The Toll

by Neal Shusterman

  “Tell the Thunderhead to explain itself!”

  “It has nothing more to say.… But it does wish you all a pleasant afternoon.” Funny, but until that moment, Greyson hadn’t even known the time of day.

  “But… but…”

  Then the lock on the door disengaged. Not just that one, but every lock in the building, courtesy of the Thunderhead—and in a moment, Tonists flooded the room, grabbing the Nimbus agents and restraining them. Last into the room was Curate Mendoza, the head of the Tonist monastery where Greyson had been harbored.

  “Our sect is not a violent one,” Mendoza told the Nimbus agents. “But at times like this, I wish we were!”

  Agent Hilliard, her eyes still just as desperate, kept her gaze fixed on Greyson. “But you said the Thunderhead allowed us to take you from them!”

  “It did,” Greyson said cheerfully. “But it also wanted me liberated from my liberators.”

  * * *

  “We could have lost you,” said Mendoza, still distraught long after Greyson had been rescued. Now they rode in a caravan of cars, all of which had actual drivers, back to the monastery.

  “You didn’t lose me,” said Greyson, tired of watching the man beat himself up over this. “I’m fine.”

  “But you might not have been if we hadn’t found you.”

  “How did you manage to find me?”

  Mendoza hesitated, then said, “We didn’t. We’d been searching for hours, then, out of nowhere a destination appeared on all of our screens.”

  “The Thunderhead,” said Greyson.

  “Yes, the Thunderhead,” Mendoza admitted. “Although I can’t see why it took so long for it to find you if it has cameras everywhere.”

  Greyson chose to keep the truth to himself—that it hadn’t taken the Thunderhead long at all, that it knew where Greyson was at every moment. But it had a reason for taking its time. Just as it had a reason for not alerting him of the kidnapping plot in the first place.

  “The event needed to appear authentic to your abductors,” the Thunderhead had told him after the fact. “The only way to ensure that was to allow it to actually be authentic. Rest assured you were never in any real danger.

  As kind and thoughtful as the Thunderhead was, Greyson had noticed it always foisted these sorts of unintentional cruelties on people. The fact that it was not human meant that it could never understand certain things, in spite of its immense empathy and intellect. It couldn’t comprehend, for instance, that the terror of the unknown was just as awful, and just as real, regardless of whether or not there was truly something to fear.

  “They weren’t planning to hurt me,” Greyson told Mendoza. “They’re just lost without the Thunderhead.”

  “As is everyone,” Mendoza said, “but that doesn’t give them the right to rip you from your bed.” He shook his head in anger—but more at himself than at them. “I should have foreseen it! Nimbus agents have more access to the backbrain than others—and of course they’d be looking for anyone who wasn’t marked unsavory.”

  Perhaps it was a bit delusional for Greyson to think he could remain unknown. It had never been in his nature to want to stand out. Now he was very literally one of a kind. He had no idea how such a thing should be played, but he suspected he’d have to learn.

  We need to talk, the Thunderhead had said on the day Endura sank, and it hadn’t stopped talking to him since. It told him that he had a pivotal role to play, but not what that role would be. It never liked to commit to answers unless there was some level of certainty, and although it was good at predicting outcomes, it was no oracle. It couldn’t tell the future, only the probabilities of what might occur. A cloudy crystal ball at best.

  Curate Mendoza rapped his fingers anxiously on his armrest.

  “These blasted Nimbus agents won’t be the only people looking for you,” he said. “We need to get out in front of this.”

  Greyson knew where this had to lead. As the sole conduit to the Thunderhead, he could no longer hide; the time had come for his role to start taking shape. He could have asked the Thunderhead for guidance on the matter, but he didn’t want to. The time he spent unsavory, with no input from the Thunderhead, was admittedly terrifying, but it was also freeing. He had grown accustomed to making decisions and having insights of his own. The choice to step out of the shadows would be his alone, without the Thunderhead’s advice or counsel.

  “I should go public,” said Greyson. “Let the world know—but do it on my terms.”

