The Ask and the Answer

“Why are you doing it then?” I ask.

“Because he broke the law. Because this is a civilized world and acts of barbarity will not be tolerated. Because the war is over.” He turns to me. “I would very much like you to convince Mistress Coyle of that.” He steps closer. “Will you do that? Will you at least tell her the things I’m doing to remedy this tragic situation?”

I look down at my feet. My mind is whirling, spinning like a meteor.

The things he says could be true.

But Maddy is dead.

And it’s my fault.

And Todd’s still gone.

What do I do?

(what do I do?)

“Will you, Viola?”

At least, I think, it’s information to give to Mistress Coyle.

I swallow. “I’ll try?”

He smiles again. “Wonderful.” He touches me gently on the arm. “Run along back now. They’ll be needing you for the funeral service.”

I nod and step out onto the front steps and away from him, moving into the square a little bit, the ROAR of it all beating down on me as hard as the sun. I stop and try to catch the breath that seems to have run away from me.

“Viola.” He’s still watching me, watching me from the steps of his house, the cathedral. “Why don’t you have dinner with me here tomorrow night?”

He grins, seeing how I try to hide how much I don’t want to come.

“Todd will be there, of course,” he says.

I open my eyes wide. Another wave rises from my chest, bringing the tears again and surprising me so much I hiccup. “Really?”

“Really,” he says.

“You mean it?”

“I mean it,” he says.

And then he opens his arms to me for an embrace.

[TODD]

“We gotta number ’em,” Davy says, getting out a heavy canvas bag that’s been left in the monastery storeroom and dropping it loudly to the grass. “That’s our new job.”

It’s the morning after the Mayor wished me a late happy birthday, the morning after I vowed I’d find her.

But ain’t nothing’s changed.

“Number ’em?” I ask, looking out at the Spackle, still staring back at us in the silence that don’t make no sense. Surely the cure shoulda worn off by now? “Why?”

“Don’t you never listen to Pa?” Davy says, getting out some of the tools. “Everyone’s gotta know their place. Besides, we gotta keep track of the animals somehow.”

“They ain’t animals, Davy,” I say, not too heated cuz we’ve had this fight before a coupla times. “They’re just aliens.”

“Whatever, pigpiss,” he says and pulls out a pair of bolt cutters from the bag, setting them on the grass. He reaches in the bag again. “Take these,” he says, holding out a handful of metal bands, strapped together with a longer one. I take them from him.

Then I reckernize what I’m holding.

“We’re not,” I say.

“Oh, yes, we are.” He holds up another tool, which I also reckernize.

It’s how we marked sheep back in Prentisstown. You take the tool Davy’s holding and you wrap a metal band around a sheep’s leg. The tool bolts the ends together tight, too tight, so tight it cuts into the skin, so tight it starts an infeckshun. But the metal’s coated with a medicine to fight it so what happens is that the infeckted skin starts to heal around the band, grow into it, replacing that bit of skin with the metal band itself.

I look up again at the Spackle, looking back at us.

Cuz the catch is, it don’t heal if you take it off. The sheep’ll bleed to death if you do. You put on a band and it’s yers till it dies. There ain’t no going back from it.

“Then all you gotta do is think of ’em as sheep,” Davy says, standing up with the bolting tool and looking out over the Spackle. “Line up!”

“We’ll do one field at a time,” he shouts, gesturing at the Spackle with the bolting tool in one hand and the pistol in the other. The soldiers on the stone walls keep their rifles pointed into the herd. “Once you get yer number, you stay in that field and you don’t leave it, unnerstand?”

And they seem to unnerstand.

That’s the thing.

They unnerstand way more than a sheep would.

I look at the packet of metal bands I’m holding. “Davy, this is–”

“Just get a move on, pigpiss,” he says impayshuntly. “We’re meant to get thru two hundred today.”

I swallow. The first Spackle in line is watching the metal bands as well. I think it’s female cuz sometimes you can tell by the colour of the lichen they’ve got growing for their clothes. She’s shorter than usual, too, for a Spackle. My height or less.

And I’m thinking, if I don’t do it, if I’m not the one who does this, then they’ll just get someone else who won’t care if it hurts. Better they have me who’ll treat ’em right. Better than just Davy on his own.

Right?

(right?)

“Just wrap the effing band round its arm or we’ll be here all effing morning,” Davy says.

I gesture for her to hold out her arm. She does, staring at my eyes, not blinking. I swallow again. I unwrap the packet of bands and peel off the one marked 0001. She’s still staring, still not blinking.

I take hold of her outstretched hand.

The flesh is warm, warmer than I expected, they look so white and cold.

I wrap the band round her wrist.

I can feel her pulse beating under my fingertips.

She still looks into my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

Davy steps up, takes the loose ends of the bands in the bolting tool, gives it a twist so sharp and hard the Spackle lets out a pained hiss, and then he slams the bolting tool together, locking the metal strip into her wrist, making her 0001 for ever and ever.

She bleeds from under the band. 0001 bleeds red.

(which I already knew)

Holding her wrist with her other hand, she moves away from us, still staring, still unblinking, silent as a curse.

None of ’em fight. They just line up and stare and stare and stare. Once in a while they make their clicking sounds to one another but no Noise, no struggles, no resistance.

Which makes Davy angrier and angrier.

“Damn things,” he says, holding the twist for a second before he bolts it off just to see how long he can make ’em hiss. And a second or two longer than that.

“How d’you like that, huh?” he yells at a Spackle as it walks away, holding its wrist, staring back at us.