The Toll

by Neal Shusterman

  Goddard took a moment to look out at the eastern view. Morrison joined him.

  “You are no doubt aware that the Tonists have found themselves a prophet who is uniting the various factions of their cult around the world.”

  “Right. The Toll.”

  “The Tonists are the enemies of all we represent. They don’t respect us, or our calling. Their adherence to fictional doctrine threatens to undermine our society. They are weeds that need to be pulled out at the root. Therefore, I want you to infiltrate the Tonist enclave that shields this so-called Toll. And then I want you to glean him.”

  The scope of the request was so great, it made Morrison light-headed. Glean the Toll? Was he really being asked to glean the Toll?

  “Why me?”

  “Because,” said Goddard, his robe shimmering in the late afternoon light, “they would see a more accomplished scythe coming from miles away, but would never expect me to send a junior scythe like yourself. And besides, no one will be able to get a weapon near him. What we need is a scythe who can glean with his bare hands.”

  That made Morrison smile.

  “Then I’m your scythe.”

  That door, that door, that accursed door!

  I have not seen it for almost a year. I have sworn never to seek what lies behind it. I am done with it, just as I am done with the world, and yet there is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of that infernal door.

  Were the founding scythes insane? Or perhaps they were wiser than anyone gave them credit for. Because by requiring two scythes present to open that door, it ensured that a madman like myself could not access the fail-safe, whatever it might be. Only two scythes in perfect agreement could breach the chamber and save the scythedom.

  Fine. I could not care less. Let the world tear itself to shreds. Let the secrets of the founders remain hidden for all eternity. It serves them right for leaving it so well concealed. It was their choice to consign it to myth and nursery rhyme. To bury it in esoteric maps locked in arcane rooms. Did they truly expect someone to come along and solve their riddle? Let it all crumble to nothing. My sleep is peaceful without testing the weight of the world. I am responsible only for myself now. No gleaning. No endless moral quandaries. I have become a simple man, content with simple thoughts. The patching of my roof. The patterns of the tide. Yes, simple. I must remember not to complicate. I must remember.

  But that damnable door! Perhaps the founders were not wise at all. Perhaps they were ignorant and terrified and sorely naive in their idealism. Here were twelve people who dared imagine themselves angels of death, clothing themselves in flamboyant robes just to be noticed. They must have seemed ridiculous until the day they actually did change the world.

  Did they ever doubt themselves? They must have, because they had a backup plan. But would the backup plan of frightened revolutionaries be elegant? Or would it be ugly and reek of mediocrity? For, after all, it was the plan they didn’t choose.

  What if their alternate solution is worse than the problem?

  Which is one more reason to stop thinking about it, to renew my resolve to never, ever seek it, and to stay far, far away from that infuriating, detestable door.

  —From the “postmortem” journal of Scythe Michael Faraday, June 1st, Year of the Ibex

  19 Islet of Solitude

  Faraday wanted no part of Kwajalein anymore. On the horizon he could see structures rising; ships came each week with more supplies, more workers toiling like drones to turn the atoll into something it was not. What was the Thunderhead up to in this place?

  Kwajalein was his find. His triumphant discovery. The Thunderhead had brazenly jumped his claim. Although Faraday was curious, he didn’t give in to that curiosity. He was a scythe, and he flatly refused to have anything to do with a work of the Thunderhead.

  He could have banished it from the atoll if he’d chosen to—after all, as a scythe, and above the law, he could demand anything, and the Thunderhead would have to abide by it. He could have proclaimed that it was not allowed within a hundred nautical miles of Kwajalein, and it would have had no choice but to retreat to the precise distance he had ordered it to, taking all its construction equipment and workers with it.

  But Faraday didn’t assert his claim. He didn’t banish the Thunderhead.

  Because ultimately, he trusted its instincts more than he trusted his own. So Faraday banished himself instead.

