Prologue
NOTHING GOOD EVER HAPPENS IN THE CITY.
The first problem is that, though there was only supposed to be Ben and Mom in the small unit she’s got here to sleep in when she’s doing city business, now there’s all four of us, me and Mom and Pop and Ben, and we’ve only got like two pairs of clothes each–except for Mom, who already had stuff here–because all our things burnt up in the fire, and we’ve requested new ones from the clothiers but they’re saying there’s a material shortage, which I don’t see how that could be possible when we’re one of the farms shearing sheep every year with the entire purpose of sending the wool to the city so that the clothiers can turn it into clothes, but we get no special treatment other than the one spare set, so every day we’re in one shirt or the other and then back to the first one, though there’s a lot less call for me to wear them than for Ben or Mom or Pop, I guess, not even for going back to the farm to feed the chooks or tend the sheep, though I trust Lee and Wilf and Jane, Wilf’s wife, and Bessie Jaye, Lee’s wife, to go over and check on them regularly, because even though Pop showed them in his Noise what happened, Wilf really doesn’t like the city anymore since they voted him out as mayor all those years ago over a bunch of made-up lies the current mayor hinted at, and Lee doesn’t come because he’s blind without Wilf’s (or someone’s) Noise to guide him, plus if they left, there’d be no one to watch over their livestock or ours, so they go over each day to our farm while Mom and Pop figure out what to do, and I just wander around the city doing nothing or sit in the unit doing nothing, because I didn’t get into upper school (which I didn’t even want to) and the only schooling left is practical farming, and I know more than enough of that already from actually living on a farm nearly my whole life, and I could maybe get a part-time job at one of the stores or markets, but who knows how long we’re going to even be here in a city where everyone’s working so hard they’ve barely invented anything to do to have fun.
This is where Ben would sign, Take a breath already, and I’d give him two fingers for that, but he’s got a point. At least he now spends most of his days out at the school and science annex to the north of the city, so I see less of him.
Anyway. The city is a shitty place. Ha! Look at that. A city that’s pretty shitty. A pretty shitty city. It barely even has a name. There were ideas like “New Haven,” “Haven Reborn,” and even “Eden,” but everyone just fell into calling it the city, without even capitalizing it.
Pop hates the place as much as I do, and it’s not helped by how the people here stare at him.
Most of them know who Pop is. He’s got kind of a reputation on New World, and a history that puts most of theirs to shame, but that doesn’t stop them.
Pop is a brave guy, the bravest man I know.
He looks them in the eye when they stare at his Noise, and they’re always the first ones to look away.
Pop’s been going around town to builders, talking about getting the house put up again when things are all clear, because he built that house himself so he’s not going to give it up, even for a giant god.
He’s also been out there and back a couple times clearing up and saving what’s worth saving, too, which isn’t much.
Mostly, though, he’s been stuck here like I have while Ben is at school and Mom is doing her research and her City Council stuff.
For lack of anything else to do, I go for a walk.
Really, that’s how boring it is here. Most of this place is on a hilltop with a river curving round it.
It started as more or less a survival camp after old Haven got wiped out by a dam release up the river at the end of the last war (and yes, it was an act of war), but tents became huts, huts became houses, and suddenly it was a city.
It grew down both sides of the hill and all the way back to the river, the same one that flows by our farm.
It’s all pretty disorganized as a place to live, but it’s not very big, and the hill isn’t very steep.
People seem to like living here, but I think, and Pop does, too, that it’s more they’re afraid to be too far from other human faces, so we all end up being this concentrated (and isolated) human outpost with a few outlying farms and the school and science annex a few hilltops over, on this planet with natives we mostly ignore and who mostly ignore us, and even I can see that’s something that can’t last forever.
I head to the center of the hilltop, away from Mom’s unit, which like most of the units in this part of the city is just an old rectangular shipping container repurposed for living quarters.
