Jeff

This does not mean, however, that I’m not INCREDIBLY EXCITED for Finch… the teaser, the thought of it being the biggest and most awesome Ambergris novel… that’s enough to keep me going.

I do hope it survives past you, though… perhaps into the lands around Ambergris? Perhaps into the past? It’s a strange not-quite-real world you’ve created… and my favorite fictional city to visit.

It reads very much from the perspective of a detective, and that should make it an unique Ambergris read. It looks like you really have nailed the situation just from reading that little bit. Excellent stuff.

Back at the station. Back at his desk with the other detectives. Smell of fungal rot from the green strip of carpet running from the door to the back area, which was hidden by a curtain. Smell of bad coffee from the table near the back that also housed their only typewriter. Dull light through dull windows above Wyte, who sat at the desk to Finch’s left. Beyond, five of ten desks empty. The rest out following leads or taken to the camps or…? Skinner, Gustat, Blakey, Dapple, and Albin furiously scritching away on their notepads with sharp pencils. All of them like school boys in some incomprehensible class. None of them likely to ask questions of the teacher. Only a weak hello when Finch had walked in. Too much effort. Not yet over the morning jitters.

Finch was in a bad mood. As usual, it had been difficult just getting back to the station. A tortuous route. No motored vehicles allowed without an important reason—too many suicide bombings. Three makeshift bridges over flooded streets. All recent gray cap engineering in sectors where gray cap buildings had gone up. The sectors did not correspond to any human map. They sliced through apartment buildings, cut down the middle of streets. Displayed an arrogance about the way things had been and were now that angered Finch.

Then a mob to avoid at the corner of Albumuth and Lake. A huge blood-red mushroom with a thick stem like a tree trunk hadn’t yet released the morning ration of drugs. A glitch? Not Finch’s problem. But the addicts were mad. They wanted their fix. Wanted out. They stood beneath the slow-breathing dead-white gills waiting for the green-gold nodes. Maybe someday he’d join them. Instead, he’d taken a boat across a wide canal. Looked down at his frowning reflection and not recognized it. The thick, broad-shouldered man lingering there seemed forty-five, not ten years younger.

All of this added to the mental fatigue. The stress.

His partner Wyte understood that better than anyone.

“When the time comes, right, Finch?”

“Sure, Wyte,” Finch said. “When the time comes.”

“You’ll know what to do.” The voice, once so deep and gravelly, had changed since Finch had first met Wyte. Become soft and liquid, lighter yet thicker.

“I’ll know what to do.”

Ritual had a purpose. Ritual cordoned off fear. Ritual made the abnormal ordinary. The memory hole beside each of the desks. The deep green vein running the length of Wyte’s arm seen from the left edge of Finch’s vision as he sat down at his desk. Pushing up ridge-like against the fabric of Wyte’s long sleeves.

Finch took his gun from its holster. Recoiled from the touch of the grip.

“For Truff’s sake,” Finch said. Laid it on his desk with a squelch.

The gun had been issued by the gray caps. Dark green exoskeleton, soft interior. It had been seeping lately. Its guts stained his hand. Reloading didn’t seem like an option.

“I wonder if it’s dying on me,” Finch said. To Wyte.

There’s a thought. Should I have been feeding it?

Wyte just grunted. He was reflexively writing up reports on nothing in particular. Lost husbands. Unidentifiable corpses. Vandalism. Finch had cases, too, but nothing that couldn’t wait.

Finch rummaged in a drawer. Found a worn handkerchief. It predated the war. He’d gotten it from an expensive shop on Albumuth Boulevard. He didn’t know why he kept it. Luck? Grimacing, picked up the gun with the handkerchief. Deposited both in the drawer.

“I’d rather get shot,” Finch said too loud, but not sure if he meant it. Gustat and Blakey, joined at the hip, looked up, glared. Dapple brought a case file so close to his eyes it hid his face.

Ever more difficult to know what to say. How to act. They all assumed the gray caps spied on them. Difficult to remember that all day.

Almost as if to cover for Finch, Wyte, asked, “So, Finchy, just how bad was it?”

Finch turned in his chair to face Wyte. Hadn’t wanted to. No telling what he looked like.

Wyte: a tall man, mid-forties, with a handsome face, powerful shoulders and chest. Tattered olive suit. Eyes now hooded in gray. A spark of green colonizing the brown of each pupil. Right temple: a purple birthmark that hadn’t been there yesterday. Smelled of cigarette smoke to cover the stench of mushrooms. Even though cigs were hard to come by. Once, he could have entered a crowded bar and all the women would have found a way to stare at him.

“A double,” Finch said. “In an abandoned apartment. One gray cap. One male human.” Then told Wyte the rest.

“A clear case of dancing lessons gone terribly wrong,” Wyte said. The grin only manifested on the left side of his mouth.

Skinner, next to Wyte, hazarded a snicker. But Finch didn’t find it funny. He was still seeing the bodies.

“This is nothing good, Wyte.” Good would have meant something that might go away quickly. This could linger.

Wyte, as if realizing his mistake: “Do you want me to take the memory bulbs?”

“No thanks.” Who knew what a memory bulb would do to Wyte in his state? Finch didn’t want to find out. The late Richard Dorn had sat at his desk for six months after the gray caps had forced him to eat a memory bulb despite his wasting disease. Dead. Turning into a tower of emerald mold. The desk sat in a corner now, abandoned, a green smudge on the seat of the chair.

“We’re in trouble on this one, aren’t we?” Wyte said. Black patch on his neck, slowly moving. Nails a faint green. A whiff of something toxic.
Finch shrugged. Yes, but not the same kind of trouble.

Wyte leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. Red stains on the shirt’s underarms.

Finch had known Wyte for more than fifteen years. They’d fought in the wars together. Known the same people before the Rising. Played darts together. Had drinks. Sudden vision, debilitating: of his girlfriend back then laughing at some joke Wyte had made one night, the days of Comedian Wyte long past except for the occasional flare up that just made it worse. Now, through some mistake or cruelty, they worked cases together.

For awhile Finch had been making Wyte more and more distant.

Someday he’ll be a silhouette on the horizon.

And Wyte sensed it.

Jeff