Текст книги "The Ask and the Answer"

Автор книги: Patrick Ness

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

'"Ere's yer bag," Wilf says, suddenly next to me, holding out the canvas sack of medicines and bandages. I look at him for a second and then I pretty much throw myself at him in a hug, pulling him tight to me, feeling the big, safe bulk of him. "Ah'm glad to see yoo, Hildy," he says.

"You, too, Wilf," I say, my voice thick. I let him go and take the bag.

"Corinne pack that?" Mistress Coyle asks.

I fish out a bandage and start cleaning the blood from my nose. "What do you care?"

"You can accuse me of many things," she says, "but not caring isn't one of them, my girl."

"I told you," I say, catching her eye, "never call me that again."

Mistress Coyle licks her teeth. She makes a quick glance to Lee and to the other soldier, Magnus, and they leave, quickly, disappearing into the trees ahead of us. "You, too, Wilf."

Wilf looks at me. "Yoo gone be all right?"

"I think so, Wilf," I say, swallowing, "but don't you go far." He nods, touching the brim of his hat again and walking after the soldiers. We watch him go.

"All right." Mistress Coyle turns to me, crossing her arms. "Let's hear it."

I look at her, at her face full of defiance, and I feel my breath quicken, the anger rising up again so fast, so easily, it feels like I might crack in two. "How dare you-"

But she's interrupting, already. "Whoever contacts your ships first has the advantage. If he's first, he tells them all about the nasty little terrorist organization he's got on his hands and can they please use their guidance equipment to track us down and blow us off the face of New World."

"Yes but if we-"

"If we got to them first, yes, of course, we could have told them all about our local tyrant, but that was never going to happen."

"We could have tried-"

"Did you know what you were doing when you ran toward that tower?"

I clench my fists. "No, but at least I could have-"

"Could have what?" Her eyes challenge me. "Sent out a message to the very coordinates the President's been searching for? Don't you think he was counting on you trying? Just why exactly do you think you haven't been arrested yet?"

I dig my nails into my palms, forcing myself not to hear what she's saying.

"We were running out of time," she says. "And if we can't use it to contact help, then at the very least we prevent him from doing the same."

"And when they land? What's your brilliant plan then?"

"Well," she says, uncrossing her arms and taking a step toward me, "if we haven't overthrown him, then there's a race to get to them first, isn't there? At least this way, it's a fair fight."

I shake my head. "You had no right."

"It's a war."

"That you started."

"He started it, my girl."

"And you escalated it."

"Hard decisions have to be made."

"And who put you in charge of making them?"

"Who put him in charge of locking away half the population of this planet?"

"You're blowing people up!"

"Accidents," she says. "Deeply regrettable."

Now it's my turn to take a step toward her. "That sounds exactly like something he would say."

Her shoulders rise and if she had Noise, it would be taking the top of my head off. "Have you seen the women's prisons, my girl? What you don't know could fill a crater-"

"Mistress Coyle!" A voice calls from the trees. Lee steps back into the rocky gash. "There's a report just come in."

"What is it?" Mistress Coyle says.

He looks from her to me. I look at the ground again.

"Three divisions of soldiers marching down the river road," he says, "dead set for the ocean."

***

I look up sharply. "They're coming here?"

Both Mistress Coyle and Lee look at me.

"No," Lee says. "They're going to the ocean."

I blink back and forth between them. "But aren't we-?"

"Of course not," Mistress Coyle says, her voice flat, mocking. "Whatever made you think we were? And whatever, I wonder, makes the President think we are?"

I feel an angry chill, despite the sun, and I notice I'm shaking inside these big stupid puffy sleeves.

She was testing me.

As if I would tell the Mayor where-

"How dare you-" I start to say again.

But the anger suddenly fades as it comes flooding back.

"Todd," I whisper.

Ocean all over his Noise.

How he promised to hide it.

And how I know he'd keep that promise-

If he could.

(oh, Todd, did he-?)

(are you-?)

Oh, no.

"I have to go back," I say. "I have to save him-" She's already shaking her head. "There's nothing we can do for him right now-"

"He'll kill him."

She looks at me, not without pity. "He's probably dead already, my girl."

I feel my throat closing up but I fight it. "You don't know that."

"If he's not dead, then he must have told the President voluntarily." She cocks her head. "Which would you rather be true?"

