The Ask and the Answer (5 page)

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watching the crowd watch him, watching their faces as they look and listen to their former Mayor try and fail to contain his Noise.

"BEHOLD!" Mayor Prentiss shouts. "YOUR FUTURE!" He turns the knife to a stabbing angle, as if to say again,
behold--

The murmuring of the crowd rises-Mayor Prentiss raises his arm-

A voice, a female one, maybe the same one, cries out, "No!"

And then suddenly I realize I know exactly what's gonna happen.

In the chair, in the room with the circle of colored glass, he brought me to defeat, he brought me to the edge of death, he made me
know
that it would come--

And then he put a bandage on me.

And
that's
when I did what he wanted.

The knife swishes thru the air and slices thru the binds on Mayor Ledger's hands.

There's a town-sized gasp, a
planet-sized
one.

Mayor Prentiss waits for a moment, then says once more, "Behold your future," quietly, not even into the microphone.

But there it is again, right inside yer mind. He puts the knife away in a belt behind his back and returns to the microphone.

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And starts to put bandages on the crowd.

"I am not the man you think I am," he says. "I am not a tyrant come to slaughter his enemies. I am not a madman come to destroy even that which would save himself. I am
not"--he
looks over at Mayor Ledger--"your executioner."

The crowds, men and women, are so quiet now the square might as well be empty.

"The war is
over,"
the Mayor continues. "And a new peace will take its place."

He points to the sky. People look up, like he might be conjuring something up there to fall on them.

"You may have heard a rumor," he says. "That there are new settlers coming."

My stomach twists again.

"I tell you as your President," he says. "The rumor is true."

How does he know? How does he ruddy
know"?

The crowd starts to murmur at this news, men and women. The Mayor lets them, happily talking over them.

"We will be ready to greet them!" he says. "We will be a proud society ready to welcome them into a new Eden!" His voice is rising again. "We will show them that they have left Old World and entered PARADISE!"

Lots more murmuring now, talking everywhere.

"I am going to take your cure away from you," the Mayor says.

And boy, does the murmuring
stop.
The Mayor lets it, lets the silence build up, and then he says, "For now."

The men look at one another and back to the Mayor.

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"We are entering a new era," Mayor Prentiss says. "You will earn my trust by joining me in creating a new society. As that new society is built and as we meet our first challenges and celebrate our first successes, you will earn the right to be called men again. You will earn the right to have your cure returned to you and that will be the moment all men truly will be brothers."

He's not looking at the women. Neither are the men in the crowd. Women got no use for the reward of a cure, do they?

"It will be difficult," he continues. "I don't pretend otherwise. But it
will
be rewarding." He gestures toward the army. "My deputies have already begun to organize you. You will continue to follow their instructions but I assure you they will never be too onerous and you will soon see that I am not your conqueror. I am not your doom. I am not," he pauses again, "your enemy."

He turns his head across the crowd of men one last time.

"I am your savior," he says.

And even without hearing their Noise, I watch the crowd wonder if there's a chance he's telling the truth, if maybe things'll be okay after all, if maybe, despite what they feared, they've been let off the hook.

You ain't,
I think.
Not by a long shot.

Even before the crowds have started to properly leave after the Mayor's finished, there's a
ker-thunk
at my door.

"Good evening, Todd," the Mayor says, stepping into the

53

bell-ringing jail and looking around him, wrinkling his nose a little at the smell. "Did you like my speech?"

"How do you know there are settlers coming?" I say. "Have you been talking to her? Is she all right?"

He don Home, home, home, t answer this but he don't hit me for it neither. He just smiles and says, "All in good time, Todd."

We hear Noise coming up the stairs outside the door.
Alive I'm alive
it says alive,
alive
alive alive
and into the room comes Mayor Ledger, pushed by Mr. Collins.

He pulls up his step when he sees Mayor Prentiss standing there.

"New bedding will arrive tomorrow," Mayor Prentiss says, still looking at me. "As will toilet privileges."

Mayor Ledger's moving his jaw but it takes a few tries before any words come out. "Mr. President--"

Mayor Prentiss ignores him. "Your first job will also begin tomorrow, Todd."

"Job?"
I say.

"Everyone has to work, Todd," he says. "Work is the path to freedom. I will be working. So will Mr. Ledger."

"I will?" Mayor Ledger says. "But we're in jail," I say.

He smiles again and there's more amusement in it and I wonder how I'm about to be stung.

"Get some sleep," he says, stepping to the door and looking me in the eye. "My son will pick you up first thing in the morning."

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3 THE NEW LIFE [TODD]

BUT IT TURNS OUT IT ain't Davy that worries me when I get dragged into the cold of the next morning in front of the cathedral. It ain't even Davy I look at.

It's the horse.

Boy colt,
it says, shifting from hoof to hoof, looking down at me, eyes wide in that horse craziness, like I need a good stomping.

"I don't know nothing bout horses," I say.

"She's from my private herd," Mayor Prentiss says atop his own horse, Morpeth. "Her name is Angharrad and she will treat you well, Todd."

Morpeth is looking at my horse and all he's thinking is
submit, submit, submit
, making my horse even more nervous and that's a ton of nervous animal I'm sposed to ride.

"Whatsa matter?" Davy Prentiss sneers from the saddle of a third horse. "You scared?"

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"Whatsa matter?" I say. "Daddy not give you the cure yet?"

His Noise immediately rises. "You little piece of-"

"My, my," says the Mayor. "Not ten words in and the fight's already begun."

"He started it," Davy says.

