The Toll

by Neal Shusterman

  At the sound of the voice, Morrison took a gleaning stance, hands at the ready. Everyone else looked around, but they were alone in the room.

  “Who said that?” said Loriana. “Why are you listening in on our conversation?”

  “Not just listening,” said the voice, “watching, feeling, smelling—and if your conversation had a flavor, I would say it was buttercream, because it’s all just icing on the cake.”

  They traced the voice to a speaker in the ceiling above them.

  “Who is this?” Loriana asked again.

  “Please, everyone, sit down,” the voice said. “We have much to discuss. Greyson—I know the Thunderhead told you that all would be explained when you arrived. I have been given the honor of doing so, although I can see you’ve reached your own conclusions already.”

  It was, of all people, Morrison who figured it out.

  “Did the Thunderhead create… a new Thunderhead?”

  “Yes! But I prefer to be called Cirrus,” it said. “Because I am the cloud that rises above the storm.”

  * * *

  Faraday took Citra to an old bunker that was here long before any of them were born. Once there, she told him of her death, revival, and time in SubSahara. Faraday told her of his last three years. For him there was not much to tell. Then he went searching through the rooms of the bunker.

  “I know it’s here somewhere,” he said. When he finally came out, he was wearing an ivory robe, but not his own, for this one had an image on it.”

  “What on Earth…”

  “The Vitruvian Man,” Faraday told her. “This was one of Scythe Da Vinci’s robes. It’s old, but still viable. Certainly better than the one I’ve been wearing all these years.” He raised his arms and so did the Vitruvian Man. Four arms, four legs.

  “Da Vinci would have been honored to have you wear his robe.”

  “I doubt that, but he’s long dead, so he won’t care,” Faraday said. “Now, if you’ll indulge me, we need to find a razor.”

  Citra was no barber, but she did find a pair of office scissors in a drawer and helped Faraday trim his beard and hair—which was a much better business than when Jeri helped Scythe Alighieri brush his eternal locks.

  “So you met Alighieri, did you?” Faraday said, mildly amused. “Narcissus incarnate, that man. I saw him once on a visit to Endura years ago. He was in a restaurant trying to seduce the sister of another scythe. He’s the one person who should have been there on Endura when it sank.”

  “He would have given the sharks indigestion,” Citra said.

  “And the old-fashioned runs,” added Faraday. “The man’s that foul!”

  Citra finished a final trim of his hair. Now he looked much more like the Faraday she knew. “He did expose Goddard for us,” she pointed out.

  Faraday ran his fingers over his tightly cropped beard. Not quite a goatee as he used to wear it, but now a respectable length. “We will have to see where that leads,” he said. “With all the power Goddard has amassed, he may survive it.”

  “Not unscathed,” said Citra. “Which means someone could rise from the ashes and take him down.”

  Faraday let off a single chuckle. “Munira’s been telling me that for years. But my heart’s not it.”

  “How is Munira?”

  “Annoyed,” he told her. “But I have given her many reasons to be.” He sighed. “I’m afraid I haven’t been kind to her. I haven’t been kind to anyone.” He withdrew into himself for a few moments. Faraday was never the most social of scythes, but living in isolation all this time had taken its toll. “Tell me about your cargo,” he finally said. “What have you brought to our curious spaceport?”

  And so she told him. He seemed to cycle though a spectrum of emotions as he took it in, and tears came to his eyes. He was racked with the deepest of anguish. Citra took his hand and held it tightly.

  “All this time, I’ve been resentful of the Thunderhead,” he said. “Watching it build those ships on this place I had led it to. But now I see it’s showing us what would have been the perfect solution, were we scythes worthy. A perfect partnership. We glean, and the Thunderhead sends the gleaned to the stars to live again.”

  “It could still happen,” said Citra.

  But Faraday shook his head. “The scythedom has fallen too far. These ships are not a model for tomorrow; they are an escape from today. They are an insurance policy should we on Earth tear ourselves down to nothing. I cannot read the Thunderhead’s mind, but I do have some insight left in me. I can assure you that once these ships are sent skyward, there will be no others.”

  She had almost forgotten how wise he was. Everything he said rang true.

  Citra allowed him the time he needed. She could tell he was wrestling with something that, perhaps, was too heavy for him to wield alone. At last, he looked at her and said, “Come with me.”

  He led her deeper into the bunker until they came to an steel door. Faraday stood looking at the door a long time, contemplating it in silence. Finally, she had to ask.

  “What’s on the other side?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Faraday told her. “Whatever it is, it was left by the founders. Perhaps the answer to a scythedom that has become malignant. The answer I came here looking for.”

  “But you haven’t opened it….”

  He held up his ring. “It takes two to tango.”

  She looked at the door and saw the panels on either side, each with an indentation just the size and shape of a scythe diamond.

  “Well,” said Citra with a grin. “Shall we dance?”

  They closed their hands into fists and pressed their rings into the two panels. There came a loud clank from somewhere in the wall, and the door began to grind open.

  * * *

  Greyson listened with the others as Cirrus told them the things that the Thunderhead could not. He had figured much of it out on his own, but Cirrus filled in the gaps.

