The Ask and the Answer

  And I stop myself and he notices. Because she did mention something, didn't she?

  She told me a story about-

  "Something you'd like to share, Viola?" the Mayor asks, coming around to face me, looking suddenly interested.

  "Nothing," I say quickly. "Nothing, just..."

  "Just what?" His eyes are keen on me, flitting over my face, trying to read me, even though I have no Noise, and I realize briefly how much he must hate that.

  "Just that she spent her first years on New World in the hills," I lie, swallowing. "Out west of town past the waterfall. I thought it was just idle talk."

  He's still staring deep into me and there's a long silence while he looks and looks before starting his walk again.

  "The most important issue," he says, "is whether the second bomb was a mistake, part of the first bomb that went off later by accident?" He comes round again to read my face. "Or was it on purpose? Was it set to go off later deliberately so that my men would be surrounding a crime scene, so that there would be maximum loss of life?"

  "No," I say, shaking my head. "She wouldn't. She's a healer. She wouldn't kill-"

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  "A general would do anything to win a war," he says. "That's why it's war."

  "No," I keep saying. "No, I don't believe-"

  "I know you don't believe it." He steps away from me again, turning his back. "That's why you were left behind."

  He goes to the small table next to his chair and picks up a piece of paper. He holds it up so I can see it.

  There's a blue A written across it.

  "Does this mean anything to you, Viola?"

  I try to keep any look off my face.

  "I've never seen that before." I swallow again, cursing myself as I do. "What is it?"

  He looks at me long and hard again, then he puts the paper back down on the table. "She will contact you." He watches my face. I try to give him nothing. "Yes," he says, as if to himself. "She will, and when she does, pass along one message in particular, please."

  "I don't-"

  "Tell her that we can stop this bloodshed at once, that we can end all this before it even begins, before more people die and peace is forever put aside. Tell her that, Viola."

  He's staring so hard at me, I say, "Okay."

  He's not blinking, his eyes black holes I can't turn away from. "But also tell her that if she wants war, she can have her war."

  "Please-" I start to say.

  "That'll be all," he says, gesturing me to my feet and toward the door. "Go back to your house of healing. Treat what patients you can."

  "But-"

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  He opens the door for me. "There'll be no hanging this afternoon," he says. "Some civic functions will have to be curtailed in light of recent terrorist activities."

  "Terrorist-?"

  "And I'm afraid I'll be far too busy sweeping up the mess your mistress has made to host the dinner I promised you tonight."

  I open my mouth but nothing comes out. He closes the door on me.

  My head spins as I stagger back down the main road. Todd is out here somewhere and all I can think of is how I can't see him and won't be able to tell him anything about what's happened or explain myself or anything. And it's her fault.

  It is. I hate to say it but it's her fault. All of this. Even if it was for reasons she thought were right, it's all her fault. Her fault that I won't see Todd tonight. Her fault that war is coming. Her fault-

  I come upon the wreckage again.

  There are four bodies lying in the road, covered in white sheets that don't quite conceal the pools of blood beneath them. Nearest to me but behind a cordon of soldiers guarding the site is the sheet covering the soldier who accidentally saved me.

  I didn't even know his name.

  And then all of a sudden he was dead.

  If she'd just waited, if she'd just seen what the Mayor wanted her to do-

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  But then I think Appeasement, my girl, it's a slippery slope-But the bodies here in the road-But Maddy dying-But the boy soldier who saved me-But Corinne being hit to stop her from helping-(oh, Todd, where are you?) (what do I do? what's the right thing?) "Move along there," a soldier barks at me, making me jump.

  I hurry along the road and before I even realize it, I'm running.

  I return to the nearly empty house of healing out of breath and slam the front door behind me. There were yet more soldiers on the road, more patrols, men on rooftops with rifles who watched me run very closely, one of them even whistling rudely as I went by.

  There'll be no getting to the communications tower now, not anymore.

  Another thing she screwed up.

  As I catch my breath, it sinks in that I'm the only thing even resembling a healer here now. Many of the patients were well enough to follow Mistress Coyle out to wherever she's gone and, who knows, might have even been the ones to plant the bombs, but there's still at least two dozen in beds here, with more coming in every day.

  And I'm just about the worst healer New Prentisstown has ever seen.

  "Oh, help," I whisper to myself.

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  ***

  "Where'd everybody go?" Mrs. Fox asks as soon as I open the door to her room. "There's been no food, no medicine-"

  "I'm sorry," I say, bustling up her bedpan. "I'll get you food as soon as I can."

  "Good heavens, dear!" she says as I turn, her eyes widening. I look at the back of my white coat where her eyes have gone. There's a dirty smear of the young soldier's blood all the way down to the hem.

  "Are you all right?" Mrs. Fox asks.

  I look at the blood, and all I can say is, "I'll get your food."

  The next hours pass in a blur. The help staff are all gone, too, and I do my best to cook for the remaining patients, serving them and asking at the same time which medicines they take and when and how much and though they're all wondering what's going on, they see how I must look and try to be as helpful as they can.

