Thought, too, that Bliss might’ve been in one of the photographs he’d burned before becoming Finch. But Bliss was one of many visitors. During the few peaceful years, there had been lots of parties at their house, with people from both sides.
Finch had seen Bliss give speeches, too. One, in front of the Voss Bender Memorial Opera House, to a crowd of almost ten thousand. He’d looked striking in an evening coat and tails. A chestful of honorary medals that made you notice the glitter more than the man. Urging cooperation and common cause in that silky voice when, just a year or two before, behind the scenes, he’d caused House Hoegbotton so much grief. Bombings. House-to-house battles to clear insurgents. Fighting in narrow streets where tanks were no help, but where F&L fungal bullets worked just fine.
Third, whatever the gray caps knew about Bliss, if they knew about Bliss. Finch couldn’t remember pulling the file on him. He’d have to put in a request. Which he hated doing. Couldn’t know what Heretic would “request” in return.
Took out the form anyway. Wrote in what he needed. Under “subject,” he filled in Ethan Bliss’s name and a few others. For cover. If Finch put in his report that he’d seen Bliss in the dead man’s memories, Bliss was as good as dead. Or would want to be. And Finch couldn’t be sure what it all meant until he questioned Bliss. Which wouldn’t happen if Heretic got hold of him first.
Why the hell was Ethan Bliss in the memories of the dead man? Typed:
Perhaps a fannarcesitti would be more useful in reading the man’s memories?
What would a gray cap see? Baiting Heretic gave Finch a grim satisfaction. Gray caps hated eating human memories. Almost as if there were a taste, a smell, that repulsed them. Finch couldn’t recall Heretic ever eating one. Could human memories harm a gray cap?
It is not entirely clear that these deaths are murders, rather than accidental. The two may have died somewhere else and been brought to the apartment. Residents of the apartment building have no additional information. Rumors that two people lived in apartment 525 cannot be confirmed.
Just covering himself in case whatever game the Partial was playing went south. Yet, stubbornly, couldn’t bring himself to mention the scrap of paper. Despite the fact the Partial knew about it. Had the Partial told Heretic? Maybe. Maybe not.
Finch pushed his chair away from the typewriter, hands behind his head. The report made no sense. Composed of smoke and shadows. Doubted Heretic would find it convincing. What did it mean that the dead man had spoken to him? Another thing he hadn’t put in the report. Some instinct had warned him against it.
Ripped the paper out of the typewriter carriage. A mechanical tearing sound loud enough to make all the other detectives turn toward him in one motion that seemed choreographed.
What the hell are you looking at?
Realized he’d said it out loud.
Jammed his report into a pod, along with the request for files. Shoved that down the memory hole gullet. Choke on it.
A minute later: a sound coming from the damn thing. Incoming.
The pod. The tendrils. Hammer. Egg. Extraction. A message from Heretic.
STAY LATE TONIGHT TO MEET
“Fuck,” Finch said.
“Is it bad?” Wyte asked.
“Why do you always ask that question?”
“Why is the answer always yes.”
“Then you shouldn’t ask it.”
Staying late always unnerved him.
Have to get out of here.
“Come on,” he said to Wyte. It would do Wyte some good, too. “We’re going to go talk to Ethan Bliss.”
If they could find him.
* * *
On a table near the desk in his apartment, Finch has a map of Ambergris from before the Rising. It covers the whole table, renders the city in perfect detail. He has no idea what it’s made of. Never tears. Never wrinkles. His father had given it to him when he was thirteen. “You’ll never need another.” Made a mark on it with a green pen every time he sent his son on an errand to a new location. Insisted Finch take the map with him everywhere. Even though it was heavy. Even if Finch had been to a place before. “The streets are shifty. I want to make sure you don’t get lost.”
The errands? Collect letters. Drop off packages. Say a single word or phrase. “Shipping lanes.” “The weather is too cold for this time of year.” “Mr. Green says you are a lucky man.” Never to the same people. Old, young, male, female, each one with secrets behind their eyes. He played it like a game. Delighted in the mystery of not really knowing the rules. Then he’d return, a human homing pigeon, to their house.
“Official business,” his father said. He held an important position for H&S because he was a war hero. Anyone could tell that from all the photographs of him fighting against the Kalif, and from the people who came over to visit. Some of them wearing funny hats and uniforms.
But by the time Finch was seventeen, his father had stopped sending him on these errands. He’d felt discarded. Hadn’t understood then that his father had turned to others when Finch began to ask questions. When he began to have a sense of the secrecy behind his missions. A tallish, dark-haired, serious boy with few close friends his age, taught at home by his father. Those journeys across the city had meant a lot to him.
But he’d kept the map, used it for his new job, which his father had gotten for him. Courier for Hoegbotton business interests. Running invoices and shipping inventories between the main offices and the warehouses at the docks. Sometimes, if the conflict heated up, if F&L cut off certain roads, he had to find alternate routes.
Trade “has to keep on an even keel, no matter what,” his boss Wyte liked to say. Wyte, seven years his senior, with an office in the brick building on Albumuth they’d both work at after the Rising. Even then Wyte had seemed too large for the world around him. Desk too small. Him too clumsy. But to Finch he’d been the height of authority.
The map shows that brick building, with a green mark by it. It also has detailed views of the Bureaucratic Quarter, the Religious Quarter, and what had unofficially been known as the Merchant Quarter before the wars. Albumuth Boulevard, the great snake wending its way through almost every part of the city. The valley that had been the home of so many citizens. The docks. The swampland to the north.
A view of Ambergris that had remained essentially unchanged for centuries. Had survived early incursions by the Kalif, the cavalry charges of Morrow back when it had a king instead of the F&L. Had even survived the Silence.
But could not survive the Rising.
The gray caps have a kind of see-through paper. A slight greenish tint, barely noticeable. It feels light as a leaf, but is very strong. Finch has stolen two sheets of it, taped them together to form an overlay to his old map. On this overlay he charts the changes he has observed, using a dark pencil that he can erase at will.
In the evenings, when too restless to sleep but too tired to read, Finch will turn on the light in the study. Or use a lantern if the electricity is out. Review the overlay. Search for what he knows has been made different again. Then render a section bare with handkerchief and water. Build it up again, redraw it all. A change in the lip of the bay. Or in the HFZ. A row of houses that has burned down. A drug mushroom that erupted from the pavement. A new gray cap house or cathedral.