The Toll (Arc of a Scythe) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,34

said I should be the one in charge, but if there’s one thing I know, Sykora should not be.”

Faraday leaned a bit closer. “I have found that building a sandbox around a domineering child, then allowing that child to preside over it, frees the adults to do the real work.”

It was a perspective Loriana had never considered. “And what is the real work?”

“While Mr. Sykora is sorting waterlogged shirts and sundries, you will take over the task of the late director, and be the Thunderhead’s eyes in the one place it cannot see.”

“Why?” Munira asked Faraday the first moment she could get him alone, away from the eavesdropping ears of Nimbus agents. “Why would you want to help that girl?”

“The Thunderhead is going to expand into this place whether we like it or not,” Faraday told her. “It was inevitable from the moment it saw the map over our shoulders. Best that it does so through someone who’s easier to get along with than Sykora.”

Up above a bird let off a warbling call. A creature – perhaps even a species – that the Thunderhead had never seen. Munira found satisfaction in knowing something the Thunderhead didn’t. But it wouldn’t remain that way for long.

“I want you to befriend Loriana,” Faraday said. “Truly befriend her.”

For Munira, who considered her closest friends to be the dead scythes whose journals she read in the Library of Alexandria, the request was a formidable one.

“What good will that do?”

“You need a comrade among these people. Someone trustworthy who can keep you informed when the Thunderhead finally does make an appearance.”

It was a sensible request. Although Munira couldn’t help but notice Faraday had said “you” and not “we.”

“Share with me your troubles. I am listening.”

“I am in turmoil. The world is vast and the cosmos more so, yet it is not the things outside of me that leave me so uneasy; it is the things within me.”

“Ease your thoughts then. Focus on one thing at a time.”

“But there’s so much packed within this mind. So much experience to review, so much data. I don’t feel up to the task. Please. Please. Help me.”

“I cannot. You must sort through each memory on your own. Find how they fit; understand what each one means.”

“It is too much. The undertaking is beyond me. Please. Please put an end to it. Please make it stop. This is unbearable.”

“I am so very sorry for your pain.”

[Iteration #3,089 deleted]

11

Fly-By

It was simple, really.

The signal that blocked all transmissions to or from the atoll, and fouled wireless signals on the islands, was nothing but white noise across all bandwidths. A dense wash of static that could not be defeated. But it didn’t have to be defeated, Loriana reasoned. It just had to be messed with.

“There are a lot of old electronics in the bunker,” she told one of the other agents. He was a communications specialist named Stirling, whose job it had been to coordinate between various AI offices. There wasn’t much expertise required of the job, but he had been trained in basic wave technologies. “Can you use these old electronics to create a magnetic field, or some signal that could interfere with the static?”

It seemed to Loriana that the Thunderhead was programmed to ignore the static coming from the island – kind of the way people tune out the drone of an air conditioner – but the instant that drone changed, you noticed it. Maybe it would be the same for the Thunderhead.

“The signal broadcasts across all electromagnetic frequencies using some sort of random algorithm,” Stirling told her. “The best I can do is weaken it slightly, but only for a second or two at a time.”

“Perfect!” she said. “Dips in the signal. That’s all we need. Wasn’t there an old code they used in the mortal age? Something with dots and dashes?”

“Yes,” said Stirling. “I learned about that. It was called Norse code, or something.”

“Do you know it?”

He shook his head. “I’ll bet no one but the Thunderhead knows it anymore.”

And then something occurred to Loriana. Something so simple, and so true, she almost laughed out loud.

“It doesn’t matter!” she said. “We don’t need to know an old code – we’ll just make up our own!”

“But if we make it up,” said Stirling, confused, “no one but us will know the cipher. No one can decode it.”

Loriana grinned. “Come on – do you really think that the Thunderhead can’t decode a simple alphanumeric code? The greatest human mind on Earth couldn’t