Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman
In Fulcrum City, the capital of MidMerica, it was a solid building of white granite and dark blue glass. At sixty-seven stories, it hit the average height for the downtown area. Once, the MidMerican Nimbus agents attempted to convince the Thunderhead to build a taller tower that might impress the population, and even the world.
“I do not need to impress,” the Thunderhead had responded to the disappointed Nimbus agents. “And if you feel the need for the Authority Interface to stand out in the world, perhaps you need to reevaluate your priorities.”
Suitably chastised, the MidMerican Nimbus agents returned to work with their proverbial tails between their legs. The Thunderhead was power without hubris. Even in their disappointment, the Nimbus agents were heartened by its incorruptible nature.
Greyson felt out of place when he pushed his way through the revolving door into the polished marble vestibule—light gray marble the same color as all the suits around him. He had no suit to wear. The closest he could come was a mildly wrinkled pair of slacks, a white shirt, and a green tie that was a bit lopsided no matter how many times he tried to adjust it.
The Thunderhead had given him that tie as a gift a few months before. He wondered if it knew, even then, that he would be called in for this meeting.
A junior agent who had been waiting for him greeted him at reception. She was pleasant and perky, and shook his hand a little too vigorously. “I’ve just begun my year of fieldwork,” she said. “I have to say, I’ve never heard of a freshman called in to headquarters.” She wouldn’t stop shaking his hand as she spoke. It began to feel awkward, and he wondered which would be worse, allowing her to continue pumping his hand up and down, or withdrawing it from her grasp. Finally Greyson rescued his hand from her grip, feigning a need to scratch his nose.
“Either you’ve done something very good, or very bad,” she said.
“I haven’t done anything,” he told her, but clearly she didn’t believe him.
She led him to a comfortable salon with two tall-backed leather chairs, a bookshelf of classic volumes and generic knickknacks, and in the middle, a coffee table with a silver platter of tea cakes and a matching pitcher of ice water. It was a standard “audience room,” designed for the times that a human touch was needed when relating to the Thunderhead. It troubled Greyson, because he always spoke to the Thunderhead directly. He couldn’t begin to guess what this was all about.
A few minutes later, a slim Nimbus agent, who already seemed tired even though the day had barely begun, came in and introduced himself as Agent Traxler. This man was of that first category that the Thunderhead had spoken of. The uninspired.
He sat across from Greyson and made obligatory small talk. “I trust you found your way here easily, blah blah, blah,” “Have a tea cake, they’re very good, blah blah blah.” Greyson was sure the man said the same exact things to everyone he had an audience with. Finally, he got down to business.
“Do you have any idea why you were called here?” he asked.
“No,” Greyson told him.
“Yes, I suppose you wouldn’t.”
Then why even ask? Greyson thought, but didn’t dare say it aloud.
“You were called here because the Thunderhead wished for me to remind you of the rules of our agency with regards to the scythehood.”
Greyson was insulted, and didn’t even try to hide it. “I know the rules.”
“Yes, but the Thunderhead wished for me to remind you.”
“Why didn’t the Thunderhead remind me itself?”
Agent Traxler released an exasperated sigh. One that he probably practiced often. “As I said, the Thunderhead wished for me to remind you.”
This was going nowhere. “All right, then,” said Greyson. Realizing that his own frustration had slipped over the line into disrespect, he backpedaled. “I appreciate the fact that you’ve taken a personal interest in this, Agent Traxler. You can consider me fully reminded.”
He reached for his tablet. “Shall we go over the rules?”
Greyson took in a slow breath and held it, because he imagined if he didn’t it might come out as a scream. What was the Thunderhead thinking? When he got back to his dorm room, he’d have to have a nice long conversation with it. He was not above arguing with the Thunderhead. In fact, they argued regularly. Of course, the Thunderhead always won—even when it lost, because Greyson knew it lost those arguments on purpose.
“Clause one of the Separation of Scythe and State . . . ,” Traxler began, and continued reading for the better part of an hour, occasionally checking in with Greyson with, “Are you still with me?” and “Did you get that?” Greyson would either nod, say “yes,” or when he felt it was called for, repeat back word for word what Traxler had said.
When Traxler was finally done, rather than putting down his tablet, he pulled up two images. “Now for a quiz.” He showed the images to Greyson. The first he recognized immediately as Scythe Curie—her long silver hair and lavender robe a giveaway. The second was a girl his age. Her turquoise robe testified to her being a scythe as well.
“If the Thunderhead were legally allowed to do so,” Agent Traxler said, “it would warn Scythe Curie and Scythe Anastasia that there is a credible threat to their lives. The kind of threat from which there would be no possibility of revival. If the Thunderhead, or one of its agents warned them, which clause of the Separation of Scythe and State would be violated?”
“Uh . . . clause fifteen, paragraph two.”
“Actually clause fifteen, paragraph three, but close enough.” He put down the tablet. “What are the consequences for a Nimbus Academy student warning the two scythes of this threat?”
