Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman
If the Thunderhead could have sneered, it would have. It knew precisely who had built the explosives, who had placed them, and who had set the trip wire. But telling the scythedom what it knew would be a severe violation of scythe-state separation. The best it had been able to do was indirectly motivate Greyson Tolliver to prevent the deadly explosion. Yet even though the Thunderhead knew who had set the explosives, it also knew that those weren’t the individuals responsible. They were merely pawns being moved by a much more capable hand. The hand of someone who was shrewd and careful enough to avoid detection—not just by the scythedom, but by the Thunderhead, as well.
“I need to discuss with you your gleaning practices, Anastasia,” Scythe Constantine said.
Scythe Anastasia shifted uncomfortably in her robe. “It’s already been discussed in conclave—I have every right to glean the way I do.”
“This is not about your rights as a scythe, it’s about your safety,” Scythe Constantine told her.
Scythe Anastasia began to bluster a complaint, but Scythe Curie, with just the slightest touch of her hand on Anastasia’s wrist, silenced her.
“Let Scythe Constantine finish what he has to say,” she said.
Scythe Anastasia took a deep breath of precisely 3,644 milliliters, and slowly released it. The Thunderhead suspected that Scythe Curie had guessed the nature of what Constantine had to say. The Thunderhead, however, didn’t have to guess. It knew.
Citra, on the other hand, had no idea. She thought she knew everything Constantine was about to say, though—so even as she put on her best Scythe Anastasia listening face, she was already formulating a response.
“While it might be difficult to track your movements, Scythe Anastasia, it is very easy to track the movements of the people you’ve marked for gleaning,” Scythe Constantine said. “Each time one of them contacts you to arrange the time and place of their gleaning, it gives your enemies an easy opportunity to take you out.”
“I’ve been fine so far.”
“Yes,” said Scythe Constantine. “You’ll be fine until the moment you’re not. Which is why I’ve asked High Blade Xenocrates to excuse you from gleaning until the threat is gone.”
This was what Citra thought he’d say, and so she struck back immediately. “Unless I violate one of the Scythe Commandments, not even the High Blade can tell me what I can and can’t do. I am autonomous and above all other law, just like you!”
Her response did not draw Scythe Constantine into a debate, nor did he disagree . . . which troubled Citra.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “I didn’t say you are being forced to stop gleaning, I said you are being excused. Meaning that if you don’t glean, you will not be penalized for falling under quota.”
“Well, in that case,” said Scythe Curie, making it clear that there was no resisting this, “I will suspend gleaning as well.” Then she raised her eyebrows, as if an idea had just occurred to her. “We could go to Endura!” She turned to Scythe Anastasia. “If we’re on a forced vacation from gleaning, why not make it true vacation?”
“An excellent idea!” said Scythe Constantine.
“I don’t need a vacation,” insisted Citra.
“Then think of it as an educational trip!” Scythe Curie said. “Every young scythe should tour the Island of the Enduring Heart. It will give you context, and connection to who we are and why we do what we do. You might even get to meet Supreme Blade Kahlo!”
“You would see the actual heart for which the island is named,” Constantine told her, as if it would entice her. “And the Vault of Relics and Futures—which can’t be visited by just anybody—but I happen to be friendly with Grandslayer Hemingway, of the World Scythe Council. I’ll bet he could arrange a personal tour.”
“I’ve never been inside the vault myself,” said Scythe Curie. “I’ve heard it’s impressive.”
Scythe Anastasia put up her hands. “Stop!” she said. “As tempting as a trip to Endura is, you’re forgetting I still have responsibilities here that I can’t just walk away from. There are still nearly thirty people I’ve already chosen for gleaning. They’ve all been injected with a poison grain that will kill them after a month. That is NOT the way I want to glean them!”
And Scythe Constantine said, “You don’t have to worry about that anymore. They’ve already been gleaned.”
The Thunderhead was, of course, aware of this, but it caught Citra completely by surprise. She heard Constantine say it, but it took a moment for the words to make it through. It registered in her nervous system even before it registered in her mind. She felt her ears getting warm, her throat getting tight.
“What did you say?”
“I said that they’ve already been gleaned. Several other scythes were sent to complete your gleanings, right down to the gentleman you chose yesterday. I assure you everything is in order. All their families were granted immunity. There are no loose ends to further endanger you.”
Citra began to stutter and bluster, which was very unlike her. She took pride in always being clear and incisive with her words, but this blindsiding tipped her off balance. She turned to Scythe Curie. “Did you know about this?”
“No,” Marie said, “but it makes sense, Anastasia. Once you calm down and think about it, you’ll realize why it had to be done.”
But Citra was miles away from calming down. She thought of the various people whom she had chosen for gleaning. She had promised them that they would have time to wrap up their affairs—that they would be able to choose how and where it would happen. A scythe’s word means everything. It was part of the code of honor Citra swore to uphold. Now all those promises were shattered.
“How could you do that? What gives you the right?”
Now Scythe Constantine raised his voice. He didn’t shout, but his voice had such resonance, it overpowered Citra’s indignation.
“You are far too valuable to the scythedom for us to risk losing you!”