"No," I say, shaking my head. "No-"

"I'm sorry, my girl." Her voice is a little calmer than before, a little softer, but still strong. "I truly am, but there are thousands of lives at stake. And like it or not, you've picked a side." She looks over to where Lee stands. "So why don't you let me show you your army?"

20 RUBBLE

**

[TODD]

"BITCHES," Mr. Hammar says from atop his horse.

"Your analysis was not asked for, Sergeant," says the Mayor, riding Morpeth thru the smoke and the twisted metal.

"They've left the mark, tho," Mr. Hammar says, pointing at the trunk of a large tree at the edge of the clearing.

The blue a of the Answer is smeared across it.

"Your concern for my eyesight does you credit," says the Mayor, sharply enough that even Mr. Hammar shuts up.

We rode up here straight from the monastery, meeting Mr. Hammar's squadron coming up the hill, looking ready for battle. When we got to the top, we found Ivan and the soldiers who were meant to be guarding the tower. Ivan got promoted here, I guess, after all the Spackle were rounded up, but now he's looking like he wishes he never heard of a tower.

Cuz it ain't here no more. It's just a heap of smoking metal, mostly in a long line where it fell, like a drunk man tipping forward onto the ground and deciding to just stay there and sleep.

(and I do my damnedest not to think about her asking me how to get here)

(saying we should go here first)

(oh, Viola, you didn't-)

"If they got enough to blow up something this big ..." Davy says to my right, looking across the field. He don't finish his sentence cuz it's the same thing we're all thinking, the thing that's in everyone's Noise.

Everyone that's got Noise, that is, cuz Mr. Hammar seems to be one of the lucky ones. "Hey, boy," he sneers at me. "You a man yet?"

"Don't you have somewhere you need to be heading, Sergeant?" the Mayor asks, not looking at him.

"With haste, sir," Mr. Hammar says again, giving me an evil wink, then spurring his horse and shouting for his men to follow. They speed down the hill in the fastest march I've seen, leaving us with Ivan and his soldiers, all of their Noise regretting to a man how they ran toward the monastery after hearing the tracer bomb hit.

It's obvious, tho, when you look back. A smaller bomb in one place to get people running away from where you want to plant yer bigger bomb.

But what the hell were they doing bombing the monastery?

Why attack the Spackle? Why attack we?

"Private Farrow," the Mayor says to Ivan. "It's Corporal Farrow, actually–" Ivan says. The Mayor turns his head slowly and Ivan stops talking as he comes to understand. "Private Farrow," the Mayor says again. "You will salvage what metal and scrap you can and then report to your commanding officer to relinquish your supply of cure–"

He stops. We can all hear Ivan's Noise clear as day. The Mayor looks round. Every soldier in the squadron has Noise. Every one of em's already been punished for one thing or another.

"You will submit yourselves to your commanding officer for appropriate punishment."

Ivan don't reply but his Noise rumbles.

"Is something unclear, Private?" the Mayor says, his voice dangerously bright. He looks into Ivan's eyes, holding his gaze. "You will submit yourselves to your commanding officer for appropriate punishment," he says again, but there's something in his voice, some weird vibrayshun.

I look at Ivan. His eyes are going foggy, unfocused, his mouth a little slack. "I will submit to my commanding officer for appropriate punishment," he says.

"Good," the Mayor says, looking back at the wreckage.

Ivan slumps a little when the eye contact is broken, blinking as if he's just woken up, forehead furrowing.

"But, sir," he says to the Mayor's back.

The Mayor turns round again, looking very surprised at still being spoken to.

Ivan presses on. "We were coming to your aid when-"

The Mayor's eyes flash. "When the Answer watched you do exactly what it wanted you to do and then blew up my tower."

"But, sir-"

Without changing his expresshun, the Mayor pulls out a pistol from his holster and shoots Ivan in the leg.

Ivan tumbles over, wailing. The Mayor looks at the other soldiers.

"Anyone else care to contribute before you get to work?"

As the rest of the soldiers ignore Ivan's screams and start clearing up the wreckage, the Mayor moves Morpeth right in front of that a, loud and clear like the announcement it is. "The Answer," he says, in a low voice like he's talking to himself. "The Answer."

"Let ms go after 'em, Pa," Davy says.

"Hmm?" The Mayor turns his head slowly, like he forgot we were there.

"We can fight," Davy says. "We proved that. And instead you got us babysitting animals that are already beat."

The Mayor considers us for a minute, tho I don't know how or when Davy turned him and me into an us. "If you think they're already beaten, David," he finally says, "then you know very little about the Spackle."

