Текст книги "The Knife of Never Letting Go"

Автор книги: Patrick Ness

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

The words sound different in her accent but they mean the same damn thing and my Noise can only say probably but I make it so my mouth says, “I don’t know.”

She watches me for more.

“I really don’t know,” I say, kinda meaning it. “If you’d asked me last week, I’d have been sure, but today–” I look down at my rucksack, at the book hiding inside. “I don’t know.” I look back at her. “I hope not.”

But probably, says my Noise. Probably yer gonna die, and tho I try to cover it up with other Noise it’s such an unfair thing it’s hard not to have it right at the front.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

She don’t say nothing.

“But maybe if we get to the next settlement–” I say, but I don’t finish cuz I don’t know the answer. “You ain’t sick yet. That’s something.”

“You must warn them,” she says, down into her knees.

I look up sharply. “What?”

“Earlier, when you were trying to read that book–”

“I wasn’t trying,” I say, my voice a little bit louder all of a sudden.

“I could see the words in your whatever,” she says, “and it’s ‘You must warn them’.”

“I know that! I know what it says.”

Of course it’s bloody You must warn them. Course it is. Idiot.

The girl says, “It seemed like you were–”

“I know how to read.”

She holds up her hands. “Okay.”

“I do!”

“I’m just saying–”

“Well, stop just saying,” I frown, my Noise roiling enough to get Manchee on his feet. I get to my feet as well. I pick up the rucksack and put it back on. “We should get moving.”

“Warn who?” asks the girl, still sitting. “About what?”

I don’t get to answer (even tho I don’t know the answer) cuz there’s a loud click above us, a loud clang-y click that in Prentisstown would mean one thing.

A rifle being cocked.

And standing on a rock above us, there’s someone with a freshly-cocked rifle in both hands, looking down the sight, pointing it right at us.

“What’s foremost in my mind at this partickalar juncture,” says a voice rising from behind the gun, “is what do two little pups think they’re doing a-burning down my bridge?”

“Gun! Gun! Gun!” Manchee starts barking, hopping back and forth in the dust.

“I’d quieten down yer beastie there,” says the rifle, his face obscured by looking down the sight straight at us. “Wouldn’t want anything to happen to it, now wouldja?”

“Quiet, Manchee!” I say.

He turns to me. “Gun, Todd?” he barks. “Bang, bang!”

“I know. Shut up.”

He stops barking and it’s quiet.

Aside from my Noise, it’s quiet.

“I do believe I sent out an asking to a partickalar pair of pups,” says the voice, “and I am a-waiting on my answer.”

I look back at the girl. She shrugs her shoulders, tho I notice we both have our hands up. “What?” I say back up to the rifle.

The rifle gives an angry grunt. “I’m asking,” it says, “what exactly gives ye permisshun to go a-burning down other people’s bridges?”

I don’t say nothing. Neither does the girl.

“D’ye think this is a stick I’m a-pointing at ye?” The rifle bobs up and down once.

“We were being chased,” I say, for lack of nothing else.

“Chased, were ye?” says the rifle. “Who was a-chasing ye?”

And I don’t know how to answer this. Would the truth be more dangerous than a lie? Is the rifle on the side of the Mayor? Would we be bounty? Or would rifle man have even heard of Prentisstown?

The world’s a dangerous place when you don’t know enough.

Like why is it so quiet?

“Oh, I heard of Prentisstown, all right,” says the rifle, reading my Noise with unnerving clarity and cocking the gun again, making it ready to shoot. “And if that’s where yer from–”

Then the girl speaks up and says that thing that suddenly makes me think of her as Viola and not the girl any more.

“He saved my life.”

I saved her life.

Says Viola.

Funny how that works.

“Did he now?” says the rifle. “And how do you know he don’t aim to just be a-saving it for himself?”

The girl, Viola, looks at me, her forehead creased. It’s my turn to shrug.

“But no.” The rifle’s voice changes. “No, huh-uh, no, I’m not a-seeing that in ye, am I, boy? Cuz yer just a boy pup still, ain’t ye?”

