The Toll Read online

  That made most people race off the ship even faster than they’d boarded. Only once they had run from the dock did the mark on their IDs go away. Even so, there were several of Loriana’s coworkers who decided to leave on those ships anyway, choosing to become someone else, anywhere else in the world, than to remain on Kwajalein.

  Loriana had a childhood friend who was supplanted. Loriana didn’t know it until she ran into him in a coffee shop one day, hugged him, and chattered away, asking where life had taken him after graduating high school.

  “I’m sorry,” he’d said politely. “I actually don’t know you. Whoever you think I am, I’m not him anymore.”

  Loriana had been stunned and embarrassed. So much so that he insisted on buying her coffee and sitting down for a chat anyway. Apparently he was now a dog breeder with a full set of fake memories of a lifetime spent in the NorthernReach region, raising huskies and malamutes for the Iditarod.

  “But doesn’t it bother you that none of it is true?” Loriana had asked.

  “No one’s memories are ‘true,’ ” he’d pointed out. “Ten people remember the same thing in ten completely different ways. And besides, who I factually was doesn’t matter—and it doesn’t change who I am now. I love who I am—which probably wasn’t true before, or I never would have been supplanted in the first place.”

  It was not exactly circular logic. More like spiral. An accepted lie that spun in upon itself until truth and fiction disappeared into a singularity of who the hell cares, as long as I’m happy?

  It had been a year since those first ships had arrived, and things had settled into a routine. Homes were built, streets were paved—but stranger were the large patches on multiple islands that were being prepped with concrete a meter thick. No one knew what for. The construction crews were simply following a work order. And since all Thunderhead work orders always ended with something sensible being built, they trusted all would be revealed when their work was done. Whenever that might be.

  Loriana had found herself in charge of the communications team, sending out painfully slow one-way messages to the Thunderhead in primitive pulses of static. It was an odd sort of job, because she couldn’t directly request anything from the Thunderhead, since the Thunderhead was required to refuse the requests of unsavories. So all she could do was make declarative statements.

  The supply ship has arrived.

  We are rationing meat.

  Pier construction delayed due to bad concrete pour.

  And when a ship with extra meat and fresh concrete mix arrived five days later, everyone knew the Thunderhead had gotten the message without anyone having to actually ask.

  While Stirling, the communications tech, was in charge of actually tapping out the messages, he didn’t decide what messages to send. That was Loriana’s job. She was the gatekeeper for all information passing out of the island. And with so much information, she had to pick and choose what got through and what didn’t. Although the Thunderhead had set up cameras all over the atoll now, those cameras couldn’t transmit through the interference. Everything had to be recorded and physically brought out of the blind spot before it could be transmitted to the Thunderhead. There were talks about building an old-school fiber-optic cable that ran to the edge of the blind spot, but apparently it wasn’t the Thunderhead’s top priority, because it had not yet sent the supplies required to build it. So the way it stood, at best, the Thunderhead saw things a day after they happened. It made the communication center critical, since it was the only way to keep the Thunderhead informed.

  On the day she received, and opened, the security pack, she slipped a message into the stack that was waiting for Stirling to send using their code system. All it said was Why me?

  “Why you, what?” Stirling asked.

  “Just ask it,” she told him. “The Thunderhead will know.” She had decided to not even tell him about the package, because she knew he wouldn’t leave her alone until she told him what it was.

  He sighed and tapped it out. “You realize it’s not going to answer you,” he said. “It’ll probably just send you a bunch of grapes or something, and you’ll have to figure out what it means.”

  “If it sends me grapes,” Loriana told him, “I’ll make wine and get drunk, and that will be my answer.”

  On her way out of the bunker, she ran into Munira, who was tending to the little garden just outside the entrance. Even though the supply ships brought just about everything they needed, Munira still grew what she could.

  “It makes me feel useful,” she once said. “Homegrown food tastes better to me than anything the Thunderhead farms anyway.”

  “So… I received something from the Thunderhead,” she told Munira, perhaps the only person she felt safe confiding in. “I’m not sure what to do.”

  Munira didn’t look up from her gardening. “I can’t talk to you about anything having to do with the Thunderhead,” she said. “I work for a scythe, remember?”

  “I know… It’s just… It’s important, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

  “What does the Thunderhead want you to do about it?”

  “It wants me to keep it secret.”

  “Then keep it secret,” Munira said. “Problem solved.”

  But that was just spiral logic, too. Because information was never given by the Thunderhead without there being a purpose to it. She could only hope that the purpose would become evident. And when it did, that she didn’t screw it up.

  “How is Scythe Faraday?” Loriana asked. She hadn’t seen him in months.

  “The same,” Munira told her. Loriana supposed that a scythe robbed of purpose was worse than being an unemployed Nimbus agent. “Does he have any plans to start gleaning again? I mean there’s hundreds of workers all over the atoll now—that’s certainly a big enough population to glean someone here and there. Not that I’m anxious to see it or anything, but a scythe who doesn’t glean is hardly a scythe.”