Davy's Noise ruffles a little. "I think I've learned a thing or two by now."

And as much as I hate to, I have to agree with him.

"Yes," says the Mayor. "I suppose you have. Both of you." He looks me in the eye and I can't help thinking of me saving 1017 from the bomb, risking my own life to get him outta the way. And him biting and scratching me by way of thanks.

"Then how about a new project?" the Mayor says, steering Morpeth over to us. "One where you can put all your expertise to work."

Davy's Noise ain't sure of this. There's pride but doubt, too.

All I got in mine is dread.

"Are you ready to lead, Todd?" the Mayor asks lightly. "I'm ready, Pa," Davy says.

The Mayor still looks only at me. He knows I'm thinking about her but he's ignoring all my askings.

"The Answer," he says, turning back to the a. "If that's who they want to be, then let them." He looks back at us. "But if there's an Answer, then someone must first..."

He lets his voice fade and he gets a faraway smile on his face, like he's laughing at his own private joke.

Davy unfolds the big white scroll onto the grass, not caring that it's getting wet in the cold morning dew. There's words written across the top and diagrams and squares and things drawn in below it.

"Measurements mostly," Davy reads. "Too effing many. I mean, look at that."

He holds the scroll up to me, trying to get me to agree.

And, well-

Yeah, okay, I-

Whatever.

"Too effing many," I say, feeling sweat come up under my arms. It's the day after the tower fell and we're back at the monastery, back to putting teams of Spackle to work. My escape seems to be forgotten, like it was part of another life and now we've all got new things to think about. The Mayor won't talk to me about Viola and I'm back working for Davy, who ain't too happy.

So it's like old times.

"There's fighting to be done and he's got us building an effing palace" Davy frowns, looking over the plans.

It ain't a palace but he's got a point. Before it was just gonna be rough shacks to shelter the Spackle for the winter but this looks like a whole new building for men, taking up most of the inside of the monastery.

It's even got a name written across the top.

A name my eye stumbles over, trying to-

Davy turns to me, his eyes widening. I make my Noise as Noisy as possible.

"We should get started," I say, standing up.

But Davy's still looking at me. "What do you think about what it says right here?" he asks, putting his finger on a block of words. "Ain't that something amazing what it says?"

"Yeah," I shrug. "I guess."

His eyes get even wider with delight. "It's a list of materials, pigpiss!" His voice is practically celebrating. "You can't read, can you?"

"Shut up," I say, looking away.

"You can't even read!" Davy's smiling up into the cold sun and around at all the Spackle watching us. "What kinda idiot gets thru life–"

"I said, shut up!"

Davy's mouth drops open as he realizes. And I know what he's gonna say before he says it. "Yer ma's book," he says. "She wrote it for you and you can't even–"

And what can I do but hit him across his stupid mouth?

I'm getting taller and bigger and he comes off worst in the fight but he don't seem to mind all that much. Even when we get back to work, he's still giggling and making a big show outta reading the plans.

"Mighty complicated, these instruckshuns," he says, a big smile across his bloody lips.

"Just effing get on with it!"

"Fine, fine," he says. "First step is what we were already doing. Tearing down all the internal walls." He looks up. "I could write it down for you."

My Noise rages red at him but Noise is useless as a weapon.

Unless yer the Mayor.

I didn't think life could turn more to crap but it always does, don't it? Bombs and towers falling and having to work with Davy and the Mayor paying me special attenshun and–

(and I don't know where she is)

(and I don't know what the Mayor's gonna do to her)

(and did she plant the bombs?)

(did she?) I turn back round to the work site.

1,150 pairs of Spackle eyes are watching us, watching me, like they're just effing farm animals looking up from their grazing cuz they heard a loud noise.

Stupid effing sheep.

"GET TO WORK!" I shout.

"You look like hell," Mayor Ledger says, as I fall onto my bed.

"Stuff it," I say.

"Working you hard, is he?" He brings me over the dinner that's already waiting for us. It don't even look like he ate too much of mine before I got here.

"Ain't he working you hard?" I say, digging in to the food.

"I think he's forgotten about me, truth to tell." He sits back on his own bed. "I haven't spoken to him in I don't know how long."

I look up at him. His Noise is gray, like he's hiding something, tho that ain't unusual.

"I've just been doing my rubbish duties," he says, watching me eat. "Listening to people talk."

"And what're they saying?" I ask, cuz it seems like he wants to talk.

"Well," he says. His Noise shifts uncomfortably.

