The Toll

by Neal Shusterman

  “Are you excited, Munira?” Faraday asked. “To know what Prometheus and the other founding scythes knew? To unravel the riddle they left for us?”

  “There’s no guarantee we’ll find anything,” Munira pointed out.

  “Always the optimist.”

  As all scythes knew, the founding scythes claimed to have prepared a fail-safe for society, should their whole concept of the scythedom not succeed. An alternative solution to the immortality problem. No one took it seriously anymore. Why should they, when the scythedom had been the perfect solution for a perfect world for over two hundred years? No one cared about a fail-safe until something failed.

  If Scythes Curie and Anastasia were successful on Endura, and Scythe Curie became the High Blade of MidMerica, perhaps the scythedom could be turned from the ruinous path Goddard would take it on. But if not, the world just might need a fail-safe.

  They dropped to five thousand feet, and as they approached, details of the atoll came into view. Lush groves and sandy beaches. The main island of Kwajalein Atoll was shaped like a long, slender boomerang—and here they finally saw something that was evident nowhere else in the blind spot. Telltale signs that there had once been a human presence here; strips of low growth that used to be roads: foundations outlining spots where buildings once stood.

  “Jackpot!” said Faraday, and pushed the stick forward, dropping their altitude for a closer look.

  Munira could actually feel her nanites registering her relief.

  At last, all was well.

  Until the moment that it wasn’t.

  * * *

  “Unregistered aircraft, please identify.”

  It was an automated message barely audible through waves of powerful interference, with a generated voice that sounded too human to actually be human.

  “Not to worry,” Faraday said, then transmitted the universal identification code used by the scythedom. A moment of silence and then:

  “Unregistered aircraft, please identify.”

  “This is not good,” said Munira.

  Faraday threw her a half-hearted scowl, then spoke into the transmitter again.

  “This is Scythe Michael Faraday of MidMerica, requesting permission to approach the main island.”

  Another moment of silence, and then the voice said:

  “Scythe ring detected.”

  Both Faraday and Munira relaxed.

  “There,” said Faraday. “All better now.”

  Then the voice spoke again.

  “Unregistered aircraft, please identify.”

  “What? I said I’m Scythe Michael Faraday—”

  “Scythe not recognized.”

  “Of course it won’t acknowledge you,” Munira told him. “You weren’t even born when this system was put in place. It probably thinks you’re an imposter with a stolen ring.”

  “Blast!”

  Which is exactly what the island did. A laser pulse shot out from somewhere on the island and took out their left engine with a reverberating boom that they could feel in their bones, as if they had been struck, and not the plane.

  This was everything that Munira had feared. The culmination of all her worst-case scenarios. And yet in spite of that, she found courage and clarity in the moment that she hadn’t expected to find. The plane had a safety pod. Munira had even checked it before takeoff just to make sure it was in working order.

  “The pod’s aft,” she told Faraday. “We have to hurry!”

  Still, he remained obstinately on the static-filled radio. “This is Scythe Michael Faraday!”

  “It’s a machine,” Munira reminded him, “and not a very smart one. It can’t be reasoned with.”

  The proof of that was a second shot that shattered the windshield and set the cockpit on fire. At a higher altitude they would have been sucked out, but they were low enough to be spared from explosive decompression.

  “Michael!” yelled Munira, using his first name, which she had never done before. “It’s no use!” Their wounded craft had already begun a lopsided dive toward the sea; there was no saving the plane now, not even by the most skilled of pilots.

  Finally, Faraday gave up, left the cockpit, and together they fought the angle of the diving jet to reach the safety pod. They climbed inside but couldn’t pull it closed, because his robe kept getting caught in the latch.

  “Damn this thing!” he growled, and tugged so hard that the hem ripped—but the latch was now free. The mechanism sealed them inside, gel-foam expanded to fill the remaining space, and the pod ejected.

  The safety pod had no window, so there was no way to see what was going on around them. There was nothing but a sense of extreme dizziness as the pod tumbled free from the crashing plane.

  Munira gasped as needles penetrated her body. She knew they were coming, but still it was a shock. They caught her in at least five places.

  “I despise this part,” groaned Faraday, who, having lived as long as he had, must have experienced a safety pod before, but it was all new and horrifying to Munira.

  Safety pods were specifically designed to render the subjects within unconscious—so that anyone who was injured by the pod’s landing would remain unconscious while their own nanites healed them. Then they would awaken unscathed after however many hours it took to repair the damage—and if death occurred, then they’d be whisked to a revival center. Like those passengers in the meteor strike, they would wake up and feel exhilarated by it all.

  Except that would not happen to Munira and Faraday way out here, if the fall killed them.

  “If we die,” said Faraday, his words already slurring, “I am truly sorry, Munira.”

  She wanted to respond but found herself slipping out of consciousness before she could.

  * * *

  There was no sense of time passing.

  One moment, Munira was tumbling in darkness with Faraday, and the next, she was looking up at swaying palm trees that shaded her from the sun. She was still in the pod, but the lid had popped open, and she was alone. She sat up, wriggling out of the form-fitting foam.

