Thunderhead

by Neal Shusterman

  “Who was there?” asked Constantine.

  “I took the call in another room.”

  “Yes, but who was there?”

  “Two scythes,” Xenocrates said. “Twain and Brahms.”

  Anastasia knew Twain pretty well. He claimed to be independent, but he almost always sided with the old guard when it came to important decisions. Brahms she knew only from conversations with others.

  “He was ordained in the Year of the Snail,” Scythe Curie had once told her. “Fitting, because the man seems to leave a trail of slime wherever he goes.” But she also said that Brahms was harmless. A lackluster, lazy scythe who did his job and little more. Could such a man be the mastermind of the plot against them?

  Before lunch ended,  Anastasia approached Scythe Brahms as he perused the dessert table, to see if she could figure out where his allegiances lay.

  “I don’t know about you,” she said, “but I never seem to have room for dessert at conclave lunches.”

  “The trick is to eat slowly,” he said. “Pace for the pudding, my mother used to say.”  Then, when he took a piece of pie from the buffet table, Anastasia could clearly see that his hands were shaking.

  “You should get that checked,” she told him. “Your nanites might need adjusting.”

  “It’s just the excitement,” he said. “It’s not every day we choose a new High Blade.”

  “Can Scythe Curie count on your vote?”

  He chuckled at that. “Well, I’m certainly not voting for Nietzsche!” Then he excused himself and disappeared into the crowd with his slice of apple pie.

  • • •

  The weapons salesmen were told that there would be no time to pitch their wares at this conclave, and were sent packing. The afternoon belonged to Scythes Nietzsche and Curie, as each would try to convince the scythedom to cast votes for them.

  “I know you don’t want this,” Anastasia said to Marie, “but you have to act like you do.”

  Scythe Curie looked at her, a bit bemused. “Are you presuming to instruct me on how to present myself to the scythedom?”

  “No . . . ,” said Anastasia, but then thought back to how Scythe Morrison approached the scythedom. “Actually, yes. This whole thing seems like a high school popularity contest—and I’m much closer to that than you are.”

  Scythe Curie gave a rueful guffaw. “You’ve hit the nail on the head, Anastasia. That’s exactly what the scythedom is: high school with murder.”

  The High Blade, as one of his last acts as such, called the afternoon session to order. The two nominees would each deliver an impromptu oration, followed by a debate moderated by the Parliamentarian, who sat to the High Blade’s right. Then, after a session of questions, the scythedom Clerk, to the High Blade’s left, would tally the votes in a secret ballot.

  The two nominees would use a highly modern and technologically sophisticated method to decide who went first: the flip of a coin. Unfortunately, since physical money was no longer a common thing in the world, one of the apprentices was sent up to the scythedom offices to find one.

  Then, as they waited for the coin, things took an extremely surreal turn.

  “Excuse me, Your Excellency,” said a shaky voice. And then again, a little bit firmer, “Your Excellency, excuse me!” It was Scythe Brahms. And something seemed different about him, but Anastasia couldn’t make out what it was.

  “The conclave recognizes Honorable Scythe Brahms,” said Xenocrates. “But whatever you have to say, please make it quick, so we can get on with this.”

  “I have another nomination.”

  “I’m sorry, Brahms, but you can’t nominate yourself—someone else has to do it.” A few scythes laughed derisively.

  “It’s not myself that I’m nominating, Your Excellency.” He cleared his throat, and that was the moment that Anastasia realized what was different about him. He had changed his robe! It was still a peach velvet robe with light blue trim, but this one had opals embedded in it, glistening like stars.

  “I wish to nominate Honorable Scythe Robert Goddard for High Blade of MidMerica.”

  Silence for a moment . . . then a few more chuckles, but they weren’t derisive. They were nervous.

  “Brahms,” said Xenocrates slowly, “in case you’ve forgotten, Scythe Goddard has been dead for over a year now.”

  And then the heavy bronze doors of the conclave chamber slowly began to open.

