The Toll (Arc of a Scythe) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,65
So the way it stood, at best, the Thunderhead saw things a day after they happened. It made the communication center critical, since it was the only way to keep the Thunderhead informed.
On the day she received, and opened, the security pack, she slipped a message into the stack that was waiting for Stirling to send using their code system. All it said was Why me?
“Why you, what?” Stirling asked.
“Just ask it,” she told him. “The Thunderhead will know.” She had decided to not even tell him about the package, because she knew he wouldn’t leave her alone until she told him what it was.
He sighed and tapped it out. “You realize it’s not going to answer you,” he said. “It’ll probably just send you a bunch of grapes or something, and you’ll have to figure out what it means.”
“If it sends me grapes,” Loriana told him, “I’ll make wine and get drunk, and that will be my answer.”
On her way out of the bunker, she ran into Munira, who was tending to the little garden just outside the entrance. Even though the supply ships brought just about everything they needed, Munira still grew what she could.
“It makes me feel useful,” she once said. “Homegrown food tastes better to me than anything the Thunderhead farms anyway.”
“So … I received something from the Thunderhead,” she told Munira, perhaps the only person she felt safe confiding in. “I’m not sure what to do.”
Munira didn’t look up from her gardening. “I can’t talk to you about anything having to do with the Thunderhead,” she said. “I work for a scythe, remember?”
“I know… It’s just… It’s important, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
“What does the Thunderhead want you to do about it?”
“It wants me to keep it secret.”
“Then keep it secret,” Munira said. “Problem solved.”
But that was just spiral logic, too. Because information was never given by the Thunderhead without there being a purpose to it. She could only hope that the purpose would become evident. And when it did, that she didn’t screw it up.
“How is Scythe Faraday?” Loriana asked. She hadn’t seen him in months.
“The same,” Munira told her. Loriana supposed that a scythe robbed of purpose was worse than being an unemployed Nimbus agent. “Does he have any plans to start gleaning again? I mean there’s hundreds of workers all over the atoll now – that’s certainly a big enough population to glean someone here and there. Not that I’m anxious to see it or anything, but a scythe who doesn’t glean is hardly a scythe.”
“He doesn’t have plans to do anything,” Munira told her.
“So, are you worried about him?”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
Loriana’s next stop was the distribution center – a warehouse of quick and easy design, near the dock, where Sykora spent most of his time walking around and doing a lot of pointing.
Loriana was there because she needed to gauge him. To see if he was acting differently. To see if maybe he had gotten the same information she had, whether or not he was on the official distribution list. But Sykora was the same as always: bureaucratic and managerial. The undisputed master of petty projects.
After a while, he noticed her lingering there.
“Is there something I can do for you, Agent Barchok?” he asked. Although they hadn’t been actual Nimbus agents for more than a year, he still acted as if they were.
“I was just wondering,” she said, “if you’ve given any real thought as to why we’re here on Kwajalein.”
He looked up from his inventory tablet and took a moment to study her. “Clearly the Thunderhead wants to establish a community here, and we are the ones it chose to populate it. Haven’t you realized that yet?”
“Yes, I know,” Loriana agreed, “but why?”
“Why?” Sykora echoed, as if the question were preposterous. “Why does anyone live anywhere? There is no ‘why.’”
There was no use pushing beyond that. Loriana realized that this was exactly what the Thunderhead wanted Sykora to think – which was probably part of the reason why he didn’t get the package. If he had, he would have insisted on putting his thumb in the pie and ruining it. It was best if he didn’t even know there was a pie to be messed with.
“Never mind,” Loriana said. “I’m just having a rough day.”
“Everything is as it should be, Agent Barchok,” he said in a feeble attempt to be fatherly. “Just do your job, and leave the big picture to me.”