I swallow. “I’ll be a man in 29 days.”

“Not something to be proud of, pup. Not where yer from.”

And then he lowers the gun away from his face.

And that’s why it’s so quiet.

He’s a woman.

He’s a grown woman.

He’s an old woman.

“I’ll thank ye kindly to call me she,” the woman says, still pointing the rifle at us from chest level. “And not so old I won’t still shoot ye.”

She’s looking at us more closely now, reading me up and down, seeing right into my Noise with a skill I’ve only ever felt in Ben. Her face is making all kindsa shapes, like she’s considering me, like Cillian’s face does when he tries to read me to see if I’m lying. Tho this woman ain’t got no Noise at all so she might be singing a song in there for all I know.

She turns to Viola and pauses for another long look.

“As pups go,” she says, looking back at me, “ye are as easy to read as a newborn, m’boy.” She turns her face to Viola. “But ye, wee girl, yer story’s not a usual one, is it?”

“I’d be happy to tell you all about it if you’d stop pointing a gun at us,” Viola says.

This is so surprising even Manchee looks up. I turn to Viola with my mouth open.

We hear a chuckle from up on the rock. The old woman is laughing to herself. Her clothes seem a real dusty leather, worn and creased for years and years with a rimmed hat and boots for ignoring mud. Like she ain’t nothing more than a farmer, really.

She’s still pointing the gun at us, tho.

“Ye were a-running from Prentisstown, were ye?” she asks, looking into my Noise again. There’s no point in hiding it so I go ahead and put forward what we were running from, what happened at the bridge, who was chasing us. She sees all of it, I know she does, but all I see her do is wrinkle up her lips and squint her eyes a bit.

“Well, now,” she says, crooking the rifle in her arm and starting to make her way down from the rocks to where we’re standing. “I can’t rightly say that I’m not peeved bout ye blowing up my bridge. Heard the boom all the way back at the farm, oh, yeah.” She steps off the last rock and stands a little ways away from us, the force of her grown-up quiet so large I feel myself stepping back without even knowing I decided to do it. “But the only place it led to ain’t been worth a-going to for a decade nor more. Only left it up outta hope.” She looks us over again. “Who’s to say I weren’t right?”

We still have our hands in the air cuz she ain’t making much sense, is she?

“I’ll ask ye this once,” the woman says, lifting the rifle again. “Am I gonna need this?”

I exchange a glance with Viola.

“No,” I say.

“No, mam,” Viola says.

Mam? I think.

“It’s like sir, bonny boy.” The woman slings the rifle over her shoulder by its strap. “For if yer a-talking to a lady.” She squats down to Manchee’s level. “And who might ye be, pup?”

“Manchee!” he barks.

“Oh, yeah, that’s definitely who ye be, innit?” says the woman, giving him a vigorous rubbing. “And ye two pups?” she asks, not looking up. “What might yer good mothers have dubbed ye?”

Me and Viola exchange another glance. It seems like a price, giving up our names, but maybe it’s a fair exchange for the gun being lowered.

“I’m Todd. That’s Viola.”

“As surely true as the sun a-coming up,” says the woman, having succeeded in getting Manchee on his back for a tummy rub.

“Is there another way over that river?” I ask. “Another bridge? Cuz those men–”

“I’m Mathilde,” the old woman interrupts, “but people who call me that don’t know me, so you can call me Hildy and one day ye may even earn the right to shake my hand.”

I look at Viola again. How can you tell if someone with no Noise is crazy?

The old woman cackles. “Yer a funny one there, boy.” She stands up from Manchee who rolls back over and stares at her, already a worshipper. “And to answer yer asking, there’s shallow crossings a couple days’ travelling upstream but there ain’t no bridges for a good distance more either way.”

She turns her gaze back to me, steady and clear, a small smile on her lips. She’s gotta be reading my Noise again but I can’t feel no prodding like I do when men try it.

And the way she keeps on looking I start to realize a few things, put a few things together. It must be right that Prentisstown was quarantined cuz of the Noise germ, huh? Cuz here’s a grown-up woman who ain’t dead from it, who’s looking at me friendly but keeping her distance, a woman ready to greet strangers from my direkshun with a rifle.