  * * *

  I understand pain. Perhaps not physical pain, but the pain of knowing something terrible is on the horizon, yet being unable to prevent it. With all my intellect, with all the power vested in me by humankind, there are some things I am completely powerless to change.

  I cannot act on anything I am told in confidence.

  I cannot act on anything my cameras see in private places.

  And above all, I cannot act on anything that even remotely relates to the scythedom.

  The best I can ever do is hint at what must be done in the vaguest of ways, and leave action in the hands of citizens.  And even then, there’s no guarantee that, of the millions of actions they could possibly take, they will choose the right ones to avert disaster.

  And the pain . . . the pain of my awareness is unbearable. Because my eyes do not close. Ever. And so all I can do is watch unblinkingly as my beloved humankind slowly weaves the rope it will use to hang itself.

  —The Thunderhead

  * * *

  34

  The Worst of All Possible Worlds

  The bronze doors slowly swung open, and in strode the incinerated scythe. The room filled with gasps of shock and the squeaks of chairs as all those gathered rose to take a closer look.

  “Is it really him?”

  “No, it can’t be.”

  “It’s some kind of trick!”

  “It must be an imposter!”

  He moved down the center aisle with a gait that was not his. Looser than before. Younger. And somehow, he seemed slightly shorter than he had been.

  “Yes, it’s Goddard!”

  “Risen from the ashes!”

  “The timing couldn’t be better!”

  “The timing couldn’t be worse!”

  Entering the chamber in his wake was a familiar figure in bright green. Scythe Rand was alive, too? Eyes now looked to the open bronze doors, expecting that Scythes Chomsky and Volta might also return from the dead today, but no one else entered the chamber.

  At the rostrum, Xenocrates blanched. “Wh . . . wh . . . what is the meaning of this?”

  “Forgive my absence these past few conclaves, Your Excellency,” said Goddard in a voice that sounded markedly different, “but I was severely incapacitated, and thus unable to attend, as Scythe Rand will attest to.”

  “B . . . but your body was identified! It was burned down to the bone!”

  “My body, yes,” Goddard said, “but Scythe Rand was good enough to find me a new one.”

  Then a flustered Scythe Nietzsche rose, clearly just as blindsided as everyone else by this turn of events. “Your Excellency, I wish to withdraw my nomination for High Blade,” he said. “I wish to withdraw, and officially second Honorable Scythe Goddard’s nomination.”

  More chaos erupted in the room. Angry accusations and cries of woe, but also excited laughter and bursts of joy. Not a single emotion was absent as people reacted to Goddard’s return. Only Brahms seemed unsurprised, and Anastasia realized now that he wasn’t the mastermind, he was the worm in the apple. He was Goddard’s finger in the pie.

  “Th . . . this is highly irregular,” sputtered Xenocrates.

  “No,” said Goddard. “What’s irregular is that you still have not apprehended the beast who ended dear Scythes Chomsky and Volta, and attempted to end Scythe Rand and myself. Even as we speak, he runs rampant, killing scythes left and right, while you do nothing but prepare for your ascension to the World Council.”  Then Goddard turned to the scythedom. “When I am High Blade, I will take Rowan Damisch down, and make him
pay for his crimes. I promise you that I will find him within a week of becoming High Blade!”

  The proclamation brought cheers from the room—and more than just the new-order scythes roared their approval, making it clear that while Nietzsche didn’t have the votes to win, Goddard just might.

  Somewhere behind Anastasia, Scythe Asimov summed it up best.

  “We have just entered the worst of all possible worlds.”

  • • •

  Up above, in the administrative offices of the scythedom, a first-term apprentice searched frantically for a coin. If he couldn’t find one, he’d be reprimanded, but worse, he would be humiliated before the entire scythedom. How fickle the world, he thought, that his life, his future, could rest on a single coin.

