The Toll (Arc of a Scythe) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,170
He might have seemed confident to others, but the truth was he’d never made a decision that he hadn’t come to regret on some level – which is why he often let decisions be made for him.
Yet the one decision he never regretted was abandoning the MidMerican scythedom to become the Toll’s personal protector. It opened the door to the self-respect that had been lacking most of his life. Funny how you don’t realize what’s missing until you’ve found it.
For the last few years, Morrison was in and out of touch with his parents back at Grouseland. They kept wanting to know when he was coming home. What could he possibly be doing that was so important?
“I’ll be home soon,” he always told them, but it was a lie. He’d known for a long time that he’d never be going back to Grouseland. Because he had finally learned to like games where the outcomes were still unknown.
He heard a door open and turned to see Astrid coming out of the Viewhouse. She looked triumphant.
“There will be a planet for Tonists!” she announced. “Kepler-186f, but I’m naming it Aria. It’s the farthest planet on the list, 561 light-years away. Cirrus calculates we have only a forty-four percent chance of reaching it without a deep-space accident, or a self-destruct scenario!”
Morrison looked at her, a bit mystified by her glee. “You do understand that there’s a fifty-six percent chance that your ship won’t survive the journey…”
“If the Tone is real, then it will protect us,” she said. “If the Tone is true, then we will reach our new home and prosper under a sky we can call our own.”
“And if the Tone is false, and you’re blown to smithereens by a space rock?”
“Then we will still have our answer,” she said.
“I guess so,” said Morrison.
Astrid let her shoulders drop and shook her head, gazing at Morrison in pity. “Why do you hate me so?” she asked.
“I don’t hate you,” he admitted. “It’s just that you’re always so sure of yourself.”
“I am unwavering,” Astrid told him. “With so many things in flux, there’s got to be someone who stands firm.”
“Fair enough,” said Morrison. “So tell me about your planet.”
According to Astrid, Kepler-186f was one-and-a-half times the size of Earth and had a 130-day year. But what struck Morrison most was the length of the journey.
“1,683 years,” Astrid told him brightly. “I won’t be there to see it, because I plan to live a natural human life-span, and either be recycled, or ejected into space – but I am content to know that I will be a link to the future.”
Then she strode off entirely satisfied with the outcome.
Although it would have by no means been his choice, Morrison was happy for her. As for himself, he still couldn’t make a decision. He found himself looking down at his ring. He never took it off. He bathed with it, slept with it. Since the day he was ordained, it had been a part of him. But there would be no scythes needed if he journeyed to one of these new places. So he tried to imagine what it would be like to take the ring off his finger. He tried to imagine how it would feel to hurl it into the sea.
Greyson found talking to the Thunderhead by landline to be a nuisance – but it could not speak aloud in the presence of Jeri, who, in spite of the strange connection they now shared, was still marked unsavory.
Cirrus, however, was not bound by the immutable rules the Thunderhead had set for itself. Certainly Cirrus had, or would have, its own rules of conduct, but for the time being Cirrus was an all-purpose work-around. It spoke to Greyson through a speaker, without caring that Jeri could hear.
“There’s something the Thunderhead and I need to ask of Anastasia, but it’s best if it comes from you,” Cirrus said. “You’ll find her in the residential area of the main island.”
“I have a feeling I know the request,” Jeri said.
Perhaps it was because Jeri now knew the Thunderhead’s mind, or maybe it was just intuition, but Jeri was right – and it was, indeed, the kind of request you needed to hear from a friend, not from an unfamiliar AI.
They found Anastasia and Faraday on an empty street. She began to tell Greyson about a bunker, but he cut her short. There was no time for small talk now.