There’s row after row of them between paved streets that are already cracking, but as I walk, I see the city’s grown even in the few months since I was here last. Some of the buildings are now three stories high, still made mostly with materials from the giant settler ships that landed here before I was born.
Ships so massive, you can still see half-empty husks out in the reclamation grounds.
But some of the new buildings are made of bricks Burly Caldwell discovered the trick of making from local mud, a trick so handy it led him all the way to being mayor about ten years ago, when he beat Wilf, who by all accounts was amazing, but who’s still different enough from other people, with his Noise and his relative quiet despite that, and his slow way of talking but smart way of thinking and just his overall goodness and kindness, that Burly convinced the city folk to be uncomfortable with him, even when they’d all loved him the first three times he was elected.
I guess bricks over decency isn’t an uncommon choice, according to Mom.
People think I don’t know about things like politics or history or construction.
They think because I failed at regular school, even though some of our classes were actually taught by our own Mom, one of the smartest people here, they think because of that, I don’t know stuff.
I do. It’s just hard for me to get the words out right onto the page or even off of my tongue, when in my head they’re as clear as anything, even if they are in great big long chains like you’re seeing here, I’m sorry, I’ll try to do better.
Anyway, that’s why Ben got into upper school and I didn’t, which is fine, I didn’t want it, I didn’t even want to come to the city, I wanted to live on the farm and find a way to make it better and maybe one day get someone to live with me out on my own farm.
But instead of starting up a plan about how to make that happen in the next five or ten years, a god blew up our house, and the nightmares I’m having are making it seem like there’s never going to be a future anyway.
Mom asked me about them again. Said all any of the other kids would tell her was that they’re dreams of Noise, even for the girls who wouldn’t usually have it. I kinda nodded and didn’t offer anything more, even though she obviously wanted to know.
They’re bad, the dreams. I mean, they’re so bad.
It’s an avalanche of Noise, and you can’t escape it.
Not just all the stuff you hate about yourself, it’s everything you fear about yourself, too, like every lie you’ve ever heard has come true at the same time, and everyone knows it, and they’re all pointing at you.
Remember that very, very, very bad thought you had about someone vulnerable that you’d never act on and you were ashamed to have and would never think it again?
Yeah, that’s there, and it’s out in the world for all to see.
So is every desire you’ve had, but I don’t even mean the dirty stuff, which of course is there, too, I mean the really dirty stuff, where you’ve had the thought and been grossed out about it because you’re fifteen and all fifteen-year-olds are pretty much perverts inside their heads, so you thought it and forgot it, but here it is again, saying that’s all you are and all you ever will be.
And it’s so loud. The Noise, they call it, but even living with Pop all these years, I’ve never really felt how noisy it is.
It falls on you as loud as a river from a cliff, and like I say, even though I was raised by a man who said no to the cure, I’m still not ready for what comes with it.
Of course it’s every thought, that’s the first thing you’re taught in school about it.
“A man unfiltered.” Words Pop used, showing up in our lessons, and that’s maybe where we make our mistake.
We talk about our thoughts as words, and so we think Noise is words, no matter how often they tell us different.
But Noise is feelings, too, every bit of excitement, dread, hope, anger (so much of that), aggression, resentment, loss, sadness, grief, all of it, and when the Noise hits you, you feel all of it, all at once, not one thing at a time, not politely, and so there’s much more than you could ever feel in one lifetime, more than anyone should have to feel, and it’s more than words, of course it is, it’s images and colors and lights and breathing darknesses that paw at you like they’re trying to tear open your clothes and rip your skin off, and the weight is indescribable, no matter how hard I try to do it.
It’s enough to wash you away, to lift you off your feet and crush you against rocks–
Or no, I was right the first time, it’s a river off a cliff, so there’s nowhere for the current to go except into the ground and you’re in its way and it’ll flatten you, wants to flatten you, pound you into nothing, and you’d get out of its way if you could only move, but you can’t, you’re smashed flat–