Monsters of Men

{VIOLA}

The urgency of Bradley’s Noise is awful.

“You’re not dying,” I say from the bed where Simone is injecting bone-mending into my ankles. “Bradley–”

“No,” he says, holding up his hands to stop me. “I feel . . .” “I can’t tell you how naked this makes me feel.”

Simone’s turned the sleeping quarters of the scout ship into a makeshift house of healing. I’m on one bed and Bradley’s in the other, his eyes wide open, his hands mostly to his ears, his Noise getting louder and louder–

“You’re sure he’s going to be all right?” Simone whispers close to me as she finishes the injections and starts bandaging my ankles. I can hear the strain in her voice.

“All I know,” I whisper back, “is that men here got used to it eventually and that–”

“There was a cure,” she interrupts. “Which this Mayor person burnt every last bit of.”

“Yes,” I say, “but at least that means one is possible.”

Quit whispering about me, Bradley’s Noise says.

“Sorry,” I say.

“For what?” he says, looking over, and then he realizes. “Could you both possibly leave me be for a while, please?”

And his Noise says, For Chrissakes get the hell out of here and give me some peace!

“Just let me finish up with Viola,” Simone says, voice still shaky and trying not to look at him. She ties the last bandage around my left ankle.

“Could you grab another one?” I ask her quietly.

“What for?”

“I’ll tell you outside. I don’t want to upset him any more.”

She looks at me suspiciously for a second but then grabs another bandage out of a drawer and we make our way to the door, Bradley’s Noise filling the little room from wall to wall.

“I still don’t understand it,” Simone says as we go. “I’m hearing it with my ears, but I’m hearing it inside my head, too. Words–” she looks at Bradley, her eyes growing wide “–and pictures.”

She’s right, pictures are starting to come from him, pictures that could be in your head or hanging in the air in front of you–

Pictures of us standing here watching him, pictures of himself on the bed–

Then pictures of what we saw in the probe projection, of what happened when a flaming Spackle arrow hit it and the signal gave out–

And then pictures of the scout ship coming down from orbit, pictures of this planet far below as they flew in, a vast bluish green ocean next to miles of forest, not even thinking to look for a Spackle army blending into the riverbank as the ship circled over New Prentisstown–

And then other pictures–

Pictures of Simone–

Pictures of Simone and Bradley–

“Bradley!” Simone says, shocked and taking a step back.

“Please!” he shouts. “Just leave me alone! This is unbearable!”

I’m shocked, too, because the pictures of Bradley and Simone are really clear and the more Bradley tries to cover them, the clearer they get, so I take Simone’s elbow and pull her away, hitting a panel to close the door behind us, which only muffles his Noise in the way it might muffle a loud voice.

We head outside. Girl colt? Acorn says, coming over from where he’s been munching grass.

“And the animals, too,” Simone says, as I rub Acorn’s nose. “What kind of place is this?”

“It’s information,” I say, remembering Ben describing how New World was for the first settlers, telling me and Todd that night in the cemetery which seems so impossibly long ago now. “Information, all the time, never stopping, whether you want it to or not.”

“He seems so frightened,” she says, her voice breaking on the word. “And those things he was thinking–” She turns away and I’m too embarrassed to ask if Bradley’s pictures were things he was remembering or things he wished for.

“He’s still the same Bradley,” I say. “You’ve got to remember that. What would it be like if everyone could hear all the things you didn’t want to say out loud?”

She sighs, looking up to the two moons, high in the sky. “There are over two thousand male settlers on the convoy, Viola. Two thousand. What’s going to happen when we wake them all up?”

“They’ll get used to it,” I say. “Men do.”

Simone snorts through the thickness in her voice. “Do women?”

“Well, that’s sort of a complicated issue around here.”

She shakes her head again, then notices she’s still holding the bandage. “What did you need this for?”

I bite my lip for a second. “Now, don’t freak out.”

I slowly pull back my sleeve and show her the band on my arm. The redness of the skin around it is even worse than it was before, and you can see my number shining in the moons-light. 1391.

“Oh, Viola,” Simone says, her voice dangerously quiet. “Did that man do this to you?”

“Not to me,” I say. “To most of the other women, though.” I cough a little. “I did this to myself.”

“To yourself?”

“For a good reason. Look, I’ll explain later, but I could really use a bandage on it right now.”

She waits for a moment, then keeps her eyes on mine as she wraps the bandage gently around my arm. The coolness from the medicine feels immediately better. “Sweetheart?” she asks, so much fierce tenderness in her voice it’s hard to look at her. “Are you really okay?”

I try a barely-there smile to shake off some of her worry. “I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

“I think you do,” she says, tying off the bandage. “And maybe you should start.”

I shake my head. “I can’t. I’ve got to get to Todd.”

Her forehead furrows. “What . . . you mean now?” She stands up straighter. “You can’t wander down into the middle of a war!”

“It’s calmed down. We saw it.”

“We saw two huge armies camped at the front line and then our probe was shot out of the sky! There’s no way you’re going down there.”

“It’s where Todd is,” I say. “It’s where I have to go.”

“You aren’t. As Mission Commander, I forbid it and that’s the end of it.”

I blink. “You forbid it?”

And I feel a really surprising anger start to rise from my belly.

Simone sees the look on my face and softens her own expression. “Viola, what you’ve obviously survived for the past five months is beyond amazing, but we’re here now. I love you far too much to allow you to put yourself in that kind of danger. You can’t go. No way.”

“If we want peace, we can’t let the war get any bigger.”

“And how are you and one boy going to stop that?”

And then the anger really starts to rise, and I try to remember that she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know what I’ve been through, what me and Todd have done. She doesn’t know I’m about a million miles past people forbidding me to do stuff.

I reach over for Acorn’s reins and he kneels down.

“Viola, no,” Simone says, stomping over–

Submit! Acorn yells, startled.

Simone takes a frightened step back. I swing my sore but mending leg over Acorn’s saddle.

“No one is the boss of me any more, Simone,” I say quietly, trying to stay calm but surprised at how strong I feel. “If my parents had lived, it might be different. But they didn’t.”

She looks like she wants to come over, but she’s seriously wary of Acorn now. “Just because your parents aren’t here doesn’t mean there aren’t still people who care for you, who can care for you.”

“Please,” I say. “You have to trust me.”

She looks at me in a kind of sad frustration. “It’s too early for you to have grown up this much.”

“Yeah, well,” I say, “sometimes you don’t have a choice.” Acorn stands up, ready to go. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Viola–”

“I have to get to Todd. That’s all there is to it. And now that the fighting’s stopped, I’ll have to find Mistress Coyle, too, before she can start blowing things up again.”