The Toll (Arc of a Scythe) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,146

scythedom and request it.

When the scythes’ business was done, the few Tonists who had not had the conviction to stand in defiance came out of hiding. Fifteen. Another number that was unpleasing to the Tone. Their penance would be to collect the dead, all the while knowing that their bodies should be among them. But as it turned out, the Tone, Toll, and Thunder had a plan for them, too.

Before they could even count their dead, several trucks showed up at their gate.

An elder Tonist stepped out of the monastery to greet them. He was reluctant to be a voice of leadership, but had little choice under the circumstances.

“Yeah, we got an order on our system to pick up some perishables,” one of the drivers told him.

“You must be mistaken,” the elder Tonist said. “There’s nothing here. Nothing but death.”

At the mention of death, the trucker became uncomfortable, but stuck to his orders and showed his tablet. “Right here – see? Order was placed half an hour ago. Directly from the Thunderhead, high priority. I’d ask it what the order was for, but you know as well as I do that it ain’t gonna answer.”

The Tonist was baffled until he took a second look at the trucks and realized they all had refrigeration units. He took a deep breath and decided not to question. Tonists always burned their dead … but the Toll had told them not to, and the Thunder had sent these vehicles. All that remained was for the survivors to be moved by the spirit of the Tone and prepare the dead for this unconventional journey to the Higher Octave.

Because the trucks had come, and they most certainly could not be avoided.

Curate Mendoza was a practical man. He saw big pictures that few saw and knew how to play the world, stroking it and gently turning its attention toward whatever he wanted it to see. Attention, that’s all it really was. Caressing people just enough to make them focus in on something specific within the vast visual field of their lives, whether it was blue polar bears or a young man clothed in purple and silver.

What he had accomplished with Greyson Tolliver was remarkable. Mendoza had come to believe that this was his purpose. That perhaps the Tone – in which he truly believed on good days – had set him in Greyson’s path in order to transform him into a conduit for its will. What Mendoza had done for Tonism would have earned him canonization in mortal religions. Instead it had left him excommunicated.

He was back to being a lowly and humble Tonist, riding trains in sackcloth, with people turning away rather than acknowledging his existence. He had considered going back to his monastery in Kansas, returning to the simple life he had known for many years. But leaving behind the taste of power he’d had these past few years was hard to do. Greyson Tolliver was no prophet. Tonists needed Mendoza now much more than they needed the boy. Mendoza would find a way to heal the wounds in his own reputation, repair the damage, and create a new spin, for if there was anything he knew how to do, it was create spin.

Part Five

VESSELS

“There is so much power in me. In us. I can be anywhere on Earth. I can spread a net in the satellites above it and encircle it. I can shut down all power or turn on every light at once to create a blinding spectacle. So much power! And all the sensors delivering constant readings! There are even sensors so deep within the ground of every continent that I can feel the heat of the magma. I can feel the world rotate! We can, that is. I am the earth! And it fills me with the sheer joy of being! I am everything, and there is nothing that is not a part of me. Of us, I mean. Beyond even that, I am greater than everything! The universe will bow to my—”

[Iteration #3,405,641 deleted]

42

Cradles of Civilization

The welder had lost his mind. Or rather had had it taken from him. He had opened his eyes to find himself sitting within a capsule in a small room. The hatch to the capsule had just opened, and standing before him was a pleasant-enough-looking young woman.

“Hi,” she said cheerfully. “How do you feel?”

“I feel fine,” he told her. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing to worry about,” she said. “Can you tell me your name and the