Monsters of Men (52 page)

I’m smiling like a loon as I hold out my hand to catch the flakes as they fall. They land like perfect little crystals before almost instantly melting on my palm, where the skin from my burns is still red.

“First time in years,” the Mayor says, looking up like everyone else, into the snow dropping down like white feathers, everywhere and everywhere and everywhere.

“Ain’t that something?” I say, still smiling. “Hey, Ben!” I start over to where he’s introducing Angharrad to his battlemore.

“Wait for a moment, Todd,” the Mayor says.

“What?” I say, a little impayshuntly cuz I’d much rather be sharing snow with Ben than the Mayor.

“I think I know what happened to him,” the Mayor says and we both look over to Ben again, still talking to Angharrad and the other horses now, too.

“Nothing
happened
to him,” I say. “He’s still Ben.”

“Is he?” the Mayor asks. “He’s been opened up by the Spackle. We don’t really know what that will do to a man.”

I frown and feel a roil in my stomach. It’s anger.

But there’s a little bit of fear there, too.

“He’s fine,” I say.

“I say this out of concern for you, Todd,” he says, sounding sincere. “I can see how happy you are to have him back. How much it means to have your father again.”

I stare at him, trying to figure him out, keeping my own Noise light, so we’re just two stones giving nothing away to each other.

Two stones getting slowly covered in snow.

“You think he may be in danger?” I finally say.

“This planet is information,” the Mayor says. “All the time, never-ceasing. Information it wants to give you, information it wants to take from you to share with everyone else. And I think you can respond to that in two ways. You can control how much you give it, like you and I have done in shutting off our Noise–”

“Or you can open yourself up to it completely,” I say, looking back at Ben, who catches my eye and smiles back.

“And which way is the proper way,” the Mayor says, “well, we’ll have to see. But I’d keep an eye on your Ben if I were you. For his own good.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” I say, turning back to him. “I’ll be keeping an eye on him the rest of his life.”

And I’m smiling as I say it, still warm from Ben’s smile to me, but I catch a glint in the eye of the Mayor, brief and vanishing, but there.

And it’s a glint of pain.

But then it’s gone.

“I hope you’ll be around to keep an eye on me, too,” he says, his own smile returning. “Keep me on the straight and narrow.”

I swallow. “You’ll do fine,” I say. “With or without me.”

And there’s the pain again. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I expect I will.”

{VIOLA}

“You look like you’ve rolled in flour,” I say down to Todd as he approaches.

“So do you,” he says.

I give my head a shake and bits of snow fall down around me. I’m already up on Acorn and I can hear the horses greeting Todd, Angharrad especially, standing underneath Bradley.

She’s a beauty,
Ben says, next to us on his battlemore.
And I think she’s got a little crush.

Boy colt
,
Angharrad says, ducking her head at the battlemore and looking away.

“I suggest your first order of business be reassurance,” the Mayor says, coming over. “Tell the Spackle we’re more committed to peace than ever. And then see if you can get some demonstrable action from them right away.”

“Like the river being released,” Bradley says. “I agree. Show the people they’ve got something to hope for.”

“We’ll do our best,” I say.

“I’m sure you will, Viola,” the Mayor says. “You always have.”

But I notice he keeps his eyes steady on Todd and Ben as they say their goodbyes.

It’s only a few hours,
I hear Ben say, his Noise bright and warm and reassuring.

“You keep yerself safe,” Todd says. “I ain’t losing you a third time.”

Well that would just be terrible bad luck, wouldn’t it?
Ben smiles.

And they embrace, warm and strong, like a father and son.

I keep watching the Mayor’s face.

“Good luck,” Todd says, coming up to my saddle. He lowers his voice. “You keep thinking bout what I said. You just keep thinking bout the future.” He grins shyly. “Now that we actually have one.”

“Are you
sure
about this?” I ask. “Because I can stay. Bradley can–”

“I told you,” he says. “I think he just wants to say goodbye. That’s why it all feels so weird. It’s actually over.”

“Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

“I’ll be fine,” Todd says. “I’ve managed all this time with him. I can last a couple more hours.”

And we squeeze hands again, holding it a second longer.

“I’ll do it, Todd,” I whisper. “I’ll come with you.”

And he doesn’t say anything, just squeezes my hand harder and brings it up to his face like he wants to breathe me in.

[T
ODD
]

“The snow’s getting thicker,” I say.

Viola and Ben and Bradley have been on the road for a little while now and I’m watching the projeckshun as they start up the hill to the Spackle, riding slowly in the weather. Viola said she’d call me when she got there but there ain’t no harm in checking their progress, is there?

“The flakes are too big to be much of a worry,” says the Mayor. “It’s when they’re small and coming down like rain that you’ve got a proper blizzard on the way.” He brushes them off his sleeve. “These are just a false promise.”

“It’s still snow,” I say, watching the horses and the battlemore in the distance.

“Come, Todd,” the Mayor says. “I need your help.”

“My help?”

He gestures around his face. “I may say I have no injuries, but the burn gel makes it easier to believe.”

“But Mistress Lawson–”

“Has gone back up to the hilltop,” he says. “You can put some on your hands at the same time. It’s efficient.”

I look down at my hands, starting to sting again as the medicine wears off. “Okay,” I say.

We head on over to the scout ship, landed in a corner of the square not far from us, get ourselves up the ramp and into the room of healing, where the Mayor sets himself down on a bed, takes off his uniform jacket and folds it next to him. He starts peeling off the bandages from the back of his head and neck.

“You should keep those on,” I say. “They’re still fresh.”

“They’re binding,” the Mayor says. “I’d like you to put new ones on a little more loosely, please.”

I sigh. “Fine.” I go to the treatment drawers and take out some burn bandages, as well as a canister of the burn gel for his face. I unpeel the bandage wrappers and tell him to lean forward, placing them loosely on the horrible burnt stretch on the back of his head. “This don’t look too good,” I say, setting the bandage down lightly.

“It’d be worse if you hadn’t saved me, Todd.” He sighs in relief as the medicine reaches into the burn, moving thru his system. He sits up for the gel, showing me his face, which has a smile on it, a smile that looks almost sad. “Remember when I bandaged you, Todd?” he asks. “All those months ago.”

“I ain’t likely to be forgetting,” I say, spreading the gel on his forehead.

“I think that was the moment we first really understood one another,” he says. “Where you saw that maybe I wasn’t all bad.”

“Maybe,” I say, carefully, using two fingers to slop it across his red cheekbones.

“That was the moment where this all really started.”

“It started a hell of a lot earlier for
me
.”

“And now here you are bandaging me in return,” he says. “At the moment where it ends.”

I stop, hands still in the air. “Where what ends?”

“Ben’s returned, Todd. I’m not ignorant of what that means.”

“What does it mean?” I say, looking at him all wary.

He smiles again and this time there’s sadness all over it. “I can still read you,” he says. “Nobody else can but then nobody else on this whole planet is like me, are they? I can read you even when you’re as silent as the black beyond.”

I lean back from him.

“You want to go with Ben,” he says, shrugging a little. “Perfectly understandable. When this is all over, you want to take Ben and Viola and start a new life away from here.” He grimaces a little. “Away from me.”

His words ain’t threatening, they’re actually the goodbye I was expecting, but there’s this feeling in the room, this weird feeling–

(and the
hum–)

(I’m noticing now for the first time–)

(it’s completely gone from my head–)

(which is somehow even more frightening than it being there–)

“I ain’t yer son,” I say.

“You might have been,” he says, almost in a whisper. “And what a son you would have made. Someone I could have finally handed over to. Someone with
power
in their Noise.”

“I ain’t like you,” I say. “I ain’t never gonna
be
like you.”