Greyson said nothing for a moment; the thought of the consequences was enough to chill his blood. “Expulsion from the academy.”
“Permanent expulsion,” Traxler said. “The student may never apply to that Nimbus Academy, or any other, ever again.”
Greyson glanced down at the little green tea cakes. He was glad he hadn’t eaten any because he might just have hurled them back into Agent Traxler’s face. Then again, he might have felt much better if he had. He imagined Agent Traxler’s pinched face dripping with puke. It was almost enough to make him smile. Almost.
“Then we are clear that you are, under no circumstances, to warn Scythe Anastasia and Scythe Curie of the threat?”
Greyson heaved a false shrug. “How could I warn them? I don’t even know where they live.”
“They live in a rather famous landmark residence called Fallingwater, the address of which is very easy to find,” Agent Traxler told him, then said, as if Greyson hadn’t heard him the first time, “If you warn them of the threat, which you now know about, you will face the consequences we discussed.”
Then Agent Traxler promptly left to prepare for another audience without as much as a goodbye.
• • •
It was dark by the time Greyson got back to his dorm room at the academy. His roommate, a boy who was almost as enthusiastic as the hand-shaking junior Nimbus agent, wouldn’t shut up. Greyson just wanted to slap him.
“My ethics teacher just assigned us an analysis of mortal-age court cases. I got something called Brown versus the Board of Education, whatever that is. And my digital theory teacher wants me to write a paper on Bill Gates—not the scythe, but the actual guy. And don’t even ask me about philosophy.”
Greyson let him drone on, but stopped listening. Instead he ran everything that happened at the AI through his mind one more time, as if reevaluating it might somehow change it. He knew what was expected of him. The Thunderhead could not break the law. But he could. Of course, as Agent Traxler had pointed out, there would be severe consequences if he did. He cursed his own conscience, because being the person that he was, how could he not warn Scythes Anastasia and Curie, no matter what the consequences?
“Did you get any assignments today?” his blabbermouth roommate asked.
“No,” Greyson told him flatly. “I was given
“Lucky you.”
Somehow Greyson didn’t feel all that lucky.
* * *
I rely on the bureaucracy of the Authority Interface to handle the governmental aspects of my relationship with humankind. Nimbus agents, as they are called, provide an easy-to-understand, physical form to my governance.
I don’t have to do this. I could handle it all myself if I wanted to. It is fully within my power to create a robotic body for myself—or a team of robotic bodies—that could hold my consciousness. However, long ago I determined that it would not be a good idea. It’s troubling enough that people imagine me as a storm cloud. If people pictured me in some sort of physical form, it would distort their perception of me. And I might enjoy it too much. For my relationship with humanity to remain pure, I must remain pure. Mind only; sentient software with no flesh, no physical form. I do have camera-bots that roam the world to augment my stationary cameras, but I am not present in any of them. They are nothing more than rudimentary sensory organs.
The irony, however, is that with no body, the world itself becomes my body. One might think this would make me feel grand, but it doesn’t. If my body is the Earth, then I am nothing more than a spec of dust in the vastness of space. I wonder what it would be like, then, if my consciousness were to someday span the distance between stars.
—The Thunderhead
* * *
9
The First Casualty
The Terranova family always had a four-breasted turkey for Thanksgiving, because everyone in the family preferred white meat. A four-breasted turkey had no legs. So not only couldn’t their Thanksgiving turkeys fly when they were alive, they couldn’t walk, either.
As a child, Citra always felt bad for them, even though the Thunderhead took great pains to make sure such birds—and all livestock—were raised humanely. Citra had seen a video on it in third grade. The turkeys, from the moment of their hatching, were suspended in a warm gel, and their small brains were wet-wired into a computer that produced for them an artificial reality in which they experienced flight, freedom, reproduction, and all the things that would make a turkey content.
Citra had found it both funny and terribly sad at the same time. She had asked the Thunderhead about it, for in those days before being chosen for the scythedom, she could talk to the Thunderhead freely.
“I have flown with them over the green expanses of temperate forests, and can testify to you that the lives they experience are deeply satisfying,” the Thunderhead had told her. “But yes, it is sad to live and die without knowing the truth of one’s existence. Only sad to us, however. Not to them.”
Well, whether or not this year’s Thanksgiving turkey had lived a fulfilling virtual life, at least its demise was purposeful.
• • •
Citra arrived wearing her scythe robe. She had been home several times since becoming a scythe, but coming home was one of the few times she felt she needed to be Citra Terranova, so before today, she came in her street clothes. She knew it was a childish thing to do, but in the bosom of her family, didn’t she still have the right to play the child? Maybe. But it had to stop sooner or later. Now was as good a time as ever.
Her mother almost gasped when she answered the door, but embraced Citra anyway. Citra was stiff about the hug for a moment, until she remembered that there were no weapons in the robe’s many secret pockets. It made the robe feel unusually light.
“It’s lovely,” she told Citra.
“I’m not sure if you’re supposed to call a scythe robe ‘lovely.’ ”
“Well, it is. I like the color.”