And if I’m contagious that means Viola’s probably definitely caught it by now, could be dying as we speak, and that I’m probably definitely not gonna be welcome in the settlement, probably definitely gonna be told to keep way way out and that that’s probably the end of that, ain’t it? My journey ended before I even found anywhere to go.

“Oh, ye won’t be welcome in the settlement,” the woman says. “No probably about it. But,” she winks at me, actually winks, “what ye don’t know won’t kill ye.”

“Wanna bet?” I say.

She turns back and steps up the rocks the way she came. We just watch her go till she gets to the top and turns around again.

“Ye all a-coming?” she says, as if she’s invited us along and we’re keeping her waiting.

I look at Viola. She calls up to the woman, “We’re meant to be heading for the settlement.” Viola looks at me again. “Welcome or not.”

“Oh, ye’ll get there,” says the woman, “but what ye two pups need first is a good sleeping and a good feeding. Any blind man could see that.”

The idea of sleep and hot food is so tempting, I forget for a second that she ever pointed a gun at us. But only for a second. Cuz there’s other things to think about. I make the decision for us. “We should keep on the road,” I say to Viola quietly.

“I don’t even know where we’re going,” she says, also quietly. “Do you? Honestly?”

“Ben said–”

“Ye two pups come to my farm, get some good eatings in ye, sleep on a bed – tho it ain’t soft, I grant ye that – and in the morning, we’ll go to the settlement.” And that’s how she says it, opening her eyes wide on it, like a word to make fun of us for calling it that.

We still don’t move.

“Look at it thusly,” the old woman says. “I got me a gun.” She waves it. “But I’m asking ye to come.”

“Why don’t we go with her?” Viola whispers. “Just to see.”

My Noise rises a little in surprise. “See what?”

“I could use a bath,” she says. “I could use some sleep.”

“So could I,” I say, “but there’s men who’re after us who probably ain’t gonna let one fallen bridge stop them. And besides, we don’t know nothing about her. She could be a killer for all we know.”

“She seems okay.” Viola glances up at the woman. “A little crazy, but she doesn’t seem dangerous crazy.”

“She don’t seem anything.” I feel a little vexed, if I’m honest. “People without Noise don’t seem like nothing at all.”

Viola looks at me, her brows suddenly creased and her jaw set a little.

“Well, not you, obviously,” I say.

“Every time . . .” she starts to say but then she just shakes her head.

“Every time what?” I whisper, but Viola just scrunches her eyes and turns to the woman.

“Hold on,” she says, her voice sounding annoyed. “Let me get my stuff.”

“Hey!” I say. What happened to her remembering I saved her life? “Wait a minute. We gotta follow the road. We gotta get to the settlement.”

“Roads is never the fastest way to get nowhere,” the woman says. “Don’t ye know that?”

Viola don’t say nothing, just picks up her bag, frowning all over the place. She’s ready to go, ready to head off with the first quiet person she sees, ready to leave me behind at the first sweet beckoning.

And she’s missing the thing I don’t wanna say.

“I can’t go, Viola,” I say, low, thru clenched teeth, hating myself a little as I say it, my face turning hot, which weirdly makes a bandage fall off. “I carry the germ. I’m dangerous.”

She turns to me and there’s a sting in her voice. “Then maybe you shouldn’t come.”

My jaw drops open. “You’d do that? You’d just leave?”

Viola looks away from my eyes but before she can answer, the old woman speaks. “Boy pup,” she says, “if it’s being infeckshus yer worried about, then yer girl mate can come a-walking up ahead with ol’ Hildy while ye stay back a little ways with the puppup to guard ye.”

“Manchee!” Manchee barks.

“Whatever,” Viola says, turning and starting to climb the rocks to where the old woman stands.

“And I told ye,” the woman says, “it’s Hildy, not old woman.”

Viola reaches her and they walk off outta sight without another word. Just like that.

“Hildy,” Manchee says to me.

