, once so deep and gravelly, had changed since they'd first met.
Become soft and liquid, lighter yet thicker.

"Where are you?"

"At my apartment."

"You'll know what to do." "I'll know what to do."

"I'm coming," Finch said.

Wyte hung up.

Sat there a moment. Leaned forward a little over his desk. Elbows
digging into the wood. Marshaling his strength.

You can do this. You have to do this. You promised him.

Finch raised his arm. Smashed his fist into the desk. Just to feel the
pain shoot up through his shoulder. Stood. Swept everything off of
his desk. Made a sound almost like a roar. Almost like a moan. While
Blakely and Gustat, standing now, just stared at him.

Tonsure's bones in the little house by the underground sea. Strange
stars. Falling with Bliss into darkness. Emerging into light. Heretic's skery
crawling up his leg. Sintra disappearing into darkness.

"What the fuck are you looking at?" Finch snarled. He began to
break everything on the floor into pieces small enough to feed into the
memory hole. Bits of pencil. Torn paper. The gaping jaw of a stapler.
Shoved them into it. The hole rasped and protested.

Then tore up his report and his pathetic message. Put them both
down the hole as well.

"Do you like that, Heretic? Do you?" Might have been screaming it.
Didn't care.

Blakely pulled him away, hand on his shoulder. Finch shrugged
it off. Whirled on him. Looked at Blakely like he didn't know him.
Saw Blakely had his gun out. Controlled himself, arms outstretched,
palms down.

"It's okay, Blakely." But it wasn't okay. How much else could fall
apart? What was left? "I just need some things from my desk and then
I'm gone."

The Photographer had said they'd be watching him. Now they'd
have to watch him deal with Wyte.

Blakely backed away. Didn't put down his gun. "You're crazy, Finch,"
he said. "You're crazy." Gustat stood there, mouth open.

Finch reached under the desk. Pulled the ceremonial scimitar in its
scabbard from its hiding place.

Blakely backed even farther away. "What the hell is that?"

"It's my sword," Finch said. Brought the belt with the scabbard
around his waist. "Never seen a sword before, Blakely?" Already had
his gun. Didn't really need anything else. Never would again.

At the door, he planned to turn and say something. What, he didn't
know. But there was nothing to say. Instead, he just pushed the filing
cabinet aside.

Left Blakely and Gustat standing there, looking like two lost boys in
a room suddenly grown huge.

yte's door had a sagging "17" on it. Half shadowed, half in
sunlight from the decorative stone wall running parallel to all
the apartments. The blue paint had a rust-like stain running through
it. An old bullet hole decorated the upper left-hand corner. A faded,
torn welcome mat. Sweat and mold and the fading stench of piss. It
depressed Finch. He'd only visited Wyte there a few times. Late-night
drinking sessions. Bold statements about escape or joining the rebels
that nobody remembered in the mornings. Commiserating with Wyte
over his estranged wife. His far distant children.

Finch had taken the long route, trying to shake any watchers.

Knocked once. Twice. Gun in one hand. Sword in the other.

Nothing.

Knocked again.

Heard a sound this time. Like a voice. A voice drowning as it spoke.
Awash in strange tides. Might've said, "Come in, Finch."

Inside: cracked yellow wallpaper. A photo of Wyte's wife on a rickety
table. A short hallway leading to the galley-style kitchen. A couple
of crooked paintings showed faded watercolor scenes of Hoegbotton
ships hunting the king squid. Fables of a bygone era.

Then the living room. Almost no furniture. As if Wyte were
already gone.

But he wasn't. He lay in the comer of the living room, the weak light
of an old lamp dribbling across his body. The lamp had come all the way
from the Southern Isles, brought by Wyte's grandmother. Shells were still
glued into the base.

Wyte dwarfed the lamp. Slumped there. Monstrous. Huge. Spilling
out in peculiar ways. As if a mossy hill had been dropped into the
room. Wandering tendrils as outliers. Above, looking down at Finch, the face within the face. The tiny eyes. White against the encroaching
dark. Staring out.

Who'd laid the trap for Wyte? In the beginning? He'd laid it for
himself, in a sense. By falling into it.

Wyte spoke. Guttural. Wet. Dissolving. "Thanks for coming, James."
Like everything were normal. Four days ago we were tracking down Bliss.

"It's going to be okay, Wyte."

"You don't have to lie to me. It's not going to be okay. It's not. I
know that. Even if Otto doesn't." A gruff, coughing laugh.

"You're among friends, Wyte."

A kind of seismic shift from the thing in the corner. Laughter?

"It's nice to call you James again. That might've been the hardest
thing. Remembering to call you Finch. Or John."

"You didn't give me up, Wyte. I'll never forget that."

A shambling shrug from the mound in the corner. From the thing
with Wyte's eyes.

"Tell Emily. Tell her. .

"She knows. I know, Wyte. No one needs to be told anything."
Finch didn't even know where Emily lived anymore.

Creature. Monster. Other.

Finch's hands were shaking. Could he do this? Searching himself.
Both Crossley and Finch. Can either of us do this? Kept thinking of
Wyte behind the desk at Hoegbotton's so long ago. Showing Finch
the ropes. Patiently explaining the job.

A world extinguished as thoroughly as a spent match in the gutter.

"James?"

"Yes?"

"Like I said on the phone, I can't control myself anymore. There's
not much of me left. The rest might fight back. But you have to know
that's not me."

Telling Finch in a candid moment months ago, "I don't want to hurt anybody.
I don't want to lose control but still be there, knowing what I am doing."

"I know, Wyte," Finch said. Grinding his teeth. Biting his cheek until
the blood came. A soundless scream building inside of him. "It's going to
be okay."

But it wasn't.

Finch closed the door behind him.

Drew his sword, tears streaming down his face.

What it took to kill a man transformed that way was almost what it
took to kill a gray cap. Finch had killed a gray cap once. Before the
Rising. When he was James Crossley. When it was just House Hoegbotton
against House Frankwrithe & Lewden. Just poorly trained Irregulars
patrolling neighborhoods. Making sure the enemy didn't take hold in
the cracks. Weeding them out from derelict, firebombed houses.
Abandoned theaters. Courtyards that still held memories of massacres.
Official Hoegbotton policy called gray caps "noncombatants" unless a
unit felt under threat. Unofficial policy encouraged patrols to engage
and drive off, "damage," or kill. Back then, the gray caps supplied arms
and ammo to Frankwrithe & Lewden.

Crossley was in charge of the patrol that night. They'd emerged
from a warren of streets into a junkyard, surrounded by burnt-out
buildings, that had once been a playground. Right after detaining
and then releasing three youths without papers. The three had done
enough to convince Crossley they belonged. Or enough for him to
not want to arrest them and have them wind up in a holding cell
where they might not last until morning.

They had only the light of a half-moon and the reluctant streetlamps
burning a hundred feet away. But Crossley caught sight of something
moving herky-jerky through the junkyard.

Seven in the patrol. Exposed. He wasn't sure what he was seeing
at first, because gray caps rarely came out into the open. It was like
seeing a dolphin in a public pond. So he'd given the signal to spread
out without knowing what they faced. Circle round. Converge.

He crept up, over broken girders and garbage, to find: a gray cap.
Wandering in a circle. Talking to itself. No obvious injury. But
something wrong. Like it was drunk.