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We run past one, then two small, empty settlements, places that obviously heeded the rumours about the army better than Carbonel Downs did. We keep to the woods twixt the river and the road but we don’t even see any caravans. They must be high-tailing it to Haven.
On we run.
Night falls and we keep on ru
“You all right?” I ask Ben, when we stop by the river to refill the bottles.
“Keep on going,” he says, gasping. “Keep on going.”
Viola sends me a worried look.
“I’m sorry we don’t got food,” I say, but he just shakes his head and says, “Keep going.”
So we keep going.
Midnight comes and we run thru that, too.
(Who knows how many days? Who cares any more?)
Till finally, Ben says, “Wait,” and stops, hands on his knees, breathing hard in a real unhealthy way.
I look around us by the light of the moons. Viola’s looking, too. She points. “There.”
“Up there, Ben,” I say, pointing up the small hill Viola’s seen. “We’ll be able to get a view.”
Ben don’t say nothing, just gasps and nods his head and follows us. There’s trees all the way up the side but a well-tended path and a wide clearing at the top.
When we get there, we see why.
“A sematary,” I say.
“A what?” Viola says, looking round at all the square stones marking out their graves. Must be a hundred, maybe two, in orderly rows and well-kept grass. Settler life is hard and it’s short and lotsa New World people have lost the battle.
“It’s a place for burying dead folk,” I say.
Her eyes widen. “A place for doing what?”
“Don’t people die in space?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she says. “But we burn them. We don’t put them in holes.” She crosses her arms around herself, mouth and forehead frowning, peering around at the graves. “How can this be sanitary?”
Ben still hasn’t said anything, just flopped down by a gravestone and leant against it, catching his breath. I take a swig from a water bottle and then hand it to Ben. I look out and around us. You can see down the road for a piece and there’s a view of the river, too, rushing by us on the left now. It’s a clear sky, the stars out, the moons starting to crescent in the sky above us.
“Ben?” I say, looking up into the night.
“Yeah?” he says, drinking down his water.
“You all right?”
“Yeah.” His breath’s getting back to normal. “I’m built for farm labour. Not sprinting.”
I look at the moons one more time, the smaller one chasing the larger one, two brightnesses up there, still light enough to cast shadows, ignorant of the troubles of men.
I look into myself. I look deep into my Noise.
And I realize I’m ready.
This is the last chance.
And I’m ready.
“I think it’s time,” I say. I look back at him. “I think now’s the time, if it’s ever go
He licks his lips and swallows his water. He puts the cap back on the bottle. “I know,” he says.
“Time for what?” Viola asks.
“Where should I start?” Ben asks.
I shrug. “Anywhere,” I say, “as long as it’s true.”
I can hear Ben’s Noise gathering, gathering up the whole story, taking one stream out of the river, finally, the one that tells what really happened, the one hidden for so long and so deep I didn’t even know it was there for my whole up-growing life.
Viola’s silence has gone more silent than usual, as still as the night, waiting to hear what he might say.
Ben takes a deep breath.
“The Noise germ wasn’t Spackle warfare,” he says. “That’s the first thing. The germ was here when we landed. A naturally occurring phenomenon, in the air, always had been, always will be. We got outta our ships and within a day everyone could hear everyone’s thoughts. Imagine our surprise.”
He pauses, remembering.
“Except it wasn’t everyone,” Viola says.
“It was just the men,” I say.
Ben nods. “No one knows why. Still don’t. Our scientists were mainly agriculturalists and the doctors couldn’t find a reason and so for a while, there was chaos. Just . . . chaos, like you wouldn’t believe. Chaos and confusion and Noise Noise Noise.” He scratches underneath his chin. “A lotta men scattered theirselves into far communities, getting away from Haven as fast as roads could be cut. But soon folk realized there was nothing to be done about it so for a while we all tried to live with it the best we could, found different ways to deal with it, different communities taking their own paths. Same as we did when we realized all our livestock were talking, too, and pets and local creachers.”
He looks up into the sky and to the sematary around us and the river and road below.
“Everything on this planet talks to each other,” he says. “Everything. That’s what New World is. Informayshun, all the time, never stopping, whether you want it or not. The Spackle knew it, evolved to live with it, but we weren’t equipped for it. Not even close. And too much informayshun can drive a man mad. Too much informayshun becomes just Noise. And it never, never stops.”
He pauses and the Noise is there, of course, like it always is, his and mine and Viola’s silence only making it louder.
“As the years went by,” he goes on, “times were hard all over New World and getting harder. Crops failing and sickness and no prosperity and no Eden. Definitely no Eden. And a preaching started spreading in the land, a poisonous preaching, a preaching that started to blame.”
“They blamed the aliens,” Viola says.
“The Spackle,” I say and the shame returns.
“They blamed the Spackle,” Ben confirms. “And somehow preaching became a movement and a movement became a war.” He shakes his head. “They didn’t stand a chance. We had guns, they didn’t, and that was the end of the Spackle.”
“Not all,” I say.
“No,” he says. “Not all. But they learned better than to come too near men again, I tell you that.”
A brief wind blows across the hilltop. When it stops, it’s like we’re the only three people left on New World. Us and the sematary ghosts.
“But the war’s not the end of the story,” Viola says quietly.
“No,” Ben says. “The story ain’t finished, ain’t even half finished.”
And I know it ain’t. And I know where it’s heading.
And I changed my mind. I don’t want it to finish.
But I do, too.
I look into Ben’s eyes, into his Noise.
“The war didn’t stop with the Spackle,” I say. “Not in Prentisstown.”
Ben licks his lips and I can feel unsteadiness in his Noise and hunger and grief at what he’s already imagining is our next parting.
“War is a monster,” he says, almost to himself. “War is the devil. It starts and it consumes and it grows and grows and grows.” He’s looking at me now. “And otherwise normal men become monsters, too.”
“They couldn’t stand the silence,” Viola says, her voice still. “They couldn’t stand women knowing everything about them and them knowing nothing about women.”
“Some men thought that,” Ben says. “Not all. Not me, not Cillian. There were good men in Prentisstown.”
“But enough thought it,” I say.
“Yes,” he nods.
There’s another pause as the truth starts to show itself.
Finally. And forever.
Viola is shaking her head. “Are you saying . . . ?” she says. “Are you really saying . . . ?”
And here it is.
Here’s the thing that’s the centre of it all.
Here’s the thing that’s been growing in my head since I left the swamp, seen in flashes of men along the way, most clearly in Matthew Lyle’s but also in the reakshuns of everyone who even hears the word Prentisstown.
Here it is.
The truth.
And I don’t want it.
But I say it anyway.
“After they killed the Spackle,” I say, “the men of Prentisstown killed the women of Prentisstown.”
Viola gasps even tho she’s got to have guessed it, too.
“Not all the men,” Ben says. “But many. Allowing themselves to be swayed by Mayor Prentiss and the preachings of Aaron, who used to say that what was hidden must be evil. They killed all the women and all the men who tried to protect them.”