The Toll Read online

  “I’d like to run my own salvage operation someday,” Jerico told the scythe, thinking Dali might put in a good word. Instead the scythe brought Jerico to the E. L. Spence—a spectacular hundred-meter AGOR ship converted for marine salvage.

  “You shall be this vessel’s captain,” Dali proclaimed. And since the Spence already had a captain, the scythe gleaned him on the spot, then instructed the crew to be obedient to their new captain or be gleaned themselves. It was, to say the least, very surreal.

  It was not the way Jerico had wanted to achieve command, but had no more choice in the matter than the gleaned captain. Realizing that a crew would not easily take orders from a twenty-year-old, Jerico lied, professing to be fortysomething, but having recently turned the corner, setting back to a more youthful self. Whether or not they believed it was their business.

  It took a long time for the crew to warm to their new captain. Some acted out in secret ways. The bout of food poisoning that first week, for instance, could likely be traced back to the cook. And although genetic testing would have determined precisely whose feces had found its way into Jerico’s shoes, pursuing it wasn’t worth the trouble.

  The Spence and its crew traveled the world. Even before Jerico’s command, the salvage team had made a name for itself, but their new captain had the sense to hire a team of Tasmanian divers with gillform breathers. Having a dive team that could breathe underwater, combined with a first-rate retrieval crew, made them sought after by scythes around the world. And the fact that Jerico made retrieval of the deadish first priority over salvage of lost property gained them even greater respect.

  Jerico had raised Scythe Akhenaten’s barge from the bottom of the Nile; retrieved Scythe Earhart’s deadish body from an ill-fated flight; and when Grandslayer Amundsen’s pleasure sub sank in icy waters off the RossShelf region of Antarctica, the Spence was summoned to retrieve him.

  And then, toward the end of Jerico’s first year of command, Endura sank in the middle of the Atlantic, setting the stage for the greatest salvage operation in history.

  Yet the curtains of that stage remained resolutely closed.

  Without the Grandslayers of the World Scythe Council, there was no one in the world who could authorize a salvage. And with Goddard raving in North Merica that the Perimeter of Reverence not be breached, Endura’s ruins remained in limbo. Meanwhile, various regional scythedoms that had aligned with Goddard patrolled the perimeter, gleaning anyone caught there. Endura sank in water two miles deep, but it might as well have been lost in the space between stars.

  With all that intrigue, it had taken quite a while for any regional scythedom to dredge up the nerve to attempt a salvage, and as soon as Amazonia declared its intention, others joined in—but since Amazonia was the first to stick its neck out, it insisted on being in charge. Other scythedoms squawked, but no one denied Amazonia. Mainly because it meant the region would bear the brunt of Goddard’s anger.

  “You do realize that our current heading is more than a few degrees off course,” Chief Wharton pointed out to the captain, now that Possuelo was no longer on the bridge.

  “We’ll correct course at noon,” Jerico told him. “It will delay our arrival by a few hours. Nothing more awkward than arriving too late in the day to begin operations, but too early to call it a night.”

  “Good thinking, sir,” Wharton said, then took a quick glance outside and corrected himself, a bit abashedly. “I’m sorry, ma’am, my mistake. It was cloudy just a moment ago.”

  “No need to apologize, Wharton,” Jerico said. “I don’t care either way—especially on a day when there’s as much sunshine as cloud cover.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Wharton said. “No disrespect intended.”

  Jerico would have smirked, but that would have been disrespectful to Wharton, whose apology, although unnecessary, was genuine. While it was a mariner’s job to mark the position of the sun and stars, they were simply not accustomed to meteorological fluidity.

  Jerico was from Madagascar—one of the world’s seven Charter Regions, where the Thunderhead employed different social structures to better the human experience—and people flocked to Madagascar because of the popular uniqueness of its mandate.

  All children in Madagascar were raised genderless and forbidden to choose a gender until reaching adulthood. Even then, many didn’t choose a single state of being. Some, like Jerico, found fluidity to be their nature.

