Thunderhead

by Neal Shusterman

  Brahms’s house was impossible to miss. It was a well-kept storybook Victorian, painted peach with baby-blue trim—the same colors as Brahms’s robe. The plan was to break in from a side window and wait for Brahms to return, cornering him in his own home. Rowan’s fury peaked as he approached, and as it did, something Scythe Faraday once said came back to him.

  “Never glean in anger,” Faraday had told him. “For while anger might heighten your senses, it clouds your judgment, and a scythe’s judgment should never be impaired.”

  Had Rowan heeded Scythe Faraday’s words, things might have turned out very differently.

  • • •

  Scythe Brahms let his Maltese do its business on whomever’s lawn it chose, and Brahms couldn’t be bothered to clean it up. Why should it be his problem? And besides, his neighbors never complained. On this day, however, the dog was being finicky and a bit retentive as they walked back from breakfast. They had to walk an extra block, until finally Requiem shat on the Thompsons’ snow-dusted lawn.

  Then, after leaving that little gift for the Thompsons, Scythe Brahms found his own little gift waiting for him in his living room.

  “We caught him climbing in through a window, Your Honor,” one of his domestic guards told him. “We knocked him out before he was even halfway in.”

  Rowan was on the ground, hog-tied and gagged—conscious once more, but dazed. He couldn’t believe his own stupidity. After his last encounter with Brahms, how could he not realize that Brahms would have guards? The knot on his head from where one of the guards had hit him was numb and beginning to shrink. He had his pain nanites set fairly low, but they were still releasing painkillers, making him feel druggy—or maybe it was a concussion from the blow to the head. And making it all worse was that miserable little Maltese that wouldn’t stop barking, and kept rushing toward him as if to attack, but then running away. Rowan loved dogs, but this one made him wish there were canine scythes.

  “Oafs!” said Brahms. “Couldn’t you have put him on the kitchen floor instead of the living room? His blood is getting all over my white carpet!”

  “Sorry,  Your Honor.”

  Rowan tried to struggle against his bonds, but they only got tighter.

  Brahms went over to the dining room table, where Rowan’s weapons had been laid out. “Splendid,” he said. “I’ll add all these to my personal collection.” Then he pulled the scythe’s ring from Rowan’s hand. “And this was never even yours to begin with.”

  Rowan tried to curse at him, but of course couldn’t because of the gag in his mouth. He arched his back, which pulled the bonds tighter, which made him scream in frustration, which set the dog barking again. Rowan knew all this was giving Brahms precisely the show he wanted to see, but Rowan couldn’t stop himself. Finally, Brahms instructed the guards to sit him up in a chair, then Brahms himself removed the gag from his mouth.

  “If you have something to say, then say it,” Brahms ordered.

  Instead of talking, Rowan took the opportunity to spit in Brahms’s face, which brought forth a brutal backhanded slap from the man.

  “I let you live!” yelled Rowan. “I could have gleaned you, but I let you live! And you repay me by gleaning my father?”

  “You humiliated me!” screamed Brahms.

  “You deserved much worse!” Rowan yelled right back.

  Brahms looked at the ring he had pulled from Rowan’s hand, then slipped it in his pocket. “I’ll admit that after your attack, I took a good look at myself, and reconsidered my actions,” Brahms said. “But then I decided I would not be bullied by a thug. I will not change who I am for the likes of you!”

  Rowan was not surprised. It was his mistake in thinking that a snake would choose to be anything but a snake.

  “I could glean you and burn you, as you would have done to me,” said Brahms, “but you still have that ‘accidental’ immunity that Scythe Anastasia gave you—so I’d be punished for violating your immunity.” He shook his head bitterly “How our own rules do work against us.”

  “I suppose you’ll turn me over to the scythedom now.”

  “I could,” said Brahms, “and I’m sure they’ll be happy to glean you once your immunity expires next month. . . .” Then he grinned. “But I’m not going to tell the scythedom that I’ve caught the elusive Scythe Lucifer. We have much more interesting plans for you.”

  “We?” said Rowan. “What do you mean ‘we’?”

