Monsters of Men

Loud, his Noise says and he gives a little smile, but it actually is a bit calmer today, less panicky.

“You will get used to it,” I say. “I promise.”

“As much as I might not want to.”

He brushes a strand of hair away from my eyes. So grown up, his Noise is saying. And looks so pale. And he shows a picture of me from last year, learning a math segment in the classes he taught. I look so small, so clean, that I have to laugh.

“Simone’s been speaking with the convoy,” he says. “They agree with the peaceful approach. We try to meet with these Spackle and offer humanitarian help to the people here, but the last thing we want to do is get involved in a war that has nothing to do with us.” His hand squeezes my shoulder. “You were right to want to keep us out of it, Viola.”

“I just wish I knew what to do now,” I say, turning away from his praise, remembering how close I came to choosing the other way. “I’ve been trying to get Mistress Coyle to talk to me about how the first truce worked but–

I stop because we both see someone running across the hilltop, looking this way and that, searching each face, then seeing the ship, seeing me and running even faster–

“Who’s that?” Bradley asks, but I’m already pulling away from him–

Because it’s–

“LEE!” I shout and start running towards him–

Viola, his Noise is saying, Viola, Viola, Viola, and he reaches me and spins me around in a breath-squeezing embrace that makes my arm ache. “Thank God!”

“Are you okay?” I’m saying as he lets me go. “Where’d you–?”

“The river!” he says, his breath heaving. “What’s happening to the river?”

He looks over to Bradley and back to me. His Noise gets louder, so does his voice. “Haven’t you seen the river?”

[TODD]

“But how?” I say, staring up at the falls–

Staring as they get quieter and quieter–

Staring as they start to disappear altogether–

The Spackle are turning off the river.

“Very clever,” the Mayor is saying to himself. “Very clever indeed.”

“What is?” I nearly shout at him. “What are they doing?”

Every man in the army is watching it now, ROARing loud about it like you wouldn’t believe, watching as the falls trickle back just exactly like someone turning down a tap, with the river below shrinking, too, metres of mud popping up where riverbank used to be.

“No word from our spies, Captain O’Hare?” the Mayor says, in a voice that ain’t happy.

“None, sir,” Mr O’Hare says. “If there’s a dam, it’s back quite a ways.”

“Then we need to find out exactly, don’t we?”

“Now, sir?”

The Mayor turns to him, fury-eyed. Mr O’Hare just salutes and leaves quickly.

“What’s going on?” I say.

“They want a siege, Todd,” the Mayor says. “Instead of a battle, they take away our water and wait until we’re so weak they can walk right over us.” His voice sounds almost angry. “This isn’t what they were supposed to do, Todd. And we will not let them get away with it. Captain Tate!”

“Yes, sir,” says Mr Tate, who’s been waiting and watching with us.

“Get the men in battle formations.”

Mr Tate looks surprised. “Sir?”

“Is there a problem with your orders, Captain?”

“The uphill battle, sir. You said yourself–”

“That was before the enemy declined to play by the rules.” His words start filling the air, twirling around and slipping into the heads of the soldiers around the edge of our camp–

“Every man will do his duty,” the Mayor says, “every man will fight until the battle is won. They won’t be expecting us to come at them so hard and surprise will win us the day. Is that clear?”

Mr Tate says, “Yes, sir,” and heads off into the army, shouting orders, while the soldiers nearest us are already gearing up and making lines.

“Prepare yourself, Todd,” the Mayor says, watching him go. “This is the day we settle it.”

{VIOLA}

“How?” Simone says. “How did they do it?”

“Can you send the probe back upriver?” Mistress Coyle asks.

“They’d just shoot it down again,” Bradley says, dialling some more on the probe’s remote panel. We’re gathered around the three-dimensional projection, Bradley aiming it under the shadow cast by the wing of the ship. Me, Simone, Bradley and Lee, with Mistress Coyle and more and more people from the Answer crowding in as word spreads.

“There,” Bradley says, and the projection gets even bigger.

There are gasps in the crowd. The river’s almost completely dry. There’s almost no waterfall at all. The picture rises a bit, but all we can see is the river drying up above the falls as well, the Spackle army a white- and clay-coloured mass on the road to the side.

“Are there other sources of water?” Simone asks.

“A few,” Mistress Coyle says, “streams and ponds here and there, but . . .”

“We’re in trouble,” Simone says. “Aren’t we?”

Lee turns to her, perplexed. “You think our trouble is just starting now?”

“I told you not to underestimate them,” Mistress Coyle says to Bradley.

“No,” Bradley replies, “you told us to bomb them into oblivion, without even trying for peace first.”

“And you’re saying I was wrong?”

Bradley dials on the remote screen again, and the probe rises higher in the sky, showing even more of the Spackle army stretching down the road in their thousands. There are further gasps behind us as the Answer sees how big the Spackle army is for the first time.

“We couldn’t kill them all,” Bradley says. “We’d only be guaranteeing our own doom.”

“What’s the Mayor doing?” I ask, my voice tight.

Bradley changes the projection angle again, and we see the army sorting itself into lines.

“No,” Mistress Coyle whispers. “He can’t be.”

“Can’t what?” I say. “Can’t what?”

“Attacking,” she answers. “It’d be suicide.”

My comm beeps and I answer it immediately. “Todd?”

“Viola?” he says, his worried face in my hand.