If she was blindsided by his first admission, this one slammed her hard from the other side.
“What?”
Scythe Constantine folded his hands in front of him and smiled, clearly enjoying the moment. “Oh, yes, my dear Scythe Anastasia, you are of great value,” he said. “Do you want to know why?” Then he leaned closer and spoke just above a whisper. “Because you stir the pot!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come now, surely you know the effect you’ve been having on the scythedom since you were ordained. You rankle the old guard and frighten the new order. You take scythes who would rather be left to their own self-importance, and force them to pay attention.” He leaned back in his chair. “Nothing pleases me more than to see the scythedom prodded out of complacency. You give me hope for the future.”
Citra couldn’t tell whether he was being sincere or sarcastic. Oddly, the thought that he might actually be sincere bothered her more. Marie had told her that Scythe Constantine was not the enemy, but, oh, how Citra wanted him to be! She wanted to lash out against him and his smug control of the situation, but she knew it was futile. If she was going to retain any dignity, she would have to regain the cool reserve of “wise” Scythe Anastasia. It was by forcing her thoughts to settle that an idea came to her.
“So you’ve gleaned all of the people I chose over the past month?”
“Yes, I’ve already told you so,” Scythe Constantine said, a bit miffed to be questioned about it again.
“I know what you told me . . . but I find it hard to believe that you’ve been able to glean all of them. I’ll bet there are one or two you haven’t gotten to yet. Would you admit it if that were true?”
Constantine regarded her with a bit of suspicion. “What are you getting at?”
“An opportunity . . .”
He said nothing for a moment. Scythe Curie looked back and forth between the two of them. Finally, Constantine spoke. “There are three we have not yet located. Our plan is to glean them the mo
“But you won’t glean them,” said Citra. “You’ll let me do it, as planned . . . then you’ll lie in wait for anyone who tries to kill me.”
“It’s more likely that Marie is their target, not you.”
“So if no one attacks me, you’ll know that for sure.”
Still, he wasn’t convinced. “They’ll smell the trap from a mile away.”
Citra smiled. “Then you’ll have to be smarter than they are. Or is that too much to ask?”
Constantine frowned and that made Scythe Curie laugh. “The look on your face right now, Constantine, is worth any attempt on our lives!”
He didn’t respond to that. Instead, he kept his attention on Citra. “Even if we outsmart them—and we will—it will be risky.”
Citra smiled. “What’s the point of living forever if you can’t take a few risks?”
In the end, Constantine reluctantly agreed to allow Citra to be bait for a trap.
“I suppose Endura can wait,” said Scythe Curie. “And I was so looking forward to it.” Although Citra suspected she was more invigorated by their new plan than she let on.
Even though it would put her in danger, Citra found that having an amount of control of the situation gave her some much-needed relief.
In fact, even the Thunderhead registered her release of tension. It could not see into Citra’s mind, but it read body language and biological changes with precision. It detected falsehoods and truths, both spoken and unspoken. Which meant that it knew whether or not Scythe Constantine was sincere in wanting her to remain alive. But as always, when it came to the scythedom, it had to remain silent.
* * *
I must admit that I am not the only factor maintaining the sustainability of the world. The scythedom also contributes by its practice of gleaning.
Even so, scythes glean only a small percentage of the population. The work of scythes is not to completely curb population growth, but to smooth its edges. That is why, at current quotas, one’s chance of being gleaned is only 10 percent over the next thousand years. Low enough to make gleaning the furthest thing from most people’s minds.
I do foresee a time, however, when population growth will need to reach an equilibrium. Zero growth. One person dying for every person born.
The year this will occur is something I do not share with the general population, but it is just beyond the horizon. Even with an incremental increase in gleaning quotas, humanity will reach its maximum sustainable population in less than a century.
I see no need to trouble humanity with this fact, for what good would it do? I alone bear the weight of that inevitability. It is, very literally, the weight of the world. I can only hope that I have the virtual shoulders of Atlas to bear it.
—The Thunderhead
* * *
17
AWFul
While Citra often had trouble inhabiting the skin of Scythe Anastasia, Greyson Tolliver had absolutely no trouble becoming Slayd, which was the unsavory nickname he took. His parents once told him that the name Greyson had been given on a whim because he had been born on a gray day. It had no meaning beyond his parents’ flippant attitude toward everything in their long and feckless lives.
But Slayd was a person to be reckoned with.
The day after his meeting with Traxler, he had his hair dyed a color called “obsidian void.” It was an absolute black so dark, it didn’t exist anywhere in nature. It actually sucked in light around it like a black hole, making his eyes seem deep-set in inscrutable shadow.
“It’s very twenty-first century,” the stylist had said. “Whatever that means.”
Greyson also had metal inserts placed beneath the skin of both his left and right temples that made it look like he was growing fledgling horns. It was much subtler than the hair, but taken together, it all made him look otherworldly and vaguely diabolical.
He certainly looked the part of an unsavory, if he didn’t feel it.
His next step was to try out his new persona.
