Cuz maybe now we found Hildy, maybe she can take care of Viola. They’re clearly peas in a pod, ain’t they? Different from me, anyway. And so maybe Hildy could help her back to wherever she’s from cuz obviously I can’t. Obviously I ain’t got nowhere I can be except Prentisstown, do I? Cuz I’m carrying a germ that’ll kill her, may kill her still, may kill everybody else I meet, a germ that’ll forever keep me outta that settlement, that’ll probably even leave me sleeping in Hildy’s barn with the sheep and the russets.
“That’s it, ain’t it, Manchee?” I stop walking, my chest starting to feel heavy. “There ain’t no Noise out here, less I’m the one who brings it.” I rub some sweat off my forehead. “We got nowhere to go. We can’t go forward. We can’t go back.”
I sit down on a rock, realizing the truth of it all.
“We got nowhere,” I say. “We got nothing.”
“Got Todd,” Manchee says, wagging his tail.
It ain’t fair.
It just ain’t fair.
The only place you belong is the place you can never go back.
And so yer always alone, forever and always.
Why’d you do it, Ben? What did I do that was so bad?
I wipe my eyes with my arm.
I wish Aaron and the Mayor would come and get me.
I wish it would just be over already.
“Todd?” Manchee barks, coming up to my face and trying to sniff it.
“Leave me alone,” I say, pushing him away.
Hildy and Viola are getting still farther away and if I don’t get up, I’ll lose the trail.
I don’t get up.
I can still hear them talking, tho it gets steadily quieter, no one looking back to see if I’m still following.
Hildy, I hear, and girl pup and blasted leaky pipe and Hildy again and burning bridge.
And I lift my head.
Cuz it’s a new voice.
And I ain’t hearing it. Not with my ears.
Hildy and Viola are getting farther away, but there’s someone coming towards them, someone raising a hand in greeting.
Someone whose Noise is saying Hello.
It’s an old man, also carrying a rifle but way down at his side, pointing to the ground. His Noise rises as he approaches Hildy, it stays risen as he puts an arm around her and kisses her in greeting, it buzzes as he turns and is introduced to Viola who stands back a little at being greeted so friendly.
Hildy is married to a man with Noise.
A full grown man, walking around Noisy as you please.
But how–?
“Hey, boy pup!” Hildy shouts back at me. “Ye going to sit there all day picking yer nose or are ye going to join us for supper?”
“Supper, Todd!” Manchee barks and takes off running towards them.
I don’t think nothing. I don’t know what to think.
“Another Noisy fella!” shouts the old man, stepping past Viola and Hildy and coming towards me. He’s got Noise pouring outta him like a bright parade, all full of unwelcome welcome and pushy good feeling. Boy pup and bridges falling and leaky pipe and brother in suffering and Hildy, my Hildy. He’s still carrying his rifle but as he reaches me, his hand’s out for me to shake.
I’m so stunned that I actually shake it.
“Tam’s my name!” the old man more or less shouts. “And who might ye be, pup?”
“Todd,” I say.
“Pleasedtameetya, Todd!” He puts an arm around my shoulders and pretty much drags me forward up the path. I stumble along, barely keeping my balance as he pulls us to Hildy and Viola, talking all the way. “We haven’t had guests for dinner in many a moon, so ye’ll have to be a-scusing our humble shack. Ain’t been no travellers thisaway for nigh on ten years nor more but yer welcome! Yer all welcome!”
We get to the others and I still don’t know what to say and I look from Hildy to Viola to Tam and back again.
I just want the world to make sense now and then, is that so wrong?
“Not wrong at all, Todd pup,” Hildy says kindly.
“How can you not have caught the Noise?” I ask, words finally making their way outta my head via my mouth. Then my heart suddenly rises, rises so high I can feel my eyes popping open and my throat start to clench, my own Noise coming all high hopeful white.
“Do you have a cure?” I say, my voice almost breaking. “Is there a cure?”
“Now if there were a cure,” Tam says, still pretty much shouting, “d’ye honestly think I’d be subjecting ye to all this here rubbish a-floating outta my brain?”