  “I feel like a woman beneath the sun and the stars. I feel like a man under the cover of clouds,” Jerico had explained to the crew when assuming command. “A simple glance at the skies will let you know how to address me at any given time.”

  It wasn’t the fluidity that stymied the crew—that was common enough—but they had trouble getting used to the meteorological aspect of Jerico’s personal system. Having been raised in a place where such things were the norm rather than the exception, it never even occurred to Jerico that it could be an issue, until leaving home. Some things simply made a person feel feminine; other things made a person feel masculine. Wasn’t that true of everyone regardless of gender? Or did binaries deny themselves the things that didn’t fit the mold? Well, regardless, Jerico found the faux pas and overcompensations more humorous than anything else.

  “How many other salvage teams do you think will be there?” Jerico asked Wharton.

  “Dozens,” said Wharton. “And more on the way. We’re already late to the party.”

  Jerico dismissed the notion. “Not at all. We’re carrying the scythe in charge, which means we’re the flagship of the operation. The party can’t start until we get there—and I intend to make a grand entrance.”

  “I have no doubt of that, sir,” said Wharton, because the sun had slipped behind a cloud.

  * * *

  At sunset, the Spence neared the spot where the Island of the Enduring Heart had sunk.

  “There are seventy-three ships of various classes waiting just outside the Perimeter of Reverence,” Chief Wharton informed Captain Soberanis.

  Scythe Possuelo couldn’t hide his distaste. “They’re no better than the sharks that devoured the Grandslayers.”

  As they began to pass the outermost vessels, Jerico noted a ship much larger than the Spence directly in their path.

  “We’ll plot a course around her,” said Wharton.

  “No,” said Jerico. “Maintain our current heading.”

  Wharton looked worried. “We’ll ram her.”

  Jerico gave him a wicked grin. “Then she’ll have to move.”

  Possuelo smiled. “And this will make clear from the beginning who is in charge of this operation,” he said. “I like your instincts, Jeri.”

  Wharton darted a glance at Jerico. Out of respect, no one on the crew called their captain Jeri—that was reserved for friends and family. But Jerico allowed it.

  The Spence surged forward at full speed, and the other ship did move, but only when it became clear that the Spence would truly ram her if it didn’t. It was a game of chicken handily won.

  “Position us dead center,” Jerico instructed as they crossed into the Perimeter of Reverence. “Then notify the other ships that they can join us. At 06:00 tomorrow, salvage crews can begin sending drones down to survey the wreckage. Tell them that all information is to be shared, and anyone caught withholding information is subject to gleaning.”

  Possuelo raised an eyebrow. “Are you speaking for the scythedom now, Captain?”

  “Just trying to ensure compliance,” Jerico said. “After all, everyone’s subject to gleaning, so I’m not telling them something they don’t already know—I’m just putting it into a new perspective.”

  Possuelo laughed out loud. “Your audacity reminds me of a junior scythe I used to know.”

  “Used to?”

  Possuelo sighed. “Scythe Anastasia. She perished along with her mentor, Scythe Curie, when Endura sank.”

  “You knew Scythe Anastasia?” asked Jerico, duly impressed.

 
“Yes,” said Possuelo, “but all too briefly.”

  “Well,” said Jerico, “perhaps whatever we raise from the depths can bring her some peace.”

  We have wished Scythes Anastasia and Curie luck on their trip to Endura and the inquest against Goddard. I can only hope that the Grandslayers, in their wisdom, will disqualify him, thereby ending his bid for High Blade. As for Munira and me, we must travel halfway around the world to find the answers we seek.

  My faith in this perfect world now hangs by the final thread of a fraying tether. That which was perfect will not remain so for long. Not while our own flaws fill the cracks and crevices, eroding all that we have labored to create.

  Only the Thunderhead is beyond reproach, but I do not know its mind. I share none of its thoughts, for I am a scythe, and the Thunderhead’s realm is beyond my reach, just as my solemn work is outside of its global jurisdiction.

