The Ask and the Answer

My stomach twists again.

“I tell you as your President,” he says. “The rumour is true.”

How does he know? How does he ruddy know?

The crowd starts to murmur at this news, men and women. The Mayor lets them, happily talking over them.

“We will be ready to greet them!” he says. “We will be a proud society ready to welcome them into a new Eden!” His voice is rising again. “We will show them that they have left Old World and entered PARADISE!”

Lots more murmuring now, talking everywhere.

“I am going to take your cure away from you,” the Mayor says.

And boy, does the murmuring stop.

The Mayor lets it, lets the silence build up, and then he says, “For now.”

The men look at one another and back to the Mayor.

“We are entering a new era,” Mayor Prentiss says. “You will earn my trust by joining me in creating a new society. As that new society is built and as we meet our first challenges and celebrate our first successes, you will earn the right to be called men again. You will earn the right to have your cure returned to you and that will be the moment all men truly will be brothers.”

He’s not looking at the women. Neither are the men in the crowd. Women got no use for the reward of a cure, do they?

“It will be difficult,” he continues. “I don’t pretend otherwise. But it will be rewarding.” He gestures towards the army. “My deputies have already begun to organize you. You will continue to follow their instructions but I assure you they will never be too onerous and you will soon see that I am not your conqueror. I am not your doom. I am not,” he pauses again, “your enemy.”

He turns his head across the crowd of men one last time.

“I am your saviour,” he says.

And even without hearing their Noise, I watch the crowd wonder if there’s a chance he’s telling the truth, if maybe things’ll be okay after all, if maybe, despite what they feared, they’ve been let off the hook.

You ain’t, I think. Not by a long shot.

Even before the crowds have started to properly leave after the Mayor’s finished, there’s a ker-thunk at my door.

“Good evening, Todd,” the Mayor says, stepping into the bell-ringing jail and looking around him, wrinkling his nose a little at the smell. “Did you like my speech?”

“How do you know there are settlers coming?” I say. “Have you been talking to her? Is she all right?”

He don’t answer this but he don’t hit me for it neither. He just smiles and says, “All in good time, Todd.”

We hear Noise coming up the stairs outside the door. Alive, I’m alive it says alive alive alive and into the room comes Mayor Ledger, pushed by Mr. Collins.

He pulls up his step when he sees Mayor Prentiss standing there.

“New bedding will arrive tomorrow,” Mayor Prentiss says, still looking at me. “As will toilet privileges.”

Mayor Ledger’s moving his jaw but it takes a few tries before any words come out. “Mr. President–”

Mayor Prentiss ignores him. “Your first job will also begin tomorrow, Todd.”

“Job?” I say.

“Everyone has to work, Todd,” he says. “Work is the path to freedom. I will be working. So will Mr. Ledger.”

“I will?” Mayor Ledger says.

“But we’re in jail,” I say.

He smiles again and there’s more amusement in it and I wonder how I’m about to be stung.

“Get some sleep,” he says, stepping to the door and looking me in the eye. “My son will collect you first thing in the morning.”

[TODD]

But it turns out it ain’t Davy that worries me when I get dragged into the cold of the next morning in front of the cathedral. It ain’t even Davy I look at.

It’s the horse.

Boy colt, it says, shifting from hoof to hoof, looking down at me, eyes wide in that horse craziness, like I need a good stomping.

“I don’t know nothing bout horses,” I say.

“She’s from my private herd,” Mayor Prentiss says atop his own horse, Morpeth. “Her name is Angharrad and she will treat you well, Todd.”

Morpeth is looking at my horse and all he’s thinking is Submit, submit, submit, making my horse even more nervous and that’s a ton of nervous animal I’m sposed to ride.

“Whatsa matter?” Davy Prentiss sneers from the saddle of a third horse. “You scared?”

“Whatsa matter?” I say. “Daddy not give you the cure yet?”

His Noise immediately rises. “You little piece of–”

“My, my,” says the Mayor. “Not ten words in and the fight’s already begun.”

“He started it,” Davy says.

“And he would finish it, too, I wager,” says the Mayor, looking at me, reading the red, jittery state of my Noise, filled with urgent red askings about Viola, with more askings I wanna take outta Davy Prentiss’s hide. “Come, Todd,” the Mayor says, reining his horse. “Ready to be a leader of men?”

“It’s a simple division,” he says as we trot thru the early morning, way faster than I’d like. “The men will move to the west end of the valley in front of the cathedral and the women to the east behind it.”

We’re riding east down the main street of New Prentisstown, the one that starts at the zigzag road by the falls, carries thru to the town square and around the cathedral and now out the back into the farther valley. Small squads of soldiers march up and down side roads and the men of New Prentisstown come past us the other way on foot, carrying rucksacks and other luggage.

“I don’t see no women,” Davy says.

“Any women,” corrects the Mayor. “And no, Captain Morgan and Captain Tate supervised the transfer of the rest of the women last night.”

“What are you gonna do with ’em?” I say, my knuckles gripping so hard on the saddle horn they’re turning white.

He looks back at me. “Nothing, Todd. They will be treated with the care and dignity that befits their importance to the future of New World.” He turns away. “But for now, separate is best.”

“You put the bitches in their place,” Davy sneers.

“You will not speak that way in front of me, David,” the Mayor says, calmly but in a voice that ain’t joking. “Women will be respected at all times and given every comfort. Though in a non-vulgar sense you are correct. We all have places. New World made men forget theirs, and that means men must be away from women until we all remember who we are, who we were meant to be.”