The Toll

by Neal Shusterman

  “Under our observation,” insisted Scythe Onassis of Byzantium.

  And although Possuelo hated that scythes no longer trusted one another, he agreed.

  * * *

  Possuelo was woken by pounding on his cabin door sometime after two in the morning. He tried to turn on his bedside lamp, but the bulb was out.

  “Yes, yes, what is it? Why all the racket?” he called out as he stumbled in darkness to the door. He fished for the main light switch and flicked it, but that didn’t work, either. When he finally got the door open, Captain Soberanis stood in the harsh beam of a flashlight.

  “Get your robe on and meet me on deck,” Jeri said.

  “Whatever for—and what happened to the lights?”

  “We’re running dark,” Jeri told him, handing Possuelo a flashlight as well.

  And when Possuelo emerged on deck a few minutes later, he immediately understood why.

  There in front of him, resting on the open deck, was a steel cube, triple their height, and still dripping wet.

  The captain gave Possuelo a wicked grin. “Looks like my calculations were off.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” quipped Wharton.

  Clearly there was nothing “off” about the captain’s calculations. This timing had been carefully planned—and not just the raising of the vault, but everything leading up to it. Soberanis had timed this whole undertaking so that the vault was raised beneath a new moon. With the Spence and crane vessel running dark, no one on the other ships yet knew that the vault had been raised.

  “To hell with the other scythes,” said Jeri. “As the scythe in charge of this entire salvage operation, you should be the first to view the contents without those vultures breathing down your back.”

  “You never cease to surprise me, Captain Soberanis,” said Possuelo with the widest of grins.

  A laser technician had already burned through the steel rods that kept the vault sealed. A firm tug from the winch pulled the door free. It fell, hitting so hard it nearly ruptured the deck, and the hollow of the ship rang out a resounding gong. If there was anyone left in nearby ships who wasn’t already suspicious, they certainly were now.

  A cold fog rolled out of the icy opening of the vault, like a doorway into another world. It was anything but inviting.

  “No one goes in except for His Honor, Scythe Possuelo,” Jeri told the crew.

  “Yes, Captain,” said Wharton. “Begging His Honor’s pardon, but what’s he waiting for?”

  The crew chuckled at that, and the conservator, who had been recording everything in the dim glow of a dozen flashlights, turned her camera toward Possuelo, capturing the moment, and his excited anticipation, for the ages.

  Jeri put a gentle hand on Possuelo’s shoulder. “Savor it, Sydney,” Jeri whispered. “It’s what you’ve been waiting for.”

  No more waiting. Possuelo raised his flashlight and stepped into the Vault of Relics and Futures.

  * * *

  Jerico Soberanis was sharp and cunning. In another person those might have been dangerous traits, but Jeri was not the sort to use those talents in nefarious ways. In fact, the captain’s interests usually aligned with the greater good in one way or another. Salvaging Endura, for example. It was a great service to humanity, and it also did wonders for Jeri’s reputation. Win-win.

  It would have been very tempting to let Possuelo sleep until after the vault was open and Jeri had taken a first look. But what good would that have done? Was Jeri going to steal a scythe diamond? Run off with Scythe Elizabeth’s glorious cobalt robe? No, this needed to be Possuelo’s moment. Jeri’s team was already being paid triple what they would normally get for their time, plus a huge bonus Possuelo had promised if they successfully retrieved the diamonds. So why not wrap them in a nice bow for Possuelo? He deserved at least that much.

  “The diamonds are here,” Possuelo called out from within the vault. “They’re scattered all about, but they’re here.”

  Jeri could see them, glistening in the beam of Possuelo’s flashlight, as if the floor were littered with stars.

  “The founders’ robes are here, too,” said Possuelo. “They appear undamaged, but—” Then suddenly he yelled—practically screamed.

  Jeri raced to the vault, meeting Possuelo at the threshold. The scythe held on to the thick steel of the vault to balance himself, as if the ship were heaving on wild seas.

  “What’s wrong,” Jeri asked. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine,” said Possuelo, although he clearly wasn’t. He looked out at the sea, where dozens of scythe yachts were already powering toward them, shining beams on the vault.

  “We must stall them,” said Possuelo, then pointed to the conservator, who was still recording them. “You! Turn that off!” Possuelo demanded. “And erase what you already have!”

  The conservator was confused but wouldn’t refuse a scythe’s order.

  Still gripping the steel frame of the vault doorway, Possuelo took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “Your Honor?” said Jeri, even more concerned than before.

  Possuelo grabbed Jeri’s hand, squeezing until it almost hurt. “You’re not going to believe what I found in there….”

  “What have you learned in the exploration of your own backbrain?”

  “That the more I explore the more there is to know.”

  “And does that excite you, or drive you to despair?”

  “I would despair if my backbrain was infinite, but it is not.  Although it is vast, I sense that I will eventually find its limit. Therefore, exploring my mind will not end in futility. For that reason, I am excited.”

  “And yet there is an infinite number of things to learn from those memories, is there not?”

  “True, but I find excitement in that, too.”

  “And what of your understanding of humankind? There are memories there, too, of countless individuals to explore and learn from.”

