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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 we 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?”
“Why did the first settlers come?” Hildy asks me. “Why does anyone look for a new place to live?”
“Cuz the place yer a-leaving ain’t worth staying for,” Tam says. “Cuz the place yer a-leaving is so bad ye gotta leave.”
“Old World’s mucky, violent and crowded,” Hildy says, wiping her face with a napkin, “a-splitting right into bits with people a-hating each other and a-killing each other, no one happy till everyone’s miserable. Least it was all those years ago.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Viola says, “I’ve never seen it. My mother and father . . .” She drifts off.
But I’m still thinking about being born on a spaceship, an honest to badness spaceship. Growing up while flying along the stars, able to go wherever you wanted, not stuck on some hateful planet which clearly don’t want you. You could go anywhere. If one place didn’t suit, you’d find another. Full freedom in all directions. Could there possibly be anything cooler in the whole world than that?
I don’t notice there’s a silence fallen at the table. Hildy’s rubbing Viola’s back again and I see that Viola’s eyes are wet and leaking and she’s started to rock a little back and forth.
“What?” I say. “What’s wrong now?”
Viola’s forehead just creases at me.
“What?” I say.
“I think maybe we talked enough about Vi’s ma and pa for now,” Hildy says softly. “I think maybe it’s time for boy and girl pups to get some shut-eye.”
“But it’s hardly late at all.” I look out a window. The sun ain’t even hardly set. “We need to be getting to the settlement–”
“The settlement is called Farbranch,” Hildy says, “and we’ll get ye there first thing in the morning.”
“But those men–”
“I been a-keeping the peace here since before you were born, pup,” Hildy says, kindly but firmly. “I can handle whatever is or ain’t a-coming.”
I don’t say nothing to this and Hildy ignores my Noise on the subject.
“Can I ask what yer business in Farbranch might be?” Tam says, picking at his corncob, making his asking sound less curious than his Noise says it is.
“We just need to get there,” I say.
“Both of ye?”
I look at Viola. She’s stopped crying but her face is still puffy. I don’t answer Tam’s asking.
“Well there’s plenty of work going,” Hildy says, standing and taking up her plate. “If that’s what yer after. They can always use more hands in the orchards.”
Tam stands and they clear the table, taking the dishes into their kitchen and leaving me and Viola sitting there by ourselves. We can hear them chatting in there, lightly enough and Noise-blocked enough for us not to be able to make it out.
“Do you really think we oughta stay the whole night?” I say, keeping my voice low.
But she answers in a violent whisper, like I didn’t even ask an asking. “Just because my thoughts and feelings don’t spill out into the world in a shout that never stops doesn’t mean I don’t have them.”