Finch by Jeff VanderMeer Read Free Page A

at the edge of the man's mouth. Dried
blood? When Finch was done, the man settled back into position as
if he'd been there a hundred years.
    No point checking the gray cap. Their skin didn't retain marks or
burns or stab wounds. Anything like that sealed over. Besides, the
cause of the gray cap's death was obvious. Wasn't it? Still, he didn't
want to assume murder. Yet.
    Out of the four "murders" in his sector over the past year, two had been
suicides and one had been natural causes. The fourth solved in a day.
    Disappearances were another subject altogether.
    He stood. Looked down at the tableau formed by the dead.
Something about it. Almost posed. Almost staged. But also: the
man's neck, half-hidden by the shirt collar. Was it ... twisted? Who
could tell with the gray cap. Impossibly long, smooth, gray neck.
(Did that mean Heretic was old, this one young?) But also torqued.
    Finch glanced up at the tired, sagging ceiling. About ten feet.
    "They look like," Finch said. "They look like they both fell."
    Could that be the sound the neighbors heard?
    "The spore camera's first shot is of them on the floor," the Partial said.
    Finch had forgotten him.
    Turned, stared at the Partial. The Partial stared back. Taking Finch's
photo with each blink.
    "I could ..."
    "What?" the Partial said. "You could what?"

    I could tear out your eye with my bare hands. Not a thought he'd seen
coming.
    "You know what I think?" the Partial said.
    Finch tamped down on his irritation. Tried to remember that, in
a way, none of the Partials were more than six years old. Disaffected
youths no matter what their age. All pale. Or made pale. Humans
who'd gotten fungal infections and liked it, Truff help them. Got
an adrenaline rush from heightened powers of sight. Enhanced by
fungal drugs autogenerated inside the eye. Pumped into the brain. In
a sense, their eye was always looking back at them.
    I'll never know what you think. Not in a million years.
    "You volunteered for that," Finch said. Pointed at the Partial's eye.
"That makes you crazy. So I don't need to know what you think."
    The Partial snickered. "I've heard it all before. And you'll never
know what you're missing ... But here's what I think, whether you
want it or not. That man's not really human. Not really. I should
know, right? And something went wrong. And maybe they didn't die
here but were, I don't know, moved."
    Finch gave the Partial a long glance. Turned to kneel again by the
man's body. The second half of what the Partial had said made less sense
than the first.
    "Just do your job." I'll do mine.
    The Partial fell silent. Hurt? Seduced by something new to click?
    Finch really didn't care. Something had caught his attention. Two
fingers of the man's left hand. Curled tight into the palm. Grit or
sand under the fingernails. Finch got to his knees, leaned forward,
took the man's hand in his. The warmth of it surprised him, the
green spores already ghosting into the flesh. He pried the fingers
back. Revealed a ragged piece of paper. A pulse-pounding moment
of excitement.
    Then he pulled it out. Released the fingers. Let the arm fall.
Shielding the paper from the Partial with his body.
    Normal paper, not fungal. Old and stained. Torn from a book? He
unfolded it. Two words, written hurriedly, in black ink: Never Lost. And
below that some gibberish that looked something like bellum omnium
contra omnes. Self-contained, or once part of a longer message?

    Definitely torn from a book. On the back a printed sentence
fragment, "the future can hold when the past holds ambiguity such as
this," and a symbol. Somehow familiar to Finch. Although he didn't
know from where.

    Stuck the paper in his boot before the Partial could blink that he'd
found something. Got up. Pulled gloves from his jacket pocket and
put them on. Opened the pouch at his belt.
    Heretic had forgotten the preservatives, but would blame Finch if
it wasn't done. Corpses didn't last long otherwise.