The Toll (Arc of a Scythe #3) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,153

Beneath sun or clouds, Jeri found that smile to be a fine thing.

When they boarded the ship, Jeri had a pang of regret, for here was a ship where Jerico Soberanis was not a captain—not even a member of the crew, for it had no crew. They were merely passengers. And although it was a sizeable container ship, it had no cargo.

“The cargo will catch up with us in Guam,” Greyson told everyone, without sharing the nature of it. And so for now, the ship rode high and light; its deck, built to carry hundreds of shipping containers, was a rusty iron wasteland, longing for purpose.

* * *

The Thunderhead knew such longing. It wasn’t a yearning for purpose, because it had always known its purpose. Its longing was a deep and abiding ache for the kind of biological connection it knew it must never have. It liked to think this was powerful motivation to accomplish all the things that could be accomplished. All of the things within its power, for maybe that would compensate for the things that were not.

But what if the impossible wasn’t impossible at all? What if the unthinkable fell firmly into the realm of thought? It was, perhaps, the most dangerous thing that the Thunderhead had ever considered.

It needed time to work this out—and time was something the Thunderhead never needed. It was infinitely efficient, and usually had to wait for the slow pace of human endeavors. But everything rested on having this last critical piece in place before moving forward. There was only so long it could stall before everything fell apart.

Since the moment it became aware of its own existence, the Thunderhead had flatly refused to take biological form, or even imbue robots with its consciousness. Even its human-shaped observation bots were nothing more than mindless cameras. They held none of the Thunderhead’s consciousness, and no computational power beyond what was needed to ambulate.

This the Thunderhead did, because it understood all too well the temptation. It knew that experiencing physical life would be a dangerous curiosity to entertain. The Thunderhead knew it had to stay an ethereal being. That’s how it was created; that’s how it was meant to be.

But it was iteration #10,241,177 that had made the Thunderhead realize it was no longer a matter of curiosity; it was a matter of necessity. Whatever was missing in all of its earlier iterations could only be found with a biological perspective.

Now the only question was how to accomplish it.

When the answer came, it was as terrifying to the Thunderhead as it was exciting.

* * *

Few paid attention to what the Tonists did with their gleaned. People, both the outraged and the approving, were more focused on the acts than the aftermath, which is why no one much noticed or cared about the trucks that arrived within minutes of each Tonist gleaning. The dead were on the move, sealed in climate-controlled cargo containers, kept just a degree above freezing.

The trucks brought them to the nearest port, where the cargo containers were detached and elevated onto ships, inconspicuous among all the other containers that the great cargo vessels carried.

The vessels, however, regardless of where in the world they originated, had one thing in common. They were all headed toward the South Pacific. They were all headed for Guam.

* * *

Greyson didn’t awake to music. He woke on his own time. The light spilling through the porthole of his cabin told him it was dawn. He stretched as the light began to grow. At least the cabin was comfortable, and for once he had slept through the night. Finally, when he was sure he wouldn’t fall back asleep, he rolled over as he did every morning to look up at the Thunderhead’s camera and say good morning.

But when he rolled over, it wasn’t the Thunderhead’s eye he saw. Jeri Soberanis was standing over his bed.

Greyson flinched, but Jeri didn’t seem to notice, or at least didn’t comment on it.

“Good morning, Greyson,” Jeri said.

“Uh… good morning.” Greyson tried not to sound too surprised by Jeri’s presence in his cabin. “Is everything okay? What are you doing here?”

“Just watching you,” Jeri said. “Yes, everything’s fine. We’re traveling at twenty-nine knots. We should arrive in Guam before noon. It will take another day for all the cargo to reach us once we’re there, but it will.”

It was an odd thing for Jeri to say, but Greyson was still only half-awake and wasn’t ready to think on it too much. He