The Ask and the Answer (26 page)

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city, men who help Mistress Coyle with the planning and targets, men with expertise on handling explosives, men who believe in the cause and want to fight against the Mayor and all he stands for.

Men who've lost wives and daughters and mothers and who are fighting to save them or fighting to avenge their memories.

Mostly it's memories.

I suppose it's useful if everyone thinks it's only women; it allows men to come and go, even if the Mayor surely knows what's what, which is probably why he's denying the cure to so much of his own army, why the Answer's own supply of cure is becoming more burden than blessing.

I cast a glance quickly back to Lee behind me and forward again.

I'm not sure of his reason for being here.

I haven't been able-

I haven't had the
chance
to ask him yet.

I'm not paying attention as I reach the dining room door and don't really notice when it opens before I can take the handle.

I look up into Mistress Coyle's face.

I don't even greet her.

"Take me with you on the next raid," I say.

Her expression doesn't change. "You know why you can't."

"Todd would join us," I say. "In a
second."

"Others aren't so sure about that, my girl." I open my mouth to reply but she interrupts. "If he's even still alive.

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Which matters not, because we can't afford to have you captured. You're the most valuable prize of all. The girl who can help the President when the ships land."

She holds up her hand. "I won't have this fight with you again. There is too much important work to do."

The camp feels silent now. The people behind her have stopped moving as we stare at one another, no one willing to ask her to get out of the way, not even Mistresses Forth and Nadari, who wait there patiently. Like Thea, they've barely spoken to me since my arrival, all these acolytes of Mistress Coyle, all these people who wouldn't dare to dream of speaking to her the way I'm speaking to her now.

They treat me as if I'm a little dangerous.

I'm slightly surprised to find I kind of like it.

I look into her eyes, into the unyieldingness of them. "I won't forgive you," I say quietly, as if I'm only talking to her. "I won't. Not now, not ever."

"I don't want your forgiveness," she says, equally quietly. "But one day, you
will
understand."

And then her eyes glint and she pulls her mouth into a smile. "You know," she says, raising her voice. "I think it's time you had some employment."

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22 1017

***

[TODD]

"CAN'T YOU EFFING THINGS move any faster?"

The four or five Spackle nearest to me flinch away, tho I ain't even spoken that loud.

"Get a
move
on!"

And as ever, no thoughts, no Noise, no nothing.

They can only be getting the cure in the fodder I still have to shovel out. But why? Why when no one else is? It makes them a sea of silent clicking and white backs bent into the cold and white mouths sending out puffs of steam and white arms pulling up handfuls of dirt and when yer looking out across the monastery grounds, all those white bodies working, well, they could be a herd of sheep, couldn't they?

Even tho if you look close you can see family groups and husbands and wives and fathers and sons. You can see older ones lifting smaller amounts more slowly. You can see younger ones helping 'em, trying to keep us from seeing that the older ones can't work too hard. You can see a baby

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strapped to its mother's chest with an old piece of cloth. You can see an especially tall one directing others along a faster work chain. You can see a small female packing mud around the infected number band of a larger female. You can see 'em working together, keeping their heads down, trying not to be the one who gets seen by me or Davy or the guards behind the barbed wire.

You can see all that if you look close.

But it's easier if you don't.

We can't give 'em shovels, of course. They could use 'em against us as weapons and the soldiers on the walls get twitchy if a Spackle even stretches its arms up too high. So there they all are, bending to the ground, digging, moving rocks, silent as clouds, suffering, and not doing nothing about it.

I got a weapon, tho. They gave me the rifle back. Cuz where am I gonna go? Now that she's gone.

"Hurry it
up!"
I shout at the Spackle, my Noise rising red at the thought of her.

I catch Davy looking over at me, a surprised grin on his face. I turn away and cross the field to another group. I'm halfway there when I hear a louder click.

I look round till I find the source.

But it's only ever the same one.

1017, staring at me again, with that look that ain't forgiveness. He moves his eyes to my hands.

It's only then I realize I've got them both clenched hard around my rifle.

I can't even remember taking it off my shoulder.

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***

Even with all this Spackle labor, it's still gonna take a coupla months to even come close to finishing this building, whatever it is, and by that time it'll be midwinter and the Spackle won't have the shelter they were sposed to be building for themselves and I know they live outside more than men do but I don't think even they can live unsheltered in the winter frost and I ain't heard of nowhere else they're gonna be going yet.

Still, we had all the internal walls torn down in seven days, two ahead of schedule, and no Spackle even died, tho we did have a few with broken arms. Those Spackle were taken away by soldiers.

We ain't seen em since.

By the end of the second week after the tower bomb, we've nearly dug all the trenches and blocks for the foundayshuns to be poured, something Davy and I are sposed to supervize even tho it's gonna be the Spackle who know how to do it.

"Pa says they were the labor that rebuilt the city after the Spackle War," Davy says. "Tho you wouldn't know it from this bunch."

He spits out a shell from the seeds he's eating. Food's getting a bit scarce what with the Answer adding supply raids to the ongoing bombs but Davy always manages to scrounge up something. We're sitting on a pile of rocks, looking out over the one big field, now dug up with square holes and ditches and so full of rock piles there's barely any room for the Spackle to crowd into.

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But they do, cramming onto the edges and huddling together in the cold. And they don't say nothing about it.

Davy spits out another shell. "You ever gonna talk again?"

"I talk," I say.

"No, you scream at yer workforce and you grunt at me. That ain't talking." He's spits out another shell, high and long, hitting the nearest Spackle in the head. It just brushes it away and keeps on digging out the last of a trench.

