Текст книги "Monsters of Men"

Автор книги: Patrick Ness

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

[TODD]

“This glorious new day,” the Mayor’s voice booms. “This day where we have beaten our enemy and begun a new era!”

And the crowd below us cheers.

“I’ve had just about enough of this,” I mutter to Bradley, holding Viola next to me on the bench where we’re sitting. We’re up on a cart, in front of a square filled with people, the Mayor’s face not just in the hovering projeckshun behind us but on the sides of two buildings as well. Another thing he figured out how to do on his own. Bradley’s frowning as the Mayor rabbits on. Mistress Coyle and Simone are on the other side of us, frowning even harder.

I feel Viola turn her head. “Yer awake,” I say.

“Was I sleeping?” she says. “Why didn’t anybody put me to bed?”

“Exactly,” I say. “The Mayor said you had to be here first, but he’s got about two more seconds before I–”

“Our peacemaker has recovered!” the Mayor says, looking back at us. He’s got a microphone in front of him, but I’m pretty sure he don’t even need it. “Let’s give her the thanks she’s owed for saving our lives and ending this war!”

And it suddenly feels like we’re drowning in the rising ROAR of the crowd.

“What’s going on?” Viola says. “Why’s he talking about me like that?”

“Because he needs a hero that isn’t me,” Mistress Coyle hisses.

“Not forgetting of course the very formidable Mistress Coyle,” the Mayor says. “Who was so helpful in my campaign against the Spackle insurgency.”

Mistress Coyle’s face goes so red it looks like you could fry eggs on it. “Helpful?” she practically spits.

But you can hardly hear her over the Mayor.

“Before I hand you over to the mistress for her own address to you,” the Mayor says, “I have an announcement to make. One that I especially wanted Viola to hear.”

“What announcement?” Viola says to me.

“No idea,” I say.

And I really don’t know.

“We’ve made a breakthrough,” the Mayor says. “This very day we have made a breakthrough on the terrible, unanticipated problem of the identification bands.”

I grip Viola harder without meaning to. The crowd’s fallen silent, as silent as it can get. The probes are sending this back to the hilltop, too. The Mayor has every human on this planet listening to him.

And he says, “We’ve found a cure.”

“WHAT?” I shout, but I’m already being drowned out by the uproar.

“How appropriate that this should come on our day of peace,” the Mayor’s saying. “How wonderful and blessed that on the threshold of a new era, I can also announce to you that the sickness of the bands is over!”

He’s talking up into the probes now, straight back to where most of the women are sick, to where the mistresses haven’t been able to heal ’em.

“There’s no time to waste,” he says. “We’ll begin distributing the cure without delay.”

Then he turns back to me and Viola again. “And we’ll start with our very own peacemaker.”

{VIOLA}

“He’s taken all the credit!” Mistress Coyle shouts, stomping around the healing room of the scout ship as we fly back. “He had them eating out of his hands!”

“You’re not even going to try the cure?” Bradley says.

Mistress Coyle looks at him like he’s just asked her to take off all her clothes. “You honestly think he just discovered it? He’s had it all along! If it’s even a cure at all and not another little time bomb.”

“But why would he do that,” Bradley says, “if curing all the women makes him even more popular?”

“He’s a genius,” Mistress Coyle says, still ranting. “Even I have to admit that. He’s a bloody, terrible, savage, brutal genius.”

“What do you think, Viola?” Lee asks from the next bed.

I can only cough by way of answer. Mistress Coyle stepped in front of me when the Mayor tried to give me the new bandages and refused to let him touch me with them until she and the other mistresses tested them thoroughly first.

And the crowds booed her, actually booed.

Especially when the Mayor brought up three women with bands. Three women with no signs of infection at all. “We haven’t figured out a way to remove the bands safely yet,” the Mayor said, “but the early results are obvious.”

Things kind of disintegrated from there and Mistress Coyle didn’t even get to give her speech, though they probably would have kept booing her anyway. After we got off the cart, Todd said he didn’t know any more than we did. “Mistress Coyle can do her tests,” he said to me, “and I’ll see what I can find out.”

But he was gripping my arms tight, whether in hope or fear, I don’t know.

Because I couldn’t hear him.

The rest of us finally went back to the scout ship, Mistress Lawson coming with us to help test the Mayor’s cure.

“I don’t know what to believe,” I say now, “only that it would be in his interests to save us.”

“So we have to base our decision on what suits him best?” Mistress Coyle says. “Brilliant, just brilliant.”

