Finch by Jeff VanderMeer (40 page)

Ambergris Rules.

You could close your eyes forever and still never be anywhere but where you
had always been. Finch saw his father's capacity for violence only once.
When he was twelve. A hot night. Made so by the rumbling excesses
of heavy artillery off to the south. Brown smoke highlighting gouts of
orange flame erupting around the silhouettes of buildings. The distant
whumping sound of shells and tank retort. House Hoegbotton and
House Frankwrithe engaged in a struggle none yet knew was pointless.
The cease-fire hadn't held.

They'd had to move from their house, gotten caught in a war zone.
Finch was hunched down by the window of the third-story apartment
they'd taken refuge in. Waiting for his father to return from hours of
scavenging for food and other supplies.

The window, with its grimy gray frame, had become a kind of moving
painting for Finch. As intense as any zoetrope. Below, Albumuth
Boulevard, once one of the richest arteries of trade in the world, had
become little more than a mass of rubble and ripped-apart bodies. A
day before men and tanks had fought across that landscape, the light
red-green at their backs. The moans and screams matched to the cruel
intensity of colors. He would watch, unblinking. Sometimes catch
glimpses of gray caps running along the periphery.

Behind him, the door burst open.

A sniper with the insignia of House Hoegbotton. Framed by the
doorway. Only five years older than Finch. Face already ancient.

"Down on the floor," the sniper ordered, walking into the living
room. He had long, delicate fingers. Golden stubble on his cheeks.
Smelled of sweat and gunpowder. "Get under that chair."

Finch scuttled out of the sniper's way across the floor. Under the
chair as ordered. Watched as the sniper pulled the curtains across the
window, opened the pane a crack, and shoved the long, steel muzzle
of his automatic rifle through the crack. From Finch's perspective on
the floor, the sniper looked huge. The recoil of the rifle made a dull, satisfying sound. Discarded shells rolled across the floor toward Finch.
Touched one. Brought his finger away burned.

The man cursed when he missed. Said nothing when he hit his
target.

"Shouldn't you be in the militia?" the sniper asked him while
reloading, back against the wall. No one had shot back yet. Later, Finch
would wonder if the sniper had been shooting at shadows. "You're old
enough."

He had no answer. No one had ever told him he was old enough
before.

Then his father appeared in the doorway, pistol in his hand. The
bright green eyes. The neatly trimmed beard and moustache. The
broad shoulders. The calloused palms.

The sniper turned, began to raise his rifle.

His father shook his head. A grim, single-minded look. Finch had
never seen that look on his father's face before. It wasn't the expression
of an engineer. It came from somewhere more primal.

The young sniper saw it, too. Lowered the rifle. Stood up. Walked
stiff legged past Finch's father and out into the hall. Like a dog trying
to make itself bigger.

Finch saw his father turn and aim at the back of the sniper's head.
Saw him struggle with the decision. Then lower the gun and lock
the door.

For a moment, Finch didn't want to come out from under the table.
Didn't know this person who looked like his father.

inch headed back to the station. Wyte's death lodged like a heavy
stone in his throat. Constricting his breath. Making him reckless.

A mob came at him out of nowhere, around a corner. Broke around
him like a summer storm. A torrent of shouting. Of sweat and dirt and
fear. The armbands of a long-dead neighborhood militia reborn. Some
dared to show the rebels' blue band on their arms. Sensing that their
time had come. Had it? Finch didn't know. So many camp uniforms
he began to wonder if the gray caps had released them just to create
chaos. To somehow obscure what was going to happen. Focused on some
objective other than him. Or they didn't like the look of him. Numb.
Staring straight ahead. Gun in its holster, sword in his right hand.

Ambergris come alive again, but into tribes, not a city. Finch
wondered what old scores would be settled first.

Less than a quarter mile from the station, a shuddering thud and crack
rumbled through the world. A series of them, from everywhere. Some
near, some distant. Followed by silence. The sounds jolted Finch out of
a walking trance. The shock reverberated in his bones.

Had the towers unleashed their weapon again? Couldn't confirm
that. Couldn't see the towers from there. Hidden by the dirty green
marble of old luxury hotels taken over by lichen and flanked by tall
trees with yellowing leaves. People leaned out of windows on the
fourth, the fifth floors, holding flags and shouting. Pointing to the
northeast, the northwest.

In the street, a tiny old woman in a faded flower dress. A grubby boy
gnawing on a shriveled apple stood beside her. Three Partials staring
at the sky. All waiting for the next blow.

But there was no green light. No second series of explosions.

Instead, a curling trail of black smoke began to rise into that perfect
blue sky. Finch recognized it. Had seen it before when a rebel bomb left
a signal to the rest of the city. Heard shouts and screams rising like the
smoke. Muffled. Distant. Disguised.

Had an odd premonition. An awful tightness in his stomach.

Finch began to run toward the smoke. Past wounded storefronts.
Past the abandoned wooden box and scissors of a sidewalk barber. Past
a huge red drug mushroom whose shade snuffed out the sky, the gentle
sighing of its gills both ominous and calming.