"Well what?"

And then I see the reason his Noise is so flat is cuz there's something he don't wanna tell me but feels like he has to, so here it comes.

"That house of healing," he says. "That one in particular."

"What about it?" I say, trying not to make it sound important, failing.

"It's closed down," he says. "Empty."

I stop eating. "What do you mean, empty?"

"I mean empty," he says gently, cuz he knows it's bad news. "There's no one there, not even the patients. Everyone's gone."

"Gone?" I whisper.

Gone.

I stand up tho there ain't nowhere to go, my stupid plate of dinner still in my hand.

"Gone where? What's he done with her?"

"He hasn't done anything," Mayor Ledger says. "Your friend ran. That's what I heard. Ran off with the women just before the tower fell." He rubs his chin. "Everyone else was arrested and taken to the prisons. But your friend ... got away."

He says got away like that's not what he means, like what he means is she was planning to get away all along.

"You can't know that," I say. "You can't know that's true about her."

He shrugs. "Maybe not," he says. "But I heard it from one of the soldiers who was guarding the house of healing."

"No," I say, but I don't know what I mean. "No."

"How well did you really know her?" Mayor Ledger says.

"You shut up."

I'm breathing hard, my chest rising and falling. It's good that she ran, ain't it? Ain't it?

She was in danger and now– (but)

(but did she blow up the tower?)

(why didn't she tell me she was going to?)

(did she lie to me?)

And I shouldn't think it, I shouldn't think it, but here it comes–

She promised. And she left. She left me. (Viola?)

(did you leave me?)

21 THE MINE

***

(Viola)

I OPEN MY EYES to the sound of wings flapping outside the door, something I already know in the few days I've been here means that the bats have returned to the caves after their night's hunting, that the sun is about to rise, that it's almost time to get myself out of bed.

Some women start to stir, stretching in their cots. Others are still dead to the world, still snoring, still farting, still drifting on in the empty nothing of sleep.

I spend a second wishing I was still there, too.

The sleeping quarters are basically just a long shack, swept earth floor, wood walls, wood door, barely any windows and only an iron stove in the center for not enough heat. The rest is just a row of cots stretched from one end to the other, full of sleeping women.

As the newest arrival, I'm at one end.

And I'm watching the occupant of the bed at the other end. She sits up straight, body fully under her command, like she never actually sleeps, just puts herself on pause until she can start work again.

Mistress Coyle turns in her cot, sets her feet on the floor, and looks over the other sleepers straight at me.

Checking on me first.

To see, no doubt, if I've run off sometime in the night to find Todd.

I don't believe he's dead. And I don't believe he told the Mayor on us, either.

There must be another answer.

I look back at Mistress Coyle, unmoving.

Not gone, I think. Not yet.

But mainly because I don't even know where we are.

We're not by the ocean. Not even close, as far as I can tell, though that's not saying much because secrecy is the watchword of the camp. No one gives information out unless it's absolutely necessary. That's in case anyone gets captured on a bombing raid or, now that the Answer have started running out of things like flour and medicine, raids for supplies as well.

Mistress Coyle guards information as her most valuable resource.

All I know is that the camp is at an old mine, started up – like so many other things seem to have been on this planet – with great optimism after the first landings but abandoned after just a few years. There are a number of shacks around the openings to a couple of deep caves. The shacks, some new, some from the mining days, serve as sleeping quarters and meeting rooms and dining halls and so on. The caves – the ones where there aren't bats, anyway – are the food and supply stores, always worryingly low, always guarded fiercely by Mistress Lawson, still fretting over the children she left behind and taking out her fretting on anyone who requests another blanket for the cold.

Deeper in the caves are the mines, originally sunk to find coal or salt and then when none was found, diamonds and then gold, which weren't found either, as if they'd do anyone any good in this place anyway. The mines are now where the weapons and explosives are hidden. I don't know how they got here or where they came from, but if the camp is found, they'll be detonated, probably wiping us all off the map.

But for now it's a camp that's near a natural well and hidden by the forest around it. The only entrance is through the trees at the bottom of the path Mistress Coyle and I bumped our way down, and it's so steep and hard you'd hear intruders come from a long way away.

"And they'll come," Mistress Coyle said to me on my first day. "We'll just have to make sure we're ready to meet them."

"Why haven't they come already?" I asked. "People must know there's a mine here."

All she did was wink at me and touch the side of her nose.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked. But that was all I got, because information is her most valuable resource, isn't it?

