The Toll (Arc of a Scythe) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,62
a sense of completion before death inevitably took them, along with everyone they ever knew and loved. It was entertaining reading, but hard for Munira to relate to at first … but the more she read, the more she came to understand the fears and the dreams of mortals. The trouble they all had living in the moment, in spite of the fact that the moment was all they had.
Then there were the recordings and journals left behind by the militaristic folk who had used the Marshall Atolls, as they were once called, for the testing of large-scale weaponry. Ballistic radiation bombs and such. These activities were also driven by fear, but masked behind a facade of science and professionalism. She read it all – and what would have been dry and reportorial to others was a tapestry of hidden history to Munira. She felt she had become an expert on what it must have been like to be mortal in a world before the benevolent protection of the Thunderhead, and the wise gleaning of scythes.
Not so wise anymore.
Gossip among the workers was filled with tales of mass gleanings – and not just in MidMerica, but in region after region. She wondered if the outside world had begun to, in some ways, resemble the mortal one. But rather than being fearful, the workers just seemed blasé.
“It never happens to us,” they would say, “or to anyone we know.”
Because, after all, a thousand people gleaned in a mass event was such a small drop in the bucket, it was hardly noticeable. What was noticeable, however, was that people tended to stay away from theaters and clubs, as well as to disassociate from unprotected social groups. “Why tempt the blade?” had become a common expression. So ever since the rise of Goddard’s new order, and the silence of the Thunderhead, people lived smaller lives. A sort of post-mortal feudalism, where people kept to themselves and didn’t bother with the tumultuous doings of the high and mighty and things that affected other people, in other places.
“I’m a bricklayer in paradise,” one of the workers on the main island told her. “My husband enjoys the sun, and my children love the beach. Why stress my emotional nanites by thinking of terrible things?”
A fine philosophy until the terrible thing comes to you.
On the day Munira brought Faraday artichokes, she dined with him at the small table he had built and positioned on the beach, just above high tide. It afforded him a view of the structures rising in the distance. And in spite of what he said, he did roast the artichokes for them.
“Who’s running things over there?” Faraday asked, glancing at the other islands across the massive lagoon. He never usually asked about what was happening around the rest of the atoll – but tonight he did. Munira saw this as a good sign.
“The Nimbus agents call any of the shots that aren’t already taken care of by the Thunderhead,” she told him. “The construction workers call them Thunderrhoids, because they’re such a pain in the ass.” She paused, because she thought Faraday might laugh at that, but he didn’t. “Anyway, Sykora blusters like he’s in control, but it’s Loriana who gets things done.”
“What sorts of things?” Faraday asked. “No, don’t tell me; I don’t wish to know.”
Still, Munira pushed the conversation further, trying to bait his curiosity. “You wouldn’t recognize the place,” she said. “It’s become … like an outpost of civilization. A colony.”
“I’m surprised Goddard hasn’t sent his emissaries here, to find out what the commotion is all about,” Faraday said.
“The outside world still doesn’t know this place exists,” Munira told him. “Apparently the Thunderhead has kept it a blind spot to everyone else.”
Faraday gave her a dubious look. “You’re telling me that those supply ships don’t bring stories home about the place that’s not supposed to exist? “
Munira shrugged. “The Thunderhead has always had projects in far-flung places. No one who’s come has left yet, and the people here have no idea where they even are, much less what they’re building.”
“And what are they building?”
Munira took her time in answering. “I don’t know,” she told him. “But I have my suspicions. I’ll share them with you when they feel a little less foolish … and when you end your prolonged pouting.”
“Pouting is a passing thing,” he told her dismissively. “What I have is a mind-set. I will not suffer this world again. It has done me no good.”