“No, you won’t,” he says. “Not with your real father here. Even though our uniforms match, eh, Todd?”

I look down at my uniform. He’s right. It’s even nearly the same
size
as the Mayor’s.

Then he turns his head slightly, looking past me. “You can come out now, Private. I know you’re there.”

“What?” I say, turning towards the door.

In time to see Ivan step into it. “The ramp was down,” he says, looking sheepish. “I was just a-making sure no one was in here who shouldn’t be.”

“Always seeking where the power is, Private Farrow,” the Mayor says, smiling sadly. “Well, I’m afraid it’s not in here any more.”

Ivan gives me a nervous glance. “I’ll just be a-going, then.”

“Yes,” says the Mayor. “Yes, I think you finally will.”

And he reaches calmly for his uniform jacket, folded nicely on the bed, and me and Ivan just stand there and watch as he reaches inside a pocket, takes out a gun, and without changing the expresshun on his face, shoots Ivan thru the head.

{VIOLA}

We’re right at the top of the hill when we hear it, taking the first steps into the Spackle camp, the Sky and 1017 waiting to greet us.

I turn round in the saddle, looking back towards the city.

“Was that a gunshot?” I say.

[T
ODD
]

“Yer mad,” I say, my hands up now, edging towards the door, where Ivan’s body is spilling blood everywhere. He didn’t move, didn’t even flinch when the Mayor raised the gun, didn’t do nothing to stop his own death.

And I know why.

“You can’t control me,” I say. “You can’t. I’ll fight you and I’ll win.”

“Will you, Todd?” he says, his voice still low. “Stop right there.”

And I stop.

My feet feel like they’re frozen to the ground. My hands are still up and I ain’t going nowhere.

“All this time, you really believed you had the upper hand?” The Mayor rises from the sickbed, still holding the gun. “That’s almost sweet.” He laughs, as if fond of the sweetness. “And you know what? You
did
. You did have it. When you were acting like a proper son, I would have done anything you asked, Todd. I saved Viola, I saved this town, I fought for
peace,
all because you asked.”

“Back off,” I say, but my feet still ain’t moving, I still can’t get them off the goddam ground.

“And then you saved my
life,
Todd,” he says, still coming towards me. “You saved me instead of that woman and I thought,
He’s with me. He’s really with me. He really is all I’ve ever wanted in a son
.”

“Let me go,” I say, but I can’t even put my hands to my ears.

“And then Ben comes to town,” he says, a flash of fire in his voice. “Right at the moment when everything was complete. The moment where you and I had the fate of this world in the palm of our hands.” He opens his palm as if to show me the fate of the world. “And then it melted away just like the snow.”

VIOLA
, I think at him, right at his head.

He smiles back. “Not quite as strong as you used to be, are you?” he asks. “Not quite as easy to do when your Noise is silent.”

My stomach drops as I realize what he’s done.

“Not what
I’ve
done, Todd,” he says, stepping right up to me. “What
you’ve
done. This is about what
you
have done.”

He raises the gun.

“You broke my heart, Todd Hewitt,” he says. “You broke a father’s heart.”

And he slams the butt of the gun against my temple and the world goes black.

The Future Arrives

(THE RETURN)

The sky rides over to me through the ice falling gently from the clouds above. It comes down like white leaves, already spreading a blanket of itself across the ground, coating us, too, on the battlemores we still ride.

It is a messenger of things to come,
the Sky shows happily.
A sign of a new beginning, the past wiped clean so that we can start a new future.

Or maybe it is just the weather,
I show.

He laughs.
That is exactly how the Sky must think. Is it the future or is it just the weather?

I ride forward to the lip of the hill, where I can see more clearly the group of three crossing the last empty field before the climb. They are coming
now,
not waiting until tomorrow, eager no doubt for further signs of peace to calm the dissension that is tearing them apart. The Sky already has the Land prepared where we blocked the river, as we know they will ask for it to be released, slowly, letting it resume its natural course.