“Heaven help ye if ye did,” Hildy says, smiling.
“And heaven help ye if ye couldn’t tell me what I was meant to be thinking.” Tam smiles back, love fuzzing all over his Noise. “Nope, boy pup,” he says to me. “No cure that I know of.”
“Well, now,” Hildy says, “Haven’s meant to be a-working on one. So people say.”
“Which people?” Tam asks, sceptical.
“Talia,” Hildy says. “Susan F. My sister.”
Tam makes a pssht sound with his lips. “I rest my case. Rumours of rumours of rumours. Can’t trust yer sister to get her own name right much less any useful info.”
“But–” I say, looking back and forth again and again, not wanting to let it go. “But how can you be alive then?” I say to Hildy. “The Noise kills women. All women.”
Hildy and Tam exchange a look and I hear, no, I feel Tam squash something in his Noise.
“No, it don’t, Todd pup,” Hildy says, a little too gently. “Like I been telling yer girl mate Viola here. She’s safe.”
“Safe? How can she be safe?”
“Women are immune,” Tam says. “Lucky buggers.”
“No, they’re not!” I say, my voice getting louder. “No, they’re not! Every woman in Prentisstown caught the Noise and every single one of them died from it! My ma died from it! Maybe the version the Spackle released on us was stronger than yers but–”
“Todd pup.” Tam puts a hand on my shoulder to stop me.
I shake him off but I don’t know what to say next. Viola’s not said a word in all of this so I look at her. She don’t look at me. “I know what I know,” I say, even tho that’s been half the trouble, ain’t it?
How can this be true?
How can this be true?
Tam and Hildy exchange another glance. I look into Tam’s Noise but he’s as expert as anyone I’ve met at hiding stuff away when someone starts poking. What I see, tho, is all kind.
“Prentisstown’s got a sad history, pup,” he says. “A whole number of things went sour there.”
“Yer wrong,” I say, but even my voice says I ain’t sure what I’m saying he’s wrong about.
“This ain’t the place for it, Todd,” Hildy says, rubbing Viola on the shoulder, a rub that Viola don’t resist. “Ye need to get some food in ye, some sleep in ye. Vi here says ye ain’t slept hardly at all in many miles of travelling. Everything will be a-looking better when yer fed and rested.”
“But she’s safe from me?” I ask, making a point of not looking at “Vi”.
“Well, she’s definitely safe from catching yer Noise,” Hildy says, a smile breaking out. “What other safety she can get from ye is all down to a-knowing ye better.”
I want her to be right but I also want to say she’s wrong and so I don’t say nothing at all.
“C’mon,” Tam says, breaking the pause, “let’s get to some feasting.”
“No!” I say, remembering it all over again. “We ain’t got time for feasting.” I look at Viola. “There’s men after us, in case you forgot. Men who ain’t interested in our well-beings.” I look up at Hildy. “Now, I’m sure yer feastings would be fine and all–”
“Todd pup–” Hildy starts.
“I ain’t a pup!” I shout.
Hildy purses her lips and smiles with her eyebrows. “Todd pup,” she says again, a little lower this time. “No man from any point beyond that river would ever set foot a
cross it, do ye understand?”
“Yep,” says Tam. “That’s right.”
I look from one to the other. “But–”
“I been guardian here of that bridge for ten plus years, pup,” Hildy says, “and keeper of it for years before that. It’s part of who I am to watch what comes.” She looks over to Viola. “No one’s coming. Ye all are safe.”
“Yep,” Tam says again, rocking back and forth on his heels.
“But–” I say again but Hildy don’t let me finish.
“Time for feasting.”
And that’s that, it seems. Viola still don’t look at me, still has her arms crossed and is now under the arm of Hildy as they walk on again. I’m stuck back with Tam who’s waiting for me to start. I can’t say as I feel much like walking any more but everyone else goes so I go, too. We carry on up Tam and Hildy’s private little path, Tam chattering away, making enough Noise for a whole town.
“Hildy says ye blew up our bridge,” he says.