He crossed onto Albumuth Boulevard, and approached the station.

The remains of it.

Transformed into a couple of side walls. Smoldering blocks of stone.
The kindle of shattered, crackling wood. A blackened hole near the
back, expelling blacker smoke. A smell like kerosene. A smell like
meat cooking.

A roiling mass of particles. Discharging light until a steady humming
glow suffused the city in a kind of dawn. There came in reply from the city
a hundredfold bestial roar.

Finch rushed to the edge of that broken space. Stopped short. Saw
the scattered remains of bodies. A pant leg. A foot. A torso tattooed
with dirt and blood. A pile of something he could not identify. Realized
some of it came from the people Heretic had killed and left in the
holding cell.

The tubes of the memory holes, torn and bleeding, glistened as they
thrashed, whipping the ground back and forth. Others lay still and
dusty in the rubble.

A couple of men Finch didn't know staggered through the mess.
Looking for survivors even though they were both bleeding. Both
marked by fire. Searching like they might find something alive.

Finch took a step forward. Then another. Walked through the
rubble, still holding his sword. Became aware of a dull, booming roar
from deep inside the smoldering black hole in the back. Through the
swirling whoosh of the rising smoke.

Became aware, too, of someone laughing from the wreckage of the
wall to his left. The bricks still went up maybe twelve feet high, ending in a broken snarl. Sheltering the table with the typewriter, which stood
as if indestructible. Beside it, slumped against the wall: Blakely, hurt in
ways beyond a doctor's care. But still alive.

Worse than war. Worse than stab wounds.

There would be no putting Blakely back together.

"The typewriter," what was left of Blakely gasped, between laughs.
"The typewriter. It's still there. It's still there."

Finch kneeled down beside him. The closer he got, the less he was
forced to see what had happened to Blakely. Not a scratch on the
man's face. But Blakely's eyes knew. Finch could see death in them.

"What happened, Blakely?"

"Albin," Blakely said. "Albin happened." Laughed again. "Blew
it all to hell. Came by to talk, he said. Had explosives strapped to
him. Stood by the curtain, said something I didn't catch. Stepped
inside. Blew himself apart. Threw me all the way across the room.
Albin. Can you believe it? Can you believe it? Can you believe it?
Can you believe it? Can you believe it? Can you believe it? Can
you-?"

Finch returned his gun to its holster. Blakely's face matched his body
now. No kinder mercy. The world getting smaller and smaller, even as
it expanded.

Stood up shakily, feeling the shock in his legs. Waved to the men
searching the rubble. "Get the hell out of here."

They saw his gun and his sword, woke as if from a trance. Picked
their way through the rubble, the interrupted flesh. Disappeared as if
never there.

More curls of black smoke now. Rising all around. Other stations hit.
Felt a conflicting sense of loss and freedom. People were dying who'd
just tried to feed themselves. Just wanted to stay alive.

The Lady in Blue: "We don't use suicide bombers anymore." But they did.

Partials would be on their way to the station. Gray caps. Struggling
to dig out of the rubble of their underground headquarters. Maybe
the sound Finch heard was just a subterranean fire or maybe it was
some fanaarcensitii beast clawing its way to the surface. Finch knew his
imagination couldn't compete.

Was it coincidence he hadn't been there when it happened?

Left the station to whatever demon was fighting its way out from
under the bricks and stone.

The madman danced on the steps near his favorite statue like nothing
had ever gone wrong in his life. Even while the black smoke continued
to rise over the city. In the hotel lobby, people had gathered as if
seeking shelter from a thunderstorm. They stood there, strangers to
him, and parted before him and his sword. He barely saw them.

Unfinished business. Loose ends. Needed to know his back was secure.

Stood in front of Rathven's door in the basement shadows. A sudden
need for his father to be alive, to be counseling him, canceled out an
impulse to smash in that door. To pound on it until his fist was raw.

Tried to wipe the crusted blood from his face. Held the gun behind
his back. The sword safely at his side. He knocked, gently.

No answer.

Knocked again. Smiled into the peephole. Knew it might come off
as a crazed leer.

Finally, muffled: "What do you want?"

"Just to talk." Just a quiet talk. With my sword and my gun, if it comes
down to that. Then, "Wyte's dead." Investing his voice with a grief that
he didn't feel. It had already shot through him and left him numb.
Wyte charging the Partials like some immortal hero. Wyte huddled in the
corner of his apartment, scared shitless. The truth somewhere between.

The door opened. Finch resisted the urge to shove it open. The urge
to hit her. To hit someone.

Rathven looked paler than he'd ever seen her. She was aiming that
heavy revolver at him. Fought to steady it as the gun dipped and
wavered slightly in her two-handed grip. Sudden flash of insight based
on nothing real: Rath as a girl, an awkward tomboy with a sense of
humor, who couldn't laugh at herself. Uncomfortable in a skirt. Smart.
Hopeful. Easily disappointed.