The Toll (Arc of a Scythe) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,11
her own ingenuity! She could have happily stayed at the Library of Alexandria none the wiser, but she had to be curious. And what was that old mortal-age saying? Curiosity was a cat killer?
As they flew over featureless Pacific seas, a strange and sudden feedback began to wail over their radio. It was nearly deafening, and it lasted for almost a minute, even after Faraday had tried to turn it off. Munira felt her eardrums would burst from it, and Faraday had to let go of the controls just to cover his ears, which sent them careening wildly. Then the terrible sound stopped just as abruptly as it had begun. Faraday quickly regained control of the plane.
“What on Earth was that?” Munira asked, her ears still ringing.
Faraday kept both hands on the controls, still getting over it himself. “My guess is that it’s some sort of electromagnetic barrier. I believe that means we’ve just crossed into the blind spot.”
Neither of them gave the noise much thought after that. And neither had any way of knowing that the same sound had been heard simultaneously all over the world – a sound that would come to be known in certain circles as “the Great Resonance.” It was the moment that marked the sinking of Endura, as well as the Thunderhead’s global silence.
But as Faraday and Munira were out of the Thunderhead’s sphere of influence once they finally did cross into the blind spot, they remained unaware of anything in the outside world.
From so high up, the submerged volcanic craters of the Marshall Atolls were clearly visible – massive lagoons within the dots and ribbons of the many islands that rimmed them. Ailuk Atoll, Likiep Atoll. There were no buildings, no docks, no visible ruins at all to suggest that people had ever been here. There were many wilderness areas around the world, but those places were all meticulously maintained by the Thunderhead’s wilderness corps. Even in the deepest, darkest forests there were communication towers and ambudrone pads, should visitors find themselves seriously injured or temporarily killed. But out here, there was nothing. It was eerie.
“People lived here once, I’m sure,” Faraday said. “But the founding scythes either gleaned them or, more likely, relocated them outside of the blind spot, to keep all activities here as secret as possible.”
Finally, in the distance ahead, Kwajalein Atoll came into view.
“‘So let’s escape, due south of Wake, and make for the Land of Nod,’” said Faraday, quoting the old nursery rhyme. And here they were, seven hundred miles due south of Wake Island, in the very center of the blind spot.
“Are you excited, Munira?” Faraday asked. “To know what Prometheus and the other founding scythes knew? To unravel the riddle they left for us?”
“There’s no guarantee we’ll find anything,” Munira pointed out.
“Always the optimist.”
As all scythes knew, the founding scythes claimed to have prepared a fail-safe for society, should their whole concept of the scythedom not succeed. An alternative solution to the immortality problem. No one took it seriously anymore. Why should they, when the scythedom had been the perfect solution for a perfect world for over two hundred years? No one cared about a fail-safe until something failed.
If Scythes Curie and Anastasia were successful on Endura, and Scythe Curie became the High Blade of MidMerica, perhaps the scythedom could be turned from the ruinous path Goddard would take it on. But if not, the world just might need a fail-safe.
They dropped to five thousand feet, and as they approached, details of the atoll came into view. Lush groves and sandy beaches. The main island of Kwajalein Atoll was shaped like a long, slender boomerang – and here they finally saw something that was evident nowhere else in the blind spot. Telltale signs that there had once been a human presence here; strips of low growth that used to be roads: foundations outlining spots where buildings once stood.
“Jackpot!” said Faraday, and pushed the stick forward, dropping their altitude for a closer look.
Munira could actually feel her nanites registering her relief.
At last, all was well.
Until the moment that it wasn’t.
“Unregistered aircraft, please identify.”
It was an automated message barely audible through waves of powerful interference, with a generated voice that sounded too human to actually be human.
“Not to worry,” Faraday said, then transmitted the universal identification code used by the scythedom. A moment of silence and then:
“Unregistered aircraft, please identify.”
“This is not good,” said Munira.
Faraday threw her a half-hearted scowl, then spoke into the transmitter again.