“My bridge,” Hildy says from in front of us.
“She did build it,” Tam says to me. “Not that anyone’s used it in forever.”
“No one?” I say, thinking for a second of all those men who disappeared outta Prentisstown, all the ones who vanished while I was growing up. Not one of them got this far.
“Nice bit of engineering, that bridge was,” Tam’s going on, like he didn’t hear me and maybe he didn’t, what with how loud he’s talking. “Sad to hear it’s gone.”
“We had no choice,” I say.
“Oh, there’s always choices, pup, but from what I hear, ye made the right one.”
We walk on quietly for a bit. “Yer sure we’re safe?” I ask.
“Well, ye can’t never be sure,” he says. “But Hildy’s right.” He grins, a little sadly, I think. “There’s more than bridges being out that’ll keep men that side of the river.”
I try and read his Noise to see if he’s telling the truth but it’s almost all shiny and clean, a bright, warm place where anything you want could be true.
Nothing at all like a Prentisstown man.
“I don’t understand this,” I say, still gnawing on it. “It’s gotta be a different kinda Noise germ.”
“My Noise sound different from yers?” Tam asks, seeming genuinely curious.
I look at him and just listen for a second. Hildy and Prentisstown and russets and sheep and settlers and leaky pipe and Hildy.
“You sure think about yer wife a lot.”
“She’s my shining star, pup. Woulda lost myself in Noise if she hadn’t put a hand out to rescue me.”
“How so?” I ask, wondering what he’s talking about. “Did you fight in the war?”
This stops him. His Noise goes as grey and featureless as a cloudy day and I can’t read a thing off him.
“I fought, young pup,” he says. “But war’s not something ye talk about in the open air when the sun is shining.”
“Why not?”
“I pray to all my gods ye never find out.” He puts a hand on my shoulder. I don’t shake it off this time.
“How do you do that?” I ask.
“Do what?”
“Make yer Noise so flat I can’t read it.”
He smiles. “Years of practise a-hiding things from the old woman.”
“It’s why I can read so good,” Hildy calls back to us. “He gets better at hiding, I get better at finding.”
They laugh together yet again. I find myself trying to send an eyeroll Viola’s way about these two but Viola ain’t looking at me and I stop myself from trying again.
We all come outta the rocky bit of the path and round a low rise and suddenly there’s a farm ahead of us, rolling up and down little hills but you can see fields of wheat, fields of cabbage, a field of grass with a few sheep on it.
“Hello, sheep!” Tam shouts.
“Sheep!” say the sheep.
First on the path is a big wooden barn, built as watertight and solid as the bridge, like it could last there forever if anyone asked it.
“Unless ye go a-blowing it up,” Hildy says, laughing still.
“Like to see ye try,” Tam laughs back.
I’m getting a little tired of them laughing about every damn thing.
Then we come round to the farmhouse, which is a totally different thing altogether. Metal, by the looks of it, like the petrol stayshun and the church back home but not nearly so banged up. Half of it shines and rolls on up to the sky like a sail and there’s a chimney that curves up and out, folding down to a point, smoke coughing from its end. The other half of the house is wood built onto the metal, solid as the barn but cut and folded like–
“Wings,” I say.
“Wings is right,” Tam says. “And what kinda wings are they?”
I look again. The whole farmhouse looks like some kinda bird with the chimney as its head and neck and a shiny front and wooden wings stretching out behind, like a bird resting on the water or something.
“It’s a swan, Todd pup,” Tam says.
“A what?”
“A swan.”
“What’s a swan?” I say, still looking at the house.
His Noise is puzzled for a second, then I get a little pulse of sadness so I look at him. “What?”
“Nothing, pup,” he says. “Memories of long ago.”
Viola and Hildy are up ahead still, Viola’s eyes wide and her mouth gulping like a fish.
“What did I tell ye?” Hildy asks.
Viola rushes up to the fence in front of it. She stares at the house, looking all over the metal bit, up and down, side to side. I come up by her and look, too. It’s hard for a minute to think of anything to say (shut up).