At breakfast, I get my usual snubbing by Thea and the other apprentices I recognize, none of whom will say a word to me, still blaming me for Maddy's death, blaming me for somehow being a traitor, blaming me for this whole damn war, for all I know.

Not that I care.

Because I don't.

I leave them to the dining hall, and I take my plate of gray porridge out in the cold morning to some rocks near the mouth of one of the caves. As I eat, I watch the camp start to wake itself, start to put itself together for the things that terrorists spend their days doing.

The biggest surprise is how few people there are. Maybe a hundred. That's all. That's the big Answer causing all the fuss in New Prentisstown by blowing things up. One hundred people. Mistresses and apprentices, former patients and others, too, disappearing in the night and returning in the morning, or keeping the camp running for those that come and go, tending to the few horses the Answer has and the oxes that pull the carts and the hens we get our eggs from and a million other things that need doing.

But only a hundred people. Not enough to have a whisper of a prayer if the Mayor's real army comes marching down toward us.

"All right, Hildy?"

"Hi, Wilf," I say, as he comes up to me, a plate of porridge in his hands, too. I scoot over so he can sit near me. He doesn't say anything, just eats his porridge and lets me eat mine.

"Wilf?" we both hear. Jane, Wilf's wife, is coming for us, two steaming mugs in her hands. She picks her way over the rocks toward us, stumbling once, spilling some coffee and causing Wilf to rise halfway up, but she recovers. "Here ya go!" she practically shouts, thrusting the mugs at us. "Thank you," I say, taking mine.

She shoves her hands under her armpits against the cold and smiles, eyes wide and searching around, like she eats with them. "Awful cold to be eating outside," she says, like an overly friendly demand that we explain ourselves.

"Yup," Wilf says, going back to his porridge.

"It's not too bad," I say, also going back to eating.

"Didja hear they got a grain store last night?" she says, lowering her voice to a whisper but somehow making it louder at the same time. "We can have bread again!"

"Yup," Wilf says again.

"D'you like bread?" she asks me.

"I do."

"Ya gotta have bread," she says, to the ground, to the sky, to the rocks. "Ya gotta have bread."

And then she's back off to the dining hall, not another word, though Wilf doesn't seem to much mind or even notice. But I know, I definitely know that Wilf's clear and even Noise, his lack of words, his seeming blankness doesn't describe all of him, not even close.

Wilf and Jane were refugees, fleeing into Haven as the army swept behind them, passing us on the road as Todd slept off his fever in Carbonel Downs. Jane fell ill on the trip and, after asking directions, Wilf took her straight to Mistress Forth's house of healing, where Jane was still recovering when the army invaded. Wilf, whose Noise is as free of deception as anyone's on this planet, was assumed by the soldiers to be an idiot and so allowed to visit his wife when no other man was.

When the women ran, Wilf helped. When I asked him why, all he did was shrug and say, "They were gone take Jane." He hid the less able women on his cart as they fled, built a hidey – hole in it so others could return for missions, and for weeks on end has risked his life taking them to and fro because the soldiers have always assumed a man so transparent couldn't be hiding anything.

All of which has been a surprise to the leaders of the Answer.

But none of which is a surprise to me.

He saved me and Todd once when he didn't have to. He saved Todd again when there was even more danger. He was even ready the first night I was here to turn right back around to help me find him, but Sergeant Hammar knows Wilf's face now, knows that he should have been arrested, so any trip back is pretty much a death sentence.

I take a last spoonful of my porridge and sigh heavily as I pop it into my mouth. I could be sighing at the cold, sighing at the boring porridge, sighing at the lack of anything to do in camp.

But, somehow, Wilf knows. Somehow, Wilf always knows.

"Ah'm shur he's okay, Hildy," he says, finishing up his own porridge. "He survives, does our Todd."

I look up into the cold morning sun and I swallow again, though there's no porridge left in my throat.

"Keep yerself strong," Wilf stays, standing. "Strong for what's comin." I blink. "What's coming?" I ask as he walks on toward the dining hall, drinking his mug of coffee. He just keeps on going.

I finish my coffee, rubbing my arms to gather some heat, thinking I'll ask her again today, no, I'll tell her I'm coming on the next mission, that I need to find-

"You're sitting out here all by yourself?"

I look up. Lee, the blond soldier, is standing there, smiling all toothy.

I immediately feel my face go hot.

"No, no," I say, standing straight up, turning away from him, and picking up the plate.

