The Ask and the Answer Read online

  "She's not using me," I say quietly.

  You can be so valuable to us, I remember, if you choose.

  He leans forward. "Can I tell you something, Viola?"

  "What?" I ask.

  He cocks his head. "I really do wish you would call me David."

  I look back down to the carpet. "What is it, David?"

  "Thank you, Viola," he says. "It really does mean something to me." He waits until I look up again. "I've met the Council that ran Haven as was. I've met the former Mayor of Haven. I've met the former police chief and the chief medical officer and the head of education. I've met everyone of any importance in this town. Some of them now work for me. Some of them don't fit into the new administration and that's fine, there's plenty of work to be done rebuilding this city, making it ready for your people, Viola, making it the proper paradise that they need and want and expect."

  He's still looking right into my eyes. I notice how dark blue his own are, like water running over a slate.

  "And of all the people I've met in New Prentisstown, your Mistress Coyle is the only one who truly knows what leading is like. Leadership isn't grown, Viola. It's taken, and she may be the only person on this entire planet besides myself who has enough strength, enough will to take it."

  I keep looking at his eyes and a thought comes.

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  His Noise is still silent as the black beyond and his face and eyes give away nothing either. But I do begin to wonder-Right there, just at the back of my thinking-Is he afraid of her?

  "Why do you think I had you taken to her for your gunshot wound?" he asks.

  "She's the best healer. You said it yourself."

  "Yes, but she's far from the only one. Bandages and medicine do most of the work. Mistress Coyle just applies them especially skillfully."

  My hand goes unconsciously to my front scar. "It's not just that."

  "It is not, you're correct." He leans even farther forward. "I want her on my side, Viola. I need her on my side if I'm going to make this new society any kind of success. If we worked together, Mistress Coyle and I"-he leans back-"well, what a world we could make."

  "You locked her up."

  "But I wasn't going to keep her locked up. The borders between men and women had become blurred, and the reintroduction of those borders is a slow and painful process. The formation of mutual trust takes time, but the important thing to remember is, as I've said, the war is over, Viola. It truly is. I want no more fighting, no more bloodshed."

  For something to do, I pick up the cooling cup of coffee. I put it to my lips but I don't drink it.

  "Is Todd okay?" I ask, not looking at him.

  "Happy and healthy and working in the sun," the Mayor says.

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  "Can I see him?"

  He's silent, as if he's considering it. "Will you do something for me?" he asks.

  "What?" Another idea begins to form in my head. "You want me to spy on her for you."

  "No," he says. "Not spying, not at all. I just want your help in convincing her that I'm not the tyrant she thinks, that history isn't as she knows it, that if we work together, we can make this place into the home we both wanted when our people left Old World all those many years ago. I am not her enemy. And I am not yours."

  He seems so sincere. He really does.

  "I'm asking for your help," he says.

  "You're in complete control," I say. "You don't need my help."

  "I do," he says insistently. "You've grown closer to her than I ever possibly could." Have I? I think. This is the girl, I remember.

  "I also know that she drugged you that first night so you would fall asleep before you told me anything."

  I sip my cold coffee. "Wouldn't you have done the same?"

  He smiles. "So you agree we're not that different, she and I?"

  "How can I trust you?"

  "How can you trust her if she drugged you?"

  "She saved my life."

  "After I delivered you to her."

  "She's not keeping me locked up in the house of healing."

  "You came here unchaperoned, didn't you? The restrictions are being lessened this very day."

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  "She's training me as a healer."

  "And who are all those other healers she's been meeting with?" He folds his fingers back into a tent. "What are they up to, do you suppose?"

  I look down into the coffee cup and swallow, wondering how he knows.

  "And what do they have planned for you?" he asks.

  I still don't look at him.

  He stands. "Come with me, please."

  He leads me out of the huge room and across the short lobby at the front of the cathedral. The doors are wide open onto the town square. The army is doing marching exercises out there and the pound pound pound of their feet pours in and the ROAR of the men who no longer have the cure floods in right behind it.

  I wince a little.

  "Look there," says the Mayor.

  Past the army, in the center of the square, some men are assembling a small platform of plain wood, a bent pole up on the top.

  "What's that?"

  "It's where Sergeant Hammar is going to be hanged tomorrow afternoon for his terrible, terrible crime."

  The memory of Maddy, of her lifeless eyes, rises in my chest again. I have to press my hand to my mouth to hold it back.

  "I spared the old Mayor of this town," he says, "but I will not spare one of my most loyal and long-standing sergeants."

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  He looks at me. "Do you honestly think I would go to such lengths just to please one girl who has information I could use? Do you honestly think I would go to that much trouble when, as you say, I'm in complete control?"

  "Why are you doing it then?" I ask.

  "Because he broke the law. Because this is a civilized world and acts of barbarity will not be tolerated. Because the war is over." He turns to me. "I would very much like you to convince Mistress Coyle of that." He steps closer. "Will you do that? Will you at least tell her the things I'm doing to remedy this tragic situation?"

  I look down at my feet. My mind is whirling, spinning like a meteor.

