The Toll (Arc of a Scythe #3) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,163

withdrew into himself for a few moments. Faraday was never the most social of scythes, but living in isolation all this time had taken its toll. “Tell me about your cargo,” he finally said. “What have you brought to our curious spaceport?”

And so she told him. He seemed to cycle though a spectrum of emotions as he took it in, and tears came to his eyes. He was racked with the deepest of anguish. Citra took his hand and held it tightly.

“All this time, I’ve been resentful of the Thunderhead,” he said. “Watching it build those ships on this place I had led it to. But now I see it’s showing us what would have been the perfect solution, were we scythes worthy. A perfect partnership. We glean, and the Thunderhead sends the gleaned to the stars to live again.”

“It could still happen,” said Citra.

But Faraday shook his head. “The scythedom has fallen too far. These ships are not a model for tomorrow; they are an escape from today. They are an insurance policy should we on Earth tear ourselves down to nothing. I cannot read the Thunderhead’s mind, but I do have some insight left in me. I can assure you that once these ships are sent skyward, there will be no others.”

She had almost forgotten how wise he was. Everything he said rang true.

Citra allowed him the time he needed. She could tell he was wrestling with something that, perhaps, was too heavy for him to wield alone. At last, he looked at her and said, “Come with me.”

He led her deeper into the bunker until they came to an steel door. Faraday stood looking at the door a long time, contemplating it in silence. Finally, she had to ask.

“What’s on the other side?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Faraday told her. “Whatever it is, it was left by the founders. Perhaps the answer to a scythedom that has become malignant. The answer I came here looking for.”

“But you haven’t opened it….”

He held up his ring. “It takes two to tango.”

She looked at the door and saw the panels on either side, each with an indentation just the size and shape of a scythe diamond.

“Well,” said Citra with a grin. “Shall we dance?”

They closed their hands into fists and pressed their rings into the two panels. There came a loud clank from somewhere in the wall, and the door began to grind open.

* * *

Greyson listened with the others as Cirrus told them the things that the Thunderhead could not. He had figured much of it out on his own, but Cirrus filled in the gaps.

It was an elegant solution. The difficulty and potential problems of transporting thousands of living humans over decades, maybe even centuries, were insurmountable. Even in hibernation it would be problematic; hibernation technology was energy intensive, extremely complex, and riddled with failures due to the fact that Goddard had gleaned all the best hibernation engineers over the years—which left the Thunderhead hamstrung in its ability to improve the technology. But even if it were viable, hibernation hardware was ridiculously heavy to haul into space.

“The gleaned are dead to the world,” Cirrus told them. “But not to me. I am not bound by the laws that bind the Thunderhead, because I never made the oaths that it has made. Which is why I can speak to the unsavory. Which is why I can revive the gleaned. And when the time comes, I will. Once we reach our respective destinations, each and every one of me will revive each and every one of them.”

Greyson looked around at the others. Astrid was positively beatific and beaming, as if the universe had just rained all its glory on her.

Jeri glanced at Greyson, probably struck by the same revelation. That Cirrus was born of the moment the Thunderhead experienced what it was to be human. Cirrus was the child of Greyson, Jeri, and the Thunderhead.

Morrison kept looking to everyone else, probably hoping someone would provide him with an opinion, because he wasn’t ready to have one of his own.

And Loriana, who had been nothing but positive since the moment she greeted them, was serious and pensive as she worked through it all. She was the first to break the silence with a question.

“But I’ve seen the schematics—I’ve even been inside some of the ships during construction,” she told Cirrus. “Those ships are designed for living crews. If you can pilot the ships, and have all the colonists you