  Mendoza looked at him and grinned. Greyson could see the man’s cogs turning.

  “Yes,” Mendoza said. “We must bring you to market.”

  “Market?” said Greyson. “That’s not really what I had in mind—I’m not a piece of meat.”

  “No,” agreed the curate, “but the right idea at the right time could be as satisfying as the finest steak.”

  * * *

  This was what Mendoza had been waiting for! Permission to set the stage for Greyson’s arrival upon it. It had to be Greyson’s idea, because Mendoza knew if it was thrust upon him, he would resist. Perhaps this nasty kidnapping had a silver lining—because it opened Greyson’s eyes to the bigger picture. And although Curate Mendoza was a man who secretly doubted his own Tonist beliefs, lately the presence of Greyson made him begin to doubt his doubts.

  It was Mendoza who was the first to believe Greyson when he claimed the Thunderhead still spoke to him. He sensed that Greyson fit into a larger plan, and maybe Mendoza fit into that plan, too.

  “You’ve come to us for a reason,” he had told Greyson on that day. “This event—the Great Resonance—resonates in more ways than one.”

  Now, as they sat in the sedan two months later, discussing greater purposes, Mendoza couldn’t help but feel empowered, emboldened. This unassuming young man was poised to bring the Tonist faith—and Mendoza—to a whole new level.

  “The first thing you’re going to need is a name.”

  “I already have one,” Greyson said, but Mendoza dismissed the notion.

  “It’s ordinary. You need to present yourself to the world as something beyond ordinary. Something… superlative.” The curate looked at him, trying to see him in a finer, more flattering light. “You are a diamond, Greyson. Now we must place you in the proper setting so that you might shine!”

  * * *

  Diamonds.

  Four hundred thousand diamonds, sealed in a vault within another vault, lost at the bottom of the sea. A single one was worth a fortune that would have been beyond the comprehension of mortals—because these weren’t ordinary jewels. They were scythe diamonds. There were nearly twelve thousand of them on the hands of living scythes—but that was nothing compared to the gems held within the Vault of Relics and Futures. Enough to serve the gleaning needs of humanity for ages to come. Enough to bejewel every scythe that would be ordained from now until the end of time.

  They were perfect. They were identical. No flaw beyond the dark spots in their centers—but that was not a flaw; it was design.

  “Our rings are a reminder that we have improved upon the world that nature has provided,” Supreme Blade Prometheus proclaimed in the Year of the Condor, upon establishing the scythedom. “It is our nature… to surpass nature.” And nowhere was that more evident than when one looked into the heart of a scythe ring, for it gave one the illusion that it had depth beyond the space it occupied. A depth beyond nature.

  No one knew how they were made, for any technology that wasn’t controlled by the Thunderhead was technology lost. Few people in the world truly knew how things worked anymore. All the scythes knew was that their rings were connected to one another, and to the scythe database, in some undisclosed manner. But as the scythedom’s computers were not under Thunderhead jurisdiction, they were subject to glitches and crashes and all the inconveniences that plagued human-machine relations in days gone by.

  Yet the rings never failed.

  They did precisely what they were meant to do: They
catalogued the gleaned; they sampled DNA from the lips of those who kissed them, in order to grant immunity; and they glowed to alert scythes of that immunity.

  But if you were to ask a scythe what the most important aspect of the ring was, that scythe would likely hold it to the light, watch it sparkle, and tell you that, above all else, the ring served as a symbol of the scythedom and of post-mortal perfection. A touchstone of a scythe’s sublime and elevated state… and a reminder of their solemn responsibility to the world.

  But all those lost diamonds…

  “Why do we need them?” many scythes now asked, knowing that the absence of them made their own rings all the more precious. “Do we need them to ordain new scythes? Why do we need more scythes? We have enough to do the job.” And without global oversight from Endura, many regional scythedoms were following MidMerica’s lead and abolishing gleaning quotas.