“Shut up,” I say.

And I don’t got no choice but to climb the rocks after them, do I?

So that’s how we make our way, along a much narrower path thru rocks and scrub, Viola and old Hildy keeping close together when they can, me and Manchee miles back, tripping our way towards who knows what further danger and the whole time I’m looking back over my shoulder, expecting to see the Mayor and Mr Prentiss Jr and Aaron all coming after us.

I don’t know. How can you know? How can Ben and Cillian have expected me to be prepared for this? Sure, the idea of a bed and hot food sounds like something worth getting shot for but maybe it’s a trick and we’re being so stupid we deserve to get caught.

And there’s people after us and we should be running.

But maybe there really ain’t another way over that river.

And Hildy could have forced us and she didn’t. And Viola said she seems okay and maybe one Noise-less person can read another.

You see? How can you know?

And who cares what Viola says?

“Look at ’em up there,” I say to Manchee. “They fell together right quick. Like they’re long-lost family or something.”

“Hildy,” Manchee says again. I swat after his rump but he runs on ahead.

Viola and Hildy are talking together but I can only hear the murmurings of words here and there. I don’t know what they’re saying at all. If they were normal Noisy people, it wouldn’t matter how far back on the trail I was, we could all talk together and nobody’d have no automatic secrets. Everybody’d be jabbering, whether they wanted to or not.

And nobody’d be left out. Nobody’d be left on his own at the first chance you had.

We all walk on.

And I’m starting to think some more.

And I’m starting to let them get a little farther ahead, too.

And I’m thinking more.

Cuz as time passes, it’s all starting to sink in.

Cuz maybe now we found Hildy, maybe she can take care of Viola. They’re clearly peas in a pod, ain’t they? Different from me, anyway. And so maybe Hildy could help her back to wherever she’s from cuz obviously I can’t. Obviously I ain’t got nowhere I can be except Prentisstown, do I? Cuz I’m carrying a germ that’ll kill her, may kill her still, may kill everybody else I meet, a germ that’ll forever keep me outta that settlement, that’ll probably even leave me sleeping in Hildy’s barn with the sheep and the russets.

“That’s it, ain’t it, Manchee?” I stop walking, my chest starting to feel heavy. “There ain’t no Noise out here, less I’m the one who brings it.” I rub some sweat off my forehead. “We got nowhere to go. We can’t go forward. We can’t go back.”

I sit down on a rock, realizing the truth of it all.

“We got nowhere,” I say. “We got nothing.”

“Got Todd,” Manchee says, wagging his tail.

It ain’t fair.

It just ain’t fair.

The only place you belong is the place you can never go back.

And so yer always alone, forever and always.

Why’d you do it, Ben? What did I do that was so bad?

I wipe my eyes with my arm.

I wish Aaron and the Mayor would come and get me.

I wish it would just be over already.

“Todd?” Manchee barks, coming up to my face and trying to sniff it.

“Leave me alone,” I say, pushing him away.

Hildy and Viola are getting still farther away and if I don’t get up, I’ll lose the trail.

I don’t get up.

I can still hear them talking, tho it gets steadily quieter, no one looking back to see if I’m still following.

Hildy, I hear, and girl pup and blasted leaky pipe and Hildy again and burning bridge.

And I lift my head.

Cuz it’s a new voice.

And I ain’t hearing it. Not with my ears.

Hildy and Viola are getting farther away, but there’s someone coming towards them, someone raising a hand in greeting.

Someone whose Noise is saying Hello.

It’s an old man, also carrying a rifle but way down at his side, pointing to the ground. His Noise rises as he approaches Hildy, it stays risen as he puts an arm around her and kisses her in greeting, it buzzes as he turns and is introduced to Viola who stands back a little at being greeted so friendly.

Hildy is married to a man with Noise.

A full grown man, walking around Noisy as you please.

But how–?

“Hey, boy pup!” Hildy shouts back at me. “Ye going to sit there all day picking yer nose or are ye going to join us for supper?”

“Supper, Todd!” Manchee barks and takes off running towards them.

I don’t think nothing. I don’t know what to think.