“Sposed to be a swan,” I finally say. “Whatever that is.”
She ignores me and turns to Hildy. “Is it an Expansion Three 500?”
“What?”
“Older than that, Vi pup,” Hildy says. “X Three 200.”
“We got up to X Sevens,” Viola says.
“Not surprised,” says Hildy.
“What the ruddy hell are you talking about?” I say. “Expanshun whatsits?”
“Sheep!” we hear Manchee bark in the distance.
“Our settler ship,” Hildy says, sounding surprised that I don’t know. “An Expanshun Class Three, Series 200.”
I look from face to face. Tam’s Noise has a spaceship flying in it, one with a front hull that matches the upturned farmhouse.
“Oh, yeah,” I say, remembering, trying to say it like I knew all along. “You build yer houses with the first tools at hand.”
“Quite so, pup,” Tam says. “Or ye make them works of art if yer so inclined.”
“If yer wife is an engineer who can get yer damn fool sculptures to stay standing up,” Hildy says.
“How do you know about all this?” I say to Viola.
She looks at the ground, away from my eyes.
“You don’t mean–” I start to say but I stop.
I’m getting it.
Of course I’m getting it.
Way too late, like everything else, but I’m getting it.
“Yer a settler,” I say. “Yer a new settler.”
She looks away from me but shrugs her shoulders.
“But that ship you crashed in,” I say, “that’s way too tiny to be a settler ship.”
“That was only a scout. My home ship is an Expansion Class Seven.”
She looks at Hildy and Tam, who ain’t saying nothing. Tam’s Noise is bright and curious. I can’t read nothing from Hildy. I get the feeling somehow, tho, that she knew and I didn’t, that Viola told her and not me, and even if it’s cuz I never asked, it’s still as sour a feeling as it sounds.
I look up at the sky.
“It’s up there, ain’t it?” I say. “Yer Expanshun Class Seven.”
Viola nods.
“Yer bringing more settlers in. More settlers are coming to New World.”
“Everything was broken when w
e crashed,” Viola says. “I don’t have any way to contact them. Any way to warn them not to come.” She looks up with a little gasp. “You must warn them.”
“That can’t be what he meant,” I say, fast. “No way.”
Viola scrunches her face and eyebrows. “Why not?”
“What who meant?” Tam asks.
“How many?” I ask, still looking at Viola, feeling the world changing still and ever. “How many settlers are coming?”
Viola takes a deep breath before she answers and I’ll bet you she’s not even told Hildy this part.
“Thousands,” she says. “There’s thousands.”
“They won’t be a-getting here for months,” Hildy says, passing me another serving of mashed russets. Viola and I are stuffing our faces so much it’s been Hildy and Tam doing all the talking.
All the a-talking.
“Space travel ain’t like ye see it in vids,” Tam says, a stream of mutton gravy tracking down his beard. “Takes years and years and years to get anywhere at all. Sixty-four to get from Old World to New World alone.”
“Sixty-four years?” I say, spraying a few mashed blobs off my lips.
Tam nods. “Yer frozen for most of it, time passing you right on by, tho that’s only if ye don’t die on the way.”
I turn to Viola. “Yer sixty-four years old?”
“Sixty-four Old World years,” Tam says, tapping his fingers like he’s adding something up. “Which’d be . . . what? Bout fifty-eight, fifty-nine New World–”
But Viola’s shaking her head. “I was born on board. Never was asleep.”
“So either yer ma or yer pa musta been a caretaker,” Hildy says, snapping off a bite of a turnipy thing then giving me an explanashun. “One of the ones who stays awake and keeps track of the ship.”
“Both of them were,” Viola says. “And my dad’s mother before him and granddad before that.”
“Wait a minute,” I say to her, two steps behind as ever. “So if we’ve been on New World twenty-odd years–”
“Twenty-three,” says Tam. “Feels like longer.”
“Then you left before we even got here,” I say. “Or your pa or grandpa or whatever.”
I look around to see if anyone’s wondering what I’m wondering. “Why?” I say. “Why would you come without even knowing what’s out here?”