The Toll

by Neal Shusterman

  That actually made Mendoza laugh, because what had these past few years been but Greyson Tolliver spewing his will in everyone else’s direction? But laughing at the Toll was over the line, so he backpedaled quickly.

  “Yes, Your Sonority,” Mendoza said, as he always said. “I’ll try to keep that in mind.” He had no choice but to back off, because arguing did nothing with this headstrong boy—a boy who had no idea what it actually took to keep his mystique alive. Although Mendoza was beginning to wonder why he even bothered.

  * * *

  Then something happened that changed everything.

  “Grief, grief, and more grief!” the Thunderhead wailed in Greyson’s ear one evening. “I wish I could have blinded my eyes to it. This event is a grim fulcrum upon which many things will pivot.”

  “Can you please not speak in riddles?” Greyson asked. “And just tell me what’s going on?”

  And so the Thunderhead told him, in excruciating detail, about the stadium gleaning. Tens of thousands felled in a single evening. “It will be all over the news in a few moments—even if the North Merican scythedom tries to hide it, it’s too big to erase. And it will lead to a chain reaction of events that will leave the world in unprecedented upheaval.”

  “What are we going to do about it?” Greyson asked.

  “Nothing,” the Thunderhead said. “It is a scythe action, which means I cannot even react to it. I must treat it as if it never happened.”

  “Well,” said Greyson, “you can’t do anything, but I can.”

  “Continue what you’ve been doing,” the Thunderhead instructed him. “Now more than ever the Sibilants will need to be reined in.” And then the Thunderhead said something that chilled him. “The odds that sibilant Tonists will seriously damage the future of humanity have ticked up to 19.3%.”

  33 Unbreakable

  “This is Scythe Anastasia. And no, this is not a recording; I’m coming to you live—because I am alive. But you’re not convinced. Of course you’re not—anyone can pull off a stunt like this using my memory construct, and a hundred other technological tricks. That’s why I need you to doubt this broadcast. Doubt it enough to do everything you can to debunk it. Do your best to prove that it’s fake, because once you fail, you’ll have to accept that it’s real. That I’m real. And once you’re convinced that I am who I say I am… then we can get down to business.”

  * * *

  The first broadcast was short and sweet. It had all the conviction, all the confidence it needed to have—and with good reason. Anastasia had found something on the lunar disaster. Something big. She had done what no one else had managed to do: uncover evidence that had been there, buried in the backbrain, since long before she was even born. The Thunderhead knew it was there, but it was, by law, obliged not to do anything about it. Scythe business was scythe business; it had to let it go. But the Thunderhead must know what she had discovered. It knew every bit of its own backbrain. She wondered if it was happy with what she had found.

  “I am immensely proud of you,” High Blade Tenkamenin told her. “I knew you’d crack it! Of course Scythe Makeda had her doubts.”

  “I was voicing healthy skepticism,” Makeda said in her own defense. “We couldn’t count our chickens before they were hatched.”

  “Or put our eggs in one basket,” added Baba. “I wonder which expression came first, the chickens or the eggs.”

  Which of course made Tenka laugh. But his laughter was short-lived. There was something weighing on the High Blade. On all of them. There had been an undercurrent of tension all day.

  It was even evident in Jeri, who usually played emotions close to the vest. “One of my crew had a family member gleaned,” Jeri told her. “I need to go into town and console her.” Jeri hesitated, as if there was more to be said… but didn’t say it. “I’ll be back late. Tell the High Blade not to expect me for dinner.”

  And then, when the rest of them did sit down for dinner, the tone in the room bordered on dour. Not tense, but heavy. As if the burden of the world, which rested firmly on their shoulders, had doubled. Anastasia thought she knew why. “It was my broadcast, wasn’t it?” she asked, breaking the silence over a salad that wilted under the weight of everyone’s mood. “People didn’t react the way you wanted. It was a waste of our time.”