  “He doesn’t have plans to do anything,” Munira told her.

  “So, are you worried about him?”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  * * *

  Loriana’s next stop was the distribution center—a warehouse of quick and easy design, near the dock, where Sykora spent most of his time walking around and doing a lot of pointing.

  Loriana was there because she needed to gauge him. To see if he was acting differently. To see if maybe he had gotten the same information she had, whether or not he was on the official distribution list. But Sykora was the same as always: bureaucratic and managerial. The undisputed master of petty projects.

  After a while, he noticed her lingering there.

  “Is there something I can do for you, Agent Barchok?” he asked. Although they hadn’t been actual Nimbus agents for more than a year, he still acted as if they were.

  “I was just wondering,” she said, “if you’ve given any real thought as to why we’re here on Kwajalein.”

  He looked up from his inventory tablet and took a moment to study her. “Clearly the Thunderhead wants to establish a community here, and we are the ones it chose to populate it. Haven’t you realized that yet?”

  “Yes, I know,” Loriana agreed, “but why?”

  “Why?” Sykora echoed, as if the question were preposterous. “Why does anyone live anywhere? There is no ‘why.’ ”

  There was no use pushing beyond that. Loriana realized that this was exactly what the Thunderhead wanted Sykora to think—which was probably part of the reason why he didn’t get the package. If he had, he would have insisted on putting his thumb in the pie and ruining it. It was best if he didn’t even know there was a pie to be messed with.

  “Never mind,” Loriana said. “I’m just having a rough day.”

  “Everything is as it should be, Agent Barchok,” he said in a feeble attempt to be fatherly. “Just do your job, and leave the big picture to me.”

  And so she did. Day after day she sent the messages that needed to be sent
and watched as the massive construction effort continued, everyone laboring with the blind, happy diligence of worker bees, ignorant of anything but their specific task, their worlds having gotten so small that they couldn’t see beyond the next rivet to be welded.

  Everyone but Loriana, who, unlike Sykora, did see the big picture.

  Because in that DNA-protected package were more than just simple documents. There were blueprints and schematics. The plans for everything the Thunderhead was planning to build here.

  And, like the package itself, it required her initials, thumbprint, and a drop of blood to signify her approval of the plans. As if she were the administrator of the entire undertaking. It took all day, and a night of tossing and turning, but the following morning, she gave her biological approval.

  Now she knew exactly what the Thunderhead was building here. She doubted anyone even suspected yet. But they would. In a year or two, it would be hard to hide it.

  And, for the life of her, Loriana didn’t know whether she should be positively joyful, or absolutely terrified.

  My fellow WestMerican scythes,

  As your High Blade, I stand here to quell your fears and misgivings about our relationship with MidMerica. The simple truth is the world is not the same place it was when we lost Endura. Sibilant Tonists brazenly defy our authority, and the Thunderhead’s continued silence has left billions without direction. What the world needs from us is strength and conviction.

  Signing official articles of alignment with the MidMerican scythedom is a step in that direction. High Blade Goddard and I are in perfect agreement that all scythes should be free to glean, unfettered by outdated customs that would limit us.

  Goddard and I shall move forward as equals, along with the High Blades of NorthernReach, EastMerica, and Mexiteca, who will shortly be signing their own articles of alignment.

  I assure you that we are not surrendering our sovereignty; we are merely affirming our parallel goals: the mutual health and continued enlightenment of our respective scythedoms.

  —Her Excellency, High Blade Mary Pickford of WestMerica, Vernal Conclave address, May 28th, Year of the Quokka

  21 Compromised

  More than two years after Loriana Barchok gave DNA approval to the Thunderhead’s secret undertaking, and a year after WestMerica officially aligned with MidMerica, Scythe Sydney Possuelo sat across the breakfast table from Scythe Anastasia, trying to bring her up to speed on the state of the world.

  The more she heard, the more diminished her appetite became. Anastasia was not ready to face a world where Goddard was the prevailing power over an entire continent.

  “While we in Amazonia have been resisting him,” Possuelo told her, “some other South Merican regions are joining with him—and now I hear he is making serious overtures to PanAsia.”

  Possuelo wiped a spot of egg yolk from his mouth, and Citra wondered how he could have an appetite. The best she could do was move food around her plate in an attempt to be gracious. She supposed it must always be this way; once the unthinkable settles into being the norm, you become numb to it. She never wanted to be that numb.

  “What does he want that he doesn’t already have?” she asked. “He’s gotten rid of the gleaning quota, so that should satisfy his lust for killing—and now he’s in control of five North Merican regions instead of just one—that should be enough for anyone.”

  Possuelo offered her a patronizing smile that she found infuriating. “Your naivete is refreshing, Anastasia. But the truth is, power for power’s sake is a consuming addiction. He would devour the world whole, and still be unsatisfied.”

  “There’s got to be a way to stop him!”

