Finch by Jeff VanderMeer Read Free

pen.
    The cut had been so clean, so precise, that there was no tearing. No
hemorrhaging. Finch could see layers. Gray. Yellow. Green. A core of dark red. (A question he was too cautious to ask: Was it always that
dark, or only in death?) Within the core, Finch saw a hint of organs.

    "Is this ... normal?" Finch asked Heretic.
    "Normal?"
    "The lack of blood, I mean, sir," Finch said.
    Gray caps bled. Finch knew that. Not like a stream or a gout, even
when you cut them deep, but a steady drip from a leaky faucet. Puncture
wounds healed almost immediately. It took a long time and a lot of
patience to kill a gray cap.
    "No, it's not normal." The humid weight of Heretic was at his side
now. A smell like garbage and burnt glass. Made him nauseous.
    "None of this is normal," the Partial ventured. Ignored.
    Finch looked up at Heretic. From that angle: the pale wattled skin of
Heretic's long throat.
    "Do you know who . . ." Finch hesitated. Gray caps didn't like being
called "gray caps," but Finch couldn't pronounce the word they did use.
Farseneeni or fanaarcensitii? The Partial circled them, blinking pictures
through his fungal eye.
    "Do you know who that is?" Finch said finally, pointing at the dead
gray cap.
    Heretic made a sound like something popping. "No. Not familiar to
us. We cannot see him," and Finch understood he meant something
other than just looking out a window.
    "Have you ... ?" Couldn't say the whole sentence. Too ridiculous.
Terrifying. At the same time. Have you eaten some of his flesh and picked
clean the memories?
    But Heretic had been around humans long enough to know what he
meant. "We tried it. Nothing that made sense."
    For a second, Finch relaxed. Forgot Heretic could send him, Sintra,
anybody he knew, to the work camps.
    "If you couldn't decipher it, how will I?"
    Then went stiff. Richard Dorn, a good detective, had questioned
Heretic too closely. Nine months to die.
    A bullet to the head. In that case.
    But the gray cap said only, "With your fresh eyes, maybe you will
have better luck."

    Heretic pulled a pouch out of his robes, opened it. Finch rose, stood
to the side as Heretic sprinkled a fine green powder over both bodies.
Could've done it using his own supply, but Heretic enjoyed doing it.
For some reason.
    "You know what to do," Heretic said.
    In time, a memory bulb would emerge from both corpses' heads.
Did the fanaarcensitii rely too much on what made them comfortable?
No autopsies, just mushrooms. But also hardly any experts left to
perform them.
    Nausea crept back into Finch's throat. "But I've never. Not a gray
cap. I mean, not one of your people."
    "We don't bite." The grin on that impossible face grew wide and
wider. The laughter again, worse.
    Finch laughed back, weakly.
    "Write down whatever you encounter, whether you understand it
or not."
    Mercifully, Heretic looked away. "A gray cap and a man. Dead in
such a manner. We need to know everything."
    "Yessir," Finch said. He couldn't keep the grimace off his face.
    Heretic seemed to take it for a smile. As he walked past on his way
to the door, he patted Finch's elbow. Finch shivered. A touch like
wet, dead leaves sewn together and stuffed with meat.
    "Report in the morning," Heretic said. "Report and report and
report, Finch." The laughter again.
    Then Heretic was gone. The hallway shadows ate him up, the
apartment door opening and closing.
    Finch could hear his own breathing. Shallow. The sudden panicked
drumming of his heart. The butterfly blinks of the Partial, still
snapping photographs.
    Took a breath. A second. Closed his eyes.
    A sunny day by the river. A picnic lunch. A tree with shade. Long, cool
grass. With Sintra.

     

2
    o obvious bullet or stab wounds. No tattoos or other marks.
Grunting with the effort, Finch turned the man over for a
second. He seemed heavier than he should be. Skin warm, the flesh
solid. From the position of the arms, Finch thought they might be
broken. A discoloration