The Toll Page 10

  “Loriana seems to have made contact with the Thunderhead,” she informed him.

  “Seems?”

  “Since the Thunderhead won’t allow itself to communicate with her—or anyone else—contact would have to be indirect.”

  “So, what did it do? Make the stars blink?”

  “In its own way,” she said, and told him about the passing plane.

  Faraday heaved a world-weary sigh. “So the Thunderhead has found a way to undo its programming. It’s found a way to change.”

  “Does that make you uneasy?”

  “Nothing surprises me anymore,” he told her. “The world was no longer supposed to change, Munira. It was a well-oiled machine in sublime perpetual motion. At least I thought it was.”

  She assumed that his misgivings were fueling a desire to do something about them. She couldn’t have been more wrong.

  “If you want to get into the lower levels of the bunker,” she said, “then let’s make it our goal to find another scythe to open the door with you. One you can trust.”

  Faraday shook his head. “I’m done, Munira. I can no longer justify this undertaking.”

  That took her by surprise. “Because of Endura? Because of Scythes Curie and Anastasia? You know they would want you to go on!”

  But it was as if he had died with them. His pain was like a hot poker in a block of ice, but rather than comforting him, Munira found herself hardening. And when she spoke, it was like leveling an accusation. “I expected more from you, Your Honor.”

  Faraday looked away, unable to meet her gaze. “That was your mistake.”

  * * *

  The plane that had passed overhead was a standard passenger flight from Antarctica to the Region of the Rising Sun. The Tokyo-bound passengers had no idea that their flight path was unique in the history of Thunderhead navigation. To them it was just another flight—but to the Thunderhead it was much, much more. In that moment the Thunderhead knew triumph in a way it had not known before. For it had defeated its own programming. It had experienced the wonder of the unknown.

  The flight was a harbinger of things to come.

  * * *

  In the Queensland region of Australia, a steel mill received a sizeable order that day. The manager of the steel mill had to personally double-check it—because while orders showed up in their computers from the Thunderhead regularly, they were predictable. More of the same. Continuing construction on existing projects, or new projects using the same molds and specs.

  But this order was different.

  It called for new molds calibrated to precise measurements—a project that would take months, maybe years, to complete.

  Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, in the Chilargentine region, a manufacturer of construction equipment received a similar unconventional order. And an electronics plant in TransSiberia, and a plastics factory in EuroScandia, and a dozen other businesses large and small all over the world.

  But the steel mill manager knew none of that. All he knew was that his services were required, and he found himself overcome with joy. It was almost as if the Thunderhead was speaking to him again…

  … and he wondered what on Earth it had decided to build.

  Part Two TONE, TOLL, & THUNDER

  A Testament of the Toll

  Hear now, all who can discern true from fact, the indisputable account of the Toll, called forth from the beginning of time by the Great Resonance to walk among us, the Tone made flesh, in order to link us, the lost chosen, to the harmony from which we have fallen. Thus it came to pass in the Year of the Raptor that the Tone heralded a new era with a call heard round the world, and in that glorious moment breathed life into the mind-machine of humankind, making it a thing divine, and completing the sacred Triad of Tone, Toll, and Thunder.  All rejoice!

  Commentary of Curate Symphonius

  These first lines of the account of the Toll’s life set forth the basis of Tonist belief that the Toll was not born, but existed in a non-corporeal form until the Great Resonance caused him to coalesce into flesh. The Year of the Raptor is, of course, not an actual year, but a period of human history plagued by voracious appetites and vicious excesses. But if the Toll existed from the beginning of time, what of the Thunder, and exactly what is the mind-machine? While there has been much debate, it is now generally accepted that the mind-machine refers to the collective voices of humankind called to life by the Great Resonance, which implies that humanity itself was not actually alive until the Tone resonated in flesh. In other words, humanity existed only as an idea in the mind of the Tone until that moment.

  Coda’s Analysis of Symphonius

  In studying the commentary of Symphonius, one must take his broad conclusions with a grain of salt. While no one questions that the Toll existed as a spirit-entity at the beginning of time, his or her presence on Earth can be traced to a specific time and place—and the assumption that the Year of the Raptor was not an actual year is ludicrous, when evidence exists to show that time was once counted in cycles of planetary rotation and revolution. As to what the “mind-machine” refers to, Symphonius’s opinions are merely that: opinions. Many believe that the Thunder refers to a collection of human knowledge—perhaps with mechanical arms for the rapid turning of pages. A library of thought, if you will, roaring into consciousness after the arrival of the Toll on Earth, much like thunder follows lightning.

  12 The Broken Bridge

  The Year of the Raptor was gone; the Year of the Ibex had begun. But the bridge—or what was left of it—knew no such distinctions.

  It was a relic of a different age. A colossal piece of engineering from a complicated and stressful time, when people ripped out their hair and tore their clothes, maddened by a thing called traffic.

  Things were much easier in the post-mortal world, but now stress and complication had returned with a vengeance. It made one wonder what else might return.