  Possuelo smiled again. This time it wasn’t patronizing; it was conspiratorial. She liked that a whole lot better. “That’s where you come in. The return of Scythe Anastasia from the dead will gain people’s attention,” he said. “It might even breathe life back into the splintered and demoralized old guard. Then maybe we’ll be able to fight him.”

  Citra sighed and shifted her shoulders uncomfortably. “Do people—ordinary people—accept the changes Goddard’s brought?”

  “For most people, scythe business is a mystery. Their only desire is to stay out of the way and avoid being gleaned.”

  “But they’ve got to see what’s happening and what he’s doing…”

  “They do… and, among the masses, he is feared, but he is also respected.”

  “What about his mass gleanings? I’m sure he’s doing even more of those. Doesn’t that bother people?”

  Possuelo deflated at the thought. “He chooses his mass gleanings carefully—only selecting unregistered, unprotected groups that the population at large doesn’t mind seeing gleaned.”

  Citra looked down at her uneaten food. She fought the urge to hurl it against the wall, just for the satisfaction of hearing the plates shatter. Targeted gleanings were not something new in history. In the past, however, they were quickly punished by one’s High Blade. But when the highest authority was the perpetrator, who was there to stop it? Rowan was the only one who dealt death to power, and it wasn’t likely that Possuelo would allow him to continue doing so.

  Goddard would find more and more vulnerable populations to target, and as long as enough people accepted it, he’d get away with it.

  “The news isn’t as dismal as it seems,” Possuelo told her. “If it’s of any consolation to you, we here in Amazonia still hold to the spirit of the Scythe Commandments, as do many other scythedoms. We estimate that half the world, maybe more, is against Goddard’s ideas and methods. Even within regions he controls, there are those who would resist him if they could. If you can believe it, Tonists are proving to be a substantial source of resistance ever since their prophet was gleaned.”

  “Prophet?”

  “There are those who believe the Thunderhead still spoke to him. But what does it matter now?”

  So Goddard had everything in his favor. It was what Marie had feared—what they all had feared. What Scythe Asimov had called “the worst of all possible worlds.” Now Marie was gone, and hope was at a premium.

  As she thought of Scythe Curie, she felt emotions erupt in her that she’d kept down until now. Marie’s last act had been to save Citra and Rowan. A truly selfless act worthy of one of the noblest post-mortals who ever lived. And now she was gone. Yes, it was years ago, but for Citra the grief was still raw and bleeding. She turned away from Possuelo to wipe her tears, but found that the moment she did, those tears exploded into sobs that she couldn’t hope to control.

  Possuelo came around the table to comfort her. She didn’t want it—didn’t want him to see her this way—but she also knew the pain was not something she had to bear alone.

  “It’s all right, meu anjo,” Possuelo said, his voice soothing and paternal. “As you said, hope is merely misplaced, and I believe you are the one to find it.”

  “ ‘Meu anjo’?” she said. “Sydney, I’m nobody’s angel.”

  “Ah, but you are,” Possuelo said. “Because an angel is what the world needs if we are to ever bring Goddard down.”

  Citra let her grief flow; then, when she felt spent, she wrangled her sorrow back in, wiping her tears. She needed this moment. Needed to say her goodbye to Marie. And now that she had, she felt just a little bit different. She felt, for the first time since her revival, less like Citra Terranova and more like Scythe Anastasia.

  * * *

  Two days later, she was moved from the revival center to a more secure location, which turned out to be an old fortress on the easternmost shore of Amazonia. A place that was desolate, and yet beautiful in its desolation. It was like being in a castle on the face of the moon, if the moon had been blessed with oceans.

  Modern amenities juxtaposed with ancient stone bulwarks made the place both comfortable and intimidating at once. Her suite had a bed fit for a queen. Possuelo had let it slip that Rowan was also here, although he probably wasn’t being given quite the same royal tre
atment.

  “How is he?” she asked Possuelo, trying to sound less concerned than she was. Possuelo visited her daily and spent considerable time with her, continuing to brief her on the state of the world, informing her bit by bit of the many things that had changed since Endura.

  “Rowan is being suitably cared for,” Possuelo told her. “I have seen to it personally.”

  “But he’s not here with us—which means you still see him as a criminal.”

  “The world sees him as a criminal,” Possuelo said. “How I see him doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me.”

  Possuelo took his time in answering. “Your assessment of Rowan Damisch is clearly blurred by love, meu anjo, and therefore not entirely reliable. However, it is not entirely unreliable, either.”

  She was given free run of the fortress, as long as she had an escort everywhere she went. She explored with the pretext of curiosity, but really she was just looking for Rowan. One of her escorts was an annoying junior scythe by the name of Peixoto, who was so starstruck by her, she feared he might just burst into flames if he as much touched her robe. As she moved through a dank space that must have been an ancient communal hall, she had to say something, because he just stood there by the stone steps, gawking at every move she made.

  “You can put your eyes back in your head now,” she told him.

  “I’m sorry, Your Honor—it’s just still hard to believe that I’m laying eyes on the actual Scythe Anastasia,” Peixoto said.