The Ask and the Answer Read Free Page B

him. Sometimes the rumor of an army is just as effective as the army itself, he told me and wasn't he right?
    All that time, running here as fast as we could, not thinking bout what Haven'd be like once we got here, not saying it out loud but hoping it'd be safe, hoping it'd be paradise.
    I'm telling you there's hope, Ben said.
    But he was wrong. It wasn't Haven at all.
    It was New Prentisstown.
    I frown, feeling my chest tighten and I look out west across the square, across the treetops that spread out into the farther silent houses and streets and on up to the waterfall, smashing down from the rim of the valley in the near distance, the zigzag road zipping up the hill beside it, the road where I fought Davy Prentiss Jr., the road where Viola-
    I turn back into the room.
    My eyes are adjusting to the fading light but there don't seem to be nothing here anyway but boards and a faint stink. The bell ropes dangle about six feet from any side. I look up to see where they're tied fast to the bells to make 'em chime. I squint down into the hole but it's too dark to see clearly what might be at the bottom. Probably just hard brick.
    Six feet ain't that much at all, tho. You could jump it easy and grab onto a rope to climb yer way down. But then-
    "It's quite ingenious, really," says a voice from the far corner.
    I jerk back, fists up, my Noise spiking. A man is standing up from where he was sitting, another Noiseless man.
    Except--
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    "If you try to escape by climbing down the ropes left so temptingly available," he continues, "every person in town is going to know about it."
    "Who are you?" I say, my stomach high and light but my fists clenching.
    "Yes," he says. "I could tell you weren't from Haven." He steps away from the corner, letting light catch his face. I see a blackened eye and a cut lip that looks like it's only just scabbed over. No bandages spared for him, obviously. "Funny how quickly one forgets the loudness of it," he says, almost to himself.
    He's a small man, shorter than me, wider, too, older than Ben tho not by much, but I can also see he's soft all over, soft even in his face. A softness I could beat if I had to.
    "Yes," he says, "I imagine you could."
    "Who are you?" I say again.
    "Who am I?" repeats the man softly, then raises his voice like he's playing at something. "I am Con Ledger, my boy. Mayor of Haven." He smiles in a dazed way. "But not Mayor of New Prentisstown." He shakes his head a little as he looks at me. "We even gave the refugees the cure when they started pouring in."
    And then I see that his smile ain't a smile, it's a wince.
    "Good God, boy," he says. "How Noisy you are."
    "I ain't a boy," I say, my fists still up.
    "I completely fail to see how that's any sort of point."
    I got ten million things I wanna say but my curiosity wins out first. "So there is a cure then? For the Noise?"
    "Oh, yes," he says, his face twitching a bit at me, like he's tasting something bad. "Native plant with a natural
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    neurochemical mixed with a few things we could synthesize and there you go. Quiet falls at last on New World."
    "Not all of New World."
    "No, well," he says, turning to look out the rectangle with his hands clasped behind his back. "It's very hard to make, isn't it? A long and slow process. We only got it right late last year and that was after twenty years of trying. We made enough for ourselves and were just on the point of starting to export it when ..."
    He trails off, looking firmly out onto the town below.
    "When you surrendered," I say, my Noise rumbling, low and red. "Like cowards."
    He turns back to me, the wincing smile gone, way gone. "And why should the opinion of a boy matter to me?"
    "I ain't a boy," I say again and are my fists still clenched? Yes, they are.
    "Clearly you are," he says, "for a man would know the necessary choices that have to be made when one is facing one's oblivion."
    I narrow my eyes. "You ain't got nothing you can teach me bout oblivion."
    He blinks a little,