Chaos Walking: The Complete Trilogy (148 page)

And he ain’t quite saying it in words–

And he’s opening up his arms and I’m throwing myself into ’em and I’m hitting him so hard we fall back against the beast he was riding and–

How big you’ve gotten,
he says–

“Ben!”
I say, gasping the words, “Aw, Jesus,
Ben–
”

You’re as tall as me,
he says.
Big as a man.

And I’m barely noticing that he says it a bit strange cuz I’m just holding him tight and my eyes are leaking water and I can barely speak as I feel him here, right
here,
right
here
in the flesh, alive and alive and alive–

“How?” I finally say, pulling back a little but still holding onto him and I can’t say no more but he knows what I mean–

The Spackle found me,
he says.
Davy Prentiss shot me–

“I know,” I say and my chest gets heavier, my chest weighing down and my Noise feeling heavier, too, heavy like it ain’t felt in a good long while, and Ben can see it and he says–

Show me.

And I do, right there before I can even get any proper words out, I show him the whole terrible story of what happened after we left him and I’d swear he was helping me do it, helping me show him the death of Aaron, the wounding of Viola, our separation, the attacks by the Answer, the banding of the Spackle, the banding of the women, the
deaths
of the Spackle, and I look over to 1017 still up on his battlemore and I show Ben all about that, too, and everything that followed, Davy Prentiss coming round to being human and then dying at the Mayor’s hand and the war and more deaths–

It’s all right, Todd,
he says.
It’s all over. The war is over.

And I can tell–

I can tell he forgives me.

He forgives me for all of it, tells me I don’t even need to be forgiven, tells me I did the best I could, that I made mistakes but that’s what makes me human and that it’s not the mistakes I made but how I responded to ’em and I can feel it from him, feel it from his Noise, telling me how I can stop now, how everything’s gonna be all right–

And I realize he ain’t telling me with words. He’s sending it right into the middle of my head, actually, no, he
ain’t,
he’s
surrounding
me with it, letting me sit in the middle of it, knowing it to be true, the forgiveness, the – and here’s a word I don’t even know but suddenly do–
absolushun,
absolushun from him if I want it, absolushun for everything–

“Ben?” I say, feeling puzzled, feeling
more
than puzzled. “What’s going on? Yer
Noise–
”

There’s a lot we need to talk about,
he says, again not with his mouth, and I start to feel weird about it but the warmth of it is all round me, the
Ben
of it’s all there, and my heart just breaks open again and I smile back at the smile he’s giving me–

“Todd?” I hear behind us.

We turn to look.

The Mayor stands at the edge of the crowd, watching us.

{V
IOLA
}

“Todd?” I hear the Mayor say as I stop right beside him–

Because it
is
Ben, it
is,
I don’t know how, but it really is him–

And he and Todd turn to look, a dazed cloud of happy Noise swirling round them, expanding over everything, including the Spackle still up on the battlemore next to them and I move toward Ben, my own heart surging–

But I glance at the Mayor’s face as I run past–

And I see
pain
there, just for a second, fleeting across his gel-shiny features, and then it’s gone, replaced with the face we know so well, the face of the Mayor, bemused and in charge–

“Ben!” I call and he opens an arm to receive me. Todd steps back but the feelings from Ben are so good, so strong that after a second Todd embraces both of us together and I feel so happy about it I start to cry.

“Mr Moore,” the Mayor calls from a distance away. “Reports of your death seem to have been exaggerated.”

As have reports of yours
, Ben says, but in the strangest way, not using his mouth, using his Noise more directly than I’ve ever heard–

“This is most unexpected,” the Mayor says, glancing at Todd, “but joyful of course. Very joyful indeed.”

But I don’t see much joy behind the smile he’s giving.

Todd doesn’t seem to notice, though. “What’s with yer Noise?” he says to Ben. “Why are you talking like that?”

“I believe I have an idea,” the Mayor says.

But Todd isn’t listening.

“I’ll explain everything,” Ben says, using his mouth for the first time, though his voice is scratchy and clogged, as if he hasn’t used it in ages.
But let me say first,
he says, back through his Noise, reaching up to the Mayor and the crowd behind him,
that peace is still with us. The Land still wants it. A real new world is still open to all of us. That’s what I came to tell you.

“Is that so?” the Mayor says, still smiling his cold smile.

“Then what’s
he
doing here?” Todd says, nodding at 1017. “He tried to kill Viola. He don’t care about peace.”

The Return made a mistake,
Ben says,
for which we must forgive him.

“The who did what now?” Todd says, perplexed.

But 1017 is already turning his battlemore back towards the road without acknowledging us, riding back through the crowds on his way out of the city.

“Well, now,” the Mayor says, his smile still stuck there. Ben and Todd lean into each other, the feelings rolling off them in waves, waves that make me feel great in spite of all my worries. “Well, now,” the Mayor says again, a little louder, trying to make sure he has all our attention. “I would very, very much like to hear what Ben has to say.”

I’m sure you would, David,
Ben says in that weird Noise way.
But first I’ve got a lot of catching up to do with my son.

And there’s a surge of feeling from Todd–

And he doesn’t see the glimmer of pain flash again on the face of the Mayor.

[T
ODD
]

“But I don’t unnerstand,” I say, not for the first time. “Does that make you Spackle now or something?”

