Thunderhead

by Neal Shusterman

  “I’ll wait.”

  “It may require a trip to your local wellness center.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “Very well.” She swiped the screen, closed his file, and told him to follow the blue line on the floor, which led him out to the hallway and to another large room, where, as promised, he was told to take a number.

  Finally, after what seemed like forever, his number came up, and he was sent to an audience room that was nothing like the comfortable one he had been in last time. This was, after all, an unsavory audience room. The walls were institutional beige, the floor ugly green tile, and the table—which had nothing on it—was slate gray, with two hard wooden chairs on either side. The only decoration in the room was a soulless sailboat picture on the wall, which was perfectly appropriate for a room like this.

  He waited another fifteen minutes, then finally his probation officer entered.

  “Good morning, Greyson,” said Agent Traxler.

  He was the last person Greyson expected to see today. “You? What are you doing here? Haven’t you ruined my life enough?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest notion what you’re talking about.”

  Of course he’d say that. Plausible deniability. He hadn’t asked Greyson do to anything. In fact, he had expressly told him what not to do.

  “I apologize for the wait,” Traxler said. “If it makes you feel any better, the Thunderhead makes us agents wait before meeting with you as well.”

  “Why?”

  Traxler shrugged. “It’s a mystery.”

  He sat down across from Greyson, glanced at the soulless sailboat with the same disgust that Greyson had, then explained his presence here.

  “I have been transferred here from Fulcrum City, and I’ve been demoted from being a senior agent to being a probation officer at this regional facility. So you’re not the only one who’s had a downgrade in status over this matter.”

  Greyson folded his arms, not feeling an ounce of sympathy for the man.

  “I trust you’re beginning to adjust to your new life.”

  “Not at all,” Greyson said flatly. “Why did the Thunderhead mark me unsavory?”

  “I thought you’d be smart enough to figure that out.”

  “Guess not.”

  Traxler raised his eyebrows, and released a slow breath to stress his disappointment at Greyson’s lack of insight. “As an unsavory, you are required to attend probationary meetings on a regular basis. These meetings will provide a way for you and me to communicate without raising the suspicion of anyone who might be watching you. Of course, for that to work, I’d have to be transferred here and made your probation officer.”

  Ah! So there was a reason why Greyson was denigrated to unsavory! It was part of some larger plan. He thought he’d feel better once he knew why, but he didn’t.

  “I do feel sorry for you,” Traxler said. “Unsavorism is a difficult yoke for those who don’t desire it.”

  “Can you rate your pity on a scale of one to ten?” Greyson asked.

  Agent Traxler chuckled. “A sense of humor, no matter how dark, is always a good thing.” Then he got down to business. “I understand that you’ve been spending most of your days and nights at home. As your friend and advisor, might I suggest that you begin frequenting places where you can meet other unsavories, and perhaps generate new friendships that could ease this time for you.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Perhaps you do want to,” Agent Traxler said gently. Almost subversively. “Perhaps you want to fit in so much that you begin to behave like an unsavory, and dress like an unsavory, and get yourself some sort of unsavory body modification to show how fully you embrace your new status.”

  Greyson said nothing at first. Traxler waited for Greyson to fully wrap his mind around the suggestion.

  “And . . . if I were to embrace my status?” asked Greyson.

  “Then I’m sure you’d learn things,” said Traxler. “Perhaps things that not even the Thunderhead knows. It does have blind spots, you know. Small ones, certainly, but they do exist.”

  “You’re asking me to be an undercover Nimbus agent?”

  “Of course not,” Traxler said with a grin. “Nimbus agents are required to attend four years at the academy, and do an additional year of mind-numbing field work before getting an actual assignment. But you’re just an unsavory. . . .” He patted Greyson on the shoulder. “An unsavory who happens to be very well-connected.”

  Then Traxler stood. “I’ll see you in a week, Greyson.” And he left without as much as a backward glance.

  Greyson felt dizzy. He was angry. He was excited. He felt used, he felt put to use. This was not what he wanted . . . or was it? “You, Greyson, are more special than you know,” the Thunderhead had told him. Was this the Thunderhead’s plan for him all along? He still had a choice in the matter. He could stay out of trouble, as he had done his whole life, and in a few months his normal status would be restored. He could go back to living his life, such as it was.

  . . . Or he could spiral down this new path. A path that was the opposite of everything he knew himself to be.

  The door opened and some nameless Nimbus agent said, “Excuse me, but now that your meeting is over, you’ll have to vacate the room immediately.”

  Greyson’s instincts told him to apologize and leave. But he knew what path he now needed to take. So he leaned back in his chair, smiled at the agent, and said:

  “Go screw yourself.”

  The agent gave him a demerit, and returned with a security guard to eject him from the room.

  * * *

  While the Office of Unsavory Affairs might appear inefficient, there is method behind the madness that it generates.

  Simply put, unsavories have a need to despise the system.

  To facilitate that, I had to create a system worthy of loathing. In reality, there is no actual need for people to take a number, or to wait for long periods of time. There isn’t even a need for an intake agent. It’s all designed to make unsavories feel as if the system is wasting their time. The illusion of inefficiency serves the specific purpose of creating annoyance around which unsavories can bond.

