The Ask and the Answer (7 page)

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work unrolling coils of barbed wire along its edge.

"Ten men with rifles and us against all these Spackle," I say, under my breath but all over my Noise.

"Ah, we'll be okay," Davy says. He raises his pistol at the Spackle nearest him, maybe a female, holding a Spackle baby. She turns the baby away so her body's protecting it. "They ain't got no fight in 'em anyway."

I see the face of the Spackle protecting her baby.

It's defeated, I think. They all are. And they know it.

i know how they feel.

"Hey, pigpiss, check it out," Davy says. He raises his arms in the air, getting all the Spackle eyes on him. "People of New Prentisstown!" he shouts, waving his arms about. "I read to you yer
dooooooom?"

And he just laughs and laughs and laughs.

Davy decides to oversee the Spackle clearing the fields of scrub but that's only cuz that means I'm the one who'll have to shovel out the fodder from the storehouse for all of 'em to eat and then fill troughs for 'em to drink from.

But it's farmwork. I'm used to it. All the chores Ben and Cillian set me to doing every day. All the chores I used to complain about.

I wipe my eyes and get on with it.

The Spackle keep their distance from me as best they can while I work. Which, I gotta say, is okay by me. Cuz I find I can't really look 'em in the eyes. I keep my head down and carry on shoveling. Davy says his pa told him the Spackle worked as servants

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or cooks but one of the Mayor's first orders was for everyone to keep 'em locked away in their homes till the army picked 'em up last night while I slept.

"People had 'em living in their back
gardens,"
Davy says, watching me shovel as the morning turns to afternoon, eating what's sposed to be lunch for both of us. "Can you believe that? Like they're effing members of the
family."

"Maybe they were," I say.

"Well they ain't no more," Davy says, rising and taking out his pistol. He grins at me. "Back to work."

I empty most of the storehouse of fodder but it still don't look like nearly enough. Plus, three of the five water pumps ain't working and by sunset, I've only managed to fix one.

"Time to go," Davy says.

"I ain't done," I say.

"Fine," he says, walking toward the gate. "Stay here on yer own then."

I look back at the Spackle. Now that the work day's thru, they've pushed themselves as far away from the soldiers and the front gates as possible.

As far away from me and Davy as possible, too.

I look back and forth twixt them and Davy leaving. They ain't got enough food. They ain't got enough water. There ain't no place to go to the toilet and no shelter of any kind at all.

I hold out my empty hands toward 'em but that don't do no kind of explaining that'll make anything okay. They just stare at me as I drop my hands and follow Davy out the gate.

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"So much for being a man of courage, eh, pigpiss?" Davy-says, untying his horse, which he calls Deadfall but which only seems to answer to Acorn.

I ignore him cuz I'm thinking bout the Spackle. How I'll treat them well. I will. I'll see that they get enough water and food and I'll do everything I can to protect 'em.

I
will.

I promise that to myself. Cuz that's what she'd want.

"Oh, I'll tell you what she
really
wants," Davy sneers. And we fight again.

New bedding's been put in the tower when I get back, a mattress and a sheet spread out on one side for me and another on the other side for Mayor Ledger, already sitting on his, Noise jangling, eating a bowl of stew. The bad smell's gone, too.

"Yes," says Mayor Ledger. "And guess who had to clean it up?"

It turns out he's been put to work as a rubbish man.

"Honest labor," he says to me, shrugging, but there are other sounds in his grayish Noise that make me think he don't believe it's very honest at all. "Symbolic, I suppose. I go from the top of the heap to the bottom. It'd be poetic if it weren't so obvious."

There's stew for me by my bed, too, and I take it to the window to look out over the town.

Which is starting to
buzz
.

As the cure leaves the systems of the men of the town,

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you begin to hear it. From inside the houses and buildings, from down the side streets and behind the trees.

Noise is returning to New Prentisstown.

It was hard for me to even walk thru
old
Prentisstown and that only ever had one hundred forty-six men in it. New Prentisstown's gotta have ten times that many. And boys, too.

I don't know how I'm gonna be able to bear it.

"You'll get used to it," Mayor Ledger says, finishing his stew. "Remember, I lived here for twenty years before we found a cure."

I close my eyes but all I see is a herd of Spackle, looking back at me. Judging me.

Mayor Ledger taps me on the shoulder and points at my bowl of stew. "Are you going to eat that?"

That night I dream-

About her-

The sun's shining behind her and I can't see her face and we're on a hillside and she's saying something but the roar of the falls behind us is too loud and I say "What?" and when I reach for her, I don't touch her but my hand comes back covered in blood--

"Viola!" I say, sitting up on my mattress in the dark, breathing heavy.

I look over to Mayor Ledger on his mattress, facing away from me, but his Noise ain't sleeping Noise, it's the gray-type Noise he has when he's awake.

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"I know yer up," I say.

"You dream quite loud," he says, not looking back. "She someone important?"

"Never you mind."

"We just have to get through it, Todd," he says. "That's all any of us has to do now. Just stay alive and get through it." I turn to the wall.

There ain't nothing I can do. Not while they got her.

Not while I don't know.

Not while they could still hurt her.

Stay alive and get thru it,
I think.

And I think of her out there.

And I whisper it, whisper it to her, wherever she is. "Stay alive and get thru it." Stay alive.

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PART II HOUSE OF HEALING

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77

5 VIOLA WAKES

***

(Viola)

"Calm yourself, my girl."

A voice-In the brightness-

i blink open my eyes. Everything is a pure white so bright it's almost a sound and there's a voice out there in it and my head is groggy and there's a pain in my side and it's too bright and i can't think-

Wait-

He was carrying me down the hill-Just
now
he was carrying me down the hill into Haven after-

"Todd?" i say, my voice a rasp, full of cotton and spit, but i run at it as hard as i can, forcing it out into the bright lights blinding my eyes.
"TODD?"

"I said to calm yourself, now."

I don't recognize the voice, the voice of a woman-

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A woman.

"Who are you?" I ask, trying to sit up, pushing out my hands to feel what's around me, feeling the coolness of the air, the softness of-

Abed?

I feel panic begin to rise.
"Where is he?"
I shout.
"TODD?"

"I don't know any Todd, my girl," the voice says as shapes start to come together, as the brightness separates into lesser brightnesses, "but I do know you're in no shape to be demanding information."

"You were
shot,"
says another voice, another woman, younger than the first, off to my right.

"Hush your mouth, Madeleine Poole," says the first woman.

"Yes, Mistress Coyle."

I keep on blinking and I start to see what's right in front of me. I'm in a narrow white bed in a narrow white room. I'm wearing a thin white gown, tied at the back. A woman both tall and plump stands in front of me, a white coat with a blue outstretched hand stitched into it draped over her shoulders, her mouth set in a line, her expression solid. Mistress Coyle. Behind her at the door holding a bowl of steaming water is a girl not much older than me.

"I'm Maddy," says the girl, sneaking a smile.

"Out," says Mistress Coyle, without even turning her head. Maddy catches my eye as she leaves, another smile sent my way.

"Where am I?" I ask Mistress Coyle, my breath still fast. "Do you mean the room, my girl? Or the
town?"
She holds my eyes. "Or indeed the planet?"

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"Please," I say and my eyes suddenly start to fill with water and I'm angry about that but I keep talking. "I was with a boy."