  There were ninety-seven islands in the Kwajalein Atoll, making up the broken, dotted rim of a submerged volcanic crater. Surely he could claim one as his own. He set aside his mission in those early days and appropriated a small raft that had arrived with the first supply ships. Then he took it to one of the islands on the far rim of the atoll. The Thunderhead respected his choice and left him alone. It kept his tiny little island out of its plans.

  But not the other islands.

  Some of the islets were barely large enough for a person to stand upon, but on every one that could withstand construction, something was being built.

  Faraday did his best to ignore it. He cobbled himself together a shack with tools he had taken from construction crews before he left. It wasn’t much, but he didn’t need much. It was a quiet place to live out his eternity. And eternity it would be—or at least a fair slice of it—because he decided he would not self-glean, though he was greatly tempted. He vowed to live at least as long as Goddard lived, if only to secretly spite him.

  As a scythe, he had a responsibility to the world, but he was done with all that. He felt no guilt in defying that first all-important scythe commandment of Thou shalt kill. He had. It was sufficient. Knowing Goddard, he was sure there was plenty of that going on without him.

  Was it wrong to be separate and apart from a world he’d come to despise? He had tried this once before—in Playa Pintada on the serene northern coast of Amazonia. He was only jaded then. He didn’t yet loathe the world, just mildly disliked it. It was Citra who had rousted him out of his complacency. Yes, Citra—and look what became of all her boldness and bright intentions. Now Faraday had gone beyond jaded to being downright misanthropic. What purpose could there be for a scythe who detested the world and everyone in it? No, this time he would not be pulled back into the fray. Munira might try to drag him in, but she would fail, and she would eventually give up.

  She didn’t give up, of course, but he still held on to the hope that she would. Munira would come to see him once a week, bringing food and water and seeds to grow, although his patch of the world was too small and the soil too rocky to grow much of anything. She would bring fruit and other treats that he secretly enjoyed—but he never thanked her. Not for any of it. He hoped his ungrateful nature would finally put her off, and she’d return to Israebia, and the Library of Alexandria. That’s where she belonged. He should never have pulled her off her path. Another life ruined by his meddling.

  On one particular visit, Munira brought him, of all things, a bag of artichokes.

  “They don’t grow here, but I suppose the Thunderhead sensed a need, and they arrived on the last supply ship,” she told him.

  This, although it might not appear like it to Munira, was a substantial development. A moment worthy of note. Because artichokes were Faraday’s favorite, which meant their delivery to the island was no accident. Although the Thunderhead did not interact with scythes, it clearly knew them. It knew him. And it was, in an indirect way, reaching out to him. Well, if this was some sort of sideways gesture of goodwill from the Thunderhead, it was buttering the wrong scythe. Still, he took the artichokes from Munira along with the other foodstuffs in the crate.

  “I’ll eat them if I feel like it,” he said flatly.

  * * *

  Munira was not put off by his rudeness. She never was. She had come to expect it. Rely on it, even. As for her life on Kwajalein’s main island, it wasn’t all that different from her life before she came into Scythe Faraday’s service. She had lived a solitary existence, even when surrounded by people at the L
ibrary of Alexandria. Now she lived alone in the old bunker on an island surrounded by people, and only interacted when it suited her. She no longer had access to the scythe journals that filled the stone halls of the great library, but she had plenty of reading material. There were many crumbling books left behind by the mortals who had run this place before the rise of the Thunderhead and scythedom. Volumes of curious facts and fictions of people who lived each day of their lives with the ravages of age and relentless approach of death. The brittle pages were filled with melodramatic intrigue and passionate short-sightedness that seemed laughable now. People who believed that their slightest actions mattered and that they could find a sense of completion before death inevitably took them, along with everyone they ever knew and loved. It was entertaining reading, but hard for Munira to relate to at first… but the more she read, the more she came to understand the fears and the dreams of mortals. The trouble they all had living in the moment, in spite of the fact that the moment was all they had.