"She left ya," Davy says. "Get over it."

My Noise rises.
"Shut up."

"I don't mean it in a bad way"

I turn to look at him, eyes wide.

"What?"
he says. "I'm just saying, you know? She left, don't mean she's dead or nothing." Spit. "From what I remember, that filly can take plenty care of herself."

There's a memory in his Noise of being electrocuted on the river road. It should make me smile, but it don't, cuz she's standing right there in his Noise, standing right there and taking him down.

Standing right there and not standing right here.

(where'd she go?)

(where'd she effing
go?)

Mayor Ledger told me just after the tower bombs that the army had gone straight for the ocean cuz they'd got a tip-off that that's where the Answer were hiding-

(was it me? did he hear it in me? I burn at the thought--) But when Mr. Hammar and his men got there, they didn't find nothing but long-abandoned buildings and half-sunken boats.

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Cuz the informayshun turned out to be false.

And I burn at that, too.

(did she lie to me?)

(did she do it on purpose?)

"Jesus, pigpiss." Davy spits again. "It's not like any of the
rest
of us got girlfriends. They're all in ruddy
jail
or setting off bombs every week or walking around in groups so big you can't even talk to 'em."

"She ain't my girlfriend," I say.

"Not the point," he says. "All it means is that yer just as alone as the rest of us, so get over it."

There's a sudden, ugly strength of feeling in his Noise, which he wipes away in an instant when he sees me watching him. "What're you looking at?"

"Nothing," I say.

"Damn right." He stands, takes his rifle, and stomps back into the field.

Somehow 1017 keeps ending up in my part of the work. I'm mainly in the back part of the fields, finishing up digging the trenches. Davy's near the front, getting Spackle to snap together the preformed guide walls we'll be using once the concrete gets poured. 1017's sposed to be doing that, but every time I look up, there he is, nearest me again no matter how many times I send him back.

He's working, sure, digging up his handfuls of dirt or piling up the sod in even rows, but always looking for me, always trying to catch my eye.

Clicking at me.

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I walk toward him, my hand up on the stock of my rifle, gray clouds starting to move in overhead. "I sent you over to Davy," I bark. "What're you doing here?"

Davy, hearing his name, calls from far across the field. "What?"

I call back, "Why do you keep letting this one back over here?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Davy yells. "They all look the same!"

"It's 1017!"

Davy gives an exaggerated shrug. "So?" I hear a click, a rude and sarcastic one, from behind me. I turn and I swear 1017 is
smiling
at me. "You little piece of-" I start to say, reaching my rifle round my front.

Which is when I see a flash of Noise. Coming from 1017.

Quick as anything but clear, too, me standing in front of him, reaching for my rifle, nothing more than what he's seeing with his eyes-Except a flash as he grabs the rifle from me-- And then it's gone.

I've still got the rifle in my hands, 1017 still knee-deep in the ditch.

No Noise at all.

I look him up and down. He's skinnier than he used to be, but they
all
are, they never get quite enough fodder for a day, and I'm wondering if 1017's been skipping meals altogether.

So he don't take no cure.

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"What're you playing at?" I ask him. But he's back at work, arms and hands digging for more dirt, ribs showing thru the side of his white, white skin. And he don't say nothing.

"Why do we keep giving 'em the cure if yer pa's taking it away from everyone else?"

Me and Davy are lunching the next day. The clouds are heavy in the sky and it'll probably start raining soon, the first rain in a good long while, and it'll be cold rain, too, but we've got orders to keep working no matter what so we're spending the day watching the Spackle pour out the first concrete from the mixer.

Ivan brought it in this morning, healed but limping, his Noise raging. I wonder where he thinks the power is
now.

"Well, it keeps 'em from plotting, don't it?" Davy says. "Keeps 'em from passing along ideas to each other."

"But they can do that with the clicking." I think for a second. "Can't they?"

Davy just gives a
who cares, pigpiss
shrug. "Got any of that sandwich left?"

I hand him my sandwich, keeping an eye out over the Spackle. "Shouldn't we know what they're thinking?" I say. "Wouldn't that be a good thing to know?"

I look out over the field for 1017 who, sure enough, is looking back at me.

Plick.
The first drop of rain hits me on the eyelash.

"Aw, crap," Davy says, looking up.

***

271

It don't let up for three days. The site gets muckier and muckier but the Mayor still wants us to keep on somehow so those three days are spent slipping and sliding thru mud and putting up huge tarpaulins on frames to cover big parts of the field.

Davy's got the inside work, bossing Spackle around to keep the tarpaulin frames in place. I spend most of my time out in the rain, trying to keep the edges of the tarpaulin pinned to the ground with heavy stones.

It's ruddy
stupid
work.

"Hurry up!" I shout to the Spackle helping me get one of the last edges pinned to the ground. My fingers are freezing cuz no one's given us gloves and there ain't been no Mayor round to ask. "Ow!" I put a bloodied knuckle up to my lips, having scraped my hand for the millionth time.

The Spackle keep at it with the rocks, seeming oblivious to the rain, which is good cuz there ain't room under the tarpaulins for all of 'em to shelter.

"Hey," I say, raising my voice. "Watch the edge! Watch that-"

A gust of wind rips away the whole sheet of tarpaulin we just pinned down. One of the Spackle keeps hold of it as it flies up, taking him with it and tumbling him hard down to the ground. I leap over him as I chase after the tarpaulin, twisting and rolling away across the muddy field and up a little slope, and I've just about got a hand on it-

And I slip badly, skidding right down the other side of the slope on my rump--

And I realize where I've run, where I've slipped--

I'm heading right down into the bog.