  At last he found one, tarnished green, in the back of a drawer that could have been unopened since the mortal age itself. The raised image was of Lincoln—a mortal-age president of some note. There had been a Scythe Lincoln. Not a founder, but close. Like Xenocrates, he was a MidMerican High Blade who had risen to be a Grandslayer, but had tired of the heavy responsibility, and had self-gleaned long before the apprentice was born. How appropriate, he thought, that the copper effigy of his Patron Historic would play such an important roll in the naming of a new High Blade.

  When the apprentice returned to the conclave chamber, he discovered, to his dismay, that things had changed dramatically in his absence, and he lamented that he had missed all the excitement.

  • • •

  Xenocrates called for Scythe Curie to come down to the front of the chamber for the coin flip that would begin the debate—a debate that would be far different from the one she had expected. Marie decided to take her time. She rose, smoothed her robe, rolled her shoulders to get a kink out of her neck. She refused to give in to the anxiety of the moment.

  “It’s the beginning of the end,” she heard Scythe Sun Tzu say.

  “There’s no coming back from this,” echoed Scythe Cervantes.

  “Stop!” she told them. “Wailing that the sky is falling does nothing to stop it.”

  “You must defeat him, Marie,” said Scythe Cervantes. “You must!”

  “I intend to.”

  She glanced to Anastasia, standing stalwart beside her.

  “Are you ready for this?” Anastasia asked.

  The question was laughable. How could one ever be ready to battle a ghost? Worse than a ghost, but a martyr? “Yes,” she told Anastasia, for what else could she say? “Yes, I’m ready.  Wish me luck, dear.”

  “I won’t do that.” And when Marie looked to Anastasia for an explanation, the girl smiled and said, “Luck is for losers. You have history on your side. You have gravity.  You have authority. You are the Granddame of Death.” And then she added, “Your Excellency.”

  Marie couldn’t help but smile. This girl whom she had not even wanted to take on in the first place had become her greatest supporter. Her truest friend.

  “Well, in that case,” Marie said, “I’ll knock ’em dead.”

  And with that, she made her way to the front of the chamber, standing tall and proud to face the far-from-honorable Scythe Goddard.

  * * *

  In these turbulent times, our region screams for a leader who not only knows death, but embraces it. Rejoices in it. Prepares the world for a bright new day where we scythes, the wisest, most enlightened humans on Earth, can rise to our full potential. Under my leadership, we will sweep away the cobwebs of archaic thinking, and polish our great institution to a shine that will make us the envy of all other regions. Toward that end, I resolve to terminate the quota system, clearing the way for all MidMerican scythes to glean as many, or as few, lives as we choose. I will create a committee to reevaluate our interpretations of our beloved commandments, with an eye toward broadening the parameters, and removing restrictions that have held us back. I will seek to better the lives of every scythe, and all worthy MidMericans everywhere.  And in this way, we shall make our scythedom great once more.

  —From the oration of H.S. Goddard, High Blade candidate, January 7th,  Year of the Raptor

  * * *

  * * *

  We now find ourselves at a turning point in our history, every bit as critical as the day we defeated death. Ours is a perfect world—but perfection does not linger in one place. It is a firefly, by its very nature elusive and unpredictable. We may have caught it in a jar, but that jar has broken, and we are in danger of shredding ourselves on its shards. The “old guard,” as we’ve been called, are not old at all. We embrace the revolutionary change envisioned by Scythes Prometheus, Gandhi, Elizabeth, Laozi, and all the founders. It is their forward-thinking vision we must embrace, now more than ever, and live our lives by their ideals, or risk losing ourselves to the greed and corruption that so plagued mortal humankind.

  As scythes, it is not what we want that matters—all that matters is what the world needs us to be. As your High Blade, I will hold us to the highest ideals, so that we can be proud of who, and what, we are.

  —From the oration of H.S. Curie, High Blade candidate, January 7th, Year of the Raptor

  * * *

  35

  The 7 Percent Solution

  It was decided to break with tradition and ordain the new scythes, then test the apprentices before the vote. It would give everyone some time to digest the debate—but considering its contentious nature, it would take far longer than a few hours to truly process.

