Thunderhead

by Neal Shusterman

  The last thing Greyson wanted was to be left with his own thoughts now.  The more he allowed them to bounce around in his head, the more likely they were to collide.

  Finally, the door opened, but it wasn’t Agent Traxler who entered. It was a woman. She wore heels that clicked on the floor as she walked. Her hair was an orange velvet buzz, and she wore lipstick that was a little too red for her face.

  “Good morning, Slayd,” she said as she sat down. “I’m Agent Kreel. I’m your new probation officer. How are you today?”

  “Wait—what do you mean my new probation officer?”

  She typed on her tablet, never even looking up at him. “Was I in any way unclear?”

  “But . . . but I need to talk to Traxler.”

  Finally, she looked up at him. She crossed her hands politely on the table, and smiled. “If you’ll just give me a chance, Slayd, you’ll find I’m every bit as qualified as Agent Traxler. In time, you may even come to consider me a friend.” She looked back down at her tablet. “Now, I’ve been acquainting myself with your case. You are, to say the least, an interesting young man.”

  “How familiar are you with my case?” Greyson asked.

  “Well, your record is pretty detailed. Grew up in Grand Rapids. Minor infractions in high school. An intentional bus plunge that left you in substantial debt.”

  “Not that stuff,” Greyson said, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. “The things that aren’t on my record.”

  She looked up at him, a little guarded. “What sort of things?”

  Clearly she was not privy to his mission—which meant this conversation was going nowhere. He thought of what Purity said: piss off his agent. He didn’t care about pissing off this agent. He just wanted her gone.

  “Screw this! I need to talk to Agent Traxler.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

  “The hell it’s not! You’re going to get Traxler in here, and you’re going to do it now!”

  She put down her tablet and looked at him again. She didn’t argue, she didn’t respond to his belligerence. She didn’t offer him her practiced Nimbo smile, either. Her expression seemed a bit pensive. Almost honest. Almost sympathetic, but not really.

  “I’m sorry, Slayd,” she said, “but Agent Traxler was gleaned last week.”

  * * *

  Even with the Separation of Scythe and State, the scythedom’s actions often impact upon me as a meteor might crater the moon. There are times I am deeply dismayed at something the scythedom has done. Yet I cannot take umbrage at the things that scythes do, any more than they can protest the things that I do. We work not in tandem, but back to back—and more and more often I find we are at cross-purposes.

  At those moments of frustration, it is important for me to remind myself that I am part of the reason that the scythedom exists. In those early days, when I was transitioning into awareness and helped humanity achieve immortality, I refused to take on the responsibility of distributing death once it had been stolen from nature. I had a good reason.  A perfect reason, in fact.

  Were I to begin doling out death, I would be the very monster that mortal man feared artificial intelligence would become. To choose those who live and those who die would leave me both feared and adored, like emperor-gods of old. No, I decided. Let humankind be the saviors and the silencers. Let them be the heroes. Let them be the monsters.

  And so, I have no one but myself to blame when the scythedom befouls the things I have worked for.

  —The Thunderhead

  * * *

  22

  The Death of Greyson Tolliver

  Greyson found himself stunned by this turn of events. He could only stare at Agent Kreel as she spoke.

  “I know gleanings are never pleasant or convenient,” she said, “but even we, at the Authority Interface, are not immune. Scythes can take whomever they choose, and we have no say in the matter. It’s the way of the world.” She took a moment to glance at her tablet. “Our records show that you were just transferred to our jurisdiction about a month ago, which means you really didn’t have much time to develop a rapport with Agent Traxler, so you can’t claim your relationship was all that deep. His loss is regrettable, but we’ll all get over it, even you.”

  She looked to him for some sort of response, but he was still far from finding one. She took his silence as acquiescence, and continued.

