The Ask and the Answer

by Patrick Ness

  She looks around to see if we're being overheard. "Mistress Coyle is brilliant," she says, "but sometimes she can only hear her own opinion."

  She waits, biting her upper lip.

  "Maddy?"

  "We'll watch out," she says. "For what?"

  " If the right moment arrives, and only if," she looks around again, "we'll see what we can do about contacting your ships."

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  8 THE NEWEST APPRENTICE

  ***

  [ Viola]

  "BUT SLAVERY IS WRONG," I say, rolling up another bandage.

  "The healers were always opposed to it." Mistress Coyle ticks off another box on her inventory. "Even after the Spackle War, we thought it inhuman."

  "Then why didn't you stop it?"

  "If you ever see a war," she says, not looking up from her clipboard, "you'll learn that war only destroys. No one escapes from a war. No one. Not even the survivors. You accept things that would appall you at any other time because life has temporarily lost all meaning."

  "War makes monsters of men," I say, quoting Ben from that night in the weird place where New World buried its dead.

  "And women," Mistress Coyle says. She taps her fingers on boxes of syringes to count them.

  "But the Spackle War was over a long time ago, wasn't it?"

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  "Thirteen years now."

  "Thirteen years where you could have righted a wrong."

  She finally looks at me. "Life is only that simple when you're young, my girl."

  "But you were in charge," I say. "You could have done something."

  "And who told you I was in charge?"

  "Corinne said-"

  "Ah, Corinne," she says, turning back to her clipboard, "doing her best to love me no matter what the facts."

  I open up another bag of supplies. "But if you were head of this Council thing," I press on, "surely you could have done something about the Spackle."

  "Sometimes, my girl," she says, giving me a displeased look, "you can lead people where they don't want to go, but most of the time you can't. The Spackle weren't going to be freed, not after we'd just beaten them in an awful and vicious war, not when we needed so much labor to rebuild. But they could be treated better, couldn't they? They could be fed properly and set to work humane hours and allowed to live together with their families. All victories I won for them, Viola."

  Her writing on the clipboard is a lot more forceful than it was. I watch her for a second. "Corinne says you were thrown off the Council for saving a life."

  She doesn't answer me, just sets down her clipboard and looks on one of the higher shelves. She reaches up and takes down an apprentice hat and a folded apprentice cloak. She turns and tosses them to me.

  "Who are these for?" I say, catching them.

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  "You want to find out about being a leader?" she says. "Then let's put you on the path." I look at her face.

  I look down at the cloak and the cap.

  From then on, I barely have time to eat.

  The day after women were allowed to move again, there were eighteen new patients, all female, who'd been suffering all kinds of things-appendicitis, heart problems, lapsed cancer treatments, broken bones-all trapped in houses where they'd been stuck after being separated from husbands and sons. The next day, there were eleven more. Mistress Lawson went back to the children's house of healing the second she was able, but Mistresses Coyle, Waggoner, and Nadari were suddenly rushing from room to room, shouting orders and saving lives. I don't think anyone's been to sleep since.

  There's certainly no time for me and Maddy to look for our moment, no time to even notice that the Mayor still hasn't come to see me. Instead, I run around a lot, getting in the way, helping out where I can, and squeezing apprentice lessons in.

  I turn out not to be a natural healer.

  "I don't think I'm ever going to get this," I say, failing yet again to tell the blood pressure of a sweet old patient called Mrs. Fox.

  "It sure feels that way," Corinne says, glancing up at the clock.

  "Patience, pretty girl," Mrs. Fox says, her face wrinkling up in a smile. "A thing worth learning is worth learning well."

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  "You're right there, Mrs. Fox," Corinne says, looking back at me. "Try it again."

  I pump up the armband to inflate it, listen through the stethoscope for the right kind of whoosh, whoosh in Mrs. Fox's blood and match that up to the little dial. "Sixty over twenty?" I guess weakly.