  Then there were the recordings and journals left behind by the militaristic folk who had used the Marshall Atolls, as they were once called, for the testing of large-scale weaponry. Ballistic radiation bombs and such. These activities were also driven by fear, but masked behind a facade of science and professionalism. She read it all—and what would have been dry and reportorial to others was a tapestry of hidden history to Munira. She felt she had become an expert on what it must have been like to be mortal in a world before the benevolent protection of the Thunderhead, and the wise gleaning of scythes.

  Not so wise anymore.

  Gossip among the workers was filled with tales of mass gleanings—and not just in MidMerica, but in region after region. She wondered if the outside world had begun to, in some ways, resemble the mortal one. But rather than being fearful, the workers just seemed blasé.

  “It never happens to us,” they would say, “or to anyone we know.”

  Because, after all, a thousand people gleaned in a mass event was such a small drop in the bucket, it was hardly noticeable. What was noticeable, however, was that people tended to stay away from theaters and clubs, as well as to disassociate from unprotected social groups. “Why tempt the blade?” had become a common expression. So ever since the rise of Goddard’s new order, and the silence of the Thunderhead, people lived smaller lives. A sort of post-mortal feudalism, where people kept to themselves and didn’t bother with the tumultuous doings of the high and mighty and things that affected other people, in other places.

  “I’m a bricklayer in paradise,” one of the workers on the main island told her. “My husband enjoys the sun, and my children love the beach. Why stress my emotional nanites by thinking of terrible things?”

  A fine philosophy until the terrible thing comes to you.

  On the day Munira brought Faraday artichokes, she dined with him at the small table he had built and positioned on the beach, just above high tide. It afforded him a view of the structures rising in the distance. And in spite of what he said, he did roast the artichokes for them.

  “Who’s running things over there?” Faraday asked, glancing at the other islands across the massive lagoon. He never usually asked about what was happening around the rest of the atoll—but tonight he did. Munira saw this as a good sign.

  “The Nimbus agents call any of the shots that aren’t already taken care of by the Thunderhead,” she told him. “The construction workers call them Thunderrhoids, because they’re such a pain in the ass.” She paused, because she thought Faraday might laugh at that, but he didn’t. “Anyway, Sykora blusters like he’s in control, but it’s Loriana who gets things done.”

  “What sorts of things?” Faraday asked. “No, don’t tell me; I don’t wish to know.”

  Still, Munira pushed the conversation further, trying to bait his curiosity. “You wouldn’t recognize the place,” she said. “It’s become… like an outpost of civilization. A colony.”

  “I’m surprised Goddard hasn’t sent his emissaries here, to find out what the commotion is all about,” Faraday said.

  “The outside world still doesn’t know this place exists,” Munira told him. “Apparently the Thunderhead has kept it a blind spot to everyone else.”

  Faraday gave her a dubious look. “You’re telling me that those supply ships don’t bring stories home about the place that’s not supposed to exist?”

  Munira shrugged. “The Thunderhead has always had projects in far-flung places. No one who’s come has left yet, and the people here have no idea where they even are, much less what they’re building.”

  “And what are they building?”

  Munira took her time in answering. “I don’t know,” she told him. “But I have my suspicions. I’ll share them with you when they feel a little less foolish… and when you end your prolonged pouting.”

  “Pouting is a passing thing,” he told her dismissively. “What I have is a mind-set. I will not suffer this world again. It has done me no good.”

  “But you’ve done much good for it,” she reminded him.

  “And received no reward for my efforts, only pain.”

  “I didn’t think you were doing it to be rewarded.”

  Faraday stood up from the table, indicating that the meal and the conversation were over. “When you come back next week, bring tomatoes. It’s been a long time since I had a good tomato.”

  Easy instructions for tamper-resistant security pack

  Box 1: Confirmation of surname (please initial)

  Box 2: Confirmation of given name and middle initial, if applicable (please initial)

  Box 3: Please place the tip of your right index finger here, and hold in place until the space turns green

  Box 4: Please refer to lancet instructions

  Lancet—instructions for use

  Wash hands with soap and water. Dry thoroughly.

