The Ask and the Answer (40 page)

402

"Todd, I've come to save you-"

"No.
I didn't have to think about nothing-"

"It's not too late."

"It
is
too late," he says, shaking his head. "It is!"

And he's moving away.

Away from me.

I'm losing him-

And I get an idea.

A dangerous, dangerous idea.

"The attack's coming tomorrow at sundown," I say.

He blinks again in surprise. "What?"

"That's when it happens." I swallow and step forward, trying to keep my voice steady. "I'm only supposed to know the fake plan, but I found out the real one. The Answer are coming over the hill with the notch in it just to the south of here, just to the south of this
cathedral,
Todd. They're coming right here and I'm sure they're coming right for the Mayor."

He looks nervously at the side door but I'm keeping my voice down. "There are only two hundred of them, Todd, but they're fully armed with guns and bombs and a plan and a hell of a leader who isn't going to stop until she topples him."

"Viola-"

"They're
coming,"
I say, moving closer again. "And now you know when and from where and if that information gets to the Mayor-"

"You shouldn't have told me," he says, not meeting my eye. "I hide things but he figures them out.
You shouldn't have told me!"

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I keep moving forward. "Then you have to come with me, don't you? You
have
to or he wins forever and ever and he'll be the one to rule this planet and he'll be the one who greets the new settlers-"

"With his hand outstretched," Todd says, his voice suddenly soft. "What?"

But he just extends his hand out into the empty air, staring at it. "Greeting it with his son."

"Well, we don't want that either." I look nervously round to the front door. Lee is sticking his head in, trying not to look too out of place, but there are soldiers marching by out front. "We don't have much time."

Todd's hand is still outstretched.

"I've done bad things, too," I say. "I wish everything was different but it isn't. There's only now and here and you
have
to come with me if we have any chance of making this come out any good at all."

He doesn't say anything but his hand is still out and he's looking at it and so i move forward another step and I take it in my own.

"We can save the world," I say, trying to smile. "You and me."

He looks into my eyes, searching, trying to read me, trying to see if I'm actually here, if it's actually true, if the things I say are real, he searches and he searches-

But he doesn't find me.

Oh, Todd-

"Going somewhere?" says a voice from across the room. A voice from a man holding a gun.

404

***

It's a different man from the one who let us in, a man I've never seen before.

Except once, in Todd's Noise.

"How did you get out?" Todd says, surprise rippling through him.

"You wouldn't leave without
this,
would you?" he says. In his non-gun hand, he's got the journal of Todd's mother. "You
give
that to me!" Todd says.

The man ignores him and waves his gun at Lee. "Come inside now," he says. "Or I will ever so happily shoot our dear friend Todd."

I look back. Lee's got flight all over his Noise but he sees the gun pointed at Todd, sees my face, and comes forward, his Noise saying so loud that he won't leave me here that it almost distracts me from the gun.

"Drop it," the man says, referring to Lee's rifle. Lee sends it clattering to the floor.

"You liar," Todd says to the man. "You coward."

"For the good of the town, Todd," the man says.

"All that moaning," Todd says, his voice and Noise fiery. "All that bitching and moaning about how he's ruining everything and yer just another spy."

"Not at first," the man says, walking toward us. "At first I was just how you saw me, the former Mayor disgraced and left alive in all his inconvenience." The man passes Todd and comes up to me, putting Todd's book under one arm. "Give me your pack."

"What?" I say.

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"Give it to me." He swings his arm back and points the gun right at Todd's head. I slide the pack off my shoulders and give it to him. He doesn't even open it the regular way, just feels along the bottom, feeling right for the secret pouch, the secret pouch where if you press right, you can feel my gun.

The man smiles. "There it is," he says. "The Answer don't change, do they?"

"You touch a hair on her head," Todd says, "and I'll kill you."

"So will I," Lee says.

The man keeps smiling. "I think you have a competitor, Todd."

"Who
are
you?" I say, annoyance at all this protection making me brave.

"Con Ledger, Mayor of Haven, at your service, Viola." He gives a little bow. "Since that's who you must be, isn't it?" He walks around Todd. "Oh, the President was very interested in the Noise of your dreams, my boy.
Very
interested in what you thought about while you were sleeping. About how much you miss your Viola, how you would do anything to find her."

I see Todd's face starting to glow red.

"And suddenly he became far more agreeable to me, asking me to pass along certain information to you, see if we could get you to do what he wanted." Mayor Ledger looks ridiculous, all the things he's carrying, a gun in one hand, pack in the other, book under his arm, and still trying to appear threatening. "I must say, it worked like a charm." He winks at me. "Now that I know when and where the Answer are going to attack."

Lee's Noise rises and he takes a furious step forward.

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Mayor Ledger cocks the pistol. Lee stops.

"Like it?" asks the Mayor. "The President gave it to me when he gave me my own key."

He smiles again, then sees how we're all looking at him. "Oh, stop it," he says. "If the President defeats the Answer then all this will be over. All the bombings, all the restrictions, all the curfews." His smile's a bit weaker now. "You have to learn how to work
within
the system for change. When
I'm
his deputy, I'll work very hard to make things better for everyone." He nods at me. "Women, too."

"You'd better shoot me," Todd says, Noise coming off him like flame. "Cuz there ain't no way yer life is safe if you ever put down that gun."

