The Ask and the Answer

The side door opens and the man who let me in leans out. “Everything all right out here, Lieutenant?”

“Lieutenant?” I say.

“We’re fine,” Todd chokes a little. “We’re fine.”

The man waits for a second, then goes back inside.

“Lieutenant?” I say again, lowering my voice.

Todd’s leant down, his hands on his knees, staring at the floor. “It wasn’t me, was it?” he says, his voice quiet, too. “I didn’t–” He gestures again at the band without looking up. “I didn’t do it without knowing it was you, did I?”

“No,” I say, reading things in his Noise, reading his numbness at them, reading all the horror that sits way down below that he’s working so hard to ignore. “The Answer did it.”

He looks up fast, filled with asking marks.

“It was the only way I could come and find you safely,” I say. “The only way I could get past all the soldiers marching around town was if they thought I’d already been banded.”

His face changes again as this sinks in. “Oh, Viola.”

I breathe out heavily. “Todd,” I say. “Please come with me.”

His eyes are wet but I can see him now, I can see him finally, I can see him in his face and in his Noise and in his arms as they drop to his sides in defeat.

“It’s too late,” he says and his voice is so sad my own eyes start to wet. “I’ve been dead, Viola. I’ve been dead.”

“You haven’t,” I say, moving a bit closer to him. “These are impossible times.”

He’s looking down now, his eyes not focused on anything.

Feeling nothing, his Noise says. Taking nothing in.

I am the Circle and the Circle is me.

“Todd?” I say and I’m close enough to reach his hand. “Todd, look at me.”

He looks up and the loss in his Noise is so great it feels like I’m standing on the edge of an abyss, that I’m about to fall down into him, into blackness so empty and lonely there’d never be a way out.

“Todd,” I say again, a catch in my voice. “On the ledge, under the waterfall, do you remember what you said to me? Do you remember what you said to save me?”

He’s shaking his head slowly. “I’ve done terrible things, Viola. Terrible things–”

“We all fall, you said.” I’m gripping him hard now. “We all fall but that’s not what matters. What matters is picking yourself up again.”

But he shakes me off.

“No,” he says, turning away. “No, it was easier when you weren’t here. It was easier when you couldn’t see–”

“Todd, I’ve come to save you–”

“No. I didn’t have to think about nothing–”

“It’s not too late.”

“It is too late,” he says, shaking his head. “It is!”

And he’s moving away.

Away from me.

I’m losing him–

And I get an idea.

A dangerous, dangerous idea.

“The attack’s coming tomorrow at sundown,” I say.

He blinks again in surprise. “What?”

“That’s when it happens.” I swallow and step forward, trying to keep my voice steady. “I’m only supposed to know the fake plan, but I found out the real one. The Answer are coming over the hill with the notch in it just to the south of here, just to the south of this cathedral, Todd. They’re coming right here and I’m sure they’re coming right for the Mayor.”

He looks nervously at the side door but I’m keeping my voice down. “There are only two hundred of them, Todd, but they’re fully armed with guns and bombs and a plan and a hell of a leader who isn’t going to stop until she topples him.”

“Viola–”

“They’re coming,” I say, moving closer again. “And now you know when and from where and if that information gets to the Mayor–”

“You shouldn’t have told me,” he says, not meeting my eye. “I hide things but he figures them out. You shouldn’t have told me!”

I keep moving forward. “Then you have to come with me, don’t you? You have to or he wins for ever and ever and he’ll be the one to rule this planet and he’ll be the one who greets the new settlers–”

“With his hand outstretched,” Todd says, his voice suddenly soft.

“What?”

But he just extends his hand out into the empty air, staring at it. “Greeting it with his son.”

“Well, we don’t want that either.” I look nervously round to the front door. Lee is sticking his head in, trying not to look too out of place, but there are soldiers marching by out front. “We don’t have much time.”

Todd’s hand is still outstretched.

“I’ve done bad things, too,” I say. “I wish everything was different but it isn’t. There’s only now and here and you have to come with me if we have any chance of making this come out any good at all.”

He doesn’t say anything but his hand is still out and he’s looking at it and so I move forward another step and I take it in my own.

“We can save the world,” I say, trying to smile. “You and me.”

He looks into my eyes, searching, trying to read me, trying to see if I’m actually here, if it’s actually true, if the things I say are real, he searches and he searches–

But he doesn’t find me.

Oh, Todd–

“Going somewhere?” says a voice from across the room.

A voice from a man holding a gun.

It’s a different man from the one who let us in, a man I’ve never seen before.

Except once, in Todd’s Noise.

“How did you get out?” Todd says, surprise rippling through him.

“You wouldn’t leave without this, would you?” he says. In his non-gun hand, he’s got the journal of Todd’s mother.

“You give that to me!” Todd says.

The man ignores him and waves his gun at Lee. “Come inside now,” he says. “Or I will ever so happily shoot our dear friend Todd.”

I look back. Lee’s got flight all over his Noise but he sees the gun pointed at Todd, sees my face, and comes forward, his Noise saying so loud that he won’t leave me here that it almost distracts me from the gun.

“Drop it,” the man says, referring to Lee’s rifle. Lee sends it clattering to the floor.