  Now, in the middle of the Atlantic, where Endura once towered above the waves, a “perimeter of reverence” had been established by the consent of scythes around the world. No one was allowed to sail anywhere near the spot where Endura had sunk, out of respect for the many thousands whose lives had been lost. In fact, High Blade Goddard, one of the few survivors of that terrible day, argued that the Perimeter of Reverence should be a permanent designation, and that nothing beneath its surface should ever be disturbed.

  But sooner or later those diamonds would have to be found. Things that valuable were rarely lost forever. Especially when everyone knew exactly where they were.

  We of the SubSaharan region take extreme umbrage with High Blade Goddard’s removal of gleaning quotas. The quotas have stood since time immemorial as a way to regulate the taking of life—and, while not officially one of the scythe commandments, quotas have kept us on track. They have prevented us from being either too bloodthirsty, or too lax.

  While several other regions have now abolished quotas as well, SubSahara stands with Amazonia, Israebia, and numerous other regions in resisting this ill-advised change.

  Further, any and all MidMerican scythes are banned from gleaning on our soil—and we urge other regions to join us in resisting Goddard’s so-called new order from establishing a chokehold on the world.

  —Official proclamation from His Excellency, High Blade Tenkamenin of SubSahara

  2 Late to the Party

  “How much longer?”

  “I’ve never known a scythe to be so impatient.”

  “Then you do not know many scythes. We are an impatient and irascible lot.”

  Honorable Scythe Sydney Possuelo of Amazonia was already present when Captain Jerico Soberanis arrived on the bridge, just after dawn. Jerico wondered if the man ever slept. Maybe scythes hired people to sleep for them.

  “Half a day at full speed,” Jerico answered. “We’ll be there by 18:00, just as I said yesterday, Your Honor.”

  Possuelo sighed. “Your ship is too slow.”

  Jerico grinned. “All this time, and now you’re in a hurry?”

  “Time is never of the essence until someone decides that it is.”

  Jerico couldn’t argue the logic. “In the best of worlds, this operation would have happened a long time ago.”

  To which Possuelo responded, “In case you haven’t noticed, this is no longer the best of worlds.”

  There was truth in that. At the very least, it was not the world that Jerico had grown up in. In that world, the Thunderhead was a part of most everyone’s life. It could be asked anything, it always answered, and its answers were precise, informative, and just as wise as they needed to be.

  But that world was gone. The Thunderhead’s voice had gone silent now that human beings were all unsavory.

  Jerico had been marked unsavory once before. As a teenager. It wasn’t hard to accomplish—just three instances of shoplifting from a local grocery. Jerico was smug about it for less than a day. Then the consequences began to set in. Being denied communication with the Thunderhead wasn’t a big deal for Jerico—but there were other things about the experience that were irksome. Unsavories were last in line for food in the school cafeteria and were always left with the dishes no one else wanted. Unsavories were moved to the front of the classroom, where the teachers could keep a watchful eye on them. And while Jerico wasn’t cut from the soccer team, probational meetings were always scheduled in direct conflict with games. It was clearly intentional.

  Jerico used to think the Thunderhead was being spitefully passive-aggressive, but in time Jerico came to realize that the Thunderhead was merely making a point. Unsavorism was a choice, and one must decide if the things lost were worth the things gained.

  Lesson learned. A taste of being unsavory was enough. It took three months of toeing the line for the big red U to be removed from Jerico’s ID, and once it was gone, there was no desire to repeat the experience.

  “I’m pleased your status has been lifted,” the Thunderhead had said, once it was free to speak again. In response, Jerico had told the Thunderhead to turn on the bedroom lights—because giving it an order put the Thunderhead back in its place. It was a servant. It was everyone’s servant. It had to do as Jerico commanded. There was comfort in that.

  And then came the schism between humanity and its greatest creation. Endura sank into the sea, and the Thunderhead declared the entirety of humankind unsavory all in the same moment. At the time, no one exactly knew what the loss of the World Scythe Council would mean for people, but the Thunderhead’s silence hurled the world into a collective panic. Unsavorism was no longer a choice—it was now a judgment. And silence was all it took to turn servitude into superiority. The servant became the master, and the world became all about pleasing the Thunderhead.