  “Not at all,” Makeda said. “You were marvelous, dear.”

  “And,” added Baba, “I’ve been tracking the chatter. It’s through the roof. I’d say you’d made an even bigger splash than Endura did.”

  “Poor taste, Baba,” said Makeda. “Very poor taste.”

  Tenkamenin didn’t comment. He seemed lost in his greens.

  “Then what is it?” Anastasia asked. “If something’s wrong, you have to tell me what it is.”

  “There was… an incident last night,” Tenkamenin finally told her. “In North Merica…”

  Anastasia braced herself. “Did it involve Rowan Damisch?”

  Tenka looked away—and so did Baba, but Scythe Makeda held glaring eye contact. “Yes, as a matter of fact it did.”

  Anastasia curled her toes so tightly she felt the soles of her feet begin to knot. “He was gleaned,” Anastasia said. “Goddard gleaned him.” Somehow, saying it herself was better than hearing any of them say it.

  But Tenka shook his head.

  “He was supposed to be gleaned,” Tenka told her. “But he escaped.”

  Anastasia folded with relief. It was not very scythelike. She tried to regain her composure, but everyone had seen.

  “He’s with the Texans,” Makeda said. “Why they’d save him is beyond me.”

  “He’s their enemy’s enemy,” Baba said.

  “The problem isn’t that he escaped—it’s what happened afterward,” Tenka told her. “Goddard ordered a mass gleaning. Beyond anything we’ve ever seen. Nearly thirty thousand souls were taken—and he’s ordered that those who escaped be hunted down along with their families. He’s invoking the third commandment.”

  “As if that applies!” snapped Makeda. “When you’ve just condemned an entire stadium to death, who wouldn’t run?”

  Anastasia was silent. She took it in. She tried not to respond, because it was just too big a thing to respond to. Rowan was safe. And because of it, thousands were dead. How was she supposed to feel about that?

  “Your broadcast went out as it was happening—before we even heard,” Tenka said. “We thought it would overshadow you—but it was just the opposite. In light of this news, it makes everything you have to say all the more important. We want to speed up the schedule. Another broadcast tomorrow night.”

  “People need to hear from you, Anastasia,” said Makeda. “You’re a voice of hope in the horror.”

  “Yes, of course,” Anastasia told them. “I’ll do another broadcast as soon as possible.”

  The main course came. A roast so rare it was bloody. Such things shouldn’t bother a scythe, but today they all had to look away when the server carved.

  * * *

  “This is Scythe Anastasia. Have you debunked me yet? Have you done what my mentor, Scythe Marie Curie, the Grand Dame of Death, would have called your due diligence? Or are you willing to accept the assertions put forth by the various scythedoms who support ‘Overblade’ Goddard’s claims to larger and larger pieces of the world? Of course they say I’m an imposter—what else can they say, if they don’t want to anger Goddard?

  “Goddard—who invited tens of thousands to witness a gleaning that turned out to be their own. He claims that Scythe Lucifer sank Endura. It’s a solid fact of history now. As I was there, I can tell you this much is true: Scythe Lucifer was on Endura. The eyewitness accounts of survivors who saw him are legitimate. But did he sink Endura?

  “Not a chance.

  “In the coming days, I’ll offer testimony that will make it very clear what happened on Endura. And who was responsible.”

  * * *

  In Goddard’s glass chalet, there were surprisingly few thin
gs that could be broken. Ayn watched as Goddard tried, but they simply lived in a world where everything was too well made. She was done trying to quell his temper. His underscythes could be his wranglers now. Today it was Nietzsche. Constantine hadn’t been seen for days. Supposedly he was off meeting with representatives of the LoneStar region, trying to convince them to turn over Rowan, but they still denied that they even had him. Underscythe Franklin would have nothing to do with Goddard when he was like this. “Tell me when he’s human again,” Aretha would say, and go off to her own quarters on a floor far enough away not to hear his rampage.