  It's well past nightfall when I come round a corner with a tray full of dirty dinner dishes and there's Corinne, just inside the entrance, pressing on the wall with one hand to hold herself up.

  I throw the tray on the floor and run to her. She holds up her other hand to stop me before I reach her. She winces as I get close.

  And I see the swelling around her eyes. And the swelling in her lower lip. And the way she's holding her body up too straight, like it hurts, like it really hurts. "Oh, Corinne," I say.

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  "Just," she says, taking a breath. "Just help me to my room."

  I take her hand to help her along and feel something hidden in her palm, pressed into mine. She holds up a finger to her lips to shush the wonderings about to come from my open mouth.

  "A girl," she whispers. "Hidden in the bushes by the road." She shakes her head angrily. "No more than a girl."

  I don't look at it until I've got Corinne to her room and left again to get bandages for her face and compresses for her ribs. I wait until I'm alone in the supply room and open my palm.

  It's a note, folded, with V written on the outside. Inside, it's only a few lines, saying almost nothing at all.

  My girl, it says. Now is the time you must choose.

  And then there's a single asking.

  Can we count on you?

  I look up.

  I swallow.

  Can we count on you?

  I fold the note into my pocket and I take up the bandages and compresses and I go to help Corinne.

  Who was beaten by the Mayor's men.

  But who wouldn't have been beaten if she hadn't had to speak for Mistress Coyle.

  But who was beaten even though the Mayor said she wouldn't be hurt.

  Can we count on you?

  And it wasn't signed with a name.

  It just said, The Answer.

  And Answer was spelled with a bright blue A.

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  15 LOCKED IN

  ***

>   [TODD] BOOM!

  -and the sky tears open behind us and a rush of wind comes up the road and Angharrad rears back in terror and I tumble off her to the ground and there's dust and screaming and a throbbing in my ears as I lay there and wait to see if I'm dead or not.

  Another bomb. The third this week since the first two. Not two hundred yards away from us this time.

  "Bitches," I hear Davy spit, getting to his own feet and looking back down the road.

  My ears are ringing and my body's shaking as I get to my feet. The bombs've come at different times of day and night, at different spots in the city. Once it was an aqueduct that fed water to the western part of town, once it was the two main bridges to the farmlands north of the river. Today, it's--

  "That's that café," Davy says, trying to stop Deadfall/ Acorn from bolting. "Where the soldiers eat."

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  He gets Deadfall to heel and climbs back up on the saddle. "Come on!" he barks. "We'll go see if they need help."

  I put my hands on Angharrad who's still frightened, still saying boy colt boy colt over and over again. I say her name a buncha times and finally get back up on her.

  "Don't you go getting no funny ideas," Davy says. He takes out his pistol and points it at me. "You ain't sposed to leave my sight."

  Cuz that's also how life's gone since the bombs started.

  Davy with a gun on me, every waking minute of every waking day.

  So I can't never go looking for her.

  "The women certainly aren't helping their own cause any," says Mayor Ledger, mouth filled with chicken.

  i don't say nothing, just eat my own dinner and field off the asking marks coming from his Noise. The café was bombed at a time when it was closed, like everything else this Answer thing bombs, but just cuz it's sposed to be empty don't mean it always is. Davy and I found two dead soldiers when we got there and one other dead guy who probably mopped the floors or something. Three more soldiers have died in the other bombs.

  It's all really pissing off Mayor Prentiss.

  I don't hardly see him no more, not since the day of my arm break, not since the day I sorta got to see Viola again. Mayor Ledger says he's arresting people and stuffing 'em in prisons west of town but not getting the knowledge he wants out of 'em. Mr. Morgan, Mr. O'Hare, and Mr. Tate

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  are leading parts of the army off into the hills west of town looking for the camps of the bomb-planters, who are all these women who disappeared the night of the first bombs.

  But the army ain't finding nothing and the Mayor just gets madder and madder, making more and more curfews, taking away more and more cure from his soldiers.

  New Prentisstown gets louder by the day.

  "The Mayor's denying the Answer even exists," I say.

  "Well, the President can say anything he likes." Mayor Ledger pokes at his dinner with a fork. "But people talk." He takes another bite. "Oh, yes, they do."

  In addishun to the mattresses wedged in on the tower ledges, they've put in a basin with fresh water every morning and a little chemical toilet back in the darkest corner. We're also getting better food, brought to us by Mr. Collins, who then locks us back inside.

  Ker-thunk.

  That's where I am, locked up here every minute I'm not with Davy. The Mayor obviously don't want me out looking for Viola, despite what he says about trust.

  "We don't know it's just women," i say, trying to keep her outta my Noise. "We don't know for sure."

  "A group calling themselves the Answer played a role in the Spackle War, Todd. Covert bombing, nighttime operations, that sort of thing."

  "And?"

  "And it was all women. No Noise to be heard by the enemy, you see." He shakes his head. "But they got out of hand at the end, became a law unto themselves. After the

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  peace, they even attacked our own city. We were finally forced to execute some of them. A nasty business."