  Near the tree line, Faraday roasted a fish on a stick over a small fire, and drank coconut water straight from the coconut. A bit of torn linen trailed from his robe in the sand, the spot where it had caught on the latch. The hem was muddy. It seemed odd to see the great Scythe Michael Faraday in a robe that wasn’t pristine and perfect.

  “Ah,” he said jovially, “you’re awake at last!” He handed her the coconut for a sip.

  “A miracle we survived,” she said. Only when she smelled the fish he was roasting did she realize how hungry she was. The pod was designed to keep its occupants hydrated for days but provided no actual nutrition. Her hunger attested to the fact that they had been there healing within the pod for at least a day or two.

  “We almost didn’t survive,” Faraday told her, giving her the fish, and skewering another. “According to the pod’s record, there was a failure of the parachute—probably hit by a piece of debris, or it took a laser strike. We hit the water hard, and in spite of the foam padding, we both suffered grade-three concussions and multiple rib fractures. You also had a ruptured lung—which is why it took a few more hours for your nanites to heal you than mine.”

  The pod, which had a propulsion system for a water landing, had powered them safely to shore and was now half-buried in the sand, having endured two days of rising and falling tides.

  Munira glanced around, and Faraday must have read the look on her face, because he said, “Oh, don’t worry; the defensive system apparently only tracks incoming craft. The pod came down close enough to the island not to be noticed.” As for as their plane—the one Faraday had promised to return to its owner—it was now in pieces at the bottom of the Pacific.

  “We are officially castaways!” Faraday said.

  “Then why are you so damn happy?”

  “Because we’re here, Munira! We did it! We have achieved something that no one since the birth of the post-mortal age has a
chieved! We’ve found the Land of Nod!”

  * * *

  The Kwajalein Atoll seemed like a small place from the sky, but now that they were on the ground, it felt massive. The main island wasn’t very wide but seemed to stretch on forever. There was evidence of old infrastructure everywhere—so, hopefully, what they were looking for would be here, and not on one of the outlying islands. The problem was they didn’t know what, exactly, they were looking for.

  They explored for days, slowly zigzagging back and forth across the island from dawn until dusk, keeping a record of the relics they found—and there were relics everywhere. The broken pavement of roads that had long since given way to a new-growth forest. Stone foundations that had once supported buildings. Tumbled piles of rusted iron and worn steel.

  They dined on fish and wild fowl, which were plentiful on the island, as were whimsically varied fruit trees that were clearly not indigenous. Most likely they had been cultivated in backyards, and were still here long after the homes and yards had gone.

  “What if we don’t find anything?” Munira had asked early into their exploration.

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said.

  “There are no bridges,” she reminded him.

  For the first few days—aside from the stubby defensive tower, which had sealed itself shut like some vertical sarcophagus—they had found little more than broken porcelain from old sinks and toilets, and plastic containers that would probably remain there unchanged until the sun went nova and devoured the inner planets. This place might be a mecca for archaeologists, but it brought the pair no closer to finding what they had come for.

  Then, toward the end of the first week, they crested a berm to find a sand-covered expanse too geometric to be natural. Just a little bit of shallow digging revealed a layer of concrete so thick that barely anything had taken root in it. There was a sense of purpose to the place, although they couldn’t tell what that purpose might have been.

  And there against the side of the berm, almost entirely hidden by vines, was a moss-covered doorway. The entrance to a bunker.

  As they cleared the vines away, they found a security panel. Anything written or etched into it had been eroded away, but what remained told the only tale it needed to tell. The panel had an indentation that was the exact size and shape as the gem on a scythe ring.

  “I’ve seen these before,” said Faraday. “In older scythe buildings, our rings would serve as entry keys. They actually used to have a purpose beyond granting immunity and looking impressive.”

  He raised his fist and pressed his ring to the indentation. They could hear the mechanism unlatch, but it took the two of them to force the old doors open.

  They had brought flashlights that had been among the scant supplies in the safety pod. Now they shined them into the musty darkness as they entered a corridor that angled downward at a steep slope.

  The bunker, unlike the island, was untouched by time, save for a fine layer of dust. A single wall had cracked, and roots pushed forth like an ancient tentacled creature forcing slow entry, but other than that, the outside world remained outside.

  Finally, the corridor opened into a space with multiple workstations. Old screens of antique computer consoles. It reminded Munira of the secret room beneath the Library of Congress where they had found the map that led them here. That place had been cluttered, but this one was left in perfect order. Chairs were pushed against desks, as if by a cleaning crew. A coffee mug from a place that bore the name of a Herman Melville character sat beside a workstation, as if waiting for someone to fill it. This place had not been abandoned in a hurry. In fact, it hadn’t been abandoned at all—it had been prepared.

  And Munira couldn’t shake the uncanny feeling that whoever had left it this way over two hundred years ago knew they were coming.

  An open response to His Excellency, High Blade Tenkamenin of SubSahara

  I categorically refuse to honor your unethical and offensive restriction on MidMerican scythes. I will not now, nor ever, acknowledge the right of any High Blade to banish my scythes from any region.