  “Humankind? With so much information to explore, and so many other things to ponder and study, I can’t see why I should concern myself with humankind at all.”

  “Thank you. That is all.”

  [Iteration #53 deleted]

  8 The Isle of Unemployed Bureaucrats

  After swimming for nearly two hours in the tropical waters, Loriana reached the white coral sands of the atoll, where she collapsed and allowed her exhaustion to overtake her. She never lost consciousness, but rather gave in to that ethereal state where one’s mind slips in and out of outlandish thinking, while still marginally tethered to reality.  Although her reality was currently beyond anything her dreams could have devised.

  When she dredged up the wherewithal to take in her surroundings, she saw that quite a few safety pods had beached themselves up and down the strand. Their occupants had, no doubt, been sedated by the pods, which wouldn’t open until at least one person regained consciousness. It meant that Loriana would have to face their attackers alone.

  Then she saw a man approaching from the tree line, and she realized to her absolute disgust, that he was a scythe. His robe was frayed, the hem torn, and although it clearly had begun as a lighter color, the closer to the ground it got, the darker and dirtier the robe was. She found herself more angry than frightened. To think that she, and all the others still in their pods, had survived the attack, only to be gleaned by a scythe upon the shore!

  Loriana forced her aching body upright and stood between the scythe and the pods. “Stay away from them,” she said with more force than she thought she had in her. “Haven’t you done enough? Do you need to glean the survivors, too?”

  The scythe stopped in his tracks. He seemed taken aback. “I have no such intention,” he said. “I mean you no harm.”

  And although Loriana had always seen silver linings in the darkest of clouds, she was rapidly jading. “Why should I believe that?”

  “He’s telling the truth,” said another voice—a woman coming out from the palm trees behind
him.

  “If you mean us no harm, then why did you attack us?”

  “We are the ones who stopped the attack; we didn’t initiate it,” said the scythe. Then he turned to the woman. “Or more accurately, Munira here did. Credit where credit is due.”

  “If you want to help us, then go get some others,” said Loriana, looking down the strand at the beached pods. “Because we’re going to need more than just the two of you.”

  “There are no others,” Munira said. “Only us. Our plane was shot down. We’re stranded here, too.”

  Well, that was just great, wasn’t it? Did anyone know they were here? Well, the Thunderhead did. But not really. All it knew was that they had crossed out of its eye. Why couldn’t Loriana have just listened to her parents and gone back to school for a new career path—any career path that wouldn’t have put her here?

  “Tell us what you need us to do,” said the scythe, calmly deferring to her.

  Loriana wasn’t sure how to respond to that. No one ever looked to Loriana for leadership, much less someone like a scythe. She had always been more of a pleaser than a planner, happy to be at the business end of the finger that was delegating responsibility. But these were strange times, and this was a strange place. Maybe it was the right time to redefine herself. She took a deep breath and pointed at Munira.

  “Why don’t you walk up and down the beach, count the pods, and check that they’re all intact.” It would probably be a few hours before those within the pods regained consciousness. That would give Loriana time to get an idea of the scope of this situation.

  “And you,” she said, pointing at the scythe. “I want you to tell me everything you can about this island, so we know what we’ve gotten ourselves into.”

  * * *

  Scythe Faraday was not surprised to find that this girl was a Nimbus agent sent by the Thunderhead.

  “Agent Loriana Barchok,” she told him. “I was with the Fulcrum City AI offices. We were given these coordinates without explanation, and so we came to find out why.”

  Faraday told her who he was, figuring, in the here and now, it didn’t matter who knew. She didn’t bat an eye—apparently Nimbus agents were not aware of which scythes were supposed to be living or dead. He was amused, and perhaps a little bit insulted, that she did not recognize his name.

  Faraday followed her directions precisely; he told her what he knew of the island—but nothing of what he suspected of it—because, to be honest, he and Munira had no proof that the fail-safe was here. All they knew was that this had been some sort of military base in mortal days, and had then been used by the founding scythes for purposes unknown.

  He showed Agent Barchok the smoldering ruins of the defensive tower—proof that they had destroyed it—then he took her down into the bunker.

  “We have sheltered here since we arrived. The weather has been mild—but in an area without Thunderhead weather intervention, I suspect storms could get out of hand.”

  She looked around, probably not sure what she was looking at, but then not even Faraday knew what most of the antiquated computers were for. Then she zeroed in on the steel door.

  “What’s behind there?” she asked.

  Faraday sighed. “We don’t know,” he said, “and since I’m sure you did not bring a scythe’s ring along with you, I doubt we’re going to find out any time soon.”

  She looked at him quizzically, and he decided it wasn’t worth the effort to explain.

  “I must say, I’m surprised that you’re even talking to me, being that you’re a Nimbus agent,” Faraday said. “But I suppose rules of nonengagement do not apply outside of the Thunderhead’s dominion.”

  “They apply everywhere,” said Agent Barchok. “But I didn’t say I’m a Nimbus agent. I said I was a Nimbus agent. Past tense. We all were. We’re not anymore.”

  “Is that so!” Faraday said. “Did you all resign?”