“We’re coming in for a landing,” Simone says over the comm system.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Mistress Coyle says. “When we’re on that council together, he’ll learn that his days of out-manoeuvring me are over.” There’s a judder as we touch down. “And now,” she says, her voice burning with heat, “I’ve got my own speech to give.”

Before the engines are even properly off, she’s marched out of the room, down the bay door and into the crowds that wait for us, crowds I can see on the monitors.

She’s greeted by a few cheers.

But only a few.

And nothing at all like what the Mayor got back in town.

And then this crowd, led by Ivan and other voices, begins to boo her, too.

[TODD]

“Why would I harm the women?” the Mayor says to me across the campfire, as night begins to fall on his day of glory. “Even if you still somehow believe I’m bent on killing every one of them, why would I do it now at my moment of biggest triumph?”

“Why didn’t you tell me, tho?” I say. “That you were so close to a cure?”

“Because I didn’t want to risk your disappointment if I failed.”

He looks at me for a long time, trying to read me, but I’m so good at it now I don’t think even he can hear me.

“Can I make a guess at what you believe?” he finally says. “I think you want to get that cure to Viola as soon as possible. I think you’re worried Mistress Coyle won’t move fast enough on her tests because she won’t want me to be right.”

And I do think this. I do.

I want the cure to be true so bad I could almost choke.

But it’s the Mayor.

But it could save Viola.

But it’s the Mayor–

“I also think you want to believe me,” he says. “That I’d really do this for real. If not for her, then for you.”

“Me?” I say.

“I think I’ve figured out your special talent, Todd Hewitt. Something that should have been obvious from the behaviour of my son.”

My stomach tenses, with anger, with grief, like it always does when Davy’s mentioned.

“You made him better,” the Mayor continues, his voice soft. “You made him smarter and kinder and more aware of the world and his place in it.” He sets down his coffee cup. “And whether I like it or not, you’ve done the same for me.”

And there’s that faint hum–

Connecting us–

(but I know it’s there and it ain’t affecting me–)

(it ain’t–)

“I regret what happened with David,” he says.

“You shot him,” I say. “It weren’t nothing that just happened.”

He nods. “I regret it more with every passing day. With every day that I’m with you, Todd. Every day, you make me better. Knowing that I’ve got you to watch what I do.” He lets out a sigh. “Even today, in what is arguably the greatest victory I’ve ever had, my first thought was, What will Todd think?”

He gestures to the darkening sky above us. “This world, Todd,” he says. “This world and how it talks, how loud its voice is.” He drifts a little, his eyes unfocused. “Sometimes it’s all you can hear, as it tries to make you disappear into it, to make you nothing.” He’s almost whispering now. “But then I hear your voice, Todd, and it brings me back.”

I don’t know what he’s talking about, so I just ask, “Have you had the cure for the bands all this time? Have you just been holding it back?”

“No,” he says. “I’ve been having my men work round the clock so I could save Viola for you, Todd. To show you how much you’ve come to mean to me.” His voice is forceful now, almost emoshunal. “You’ve redeemed me, Todd Hewitt. Redeemed me when no one else would have thought it possible.” He smiles again. “Or even desirable.”

I still don’t say nothing. Cuz he ain’t redeemable. Viola even said so.

But–

“They’ll test it,” he says. “They’ll find it’s a cure, and then you’ll see that I tell you the truth. It’s so important, I won’t even ask you to trust me.”

He waits again for me to say something. I still don’t.

“And now,” he says, slapping his hands on his thighs, “it’s time to start preparing for our first council meeting.”

He gives me a final look, then heads back into his tent. I get up after a minute and go over to Angharrad, tethered with Juliet’s Joy by my own tent, eating her heart’s delight of hay and apples.

She saved Viola’s life up on that hill. I ain’t never forgetting that.

And now the Mayor’s offering to do it down here.

And I wish I could believe him. I want to.

(redeemed–)

(but how far–?)

Boy colt, Angharrad says, nuzzling my chest.

Submit! Juliet’s Joy snaps, her eyes wide.

And before I can say anything, Angharrad snaps back SUBMIT! even louder.

And Juliet’s Joy lowers her head.

“Girl!” I say, with amazement. “That’s my girl.”

Boy colt, she says, and I hold onto her, feeling her warmth, her fuggy horse smell tickling my nose.

I hold onto her and I think about redempshun.

{VIOLA}

“You are not going to be on the council with the Spackle, Ivan,” Mistress Coyle says, Ivan clomping in behind her into the scout ship. “And you are not allowed in here.”

It’s the day after we came back from town, and I’m still on my bed, feeling worse than ever, the fever not responding at all to Mistress Lawson’s newest combination of antibiotics.

