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Finally feel like I'm doing something for Todd. We hear the crunch of gravel on the road and crouch a little lower as the expected pair of soldiers march past us and away.
"Here we go," I say.
We stand up as much as we dare and move quickly down the ditch, away from the town.
"Do you still have family on the ships?" Maddy whispers. "Someone besides your mother and father?"
I wince a little at the sound she's making but I know she's only talking to cover her nerves. "No, but I know everyone else. Bradley Tench, he's lead caretaker on the Beta, and Simone Watkin on the Gamma is really smart."
The ditch bends with the road and there's a crossroads coming up that we'll have to negotiate.
Maddy starts up again. "So Simone's the one you'd-"
"Shh," I say because I think I heard something.
Maddy comes close enough to press against me. Her whole body is shaking and her breath is coming in short little puffs. She has to come this time because she knows where the tower is, but I can't ask her to do it again. When I come back, I'll come on my own.
Because if anything goes wrong-
"I think we're okay," I say.
We step slowly out from the ditch to cross the crossroads, looking all around us, stepping lightly in the gravel. "Going somewhere?" says a voice.
***
Maddy takes in a sharp breath behind me. There's a soldier leaning against a tree, his legs crossed like he couldn't be more relaxed.
Even in the moonlight I can see the rifle hanging lazily from his hand.
"Little late to be out, i
"We got lost," I sputter. "We were separated from-"
"Yeah," he interrupts. "I'll bet."
He strikes a match against the zip of his uniform jacket. In the flare of light, I see sergeant hammar written across his pocket. He uses the match to light a cigarette in his mouth.
Cigarettes were ba
But I guess if you're an officer.
An officer without Noise who can hide in the dark.
He takes a step forward and we see his face. He's got a smile on over the cigarette, an ugly one, the ugliest I've ever seen.
"You?" he says, recognition in his voice as he gets nearer.
As he raises his rifle.
"Yer the girl," he says, looking at me.
"Viola?" Maddy whispers, a step behind me and to my right.
"Mayor Prentiss knows me," I say. "You won't harm me." He inhales on the cigarette, flashing the ember, making a streak against my vision. "President Prentiss knows you." Then he looks at Maddy, pointing at her with the rifle. "I don't reckon he knows you, tho." And before I can say anything-Without giving any kind of warning-As if it was as natural to him as taking his next breath-Sergeant Hammar pulls the trigger.
9 WAR IS OVER
***
[TODD]
YOUR TURN TO DO THE BOG," Davy says, throwing me the canister of lime.
We never see the Spackle use the corner where they've dug a bog to do their business but every morning it's a little bit bigger and stinks a little bit more and it needs lime powdered over it to cut down on the smell and the danger of infeckshun.
I hope it works better on infeckshun than it does on smell. "Why ain't it never yer turn?" I say.
"Cuz Pa may think yer the better man, pigpiss," Davy says, "but he still put me in charge." And he grins at me. I start walking to the bog.
The days passed and they kept passing, till there was two full weeks of 'em gone and more. I stayed alive and got thru, (did she?) (did she?)
Davy and I ride to the monastery every morning and he "oversees" the Spackle tearing down fences and pulling up brambles and I spend the day shoveling out not enough fodder and trying and failing to fix the last two water pumps and taking every turn to do the bog.
The Spackle've stayed silent, still not doing nothing that could save themselves, fifteen hundred of 'em when we finally got 'em counted, crammed into an area where I wouldn't herd two hundred sheep. More guards came, standing along the top of the stone wall, rifles pointed twixt rows of barbed wire, but the Spackle don't do nothing that even comes close to threatening.
They've stayed alive. They've got thru it.
And so has New Prentisstown.
Every day, Mayor Ledger tells me what he sees out on his rubbish rounds. Men and women are still separated and there are more taxes, more rules about dress, a list of books to be surrendered and burned, and compulsory church attendance, tho not in the cathedral, of course.
But it's also started to act like a real town again. The stores are back open, carts and fissionbikes and even a fissioncar or two are back on the roads. Men've gone back to work. Repairmen returned to repairing, bakers returned to baking, farmers returned to farming, loggers returned to logging, some of 'em even signing up to join the army itself, tho you can tell who the new soldiers are cuz they ain't been given the cure yet.
"You know," Mayor Ledger said one night and I could see it in his Noise before he said it, see the thought forming, the thought I hadn't thought myself, the thought I hadn't let myself think. "It's not nearly as bad as I thought," he said. "I expected slaughter. I expected my own death, certainly, and perhaps the burning of the entire town. The surrender was a fool's chance at best, but maybe he's not lying."
He got up and looked out over New Prentisstown. "Maybe," he said, "the war really is over."
"Oi!" I hear Davy call as I'm halfway to the bog. I turn round. A Spackle has come up to him.
It's holding its long white arms up and out in what may be a peaceful way and then it starts clicking, pointing to where a group of Spackle have finished tearing down a fence. It's clicking and clicking, pointing to one of the empty water troughs, but there ain't no way of understanding it, not if you can't hear its Noise.
Davy steps closer to it, his eyes wide, his head nodding in sympathy, his smile dangerous. "Yeah, yeah, yer thirsty from the hard work," he says. "Course you are, course you are, thank you for bringing that to my attenshun, thank you very much. And in reply, let me just say this."
He smashes the butt of his pistol into the Spackle's face. You can hear the crack of bone and the Spackle falls to the ground clutching at its jaw, long legs twisting in the air.
There's a wave of clicking around us and Davy lifts his pistol again, bullet end facing the crowd. Rifles cock on the fence top, too, soldiers pointing their weapons. The Spackle slink back, the broken - jawed one still writhing and writhing in the grass.
"Know what, pigpiss?" Davy says.
"What?" I say, my eyes still on the Spackle on the ground, my Noise shaky as a leaf about to fall.
He turns to me, pistol still out. "It's good to be in charge."
Every minute I've expected life to blow apart. But every minute, it don't. And every day I've looked for her.
I've looked for her from the openings outta the top of the bell tower but all I ever see is the army marching and men working. Never a face I reckernize, never a silence I can feel as hers.
I've looked for her when Davy and I ride back and forth to the monastery, seeking her out in the windows of the Women's Quarter, but I never see her looking back.
I've even half looked for her in the crowds of Spackle, wondering if she's hiding behind one, ready to pop out and yell at Davy for beating on 'em and then saying to me, like everything's okay, "Hey, I'm here, it's me."
But she ain't there.