Monsters of Men (20 page)

“They started coming up the hill about an hour ago,” he’s saying to her. “Twos and threes at first, but now . . .”

“Who did?” I ask, following them outside and down the ramp, joining Lee, Simone and Mistress Coyle at the bottom. I look out across the hilltop.

Which now has three times as many people as it did yesterday. Ragged-looking groups of all ages, some still wearing the night clothes they were in when the Spackle first attacked.

“Do any of them need medical attention?” Mistress Lawson asks, not waiting for a reply before she heads off towards the largest batch of newcomers.

“Why are they coming
here
?” I ask.

“I’ve been talking to some of them,” Lee says. “People don’t know whether it’s safer to have the scout ship protect them or stay in town and have the army do it.” He looks over at Mistress Coyle. “When they heard the Answer was here, that made up some of their minds.”

“Which way?” I say, frowning.

“There’s got to be five hundred people here,” Simone says. “We don’t have anything like that kind of supply of food or water.”

“The Answer does in the short term,” Mistress Coyle says, “but you can bet there’ll be more coming.” She turns to Bradley and Simone. “I’m going to need your help.”

As if you’d have to ask
, Bradley’s Noise rattles. “The convoy agrees that our primary mission is humanitarian,” he says. He looks over at me and Simone, and his Noise rattles some more.

Mistress Coyle nods. “We should probably have a talk about the best way to do that. I’ll get the mistresses together and–”

“And we’ll include it with a talk about how to sign a new truce with the Spackle,” I say.

“That’s a thorny issue, my girl. You can’t just wander in and ask for peace.”

“And you can’t just sit back and wait for more war either.” I can tell from Bradley’s Noise he’s listening to me. “We have to find a way to make this world work together.”

“Ideals, my girl,” she says. “Always easier to believe in than live.”

“But if you don’t at least
try
to live them,” Bradley says, “then there’s no point in living at all.”

Mistress Coyle looks at him slyly. “Which is another ideal in itself.”

“Excuse me,” a woman says, approaching the ship. She looks nervously over all of us before settling her eyes on Mistress Coyle. “You’re the healer, aren’t you?”

“I am,” Mistress Coyle replies.

“She’s
a
healer,” I say. “One of many.”

“Can you help me?” the woman says.

And she pulls up her sleeve to reveal a band so infected it’s clear even to me that she’s already lost her arm.

[T
ODD
]

“They kept coming through the night,”
Viola says to me thru the comm.
“There’s three times as many here now.”

“Same here,” I say.

It’s just before dawn, the day after Mr Shaw spoke to the Mayor, the day after townsfolk started showing up on Viola’s hill, too, and more keep popping up everywhere. Tho it’s mostly men in town and mostly women up on the hill. Not all, but mostly.

“So the Mayor gets what he wants,”
Viola sighs, and even on the small screen I can see how pale she still looks.
“Men and women separated.”

“You all right?” I ask.

“I’m okay,”
she says a bit too quick.
“I’ll call you later, Todd. Busy day ahead.”

We hang up and I come outta my tent and find the Mayor already waiting for me with two cups of coffee. He holds one out. After a second, I take it. We both stand there drinking, trying to get some warmth inside of us as the sky gets pinker. Even at this hour, there are some lights on where the Mayor’s men got power running into some of the bigger buildings so the townsfolk could gather in warmth.

The Mayor’s eyes are on the Spackle hilltop, like always, still in the dark half of the sky, still hiding an unseen army behind itself. And I realize that just right now, just for these few minutes while the Mayor’s army sleeps, you can hear something besides their sleeping
ROAR
,
something faint and in the distance.

The Spackle got a
ROAR
,
too.

“Their voice,” the Mayor says. “And I really do think it’s one big voice, evolved to fit this world perfectly, connecting them all.” He sips his coffee. “You can hear it sometimes on quiet nights. All those individuals, speaking as one. Like the voice of this whole world, right inside your head.”

He keeps staring at the hill in a kinda spooky way, so I ask, “Yer spies ain’t heard ’em planning nothing?”

He takes another drink but don’t answer me.

“They can’t get close, can they?” I say. “Else they’ll hear
our
plans.”

“That’s the nub of it, Todd.”

“Mr O’Hare and Mr Tate don’t got Noise.”

“I’m already down two captains,” he says. “I can’t spare any more.”

“Well, you didn’t really burn all the cure, did you? Just give it to yer spies.”

He don’t say nothing.

“You didn’t,” I say, then I realize. “You
did
.”

He still don’t say nothing.

“Why?”
I ask, looking round at the soldiers nearby. The
ROAR
is already getting louder now as they wake. “The Spackle can sure hear
us
. You coulda had an advantage–”

“I have other advantages,” he says. “Besides, there may be another among us soon who could be most useful in regards to spying.”

I frown. “I ain’t never gonna work for you,” I say. “Not never.”

“You already
have
worked for me, dear boy,” he says. “For several months, if I remember correctly.”

I can feel my temper rising
right
up but I stop cuz James has come over with the morning feedbag for Angharrad. “I’ll take it,” I say, setting down my coffee. He hands me the bag and I loop it gently round Angharrad’s head.

Boy colt?
she asks.

“It’s okay,” I say, into her ears, stroking ’em with my fingers. “Eat, girl.” It takes another minute but then I start seeing her jaws work as she takes the first bites. “Attagirl,” I say.

James is still there, staring at me blankly, his hands still up from when he gave me the bag. “Thanks, James,” I say.

He still stands there, staring, not blinking, hands still up.

“I said,
thanks
.”

And then I hear it.