Ivan stands there a moment, looking defiantly at Mistress Coyle, at me, at Lee on the other bed, at Mistress Lawson where she’s removing Lee’s final bandages. “You’re still acting like you’re in charge here, Mistress,” Ivan says.

“I am in charge here, Mr Farrow,” Mistress Coyle seethes back at him. “As far as I know, no one’s appointed you their new Mistress.”

“Is that why people are returning to the town in droves?” he says. “Is that why half the women are already a-taking the Mayor’s new cure?”

Mistress Coyle spins round to Mistress Lawson. “What?”

“I only gave it to the dying, Nicola,” Mistress Lawson says, slightly sheepish. “If you have to choose between certain death and possible death, it’s no choice at all.”

“It’s not just the dying now,” Ivan says. “Not when the rest saw how well it works.”

Mistress Coyle ignores him. “And you didn’t tell me?”

Mistress Lawson looks down. “I knew how upset you’d be. I’ve tried to talk the others out of it–”

“Your own mistresses are doubting your authority,” Ivan says.

“You shut your mouth, Ivan Farrow,” Mistress Lawson barks.

Ivan licks his lips, sizing us all up again, and then he leaves, heading back to the crowd outside.

Mistress Lawson immediately starts apologizing. “Nicola, I’m so sorry–”

“No,” Mistress Coyle stops her. “You were right, of course. Those worst off, those who had nothing to lose . . .” She rubs her forehead. “Are people really going back to town?”

“Not as many as he said,” Mistress Lawson says. “But some.”

Mistress Coyle shakes her head. “He’s winning.”

And we all know she means the Mayor.

“You’ve still got the council,” I say. “You’ll be better at that than he is.”

She shakes her head again. “He’s probably planning something right now.” She sighs out through her nose, and then she leaves, too, without another word.

“He won’t be the only one planning something,” Lee says.

“And we’ve seen how well her plans have worked in the past,” I say.

“You two hush up,” Mistress Lawson snaps. “A lot of people are alive today because of her.”

She tears the last bandage off Lee’s face with more vigour than is strictly necessary. Then she bites her bottom lip and glances up at me. Over the bridge of Lee’s nose, there’s just bright pink scar tissue where his eyes used to be, the sockets covered now with livid skin, the blue eyes that used to look back gone for ever.

Lee can hear our silences. “Is it that bad?”

“Lee–” I start to say, but his Noise says he isn’t ready and he changes the subject.

“Are you going to take the cure?” he asks.

And I see all the feelings he has for me right at the front of his Noise. Pictures of me, too. Way more beautiful than I ever could be.

But the way he’ll see me for ever now.

“I don’t know,” I say.

And I really don’t know. I’m not getting better, not at all, and the convoy is still weeks away, if they’ll even be able to help when they get here. Fatal, I keep thinking, and now it doesn’t just feel like Mistress Coyle trying to scare me. I wonder if I’m one of those women Mistress Lawson mentioned who have to choose between certain death and possible death.

“I don’t know,” I say again.

“Viola?” Wilf says, appearing in the doorway.

“Ah,” Lee says, his Noise reaching out to Wilf’s, almost unwillingly seeing what Wilf’s seeing–

Seeing his own scarred eyes.

“Phew,” he whistles, but you can hear the nervousness, the fake bravery. “That’s not so bad. You two made it seem like I was practically Spackle.”

“Ah brought Acorn back from town,” Wilf says to me. “Stabled him wi’ my oxes.”

“Thank you, Wilf,” I say.

He nods. “And young Lee there,” he says. “If ya ever need me to see for ya, ya just gotta say.”

There’s a flood of surprised and touched feeling in Lee’s Noise, bright enough for Wilf to see his answer.

“Hey, Wilf?” I say, getting an idea, one that feels better by the second.

“Yeh?” he says.

“How would like you be on the new council?”

[TODD]

“It’s a ruddy great idea,” I say, watching Viola’s face in my comm. “Every time they wanna do something stupid, Wilf won’t even say no, he’ll just say what we should obviously do instead.”

“That’s what I thought,” she says and doubles up coughing again.

“How are them tests coming along?” I say.

“The women who’ve taken it haven’t shown any problems so far, but Mistress Coyle wants to do more checks.”

“She ain’t never gonna approve it, is she?”

Viola don’t disagree. “What do you think about it?”

I take a long deep breath. “I don’t trust him,” I say, “no matter how much he says he’s redeemed.”

“He says that?”

I nod.

“Well, that’s exactly the kind of thing he would say.”