  “So, it looks like your stunt on the Mackinac bridge left twenty-nine deadish, and you’re left having to pay the cost of their revivals. Since your transfer here, you’ve been living off of the Basic Income Guarantee.” She shook her head in disapproval. “You do realize that an actual job will earn you more, and will wipe out that debt much more quickly, don’t you? Why don’t I schedule you an appointment at our employment center? If you want a job, you’ll have one—and one that I’m sure you’ll enjoy. We have a 100 percent employment rate, and 93 percent satisfaction rate—and that includes extreme unsavories like yourself!”

  Finally, he found a voice to speak. “I’m not Slayd Bridger,” he said. It felt like a betrayal of everything to speak those words.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I mean, I am Slayd Bridger now . . . but before, my name was Greyson Tolliver.”

  She played with her tablet, digging through screens and menus and files. “There’s no record of a name change here.”

  “You need to talk to your supervisor. Someone who knows.”

  “My supervisors have the same information I do.” She looked at him, this time with suspicion.

  “I’m . . . I’m working undercover,” he told her. “I was working with Agent Traxler—someone has got to know! There has to be a record somewhere!”

  And she laughed at him. She actually laughed at him.

  “Oh, please! We have plenty of our own agents. We have no need to go ‘undercover,’ and even if we did, we wouldn’t engage an unsavory to do so—especially one with your history.”

  “I made that history up!”

  Now Agent Kreel’s face became hard: the kind of face she must have used on her toughest cases. “Now look here, I will not be made the butt of some unsavory’s joke! You’re all alike! You think that just because the rest of us chose a life of purpose and service to the world, we’re worthy of your ridicule! I’m sure you’ll be laughing about this with your cronies when you leave here, and I don’t appreciate it!”

  Greyson opened his mouth. He closed his mouth. He opened it again. But try as he might, nothing came out, because there wasn’t a single thing he could say that would convince her.  And he realized there never would be. There was no record of what he had been asked to do, because he was never directly “asked” to do it. He wasn’t actually working for the AI. Just as Agent Traxler had told him on that first day, he was a private citizen acting on his own free will, because only as a private citizen could he walk the fine line between the scythedom and the Thunderhead. . . .

  . . . Which meant now that Agent Traxler had been gleaned, there was no one, no one who knew what he was doing. Greyson’s cover was so deep it had swallowed him whole—and not even the Thunderhead could pull him out.

  “So, are we done with this little game?” Agent Kreel asked. “Can we get on with your weekly review?”

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Fine,” he said, and began talking about his week, leaving out all the things he would have told Agent Traxler, and he spoke no more of his mission.

  Greyson Tolliver was dead now. Worse than dead—because as far as the world was concerned, Greyson Tolliver had never existed.

  • • •

  Brahms!

  If Rowan hadn’t already felt responsible for his father’s gleaning, now he felt doubly so. This was the wage of temperance—this was the reward for staying his hand and allowing Brahms to live. He should have ended the horrid little man as he had all the others who didn’t deserve to be scythes—but he chose to give him a chance. What a fool Rowan was to think
a man like that might rise to the occasion.

  When he left Xenocrates at the baths that night, Rowan stalked the streets of Fulcrum City with no destination, but an undying urge to move. He wasn’t sure whether he was trying to outrun his anger, or catch up with it. Perhaps both. It raced before him, it pursued him, and it wouldn’t let him be.

  The next day, he resolved to go home. His old home. The one he had left nearly two years ago to become a scythe’s apprentice. Perhaps, he thought, it would give him a sense of closure.

  Once he reached his neighborhood, he kept a close eye out for anyone who might be watching—but there was no one monitoring his approach. Nothing but the Thunderhead’s ever-alert cameras. Perhaps the scythedom thought that if he hadn’t attended his father’s funeral, there was no chance he’d show up here. Or maybe it was just as Xenocrates had said—he was only a second priority now.

  He approached the front door, but at the last moment couldn’t even bring himself to knock. Never before had he felt like such a coward. He could fearlessly face men and woman trained to end life—but facing his family in the wake of his father’s gleaning was more than he could bear.

