The Ask and the Answer (3 page)

31

to him.
Sometimes the rumor of an army is just as effective as the army itself,
he told me and wasn't he right?

All that time, running here as fast as we could, not thinking bout what Haven'd be like once we got here, not saying it out loud but hoping it'd be safe, hoping it'd be paradise.

I'm telling you there's hope,
Ben said.

But he was wrong. It wasn't Haven at all.

It was New Prentisstown.

I frown, feeling my chest tighten and I look out west across the square, across the treetops that spread out into the farther silent houses and streets and on up to the waterfall, smashing down from the rim of the valley in the near distance, the zigzag road zipping up the hill beside it, the road where I fought Davy Prentiss Jr., the road where Viola-

I turn back into the room.

My eyes are adjusting to the fading light but there don't seem to be nothing here anyway but boards and a faint stink. The bell ropes dangle about six feet from any side. I look up to see where they're tied fast to the bells to make 'em chime. I squint down into the hole but it's too dark to see clearly what might be at the bottom. Probably just hard brick.

Six feet ain't that much at all, tho. You could jump it easy and grab onto a rope to climb yer way down. But then-

"It's quite ingenious, really," says a voice from the far corner.

I jerk back, fists up, my Noise spiking. A man is standing up from where he was sitting, another Noiseless man.

Except--

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"If you try to escape by climbing down the ropes left so temptingly available," he continues, "every person in town is going to know about it."

"Who are you?" I say, my stomach high and light but my fists clenching.

"Yes," he says. "I could tell you weren't from Haven." He steps away from the corner, letting light catch his face. I see a blackened eye and a cut lip that looks like it's only just scabbed over. No bandages spared for him, obviously. "Funny how quickly one forgets the
loudness
of it," he says, almost to himself.

He's a small man, shorter than me, wider, too, older than Ben tho not by much, but I can also see he's soft all over, soft even in his face. A softness I could beat if I had to.

"Yes," he says, "I imagine you could."

"Who are you?" I say again.

"Who am I?" repeats the man softly, then raises his voice like he's playing at something. "I am Con Ledger, my boy. Mayor of Haven." He smiles in a dazed way. "But not Mayor of New Prentisstown." He shakes his head a little as he looks at me. "We even gave the refugees the cure when they started pouring in."

And then I see that his smile ain't a smile, it's a
wince.

"Good God, boy," he says. "How Noisy you are."

"I ain't a boy," I say, my fists still up.

"I completely fail to see how that's any sort of point."

I got ten million things I wanna say but my curiosity wins out first. "So there
is a
cure then? For the Noise?"

"Oh, yes," he says, his face twitching a bit at me, like he's tasting something bad. "Native plant with a natural

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neurochemical mixed with a few things we could synthesize and there you go. Quiet falls at last on New World."

"Not
all
of New World."

"No, well," he says, turning to look out the rectangle with his hands clasped behind his back. "It's very hard to make, isn't it? A long and slow process. We only got it right late last year and that was after twenty years of trying. We made enough for ourselves and were just on the point of starting to export it when ..."

He trails off, looking firmly out onto the town below.

"When you surrendered," I say, my Noise rumbling, low and red. "Like cowards."

He turns back to me, the wincing smile gone,
way
gone. "And why should the opinion of a boy matter to me?"

"I
ain't
a boy," I say again and are my fists still clenched? Yes, they are.

"Clearly you are," he says, "for a
man
would know the necessary choices that have to be made when one is facing one's oblivion."

I narrow my eyes. "You ain't got nothing you can teach me bout oblivion."

He blinks a little, seeing the truth of it in my Noise as if it were bright flashes trying to blind him, and then his stance slumps. "Forgive me," he says. "This isn't me." He puts a hand up to his face and rubs it, smarting at the bruise around his eye. "Yesterday, I was the benevolent Mayor of a beautiful town." He seems to laugh at some private joke. "But that was yesterday."

"How many people in Haven?" I say, not quite ready to let it go.

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He looks over at me. "Boy-"

"My name is Todd Hewitt," I say. "You can call me Mr. Hewitt."

"He promised us a new beginning-"

"Even
I
know he's a liar.
How many people?"
He sighs. "Including refugees, three thousand, three hundred."

"The army ain't a third that size," I say. "You coulda fought."

"Women and children," he says. "Farmers."

"Women and children fought in other towns. Women and children
died."

He steps forward, his face getting stormy. "Yes, and now the women and children of this city will
not
die! Because
I
reached a peace!"

"A peace that blacked yer eye," I say. "A peace that split yer lip."

He looks at me for another second and then gives a sad snort. "The words of a sage," he says, "in the voice of a hick."

And he turns back to look out the opening.

Which is when I notice the low
buzz
.

Asking marks fill my Noise but before I can open my mouth, the Mayor, the
old
Mayor, says, "Yes, that's me you hear."

"You?" I say. "What about the cure?"

"Would you give your conquered enemy his favorite medicine?"

I lick my upper lip. "It comes back? The Noise?"

"Oh, yes." He turns to me again. "If you don't take your daily dose, it most definitely comes back." He returns

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to his corner and slowly sits himself down. "You'll notice there are no toilets," he says. "I apologize in advance for the unpleasantness."