  —The Thunderhead

  * * *

  13

  Not a Pretty Picture

  Scythe Pierre-Auguste Renoir was no artist, although he had quite the collection of masterpieces painted by his Patron Historic. What could he say? He liked pretty pictures.

  Of course, a MidMerican scythe naming himself after a French artist infuriated scythes from the FrancoIberian region. They felt that all mortal-age French artists belonged to them. Well, just because Montreal was now part of MidMerica didn’t mean its French heritage was lost. Surely someone in Scythe Renoir’s ancestry had been from France.

  No matter—the scythedoms across the Atlantic could bluster all they wanted, it did not affect him. What affected him were the Permafrost ethnics in the northern reaches of the Mericas where he lived. While the rest of the world had blended on the genetic level to a large degree, the Permafrosts were far too protective of their culture to become one with the rest of humankind. Not a crime, of course—people were free to do as they chose—but to Scythe Renoir it was a nuisance, and a blemish upon the order of things.

  And Renoir knew order.

  His spices were arranged alphabetically; his teacups were lined up in his cupboard with mathematical precision; he had his hair trimmed to a measured length every Friday morning. The Permafrost population flew in the face of all of that. They looked far too racially distinct, and it was something he could not abide.

  Therefore, he gleaned as many of them as he could.

  Of course, showing an ethnic bias would leave him in deep water with the scythedom if it found out. Thank goodness Permafrost was not considered a distinct race. Their genetic ratio simply showed a high percentage of  “other.”  “Other” was such a broad category, it effectively masked what he was doing. Perhaps not from the Thund
erhead, but from the scythedom, which was all that mattered. And as long as he gave no one in the scythedom a reason to look deeper into his gleanings, no one would know! In this way, he hoped, in time, to thin the population of ethnic Permafrosts, until their presence no longer offended him.

  On this particular night, he was on his way to a double gleaning. A Permafrost woman and her young son. He was in high spirits that evening—but just as he left his home, he unexpectedly encountered a figure dressed in black.

  The woman and her son were not gleaned that night . . . however, Scythe Renoir was not so lucky. He was found in a burning publicar that had sped through his neighborhood like a fireball until its tires melted and it skidded to a stop. By the time firefighters reached him, there was nothing they could do. It was not a pretty picture.

  • • •

  Rowan awoke to a knife at his throat. The room was dark. He couldn’t see who held the knife, but he knew the feel of the blade. It was a ringless karambit—its curved blade perfect for its current application. He had always suspected his tenure as Scythe Lucifer would not last long. He was prepared for this. He was prepared from the day he began.

  “Answer me truthfully, or I will slit your throat ear to ear,” his assailant said. Rowan recognized the voice right away. It was not a voice he was expecting.

  “Ask your question first,” Rowan said. “Then I’ll tell you whether I’d rather answer it or have my throat slit.”

  “Did you end Scythe Renoir?”

  Rowan did not hesitate. “Yes, Scythe Faraday.  Yes, I did.”

  The blade was removed from his neck. He heard a twanging sound across the room as the hurled blade embedded in the wall.

  “Damn you, Rowan!”

  Rowan reached to turn on the light. Scythe Faraday now sat in the single chair in Rowan’s Spartan room. It’s a room Faraday should approve of, Rowan thought. No creature comforts, but for a comfortable bed to guard against the troubled sleep of a scythe.

  “How did you find me?” Rowan asked. After his encounter with Tyger, Rowan had left Pittsburgh for Montreal, because he felt that if  Tyger could find him, anyone could. And yet even with the move, he was found. Luckily, it was Faraday and not another scythe who might not hesitate to slit his throat.

  “You forget that I’m skilled in digging around the backbrain. I can find anything or anyone I set my mind to.”

  Faraday regarded him with eyes filled with smoldering anger and bitter disappointment. Rowan felt compelled to look away, but he didn’t. He refused to feel any shame for the things he’d done.

  “When you left, Rowan, did you not promise me that you would lie low, and stay away from scythe affairs?”

  “I did promise that,” Rowan told him quite honestly.

  “So you lied to me? You planned this ‘Scythe Lucifer’ business all along?”

  Rowan got up and pulled the blade from the wall. A ringless karambit, just as he thought. “I didn’t plan anything, I just changed my mind.” He handed the blade back to Faraday.

  “Why?”

  “I felt I had to. I felt it was necessary.”

  Faraday looked to Rowan’s black robe, which hung on a hook beside the bed. “And now you dress in a forbidden robe. Is there no taboo you will not break?”

  It was true. Scythes were not allowed to wear black, which is exactly why he chose it. Black death for purveyors of darkness.

  “We are supposed to be the enlightened!” Faraday said. “This is not how we fight!”

  “You of all people have no right to tell me how to fight.  You played dead and ran away!”

  Faraday took a deep breath. He looked at the karambit in his hand and slipped it into an inner pocket of his ivory robe. “I thought by convincing the world that I had self-gleaned, it would save you and Citra. I thought you would be freed from the apprenticeship and get sent back to your old lives!”