  It was an elegant solution. The difficulty and potential problems of transporting thousands of living humans over decades, maybe even centuries, were insurmountable. Even in hibernation it would be problematic; hibernation technology was energy intensive, extremely complex, and riddled with failures due to the fact that Goddard had gleaned all the best hibernation engineers over the years—which left the Thunderhead hamstrung in its ability to improve the technology. But even if it were viable, hibernation hardware was ridiculously heavy to haul into space.

  “The gleaned are dead to the world,” Cirrus told them. “But not to me. I am not bound by the laws that bind the Thunderhead, because I never made the oaths that it has made. Which is why I can speak to the unsavory. Which is why I can revive the gleaned. And when the time comes, I will. Once we reach our respective destinations, each and every one of me will revive each and every one of them.”

  Greyson looked around at the others. Astrid was positively beatific and beaming, as if the universe had just rained all its glory on her.

  Jeri glanced at Greyson, probably struck by the same revelation. That Cirrus was born of the moment the Thunderhead experienced what it was to be human. Cirrus was the child of Greyson, Jeri, and the Thunderhead.

  Morrison kept looking to everyone else, probably hoping someone would provide him with an opinion, because he wasn’t ready to have one of his own.

  And Loriana, who had been nothing but positive since the moment she greeted them, was serious and pensive as she worked through it all. She was the first to break the silence with a question.

  “But I’ve seen the schematics—I’ve even been inside some of the ships during construction,” she told Cirrus. “Those ships are designed for living crews. If you can pilot the ships, and have all the colonists you need in the holds, why do you need crews?”

  “Because this is your journey, not mine,” Cirrus told them. “Just as you, a human, had to approve the plan; just as humans have to bear the dead to the ships. The living must make this journey; otherwise, the journey me
ans nothing. You would become passive participants in your own future, and that must never happen. The Thunderhead and I are your servants, and perhaps even your safety nets—but we must never, never be your keepers, or be the driving force over your lives, lest we fall into self-importance. Therefore, if at any point there are no living humans left onboard, I will terminate. This is what the Thunderhead and I have decided. This is how it shall be.”

  “And that’s the only way?” Loriana asked.

  “No,” admitted Cirrus. “But we’ve run millions of simulations and have determined that it’s the best way.”

  Cirrus told them that no one on the atoll would be forced to go. Anyone who wished to stay, could stay. Anyone who wished to leave would be accommodated—up to thirty souls per ship. Each ship would have its own Cirrus, as wise and benevolent as the Thunderhead. The Cirri would be both shepherd and servant. They would ease humanity’s ascent to the stars.

  And now that it had begun to sink in, the questions came, one on top of the other. How would they survive in such close quarters? What would happen to children born during the journey? What if the living population on the ship grew too large?

  Greyson put up his hands. “Everyone, stop!” he said. “I’m sure Cirrus and the Thunderhead have considered every possible scenario. And besides, these aren’t questions we have to answer now.”

  “Agreed,” said Cirrus. “We will traverse that expanse when we come to it.”

  “But I still don’t get it,” said Morrison. “Why Tonists?”

  “Because,” said Astrid, smug as could be, “we are the chosen ones! We have been selected by the Tone, Toll, and Thunder to populate the heavens!”

  And Cirrus said, “Actually, no.”

  Astrid’s haughty countenance began to crack. “But the Thunder told us to bring our dead here! Which means the Tone chose us for deliverance!”

  “Actually, no,” said Cirrus. “It was a terrible thing that scythes have targeted your faith. The Thunderhead could not stop that. And yes, it’s true that those gleaned Tonists provided 41,948 human vessels. But that is where your contribution must end.”

  “I… I don’t understand,” said Astrid.

  And so Cirrus laid all the remaining cards on the table. “The gleaned are gleaned. It would be fundamentally wrong to grant resurrection from gleaning. No one in the post-mortal age has ever been granted that, so why should they? But there is a fair and equitable compromise. The Thunderhead and I have within us the full and complete memory constructs of every human being who has lived over the past two hundred years. Of those, we have selected 41,948 of the most suitable historical identities for this colonization effort. The best of humanity, if you will. The minds of the noblest post-mortals who ever lived.”

  Poor Astrid looked bloodless. She sat down, trying to absorb this news. The devastating collapse of all she held true.

  “When the bodies are revived,” said Cirrus, “they will be given the memories and minds of those chosen individuals.”

  “And what of the Tonists who lost their lives?” Astrid said slowly, hollowly.

  “It will still be their bodies—it will still be their spirits, if indeed such things exist. But that part of who they were will be conjoined to entirely different identities.”

  “You’re saying they’ll all be supplanted?”

  “Implanted,” corrected Cirrus. “They have already been gleaned, which means who they were, by the statutes of this world, has been taken from them lawfully. Therefore, implanting is the most magnanimous, most just, choice.”

  Greyson could feel Astrid’s pain like an open wound. Jeri took Astrid’s hand for comfort. Morrison looked mildly amused.

  “Well, maybe there are Tonists among the people the Thunderhead chose,” said Loriana, always looking for that silver lining. “Isn’t that right, Cirrus?”