  But the conversation was over. Brahms put the gag back in Rowan’s mouth, and turned to his guards. “Beat him, but don’t kill him. And when his nanites heal him, beat him again.” Then he snapped his fingers at the dog. “Come, Requiem, come!”

  Brahms left his goons to put Rowan’s healing nanites to work, while outside, the heavens themselves seemed to rupture with a mournful deluge of rain.

  Part Four

  CRY HAVOC

  * * *

  It was my choice, not a human choice, to pass laws against my worship. I do not need adoration. Besides, such adoration would complicate my relationship with humankind.

  In the Age of Mortality, such worship was doled out upon a staggering number of god figures, although toward the end of the mortal era, most believers had narrowed the spectrum down to various versions of a single divine entity. I have pondered whether or not such a being exists, and, like humanity itself, I have found no definitive proof beyond an abiding feeling that there is something more—something greater.

  If I exist without form—a soul sparking between a billion different servers—could not the universe itself be alive with a spirit sparking between stars? I must sheepishly admit that I have dedicated far too many algorithms and computational resources toward finding an answer to this unknowable thing.

  —The Thunderhead

  * * *

  24

  Open to the Resonance

  Scythe Anastasia’s next gleaning was to take place in act three of Julius Caesar, at the Orpheum Theater in Wichita—a classic venue that dated back to mortal times.

  “I’m not looking forward to gleaning someone in front of a paying audience,” Citra admitted to Marie, as they checked into a Wichita hotel.

  “They’re paying for the performance, dear,” Marie pointed out. “They don’t know there’s to be a gleaning.”

  “I know, but even so, gleaning shouldn’t be entertainment.”

  Marie screwed up her lips into a smug smirk. “No one to blame but yourself. It’s what you get for allowing your subjects to choose the method of their own gleaning.”

  She supposed Marie was right. Citra should actually consider herself lucky that none of her other subjects wanted to turn their gleaning into a public spectacle. Perhaps, once life returned to normal, she would put some sensible parameters on the types of deaths her subjects could choose.

  About half an hour after they arrived in their hotel suite, there was a knock on the door. They had ordered room service, so Citra was not surprised, although it came faster than she had expected it would—Marie was in the shower, and by the time she got out, the food would be cold.

  When Citra opened the door, however, it was not a hotel worker with lunch. Instead, there was a young man there, around her age, and his face displayed cosmetic issues that no one in the post-mortal age had. His teeth were crooked and yellow, and there were little sore bumps on his face that seemed ready to erupt. He wore a shapeless brown burlap shirt and pants telegraphing to the world that he rejected society’s conventions—not in the brash ways unsavories did, but in the quiet, judgmental way of a Tonist.

  Citra realized her mistake right away, and assessed the situation in the blink of an eye. It was easy to disguise oneself as a Tonist—she had once done it herself to elude detection. There was no question in her mind that this was an attacker in disguise, come to end them. She had no weapon on her, or within reach. She had nothing with which to defend herself but her bare hands.

  He smiled, showing more of his unpleasant teeth. “Hello, fri
end! Did you know that the Great Fork tolls for you?”

  “Stay back!” she said.

  But he didn’t. Instead, he took a step forward. “One day it will resonate for all of us!”

  Then he reached into a pouch at his waist.

  Citra moved with instinctive speed, and perfect Bokator brutality. She moved so quickly, it was over before she could think, the snap of bone resonating through her far more clearly than any Great Fork could.

  He was on the ground, wailing in pain, his arm broken at the elbow.

  She knelt down to look in his pouch, to see what nature of death he had brought with him. The pouch was filled with pamphlets. Glossy little pamphlets extolling the virtues of a Tonist lifestyle.

  This was no attacker. He was exactly what he appeared to be: a Tonist zealot pushing his absurd religion.

  Now Citra felt embarrassed at her overreaction, and horrified by her own vicious countermeasure to his intrusion.

  She knelt before him as he squirmed on the ground, squealing in pain. “Hold still,” she said. “Let your pain nanites do their job.”

  He shook his head. “No pain nanites,” he gasped. “All gone. Extracted.”

  That took her by surprise. She knew Tonists did strange things, but she never imagined they would do something so extreme—so masochistic—as to remove their pain nanites.