  The things he says could be true.

  But Maddy is dead.

  And it's my fault.

  And Todd's still gone.

  What do I do?

  (what do I do?)

  "Will you, Viola?"

  At least, I think, it's information to give to Mistress Coyle. I swallow. "I'll try?"

  He smiles again. "Wonderful." He touches me gently on the arm. "Run along back now. They'll be needing you for the funeral service."

  I nod and step out onto the front steps and away from him, moving into the square a little bit, the ROAR of it all beating down on me as hard as the sun. I stop and try to catch the breath that seems to have run away from me.

  "Viola." He's still watching me, watching me from the

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  steps of his house, the cathedral. "Why don't you have dinner with me here tomorrow night?"

  He grins, seeing how I try to hide how much I don't want to come.

  "Todd will be there, of course," he says.

  I open my eyes wide. Another wave rises from my chest, bringing the tears again and surprising me so much I hiccup. "Really?"

  "Really," he says.

  "You mean it?"

  "I mean it," he says.

  And then he opens his arms to me for an embrace.

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  11 SAVED YER LIFE

  ***

  [TODD]

  "WE GOTTA NUMBER 'EM," Davy says, getting out a heavy canvas bag that's been left in the monastery storeroom and dropping it loudly to the grass. "That's our new job."

  It's the morning after the Mayor wished me a late happy birthday, the morning after I vowed I'd find her. But ain't nothing's changed.

  "Number em?" I ask, looking out at the Spackle, still staring back at us in the silence that don't make no sense. Surely the
cure shoulda worn off by now? "Why?"

  "Don't you never listen to Pa?" Davy says, getting out some of the tools. "Everyone's gotta know their place. Besides, we gotta keep track of the animals somehow."

  "They ain't animals, Davy," I say, not too heated cuz we've had this fight before a coupla times. "They're just aliens."

  "Whatever, pigpiss," he says and pulls out a pair of bolt cutters from the bag, setting them on the grass. He reaches

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  in the bag again. "Take these," he says, holding out a handful of metal bands, strapped together with a longer one. I take them from him.

  Then I reckernize what I'm holding.

  "We're not," I say.

  "Oh, yes, we are." He holds up another tool, which I also reckernize.

  It's how we marked sheep back in Prentisstown. You take the tool Davy's holding and you wrap a metal band around a sheep's leg. The tool bolts the ends together tight, too tight, so tight it cuts into the skin, so tight it starts an infeckshun. But the metal's coated with a medicine to fight it so what happens is that the infeckted skin starts to heal around the band, grow into it, replacing that bit of skin with the metal band itself.

  I look up again at the Spackle, looking back at us.

  Cuz the catch is, it don't heal if you take it off. The sheep'll bleed to death if you do. You put on a band and it's yers till the sheep dies. There ain't no going back from it.

  "Then all you gotta do is think of 'em as sheep," Davy says, standing up with the bolting tool and looking out over the Spackle. "Line up!"

  "We'll do one field at a time," he shouts, gesturing at the Spackle with the bolting tool in one hand and the pistol in the other. The soldiers on the stone walls keep their rifles pointed into the herd. "Once you get yer number, you stay in that field and you don't leave it, unnerstand?" And they seem to unnerstand.

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  That's the thing.

  They unnerstand way more than a sheep would. I look at the packet of metal bands I'm holding. "Davy, this is-"

  "Just get a move on, pigpiss," he says impayshuntly. "We're meant to get thru two hundred today."

  I swallow. The first Spackle in line is watching the metal bands as well. I think it's female cuz sometimes you can tell by the color of the lichen they've got growing for their clothes. She's shorter than usual, too, for a Spackle. My height or less.

  And I'm thinking, if I don't do it, if I'm not the one who does this, then they'll just get someone else who won't care if it hurts. Better they have me who'll treat 'em right. Better than just Davy on his own.

  Right?

  (right?)

  "Just wrap the effing band round its arm or we'll be here all effing morning," Davy says.

  I gesture for her to hold out her arm. She does, staring at my eyes, not blinking. I swallow again. I unwrap the packet of bands and peel off the one marked 0001. She's still staring, still not blinking.

  I take hold of her outstretched hand.

  The flesh is warm, warmer than I expected, they look so white and cold.

  I wrap the band round her wrist.

  I can feel her pulse beating under my fingertips.

  She still looks into my eyes.

  "I'm sorry," I whisper.

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  Davy steps up, takes the loose ends of the bands in the bolting tool, gives it a twist so sharp and hard the Spackle lets out a pained hiss, and then he slams the bolting tool together, locking the metal strip into her wrist, making her 0001 forever and ever.

  She bleeds from under the band. 0001 bleeds red.

  (which I already knew)

  Holding her wrist with her other hand, she moves away from us, still staring, still unblinking, silent as a curse.

  None of 'em fight. They just line up and stare and stare and stare. Once in a while they make their clicking sounds to one another but no Noise, no struggles, no resistance.

  Which makes Davy angrier and angrier.