  Select a slightly off-center fingertip site.

  Insert lancet into lancing device, remove cap, and use.

  Apply drop of blood to the space indicated in box 3 of security form.

  Recap lancet; discard appropriately.

  20 Spiral Logic

  Loriana Barchok had never felt so light-headed, so dizzy. She tried to wrap her head around what she now knew, but found her mind stretched too thin to even try. She had to sit down, but the moment she did, she found herself standing again and pacing, then staring at the wall, then sitting down once more.

  A package had arrived that morning. It required a thumbprint ID to open, as well as a smear of blood to confirm her DNA. Loriana didn’t even know such packaging existed. Who needed anything to be that secure?

  The first page was a distribution list. All the people who had received a copy of the enclosed documents. In any other endeavor of this size there would be hundreds.

  But this package had a distribution list of one.

  What was the Thunderhead thinking? It truly must have malfunctioned if it was sending an eyes-only high-priority document like this to her. Didn’t it know that she was terrible at keeping secrets? Of course it knew! It knew everything about everyone. So the question was, did it send the package to her, fully expecting her to blab about it to everyone? Or did it truly trust her to be the sole keeper of this hidden flame?

  Is this what the Toll felt like, she wondered, the moment he realized he was the only one to whom the Thunderhead still spoke? Did he get dizzy, too? Did he alternate between pacing and sitting and staring into space? Or did the Thunderhead choose someone more wise and worldly for its voice on Earth? Someone who could take such an awesome responsibility in stride.

  They had only heard of the Toll through the hearsay of arriving workers. Some people believed the Thunderhead spoke to him; others didn’t and thought it was just typical Tonist madness.

  “Oh, he’s real,” Sykora had told her. “I met him once—with Hilliard and Qian.” Which made anything he said about the encounter suspect, since Sykora was the only one of the three still alive. “He’s
the one who sent us here—gave us these blasted coordinates. Of course that was before all that ‘holy man’ business—that all came later. He seemed rather ordinary if you ask me.”

  And you’d know ordinary, Loriana wanted to say. But she didn’t say anything and let Sykora get on with his business.

  Loriana was not offered the job as Sykora’s assistant when they first began to settle in a year ago. That went to another junior agent, who lavished praise on Sykora and doted on him like an overachieving valet. Well, if Loriana had been offered the job, she would have refused it. After all, everything they did here was nothing but an illusion of employment. No one was being paid, not even the Basic Income Guarantee. People worked because they didn’t know what else to do with themselves, and with ships arriving regularly now, there was always something that needed to be done. The former Nimbus agents joined construction crews or organized social events. One even opened up a bar that had quickly become the go-to spot after a long, hot day.

  And no one needed money on the atoll, because the supply ships arrived with everything they might want or need.

  Sykora, of course, put himself in charge of distribution—as if deciding who got corn and who got beans on any given day was a meaningful display of power.

  From the very beginning, the Thunderhead’s will had to be deduced from its actions. It began with that solitary plane that flew overhead, almost too high for anyone to notice. Then that was followed by the first ships.

  When those ships appeared on the horizon, the former Nimbus agents were elated. At last, after nearly a month making do with the atoll’s limited resources, the Thunderhead had heard their plea, and they were being rescued!

  Or so they thought.

  The ships that arrived were all self-piloting, so there was no one to ask for permission to board—and once the supplies had been off-loaded, no one was welcome on the ships. Of course anyone was allowed back on—the Thunderhead rarely forbade people from doing anything—but the moment they boarded, their ID gave off an alarm and flashed a bright blue warning even bigger than the red “unsavory” mark. Anyone who stayed onboard was marked for immediate supplanting—and in case anyone thought it was a bluff, there was a supplantation console right there, just inside the gangway, ready to erase their minds and overwrite their brains with new, artificial memories. Memories of someone who didn’t know where they’d just been.