  The founding scythes feared our own hubris—feared that we couldn’t maintain the virtue, selflessness, and honor that our job as scythes requires. They worried that we might grow so full of ourselves—so bloated by our own enlightenment—that we would, like Icarus, fly too close to the sun.

  For more than two hundred years we have proved ourselves worthy. We have lived up to their grand expectations. But things have changed in the blink of an eye.

  There is, I know, a fail-safe left by the founding scythes. A contingency should the scythedom fail. But if I find it, will I have the courage to take action?

  —From the “postmortem” journal of Scythe Michael Faraday, March 31st, Year of the Raptor

  3 An Invigorating Way to Start One’s Week

  On the day that Endura sank, a small, off-grid plane flew to a place that didn’t exist.

  Munira Atrushi, a former night librarian at the Great Library of Alexandria, was the passenger. Scythe Michael Faraday was the pilot.

  “I learned to pilot aircraft in my early years as a scythe,” Faraday told her. “I find that flying a plane is calming. It brings one’s mind to a different, more peaceful place.”

  That might work for him, but apparently it didn’t work for passengers, because every bump had Munira white-knuckling her seat.

  Munira was never a fan of air travel. Yes, it was perfectly safe, and no one had been known to be permanently killed by an airplane. The one post-mortal incident on record took place more than fifty years before she was born, involving a passenger liner that had the profoundly bad luck to be struck by a meteorite.

  The Thunderhead immediately ejected all the passengers to avoid the inevitable crash and burn. Instead, they were quickly rendered deadish by the rarefied air at cruising altitude. Within seconds they were frozen solid by the cold and fell to the forest far below. Ambudrones were dispatched even before they landed, and recovered each and every body within an hour. They were brought to revival centers, and in a couple of days they happily boarded a new flight to their destination.

  “An invigorating way to start one’s week,” one of the passengers had quipped in an interview.

  Be that as it may, Munira still did not like planes. She knew her fear was completely irrational. Or at least it had been irrational until Scythe Faraday pointed out that once they crossed out of known airspace, they’d be on their own.

  “Once we’re in the Pacific ‘blind spot,’ no one will be tracking us—not even the Thunderhead,” Faraday told her. “No one will know if we live or die.”

  It meant that if they did have the bad luck of being struck by a meteorite, or met with some other unexpected catastrophe, no ambudrones would arrive to airlift them to a revival center. They would stay dead just as permanently as mortals once did. Just as irrevocably as if they were gleaned.

  It didn’t help that the plane was being flown by Faraday instead of being allowed to fly itself. She trusted the venerable scythe, but still, he was, like everyone else, subject to human error.

  This was all her own fault. She was the one who had deduced that the Thunderhead had a blind spot in the South Pacific. A spot filled with islands. Or, more accurately, atolls—ridges of ancient volcanoes that now formed a series of circular island chains. This was an entire region hidden from the Thunderhead—and indeed the world—by the founding scythes. The question was why?

  Just three days ago, they had met with Scythes Curie and Anastasia to tell them of their suspicions. “Be careful, Michael,” Scythe Curie had said. The fact that Curie was concerned with what they had uncovered was troubling to Munira. Scythe Curie was fearless… and yet she feared for them. That was no small thing.

  Faraday, too, had his misgivings, but he chose not to share them with Munira. Better she see him as stalwart. After that meeting, they had made their way, ever incognito, to WestMerica using commercial transit. The rest of the way would be by private craft; they just had to get themselves a plane. While Faraday was entitled to take anything he wanted, no matter how large or who it belonged to, he rarely did so. It was always his objective to leave as small a footprint as possible on the lives of those he encountered. Unless, of course, his purpose was to glean them. In that case, his footprint would be definitive, and heavy.

  He had not gleaned a single soul since faking his own death. As a dead man, he could not take life—because if he did, the scythedom would be alerted, as the scythedom database logged all gleanings by way of his ring. He had considered disposing of it, but chose not to. It was a matter of honor, a matter of pride. He was still a scythe and would not disrespect the ring by parting with it.