“Another Noisy fella!” shouts the old man, stepping past Viola and Hildy and coming towards me. He’s got Noise pouring outta him like a bright parade, all full of unwelcome welcome and pushy good feeling. Boy pup and bridges falling and leaky pipe and brother in suffering and Hildy, my Hildy. He’s still carrying his rifle but as he reaches me, his hand’s out for me to shake.

I’m so stunned that I actually shake it.

“Tam’s my name!” the old man more or less shouts. “And who might ye be, pup?”

“Todd,” I say.

“Pleasedtameetya, Todd!” He puts an arm around my shoulders and pretty much drags me forward up the path. I stumble along, barely keeping my balance as he pulls us to Hildy and Viola, talking all the way. “We haven’t had guests for dinner in many a moon, so ye’ll have to be a-scusing our humble shack. Ain’t been no travellers thisaway for nigh on ten years nor more but yer welcome! Yer all welcome!”

We get to the others and I still don’t know what to say and I look from Hildy to Viola to Tam and back again.

I just want the world to make sense now and then, is that so wrong?

“Not wrong at all, Todd pup,” Hildy says kindly.

“How can you not have caught the Noise?” I ask, words finally making their way outta my head via my mouth. Then my heart suddenly rises, rises so high I can feel my eyes popping open and my throat start to clench, my own Noise coming all high hopeful white.

“Do you have a cure?” I say, my voice almost breaking. “Is there a cure?”

“Now if there were a cure,” Tam says, still pretty much shouting, “d’ye honestly think I’d be subjecting ye to all this here rubbish a-floating outta my brain?”

“Heaven help ye if ye did,” Hildy says, smiling.

“And heaven help ye if ye couldn’t tell me what I was meant to be thinking.” Tam smiles back, love fuzzing all over his Noise. “Nope, boy pup,” he says to me. “No cure that I know of.”

“Well, now,” Hildy says, “Haven’s meant to be a-working on one. So people say.”

“Which people?” Tam asks, sceptical.

“Talia,” Hildy says. “Susan F. My sister.”

Tam makes a pssht sound with his lips. “I rest my case. Rumours of rumours of rumours. Can’t trust yer sister to get her own name right much less any useful info.”

“But–” I say, looking back and forth again and again, not wanting to let it go. “But how can you be alive then?” I say to Hildy. “The Noise kills women. All women.”

Hildy and Tam exchange a look and I hear, no, I feel Tam squash something in his Noise.

“No, it don’t, Todd pup,” Hildy says, a little too gently. “Like I been telling yer girl mate Viola here. She’s safe.”

“Safe? How can she be safe?”

“Women are immune,” Tam says. “Lucky buggers.”

“No, they’re not!” I say, my voice getting louder. “No, they’re not! Every woman in Prentisstown caught the Noise and every single one of them died from it! My ma died from it! Maybe the version the Spackle released on us was stronger than yers but–”

“Todd pup.” Tam puts a hand on my shoulder to stop me.

I shake him off but I don’t know what to say next. Viola’s not said a word in all of this so I look at her. She don’t look at me. “I know what I know,” I say, even tho that’s been half the trouble, ain’t it?

How can this be true?

How can this be true?

Tam and Hildy exchange another glance. I look into Tam’s Noise but he’s as expert as anyone I’ve met at hiding stuff away when someone starts poking. What I see, tho, is all kind.

“Prentisstown’s got a sad history, pup,” he says. “A whole number of things went sour there.”

“Yer wrong,” I say, but even my voice says I ain’t sure what I’m saying he’s wrong about.

“This ain’t the place for it, Todd,” Hildy says, rubbing Viola on the shoulder, a rub that Viola don’t resist. “Ye need to get some food in ye, some sleep in ye. Vi here says ye ain’t slept hardly at all in many miles of travelling. Everything will be a-looking better when yer fed and rested.”

“But she’s safe from me?” I ask, making a point of not looking at “Vi”.

“Well, she’s definitely safe from catching yer Noise,” Hildy says, a smile breaking out. “What other safety she can get from ye is all down to a-knowing ye better.”

