The Ask and the Answer

by Patrick Ness

  But you can still see a man's face in there, can't you? Still see a face that feels and fears-And suffers.

  It's hard to tell which are male and which are female cuz they all got the same lichen and moss growing right on their skins for clothing but there seem to be whole Spackle families in there, larger spacks protecting their spack children and what must be spack husbands protecting spack

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  wives, arms wrapped round each other, heads pressed close together. All of them silently-- Silently.

  "I know!" Davy says. "Can you believe they gave the cure to these animals'?"

  They look at Davy now and a weird clicking starts passing twixt 'em all with glances and nods moving along the crowd. Davy raises his pistol and steps farther into the monastery grounds. "Thinking of trying something?" he yells. "Give me a reason! Go on! GIVE ME A REASON!"

  The Spackle huddle closer together in their little groups, backing away from him where they can.

  "Get in here, Todd," Davy says. "We got work to do."

  I don't move.

  "I said, get in here! They're animals. They ain't gonna do nothing."

  I still don't move.

  "He murdered one of y'all," Davy says to the Spackle. "Davy!" I shout.

  "Cut its head right off with a knife. Sawed and sawed--"

  "Stop it!" I run at him to get him to shut his effing mouth. I don't know how he knows but he knows and he's gotta shut up right effing now.

  The Spackle nearest the gate scoot way back at my approach, getting outta my way as fast as they can, looking at me with frightened faces, parents getting their children behind them. I push Davy hard but he just laughs and I realize I'm inside the monastery walls now.

  And I see just how many Spackle there are.

  ***

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  The stone wall of the monastery surrounds a huge bit of land but only one little building, some kind of storehouse. The rest is divided up into smaller fields, separated by old wooden fences with low gates. Most of 'em are badly overgrown and you can see heavy grass and brambles stretching all the way to the back walls a good hundred yards away. But mostly you can see Spackle.

  Hundreds and hundreds of 'em spread out over the grounds.

  Maybe even more than a thousand.

  They're pushing themselves against the monastery wall, huddling behind the rotting fences, sitting in groups or standing in rows.

  But all watching me, silent as the grave, as my Noise spills out all over the place.

  "He's a liar!" I say. "It weren't like that! It weren't like that at all!"

  But what was it like? What was it like that I can explain? Cuz I did do it, didn't I?

  Not how Davy said but nearly as bad and completely as big in my Noise, too big to cover with all their eyes looking back at me, too big to surround with lies and confuse the truth, too big to not think about as a crowd of Spackle faces just stare.

  "It was an accident," I say, my voice trailing off, looking from face to weird face, not seeing no pictures of Spackle Noise, not understanding the clicking they make, so doubly not knowing what's happening. "I didn't mean it."

  But not one of 'em says a thing back. They don't do nothing but stare.

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  ***

  There's a creak as the gate behind us opens up again. We turn to look.

  It's Ivan from Farbranch, the one who joined the army rather than fight it.

  And look how right he was. He's wearing an officer's uniform and he's got a group of soldiers with him.

  "Mr. Prentiss Jr.," he says, nodding at Davy, who nods back. Ivan turns to me, a look in his eye I can't read and no Noise to be heard. "It's good to see you well, Mr. Hewitt."

  "You two know each other?" Davy says, sharplike.

  "We've had past acquaintance," Ivan says, still looking at me.

  But I ain't saying a word to him.

  I'm too busy putting up pictures in my Noise.

  Pictures of Farbranch. Pictures of Hildy and Tam and Francia. Pictures of the massacre that happened there. The massacre that didn't include him.

  A look of annoyance crosses his face. "You go where the power is," he says. "That's how you stay alive."

  I put up a picture of his town burning, men and women and children burning with it.

  He frowns harder. "These men will stay here as guards. Your orders are to set the Spackle a-clearing the fields and make sure they're fed and watered."

  Davy rolls his eyes. "Well, we know that--"

  But Ivan's already turning and heading out the gate, leaving behind ten men with rifles. They take up stayshuns standing on top of the monastery wall, already getting to

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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.
r />   "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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  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."