  "Well, let's find out," Corinne says. "Have you died this morning, Mrs. Fox?"

  "Oh, dearie me, no," Mrs. Fox says.

  "Probably not sixty over twenty then," Corinne says.

  "I've only been doing this for three days," I say.

  "I've been doing it for six years," Corinne says, "since I was way younger than you, my girl. And here you are, can't even work a blood pressure sleeve, yet suddenly an apprentice just like me. Funny how life works, huh?"

  "You're doing fine, sweetheart," Mrs. Fox says to me.

  "No, she isn't, Mrs. Fox," Corinne says. "I'm sorry to contradict you, but some of us regard healing as a sacred duty."

  "I regard it as a sacred duty," I say, almost as a reflex. This is a mistake.

  "Healing is more than a job, my girl," Corinne says, making my girl sound like the worst insult. "There is nothing more important in this life than the preservation of it. We're God's hands on this world. We are the opposite of your friend the tyrant."

  "He's not my-"

  "To allow someone, anyone, to suffer is the greatest sin there is."

  "Corinne-"

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  "You don't understand anything," she says, her voice low and fierce. "Quit pretending that you do."

  Mrs. Fox has shrunk down nearly as far as I have.

  Corinne glances at her and back at me, then she straightens her cap and tugs the lapels on her cloak, stretching out her neck from right to left. She closes her eyes and lets out a long, long breath.

  Without looking at me, she says, "Try it again."

  "The difference between a clinic and a house of healing?" Mistress Coyle asks, ticking off boxes on a sheet.

  "The main difference is that clinics are run by male doctors, houses of healing by female healers," I recite, as I count out the day's pills into separate little cups for each patient.

  "And why is that?"

  "So that a patient, male or female, can have a choice between knowing the thoughts of their doctor or not."

  She raises an eyebrow. "And the real reason?"

  "Politics," I say, returning her word.

  "Correct." She finishes the paperwork and hands it to me. "Take these and the medicines to Madeleine, please."

  She leaves and I finish filling up the tray of medicines. When I come out with it in my hands, I see Mistress Coyle down at the end of the hallway, passing by Mistress Nadari.

  And I swear I see her slip Mistress Nadari a note, without either of them pausing.

  ***

  113

  We can still only go out for an hour at a time, still only in groups of four, but that's enough to see how New Prentisstown is putting itself together. As my first week as an apprentice comes to an end, we hear tell that some women are even being sent out into fields to work in women-only groups.

  We hear tell that the Spackle are being kept somewhere on the edge of town, all together as one group, awaiting "processing," whatever that might mean.

  We hear tell the old Mayor is working as a dustman.

  We hear nothing about a boy.

  "I missed his birthday," I tell Maddy, as I practice tying bandages around a rubber leg so ridiculously realistic everyone calls it Ruby. "It was four days ago. I lost track of how long I was asleep and-"

  I can't say any more, just pull the bandage tight-

  And think of when he put a bandage on me-

  And when I put bandages on him.

  "I'm sure he's fine, Vi," Maddy says.

>   "No, you're not."

  "No," she says, looking back out the window to the road, "but against all odds the city's not at war. Against all odds, we're still alive and still working. So, against all odds, Todd could be alive and well."

  I pull tighter on the bandage. "Do you know anything about a blue A?"

  She turns to me. "A what?"

  I shrug. "Something I saw in Mistress Coyle's notebook."

  "No idea." She looks back out the window. "What are you looking for?"

  "I'm counting soldiers," she says. She looks back again

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  at me and Ruby. "It's a good bandage." Her smile makes it almost seem true.

  I head down the main hallway, Ruby kicking from one hand. I have to practice injecting shots into her thigh. I already feel sorry for the poor woman whose thigh gets my first real jab.

  I come round a corner as the hallway reaches the center of the building, where it turns ninety degrees down the other wing, and I nearly collide with a group of mistresses, who stop when they see me.

