The Toll (Arc of a Scythe #3) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,167

nearby light post.

“Please, Rowan. Put that away,” it said. “It will only complicate things. And the rest of you stop staring and get back to work, because the longer you take, the more unpleasant your task will be.”

“Cirrus?” said Rowan, recognizing the voice that had spoken to him through the bot back in Tokyo.

“Welcome to nowhere,” Cirrus said. “There’s someone I need you to see, and preferably sooner than later. Follow my voice.”

And Cirrus jumped from one speaker to another, leading Rowan deeper into the moonlit island.

* * *

“It’s Italian,” said Munira. “I can tell by the handwriting that it was written by Scythe Da Vinci.”

The commotion on the island was at full-tilt frenzy, but Munira refused to be a part of it. When she’d heard pounding on her door, she’d thought it was Sykora or some other overbearing blowhard come to make her unload cargo. When she saw who it was, she let them in. Now she was regretting it.

“What does it say?” Anastasia asked. Munira found she couldn’t look at Anastasia directly for fear that her fury would be written on her face in a language Anastasia could easily understand. How could they have done this? They opened the door in the bunker, went inside, and Munira was excluded. Because she wasn’t a scythe.

“I’ll need some time to translate it,” she told them.

“We don’t have time.”

“Then give it to the Thunderhead.” Which of course was not possible.

To Munira, this was a betrayal, and yet the wise and honorable Scythe Michael Faraday still couldn’t see it. Because when it came to people, he had no wisdom at all. He could have come for her—could have brought her there to be with him when they finally unsealed that door they’d been waiting three years to open. But no.

Munira knew it was petty, she knew she was being childish, but it hurt. It hurt more than all the times Faraday had dismissed her out of hand and told her to leave his pathetic little island. That room was the reason she had come, and they went in without her.

“I’m glad that you’ve been reunited,” she told them. “I’m glad that you found what you were looking for. But it’s late, I’m tired, and I don’t work well under pressure. Come back in the morning.”

Then she took the pages, went into her bedroom, and closed the door. Only when she knew they had left did she start to decipher Da Vinci’s writings.

* * *

“Please,” Astrid begged, “if you have any mercy, you won’t do this!”

The others had left. Gone to grapple on their own with the decision ahead of them. Cirrus invited them to be part of the crew of whichever ship they chose. No one was forced to go, but no one would be denied.

“It’s not about mercy,” Cirrus calmly explained. “It’s about creating the best possible odds for the future of humankind.”

Astrid didn’t know which she hated more, Cirrus’s logic or its calm, considered delivery. “Some things are more important than odds and probabilities!”

“Think of what you’re saying, Astrid. You would intentionally hurt humanity’s chances in order to ease your own suffering over our decision. How could you be so selfish?”

“Selfish? I have devoted my life to the Tone! I have done nothing for myself! Nothing!”

“That’s not healthy, either,” Cirrus told her. “For human beings, a balance between altruism and self-care is called for.”

Astrid growled in frustration, but knew that wouldn’t help. Cirrus, like the Thunderhead, could not lose an argument unless it chose to. What she needed to do was make it want to lose.

“One ship,” Astrid begged, her plea moving from desperate to impassioned. “One ship, that’s all I’m asking. I know that the Thunderhead knows best. I know that its decisions are the correct ones. But I also know that there’s always more than one correct choice.”

“This is true,” said Cirrus.

“Everything resonates—you said so yourself—which means that somehow we resonate. Tonists resonate. The things we believe, the things we hold true, have a right to endure.”

“Take heart, Astrid,” Cirrus said. “The purge will end. We predict that Tonism will continue to thrive on Earth in spite of the scythedoms’ attempts to eradicate it.”

“But don’t we also have the right to a presence in the stars? Yes, you’re right—we don’t integrate well with others, but we don’t have to if the entire colony is made up of Tonists. Throughout history, people have sailed impossible expanses and faced great dangers to find religious freedom. Why would you and the