  "But if you executed them, how can it be them?"

  "Because an idea lives on after the death of the person." He burps quietly. "I don't know what they think they're going to accomplish, though. It's only a matter of time before the President finds them."

  "Men have gone missing, too," I say, cuz it's true but what I'm thinking is--

  (did she go with em?)

  I lick my lips. "These healing houses where women work," I say, "are they marked somehow? Some way to tell what they are?"

  He takes a sip of his water, watching me over his cup. "Why do you want to know a thing like that?"

  I rustle my Noise a little to hide anything that might give me away. "No reason," I say. "Never mind." I set my dinner on the little table they've given us, our agreed sign that he can eat the rest of mine. "I'm gonna sleep."

  I lay back on my bed and face the wall. The last of the setting sun's coming thru the openings in the tower. There ain't no glass in the openings and winter's coming. I don't know how we're gonna get thru the cold. I put my arm under my pillow and pull my legs up to me, trying not to think too loud. I can hear Mayor Ledger eating the rest of my dinner.

  But then a picture comes floating from his Noise, floating right over to me, a picture of an outstretched hand, painted in blue.

  I turn to look at him. I've seen the hand on at least two different buildings on the way to the monastery.

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  "There are five of them," he says, his voice low. "I can tell you where they are. If you want."

  I look into his Noise. He looks into mine. We're both covering something, hiding something beneath all the other strands of our thoughts. All these days locked together and we're still wondering if we can trust each other.

  "Tell me," I say.

  "1017," I read out to Davy as he spins the bolting tool around, latching the band to a Spackle who instantly becomes 1017.

  "That's enough for today," Davy says, tossing the bolting tool in the bag.

  "We've still got-"

  "I said that's enough." He limps back over to our bottle of water and takes a swig. His leg should be healed by now. My arm is, but he still limps.

  "We were sposed to be done with this in a week," I say. "We're going on two now."

  "I don't see no one hurrying us along." He spits out some water. "Do you?"

  "No, but-"

  "And no further instruckshuns and no new jobs ..." He trails off, takes another swig of water, and spits some more. He glares to my left. "What're you looking at?"

  1017 is still standing there, holding the band with one hand and staring at us. I think it's a male and I think it's young, not quite an adult. It clicks at us once and then once again and even tho it ain't got Noise the click sure sounds like something rude.

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  Davy thinks so, too. "Oh, yeah?" He reaches for the rifle slung on his back, his Noise firing it again and again at fleeing Spackle.

  1017 stands his ground. He looks me in the eye and clicks again.

  Yeah, definitely rude.

  He backs off, walking away but still staring at us, one hand rubbing his metal band. I turn to Davy, who's got his rifle up and pointed at 1017 as he goes.

  "Don't," I say.

  "Why not?" Davy says. "Who's gonna stop us?" I don't got the answer, cuz it seems there's nobody.

  The bombs have come every third or fourth day. No one knows where they'll be or how they're planted, but BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The evening of the sixth bomb, a small fission reactor this time, Mayor Ledger comes in with a blackened eye and a swollen nose. "What happened?" I ask.

  "Soldiers." He spits. He takes up his dinner plate, stew again, and winces as he takes the first bite. "What did you do?"

  His Noise rises a little and he turns an angry eye on me. "I didn't do anything."

  "You know what I mean."

  He grumbles some, eats some more stew, then says, "Some of them got the brilliant idea that I was the Answer. Me."

  "You?" i say, maybe a bit too surprised.

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&n
bsp; He stands, setting down his stew, mostly uneaten, so I know he must be really sore. "They can't find the women responsible and the soldiers are looking for someone to blame." He stares outta one of the openings, watching night fall across the town that was once his home. "And did our President do anything to stop my beating?" he says, almost to himself. "No, he did not."

  I keep eating, trying to keep my Noise quiet of things I don't wanna think.

  "People are talking," Mayor Ledger says, keeping his voice low, "about a new healer, a young one no one's ever seen before, going in and out of this very cathedral a while back, now working at the house of healing Mistress Coyle used to run."

  Viola, I think, loud and clear before I can cover it.

  Mayor Ledger turns to me. "That's one you won't have seen. It's off the main road and down a little hill toward the river about halfway to the monastery. There are two barns together on the road where you need to turn." He looks out the opening again. "You can't miss it."

  "I can't get away from Davy," I say.

  "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," Mayor Ledger says, lying back down on his bed. "I'm merely telling you idle facts about our fair city."

  My breathing gets heavier, my mind and Noise racing thru possibilities about how I can get there, how I can get away from Davy to find the house of healing.

  (to find her)

  It isn't till later that I think to ask, "Who's Mistress Coyle?"

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  Even tho it's dark, I can feel Mayor Ledger's Noise get a little redder. "Ah, well," he says, into the night. "She'd be your Answer, wouldn't she?"

  "That's the last of 'em," I say, watching Spackle 1182 slink away, rubbing her wrist.

  "About effing time," Davy says, flopping down onto the grass. There's a crispness to the air but the sun is out and the sky is mostly clear.