  His latest tantrum was brought on by Scythe Anastasia’s second message to the world.

  “I want her found!” he demanded. “I want her found and gleaned.”

  “She can’t be gleaned,” Underscythe Nietzsche tried to explain. “Whether you like it or not, she’s still a scythe.”

  “Then we’ll find her and make her self-glean,” yelled Goddard. “I’ll make her suffering so great that she’ll end her own life to stop it.”

  “Your Excellency, the suspicion that would bring upon you will not be worth the effort.”

  It made Goddard throw a chair across the room. It didn’t break.

  Ayn sat calmly in the conference room, watching the drama play out between them. Nietzsche kept looking to her for help, but she would not waste her breath. Goddard would be unreasonable until he wasn’t. Period. Then he would find a rational excuse for everything he had done while unhinged.

  Ayn used to believe the things Goddard did were all part of a greater plan—but now she saw the truth: The plan always came after the action. He was brilliant at finding shapes in the clouds of his fury.

  Such as convincing himself that the Mile High gleaning was a decisive act of wisdom. Repercussions from the mass gleaning had been immediate. Those regions that were anti-Goddard railed against him. Half a dozen regions announced that they would grant immunity to anyone who chose to leave Goddard’s dominion, and plenty of people were taking them up on the invitation. Yet in spite of all that, those who supported Goddard were also galvanized, insisting that “those people” at the stadium deserved gleaning—because anyone who would want to witness an execution deserved what they got. Even though they were probably all watching themselves before the feed was cut.

  Most people, however, didn’t take a position either way. They just wanted to disappear into the pleasantries of their lives. As long as when bad things happened, they happened somewhere else, to someone they didn’t know, it was not their problem. Except that everyone knew someone who knew someone who was at the stadium that day and didn’t come home.

  Nietzsche continued to try to soothe Goddard, who still stormed around the conference room.

  “Anastasia is nothing, Your Excellency,” Nietzsche said. “But by reacting to her, you’re making her much more important than she needs to be.”

  “So I should just ignore her and her accusations?”

  “Accusations are all they are, and we don’t even yet know what she’s accusing you of. She’s an itch best left unscratched, Your Excellency.”

  That actually made Ayn laugh—because she could imagine Goddard scratching an itch until he bled out.

  Finally spent, Goddard slammed himself down into a chair and reined in his rage. “Tell me what’s going on out there,” he demanded. “Tell me what I need to know.”

  Nietzsche sat down at the conference table “Allied scythedoms are either supporting what you did at the stadium or are remaining silent. Scythedoms who stand against you are calling for you to self-glean—but I’m more concerned with the flood of people crossing the border into the LoneStar region.”

  “You wanted fear,” Ayn said. “Now you’ve got it.”

  “We’re exploring the possibility of building a wall to stem the exodus.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Goddard said. “Only idiots build walls. Let them go—and once we succeed in absorbing the LoneStar region, those who abandoned MidMerica will be marked for gleaning.”

  “Is that how you solve every problem now?” Ayn asked. “Glean it away?”

  She expected him to snap back at her, but his mood had settled. “It’s what we do, Ayn. It’s the tool we’ve been granted—the only tool we can wield.”

  “And then,” continued Nietzsche, “there’s the matter of the Tonists.”

  “Tonists!” lamented Goddard. “Why must Tonists always be on the agenda?”

  “You turned their prophet into a martyr,” Ayn pointed out. “In spite of what you think, dead enemies are harder to fight than live ones.”

  “Except…,” said Nietzsche, hesitating.

  “Except what?” Goddard prompted.

  “Except that we’ve been tracking reports that the Toll has appeared to people.”

  Goddard grunted in disgust. “Yes, I know. In clouds, and in the patterns of burnt toast.”

  “No, Your Excellency. I mean in the flesh. And we’re beginning to think the reports might be credible.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Well, we never confirmed that the body presented was actually the Toll’s. It’s possible that he’s still alive.”

