On the far wall hung three of the hotel's original tourist scenes of Albumuth Boulevard. A far better view than the one from the small balcony abutting the kitchen. All the balcony could show him was more of the night sky, a sliver of the two towers, and the alley below. A view saved for emergencies. A second view could be had from the bathroom by opening the small latched window and standing on the toilet. Finch could look down into the courtyard whenever he wanted. Between the two sight lines, he had as much forewarning as he could expect. If what came after him was human.
Not a bad place. At least he had a separate office next to the kitchen and extra bookcases, overflowing, on the wall closest to the door. He'd made them from planks torn up from the rotting eleventh floor.
Even before the Rising, Finch had enjoyed reading. So many nights at the old house in the valley he and his father had sat reading in silence, separate yet together. To block out the night. The wars. Now the gray caps' camps lay so close that a crushed foundation under a heap of garbage was all that remained of the house. Nothing left but the books and other things he'd rescued.
Some books had been bought during cease-fires. Before the Rising destroyed the idea of bookstores. A few had come from his grandparents, who had returned to the Southern Isles when he was ten. Memories of them were like spent matches dull against a sudden darkness. He leafed through the books for signs of them sometimes. A folded letter. A note that never dropped to the floor.
But most of the books had been his father's, rescued from the old home. About a dozen Finch knew from long repetition, part of his father's home-schooling when it was too dangerous to go to class.
His father had started out as a brilliant engineer. In his youth, he had served in the Ambergris military in that brief, bright window when they'd taken on the Kalif's empire. He was with the troops as they advanced into a desert strewn with oases and hunched trees with gnarled black branches. As they took the Kalif's lands, and contemplated their own vision of conquest. As they were pushed back.
With Finch's mother dead in childbirth, his father had raised him after the war. A strange life, seesawing between wealth and poverty. Father's many important yet strange friends. His connections with Hoegbotton & Sons. And yet sometimes things had been bad enough Finch's father had supported them doing odd jobs and trading books for food. Or burning books for fuel.
Back at the old house, there had been many photographs of his father. The broad-chested muscular form of the man, tight in that characteristic Ambergrisian uniform of olive green. Wedge of a hat tilted to the side as was the fashion. On a hill or in a city or atop a tank. Surrounded by fellow soldiers or alone. Always smiling. Eyes dark dots looking into the camera. Seeming aware of future fame, but not of how it would come. Nor of how far he would fall.
Finch had chosen "John" for his new identity because it was his father's name. "Finch" was just a common bird, a creature no one would ever notice. He'd burned all photographs except one the night he'd changed his name. Displayed on the mantel, it showed his grandparents just arrived from the Southern Isles. At the docks with their suitcases beside them. Looking faded, remote, and confused. Grandpa had been a carpenter. Grandma a homemaker. There were no relatives on his mother's side. His father was four years old in the photo. This image was all Finch was willing to risk.
Once, Sintra had asked about the people in the photo. He'd said he didn't know them. That he'd found the photo on the street and liked it. True, to a point. Hadn't known the four-year-old. Never really knew his grandparents. Just another nonmemory from a lost life, and most days he didn't regret that.
On the back of the photograph, his father had scrawled a few lines: "Sometimes a man will see in his own image a desert, and it is the need to make that desert bloom which drives him again and again to action, as hopelessness compels us to our end. Sometimes, too, a man will flee in the enemy's direction, eager to weather any punishment-physical or mental-that proves he is still alive. Or, he does so from a pride that lies to him, tells him he can change what seems unchangeable." From a book? His own thoughts? Finch would never know.
Feral jumped up on his lap. Began to purr as Finch petted him.
The rough-smooth taste of the whisky scratched and soothed his throat. He sank further into his chair. Maybe Sintra would come by tonight.
Never lost.
"Yes, I know, fat boy," Finch murmured. Could sit there all night. Forget what he had to do and pull out a book that he'd read three or four times already. Pretend he lived in a better world.
Turned on the small radio on the table next to him. Feral stopped purring for a second. Only one station across the dial: the gray caps' station. Gone any cacophony of voices and music. Usually just a single signal, filled with cryptic clicks and whistles. Punctuated by propaganda delivered in flat tones by human readers. ". . . A spy is caught and killed just outside the Zone ... Sector 509 has been scheduled for renovation. Anyone living there should relocate immediately."
But, tonight, nothing. That made thirty-seven days of static. What did it mean? Was it just another slackening of attention? Or something more serious? Finch had noticed a pattern. The new dislodged the old. A puppet government in place for six months dissolved when the gray caps turned to building the camps. Electricity no longer reliable since they'd started in on the two towers. These failings brought a twisted optimism. Maybe they can't do everything at once. Or maybe there was a purpose to all of it that he just couldn't see.
He pushed a complaining Feral off his lap. Walked back into the kitchen.
The memory bulbs lay on the counter. Vaguely round. Pitted and whorled. Smelling of both salt and offal. Already rotting?
Finch looked down at the cat, which had followed him expecting a treat. Wondered what would happen if he fed a bulb to Feral.
"You want to eat one of these and I'll eat the other?" he asked Feral.
The cat walked back into the living room. Finch laughed. "Smart choice." Picked up the phone receiver, dialed Rathven's number. A crackling interference. At least it's working.
Through the static: "I'm taking one now. Give it an hour. If I don't call back, check on me."
"I will. Be safe."
"Thanks."
Finch put the receiver down. Be safe. Don't slip on the carpet. Don't fall out the window.
Which poison first? Finch picked up the orange one. Get the worst over with first.
Each time he ate a memory bulb, he became someone else. Different when he returned.
These would be his fourth and fifth. The first had belonged to a girl of ten and had given him nightmares for a year. Montages of a ragged doll. Soup made with dog bones. A bleak apartment without even wallpaper. Turned out there'd been no foul play. Her parents dead, she'd starved to death. The second had been a young man, the third a young woman. A double suicide unspooled in his head. Left him with longings he didn't know he had. Regrets that weren't his. Memories of people he didn't know. Or want to know.