"And he would finish it, too, I wager," says the Mayor, looking at me, reading the red, jittery state of my Noise, filled with urgent red askings about Viola, with more askings I wanna take outta Davy Prentiss's hide. "Come, Todd," the Mayor says, reining his horse. "Ready to be a leader of men?"

"It's a simple division," he says as we trot thru the early morning, way faster than I'd like. "The men will move to the west end of the valley in front of the cathedral and the women to the east behind it."

We're riding east down the main street of New Prentisstown, the one that starts at the zigzag road by the falls, carries thru to the town square and around the cathedral and now out the back into the farther valley. Small squads of soldiers march up and down side roads and the men of New Prentisstown come past us the other way on foot, carrying rucksacks and other luggage.

"I don't see no women," Davy says.

"Any
women," corrects the Mayor. "And no, Captain Morgan and Captain Tate supervised the transfer of the rest of the women last night."

"What are you gonna do with em?" I say, my knuckles gripping so hard on the saddle horn they're turning white.

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He looks back at me. "Nothing, Todd. They will be treated with the care and dignity that befits their importance to the future of New World." He turns away. "But for now, separate is best."

"You put the bitches in their place," Davy sneers.

"You will not speak that way in front of me, David," the Mayor says, calmly but in a voice that ain't joking. "Women will be respected at all times and given every comfort. Though in a nonvulgar sense you are correct. We all have places. New World made men forget theirs, and that means men must be away from women until we all remember who we are, who we were meant to be."

His voice brightens a little. "The people will welcome this. I offer clarity where before there was only chaos."

"Is Viola with the women?" I ask. "Is she okay?"

He looks back at me again. "You made a promise, Todd Hewitt," he says. "Need I remind you once more?
Just save her and I'll do anything you want,
I believe were your exact words."

I lick my lips nervously. "How do I know yer keeping yer end of the bargain?"

"You don't," he says, his eyes on mine, like he's peering right past every lie I could tell him. "I want your faith in me, Todd, and faith with proof is no faith at all."

He turns back down the road and I'm left with Davy snickering to my side so I just whisper "Whoa, girl," to my horse. Her coat is dark brown with a white stripe down her nose and a mane brushed so nice I'm trying not to grab onto it less it make her mad.
Boy colt,
she thinks.

She,
I think.
She.
Then I think an asking I ain't never

57

had a chance to ask before. Cuz the ewes I had back on the farm had Noise, too, and if women ain't got Noise--

"Because women are not animals," the Mayor says, reading me. "No matter what anyone claims I believe. They are merely naturally Noiseless."

He lowers his voice. "Which makes them different."

It's mostly shops that line this part of the road, dotted twixt all the trees, closed, reopening who knows when, with houses stretching back from side streets both toward the river on the left and the hill of the valley on the right. Most of the buildings, if not all, are built a fair distance from one another, which I spose is how you'd plan a big town before you found a cure for the Noise.

We pass more soldiers marching in groups of five or ten, more men heading west with their belongings, still no women. I look at the faces of the men going by, most of them pointed to the road at their feet, none of them looking ready to fight.

"Whoa, girl," I whisper again cuz riding a horse is turning out to be powerfully uncomfortable on yer private parts.

"And there's Todd," Davy says, pulling up next to me. "Moaning already."

"Shut it, Davy," I say.

"You will address each other as Mr. Prentiss Jr. and Mr. Hewitt," the Mayor calls back to us.

"What?"
Davy says, his Noise rising. "He ain't a man yet! He's just-"

The Mayor silences him with a look. "A body was discovered in the river in the early hours of this morning," he

58

says. "A body with many terrible wounds to its flesh and a large knife sticking out of its neck, a body dead not more than two days."

He stares at me, looking into my Noise again. I put up the pictures he wants to see, making my imaginings seem like the real thing, cuz that's what Noise is, it's everything you think, not just the truth, and if you think hard enough that you did something, well, then, maybe you actually did.

Davy scoffs.
"You
killed Preacher Aaron? I don't believe

it."

The Mayor don't say nothing, just moves Morpeth along a little faster. Davy sneers at me, then kicks his own horse to follow.

"Follow," Morpeth nickers.

"Follow," Davy's horse whinnies back.

Follow,
thinks my own horse, taking off after them, bouncing me even worse.

As we go, I'm on the constant lookout for her, even tho there's no chance of seeing her. Even if she's still alive, she'd still be too sick to walk, and if she weren't too sick to walk, she'd be locked up with the rest of the women.

But I keep looking-

(cuz maybe she escaped--)

(maybe she's looking for me--)

(maybe she's-)

And then I hear it.

I am the Circle and the Circle is me.

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Clear as a bell, right inside my head, the voice of the Mayor, twining around my own voice, like it's speaking direktly into my Noise, so sudden and real I sit up and nearly fall off my horse. Davy looks surprised, his Noise wondering what I'm reacting to.

But the Mayor just rides on down the road, like nothing happened at all.

The town gets less shiny the farther east we get from the cathedral and soon we're riding on gravel. The buildings get plainer, too, long wooden houses set at distances from each other like bricks dropped into clearings of trees.

Houses that radiate the silence of women.

"Quite correct," the Mayor says. "We're entering the new Women's Quarter."

My heart starts to clench as we go past, the silence rising up like a grasping hand.

I try to sit up higher on my horse.

Cuz this is where she'd be, this is where she'd be healing.

Davy rides up next to me again, his pathetic, half-there mustache bending into an ugly smile.
I'll tell you where yer whore is,
his Noise says.

Mayor Prentiss spins round in his saddle.

And there's the weirdest flash of sound from him, like a shout but quiet and away from me, not in the world at all, like a million words all said together, so fast I swear I feel my hair brush back like in a wind.

But it's Davy who reacts--