It’s hard to catch in the
ROAR
of everyone else’s Noise, even James’s, which is thinking about how he used to live upriver with his pa and his brother and how he joined the army when it marched past cuz it was either that or die fighting and now here he is, in a war with the Spackle, but he’s happy now, happy to be fighting, happy to be serving the President–

“Aren’t you, soldier?” says the Mayor, taking another sip of his coffee.

“I am,” James says, still not blinking. “Very happy.”

Cuz underneath it all lies the little vibrating
buzz
of the Mayor’s Noise, seeping into James’s, twining round it like a snake, pushing it into a shape that ain’t too disagreeable to James but still ain’t quite his own.

“You may go,” the Mayor says.

“Thank you, sir,” James blinks, dropping his hands. He gives me a funny little smile and then walks back into the thick of the camp.

“You can’t,” I say to the Mayor. “Not all of ’em. You said you just started being able to control people. That’s what you
said.
”

He don’t answer, just turns back up to the hill.

I stare at him, figuring it out some more. “But yer getting stronger,” I say. “And if they’re cured–”

“The cure turned out to mask everything,” he says. “It made them, shall we say, harder to reach. You need a lever to work a man. And Noise turns out to be a very good one.”

I look round us again. “But you don’t
have
to,” I say. “They’re already following you.”

“Well, yes, Todd, but that doesn’t mean they’re not open to suggestion. It can’t have escaped your attention how quickly they follow my orders in battle.”

“Yer working up to controlling a whole army,” I say. “A whole
world
.”

“You make it sound so sinister.” He smiles that smile. “I’d only ever use it for the good of us all.

And then there’s a sound behind us, fast footsteps. It’s Mr O’Hare, outta breath, his face blazing.

“They’ve attacked our spies,” he pants at the Mayor. “Only one man each returned from north and south. Obviously left so they could tell us what happened. The Spackle slaughtered the rest.”

The Mayor grimaces and turns back to the hilltop. “So,” he says. “That’s how they’re playing the game.”

“What’s that sposed to mean?” I say.

“Attacks from the northern road and the southern hills,” he says. “The first steps towards the inevitable.”

“The inevitable what?”

He raises his eyebrows. “They’re surrounding us, of course.”

{VIOLA}

Girl colt
,
Acorn greets me as I give him an apple I stole from the food tent. He stables in an area at the treeline where Wilf’s taken all the Answer’s animals.

“He giving you any trouble, Wilf?” I ask.

“Nah, ma’am,” Wilf says, attaching feedbags to a pair of oxes next to Acorn.
Wilf
,
they say, while they eat.
Wilf, Wilf
.

Wilf
,
Acorn says, nudging in my pockets for another apple.

“Where’s Jane?” I ask, looking around.

“Helpin hand out food with the mistresses,” Wilf says.

“That sounds like Jane,” I say. “Listen, have you seen Simone? I need to talk to her.”

“She’s off huntin with Magnus. Ah heard Mistress Coyle suggestin it to her.”

Ever since the townsfolk started showing up, food has been our most pressing issue. Mistress Lawson, as usual, is in charge of inventory and has set up regular food chains to feed the people who are arriving, but the Answer’s food stocks aren’t going to last for ever. Magnus has been leading hunting parties to supplement it.

Mistress Coyle, meanwhile, has been deep in the medical tents, working on women with infected arms. There’s been a huge variation in how bad they are. Some of the women are so sick they’re barely able to stand; for others it’s nothing more than a bad rash. It does seem to affect every woman somehow, though. Todd says the Mayor’s giving medical help to the few women down there, too, all concerned now about the bands
he
put there, saying he’ll do whatever it takes to help them, not having intended this at all.

It’s enough to make me feel even sicker.

“I must have been in the healing room when she left,” I say, feeling the burning in my arm, wondering if my fever’s back
again
. “I guess it’ll have to be Bradley then.”

I head off back to the scout ship, but I hear Wilf say, “Good luck” as I go.

I listen out for Bradley’s Noise, still louder than any other man here, until I find his feet sticking out of a section on the front of the ship, a panel laying on the ground and tools everywhere.

Engine
, he’s thinking.
Engine
and
war
and
missile
and
food shortage
and
Simone won’t even look at me
and
Someone there?

“Someone there?” he asks, scooting his way out.

“Only me,” I say as he emerges.

Viola
, he thinks. “Something I can help you with?” he says, way shorter than I’d like.

I tell him what Todd told me about the Spackle and the Mayor’s spies, about the Spackle maybe being on the move.

“I’ll see what I can do to make the probes more effective,” he sighs. He looks out at the camp that now completely surrounds the scout ship, out to all sides of the clearing, with other makeshift tents up beyond the line of trees, too. “We have to protect them now,” he says. “It’s our duty, now that we’ve upped the stakes.”

“I’m sorry, Bradley,” I say. “I couldn’t have done any other thing.”

He looks up sharply. “Yes, you could have.” He pulls himself to his feet and says it again, more firmly. “
Yes,
you
could
have. Choices may be unbelievably hard but they’re never impossible.”

“What if it’d been Simone down there instead of Todd?” I say.

And Simone is all over his Noise, his deep feelings for her, feelings I don’t think are returned. “You’re right,” he says. “I don’t know. I hope I’d make the right choice, but Viola it
is
a choice. To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that’s not how a person with integrity acts.”
A child
, his Noise says,
A CHILD
, and his voice softens. “And I do believe you’re a person with integrity.”

“You do?” I say.

“Of course I do,” he says. “What’s important is taking responsibility for it. Learning from it. Using it to make things better.”