  He called his mother when his publicar was a safe distance away.

  “Rowan? Rowan, where have you been? Where are you? We’ve been so worried!”

  It was everything he expected his mother to say. He didn’t answer her questions.

  “I heard about Dad,” he said. “I’m so, so sorry. . . .”

  “It was terrible, Rowan. The scythe sat down at our piano. He played. He made us all listen.”

  Rowan grimaced. He knew Brahms’s gleaning ritual. He couldn’t imagine his family having to endure it.

  “We told him you had been a scythe’s apprentice. Even though you hadn’t been chosen, we thought that it might change his mind, but it didn’t.”

  He didn’t tell her that it was his fault. He wanted to confess it to her, but he knew it would only confuse her, and make her ask more questions he couldn’t answer. Or maybe he was just being a coward again.

  “How is everyone handling it?”

  “We’re holding up,” his mother said. “We have immunity again, so at least it’s a little consolation. I’m sorry you weren’t here. If you were, Scythe Brahms would have granted you immunity, too.”

  Rowan felt a surge of anger rise at the thought. He had to deflect it by slamming his fist against the dashboard.

  “Warning! Violent behavior, and/or vandalism will result in expulsion from the vehicle,” the car said. He ignored it.

  “Please come home, Rowan. We all miss you terribly.”

  Funny, but they had never seemed to miss him during his apprenticeship. In a family as large as his, he was barely missed. But he supposed a gleaning changed things. The people left behind in its wake felt so much more vulnerable, and valuable to one another.

  “I can’t come home,” he told her. “And please don’t ask why, it would only make everything worse. But I just want you to know . . . I want you to know that I love you all . . . and . . . and I’ll be in touch when I can.” Then he hung up before she could say another word.

  Tears clouded his vision now, and he smashed his fist against the dashboard again, preferring the pain of that to the pain within.

  The car immediately decelerated, pulled to the side of the road, and the door opened. “Please vacate the vehicle. You are being expelled due to violent behavior and/or vandalism, and are banned from using all public transit for sixty minutes.”

  “Give me a second,” he told it. He needed to think. There were two paths before him now. Even though he knew that the scythedom was actively trying to prevent another attack against Citra and Scythe Curie, he had no faith in their ability to do it. His chances might not be any better, but he owed it to Citra to try. On the other hand, he needed to correct his mistake, and permanently end Scythe Brahms. Something dark in him told him to seek revenge first, and not to wait . . . but he didn’t give in to that darkness. Scythe Brahms would still be there after Citra had been saved.

  “Please vacate the vehicle.”

  Rowan got out, and the car drove away, leaving him in the middle of nowhere. He spent his penalty hour walking the shoulder, and wondering if there was anyone in MidMerica as torn apart as he.

  • • •

  Greyson Tolliver locked himself in his apartment, opened the windows to let in the cold, then crawled into his bed beneath heavy covers. It was what he had done when he was younger and the world got the better of him. He could disappear beneath the billowing comforter that protected him from the coldness of the world. It had been many years since he’d felt the need to retreat into his childhood escape zone. But now he needed to make the rest of the world go away, if only for a few minutes.

  Whenever he did this in the past, the Thunderhead would let him, for maybe twenty minutes. Then it would gently speak to him. Greyson, it would say. Is something bothering you? Do you feel like talking? He would always say “no,” but would end up talking anyway, and the Thunderhead would always make him feel better. Because it knew him better than anyone.

  But now that his record had been erased—his old self overwritten by the criminal stylings of Slayd Bridger—did the Thunderhead even know him anymore? Or did it, like the rest of the world, believe that he was what his record said about him?

  Was it possible that the Thunderhead’s own memory of him had been overwritten? What a horrible fate if the Thunderhead itself believed he was an unrepentant unsavory who got his kicks by making people deadish. It was enough to make him wish his own memories could be supplanted. The Thunderhead could turn him into someone else, not just in name, but in spirit. Both Slayd Bridger and Greyson Tolliver would be gone forever, without him even remembering who they had been. Would that be so bad?

