Finch by Jeff VanderMeer Read Free Page B

Within forty-eight
hours, you'd be breathing them, as the spores did their work.
    Carefully, he sprinkled a blue powder across both corpses. Not
spores this time, but tiny fruiting bodies. The powder smelled like
smoke from the camps to the south. Or the camps smelled like the
powder. Pointless to wear the gloves after the hundreds of fungal
toxins and experiments that had been released into the air. The
millions of floating spore-eyes. Yet still he did it.
    Blue mingled with green. The green disappeared as he watched,
colonized by the blue. The two bodies would not decay now. They
would linger, suspended, until Finch returned to collect their
memories.
    "... and know you don't want to eat the memories," the Partial said
to Finch's back. Sounding triumphant.
    Finch's thoughts had been so far away he'd missed the first part.
    "Is that all?" Wanted to laugh.
    Did they talk this way together in the barracks near the camps
where the gray caps housed them like weapons? Spewing out each day
and night like black ants. Foraging on the flesh of the city. Observers
and security both.
    "You're afraid of change," the Partial said. "Of being changed. That's
why you hate me."
    Swiveled abruptly in his crouch, hand on his gun. Met the
Partial's corrupted gaze.

    "Is that all?" Finch repeated. "I mean, are you done with your picturetaking?"
    No skill when every blink was an image. No honor in a perpetual
voyeurism. A kind of treason against your own kind. "It warps
the privacy of your own life," Wyte had said once, as if he knew.
"Permanent occupation. I wouldn't want to live that way." Yet now
Wyte did. And so did Finch. In a sense.
    "I'm never done," the Partial said. "And if you've got a past, you
should be worried. They'll work through all the records some day.
Maybe they'll find you."
    Funny thing is, Partial, Heretic already knows my past. Most of it. And he
doesn't give a fuck. That's not who I'm worried about.
    Wanted to say it but didn't. Unsnapped the clasp on his holster. The
fungal gun trembled there like a live thing. Wet. Dripping. Useless
against a gray cap. Very useful against a Partial. Still human, no matter
how much you pretend.
    "Get the fuck out of here."
    "I see everything," the Partial said. "Everything."
    "Yes," Finch said, "but that's unavoidable, isn't it?"
    The Partial stared at Finch. Seemed about to say something. Bit
down on it, hard. Walked out into the hall. Slammed the door
behind him.
    Leaving Finch alone with the bodies.

    Now Finch can see the frailty death has lent them. Now Finch can see
the vulnerability. The way the light uses them in the same way it uses
him. He walks to the window. Looks out across the damaged face of
Ambergris.
    Six years and I can't recognize a goddamn thing from before.
    Harsh blue sprawl of the bay, bled from the River Moth. Carved from
nothing. The first thing the gray caps did when they Rose, flooding
Ambergris and killing thousands. Now the city, riddled through with
canals, is like a body that was once drowned. Parts bleached, parts
bloated. Metal and stone for flesh. Places that stick out and places
that barely touch the surface.

    In the foreground of the bay stands the scaffolding for the two tall
towers still being built by the gray caps. A rough pontoon bridge
reaches out to them, an artificial island surrounding the base. The
scaffolding rises twenty feet above the highest tower. Hard to know
if they are almost complete or will take a hundred years more. Great
masses of green fungus cling to the tops. It makes the towers look
shaggy, almost as if they had fur, were flesh and blood. A smell like
oil and sawdust and frying meat. At dusk each day the gray caps lead a
work force from the camps south of the city. All night, the sounds of
hammering and construction. Emerald lights moving like slow stars.
Screams of injury or punishment. To what purpose? No one knows.
While along the lip of the bay, monstrous fungal cathedrals rise