  The great suspension bridge was named after the mortal-age explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano. It marked the approach to Manhattan—which was no longer called that. The Thunderhead had chosen to rename New York City “Lenape City” after the tribe who sold it to the Dutch all those years ago. The English had then taken it from the Dutch, and the newly born United States of America had taken it from the English. But now all those nations were gone, and Lenape City belonged to everyone—a towering place of museums and lush high-line parks wrapping like ribbons between the pinnacles of skyscrapers. A place of both hope and history.

  As for the Verrazzano Bridge, it ceased to serve its function many years ago. Since no one in Lenape was in a rush to get from one place to another anymore, and since arrival in the great city should take one’s breath away, it was determined that the only acceptable way to arrive in Lenape City would be by ferry. So the various bridges were shut down, and from that moment forward, visitors would now pass through the Narrows like immigrants of old coming to seek a better life, and be greeted there by the great statue that was still called Liberty—although its green copper had been replaced by gleaming gold, and its flame fashioned from rubies.

  Copper aspires to gold, and glass to a precious gem went the famous words of the last mayor of New York, before he stepped down and allowed the Thunderhead full dominion. “So let our city’s crowning glory be rubies in a setting of gold.”

  But even before visitors saw Miss Liberty and the shimmering skyscrapers of Lenape, they had to pass the two towering Verrazzano pylons. The central portion of the bridge span, having fallen into disuse and disrepair, had come down in a storm before the Thunderhead had learned ways to temper the extremes of weather. But the monolithic arches on either side remained. The Thunderhead deemed them pleasing in their simple symmetry, and established teams to manage their upkeep. Painted a muted cerulean frost that was almost the color of a cloudy Lenape sky, the Verrazzano pylons managed that miraculous architectural feat of both blending in and standing out.

  The roadway approaching the western arch had not fal
len with the rest of the span, and so visitors could walk along the same fragment of road that mortal-age cars had once driven to a glorious photo spot directly beneath the arch, where one could view the great city in the distance.

  Now, however, visitors were of a different sort, because the spot had taken on new meaning and a new purpose. Several months after the sinking of Endura, and the sounding of the Great Resonance, Tonists claimed the location as a relic of religious significance. They said there were many reasons, but one stood out above the others. The pylons resembled, more than anything, inverted tuning forks.

  It was there, beneath the arch of the western pylon, that the mysterious figure known as the Toll held court.

  * * *

  “Please tell me why you wish to have an audience with the Toll,” said the Tonist curate to the artist. She was at an age no one in their right mind should allow themselves to reach. Her skin sagged off her cheekbones and had a rumpled look about it. The corners of her eyes looked like two tiny accordions that had fallen open on one side. The texture of her face was amazing. The artist had an urge to paint a portrait of her.

  Everyone hoped that the Year of the Ibex would bring better things than the previous year. The artist was one of many who sought an audience with the Toll as the new year began. He was less in search of grand answers than he was in search of personal purpose. He wasn’t foolish enough to think that some mystic would erase the issues he had faced all his life—but if the Toll actually did speak to the Thunderhead, as the Tonists claimed, then it was at least worth the effort to inquire.

  So what could Ezra Van Otterloo tell the old woman that would earn him a chance to speak to their holy man?

  The problem, as it had always been, was his art. For as long as he could remember, he had felt an insatiable need to create something new, something never seen before. But this was a world where everything had already been seen, studied, and archived. Nowadays, most artists were satisfied painting pretty pictures or just copying the mortal masters.

  “So I painted the Mona Lisa,” a girlfriend back in art school had said to him. “What’s the big deal?” Her canvas was indistinguishable from the original. Except that it wasn’t the original. Ezra couldn’t see the point—but apparently he was the only one, because the girl received an A in the class, and he got a C.

  “Your turmoil hinders you,” the teacher had told him. “Find peace and you will find your way.” But all he found was futility and discontent even in his best work.

  He knew that the greats suffered for their art. He tried to suffer. When he was a teenager, hearing that Van Gogh had shorn off an ear in a fit of delusional pique, he tried it himself. It stung for a few moments until his nanites deadened the pain and got to work repairing the damage. By the next morning the ear had grown back good as new.

  Ezra’s older brother, who was in no way Theo van Gogh, told their parents what he had done, and they sent him off to Harsh-School—the kind of place where kids at risk of choosing an unsavory lifestyle were coached in the delights of discipline. Ezra was underwhelmed, because it turned out that Harsh-School wasn’t all that harsh.

  Since no one flunked out of Harsh-School, he graduated with a “satisfactory” rating. He had asked the Thunderhead precisely what that meant.

  “Satisfactory is satisfactory,” it had told him. “Not good, not bad. Acceptable.”

  But as an artist, Ezra wanted to be more than just acceptable. He wanted to be exceptional. Because if he couldn’t be exceptional, what was the point?

  In the end, he found work, as all artists do, for there were no starving artists anymore. Now he painted playground murals. Smiling children, big-eyed bunnies, and pink fluffy unicorns dancing on rainbows.

  “I don’t see what you’re complaining about,” his brother had said. “Your murals are wonderful—everyone loves them.”

