The Toll (Arc of a Scythe) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,149

propulsion for long cosmic distances. Which meant that these craft would not be hanging around their neighborhood.

“Why you?” Munira had asked when Loriana first confided in her about having the full overview of blueprints. “Why would the Thunderhead give all that to you?”

Loriana had shrugged. “I guess the Thunderhead trusts me more than anyone else not to muck it up.”

“Or,” suggested Munira, “the Thunderhead is using you as the stress test – giving it to the person most likely to screw things up – because if a plan can survive you, then it’s foolproof!”

Loriana laughed. Munira was dead serious, not at all getting the insult she had just delivered.

“I can believe that,” Loriana had said.

Munira, of course, knew what she was doing. It was great fun to tease Loriana. The truth was Munira had come to admire the girl. She came off as frazzled at times, but Loriana was one of the most capable people Munira knew. She could get more things done in a day than most people got done in a week – precisely because more “serious” people took her for granted, so she could work under everyone’s radar.

Munira did not involve herself in the construction efforts. Nor did she separate herself from the rest of the atoll, as Faraday had. She could have holed up in the old bunker indefinitely, but after the first year, she tired of it. That obdurate, impassible door just reminded her of all the things she and Faraday could not accomplish. The founders’ fail-safe, if it even existed, was sealed in there. But as information trickled in about the new order, and how Goddard was swallowing larger and larger portions of North Merica, she began to wonder if it might not be worth pushing Faraday just a little harder to come up with a plan to breach that miserable door.

While Munira had never been much of a people person, she now spent her days hearing strangers’ most personal secrets. They came to her because she was a good listener, and because she had no social ties that might make their little confessions awkward. Munira didn’t even know she had become a “professional confidant” until it showed up on her ID, replacing “librarian” as her profession. Apparently personal confidants were much in demand everywhere since the Thunderhead went silent. Used to be that people confided in the Thunderhead. It was supportive, nonjudgmental, and its advice was always the right advice. Without it, people found themselves bereft of a sympathetic ear.

Munira was not sympathetic, and not all that supportive, but she had learned from Loriana how to suffer fools politely, for Loriana was always dealing with imbeciles who thought they knew better than her. Munira’s clients weren’t imbeciles for the most part, but they talked about a whole lot of nothing. She supposed listening to them wasn’t all that different from reading the scythe journals in the stacks of the Library of Alexandria. A bit less depressing, of course, because while scythes spoke of death, remorse, and the emotional trauma of gleaning, ordinary people spoke of domestic squabbles, workplace gossip, and the things their neighbors did that annoyed them. Even so, Munira enjoyed listening to their tales of woe, titillating secrets, and overblown regrets. Then she would send them on their merry way, leaving them a little less burdened.

Surprisingly few people spoke of the massive launch port they were building. “Launch port,” not “space port,” because the latter would suggest the ships were coming back. There was nothing about those ships to indicate any sort of return.

Munira was Loriana’s confidant, too – and Loriana had given her a glimpse of the schematics. The ships were identical. Once the rockets’ stages had brought each ship to escape velocity, and had been jettisoned, what would remain would be multitiered revolving craft hurtling from Earth, as if they couldn’t get away fast enough.

The higher tiers contained living quarters and communal areas for about thirty people, a computer core, sustainable hydroponics, waste recycling, and whatever supplies the Thunderhead felt would be needed.

But the ships’ lowest tiers were a mystery. Each ship had storage space – a hold – that was still completely empty, even after everything else had been completed. Perhaps, Munira and Loriana conjectured, they would be filled when the ships reached their destination, wherever that destination might be.

“Let the Thunderhead pursue its folly,” Sykora had once said dismissively. “History has already shown that space isn’t a viable alternative for the human race. It’s just one more