  Mistress Coyle and four, five, six other healers behind her. I recognize Mistress Nadari and Mistress Waggoner, and there's Mistress Lawson, too, but I've never seen the other three before and didn't even see them come into the house of healing.

  "Have you no work, my girl?" Mistress Coyle says, some edge in her voice.

  "Ruby," I stammer, holding out the leg.

  "Is this her?" asks one of the healers I don't recognize.

  Mistress Coyle doesn't introduce me.

  She just says, "Yes, this is the girl."

  I have to wait all day to see Maddy again, but before I can ask her about it, she says, "I've figured it out."

  "Did one of them have a scar on her upper lip?" Maddy whispers in the dark. It's well past midnight, well past lights-out, well past when she should be in her own room.

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  "I think so," I whisper back. "They left really quickly."

  We watch another pair of soldiers march down the road. By Maddy's reckoning, we've got three minutes.

  "That would have been Mistress Barker," she says. "Which means the others were probably Mistress Braithwaite and Mistress Forth." She looks back out the window. "This is crazy, you know. If she catches us, we'll get it good."

  "I hardly think she's going to fire you under the circumstances."

  Her face goes thoughtful. "Did you hear what the mistresses were saying?"

  "No, they shut up the second they saw me."

  "But you were the girl?"

  "Yeah," I say. "And Mistress Coyle avoided me the rest of today."

  "Mistress Barker..." Maddy says, still thinking. "But how could that accomplish anything?"

  "How could what accomplish what?"

  "Those three were on the Council with Mistress Coyle. Mistress Barker still is. Or was, before all this. But why would they be-" She stops and leans closer to the window. "That's the last foursome."

  I look out and see four soldiers marching up the road.

  If the pattern Maddy's spotted is right, the time is now.

  If the pattern's right. "You ready?" I whisper.

  "Of course I'm not ready," Maddy says, with a terrified smile. "But I'm going."

  I see how she's flexing her hands to keep them from

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  shaking. "We're just going to look," I say. "That's all. Out and back again before you know it."

  Maddy still looks terrified but nods her head. "I've never done anything like this before in my whole life."

  "Don't worry," I say, lifting the sash on my window all the way up. "I'm an expert."

  The ROAR of the town, even when it's sleeping, covers our footsteps pretty well as we sneak across the dark lawn. The only light is from the two moons, shining down on us, half circles in the sky.

  We make it to the ditch at the side of the road, crouching in the bushes.

  "What now?" Maddy whispers.

  "You said two minutes, then another pair."

  Maddy nods in the shadows. "Then another break of seven minutes."

  In that break, Maddy and I will start moving down the road, sticking to the trees, staying undercover, and see if we can get to the communications tower, if that's even what it Is.

  See what's there when we do.

  "You all right?" I whisper.

  "Yeah," she whispers back. "Scared but excited, too."

  I know what she means. Out here, crouching in a ditch under the cover of night, it's crazy, it's dangerous, but I finally feel like I'm doing something, finally feel like I'm taking charge of my own life for the first time since being stuck in that bed.

  Finally feel like I'm doing something for Todd.

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  We hear the crunch of gravel on the road and crouch a little lower as the expected pair of soldiers march past us and away.

  "Here we go," I say.

  We stand up as much as we dare and move quickly down the ditch, away from the town.

  "Do you still have family on the ships?" Maddy whispers. "Someone besides your mother and father?"

  I wince a little at the sound she's making but I know she's only talking to cover her nerves. "No, but I know everyone else. Bradley Tench, he's lead caretaker on the Beta, and Simone Watkin on the Gamma is really smart."

  The ditch bends with the road and there's a crossroads coming up that we'll have to negotiate.

  Maddy starts up again. "So Simone's the one you'd-"

  "Shh," I say because I think I heard something.

  Maddy comes close enough to press against me. Her whole body is shaking and her breath is coming in short little puffs. She has to come this time because she knows where the tower is, but I can't ask her to do it again. When I come back, I'll come on my own.