His heart was racing a little too fast as he approached Mault, a local club that catered to the unsavory crowd. Unsavories loitering outside eyed him as he approached, checking him out, sizing him up. These people were caricatures of themselves, he thought. They conformed so closely to their culture of nonconformity that there was a uniformity to them, defeating the whole purpose.
He approached a muscular bouncer at the door, whose name tag said MANGE.
“Unsavories only,” Mange said sternly.
“What, don’t I look unsavory to you?”
He shrugged. “There are always poseurs.”
Greyson showed him his ID, which flashed the big red U. The bouncer was satisfied. “Enjoy,” he said mirthlessly, and let him in.
He assumed he’d be walking into a place with loud music, flashing lights, gyrating bodies, and dark corners where all sorts of questionable things would be going on. But what he found inside Mault was not at all what he expected—in fact, he was so unprepared for what he saw that he stopped short, as if maybe he had stepped through the wrong door.
He was in a brightly lit restaurant—an old-fashioned malt shop with red booths and shiny stainless-steel stools at the counter. There were clean-cut guys wearing varsity letter jackets, and pretty ponytailed girls in long skirts and thick, fuzzy socks. Greyson recognized the era that the place was intended to reflect: a time period called The Fifties. It was a cultural epoch from mortal-age Merica, where all the girls had names like Betty and Peggy and Mary Jane, and all the guys were Billy or Johnnie or Ace. A teacher once told Greyson that The Fifties was, in fact, only a period of ten years, but Greyson found it hard to believe. It was probably at least a hundred.
The place seemed a loyal replica of the era, but there was something off about it—because sprinkled among the clean-cuts were unsavories who did not belong in the scene at all. One unsavory with intentionally tattered clothes forced himself into a booth with a happy couple.
“Get lost,” he told the strong-looking All-Merican Billy in a letter sweater who sat across from him. “Your girl and I are gonna get acquainted.”
The Billy, of course, refused to leave, and threatened to take the unsavory and “knock him into next Tuesday.” The unsavory responded by getting up, dragging the jock out of the booth, and starting a fight. The big guy had everything over the scrawny unsavory: size and strength, not to mention looks, but every time the jock swung his heavy fists, they missed, while the unsavory connected every time—until finally the jock ran off, wailing in pain, abandoning his girlfriend, who now seemed quite impressed by the unsavory’s bravado. He sat down with her, and she leaned in to him as if they were the true couple.
At another table, an unsavory girl got into an insult match with a pretty debutante in a pink sweater. The confrontation ended with the unsavory girl grabbing her sweater and ripping it. The pretty girl didn’t fight back; she just put her face in her hands and sobbed.
And in the back, some other Billy was moaning because he had just lost all of Daddy’s money in a billiards wager to a merciless unsavory who would not stop insulting him.
What the hell was going on here?
Greyson sat down at the counter, wishing he could just disappear into the black hole of his hair until he could get a grip on the various dramas playing out around him.
“What’s your pleasure?” asked a perky waitress behind the counter. Her uniform had the name “Babs” embroidered on it.
“A vanilla shake, please,” he said. Because isn’t that what you ordered in a place like this?
The waitress smirked. “The P word,” she said. “Don’t hear that much around here.”
Babs brought his shake, inserted a straw, and said, “Enjoy.”
In spite of Greyson’s desire to disappear, another unsavory sat next to him. A guy who was so gaunt he was practically skeletal.
“Vanilla? Really?” he said.
Greyson dug inside himself to find some appropriate a
“Naah,” said skeletor. “It’s not me you’re supposed to throw it at.”
The guy winked at him—and then it finally clicked. The nature of this place—its purpose—became clear to Greyson. Skeletor watched him to see what he would do, and Greyson realized that if he was going to fit in—truly fit in—he had to own this. So he called Babs over.
“Hey,” he said, “my shake sucks.”
Babs put her hands on her hips. “So what do you want me to do about it?”
Greyson reached for his shake. He was just going to knock it over and dump it onto the counter, but before he could, skeletor grabbed it off the table and hurled its contents at Babs, leaving her dripping with vanilla cream and a maraschino cherry lodged in the breast pocket of her uniform.
“He said his shake sucks,” said skeletor. “Make him another!”
Babs, her uniform dripping with vanilla, sighed and said, “Coming right up.” Then she went off to make him a new shake.
“That’s the way it’s done,” said the unsavory. He introduced himself as Zax. He was a little older than Greyson—perhaps twenty-one—but had a way about him that suggested this wasn’t his first time at that age.
“Haven’t seen you around,” he said.
“The Authority Interface sent me here from up north,” Greyson told him, amazed that he could make up a story on the spot. “I was causing too much trouble, so the Thunderhead felt I could do with a fresh start.”
“A new place to make trouble,” said Zax. “Nice.”
“This club is different from the ones they got where I come from,” Greyson said.
“You guys up north are behind the times! AWFul clubs are all the rage around here!”
AWFul, he explained, stood for “Anachronistic Wish Fulfillment.” Everyone here—except, of course, for the unsavories—were employees. Even all the Billies and Betties. Their job was to accept whatever the unsavory customers dished out. They would lose fights, allow food to be hurled at them, let their dates be stolen, and Greyson assumed that was just for starters.