Prologue #5
I get a little angry at the word. Mom says it a lot. “Why do you always assume because we’re teenagers it’s only ever embarrassment? That’s insulting. Arrow’s parents are hardcore in Margery Wingard’s church. If they think he and his sister saw a god somewhere, they’d probably beat him for heresy.”
Where do you know a word like heresy? Ben signs.
“Again,” I say, “insulting.”
“I’m sorry,” Mom says to me. “I didn’t know.”
“Because you didn’t think to ask.”
Her eyes flash. “And that’s enough of that, Maximillian.”
“Is it, though? Why are you letting everyone in the city think Pop caused the fire at our farm? They think he’s an idiot. They think he’s a drunk–”
“I am not responsible for that rumor, and I’ve corrected anyone who’s brought it up to me, as I’d expect both of you to do.” She gets up, still hot. “I’ll talk to Arrow and Echo and I’ll keep their parents out of it, all right? Is that good enough for you?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer, just leaves the room. Ben looks at me smugly, like he knew Mom would be reasonable and have an answer and a plan. So I give him two fingers and go to bed myself.
I dream. It effing sucks worse than you’d ever believe.
“The findings suggest,” President Burly says on screens all over the city, including the pads we’re holding in our own private homes whether we want to watch him or not, “a link between what we’re calling root fever–after the indigenous root where the bacteria was first discovered–and these hallucinatory nightmares our youth are having. ”
“Suggest,” Pop scoffs behind me. He got back this morning. Nothing’s changed at our farm, and no one at the Smith farm has seen a god, so Pop came back to the city, which has already ruined his mood. “That means they haven’t proved a damn thing.”
“We’re asking everyone to wear masks when dealing with Spackle merchants,” Burly goes on.
“This is a precaution for now. We’ve heard the voices calling for the Spackle to be removed from within the city limits, and we feel that this is too drastic a step.
We’ve worked hard over the years to build and maintain a good relationship with our neighbors. ”
“Neighbors,” Pop scoffs again.
“Again, these are just precautionary measures. There seem to have been no effects beyond the Noise dreams.”
“Those are bad enough,” I mutter.
“I would also like to add that reports of ‘burning giants’ and ‘godlike’ creatures in the surrounding forests are, so far, nothing but hearsay.”
I expect Pop to scoff at the word “hearsay” but he stays silent, though his Noise is bright and angry as anything.
“We appeal to our citizens to keep calm. We have a life here. It’s been hard, but it’s getting better every day. And we’ll get through this. Like we get through everything. Together.”
His face blips out.
“Politicians,” Pop nearly spits. “You can’t trust ’em.”
It seems like he’s being kind of sensible, though, Ben signs. He’s just taking precautions.
“It’s the same old shit wrapped up in a different package!
” Pop says, surprisingly loud. “There ain’t no one who’s been demanding the Land’s removal, I bet.
He just brought it up to put the idea in people’s minds so that when he does kick them all out, we won’t be surprised and we can think, oh, brave man, you tried to do the right thing but the ‘Spackle’ drove you to it. ”
We don’t really have anything to say to that, plus it would be hard to get a word in, his Noise is racing so fast and hot.
“And we all gotta pretend we didn’t see what we saw,” he carries on. “Or there’ll be panic. And we sure wouldn’t want anyone to panic that giant burning things could come raging through this city at any moment.”
“You really think that?” I ask, frightened again.
He calms down almost immediately. “No, son, I’m sorry.” He rubs a hand through his hair. “I’m just frustrated. I’ve seen bad leaders and bad mayors. I don’t trust any of ’em. I sure as hell don’t trust Burly to do the right thing. Too eager to please.”
“He does know about the gods, right?” I ask.
“Course he does,” Pop says. “Your mom told him.” He pauses. “I’m pretty sure she told him.” His Noise darkens. “I’m going for a walk.”
He stomps out of the unit, and almost like he was waiting for it, Burly knocks on our door not one minute later. He steps inside before we’ve even invited him.
“Our mom’s not here,” I say. “Pop neither.”
He smiles at us both. “That’s okay. I was actually hoping to talk to the two of you.”
“Us?” I look at Ben. He shrugs. “Why us?”
Burly sits down in one of the two chairs we’ve got in the main room, making himself comfortable. “I understand you two thought you saw something out in the woods around the time of your fire. And you’ve been talking about it with your classmates.”
Burly’s smile is still on his face, and his tone is like this is the most relaxed conversation ever. That’s already not how it feels.
“If you’ve come here to call us liars–” I start.
We saw it, Ben’s comm says. You know we saw it. But you want us to pretend we didn’t.
Burly’s smile gets wider. “You’ve always been very clever, Ben, haven’t you?”
“He’s not the only one,” I say.
“I’m trying to keep a city together, boys. I’m trying to keep people from panicking, and if I can’t do that, I hope to manage their panic into something less harmful than full-blown panic would be. Does that make any sense?”
“No,” I say.
Yes, Ben says, and I look at him, shocked. It does.
“You don’t lie to people,” I say.
You do if they’d misunderstand the truth.
“And who decides that?”
“I do,” Burly says. “That’s what I was elected for. That’s why the people chose me.”
“They chose you because they like your bricks.”
He laughs at this. “That, too. And while I can’t properly say that I believe what you say you saw–”
“We did,” I say. “We absolutely did.”
“I’m asking you both to keep it quiet for now. Until we know what we’re dealing with.” He shrugs. “We’ve barely got a handle on the Noise dreams that are making your lives so miserable.”
“It’s not bacteria,” I say, then I add, “probably.”
“It could be,” Burly says. “And that’s better than it being the thing in space that’s coming our way.”
“No, it isn’t,” I say. “People are just going to be mad at the Land now.”
“Believe it or not, Max, that’s actually what I’m trying to stop from happening.”
“I don’t believe you, because you’re making things up and lying to everyone.”
“There is a bacteria. It could indeed be linked, and it could also be curable when the right moment calls for a cure, if you see what I mean. In the meantime, it keeps people not only distracted but steering clear of the Spackle.”
“People aren’t going to believe you.”
“Oh, a person might not, but people definitely will. And it’ll keep everyone safe, including the Spackle. Which is why I need your help to make it convincing.”
“Why should we?”
“Do you want people to die?” Burly says, stern for the first time. “Do you want Spackle to die?”
“They’re called the Land.”
“And do you want them to die? Because that’s what we do. That’s what humans do. When things get weird or strange, we attack the locals. It’s what we’ve done here, time and again, and they nearly wiped us out. We can’t have that, Max. We just can’t. Especially right now.”
“Why especially right now?”
He looks to the ceiling. “I can’t tell you that. Can I just ask you to trust me?”
“No,” I say.
Yes, Ben says, and honest to god, we’re going to have such an argument when Burly leaves.
“Pop says you’re only preparing the city to blame the Land,” I say. “He says you’re putting ideas in their heads that they didn’t have before and that you’re getting people ready for kicking the Land out and maybe even killing them again. The opposite of what you just said.”
Burly looks at me now, really looks at me. “You’re a very brave boy, Max. Not many people, not many kids would speak to me that way.” He smiles again. “But thank you for telling me what your father thinks.”
I wince.
“And fine,” he says, “if you mistrust me that much, then I’ll tell you.”
“Tell us what?” I say, unsure now if I want to hear.
“That rock, up there in space,” Burly says. “We think it’s a ship.”
We know that part, Ben types.
“But what you don’t know is that we also think it’s an invasion.”