“Yeah.”

She waits for me to say more. “But?”

I look back into her eyes, back thru the comm to her, there, on the hilltop, on this same world as me but so far away. “He seems to need me, Viola. I don’t know why, but it’s like I’m important to him somehow.”

“He called you his son once before, when we were fighting him. Said you had power.”

I nod. “I don’t trust him to do any of this outta the goodness of the heart he ain’t got.” I swallow. “But I think he’d do it to get me on his side.”

“Is that enough reason to risk it?”

“Yer dying,” I say, and then keep talking cuz she’s already talking over me. “Yer dying and yer lying to me that yer not and if something happened to you, Viola, if something happened–”

My throat chokes up hard, like I really can’t breathe.

And I can’t say nothing more for a second.

(I am the Circle–)

“Todd?” she finally says, for the first time not denying she’s sicker than she’s said. “Todd, if you tell me to take it, I will. I won’t wait for Mistress Coyle.”

“But I don’t know,” I say, my eyes still flooded.

“We fly in tomorrow morning,” she says. “To ride up for the first council.”

“Yeah?”

“If you want me to do it,” she says, “I want you to put the bandages on me yourself.”

“Viola–”

“If it’s you doing it, Todd,” she says, “nothing can go wrong. If it’s you doing it, I know I’m safe.”

And I wait for a long minute.

And I don’t know what to say.

And I don’t know what to do.

{VIOLA}

“So you’re taking it, too, then?” Mistress Coyle says from the doorway after I click off with Todd.

I’m about to complain about her listening to a private conversation again but she’s done it so often I’m not even really mad. “It’s not decided yet.”

I’m alone with her. Simone and Bradley are preparing for tomorrow’s meeting, and Lee is out with Wilf, learning about the oxes, whose Noise he can see.

“How are the tests coming?” I ask.

“Excellent,” she says, not uncrossing her arms. “Aggressive antibiotics combined with an aloe Prentiss says he found in the weapons of the Spackle that allows for a dispersal of the medicine ten or fifteen times faster than we’d been doing it. Hitting it so fast it doesn’t have time to regroup. It’s quite brilliant, really.” She looks me square in the eye, and I swear I see sadness there. “A real breakthrough.”

“But you still don’t trust it?”

She sits down next to me with a heavy sigh. “How can I? After all he’s done? How can I not just sit here in despair at all the women who keep reaching for the cure, all the while sick with worry that they’re just walking into a trap.” She bites her lip. “And now you.”

“Maybe,” I say.

She takes a long breath and lets it out. “Not all the women are taking it, you know. There are some, a good number, who’d rather trust me to find a better cure for them. And I will, you know. I will.”

“I believe you,” I say. “But fast enough?”

She gets a look on her face so unusual for her it takes me a second to realize what it is.

She looks almost defeated.

“You’ve been so sick,” she says, “trapped in this little room, that you don’t really realize what a hero you are out there.”

“I’m not a hero,” I say, surprised.

“Please, Viola. You faced down the Spackle and won. You’re everything they want to be themselves. A perfect symbol for the future.” She shifts her weight. “Not like those of us left in the past.”

“I don’t think that’s true–”

“You went up a girl and came down a woman,” she says. “I get asked five hundred times a day how the Peacemaker is doing.”

And it’s only then I see the importance of what she’s saying.

“If I take the cure,” I say, “you think everyone else will, too.”

Mistress Coyle says nothing.

“And he’ll have completely won,” I continue. “That’s what you think.”

She still says nothing, looking at the floor. When she does speak, it’s unexpected. “I miss the ocean,” she says. “On a fast horse, I could leave right now and make it there by sundown, but I haven’t even seen it since we failed to make a fishing village. I moved to Haven and never looked back.” Her voice is quieter than I’ve ever heard it. “I thought that life was over. I thought in Haven there were things worth fighting for.”

“You still can fight for them,” I say.

“I think I may be already beaten, Viola,” she says.

“But–”

“No, I’ve had power slip away from me before, my girl. I know what it feels like. But I always knew I’d come back.” She turns to me, her eyes sad but otherwise unreadable. “But you aren’t beaten, are you, my girl? Not yet.”

She nods, as if to herself, then she does it again and gets up.

“Where are you going?” I call after her.

But she keeps on and doesn’t look back.

[TODD]

I hold up my ma’s book. “I wanna read the end.”

The Mayor looks up from his reports. “The end?”

“I wanna find out what happened to her,” I say. “In her own words.”

The Mayor leans back. “And you think I’m afraid to have you hear it?”

