The Toll (Arc of a Scythe) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,44
Greyson sat below in the small cabin, along with a nervous Tonist girl whose job it was to see to whatever he might need during the journey. Each day there was someone new. It was considered a high honor to ride with the Toll to his residence – a reward bestowed upon the most devout, most righteous of Tonists. Usually Greyson would try to break the ice with conversation, but it always ended up being stilted and awkward.
He suspected that Mendoza was making a pathetic attempt at providing intimate companionship for the evening – because all the young Tonists who made the journey were attractive and roughly Greyson’s age. If that was Mendoza’s aim, it failed, because Greyson never made a single advance, even when he might have felt inclined. It would have been the sort of hypocrisy he could not abide. How could Greyson be their spiritual leader if he took advantage of the position?
All sorts of people were throwing themselves at him now, to the point that it was embarrassing – and although he shied away from the ones Mendoza put in his path, he did accept occasional companionship when he felt it wasn’t an abuse of his power. His greatest attraction, however, was for women who were too unsavory for their own good. It was a taste he had developed after his brief time with Purity Viveros, a murderous girl who he had come to love. Things had not ended well. She was gleaned right before his eyes by Scythe Constantine. Greyson supposed seeking out others like her was his way of mourning for her – but no one he found was anywhere near nasty enough.
“Historically, religious figures tend to be either oversexed or celibate,” said Sister Astrid, a devout Tonist of the non-fanatical variety, who managed his daily schedule. “If you can find your happy place in between, that’s the best any holy man could ask for.”
Astrid was perhaps the only one among those who attended him who he considered a friend. Or at least could talk to like one. She was older – in her thirties – not old enough to be his mother, but perhaps an older sister or cousin, and she was never afraid to speak her mind.
“I believe in the Tone,” she once told him, “but I don’t buy that what-comes-can’t-be-avoided garbage. Anything can be avoided if you try hard enough.”
She had first come to him for an audience on what had to be the coldest day of the year – which was even colder under the arch. She was so miserable, she forgot what she was there to ask and spent the whole time cursing the weather, and the Thunderhead for not doing more about it. Then she had pointed at the embroidered scapular that the Toll wore over his tunic.
“Have you ever run that wave pattern through a sequencer to see what it spits out?” she asked.
Turned out his scapular was seven seconds of a mortal-age piece of music called “Bridge over Troubled Water,” which made perfect sense, considering where the Toll had his audiences. He immediately invited Astrid to be part of his inner circle – a reality check against all the crap he had to face on a daily basis.
There were many days Greyson wished he was still laying low, unseen and unknown in his dark little room of the Wichita monastery, a nonentity who had even had his name taken from him. But there was no turning back from this path now.
The Thunderhead could read all of Greyson’s physiology. It knew when his heart rate was elevated; it knew when he was feeling stress or anxiety or joy; and when he slept, it knew when he was dreaming. It could not access his dreams, though. Even though everyone’s waking memories were uploaded to the backbrain on a minute by minute basis, dreams were not included.
It was discovered early on that when someone needed their brain restored – either a splatter or someone who had suffered brain injury in some other way – dreams became a problem. For when their memories were returned to them, they had trouble differentiating what was real from what was the product of dreams. So now when one’s mind was handed back to them in revival centers, they had every memory, except for the memories of dreams. No one complained, for how could you miss something that you no longer remembered you had?
And so the Thunderhead had no idea what adventures and dramas