  What can I do to lift this judgment? people cried. What can I do so that the Thunderhead finds favor in me once more? The Thunderhead never asked for adoration, yet people now gave it, creating elaborate hoops to jump though, hoping that the Thunderhead would take notice. Of course the Thunderhead did hear the cries of humanity. It still saw everything, but now it kept its opinions to itself.

  Meanwhile, planes still flew, ambudrones were still dispatched for people who went deadish, food was still grown and distributed—the Thunderhead kept the world functioning in the same fine-tuned precision as before; it did what it saw fit for the human race as a whole. But if you wanted your desk lamp turned on, you had to do it yourself.

  * * *

  Scythe Possuelo stayed on the bridge, monitoring their progress for a bit longer. It was smooth sailing—but smooth sailing was a monotonous endeavor, especially to one not accustomed to it. He left to take breakfast in his quarters, his forest-green robe billowing behind him as he went down the narrow stairs toward the lower decks.

  Jerico wondered what sort of things went through the scythe’s mind. Did he worry about tripping over his robe? Did he relive past gleanings? Or was he merely thinking about what he’d have for breakfast?

  “He’s not a bad sort,” said Wharton, the ship’s deck watch officer, who had been in the position much longer than Jerico had had command of the ship.

  “I actually like him,” said Jerico. “He’s a lot more honorable than some of the other ‘honorable scythes’ I’ve come across.”

  “The fact that he chose us for this salvage says a lot.”

  “Yes, I’m just not sure what it says.”

  “I believe it says you chose your career path wisely.”

  That was quite a compliment coming from Wharton—who was not a man given over to flattery. But Jerico couldn’t take full credit for the decision.

  “I just took the Thunderhead’s advice.”

  A few years earlier, when the Thunderhead had suggested Jerico might be happy pursuing a life at sea, it had annoyed Jerico no end. Because the Thunderhead was right. It had made a perfect assessment. Jerico had already been thinking along those lines, but to hear the Thunderhead make the suggestion was like a spoiler to the story. Jerico knew there were many seafaring lives to choose fro
m. There were people who traveled the globe in search of the perfect wave to surf. Others spent their time racing sailboats or traversing oceans in tall ships modeled after vessels from bygone eras. But these were pastimes that served no practical purpose beyond the sheer joy of it. Jerico wanted a pursuit of happiness that was also functional. A career that added something tangible to the world.

  Marine salvage was the perfect ticket—and not just dredging up things the Thunderhead intentionally sank to provide work for the salvage industry. That was no better than children digging up plastic dinosaur bones in a sandbox. Jerico wanted to recover things that had truly been lost, and that meant developing a relationship with the scythedoms of the world—because while ships under the Thunderhead’s jurisdiction never met with untimely ends, scythe vessels were prone to mechanical failure and subject to human error.

  Shortly out of secondary school, Jerico took a position as a junior apprentice with a second-rate salvage team in the western Mediterranean—then, when Scythe Dali’s yacht sank in shallow waters off the coast of Gibraltar, it gave Jerico an unexpected opportunity for advancement.

  Using standard diving gear, Jerico was one of the first to the wreck, and while the others were still surveying the scene, Jerico—against captain’s orders—went inside, found the body of the deadish scythe in his cabin, and brought him to the surface.

  Jerico was fired on the spot. No surprise—after all, it was mutinous to disobey a direct order—but it was part of a calculated move. Because when Scythe Dali and his entourage were revived, the first thing the man wanted to know was who had pulled him from the sea.

  In the end, the scythe was not only grateful, but exceptionally generous. He granted the entire salvage team a year of immunity from gleaning, but wanted to bestow something special on the one who had sacrificed everything to retrieve the body of the deadish scythe—for, clearly, that individual had their priorities in order. Scythe Dali asked what Jerico hoped to achieve in life.