  "Damn things," he says, holding the twist for a second before he bolts it off just to see how long he can make 'em hiss. And a second or two longer than that.

  "How d'you like that, huh?" he yells at a Spackle as it walks away, holding its wrist, staring back at us.

  0038 is next in line. It's a tall one, probably male, skinny as anything and getting skinnier cuz even a fool can see that the fodder we put out every morning ain't enough for fifteen hundred Spackle.

  "Put the band round its neck," Davy says.

  "What?" I say, my eyes widening. "No!"

  "Put it round its effing neck!"

  "I'm not--"

  He lunges forward suddenly, clonking me on the head with the bolting tool and ripping the metal bands outta my

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  hand. I fall to one knee, clutching at my skull and the pain keeps me from looking up for a few seconds. And when I do, it's too late.

  Davy's got the Spackle kneeling in front of him, the 0038 band twisted tight around its neck, and is using the bolting tool to twist it tighter. The soldiers on the top of the wall are laughing and the Spackle's gasping for air, clawing at the band with its fingers, blood coming from round its neck.

  "Stop it!" I shout, struggling to get to my feet.

  But Davy slams the bolting tool shut and the Spackle tumbles over into the grass, making loud gagging sounds, its head starting to turn a cruel-looking pink. Davy stands above it, not moving, just watching it choke to death.

  I see the bolt cutters Davy set on the grass and I stumble to 'em, grabbing 'em and rushing back over to 0038. Davy tries to stop me but I swing the bolt cutters at him and he jumps back and I kneel beside 0038 and try to get to the metal band but Davy's twisted it so tight and the Spackle's thrashing so much from suffocating that I finally have to force him down with one fist.

  I cut the band free. It flies off in a mess of blood and skin. The Spackle takes in a rake of air so loud it hurts yer ears and I lean back away from him, bolt cutters still in my hand.

  And as I watch the Spackle struggle to breathe again and possibly fail and as Davy hovers behind me, bolting tool in his hand, I realize how much clicking I'm hearing running thru the Spackle and it's now, of all times, of all moments, of all reasons-It's right now they decide to attack.

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  ***

  The first punch glances lightly off the crown of my head. They're thin and they're light so there's not much weight behind the punch.

  But there are fifteen hundred of 'em. And they come in a wave, so thick it's like being plunged underwater-More fists, more punching, scratches across my face and the back of my neck and I'm knocked farther to the ground and the weight of em presses down on me, grabbing at my arms and legs, grabbing at my clothes and hair, and I'm calling out and yelling and one of 'em's taken the bolt cutters from my hand and swings it hard into my elbow and the pain of it is more than I can actually stand-

  And my only thought, my only stupid thought is-Why are they attacking we? I tried to save 0038. (but they know, they know-) (they know I'm a killer--)

  Davy cries out as I hear the first gunshots from the top of the stone walls. More punches and more scratches but more gunshots, too, and the Spackle start to scatter which is something I can hear more than see cuz of the pain radiating up from my elbow.

  And there's still one on top of me, scratching at me from behind as I lie facedown on the grass and I manage to turn myself over and tho the guns are still firing and the smell of cordite is filling the air and Spackle are running and running, this one stays on me, scratching and slapping away.

  And the same second I realize it's 0001, the first one in

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  line, the first one I touched, there's a bang and she spins and falls to the grass beside me. Dead.

  Davy's standing over me with his pistol, smoke still coming from its barrel. His nose and lip are bleeding, he's got as many scratches as I do, and he's leaning heavily to one side.

  But he's smiling.

  "Saved yer life, didn't I?"
/>   The firing of rifles carries on. The Spackle keep running but there's nowhere to go. They fall and they fall and they fall.

  I look down at my elbow. "I think my arm's broke."

  "I think my leg's broke," Davy says, "but you go back to Pa. Tell him what's happened. Tell him I saved yer life."

  Davy's not looking at me, still raising his pistol, firing it, keeping his weight all weird on his legs.

  "Davy-"

  "Go!" he says and there's a grim kinda joy coming from him. "I got me a job to finish here." He fires the gun again. Another Spackle falls. They're falling all over the place.

  I take a step toward the gate. And another.

  And then I'm running.

  My arm throbs with every step but Angharrad says boy colt when I get to her and snuffles my face with a wet nose. She kneels down so I can flop forward onto her saddle. When she takes off down the road, she waits till I'm upright before she hits the fastest gallop I ever seen from her. I'm hanging onto her mane with one hand, my hurt arm curled

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  under me, and I'm trying not to throw up from the pain.

  I look up now and then to see women, quiet and distant, watch me ride past from their windows. I see men watch the horse run by, looking at my face all bloody and injured.

  And I wonder who they think they're seeing.

  Are they seeing one of them?

  Or are they seeing their enemy?

  Who do they think I am?

  I close my eyes but I nearly lose my balance so I open them again.

  Angharrad takes me down the road on the side of the cathedral, her shoes striking sparks on the cobbles as she turns the corner to go round to the entrance. The army's in the square doing marching exercises. Most of them still ain't got Noise but the pounding of their feet is loud enough to bend the air.