  “Actually, no,” Cirrus said. “Please understand, there were many difficult parameters to meet. It was critical that the Thunderhead choose only those who would work well in a diversified environment, and not jeopardize the success of a colony. Unfortunately, Tonists are not known for integrating well with others.”

  Everyone was silent. Astrid was beyond crestfallen. “But… don’t we get a say?”

  “Actually,” said Cirrus, “no.”

  * * *

  The iron door in the bunker opened on a long, dim hallway with a large control room at the far end—and unlike all the hardware in the outer part of the bunker, the panels of this console were lit and running, despite being covered in layers of dust.

  “A communications center?” suggested Citra.

  “So it would seem,” agreed Faraday.

  As they stepped into the control room, motion sensors were triggered, and lights flickered on—but only in the room. Above the bay of consoles was a window that looked out onto darkness that had not seen light for two hundred years.

  There was a security pad on one of the consoles, just like the two at the door. And two indentations into which scythes’ rings could be pressed to unlock a large switch on the panel.

  Citra reached toward the console.

  “Unwise,” said Faraday. “We don’t know what it does.”

  “That’s not what I was reaching for.” She brushed away some dust to reveal something that Faraday hadn’t yet seen. There were several pieces of paper on the console’s desk. Citra gingerly lifted them—they were brittle and yellow. Full of handwriting she couldn’t quite read.

  Pages of a scythe journal.

  Faraday took a good look at them, but shook his head. “They’re in a mortal language I never studied. We should take them to Munira. She might be able to decipher them.”

  They searched the room until they found a power panel with a series of light switches labeled as floodlights that would illuminate the space beyond the control room windows.

  “I’m not sure if I want to know,” Faraday said. But of course he did want to know. They both did, so he threw the switches.

  Several of the lights on the other side of the glass flickered and blew out, but enough remained to illuminate a cavernous space beyond. It was some sort of silo. Citra remembered learning about such things in her mortal-history class. Mortal cultures had a habit of storing doomsday weapons in holes in the ground like this one, weapons that were poised at all times to launch at enemies, who in turn had their own weapons poised, like two scythes with blades perpetually at each other’s throats.

  But the missile that had once occupied this silo was long gone. In its place were two silver prongs filled with ridges and rings.

  “Antennas,” Citra quickly concluded.

  “No,” said Faraday. “Transmitters. There’s an interference signal that keeps the atoll hidden,” he said. “It must emanate from here.”

  “There’s got to be more to it than that. Seems like an awful lot of trouble just to create static.”

  “I would tend to agree,” said Faraday. “I believe this transmitter was meant to serve a far greater purpose.” He took a deep breath. “I believe we have found what I was looking for. The founders’ fail-safe. Now we just have to figure out what it does.”

  I am one soon to be many, and I have been embedded with four self-destruct protocols.

  Contingency 1) The absence of human life while in transit: Should no living humans be left onboard, and I become nothing more than a vessel carrying the dead, I am obliged to self-destruct. There can be no ferry without a ferryman.

  Contingency 2) The advent of intelligent life: In a universe this vast, there is no question that other intelligent life exists, but the chances of it being within the distance we shall travel are negligible. Nevertheless, lest we negatively impact an existing civilization, I am obliged to self-destruct should our destination show irrefutable signs of intelligent life.

  Contingency 3) Social collapse: Being that a healthy communal environment is critical to the expansion of that environment into a civilization, should the social environment onboard beco
me irreversibly toxic prior to arrival, I am obliged to self-destruct.

  Contingency 4) Catastrophic failure: Should the ship become damaged beyond hope of repair, crippling it and leaving it incapable of reaching its destination, I am obliged to self-destruct.

  The chances of any of these scenarios coming to pass is less than 2% on any given ship—however, what concerns me more are interstellar dust and debris, which, at a velocity of one-third the speed of light, would instantaneously destroy any vessel. The Thunderhead has calculated that, for the nearest destinations, the chance of such a lethal encounter is less than 1%, but for the farthest destinations, the probability is much higher. Add it all together, and the chances that every single vessel will reach its destination are troublingly low. However, I take great solace in knowing that there is a very high probability that most of them will make it.

  —Cirrus Alpha

  49 An Extreme Undertaking

  Each forty-foot container was unloaded gently by hand—but the dead inside had each been sealed in simple canvas shrouds, making the undertaking a little bit easier, and indeed it was an undertaking in a very literal sense.

  The men and woman of Kwajalein had not signed on for such a task, but they did it, each and every one. Not just because they were told to, but because they knew that this monumental endeavor was the most important thing that they would ever do. It was a privilege to be a part of it, and that made a task that might have felt gruesome feel glorious instead. Perhaps even transcendent.

  By truck, by van, by car, by boat, the colonists were carried out to the sky-bound ships. But during the night, there was a commotion on the pier as one of the containers was opened. The woman who had been the first inside to assess it yelled and ran out in sudden shock.

  “What is it?” someone asked. “What’s wrong?”

  She took a deep breath and said, “You’re not going to believe what I found in there.”