  Ayn took a deep breath, suspecting another round of things not breaking was about to begin.

  34 A Better Place

  “I know most people don’t follow what happens in the scythedom. That’s natural. The scythedom was created so that most people would never have to deal with the bringers of death until death was brought to them.

  “But the sinking of Endura affected us all. It made the Thunderhead go silent and mark everyone unsavory. And without Grandslayers to moderate, it led to an imbalance of power within the scythedom.

  “We’ve had a stable world for over two hundred years. But not anymore. If we want that stability back, we have to fight for it. Not just those of us in the scythedom, but everyone. And when you hear what I have to say, you’re going to want to fight.

  “I know what you’re thinking. ‘Is Scythe Anastasia going to make the accusation? Is she going to publicly point the finger at Goddard as the killer of the Grandslayers, and the destroyer of Endura?’

  “You’ll have to wait, because there are other cases that must be made first. Other accusations. I’m going to show you a history of unthinkable acts that go against everything the scythedom is supposed to stand for.

  “It’s a story that doesn’t start with Goddard—in fact, it starts years before he was even born.

  “In the Year of the Lynx, the Nectaris Prime colony on the moon had what they called a catastrophic atmospheric failure. Their entire supply of oxygen—even the reserve of liquid oxygen—vented into space, killing every colonist. Not a single survivor.

  “Everyone knows about that—it’s something we all learned in school. But have you ever read the first screen on the official history databases? You know the one—it’s that annoying scroll of small print you always skip to get to whatever you’re looking for. If you actually read it, buried in the middle of all that legal camouflage, is a small clause. It states that the public history databases are all subject to scythe approval. Why? Because scythes are allowed to do anything they want. Even censor history.

  “That wasn’t a problem as long as scythes were true to their calling. Honorable, virtuous, holding themselves to the highest human ideals. It only became a problem when certain scythes began to serve themselves instead of humanity.

  “The moon colony was the first attempt at off-world settlement. The plan was to steadily populate ‘the Lunar Frontier’ and relieve the population problem back on Earth. The Thunderhead had it all worked out. Then came the disaster.

  “I want you to unlearn everything you think you know about that event—because as I said, the official histories can’t be trusted. Instead, I want you to research the lunar disaster for yourself, just the way I did. Go directly to the original sources. Those first articles written. Personal recordings made by the doomed colonists
before they died. Broadcasts pleading for help. It’s all there in the Thunderhead’s backbrain. Of course the Thunderhead won’t guide you, because you’re unsavory, so you’ll have to find it yourself.

  “But you know what? Even if you weren’t unsavory, the Thunderhead wouldn’t guide you. Because of the sensitive nature of the information, helping you find it would be against the law, and as much as it might want to, the Thunderhead cannot break the law. Good thing you have me.”

  * * *

  The LoneStar scythes brought Rowan to Austin, the city farthest from any border, and set layer upon layer of protection around him. He was treated with care. He wasn’t given a luxury suite, but wasn’t put in a cell, either.

  “You are a criminal,” Scythe Coleman had told him during his rescue. “But we’ve learned from our studies of the mortal age—where crime was the norm rather than the exception—that criminals can be useful, in their own way.”

  They allowed him a computer with which to educate himself about the years he had missed, but he kept being drawn instead to videos of what had happened at Mile High Stadium after he had been rescued. There were no official recordings of the “correctional gleaning,” as the North Merican Allied Scythedom was spinning it, but survivors were posting personal recordings they had made.

  Rowan watched them not because he wanted to, but because he felt an overwhelming need to witness as much of it as possible. To acknowledge as many victims as he could. Even though he knew none of them, he felt it was his responsibility to remember their faces and give them at least one last moment of respect. If he had known Goddard would do this, he would have resisted the Texan scythes and accepted his own gleaning—but how could he have known—and how could he have resisted? Just as Goddard was determined to end him, the Texans were determined to steal him away.