  Because if anything goes wrong-

  "I think we're okay," I say.

  We step slowly out from the ditch to cross the crossroads, looking all around us, stepping lightly in the gravel. "Going somewhere?" says a voice.

  ***

  118

  Maddy takes in a sharp breath behind me. There's a soldier leaning against a tree, his legs crossed like he couldn't be more relaxed.

  Even in the moonlight I can see the rifle hanging lazily from his hand.

  "Little late to be out, innit?"

  "We got lost," I sputter. "We were separated from-"

  "Yeah," he interrupts. "I'll bet."

  He strikes a match against the zip of his uniform jacket. In the flare of light, I see sergeant hammar written across his pocket. He uses the match to light a cigarette in his mouth.

  Cigarettes were banned by the Mayor.

  But I guess if you're an officer.

  An officer without Noise who can hide in the dark.

  He takes a step forward and we see his face. He's got a smile on over the cigarette, an ugly one, the ugliest I've ever seen.

  "You?" he says, recognition in his voice as he gets nearer.

  As he raises his rifle.

  "Yer the girl," he says, looking at me.

  "Viola?" Maddy whispers, a step behind me and to my right.

  "Mayor Prentiss knows me," I say. "You won't harm me." He inhales on the cigarette, flashing the ember, making a streak against my vision. "President Prentiss knows you." Then he looks at Maddy, pointing at her with the rifle. "I don't reckon he knows you, tho." And before I can say anything-Without giving any kind of warning-As if it was as natural to him as taking his next breath-Sergeant Hammar pulls the trigger.

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  9 WAR IS OVER

  ***

  [TODD]

  YOUR TURN TO DO THE BOG," Davy says, throwing me the canister of lime.

  We never see the Spackle use the corner where they've dug a bog to do their business but every morning it's a little bit bigger and stinks a little bit more and it needs lime powdered over it to cut down on the smell and the danger of infeckshun.

  I hope it works better on infeckshun than it does on smell. "Why ain't it never ye
r turn?" I say.

  "Cuz Pa may think yer the better man, pigpiss," Davy says, "but he still put me in charge." And he grins at me. I start walking to the bog.

  The days passed and they kept passing, till there was two full weeks of 'em gone and more.

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  I stayed alive and got thru, (did she?) (did she?)

  Davy and I ride to the monastery every morning and he "oversees" the Spackle tearing down fences and pulling up brambles and I spend the day shoveling out not enough fodder and trying and failing to fix the last two water pumps and taking every turn to do the bog.

  The Spackle've stayed silent, still not doing nothing that could save themselves, fifteen hundred of 'em when we finally got 'em counted, crammed into an area where I wouldn't herd two hundred sheep. More guards came, standing along the top of the stone wall, rifles pointed twixt rows of barbed wire, but the Spackle don't do nothing that even comes close to threatening.

  They've stayed alive. They've got thru it.

  And so has New Prentisstown.

  Every day, Mayor Ledger tells me what he sees out on his rubbish rounds. Men and women are still separated and there are more taxes, more rules about dress, a list of books to be surrendered and burned, and compulsory church attendance, tho not in the cathedral, of course.

  But it's also started to act like a real town again. The stores are back open, carts and fissionbikes and even a fissioncar or two are back on the roads. Men've gone back to work. Repairmen returned to repairing, bakers returned to baking, farmers returned to farming, loggers returned to logging, some of 'em even signing up to join the army itself, tho you can tell who the new soldiers are cuz they ain't been given the cure yet.

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  "You know," Mayor Ledger said one night and I could see it in his Noise before he said it, see the thought forming, the thought I hadn't thought myself, the thought I hadn't let myself think. "It's not nearly as bad as I thought," he said. "I expected slaughter. I expected my own death, certainly, and perhaps the burning of the entire town. The surrender was a fool's chance at best, but maybe he's not lying."