“I don’t know anything that can help you.”
The Partial frowned. “That’s not true. I think you’re just stalling. Maybe you still don’t really believe me about Heretic. Maybe you think he’s going to come walking through that door.”
“No, I believe you!” Anticipating the hammer.
But the Partial stood up anyway. Got behind Finch. Pulled his chair around until he was facing Shriek’s body under the blanket.
Stooped. Pulled the blanket away.
Revealing Heretic, and a couple of pillows. The hat missing. A head stippled with tiny mauve mushroom caps. His neck twisted. His face crumpled and torn. Eyes closed. One of his feet was on the wrong way. As if he’d fallen from a great height.
From a suffocating distance, Finch heard the Partial say, “See? Just like I told you.”
Heard someone say, “Where’s the body? Of the dead man.”
Heard the response through the singing of the blood in his ears: “Oh, we destroyed that yesterday. Too big a risk to their plans. Heretic’s orders. When he was still giving orders. We spread the ashes over the base of the towers.”
Then, thankfully, the Partial was hitting him with the hammer again.
And he was losing the thread again.
Going under.
Going deep under.
SATURDAY
I: Try to see it from my point of view. Because I’m trying to see it from theirs. They’ve got a vision that’s extraordinarily deep and wide. A long view.
F: How you must admire that.
I: Does an ant mourn the passing of another ant?
F: Maybe. I don’t know.
I: They see everything, everywhere, over thousands of years. And they work with spores and things smaller than spores—on a microscopic level. What’s it to them if they reduce a life from a macroscopic to microscopic level. To its different parts. It’s just life in a different form. Nothing’s been killed. Nothing’s ended because something else has begun. I find it liberating. If only they’d kept their word.
F: Does that excuse them?
I: After all you’ve done over the past week, Finch. Do you really think they need an excuse? Believe me, it’s nothing personal. Now, I’m going to have to hurt you again.
1
Woke to a sack over his head. Woke to the Partial whittling a tattoo into his leg. Woke to his own shrieks. Wondered if the Lady in Blue had spirited him away. Waking and drugging him. Waking and drugging him. Never lost.
And always, the Partial asking him questions. Who was Ethan Bliss? How did the doors work? Had he met the Lady in Blue? Kept answering sideways, but after a while didn’t remember what he’d said. Or not said.
After midnight. Maybe. Pitch black except for the lanterns. Except for the pale face of the Partial.
Part of his mouth didn’t work right. Jutted out. Swollen. His vowels came out slurry. Couldn’t feel his feet or hands. A kind of mercy. Because early on the Partial had cut off one of Finch’s toes. Had busted up his knee again. Cut a slit in his right cheek that bled into his mouth.
“Confess,” the Partial kept saying. “Confess.”
Was he ready to confess? And to what? Duncan Shriek was dead. The mission dead with it. Changing his name, leaving Crossley behind, now seemed as pathetic as the plan to revive Shriek. What had he been doing but playing sides off against each other? Buying time working for one, working for the other. For what? More of the same? Maybe even less of it. And if he confessed that, would the Partial do more than blink in confusion? Half the time the Partial wanted information. Half the time he just wanted to inflict pain.
The Partial said, “My name is Thomas. You should call me Thomas. That’s my name.”
Laughter gushed up from deep inside Finch at the absurdity of that. Laughter he couldn’t stop.
“I confess,” he said. Screamed it. As the Partial went back to work.
The chair slowly rocking, rocking back and forth.
* * *
Rocking. Rocking. Back and forth.
Finch sat on the upper deck of a houseboat in the Spit. From the towers across the bay, green fire gathered. It leapt out at them. Became huge and sparkling over their heads. Burned into boats all around them. Splintered timbers. Sent up waves of flame. A fire that never seemed to reach them. And yet was inside him.
Wyte and Finch’s father sat on a whitewashed bench opposite him. His father was the hunched-over specter he’d been at the clinic, in the last days. Coughing up blood. Wyte was, mercifully, as he’d been before the vainglorious charge from the chapel.
“Getting close,” his father said.
“Getting close,” said Wyte.
“Hang on,” his father said.
“Soon it will be your turn,” Wyte said. “Will you be ready?”
“Ready for what?” Finch said.
“Never lost.” Now it wasn’t Wyte sitting beside his father, but Finch as James Crossley. Youthful. Neatly trimmed beard. Eyes bright with confidence. The James Crossley who’d worked as a courier for Wyte.
Finch smiled. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you. Could’ve used you earlier, James.”
His father had disappeared. Duncan Shriek was sitting next to James now. Flickering in and out like a faulty bulb.
Finch stared at them both. While the Spit burned down around them.
Shriek said, “You can’t survive much more of this. You’ve got to find a way out.”
Finch grinned painfully. With each new bolt of green light another part of him was disintegrating. Falling away.
“Easy for a dead man to say. I’m still in the world,” he said.
Something was calling. Some noise was exploding in his head.
“You’ll be back,” Shriek promised, fading into darkness.
* * *
Woke, finally, to the sounds of combat. Rockets. Gunfire. The recoil of a tank blast?
Through the window, through the blood in his eyes, Finch saw intense flashes of light. Nothing like the gray caps’ spore clouds. Or their fungal displays. That light was more like a mist. This was harsh and sudden. Unforgiving.
Blood tickled his throat. The Partial had taken teeth. Each a raging agony in his mouth.
The Partial sat on the couch, tapping his foot. He’d turned the chair so it faced him.
Finch laughed. An unhinged laugh that ended on too high a note. Thought, “Could the interrogation be getting to the fucker?” But had said it aloud. The Partial crept behind him. Felt a soft sawing around his numb hand. A sudden flowing release.
Still the rockets went off. So they must be real. Not hallucinations.
No one’s coming for me. No one.
The Partial placed Finch’s bloody pinkie finger on the table. It looked like a white worm.
“Don’t disrespect me again,” the Partial said. Breathing hard. Something almost sexual in the way he swallowed. Let the tip of his tongue show through his teeth. “Or there’s more where that came from.”
A chuckle or the low sound of a moan? “Only eight, or nine. But I won’t. I won’t. I won’t. Just untie me. I can’t feel my hands. I can’t feel my legs.”
The Partial ignored him. Which meant slapping him a few times.