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“You were a very sick boy,” he says. “I wasn’t sure we were going to be able to beat it. You weren’t even giving off Noise until yesterday.” He looks me in the eye. “Haven’t seen that sort of sickness for a long time.”
“Yeah, well,” I say.
“Haven’t heard of a Spackle attack for a very long time,” he says. I don’t say nothing to this, just breathe deep. “That’s great, Todd,” the doctor says. “Could you take off your shirt, please?”
I look at him, then over to Viola.
“I’ll wait outside,” she says and out she goes.
I reach behind me to pull my shirt over my head and as I do I realize there’s no pain twixt my shoulderblades.
“Took some stitches, that one,” Doctor Snow says, moving around behind me. He puts the device against my back.
I flinch away. “That’s cold.”
“She wouldn’t leave your side,” he says, ignoring me and checking different places for my breath. “Not even to sleep.”
“How long I been here?”
“This is the fifth morning.”
“Five days?” I say and he barely has a chance to say yes before I’m pulling back the covers and getting outta the bed. “We gotta get outta here,” I say, a little unsteady on my feet but standing nonetheless.
Viola leans back in the doorway. “I’ve been trying to tell them that.”
“You’re safe here,” Doctor Snow says.
“We’ve heard that before,” I say. I look to Viola for support but all she does is stifle a smile and I realize I’m standing there in just a pair of holey and seriously worn-out underpants that ain’t covering as much as they should. “Hey!” I say, moving my hands down to the important bits.
“You’re safe as you’re going to be anywhere,” Doctor Snow says behind me, handing me a pair of my trousers from a neatly washed pile by the bed. “We were one of the main fronts in the war. We know how to defend ourselves.”
“That was Spackle.” I turn my back to Viola and shove my legs in the trousers. “This is men. A thousand men.”
“So the rumours say,” Doctor Snow says. “Even though it’s not actually numerically possible.”
“I don’t know nothing from numerickly,” I say, “but they got guns.”
“We have guns.”
“And horses.”
“We’ve got horses.”
“Do you have men who’ll join them?” I say, challenging him.
He don’t say nothing to that, which is satisfying. Then again, it ain’t satisfying at all. I button up my trousers. “We need to go.”
“You need to rest,” the doctor says.
“We ain’t staying and waiting for the army to show up.” I turn to include Viola, turn without thinking to the space where my dog’d be waiting for me to include him too.
There’s a quiet moment when my Noise fills the room with Manchee, just fills it with him, side to side, barking and barking and needing a poo and barking some more.
And dying.
I don’t know what to say about that neither.
(He’s gone, he’s gone.)
I feel empty. All over empty.
“No one’s going to make you do anything you don’t want to, Todd,” Doctor Snow says gently. “But the eldermen of the village would like to talk to you before you leave us.”
I tighten my mouth. “Bout what?”
“About anything that might help.”
“How can I help?” I say, grabbing a washed shirt to put on. “The army will come and kill everyone here who don’t join it. That’s it.”
“This is our home, Todd,” he says. “We’re going to defend it. We have no choice.”
“Then count me out–” I start to say.
“Daddy?” we hear.
There’s a little boy standing in the doorway next to Viola.
An actual boy.
He’s looking up at me, eyes wide open, his Noise a fu
“Hey, fella,” Doctor Snow says. “Jacob, this is Todd. All woke up.”
Jacob looks at me solemnly, a finger in his mouth, and gives a little nod. “Goat’s not milking,” he says quietly.
“Is she not?” Doctor Snow says, standing up. “Well, we’d better go see if we can talk her into it, hadn’t we?”
Daddy daddy daddy says Jacob’s Noise.
“I’ll see to the goat,” Doctor Snow is saying to me, “and then I’ll go round up the rest of the eldermen.”
I can’t stop staring at Jacob. Who can’t stop staring at me.
He’s so much closer than the kids I saw at Farbranch.
And he’s so small.
Was I that small?
Doctor Snow’s still talking. “I’ll bring the eldermen back here, see if you can’t help us.” He leans down till I’m looking at him. “And if we can’t help you.”
His Noise is sincere, truthful. I believe he means what he says. I also believe he’s mistaken.
“Maybe,” he says, with a smile. “Maybe not. You haven’t even seen the place yet. Come on, Jake.” He takes his son’s hand. “There’s food in the kitchen. I’ll bet you’re starved. Be back within the hour.”
I go to the door to watch them leave. Jacob, finger still in his mouth, looks back at me till he and his pa disappear outta the house.
“How old is that?” I ask Viola, still looking down the hallway. “I don’t even know how old that is.”
“He’s four,” she says. “He’s told me about 800 times. Which seems kind of young to be milking goats.”
“Not on New World, it ain’t,” I say. I turn back to her and her hands are on her hips and she’s giving me a serious look.
“Come and eat,” she says. “We need to talk.”
She leads me to a kitchen as clean and bright as the bedroom. River still rushing by outside, birds still Noisy, music still–
“What is that music?” I say, going to the window to look out. Sometimes it seems like I reckernize it but when I listen close, it’s voices changing over voices, ru
“It’s from loudspeakers up in the main settlement,” Viola says, taking a plate of cold meat outta the fridge.
I sit down at the table. “Is there some kinda festival going on?”
“No,” she says, in a way that means just wait. “Not a festival.” She gets out bread and some orange fruit I ain’t never seen before and then some red-coloured drink that tastes of berries and sugar.
I dig into the food. “Tell me.”
“Doctor Snow is a good man,” she says, like I need to know this first. “Everything about him is good and kind and he worked so hard to save you, Todd, I mean it.”
“Okay. So what’s up?”
“That music plays all day and all night,” she says, watching me eat. “It’s faint here at the house, but in the settlement, you can’t hear yourself think.”
I pause at a mouthful of bread. “Like the pub.”
“What pub?”
“The pub in Prent–” I stop. “Where do they think we’re from?”
“Farbranch.”
I sigh. “I’ll do my best.” I take a bite of the fruit. “The pub where I come from played music all the time to try and drown out the Noise.”
She nods. “I asked Doctor Snow why they did it here, and he said, ‘To keep men’s thoughts private’.”
I shrug. “It makes an awful racket, but it kinda makes sense, don’t it? One way to deal with the Noise.”
“Men’s thoughts, Todd,” she says. “Men. And you notice he said he was going to ask the eldermen to come seek out your advice?”
I get a horrible thought. “Did the women all die here, too?”
“Oh, there’s women,” she says, fiddling with a butter knife. “They clean and they cook and they make babies and they all live in a big dormitory outside of town where they can’t interfere in men’s business.”