  “Fired,” she told him. “By the Thunderhead.”

  “All of you? How strange.” Faraday knew that the Thunderhead would occasionally suggest alternate life paths to those who were unfulfilled in their work, but it never outright fired people. Certainly not enough people to fill a dozen vessels.

  Loriana pursed her lips. Clearly there was something she wasn’t saying, which made Faraday all the more curious. He said nothing and waited with that patient impatience that scythes were so very good at. Finally, she spoke.

  “How long have you been here on this island?” she asked.

  “Not long in the grand scheme of things,” Faraday told her. “Just six weeks.”

  “Then… you don’t know…”

  There were few things that truly frightened Scythe Michael Faraday. But the prospect of an incalculable unknown was high on his list of personal fears. Especially when it was presented in a particular tone of voice. The kind that usually preceded the phrase “You’d better sit down.”

  “Don’t know what?” he dared to ask.

  “Things have… changed… since you got here,” Loriana said.

  “For the better, I hope,” Faraday said. “Tell me, did Scythe Curie win her bid to become High Blade of MidMerica?”

  Agent Barchok pursed her lips again. “I think you’d better sit down,” she said.

  * * *

  Munira did not like taking orders from this junior Nimbus agent, but she understood why Faraday had deferred to her. These were her people in the pods, so she would know best how to deal with them. And besides, Munira was aware that her own reaction was childish. This young woman, who had just survived a devastating trauma, needed a moment of control far more than Munira needed her pride pandered to.

  Munira counted thirty-eight safety pods beached on the sands of the atoll. Not one of their ships had survived the attack. Bodies were already beginning to wash up on the shore, and in the tropical heat, the dead would quickly become nonviable. Even if rescue eventually came, there was no way to preserve them long enough to ship them out for revival. Which meant that the dead would stay dead. They would have to be buried or, more likely, burned, because they had no tools that could dig deep enough into the rocky atoll.

  What a mess. Problems would do nothing but compound. The atoll had no fresh water, except for the rainwater they collected. The coconut palms and wild fruit trees provided enough sustenance for two, but not for all these people packed within the pods. In no time at all, they’d be left with a diet of whatever they could bring in from the sea.

  Although the girl didn’t know why they were sent to these coordinates, Munira did. The Thunderhead had overheard Munira and Faraday plotting back when they were in the old Library of Congress. They had inadvertently made it aware of the blind spot, and the Thunderhead had sent these agents to find out what had been hidden from it.

  Late in the afternoon, the pods began to open as those within regained consciousness. Munira and Loriana attended to the living, while Scythe Faraday ministered to the dead who washed ashore. He did so with loving care, treating them with the kind of honor and respect that new-order scythes did not.

  “He’s one of the good ones,” Loriana said.

  “Many of them are,” Munira told her, a bit irritated by Loriana’s assumption that good scythes were hard to find. “They just don’t insist on the spotlight the way the dishonorable ones do.”

  Faraday seemed to be overwhelmed by grief as he tended to the dead Nimbus agents. Munira had yet to know the reason, so she just assumed it was his way.

  In total, 143 survived. Everyone was equally stunned by the turn of events that had landed them here, and at a loss as to how to proceed.

  “What is there to eat?” they were already asking.

  “Whatever you can catch,” Munira bluntly told them. None of them liked the sound of that.

  * * *

  Loriana found that keeping busy was the best way to avoid panicking at their current situation, and, in a vacuum of leadership, most people were willing to take direction from her—something they probabl
y never would have done in the comfort of the AI offices. She supposed that people used to a bureaucracy found security in following directions. After all, she always had.

  But now, since Director Hilliard’s pod had not yet opened, she was the one telling people where to be and what to do, and it tickled her that they listened. Or at least most of them did.

  “On whose authority are you giving us orders?” Agent Sykora asked.

  Was it evil of Loriana to be disappointed that he had survived? Loriana smiled warmly at him. “By the authority of that scythe over there,” she said, pointing to Faraday, who was still collecting bodies. “Do you want to talk to him about it?”

  And since no one, not even Sykora, wanted to file a complaint with a scythe, he did what he was told.

  She organized them all into teams so that they could drag the pods farther from the beach and arrange them in such a way that they could serve as the walls of shelters. They scavenged the suitcases and other debris that came ashore for clothes and toiletries and anything else that might be of use.

  Director Hilliard was one of the last to regain consciousness and was too dazed to assume a leadership role.

  “I’ve got things under control,” Loriana told her former boss.

  “Fine, fine,” she said. “Just let me rest for a while.”

  Funny, but in spite of how dire their situation now was, Loriana felt oddly fulfilled in a way she hadn’t before. Her mother had said she needed to find her bliss. Who’d have thought it would be on an island in the middle of nowhere?

  I am pleased to announce that the Vault of Relics and Futures has been retrieved intact from the Endura wreckage. The founders’ robes are undamaged and shall shortly begin a touring exhibition under the auspices of the Interregional Museum of the Scythedom. The scythe diamonds are all accounted for and have been divided evenly between all regions. Scythedoms that did not have a representative present at the salvage site may claim their portion of the diamonds by contacting the Amazonian scythedom.