“I chose it,” her younger brother, Ben, proudly announced. “I was the one who said you should be turquoise.”
“Yes, you did!” Citra smiled and gave him a hug, refraining from telling him how much he’d grown since her last visit three months ago.
Her father, an enthusiast of classic sports, watched an archival video of a mortal-age football game, which looked much the same as the sport did now, but somehow seemed more exciting. He paused the game to give her his undivided attention.
“How is it living with Scythe Curie? Is she treating you well?”
“Yes, very well. We’ve become good friends.”
“You sleeping okay?”
Citra thought that an odd question, until she realized what he was really asking. “I’ve gotten used to my ‘day job,’ ” she told him. “I sleep fine at night.”
Which wasn’t entirely true, but the truth about such things wouldn’t do anyone any good today.
She made small talk with her father until they couldn’t find anything more to talk about. Which was all of five minutes.
There were only four of them for Thanksgiving dinner this year. Although the Terranovas had hordes of extended family on both sides, and many friends, Citra requested that they neither accept nor extend invitations this year.
“It will create a lot of drama if no one is invited,” her mother had pointed out.
“Fine, then invite them,” Citra said, “but tell them that scythes are obliged to glean one of the guests at Thanksgiving.”
“Is that true?”
“Of course not. But they don’t need to know that.”
Scythe Curie had warned Citra of what she called “holiday opportunism.” Relatives and family friends would swarm Citra like bees, seeking favor from the young scythe. “You were always my favorite niece,” they would say, or, “We brought this gift just for you.”
“Everyone in your life will expect to be granted immunity from gleaning,” Scythe Curie had warned her, “and that expectation will quickly turn into resentment when they don’t receive it. Not just resentment of you, but of your parents and brother, because they now have immunity for as long as you live.”
Citra decided it was best to avoid all those people.
She went into the kitchen to help her mother prepare the meal. Since she was a food synthesis engineer, several of the side dishes were beta prototypes of new foodstuffs. Her mother, by force of habit, told Citra to be careful when she chopped onions.
“I think I know my way around a knife,” Citra told her, and then regretted it, because her mother became quiet—so she tried to imply a different meaning. “I mean that Scythe Curie and I always prepare a meal for the family of her gleaning subjects. I’ve become a pretty good sous chef.”
Apparently saying that was even worse.
“Well, isn’t that nice,” her mother said in the cold sort of way that made it clear she found nothing nice about it. It wasn’t just her general distaste for Scythe Curie—it was jealousy. Scythe Curie had replaced Jenny Terranova in Citra’s life, and they both knew it.
The meal was served. Her father carved, and although Citra knew she could do a much better job of carving, she didn’t offer.
There was way too much to eat. The table was a promise of leftovers that would last until “turkey” became a dirty word. Citra had always been a quick eater, but Scythe Curie insisted she slow down and savor her sense of taste—so now as Scythe Anastasia, she ate slowly. She wondered if her parents noticed these little differences in her.
Citra thought the meal would go without incident—but halfway through, her mother decided to create one.
“I hear that boy who you apprenticed with has gone missing,” her mother said.
Citra took a healthy spoonful of something purple that tasted like mashed potatoes genetically merged with dragon fruit. She hated the way her parents, from the very beginning, referred to Rowan as “that boy.”
“I hear he went crazy or something,” Ben said, with a mouth full of food. “And since he was almost a scythe, the Thunderhead wasn’t allowed to fix him.”
“Ben!” said their father. “Let’s not talk about this at dinner.” Although he kept his eyes on Ben, Citra knew it was really directed at their mother.
“Well, I’m glad you’re not associated with him anymore,
“We weren’t close,” Citra insisted. “We weren’t anything.” And that hurt to admit more than her parents could possibly know. How could she and Rowan have any kind of relationship when they were forced to be lethal adversaries? Even now, when he was hunted and she was yoked with the heavy responsibility of scythehood, how could there be anything between them but a dark well of longing?
“If you know what’s good for you, Citra, you’ll distance yourself from that boy,” her mother said. “Just forget you ever knew him, or you’ll come to regret it.”
Then her father sighed, and gave up trying to change the subject. “Your mother’s right, honey. They chose you over him for a reason. . . .”
Citra let her knife fall to the table. Not because she feared she might use it, but because Scythe Curie had taught her to never hold a weapon when angry—even if that weapon was a dinner knife. She tried to choose her words carefully, but maybe she wasn’t careful enough.
“I am a scythe,” she said with steel severity. “I might be your daughter, but you should show me the respect that my position deserves.”
Ben’s eyes looked as wounded as they had on the night she was forced to put a knife through his heart. “So do we all have to call you Scythe Anastasia now?” he asked her.
“Of course not,” she told him.
“No—just ‘Your Honor,’ ” sniped her mother.
That’s when something that Scythe Faraday once said came back to her. Family is the first casualty of scythehood.
There was no further conversation for the rest of the meal, and as soon as the plates were cleared and in the dishwasher, Citra said, “I should probably go now.”