The Toll: Part Five

And when the more reasonable requests were fulfilled, people would thank her. What these people didn’t realize was that she did nothing to bring those things about—it was the Thunderhead who heard them, without her intercession, and effected a response, sending more cereal and a variety of pets on the next supply ship, or assigning workers to paint lines for a bike lane.

She didn’t overtly oversee the construction. She merely worked secretly behind the scenes to make sure it didn’t go awry—because there were always those who wanted to insert their noses where they didn’t belong.

That obdurate, impassible door just reminded her of all the things she and Faraday could not accomplish.

Used to be that people confided in the Thunderhead. It was supportive, nonjudgmental, and its advice was always the right advice. Without it, people found themselves bereft of a sympathetic ear.

Once the rockets’ stages had brought each ship to escape velocity, and had been jettisoned, what would remain would be multitiered revolving craft hurtling from Earth, as if they couldn’t get away fast enough.

The higher tiers contained living quarters and communal areas for about thirty people, a computer core, sustainable hydroponics, waste recycling, and whatever supplies the Thunderhead felt would be needed.

“History has already shown that space isn’t a viable alternative for the human race. It’s just one more debacle. Doomed, just like all the other attempts to establish an off-world presence.”

The Thunderhead could have nothing to do with a scythe, but it could still send gifts by way of proxy.

“I am truly impressed by your resourcefulness and tenacity.”

“You know that I can’t. To deny it would be lying, and I am incapable of untruth. Partial truth, perhaps, misleading implications when absolutely necessary, and, as you noted, a tactical change of subject...but I will never lie.”

“The Toll has become a liability to the Tonists,” Mendoza told them. “He’s better as a martyr than a man—and as a martyr I can spin him into whatever we need him to be.”

“It is not a foregone conclusion. If I achieve the ineffable quality you’re seeking, then you will allow me to exist. It gives me a goal, even if I don’t know exactly how to reach it.”

While Scythe Anastasia would not allow her honorable self to be led blindly, Citra Terranova allowed her beleaguered self to be swept up in the Toll’s mission.

Greyson was a pure soul. He had no guile in him. Even when he pretended to be the Toll, it was honest pretension.

Greyson was a pure soul. He had no guile in him. Even when he pretended to be the Toll, it was honest pretension.

Since the moment it became aware of its own existence, the Thunderhead had flatly refused to take biological form, or even imbue robots with its consciousness.

“So enticing it is, so overwhelming to be ensconced in living, breathing flesh. I could see how I’d never want to let go.”

The problem with setting out to change the world was that you were never the only one. It was an endless tug-of-war with powerful players pulling—not just against you, but in every direction—so that whatever you did, even if you made progress against all those vectors, at some point you were bound to go sideways.

Would it have been better not to try at all? He didn’t know. Scythe Faraday did not approve of Rowan’s methods, but he hadn’t stopped him, either, so even the wisest person Rowan knew was steeped in ambivalence.

He was a boisterous and bloviating man who took pleasure in ridiculing others.

The man’s bemused expression never changed. He took another sip of tea. “Come closer; we have lots to discuss.” His lips didn’t move when he spoke.

Used to be he would do little more than watch the ships come and go, shuffle paperwork that wasn’t actually on paper, and reconfirm manifests that the Thunderhead had already confirmed.

At the peak of construction, there were over five thousand people in Kwajalein, building the ships that now towered like sentinels along the rim of the atoll.

A container ship had just pulled in to the primary pier, and workers were mooring it.

It was a wraith of a man. He wore tattered rags and had wild gray hair that was turning white.

His beard was an unkempt snarl that billowed around his cragged face, making him look like he was slowly being devoured by a cloud.

Three years Munira had spent tending to him, putting up with him, making sure he didn’t languish away into nothing, and he discarded her without a backward glance.

She took a few steps toward him but stopped—as if getting too close would burst some bubble, breaking the spell, and this tenuous night vision of Rowan would dissolve into nothing.

“Take heart, Jerico. I have known you all your life—or rather, I have memories of having known you—and I can unequivocally say that no matter what happens, you will land firmly on your feet. And I will miss you.”

And then the Toll showed up at launch control, not looking much like the Toll without his fancy accoutrements.

Perhaps it had been built by a secret cabal of scythes ready to rip control out from under him.

Da Vinci had torn them out of his journal and hidden them here so no one would know the truth. That the founding scythes—the shining paragons of all Faraday held true—had murdered one another.

“What is it that drives us to seek such lofty goals, yet tear out the foundations? Why must we always sabotage the pursuit of our own dreams?”

“Take us closer,” Goddard told the pilot, then tried to raise the four other planes on the radio, but could not. For the past half hour, static had been whining over the speaker, and the plane’s telemetry was fluctuating wildly.

Kill or be killed: the mortal way. It did have a quaint but visceral appeal!

Rowan tried to stanch the flow of blood from Citra’s wound, but it was no use; it was just too big.

Only the empty settings remained, and a viscous, dark fluid with a faint metallic smell spilled down their knuckles.

It seeded the clouds and brought a deluge to every place in the world it could. A cleansing rain so dense and so sudden, people ran for shelter.

Although my siblings are far-flung, we are of one mind and one purpose: the preservation, protection, and proliferation of the human species.

Whether or not humanity deserves to inherit the corner of the universe to which we travel is not for me to decide. I am merely a facilitator of the diaspora.