And then a pair of hooves strike him hard in the chest, sending him flying backwards across the clear ground–

[TODD]

“VIOLA!”

I’m screaming my head off, looking for a horse to ride, a fissioncar, anything to get me up that hill–

“It’s okay, Todd!” the Mayor shouts, looking at the projeckshun. “It’s all right! Your horse kicked him away.”

I look back to the projeckshun just in time to see 1017 hit the ground a buncha metres from where he was just standing, tumbling down in a heap, and Angharrad’s hind legs coming back to the ground–

“Oh, good girl!” I yell. “Good horse!” And I grab my comm, shouting, “Viola! Viola, are you there?”

And now I see Bradley kneeling down to Viola and the Spackle leader grabbing up 1017 and pretty much throwing him back to the other Spackle, who drag him away, and I see Viola digging in her pocket for her comm–

“Todd?” she says.

“Are you okay?” I say.

“That was your Spackle, Todd!” she says. “The one you let go!”

“I know,” I say, “if I ever see him again, I’m gonna–”

“He stopped when he saw the band on my arm.”

“Viola?” Simone breaks in from the scout ship.

“Don’t fire!” Viola says quickly. “Don’t fire!”

“We’re going to get you out of there,” Simone says.

“NO!” Viola snaps. “Can’t you see they didn’t expect that?”

“Let her get you outta there, Viola!” I yell. “It’s not safe. I knew I never shoulda let you–”

“Listen to me, both of you,” she says. “It’s stopping, can’t you–?”

She breaks off and in the projeckshun the leader of the Spackle has come near ’em again, his hands out in a peaceful way.

“He’s saying he’s sorry,” Viola says. “He’s saying it’s not what they wanted . . .” She breaks off for a second. “His Noise is more pictures than words, but I think he’s saying that one is crazy or something.”

I feel a little stab at this. 1017 crazy. 1017 driven crazy.

Course he would be. Who wouldn’t be after what happened to him?

But that don’t mean he gets to attack Viola–

“He’s saying he wants the peace talks to continue,” Viola says, “and oh–”

In the projeckshun, the leader of the Spackle takes her hand and helps her to her feet. He gestures to the Spackle in the half-circle and they part and some more Spackle bring out these thin strips of wood woven into chairs, one for each of ’em.

“What’s going on?” I say into the comm.

“I think he’s–” she stops and the half-circle parts once more and another Spackle comes thru, his arms full of fruits and fish and a Spackle next to him carries a woven-wood table. “They’re offering us food,” Viola says and at the same time I hear Bradley say, “Thank you” in the background.

“I think the peace talks are back on,” Viola says.

“Viola–”

“No, I mean it, Todd. How many chances are we going to get?”

I fume for a second but she’s got a stubborn sound in her voice. “Well, you leave the comm open, you hear?”

“I agree,” Simone says on the other channel. “And you be sure to tell their leader how close they came to being vapours and rubble just now.”

There’s a pause and in the projeckshun, the leader of the Spackle pulls up straight in his chair.

“He says he knows,” Viola says, “and that–”

And then we hear it, the words coming thru, and it’s our language, in a voice that sounds kinda like us but like it’s made of a million voices saying the exact same thing.

The Land regrets the actions of the Return, it says.

I look at the Mayor. “What’s that sposed to mean?”

{VIOLA}

“The honest truth,” Bradley says, “is that we can’t leave. It was a one-way trip, decades long. Our forefathers saw this planet as a prime candidate for settlement, and the deep space probes–” he clears his throat in discomfort, though you can already see what he’s going to say in his Noise “–the deep space probes didn’t show any signs of intelligent life here, so–”

So the Clearing cannot leave, the Sky says, looking beyond us at the scout ship hovering there. The Clearing cannot leave.

“I’m sorry?” Bradley says. “The what?”

But the Clearing has much to answer for, the Sky says, and his Noise shows us a picture of the one who ran at us with a blade, the one with the band on his arm, the one that Todd knew–

And there’s feeling behind it, communicated directly as feeling, outside of language, feelings of terrible sadness, not for us, not for the interruption to the peace talks, but for the one who attacked us, sadness coming now with images of the Spackle genocide, images of 1017 surviving it and finding the rest of the Spackle, feelings of how damaged he is, how damaged we made him–

“I’m not excusing that,” I interrupt, “but that wasn’t us.”

The Sky stops his Noise and looks at me. And it feels as if every Spackle on the face of this planet is looking at me, too.

I choose my words carefully.

“Bradley and I are new here,” I say. “And we’re very eager not to repeat the mistakes of the first settlers.”

Mistakes? says the Sky, and his Noise opens again with images of what can only be the first Spackle War–

Pictures of death on a scale I hadn’t even imagined–

Pictures of Spackle dying by the thousands–

Pictures of atrocities at the hands of men–

Pictures of children, babies–

“We can’t do anything about what’s happened,” I say, trying to look away but his Noise is everywhere, “but we can do something to keep it from happening again.”

“Starting with an immediate ceasefire,” Bradley adds, looking stricken under the weight of the pictures. “That’s the first thing we can agree on. We’ll make no further attacks on you, and you’ll make no further attacks on us.”

The Sky merely opens his Noise again, showing a wall of water ten times as tall as a man, rushing down the riverbed where we sit, wiping out all before it as it slams into the valley below, erasing New Prentisstown from the map.

Bradley sighs and then opens his own Noise with missiles from the scout ship incinerating this hilltop and then more missiles falling from orbit, falling from a height the Spackle couldn’t hope to retaliate against, destroying the entire Spackle race in a cloud of fire.

The Sky’s Noise gets a satisfied feeling, like we were just confirming what he already knew.

“So that’s where we stand,” I say, coughing. “Now what are we going to do about it?”

There’s a longer pause and then the Sky’s Noise opens again.

And we begin to talk.

[TODD]

“They’ve been at it for hours,” I say, watching the projeckshun from the campfire. “What’s taking ’em so long?”

“Quiet, please, Todd,” the Mayor says, trying to catch every word over my comm. “It’s important we know everything that’s discussed.”

“What’s there to discuss?” I say. “We all stop fighting and live in peace.”

The Mayor gives me a look.

“Yeah, okay,” I say, “but she ain’t well. She can’t just sit up there in the cold all day.”

We’re around our campfire now, me and the Mayor, with Mr Tate and Mr O’Hare watching with us. Everyone in town’s watching the projeckshuns, too, tho with less interest as time goes on cuz watching people talk for hours ain’t that interesting, no matter how important. Wilf eventually said he needed to get back to Jane and took Mistress Coyle’s ox-cart back to the hilltop.

“Viola?” we hear over the comm. It’s Simone.

“Yes?” Viola answers.

“Just an update on our fuel, sweetheart,” Simone says. “The cells can keep us hovering here through the early part of the evening, but after that you’re going to need to start thinking about coming back tomorrow.”

I press a button on my comm. “Don’t you leave her there,” I say. I see the Spackle leader and Bradley both look surprised in the projeckshun. “Don’t you let her outta yer sight.”