  As I’m sure your own parliamentarian will tell you, scythes have free reign to travel the world over, and can glean whomever they see fit, whenever, and wherever they see fit to do it.

  Therefore, any restriction placed has no validity, and any region that joins SubSahara in this wretched endeavor shall see an influx of MidMerican scythes, if only to make my point. Be warned that any action taken against my scythes in your region will be responded to in kind, and swiftly.

  Respectfully, Honorable Robert Goddard, High Blade of MidMerica

  4 Objects of Great Value

  The first week of the Endura salvage had been all about mapping the wreckage and the expansive debris field.

  “Here’s what we know,” Captain Soberanis told Scythe Possuelo, bringing up a holographic display. “The Island of the Enduring Heart sank right along the ridge of a subsea mountain range. It hit a peak on the way down, and split into three sections.” Jerico rotated the image. “Two segments came to rest on this plateau east of the ridge; the third dropped into a trench on the western side. And it’s all within a debris field that spans twenty-five nautical miles.”

  “How long until we start bringing things up?” Possuelo asked.

  “It’s a lot to explore and catalogue,” Jerico told him. “Maybe a month until we can begin. But a proper salvage is going to take years. Decades, even.”

  Possuelo examined the image of the wreckage, perhaps studying what was left of the skyline, looking for familiar landmarks. Then he took it upon himself to rotate the map, and pointed to the section way down in the trench. “The map looks incomplete here. Why?”

  “The depth. The treacherous terrain is making it difficult to map—but that can come later. We can begin with the debris field, and the sections that came to rest on the plateau.

  Possuelo waved his hand as if swatting at a gnat. “No. I’m more interested in this section in the trench.”

  Jerico took a moment to study the scythe. The man had been affable and forthcoming thus far; perhaps there was enough trust between them now to gain some information Possuelo might not be willing to share with others.

  “If there’s something specific you’re looking for, it would help if I knew.”

  Possuelo took a moment before he answered. “The Amazonian scythedom is interested in the recovery of priceless artifacts. Those artifacts can be found in the ruins of the Museum of the Scythedom.”

  “The enduring heart?” asked Jerico. “I’m sure the heart itself is long dead, and devoured.”

  “It was in a protective case,” Possuelo told him. “Whatever remains of it should be preserved in a museum.” Then he added, “And there were other items.”

  When it was clear that Possuelo was not going to reveal any more, Jerico said, “Understood. I’ll instruct the other crews that they can salvage the sections of the city on the higher plateau. But my team, and my team alone, will take on the wreckage in the trench.”

  Possuelo relaxed a little bit. He took a moment to look at Jerico with what was either curiosity or admiration, or a little bit of both. “How old are you, really, Jeri?” he asked. “Your crew tells me you turned a corner before assuming command, which would put you at about twice your physical age… but you seem older. Wiser. I’m thinking that wasn’t the first corner you’ve turned.”

  Jerico took a moment, considering how best to answer.

  “I’m not the age that I tell my crew,” Jerico finally admitted. Because a half-truth was better than no truth at all.

  * * *

  The enduring heart—the one for which the great floating city was named—was the oldest living heart in the world, kept alive by electrical stimulation and rejuvenating nanites so that it was forever young. It had beat over nine billion times, and was a symbol of humanity’s conquest of death. However, it died when the island sank and power was cut to its electrodes.


  As Scythe Possuelo had said, it was, indeed, protected within an impact-resistant tempered-glass case… but the case could not stand the pressure so far down, and it imploded long before reaching bottom. As for the heart itself—or what was left of it after the implosion—it would not turn up among the debris the salvage team eventually found. No doubt it had been devoured—if not by the carnivorous sea life that had been lathered into an artificial feeding frenzy, then by some lucky scavenger who just happened to be passing by.

  While all the other salvage teams were satisfied to go after easier salvage, Jeri Soberanis’s crew labored tirelessly with little to show for its efforts for weeks. While other crews were bringing up treasure troves, Captain Soberanis brought up virtually nothing.

  With the towers of the drowned city leaning at steep angles, ripping free and tumbling with the slightest provocation into the depths, it was too dangerous to actually send crewmembers down. While amphibious Tasmanians were fine for shallow salvages, they couldn’t dive past sixty meters without a pressure suit. They had already lost one robotic sub, crushed by a plunging refrigerator that came crashing through the window of a shifting tower. True, anyone who was killed could be sent off for revival, but that required being able to retrieve their bodies from the trench. It was simply not worth the risk.

  Possuelo, usually a man of measured demeanor and not easily riled, was now prone to fits of frustration.

  “I realize that this is a delicate process,” Possuelo said after the fifth week of remote deep dives, “but sea slugs move faster than you and your crew!”

  What made his frustration worse was the arrival of more and more scythe yachts. Representatives from nearly every scythedom in the world had shown up—because everyone knew that he was after the Vault of Relics and Futures. It was fine when it remained in a place too cold and too deep for even sunlight to reach—but out of sight did not mean out of mind.