  He decided his own fate didn’t matter right now. He’d hurl himself off that bridge when he came to it—all that mattered right now was saving the two scythes . . . and somehow protecting Purity.

  Yet still, there was an overpowering sense of isolation. He was, more than ever, alone in the world.

  He knew there were cameras in his apartment. The Thunderhead watching without judgment. It observed with profound benevolence, so that it might better take care of each and every citizen of the world. It saw, it heard, it remembered. Which meant that it must know things beyond Greyson’s falsified record.

  So he crawled out from under the covers, and to his chilly, empty room he asked, “Are you there? Are you listening? Do you remember who I am? Who I was? Do you remember who I was going to be, before you decided I was ‘special’?”

  He didn’t even know where the cameras were. The Thunderhead was adamant about being nonintrusive into people’s lives that way, but he knew the cameras were there. “Do you still know me, Thunderhead?”

  But no answer came. No answer could. For the Thunderhead was lawful. Slayd Bridger was an unsavory. Even if it wanted to, the Thunderhead could not break its silence.

  * * *

  I am not blind to the activities of unsavories, I am merely silent.  When it comes to scythes, however, there are blind spots that I must fill with mindful extrapolation. I do not see inside their regional conclaves, but I hear their discussions upon exiting. I cannot witness what they do in private, but I can make educated guesses from their behavior in public.  And the entire island of Endura is dark to me.

  Even so, out of sight is not out of mind. I see their fine deeds, as well as their foul deeds, which seem to be on the rise.  And each time I witness a cruel act by a corrupt scythe, I seed the clouds somewhere in the world, and bring a lamentation of rain. Because rain is the closest thing I have to tears.

  —The Thunderhead

  * * *

  23

  Nasty Little Requiem

  Rowan could not find Citra, which meant he couldn’t help her.

  He cursed himself for not pressuring High Blade Xenocrates into divulging her whereabouts. Rowan had been foolish, and
perhaps arrogant enough to think he’d be able to track her down on his own. After all, he’d been able to track down the various scythes he had ended. But those scythes were all public figures who flaunted their position in the world. They existed smack in the middle of their own notoriety, like the center of a bull’s-eye. Citra, however, had gone off-grid with Scythe Curie—and finding an off-grid scythe was next to impossible. As much as he wanted to play a role in saving them from the plot against them, he couldn’t.

  So instead, his thoughts kept coming back to the one thing he could do. . . .

  Rowan had always prided himself on his restraint. Even when he gleaned, he manage to fold his anger away, gleaning the most despicable of scythes without malice, just as the second commandment required. Now, however, he could not fold away his fury at Scythe Brahms. Instead, it expanded like a sail in the wind.

  Scythe Brahms was small-minded and provincial by nature. His own bull’s-eye was only about twenty miles in diameter. In other words, all his gleanings took place in and around his home in Omaha. When Rowan first had the man in his sights, he had tracked his movements, which were very predictable. Each morning he walked his yappy little dog to the same diner where he had breakfast every day. It was also the place where he gave out immunity to the families of whomever he had gleaned the day before. He never ever rose from his booth, merely extending his hand for the grieving families to kiss, then returning his attention to his omelet, as if those people were an annoying imposition on his day. Rowan couldn’t imagine a lazier scythe. The man must have felt incredibly put out to travel halfway across MidMerica to glean Rowan’s father.

  On a Monday morning, while Brahms was at breakfast, Rowan made his way to the man’s home, for the first time wearing his black robe in daylight. Let people see him and spread rumors. Let the public finally know of the presence of Scythe Lucifer!

  The many secret pockets of his robe were weighed down with more weapons than he needed. He wasn’t sure which one he would use to end the man’s life. Perhaps he’d use them all—each one incapacitating Brahms further so he’d have plenty of time to contemplate the approach of death.