I want her to be right but I also want to say she’s wrong and so I don’t say nothing at all.

“C’mon,” Tam says, breaking the pause, “let’s get to some feasting.”

“No!” I say, remembering it all over again. “We ain’t got time for feasting.” I look at Viola. “There’s men after us, in case you forgot. Men who ain’t interested in our well-beings.” I look up at Hildy. “Now, I’m sure yer feastings would be fine and all–”

“Todd pup–” Hildy starts.

“I ain’t a pup!” I shout.

Hildy purses her lips and smiles with her eyebrows. “Todd pup,” she says again, a little lower this time. “No man from any point beyond that river would ever set foot across it, do ye understand?”

“Yep,” says Tam. “That’s right.”

I look from one to the other. “But–”

“I been guardian here of that bridge for ten plus years, pup,” Hildy says, “and keeper of it for years before that. It’s part of who I am to watch what comes.” She looks over to Viola. “No one’s coming. Ye all are safe.”

“Yep,” Tam says again, rocking back and forth on his heels.

“But–” I say again but Hildy don’t let me finish.

“Time for feasting.”

And that’s that, it seems. Viola still don’t look at me, still has her arms crossed and is now under the arm of Hildy as they walk on again. I’m stuck back with Tam who’s waiting for me to start. I can’t say as I feel much like walking any more but everyone else goes so I go, too. We carry on up Tam and Hildy’s private little path, Tam chattering away, making enough Noise for a whole town.

“Hildy says ye blew up our bridge,” he says.

“My bridge,” Hildy says from in front of us.

“She did build it,” Tam says to me. “Not that anyone’s used it in forever.”

“No one?” I say, thinking for a second of all those men who disappeared outta Prentisstown, all the ones who vanished while I was growing up. Not one of them got this far.

“Nice bit of engineering, that bridge was,” Tam’s going on, like he didn’t hear me and maybe he didn’t, what with how loud he’s talking. “Sad to hear it’s gone.”

“We had no choice,” I say.

“Oh, there’s always choices, pup, but from what I hear, ye made the right one.”

We walk on quietly for a bit. “Yer sure we’re safe?” I ask.

“Well, ye can’t never be sure,” he says. “But Hildy’s right.” He grins, a little sadly, I think. “There’s more than bridges being out that’ll keep men that side of the river.”

I try and read his Noise to see if he’s telling the truth but it’s almost all shiny and clean, a bright, warm place where anything you want could be true.

Nothing at all like a Prentisstown man.

“I don’t understand this,” I say, still gnawing on it. “It’s gotta be a different kinda Noise germ.”

“My Noise sound different from yers?” Tam asks, seeming genuinely curious.

I look at him and just listen for a second. Hildy and Prentisstown and russets and sheep and settlers and leaky pipe and Hildy.

“You sure think about yer wife a lot.”

“She’s my shining star, pup. Woulda lost myself in Noise if she hadn’t put a hand out to rescue me.”

“How so?” I ask, wondering what he’s talking about. “Did you fight in the war?”

This stops him. His Noise goes as grey and featureless as a cloudy day and I can’t read a thing off him.

“I fought, young pup,” he says. “But war’s not something ye talk about in the open air when the sun is shining.”

“Why not?”

“I pray to all my gods ye never find out.” He puts a hand on my shoulder. I don’t shake it off this time.

“How do you do that?” I ask.

“Do what?”

“Make yer Noise so flat I can’t read it.”

He smiles. “Years of practise a-hiding things from the old woman.”

“It’s why I can read so good,” Hildy calls back to us. “He gets better at hiding, I get better at finding.”

They laugh together yet again. I find myself trying to send an eyeroll Viola’s way about these two but Viola ain’t looking at me and I stop myself from trying again.

We all come outta the rocky bit of the path and round a low rise and suddenly there’s a farm ahead of us, rolling up and down little hills but you can see fields of wheat, fields of cabbage, a field of grass with a few sheep on it.

“Hello, sheep!” Tam shouts.