  He found that he missed gleaning less and less as time went on. Besides, right now he had other things to do.

  Once in WestMerica, they spent a day in Angel City, a place that, in mortal days, was the subject of much glittering fascination and personal misery. Now it was just a theme park. Then the following morning, Faraday donned his robe, which he hadn’t worn much since slipping off the scythedom’s radar, went to a marina, and appropriated the best seaplane there: an eight-passenger amphibious jet.

  “Make sure we have sufficient fuel cells for a transpacific journey,” he told the manager of the marina. “We intend to depart as soon as possible.”

  Faraday was a formidable figure already without the robe. Munira had to admit that with his robe, he was commanding in a way that only the best scythes are.

  “I’ll have to talk to the owner,” the marina manager said with a quiver in his voice.

  “No,” Faraday calmly told him. “You’ll have to tell the owner after we’ve gone, as I have no time to wait. Inform them that the craft shall be returned once I’m done with it, and I shall pay a sizeable rental fee.”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” said the man, for what else could he say to a scythe?

  While Faraday was alert at the controls, Munira kept checking to make sure he wasn’t dozing or losing focus. And she counted every pocket of turbulence they hit on the way. Seven so far.

  “If the Thunderhead controls weather, why doesn’t it smooth out the flight channels?” she griped.

  “It doesn’t control weather,” Faraday pointed out. “The Thunderhead merely influences it. And besides, the Thunderhead cannot intervene for a scythe, no matter how much his esteemed associate despises choppy air.”

  Munira appreciated that he did not refer to her as his assistant anymore. She had proved herself to be much more than that by finding the blind spot in the first place. Curse her own ingenuity! She could have happily stayed at the Library of Alexandria none the wiser, but she had to be curious. And what was that old mortal-age saying? Curiosity was a cat killer?

  As they flew over featureless Pacific seas, a strange and sudden feedback began to wail over their radio. It was nearly deafening, and it lasted for almost a minute, even after Faraday had tried to turn it off. Munira felt her eardrums would burst from it, and Faraday had to let go of the controls just to cover his ears, which sent them careening wildly. Then the terrible sound stopped just as abruptly as it had begun. Faraday quickly regained control of the
plane.

  “What on Earth was that?” Munira asked, her ears still ringing.

  Faraday kept both hands on the controls, still getting over it himself. “My guess is that it’s some sort of electromagnetic barrier. I believe that means we’ve just crossed into the blind spot.”

  Neither of them gave the noise much thought after that. And neither had any way of knowing that the same sound had been heard simultaneously all over the world—a sound that would come to be known in certain circles as “the Great Resonance.” It was the moment that marked the sinking of Endura, as well as the Thunderhead’s global silence.

  But as Faraday and Munira were out of the Thunderhead’s sphere of influence once they finally did cross into the blind spot, they remained unaware of anything in the outside world.

  * * *

  From so high up, the submerged volcanic craters of the Marshall Atolls were clearly visible—massive lagoons within the dots and ribbons of the many islands that rimmed them. Ailuk Atoll, Likiep Atoll. There were no buildings, no docks, no visible ruins at all to suggest that people had ever been here. There were many wilderness areas around the world, but those places were all meticulously maintained by the Thunderhead’s wilderness corps. Even in the deepest, darkest forests there were communication towers and ambudrone pads, should visitors find themselves seriously injured or temporarily killed. But out here, there was nothing. It was eerie.

  “People lived here once, I’m sure,” Faraday said. “But the founding scythes either gleaned them or, more likely, relocated them outside of the blind spot, to keep all activities here as secret as possible.”

  Finally, in the distance ahead, Kwajalein Atoll came into view.

  “ ‘So let’s escape, due south of Wake, and make for the Land of Nod,’ ” said Faraday, quoting the old nursery rhyme. And here they were, seven hundred miles due south of Wake Island, in the very center of the blind spot.