  “It didn’t work,” Rowan reminded him. “And you’re still hiding.”

  “I am biding my time.  There’s a difference.  There are things I can accomplish best if the scythedom does not know I’m alive.”

  “And,” said Rowan, “there are things I can accomplish best as Scythe Lucifer.”

  Scythe Faraday stood and took a long, hard look at him. “What have you become, Rowan . . . that you could end the existences of scythes in cold blood?”

  “As they die, I think of their victims. The men, women, and children that they have gleaned—because the scythes that I end don’t glean with remorse, or the sense of responsibility that a scythe is supposed to have. Instead, I’m the one who feels compassion for their victims. And that frees me from feeling any remorse for the twisted scythes that I end.”

  Faraday seemed unmoved. “Scythe Renoir—what was his crime?”

  “He was doing a secret ethnic cleansing of the north.”

  That gave Faraday pause for thought. “And how did you learn of this?”

  “Don’t forget that you taught me how to research the backbrain, too,” Rowan told him. “You taught me the importance of thoroughly researching the people I was to glean. Or did you forget that you put all these tools in my hands?”

  Scythe Faraday looked out of the window, but Rowan knew it was only to keep from having to look Rowan in the eye. “His crime could have been reported to the selection committee. . . .”

  “And what would they have done? Reprimanded him and put him on probation? Even if they stopped him from gleaning, it wouldn’t suit the crime!”

  Scythe Faraday finally turned to look at him. He suddenly seemed tired, and old. Much older than a person is supposed to feel or look. “We are not a society that believes in punishment,” he said. “Only correction.”

  “So do I,” Rowan told him. “In mortal days, when they couldn’t cure a cancer-illness, they cut that cancer-illness out. That’s exactly what I do.”

  “It’s cruel.”

  “It’s not. The scythes that I end feel no pain. They are dead before I reduce them to ash. Unlike the late Scythe Chomsky, I do not burn them alive.”

  “A small grace,” said Faraday, “but not a saving one.”

  “I’m not asking to be saved,” Rowan told him. “But I do want to save the scythedom. And I believe this is the only way to do it.”

  Faraday looked him over again, and shook his head sadly. He was no longer furious. He seemed resigned.

  “If you want me to stop, you’ll have to end me yourself,” Rowan told him.

  “Do not put me to the test, Rowan. Because the grief I might feel from ending you would not stay my hand if I felt it was necessary.”

  “But you won’t. Because deep down you know that what I’m doing is necessary.”

  Scythe Faraday didn’t speak for a while. He returned his gaze out the window. It had started to snow. Flurries. It would make the ground slick. People would fall, hit their heads. The revival centers would be busy tonight.

  “So many scythes have fallen from the old, true ways,” Faraday said with a weight of sadness that went deeper than Rowan could read. “Would you end half the scythedom—because from what I can see, Scythe Goddard is being seen as a martyr in the so-called new order. More and more scythes are coming to enjoy the act of killing. Conscience is becoming a casualty.”

  “I’ll do what I have to do until I can’t do it anymore,” was Rowan’s only response.

  “You can end scythe after scythe, it won’t change the tide,” Faraday said. It was the first thing he offered Rowan that made him question himself. Because he knew Faraday was right. No matter how many bad scythes he removed from the equation, there would be more on the rise. New-order scythes would take on apprentices who lusted for death, like mortal-age murderers—the kind who were put in incarceration places and spent the rest of their limited lives behind bars. Now those would be the types of monsters allowed to freely end life without consequence. This was not what the founders wanted—but all the founding scythes had long since self-gleaned. And even if any of the
m were still alive, what power would they have to change things now?

  “So what will change the tide?” Rowan asked.

  Scythe Faraday raised an eyebrow. “Scythe Anastasia.”

  Rowan had not expected that. “Citra?”

  Faraday nodded. “She is a fresh voice of reason and responsibility. She can make the old ways new again. Which is why they fear her.”

  Then Rowan read something deeper in Faraday’s face. He knew what he was really saying. “Citra’s in danger?”

  “It would appear.”

  Suddenly Rowan’s whole world seamed to heave on its axis. He was amazed at how quickly his priorities could change.

  “What can I do?”

  “I’m not sure—but I can tell you what you will do. You will write an elegy for each of the scythes you kill.”

  “I’m not your apprentice anymore. You can’t order me around.”

  “No, but if you wish to wash at least some of the blood from your hands and win back an ounce of my respect, you will do it. You will write an honest epitaph for each of them. You will speak to the good each of your victims has done in the world, as well as the bad—for even the most self-serving, corrupt of scythes has some virtue hidden within the wrinkles of their corruption. At some point in their lives, they strove to do what was right before they fell.”

  He paused as a memory came to him. “I used to be friends with Scythe Renoir,” Faraday admitted, “many years before his bigotry became the cancer you spoke of. He loved a Permafrost woman once. You didn’t know that, did you? But as a scythe, he couldn’t marry. Instead, she married another Permafrost man . . . which began Renoir’s long path to hatred.” He took a moment to look at Rowan. “If you had known that, would you have spared him?”

  Rowan didn’t answer, because he didn’t know.