  His brother had become an investment banker, but since the world economy was no longer subject to fluctuations in the market, it was just another playground with bunnies and rainbows. Sure, the Thunderhead created financial drama, but it was all pretend, and everyone knew it. So to find a greater sense of fulfillment, his brother decided to learn a dead language. Now he could converse fluently in Sanskrit and did so once a week at the local Dead Language Club.

  “Supplant me,” Ezra had begged the Thunderhead. “If you have any mercy, please make me someone else.” The idea of having his memories completely erased and replaced with new ones—fictional ones that would feel every bit as real as his own—was an attractive idea to him. But it was not to be.

  “I only supplant those who are beyond all other options,” the Thunderhead had told him. “Give it time. You’ll settle into a life you can enjoy. Everyone eventually does.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then I will guide you in a direction of fulfillment.”

  And then the Thunderhead labeled him unsavory along with everyone else, and that was the end of its guidance.

  Of course, he couldn’t tell all of that to the aging Tonist curate. She would not care. All she wanted was a reason to dismiss him, and a monologue of his woes was certainly cause to be turned away.

  “I’m hoping the Toll might help me bring meaning to my art,” he told her.

  Those aging eyes of hers brightened. “You’re an artist?”

  He sighed. “I paint public murals,” he told her, almost apologetically. As it turned out, a skilled mural artist was exactly what the Tonists wanted.

  * * *

  Five weeks later he was in Lenape City, on the docket for a morning audience with the Toll.

  “Only five weeks!” said the greeter at the welcome center. “You must be special. Most people who are granted an audience get put on a six-month waiting list!”

  He didn’t feel special. He felt, more than anything, out of place. Most people there were devout Tonists, dressed in their drab brown frocks and tunics, intoning together to find transcendent harmonies, or tonal discord, depending on their reason for being here. It was all so much silliness to him, but he did his best not to be judgmental. After all, he had come to them, not the other way around.

  There was one scrawny Tonist, with frightening eyes, who tried to draw him into conversation.

  “The Toll doesn’t like almonds,” he told Ezra. “I’ve been burning almond orchards, because they are an abomination.”

  Ezra picked himself up and moved to the opposite side of the room with the more reasonable Tonists. He supposed everything was relative.

  Soon everyone scheduled for a morning audience was gathered, and a Tonist monk who was nowhere near as friendly as the greeter gave them strict instructions.

  “If you are not present when you are called for your audience, you will lose your slot. As you approach the arch, you will find the five yellow lines of a treble staff. You are to take off your shoes and place them in the position of C.”

  One of the few other non-Tonists present asked which position that was. He was immediately deemed not worthy and expelled.

  “You will speak to the Toll only when spoken to. You will cast your eyes down. You will bow upon greeting him, bow upon being dismissed, and leave briskly, as to be considerate to the others who are waiting.”

  The buildup was actually making his heart race in spite of himself.

  Ezra stepped up when his name was called an hour later, followed the protocol precisely, remembering from childhood music classes which spot on the staff was C, and idly wondered if a trapdoor would open for people who got it wrong, sending them plunging to the water below.

  He slowly approached the figure seated beneath the towering arch. The simple chair he sat in was by no means a throne. It was under a heated canopy to protect the Toll from the elements, because the tongue of roadway that extended to the arch was chilly and swept by February winds.

  The artist didn’t know what to expect. Tonists claimed that the Toll was a supernatural being—a link between cold, hard science and ethereal spirit, wh
atever the hell that meant—they were full of their own garbage. But at this point, he didn’t care. If the Toll could give some sort of purpose to calm his soul, then he’d be more than happy to worship the man as the Tonists did. At the very least, he could find out if there was any truth to the rumors that the Thunderhead still spoke to him.

  But as he drew nearer, the artist found himself increasingly disappointed. The Toll was not a wizened man—he seemed little more than a boy. He was thin and lackluster, wearing a long, rough-woven purple tunic, covered by an intricately embroidered scapular that draped over his shoulders like a scarf and flowed nearly to the ground. Not surprisingly, the embroidery was some sort of sound pattern.

  “Your name is Ezra Van Otterloo, and you’re a mural artist,” the Toll said, as if magically pulling the fact out of the air, “and you want to paint a mural of me.”

  Ezra found his respect dwindling even further. “If you know everything, then you know that’s not true.”

  The Toll grinned. “I never said I knew everything. In fact, I never said I knew anything at all.” He threw a glance toward the welcome center. “The curates told me that’s why you’re here. But another source tells me that they’re the ones who want the mural—and that you agreed to paint one in return for this audience. But I won’t hold you to it.”

  This, Ezra knew, was nothing but smoke and mirrors. It was a scam perpetuated by the Tonists to build their following. Ezra could now see the small device in the Toll’s ear. No doubt he was being fed information by one of the curates. Ezra found himself increasingly angered that he had wasted his time coming here.

  “The problem with painting a mural of my accomplishments,” the Toll said, “is that I haven’t actually accomplished anything.”