"You don't have to leave-" he's saying. "No, I'm finished-"

"Viola-"

"All yours-"

"That's not what I meant-"

But I'm already stomping back to the dining hall, cursing myself for the redness of my face.

Lee isn't the only man. Well, he's hardly a man, but like Wilf, he and Magnus can no longer pretend to be soldiers and go to the city, now that their faces are known.

But there are others who can. Because that's the biggest secret of all about the Answer.

At least a third of the people here are men, men who pretend to be soldiers to shuttle women in and out of the city, men who help Mistress Coyle with the planning and targets, men with expertise on handling explosives, men who believe in the cause and want to fight against the Mayor and all he stands for.

Men who've lost wives and daughters and mothers and who are fighting to save them or fighting to avenge their memories.

Mostly it's memories.

I suppose it's useful if everyone thinks it's only women; it allows men to come and go, even if the Mayor surely knows what's what, which is probably why he's denying the cure to so much of his own army, why the Answer's own supply of cure is becoming more burden than blessing.

I cast a glance quickly back to Lee behind me and forward again.

I'm not sure of his reason for being here.

I haven't been able-

I haven't had the chance to ask him yet.

I'm not paying attention as I reach the dining room door and don't really notice when it opens before I can take the handle.

I look up into Mistress Coyle's face.

I don't even greet her.

"Take me with you on the next raid," I say.

Her expression doesn't change. "You know why you can't."

"Todd would join us," I say. "In a second."

"Others aren't so sure about that, my girl." I open my mouth to reply but she interrupts. "If he's even still alive. Which matters not, because we can't afford to have you captured. You're the most valuable prize of all. The girl who can help the President when the ships land."

She holds up her hand. "I won't have this fight with you again. There is too much important work to do."

The camp feels silent now. The people behind her have stopped moving as we stare at one another, no one willing to ask her to get out of the way, not even Mistresses Forth and Nadari, who wait there patiently. Like Thea, they've barely spoken to me since my arrival, all these acolytes of Mistress Coyle, all these people who wouldn't dare to dream of speaking to her the way I'm speaking to her now.

They treat me as if I'm a little dangerous.

I'm slightly surprised to find I kind of like it.

I look into her eyes, into the unyieldingness of them. "I won't forgive you," I say quietly, as if I'm only talking to her. "I won't. Not now, not ever."

"I don't want your forgiveness," she says, equally quietly. "But one day, you will understand."

And then her eyes glint and she pulls her mouth into a smile. "You know," she says, raising her voice. "I think it's time you had some employment."

22 1017

***

[TODD]

"CAN'T YOU EFFING THINGS move any faster?"

The four or five Spackle nearest to me flinch away, tho I ain't even spoken that loud.

"Get a move on!"

And as ever, no thoughts, no Noise, no nothing.

They can only be getting the cure in the fodder I still have to shovel out. But why? Why when no one else is? It makes them a sea of silent clicking and white backs bent into the cold and white mouths sending out puffs of steam and white arms pulling up handfuls of dirt and when yer looking out across the monastery grounds, all those white bodies working, well, they could be a herd of sheep, couldn't they?

Even tho if you look close you can see family groups and husbands and wives and fathers and sons. You can see older ones lifting smaller amounts more slowly. You can see younger ones helping 'em, trying to keep us from seeing that the older ones can't work too hard. You can see a babys trapped to its mother's chest with an old piece of cloth. You can see an especially tall one directing others along a faster work chain. You can see a small female packing mud around the infected number band of a larger female. You can see 'em working together, keeping their heads down, trying not to be the one who gets seen by me or Davy or the guards behind the barbed wire.

You can see all that if you look close.

But it's easier if you don't.

We can't give 'em shovels, of course. They could use 'em against us as weapons and the soldiers on the walls get twitchy if a Spackle even stretches its arms up too high. So there they all are, bending to the ground, digging, moving rocks, silent as clouds, suffering, and not doing nothing about it.

I got a weapon, tho. They gave me the rifle back. Cuz where am I gonna go? Now that she's gone.

"Hurry it up!" I shout at the Spackle, my Noise rising red at the thought of her.

I catch Davy looking over at me, a surprised grin on his face. I turn away and cross the field to another group. I'm halfway there when I hear a louder click.

I look round till I find the source.

But it's only ever the same one.

1017, staring at me again, with that look that ain't forgiveness. He moves his eyes to my hands.

It's only then I realize I've got them both clenched hard around my rifle.

I can't even remember taking it off my shoulder.