Monsters of Men

And–

And–

And we’re still here–

No waves of heat and death, no top of the hill obliterated with us still standing on it–

What happened? Ben asks as we all lift our heads again.

There’s a gash in the riverbed and some smoke from where the missile hit but–

“It didn’t explode,” I say.

“Nor that one,” Bradley says, pointing to the hillside, where a streak of brush and shrubs has been torn out but where you can also see the casing from the missile broken up into pieces.

Broken up by the impact with the rock, not by an explosion.

“They can’t be duds,” I say, “not both of them.” I look at Bradley and feel a rush of excitement. “You disco

“Not me,” he says, looking back up to the scout ship, hovering there, the Mayor no doubt wondering as much as we are how we’re all still standing here. “Simone,” Bradley says. He looks back at me. “We never quite got over me having Noise and I thought she was too close to Mistress Coyle, but . . .” He looks back up at the scout ship. “She must have seen the potential harm.” I can see his Noise choking up. “She saved us.”

The Sky and 1017 are watching, too, and you can hear their surprise that the missiles didn’t kill everyone.

Are those the only weapons on the ship? Ben asks.

I look back up and the scout ship is already turning in the air–

“The hoopers,” I say, remembering–

[TODD]

“What the HELL?” the Mayor growls–

But I’m watching the screens that show the hilltop–

Where the missiles ain’t exploded–

They just crashed and that was that, causing no more damage than throwing a really big rock–

“Todd!” the Mayor shouts into the camera. “What do you know of this?”

“You fired at VIOLA!” I shout back. “Yer life ain’t worth nothing, you hear me? NOTHING!”

He makes another growling sound and I run to the door of the healing room but of course it’s locked and then the whole floor lurches back as he powers the ship forward. I fall into the beds, slipping on Ivan’s blood, trying to keep my eyes on the screens, trying to see her anywhere on the hilltop–

And with one hand I’m patting my pockets down for the comm but of course he took that–

But then I start looking round the room cuz Simone used to talk to us from the ship, didn’t she? And if the comm system comes down here from the cockpit, maybe it can go outta here as well–

I hear two more whooshing sounds–

In the screens, two more missiles are headed for the hilltop, at closer range this time, and they both slam hard into the crowds of Spackle fleeing down the riverbed–

But still no proper explozhuns–

“Very well, then,” I hear the Mayor say in that measured way that means he’s really angry.

And we’re flying right over the top of the Spackle–

And goddam if there ain’t a lot of ’em–

How in the living hell did we ever think we could fight an army that big?

“I do believe there’s another class of weapon on this ship,” the Mayor says–

And the screens show a view from above as the cluster bombs drop onto the fleeing Spackle–

Drop and fall and not explode neither–

“DAMMIT!” I hear the Mayor yell–

I lurch over to the comm panel where the Mayor’s voice is coming out. I touch the screen beside it and a whole list of words pops up–

“So be it,” seethes the Mayor on the screen behind me. “We’ll just have to do things the old-fashioned way.”

And I’m looking at the words on the screen and I’m forcing my concentrayshun on ’em, forcing everything the Mayor taught me–

And slowly, slowly, slowly, they start to make sense–

{VIOLA}

“We wanted peace!” Bradley shouts at the Sky, as we watch the hoopers fall with almost no effect except for the poor Spackle just beneath them. “This is the action of one man!”

But the Sky’s Noise has no words, just anger, anger that he’s been duped, anger that his position is weak because he’s proposed peace, anger that we’ve betrayed him.

“We haven’t!” I shout. “He’s trying to kill us, too!”

And my heart’s beating out of my chest worrying what the Mayor’s done to Todd–

“Can you help us?” Bradley says to the Sky. “Can you help us stop him?”

The Sky looks over to him, surprised. The Spackle behind him still run but the trees on the riverbanks are starting to disguise their numbers as they flee the scout ship, which has stopped dropping the disarmed hoopers and is hovering ominously in the still-falling snow.

“Your burning fire bolt things,” I say. “Those things you shoot from the bows.”

Would they work against an armoured vessel? The Sky asks.

“In large enough numbers, maybe,” Bradley says. “While the ship’s still low enough to be hit.”

The ship is turning now, still hovering at the same height, and we hear a change to the pitch of its engines.

Bradley looks up sharply.

“What is it?” I say.

Bradley shakes his head. “He’s changing the fuel mixture,” he says and his Noise cranks up, confused but alarmed, as if it’s remembering something just a little out of reach–

“He’s the last obstacle to peace here,” I say to the Sky. “If we can stop him–”

Then someone else will pop up in his place, says the Sky. That has always been the evil of the Clearing.

“Then we’ll just have to work that much harder!” I say. “If we managed to get this far against the man in that ship, don’t you think that at least shows how much it means to some of us?”

The Sky looks back up and I can see the rumblings of agreement there, rumblings that what I say is true against the other truth of the ship hanging in the air–

And of the ships to come–

The Sky turns to 1017. Send a message along the Pathways, he says. Order the weapons to be prepared.

(THE RETURN)

Me? I show.

The Land will need to learn to listen to you, the Sky shows. They can begin right now.

And he opens his voice to me and I am sending out his orders in the language of the Land almost before I know I am doing it–

I let it flow through me, as if I am merely a cha

Flow through me and out into the Pathways, into the soldiers and the Land waiting around us, and it is not my voice, not even the Sky’s voice nearby speaking through me, but a voice of the bigger Sky, the Sky that exists apart from whatever individual goes by the name, the Sky which is the agreement of the Land, the accumulated voice of all of us, the voice of the Land speaking to itself, the voice that keeps it alive and safe and ready to face the future, it is that which speaks through me–

That is the voice of the Sky–

And it urges the soldiers to battle, urges the rest of the Land to fight as well, to gather the spi

It’s working, the Source shows to the people from the Clearing. Help is coming–

And then there is a hissing sound from above and we all look up–

To see a waterfall of fire pouring out of the engines of the vessel–

Pouring down like blood from a wound, smoke and steam billowing around it in the cold air, pouring down onto the Land and setting it ablaze and as the vessel starts to fly a wide circle around us, the fire roars up from the ground in walls, burning everything that can burn, trees, secreted huts, the Land, the world–

“Rocketfuel,” the man from the Clearing says.

“He’s trapping us here,” the Knife’s one in particular says, spi

The vessel rises higher in the air, its circle arcing wider, the fire still pouring out of it–

He’s destroying everything, the Source says. He’s setting the whole valley ablaze.