The Ask and the Answer

And he does the most surprising thing.

He steps forward and pulls the sheet straight across me, almost like he’s tucking me in.

“Before I go,” he says. “I have one request.”

“What?” I say, fighting to keep awake.

“I’d like you to call me David.”

“What?” I say, my voice heavy.

“I’d like you to say, Good night, David.”

The Jeffers has so disconnected me that the words come out before I know I’m even saying them. “Good night, David.”

Through the haze of the drug, I see him look a little surprised, even a little disappointed.

But he recovers quickly. “And to you, Viola.” He nods at me and steps towards the door to leave.

And I realize what it is, what’s so different about him.

“I can’t hear you,” I whisper from my bed.

He stops and turns. “I said, And to–”

“No,” I say, my tongue barely able to move. “I mean I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you think.”

He raises his eyebrows. “I should hope not.”

And I think I’m asleep before he can even leave.

I don’t wake for a long, long time, finally blinking again into the sunshine, wondering what was real and what was a dream.

( . . . my father, holding out his hand to help me up the ladder into the hatch, smiling, saying, “Welcome aboard, skipper . . .”)

“You snore,” says a voice.

Corinne is seated in the chair, her fingers flying a threaded needle through a piece of fabric so fast it’s like it’s not her doing it, like someone else’s angry hands are using her lap.

“I do not,” I say.

“Like a cow in oestrus.”

I push back the covers. My bandages have been changed and the lightning pain is gone so the stitch must be repaired. “How long have I been asleep?”

“More than a day.” She sounds disapproving. “The President’s already sent men by twice to check on your condition.”

I put a hand on my side, tentatively pushing on the wound. The pain is almost non-existent.

“Nothing to say to that then, my girl?” Corinne says, needle thrashing ferociously.

I furrow my forehead. “What’s there to say? I’d never met him before.”

“He was sure keen to know you though, wasn’t he? Ow!” She breathes in a sharp hiss and sticks a fingertip in her mouth. “All the while he’s got us trapped,” she says around her finger. “All the while we can’t even leave this building.”

“I don’t see how that’s my fault.”

“It isn’t your fault, my girl,” Mistress Coyle says, coming into the room. She looks sternly at Corinne. “And no one here thinks it is.”

Corinne stands, bows slightly to Mistress Coyle and leaves without another word.

“How are you feeling?” Mistress Coyle asks.

“Groggy.” I sit up more, finding it much easier to do so this time. I also notice my bladder is uncomfortably full. I tell Mistress Coyle.

“Well, then,” she says, “let’s see if you can stand on your own to help with that.”

I take in a breath and turn to put my feet on the floor. My legs don’t want to bend very fast but eventually they get there and eventually I can stand up and even walk to the door.

“Maddy said you were the best healer in town,” I marvel.

“Maddy tells no lies.”

She accompanies me down a long white hallway to a toilet. When I’ve finished and washed and opened the door again, Mistress Coyle is holding a heavier white gown for me to wear, longer and much nicer than the backwards robe I have on. I slip it over my head and we walk back up the hallway, a little wobbly, but walking all the same.

“The President has been asking after your health,” she says, steadying me with her hand.

“Corinne told me.” I look up at her out of the corner of my eye. “It’s only because of the settler ships. I don’t know him. I’m not on his side.”

“Ah,” Mistress Coyle says, getting me back through the door to my room and onto my bed. “You do recognize there are sides then?”

I lie back, my tongue pressed against the back of my teeth. “Did you give me two doses of Jeffers so I wouldn’t have to speak to him for very long?” I say. “Or so I wouldn’t be able to tell him very much?”

She gives a nod as if to say how clever I am. “Would it be the worst thing in the world if it was a little of both?”

“You could have asked.”

“Wasn’t time,” she says, sitting down in the chair next to the bed. “We only know him by his history, my girl, and his history is bad, bad, bad. Whatever he might say about a new society, there is good reason to want to be better prepared if he starts a conversation.”

“I don’t know him,” I say again. “I don’t know anything.”

“But, done rightly,” she says, with a little smile, “you might learn things from a man who takes an interest.”

I try to read her, read what she’s trying to tell me, but of course women here don’t have Noise either, do they?

“What are you saying?” I ask.

“I’m saying it’s time for you to get something solid into your stomach.” She stands, brushing invisible threads off her white coat. “I’ll have Madeleine bring in some breakfast for you.”

She walks to the door, taking hold of the handle but not turning it yet. “But know this,” she says, without turning around. “If there are sides and our President is on one . . .” She glances back at me over her shoulder. “Then I am most definitely on the other.”

{VIOLA}

“There are six ships,” I say from my bed, for the third time in as many days, days where Todd is still out there somewhere, days where I don’t know what’s happening to him or to anyone else outside.

From the windows of my room, I see soldiers marching by all the time, but all they do is march. Everyone here at the house of healing half-expected them to come bursting through the doors at any moment, ready to do terrible things, ready to assert their victory.

But they haven’t. They just march by. Other men bring us deliveries of food to the back doors, and the healers are left to their work.

We still can’t leave, but the world outside doesn’t seem to be ending. Which isn’t what anyone expected, not least, it seems, Mistress Coyle, who’s convinced it only means something worse is waiting to happen.