I watch him sit, my Noise still rattling red and sore and full of askings.

"It
was
you, if I'm not mistaken?" he says. "This morning? The one who the town was cleared for, the one the new President greeted himself on horseback?"

I don't answer him. But my Noise does.

"So, who are you then, Todd Hewitt?" he says. "What makes you so special?"

Now
that,
I think, is a very good asking.

Night falls quick and full, Mayor Ledger saying less and less and fidgeting more and more till he finally can't stand it and starts to pace. All the while, his
buzz
gets louder till even if we wanted to talk, we'd have to shout to do it.

I stand at the front of the tower and watch the stars come out, night covering the valley below.

And I'm thinking and I'm trying not to think cuz when I do, my stomach turns and I feel sick, or my throat clenches and I feel sick, or my eyes wet and I feel sick.

Cuz she's out there somewhere.

(please
be out there somewhere)

(please
be okay)

(please)

"Do you always have to be so bloody
loud?"
Mayor Ledger snaps. I turn to him, ready to snap back, and he holds up his hands in apology. "I'm sorry. I'm not like this."

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He starts fidgeting his fingers again. "It's difficult having one's cure taken away so abruptly."

I look back out over New Prentisstown as lights start coming on in people's houses. I ain't hardly seen no one out there the whole day, everyone staying indoors, probably under the Mayor's orders.

"They all going thru this out there, then?" I say.

"Oh, everyone will have their little stockpile at home," Mayor Ledger says. "They'll have to have it pried out of their hands, I imagine."

"I don't reckon that'll be a problem when the army gets here," I say.

The moons rise, crawling up the sky as if there was nothing to hurry about. They shine bright enough to light up New Prentisstown and I see how the river cuts thru town but that there ain't nothing much north of it except fields, empty in the moonlight, then a sharp rise of rocky cliffs that make up the north wall of the valley. To the north, you can also see a thin road coming outta the hills before cutting its way back into town, the other road that Viola and I didn't take after Farbranch, the other road the Mayor
did
take and got here first.

To the east, the river and the main road just carry on, going God knows where, round corners and farther hills, the town petering out as it goes. There's another road, not much paved, that heads south from the square and past more buildings and houses and into a wood and up a hill with a notch on the top.

And that's all there is of New Prentisstown.

Home to three thousand, three hundred people, all

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hiding in their houses, so quiet they might be dead.

Not one of them lifting a hand to save theirselves from what's coming, hoping if they're meek enough, if they're
weak
enough, then the monster won't eat 'em.

This
is where we spent all our time running to.

I see movement down on the square, a shadow flitting, but it's only a dog.
Home, home, home,
I can just about hear him think.
Home, home, home.

Dogs don't got the problems of people.

Dogs can be happy any old time.

I take a minute to breathe away the tightness that comes over my chest, the water in my eyes.

Take a minute to stop thinking bout my own dog. When I can look out again, i see someone not a dog at all.

He's got his head slumped forward and he's walking his horse slow across the town square, the hoofs clopping against the brick and, as he approaches, even tho Mayor Ledger's has started to become such a nuisance I don't know how I'm ever gonna sleep, i can still hear it out there. Noise.

Across the quiet of a waiting city, I can hear the man's Noise.

And he can hear mine.

Todd Hewitt?
he thinks.

And I can hear the smile growing on his face, too.

Found something, Todd,
Todd, he says, across the square, up the tower, seeking me out in the moonlight.

Found something of yers.

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I don't say nothing. I don't
think
nothing.

I just watch as he reaches behind him and holds something up toward me.

Even this far away, even by the light of the moons, I know what it is.

My ma's book.

Davy Prentiss has my ma's book.

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2 THE FOOT UPON THE NECK

***

[TODD]

EARLY NEXT MORNING, a platform with a microphone on it gets built noisily and quickly near the base of the bell tower and, as the morning turns to afternoon, the men of New Prentisstown gather in front of it.

"Why?" I say, looking out over 'em.

"Why do you think?" Mayor Ledger says, sitting in a darkened corner, rubbing his temples, his Noise
butt
sawing away, hot and metallic. "To meet the new man in charge."

The men don't say much, their faces pale and grim, tho who can know what they're thinking when you can't hear their Noise? But they look cleaner than the men in my town used to, shorter hair, shaved faces, better clothes. A good number of em are rounded and soft like Mayor Ledger.

Haven musta been a comfortable place, a place where men weren't fighting every day just to survive.

Maybe too much comfort was the problem.

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Mayor Ledger snorts to himself but don't say nothing.

Mayor Prentiss's men are on horseback at strategic spots across the square, ten or twelve of 'em, rifles ready, to make sure everyone behaves tho the threat of an army coming seems to have done most of the work. I see Mr. Tate and Mr. Morgan and Mr. O'Hare, men I grew up with, men I used to see every day being farmers, men who were just men till suddenly they became something else.

I don't see Davy Prentiss nowhere and my Noise starts rumbling again at the thought of him.

He musta come back down the hillside from wherever his horse dragged him and found the rucksack. All it had in it anymore was a bunch of ruined clothes and the book.

My ma's book.

My ma's words to me.

Written when I was born. Written till just before she died.

Before she was murdered.