No,
Ben says, thru his Noise, but way clearer than Noise speech ever usually is.
The Spackle speak the voice of this planet. They live within it. And now, because of how long I was immersed in that voice, I do, too. I’ve connected with them.

And there’s that
connected
word again.

We’re in my tent, just me and him, Angharrad tied outside in a way that blocks the opening. I know the Mayor and Viola and Bradley and all them are out there waiting for us to come out to tell ’em what the hell’s going on.

But let ’em wait.

I got Ben back and I ain’t letting him outta my sight.

I swallow and think for a minute. “I don’t unnerstand,” I say again.

“I think it could be the way forward for all of us,” he says with his mouth, croaky and crackling. He coughs and lets his Noise take over again.
If we can
all
learn to speak this way, then there won’t be any more division twixt us and the Spackle, there won’t be any division twixt
humans
.
That’s the secret of this planet, Todd. Communication, real and open, so we can finally understand each other for once.

I clear my throat. “Women don’t got Noise,” I say. “What’ll happen to them?”

He stops.
I’d forgotten,
he says.
It’s been so long since I’ve really been around them.
He brightens again.
Spackle women have Noise. And if there’s a way for men to
stop
having Noise
– he looks at me –
There must be a way for women to start.

“The way things’ve gone round here,” I say, “I don’t know that yer gonna have much success with that kinda talk.”

We sit quietly for a moment. Well, not quietly, cuz Ben’s Noise churns around us constantly, taking my own Noise and mixing it in like the most natural thing in the world, and in any instant I can know anything and everything about him. Like how, after Davy shot him, he stumbled into the undergrowth to die and lay there for a day and a night before he was found by a hunting party of Spackle and then what followed was months of dreaming where he was nearly dead, months away in a world of strange voices, learning all the knowledges and histories of everything the Spackle know, learning new names and feelings and unnerstandings.

And then he woke up and was changed.

But was still Ben, too.

And I tell him, thru the best use of my Noise, which feels open and free again like it ain’t done for months, about everything that happened here and how I still don’t quite unnerstand how I ended up wearing this uniform–

But all he asks is,
Why isn’t Viola in here with us?

{V
IOLA
}

“Don’t you feel excluded?” the Mayor says, pacing around the campfire one more time.

“Not really,” I say, watching him. “It’s his father in there.”

“Not his
real
father,” says the Mayor, frowning

“Real enough.”

The Mayor keeps pacing, his face hard and cold.

“Unless you mean–” I say.

“If they ever do emerge,” he says, nodding at the tent where Ben and Todd are talking, where we can hear and see a cloud of Noise spinning denser and more intricately than any usual man’s Noise, “please send Todd to retrieve me.”

And off he goes, Captain O’Hare and Captain Tate following him.

“What’s with him?” Bradley asks, watching the Mayor leave.

It’s Wilf who answers. “He thinks he’s lost his son.”

“His son?” Bradley asks.

“The Mayor’s somehow got it into his head that Todd’s a replacement for Davy,” I say. “You saw how he was talking to him.”

“I heard some of it through the crowd,” Lee says, from where he’s sitting by Wilf. “Something about Todd transforming him.”

“And now Todd’s
real
father’s here,” I say.

“At the worst possible moment,” Lee says.

“Or just in the nick of time,” I say.

The curtain of the tent opens and Todd pokes his head out.

“Viola?” he says.

And I turn to look at him–

And when I do, I can hear everything he’s thinking.

Everything.

Clearer than before, clearer than seems possible–

And I’m not even sure I’m supposed to, but I look him in the eyes and I see it–

In the middle of everything he’s feeling–

Even after we fought-

Even after I doubted him-

Even after I
hurt
him–

I see how much he loves me.

But I see more, too.

[T
ODD
]

“So what happens now?” Viola says to Ben, sitting next to me on my cot. I’ve taken her hand. Didn’t say nothing about it, just took it, and she let me and we sit side by side.

Peace is what happens,
Ben says.
The Sky sent me to find out about the explosion, to see if peace was still possible.
He smiles and again it’s thru his whole Noise, reaching out to us so that it’s hard not to smile yerself.
And it
is
possible. That’s what the Return is telling the Sky right now.

“What makes you think 1017 is trustworthy?” I say. “He attacked Viola.”

I squeeze Viola’s hand.

She squeezes it back.

Because I know him,
Ben says.
I can hear his voice, hear the conflict in it, hear the good that wants to come. He’s like you, Todd. He can’t kill.

I look at the floor at that.

“I think you need to talk to the Mayor,” Viola says to Ben. “I don’t think he’s too happy that you’re back.”

No,
Ben says.
I got that impression too, though he is very difficult to read, isn’t he?
He stands. “But he needs to know the war is over,” he rasps in his spoken voice.

He looks at me and Viola sitting there, gives another little smile, and then leaves us in the tent.

We don’t say nothing for a minute.

Or for another minute more.

And then I tell her the thought that’s been coming ever since I saw Ben.

{V
IOLA
}

“I wanna go back to old Prentisstown,” Todd says.

“What?” I say, surprised, even though I’d seen it swirling in his Noise.

“Maybe not old Prentisstown itself,” he says. “But not here.”

I sit up. “Todd, we’ve barely started–”