Free Finch by Jeff VanderMeer by Jeff VanderMeer

with?"
    "Shut up. This is just one of your memories. Manifesting in me. It
isn't real."
    Blindingly, unbelievably bright, a light like the sun shot through the
window. The night sky torn apart by it. Through the tear: a turquoise
sea roiling with ever-changing patterns.

    "You don't have to understand it. Not now," the man said.
    Didn't know if he was inside a mushroom or outside the universe.
Glimpses of the city from on high: each street, each canal, an artery
filled with blood. Hadn't known there could be so many shades of
red. Spiking into his eyes.
    "Be careful," the man said, echoing Rathven, and took Finch's hand.
The man's hand was warm. Calloused. Real. "Don't lose your self, no
matter what happens."
    The man and Feral and Sidle disappeared. The window became a
huge mouth, and they were all nothing more or less than memory
bulbs within it. Finch fell through the same skein of stars he had seen
in the gray cap's memory.
    Woke up:
    Teetering on the battlements of an ancient fortress, looking out
over a desert, the sand flaring out for miles under the seethe of dusk.
Moments from someone else's childhood. A parent's death. Sitting in
a blind. Crawling through tunnels.
    Woke up:
    A cavern glittering with veins of some blue metal, huge mushrooms
slowly breathing in and out. Seen in a flash of light that faded and
kept fading but never went out: more caverns, an old woman's face,
framed by white hair; another woman, in her twenties, her thirties,
her forties. A shadowy figure hobbling down a street.
    Woke up:
    The insane jungle of the HFZ, almost floating above it, through
it, coming out into a clearing ringed by twelve green men planted
in the ground, arms at their sides, their mouths opening and closing
soundlessly. And the jungle was made of fungus, not trees, poured
over trucks and tanks and other heavy machinery junked and rusted
out and infested with mushrooms, some of it still slowly, slowly
moving. And back to the fortress, at the edge of a man made cliff,
many hundreds of feet above the desert floor, and out in the desert
a thousand green lights held by a thousand shadows motionless, watching. A sound of metal locking into place. A kind of mirror.
An eye. Pulling back to see a figure that seemed oddly familiar, and
then a name: Ethan Bliss. Then a circle of stone, a door, covered
with gray cap symbols. And, finally, jumping out into the desert air,
toward a door hovering in the middle of the sky, pursued by the gray
cap, before the world went dark.

    Wake up ... Came out of it seconds, centuries, later. To find Feral and
Sidle watching him. Feral on the floor near the couch. Sidle on the
windowsill, a large black moth trapped between his clockwork jaws.
    The phone was ringing and ringing. Reached out for it. Put it to
his ear.
    "Are you okay?" Rath's voice.
    "I'm going to be fine. I think."
    Hung up.
    Closed his eyes.

TUESDAY
    I: The fanaarcensitii. You said he had fallen from a great height. Did
anything you saw in the memory bulbs support that idea?
    F: Instinct. I didn't trust what I saw.
    I: Why not?
    F: Because I haven't felt the same since I ate them. Because they were
scenes out of a nightmare. I don't know.
    I: There's one strange thing in all of this.
    F: Just one?
    I: A mention of a fortress. In a desert. Do you know the name of this
place?
    F: No.
    I: I think you do.
    F: I don't even know if it was real or not.
    I: Is this real?
    [screams]

     

I
    oke to a weight on the bed next to him. Went rigid. Sucked in
his breath. Reached for his gun. Then relaxed. Recognized the
smell of her sweat, some subtle perfume behind it. Sintra Caraval.
The woman who had been part of his life for the last two years. She
smelled good.
    He could feel her staring at the back of his head. Her breath on his
back. He smiled. Didn't open his eyes. She kissed his neck.
    She was naked. Smooth, soft feel of her breasts against his
shoulders. He was instantly hard. Opened his eyes. Turned