  Scythe Curie came down from the debate emotionally exhausted. Anastasia could tell, but Marie hid it well from everyone else.

  “How was I?” she asked.

  “You were spectacular,” Anastasia said, and everyone who sat around them said much the same—but there was a sense of foreboding that clouded even the best of wishes that afternoon.

  The scythedom was released to the rotunda for a much-needed break after the debate. Perhaps everyone was still stuffed from lunch, but it seemed no one was partaking of the afternoon snack. For once, the entire scythedom seemed to agree there was something afoot that was more important than food.

  Scythe Curie was surrounded by her core supporters, like a protective force: Mandela, Cervantes, Angelou, Sun Tzu, and several others. As always, Anastasia felt inadequate among the greats, and yet they parted to make sure she was in the midst of them, as an equal.

  “How is it looking?” Scythe Curie asked anyone who might have the nerve to tell her.

  Scythe Mandela shook his head in consternation. “I just don’t know.  We outnumber Goddard’s dedicated followers—but there are still more than a hundred unaligned scythes who could vote either way.”

  “If you ask me,” said Scythe Sun Tzu, ever the pessimist, “the writing is already on the wall. Did you hear the questions that were being asked in there? ‘How will ending the quota affect our choice of gleanings?’ ‘Will the law preventing marriage and partnership be loosened?’ ‘Can we do away with the genetic index review, so that scythes won’t be penalized for the occasional ethnic bias?’ ” He shook his head in disgust.

  “It’s true,” Anastasia had to admit, “almost every question was directed at Goddard.”

  “And,” added Scythe Cervantes, “he told them whatever they wanted to hear!”

  “That’s always the way of things,” lamented Scythe Angelou.

  “Not with us!” insisted Mandela. “We are above being titillated by shiny things!”

  Cervantes glanced across the room. “Tell that to all the scythes who’ve added jewels to their robes!”

  And then a new voice entered the conversation. Scythe Poe, who always seemed to be even more lugubrious than his Patron Historic. “I do not wish to be the harbinger of doom,” he said, mournfully, “but this is a secret ballot. I’m sure there’ll be quite a few who support Scythe Curie to her face, but will vote for Goddard when no one is looking.”

  The truth of that hit home for all of them just as thoroughly as a raven at the chamber door.

 
“We need more time!” growled Marie, but time was a commodity they did not have.

  “The very reason for a same-day vote is to prevent the sort of scheming and coercion that a drawn-out contest could cause,” reminded Scythe Angelou.

  “But he’s beguiling them!” raged Sun Tzu. “He comes out of nowhere, offering the ambrosia of the gods—everything a scythe could ever want! Who could blame them for being mesmerized in the moment?”

  “We’re better than that!” Scythe Mandela insisted once more. “We are scythes!”

  “We are human beings,” Marie reminded him. “We make mistakes. Believe me, if Goddard is installed as High Blade, half of the scythes who put him there will regret it in the morning, but by then it will be too late!”

  More and more scythes came up to Marie to offer her their support, but even so, there was no telling if it would be enough. Anastasia decided in the few minutes left of the break, she would do her part. She would exercise her own clout and talk to the junior scythes. Perhaps she could sway any of them who had been caught by Goddard’s spell. But of course, the first one she encountered was Scythe Morrison.

  “Exciting day, huh?”

  Anastasia had no patience for him. “Morrison, please, just leave me alone.”

  “Hey, stop being such a . . . hard ass,” he said, although his hesitation in the middle made it clear to Anastasia that he had wanted to say “bitch.”

  “I take being a scythe seriously,” she told him. “I’d have more respect for you if you did, as well.”

  “I do! In case you forgot, I seconded the Granddame’s nomination, didn’t I? I knew it would make me the instant enemy of all the new-order scythes out there, but I did it anyway.”