“Are you?” I say, keeping his gaze.

“Only in how sad it will be for you, Todd.”

“Sad for me?”

“Those were terrible times,” he says. “And there’s no version of that history, not mine, not Ben’s, not your mother’s, where there’s a happy ending.”

I keep staring at him.

“All right,” the Mayor says. “Open it to the end.”

I look at him for another second, then I open her book, flipping thru the pages till I get to the last entry, my heart skipping a little at what I’ll find there. The words are the usual scramble, spilling out everywhere like a rockslide (tho I’m getting better at picking some of ’em out, it’s true) and my eyes go right to the end, the very last paragraphs, to the very last things she ever wrote to me–

And then suddenly, almost before I’m ready–

This war, my dearest son–

(there she is–)

This war that I hate because of how it threatens all yer days to come, Todd, this war that was bad enough when we were just fighting the Spackle, but now there are divisions forming, divisions twixt David Prentiss, the head of our little army here, and Jessica Elizabeth, our Mayor, who’s been rallying the women and many of the men to her side, Ben and Cillian included, over how the war’s being conducted.

“You were dividing the town?” I say.

“I wasn’t the only one,” the Mayor says.

And oh it makes my heart sick, Todd, to see us split like this, split before we’ve even made peace, and I wonder how this can be a real New World when all we do is bring our old quarrels to it.

The Mayor’s breathing is light and I can somehow tell he ain’t struggling half as hard as he used to.

(and the faint hum there, too–)

(that I know is him connecting us–)

But then there’s you, son, as of right now the youngest boy in town, maybe even in this whole world, and yer gonna have to be the one who makes it come right, you hear? Yer a native born New Worlder, so you don’t have to repeat our mistakes. You can shake off the past and maybe, just maybe, you’ll bring paradise to this place.

And my stomach pulls a little cuz she’s wished that for me from the very first page.

But that’s probably enough responsibility for one day, huh? I have to leave now for that secret meeting Mayor Elizabeth’s called.

And oh, my beautiful boy, I’m afraid of what she’s going to suggest.

And that’s it.

After that, it’s just blank.

Nothing more.

I look up to the Mayor. “What did Mayor Elizabeth suggest?”

“She suggested the attack on me and my army, Todd,” he says. “An attack which they lost, as much as we tried not to make it a dangerous fight. And then they killed themselves to ensure our doom. I’m sorry, but that’s what happened.”

“No, it ain’t,” I say, starting to boil. “My ma wouldn’t do that to me. Ben said–”

“I can’t convince you, Todd,” he says, frowning sadly. “There’s nothing I can say that ever will, I know that. And I’m certain I made mistakes back then, maybe even mistakes that led to worse consequences than I’d ever intended. Maybe that’s even true.” He leans forward. “But that was before, Todd. That’s not now.”

My eyes are still wet, thinking of my ma, signing off.

Being afraid of what was to come.

Whatever it was.

Cuz the answer ain’t there. What really happened ain’t there. I know as much about the Mayor as before.

“I am a bad man, Todd,” the Mayor says. “But I’m getting better.”

I touch my fingertips to the cover of my ma’s journal, feeling along the knife mark. I don’t believe his verzhun of the story, I just don’t and never will.

I believe he believes it tho.

I believe he might even be sorry.

“If you ever hurt Viola,” I say, “you know I’d kill you.”

“One of the many reasons why I never would.”

I swallow. “The cure will make her well? It’ll save her life?”

“Yes, Todd, it will.” And that’s all he says.

I look up into the sky, into another freezing night, cloudy still, but no snow yet. Another night with little or no sleep, the night before the first big council meeting. The night before we start making the new world for real.

Just like my ma said.

“Bring me the bandages,” I say. “I’ll put ’em on her myself.”

He makes a low sound, almost as if in his Noise, and his face is holding back a smile, a real, true and feeling smile.

“Thank you, Todd,” he says.

And he sounds like he means it.

I wait a long time before I say it–

But I do finally say it.

“Yer welcome.”

“Mr President?” we hear. Mr O’Hare’s come up to us, waiting to interrupt.

“What is it, Captain?” the Mayor says, still looking at me.

“There’s a man here,” Mr O’Hare says, “been hassling the men all night about a meeting with you. Wants to pledge his support.”

The Mayor don’t even try to hide his impayshunce. “If I have to listen to every man on this planet pledge his support–”

“Said to tell you his name is Ivan Farrow,” Mr O’Hare says.

And the Mayor looks surprised.

And then he gets a different kinda smile on his face.

Ivan Farrow. Who goes where the power is.