Mayor Ledger sighs. "I'm not going to shoot
anyone,
Todd, not unless-"

The side door suddenly opens and the man who let me in steps out, surprise lighting up his face and Noise. "What're you-"

Mayor Ledger points the gun at him and pulls the trigger three times. The man falls back into the doorway and all the way to the floor until only his feet are sticking out.

We all stand there, shocked, echoes of gunfire still ringing off the marble floors.

There's a clear picture in Mayor Ledger's Noise, of himself with a black eye and split lip, of the man on the floor giving him the beating.

He looks back at us, sees us staring at him.
"What?"

"Mayor Prentiss ain't gonna like that," Todd says. "He knows Mr. Collins from old Prentisstown."

"I'm sure the prize of Viola and the Answer's attack

407

will make up for any other misunderstandings." Mayor Ledger's looking around now, trying to find a place to free up his hands. He finally just tosses the book to Todd, as if he doesn't want it anymore. Todd fumbles it in his hands but catches it.

"Your mother wasn't much of a writer, Todd," Mayor Ledger says, bending forward and zipping open the pack with his free hand. "Barely literate."

"You're going to pay for that." Todd looks back at me and I realize I'm the one who said it out loud.

Mayor Ledger digs around in my bag. "Food!" he says, his face lighting up. He takes out a crested pine from the top and immediately shoves it in his mouth. He digs some more, finding bread and more fruit, taking bites of almost everything. "How long were you planning on
staying?"
he asks, his mouth full.

I see Todd starting to edge forward.

"It's not like I can't hear you," Mayor Ledger says, waving the gun again, digging down to the bottom of the bag. He stops, his hand deep inside, and looks up. "What's this?" He feels around a little more and starts to drag something larger out of the pack. At first I assume it's the gun but then he shakes it free of the bag.

He stands up.

And looks curiously at the Thrace bomb in his hand.

There's a second where it can't be true. There's a second where my eyes can't be seeing what they're seeing, not believing that I know what a bomb looks like by now. There's

408

a moment where it's in his hand but it doesn't mean anything, it doesn't mean anything at all.

But then Lee gasps beside me and it all makes sense, it all makes the worst goddam sense I can even think of.

"No," I say.

Todd spins around. "What? What is it?"

Time slows down to nothing. Mayor Ledger turns it over in his hand and a beeping starts, a fast beeping, a beeping obviously set to go whenever anyone searched through my bag and picked it up, the pulse in his hand setting it off, a bomb you know is going to kill you if you let go of it.

"This isn't-" says Mayor Ledger, looking up-

But Lee is already reaching for my arm-

Trying to grab it so we can bolt for the front door-

"Run!" he's yelling-

But I'm jumping forward, not back-

And I'm pushing Todd sideways-

Stumbling toward the room where the dead man fell-

Mayor Ledger isn't trying to shoot us-

Isn't doing anything-

He's just standing there, realization dawning-

And as we're falling through the doorway-

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And rolling over the dead man-

And curling into each other for protection-

Mayor Ledger tries to throw the bomb away from himself-

And-

BOOM

-it blasts him into a thousand pieces, tearing out the walls behind him and most of the room we're falling into and the heat from the explosion singes our clothes and our hair and rubble comes tumbling down and we force ourselves under a table but something hits Todd hard in the back of the head and a long beam falls across my ankles and I feel both of them break and all I can think as I yell out at the impossible pain is
she betrayed me she betrayed me she betrayed me
and it wasn't a mission to save Todd, it was a mission to
kill
him, and the Mayor, too, if she was lucky-She betrayed me-

410

She betrayed me
again-
And then there's darkness.

Some time later, there are voices, voices in the dust and rubble, voices drifting into my pain-addled head.

One voice.

His voice.

Standing over me.

"Well, well," says the Mayor. "Look who we have here."

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PART VI THE ASK AND THE ANSWER

412

413

35 VIOLA IS ASKED

***

[TODD]

LET HER GO!"

I pound my fists on the glass but no matter how hard I hit it, it ain't breaking.
"LET HER GO!"

My voice is cracking from the strain but I'll go and go till it gives out completely.

'you
LAY
A FINGER ON HER, I'LL KILL YOU!"

Viola is strapped to the frame in the Arena of the Ask, her arms back and up, the skin around the metal band burning red, her head twixt the little buzzing rods that keep her from hearing Noise.

The tub of water is below her, the table of sharp tools to her side.

Mr. Hammar stands there waiting, arms crossed, and Davy, too, watching nervously from the far door, across the room.

And the Mayor is there, calmly walking round her in a circle.

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***

All I remember is the
BOOM
and Mayor Ledger disappearing in a fury of fire and smoke.

I woke up here, my head aching, my body filthy from dirt and rubble and dried blood.

And I got to my feet.

And there she was

Beyond the glass.

Being Asked.

I press the button again for the speaker in the room. "LET HER GO!"

But no one acts like they can hear me at all.

"I do this with the greatest reluctance, Viola," says the Mayor, still walking in his slow circle. I can hear
him
perfectly clear. "I thought we might be friends, you and I. I thought we had an understanding." He stops in front of her. "But then you blew up my home."

"I didn't know there was a bomb," she says and I can see the pain across her face. There's dried blood all over her, too, cuts and scratches from the explozhun.

But it's her feet that look the worst. Her shoes are off and her ankles are swollen and twisted and black and I just know the Mayor ain't given her nothing for the pain.

I can see it on her face.

See how much she's hurting.

I try to pull up the bench behind me so I can smash it thru the window but it's bolted into the concrete.