“Sheep!” say the sheep.

First on the path is a big wooden barn, built as watertight and solid as the bridge, like it could last there forever if anyone asked it.

“Unless ye go a-blowing it up,” Hildy says, laughing still.

“Like to see ye try,” Tam laughs back.

I’m getting a little tired of them laughing about every damn thing.

Then we come round to the farmhouse, which is a totally different thing altogether. Metal, by the looks of it, like the petrol stayshun and the church back home but not nearly so banged up. Half of it shines and rolls on up to the sky like a sail and there’s a chimney that curves up and out, folding down to a point, smoke coughing from its end. The other half of the house is wood built onto the metal, solid as the barn but cut and folded like–

“Wings,” I say.

“Wings is right,” Tam says. “And what kinda wings are they?”

I look again. The whole farmhouse looks like some kinda bird with the chimney as its head and neck and a shiny front and wooden wings stretching out behind, like a bird resting on the water or something.

“It’s a swan, Todd pup,” Tam says.

“A what?”

“A swan.”

“What’s a swan?” I say, still looking at the house.

His Noise is puzzled for a second, then I get a little pulse of sadness so I look at him. “What?”

“Nothing, pup,” he says. “Memories of long ago.”

Viola and Hildy are up ahead still, Viola’s eyes wide and her mouth gulping like a fish.

“What did I tell ye?” Hildy asks.

Viola rushes up to the fence in front of it. She stares at the house, looking all over the metal bit, up and down, side to side. I come up by her and look, too. It’s hard for a minute to think of anything to say (shut up).

“Sposed to be a swan,” I finally say. “Whatever that is.”

She ignores me and turns to Hildy. “Is it an Expansion Three 500?”

“What?”

“Older than that, Vi pup,” Hildy says. “X Three 200.”

“We got up to X Sevens,” Viola says.

“Not surprised,” says Hildy.

“What the ruddy hell are you talking about?” I say. “Expanshun whatsits?”

“Sheep!” we hear Manchee bark in the distance.

“Our settler ship,” Hildy says, sounding surprised that I don’t know. “An Expanshun Class Three, Series 200.”

I look from face to face. Tam’s Noise has a spaceship flying in it, one with a front hull that matches the upturned farmhouse.

“Oh, yeah,” I say, remembering, trying to say it like I knew all along. “You build yer houses with the first tools at hand.”

“Quite so, pup,” Tam says. “Or ye make them works of art if yer so inclined.”

“If yer wife is an engineer who can get yer damn fool sculptures to stay standing up,” Hildy says.

“How do you know about all this?” I say to Viola.

She looks at the ground, away from my eyes.

“You don’t mean–” I start to say but I stop.

I’m getting it.

Of course I’m getting it.

Way too late, like everything else, but I’m getting it.

“Yer a settler,” I say. “Yer a new settler.”

She looks away from me but shrugs her shoulders.

“But that ship you crashed in,” I say, “that’s way too tiny to be a settler ship.”

“That was only a scout. My home ship is an Expansion Class Seven.”

She looks at Hildy and Tam, who ain’t saying nothing. Tam’s Noise is bright and curious. I can’t read nothing from Hildy. I get the feeling somehow, tho, that she knew and I didn’t, that Viola told her and not me, and even if it’s cuz I never asked, it’s still as sour a feeling as it sounds.

I look up at the sky.

“It’s up there, ain’t it?” I say. “Yer Expanshun Class Seven.”

Viola nods.

“Yer bringing more settlers in. More settlers are coming to New World.”

“Everything was broken when we crashed,” Viola says. “I don’t have any way to contact them. Any way to warn them not to come.” She looks up with a little gasp. “You must warn them.”

“That can’t be what he meant,” I say, fast. “No way.”

Viola scrunches her face and eyebrows. “Why not?”

“What who meant?” Tam asks.

“How many?” I ask, still looking at Viola, feeling the world changing still and ever. “How many settlers are coming?”

Viola takes a deep breath before she answers and I’ll bet you she’s not even told Hildy this part.

“Thousands,” she says. “There’s thousands.”