  She sighs and looks away for a second, then she purses her lips and sits down in a chair next to the bed. Her face is stern, her hair pulled back in plaits so tight you could probably climb them, her body solid and big and not at all someone who you'd mess around with.

  "I'm sorry," she says, almost tenderly. Almost. "I don't know anything about a boy." She frowns. "I'm afraid I don't know anything about anything except that you were brought to this house of healing yesterday morning so close to death I wasn't at all sure we would be able to bring you back. Except that we were informed in no uncertain terms that our survival rather depended upon yours."

  She waits to see how I take this.

  I have no idea how I take this.

  Where is he? What have they done with him?

  I turn away from her to try and think but I'm wrapped so tight in bandages around my middle I can't properly sit up.

  Mistress Coyle runs a couple of fingers across her brow. "And now that you're back," she says, "I'm not at all sure you're going to thank us for the world to which we've returned you."

  She tells me of Mayor Prentiss arriving in Haven in front of the rumor of an army, a big one, big enough to crush the town without effort, big enough to set the whole world ablaze. She tells me of the surrender of someone called Mayor Ledger, of

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  how he shouted down the few people who wanted to fight, of how most people agreed to let him "hand over the town on a plate with a bow tied round it."

  "And then the houses of healing," she says, real anger coming off her voice, "suddenly became prisons for the women inside."

  "So you're a doctor, then?" I ask, but all I can feel is my chest pulling in on itself, sinking as if under an enormous weight, sinking because we failed, sinking because outrunning the army proved to be of no use at all.

  Her mouth curls in a small smile, a secret one, like I just let something go. But it's not cruel and I'm finding myself less afraid of her, of what this room might mean, less afraid for myself, more afraid for him.

  "No, my girl," she says, cocking her head. "As I'm sure you know, there are no women doctors on New World. I'm a healer."

  "What's the difference?"

  She runs her fingers across her brow again. "What's the difference indeed?" She drops her hands in her lap and looks at them. "Even though we're locked up," she says, "we still hear rumors, you see. Rumors of men and women being separated all over town, rumors of the army arriving perhaps this very day, rumors of slaughter coming over the hill to vanquish us all no matter how well we surrendered."

  She's looking at me hard now. "And then there's you."

  I look away from her. "I'm not anyone special."

  "Are y
ou not?" She looks unconvinced. "A girl whose arrival the whole town has to be cleared for? A girl whose life I am ordered to save on pain of my own? A girl"-she leans

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  forward to make sure I'm listening-'fresh from the great black beyond?"

  I stop breathing for a second and hope she doesn't notice. "Where'd you get an idea like that?"

  She grins again, not unkindly. "I'm a healer. The first thing I ever see is skin and so I know it well. Skin tells the story of a person, where they've been, what they've eaten, who they are. You've got some surface wear, my girl, but the rest of your skin is the softest and whitest I've seen in my twenty years of doing the good work. Too soft and white for a planet of farmers."

  I'm still not looking at her.

  "And then there are the rumors, of course, brought in by the refugees, of more settlers on the way. Thousands of them."

  "Please," I say quietly, my eyes welling up again. I try to force them to stop.

  "And no girl from New World would ever ask a woman if she was a doctor," she finishes.

  I swallow. I put a hand to my mouth. Where is he? i don't care about any of this because where is he?

  "I know you're frightened," Mistress Coyle says. "But we're suffering from an excess of fright here in this town and there's nothing I can do about that." She reaches out a rough hand to touch my arm. "But maybe you can do something to help us."

  I swallow but I don't say anything.

  There's only one person I can trust.

  And he's not here.

  Mistress Coyle leans back in her chair. "We did save your life," she says. "A little knowledge could be a large comfort."

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  I breathe in deep, looking around the room, around at the sunlight streaming in from a window looking out onto trees and a river, the river, the one we followed into what was supposed to be safety. It seems impossible that anything bad could be happening anywhere on a day so bright, that there's any danger on the doorstep, that there's an army coming.