The Toll (Arc of a Scythe) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,174
world. They were the only ones.
Faraday returned to Munira at sunrise, pounding on her door until she let him in.
“I’ve deciphered it,” she told him, clearly having been up all night working on it. “It’s eye-opening,” she said. “The fail-safe exists, although Da Vinci never said what it does.”
But before he even stepped inside, Faraday held something out to her that caught the early morning sunlight, refracting it in shifting patterns on her front door. A scythe ring.
Munira gave him a half-hearted smile.
“If this is a proposal,” she said, “shouldn’t you be on one knee?”
“I propose,” he said, “that you take your rightful place among us. I’m deeply sorry to have left you yesterday, Munira. I was overwhelmed, and I am not the most perfect of men.”
“No,” she admitted, “you’re not. But you’re better than most. If you don’t count the last three years.”
“Point taken,” Faraday said. “This ring was Scythe Anastasia’s, but Scythe Anastasia will no longer be with us,” he told her. “So tell me, Munira… Who will you be?”
She took the ring, turned it in her hand, and thought about it. “I had my Patron Historic all picked out that day they denied me the ring,” she told him. “Bathsheba. She was the obsession of one king, and the mother of another. A woman in a patriarchal society who still managed to change the world. Her son was Solomon the Wise, so you could say she was the mother of wisdom.”
Munira looked at the ring for a long moment, then gave it back to Faraday. “The invitation is enough,” she said. “But if I am truly to be the mother of wisdom, I have to be wise enough to know that I can’t covet this ring anymore.”
Faraday smiled with understanding and slipped the ring back into a pocket in his robe. “It would have been nice to know Honorable Scythe Bathsheba. But I’m much happier knowing the honorable Munira Atrushi.”
“Greyson…
“Greyson…”
He wasn’t quite ready to get up. He could tell he hadn’t had much sleep, but he hadn’t expected much. With less than twenty-four hours to launch there’d be a lot to do. And a lot to consider. Like whether or not he would go.
“Greyson…”
He had done what he’d needed to do. And although there wasn’t much tying him to the world now, there wasn’t much pushing him off it, either. He could be anywhere – because wherever he was, he’d be forging a whole new life for himself.
“Greyson…”
And then there was Jeri. He couldn’t quite make out his feelings for Jeri, other than that he had them. Where that would lead was still anyone’s guess.
“Greyson…”
He finally rolled over and looked to the Thunderhead’s camera. Its voice was particularly grating today as it came through the tinny speaker of a landline squawk box.
“Good morning,” he said. “What time is—”
“I am thinking that a journey would be a good idea at this time,” the Thunderhead said.
“Yeah, I know,” said Greyson, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. “Just let me take a shower and—”
“Of course you can do that if you wish, but I don’t think you’re hearing me,” the Thunderhead said, and suddenly got louder. Much louder. “I’m thinking that a journey for everyone on the atoll would be a good idea. I’m thinking it would be an extremely good idea … right … NOW.”
Loriana hadn’t even tried to sleep. How could she? Until today she was just the communications guru, but after last night, everyone was looking to her for answers.
“It will be simple,” Cirrus had told her shortly before being loaded onto the ships. “People can choose to go, or they can choose to stay. If they stay, they’ll need to clear the launch zone until after the ships have launched – either by boat or by taking refuge on Ebadon, which is the only island in the atoll that’s far enough away. If they choose to go, have them provide a list of who they wish to travel with. Everyone may bring one backpack no larger than twenty liters.”
“That’s all?”
“The time of tangibles is over,” Cirrus said. “Anything else they wish to remember I already have images of in my backbrain.”
Loriana couldn’t stop pacing. “What about pets?”
“They will be accommodated in place of a backpack.”
“Can people choose their destinations?”
“If we allowed that, everyone would sign up for the nearest planet. I’ll announce the destination and the length of the journey once we’ve left. Will you go, Loriana?”