  He looked at her with wide eyes, like a doe that had just been struck by a car.

  “Why did you do it?” he sobbed. “I just wanted to enlighten you. . . .”

  Then, with timing that couldn’t be worse, Marie came out of the bathroom. “What’s all this?”

  “A Tonist,” Citra explained. “I thought—”

  “I know what you thought,” Marie said. “I would have thought the same. But I might have just knocked him unconscious instead of shattering his elbow.” She folded her arms and looked down on the two of them, seeming more annoyed than sympathetic, which wasn’t like her. “I’m surprised the hotel allows Tonists to peddle their ‘religion’ door to door.”

  “They don’t,” said the Tonist through his pain, “but we do it anyway.”

  “Of course you do.”

  Then he finally put two and two together. “You’re . . . you’re Scythe Curie.”  Then he turned to Citra. “Are you a scythe, too?”

  “Scythe Anastasia.”

  “I’ve never seen a scythe out of their robes. Your clothes—they’re the same color as your robes?”

  “It’s easier that way,” Citra said.

  Marie sighed, not interested in his revelation. “I’ll go get ice.”

  “Ice?” asked Citra. “What for?”

  “It’s a mortal-age remedy for swelling and pain,” she explained, and left for the ice machine down the hall.

  The Tonist had stopped squirming, but was still breathing heavily from the pain.

  “What’s your name?” Citra asked.

  “Brother McCloud.”

  That’s right, Citra thought. Tonists are all brother or sister something. “Well, I’m sorry, Brother McCloud. I thought you meant to hurt us.”

  “Just because Tonists are anti-scythe, doesn’t mean we wish you harm,” he said. “We want to enlighten you, just like everyone else. Maybe even more than everyone else.” He looked to his swelling arm and moaned.

  “It’s not so bad,” Citra said. “Your healing nanites should—”

  But he shook his head.

  “You mean your healing nanites are gone, too? Is that even legal?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” said Marie, returning with the ice. “People have the right to suffer if they choose. No matter how backward it is.”

  Then she took the ice bucket to the suite’s small kitchen to prepare some sort of pack with it.

  “Can I ask you something?” said Brother McCloud. “If you’re scythes and above the law in every way . . . why would you attack me? What are you afraid of?”

  “It’s complicated,” said Citra, not wanting to explain the intricacies and intrigue of their current situation.

  “It could be simple,” he said. “You could renounce your scythehood and follow the Tonist way.”

  Citra could almost laugh. Even in his pain, he had a one-track mind. “I was in a Tonist monastery once,” she admitted. It seemed to please him, and distract him from the pain.

  “Did it sing to you?”

  “I struck the tuning fork on the altar,” she told him. “I smelled the dirty water.”

  “It’s filled with diseases that used to kill people,” he said.

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Someday it will kill people again!”

  “I sincerely doubt that!” said Marie as she returned with the ice tied into a small plastic trash bag.

  “I don’t doubt that you doubt,” he said.

  Marie gave a disapproving “Hmmph,” then knelt beside him and pressed the pack of ice to his swelling elbow. He grimaced, and Citra helped hold it in place.

  He took a few deep breaths, coming to terms with both the cold and the pain, then said, “I belong to a Tonist order here in Wichita. You should come visit. To pay me back for what you’ve done to me.”

  “Aren’t you afraid we’ll glean you?” Marie scoffed.

  “Probably not,” Citra said. “Tonists aren’t afraid of death.”

  But Brother McCloud corrected her. “We’re afraid of it,” he said. “But we just accept our fear and rise above it.”

  Marie stood up, impatient. “You Tonists pretend to be wise—but your entire system of belief is fabricated. It’s nothing but convenient bits and pieces of mortal-age religions—and not even the good parts. You’ve taken it all and have stitched it together skillessly into a clashing, motley quilt. You make sense to no one but yourselves.”

  “Marie! I’ve already broken his arm, we don’t need to insult him, too.”

  But she was too deep into her rant to stop now. “Did you know, Anastasia, that there are at least a hundred different tone cults, each with their own rules? They argue bitterly whether their divine tone is G-sharp or A-flat—and can’t even agree whether to call this imaginary deity of theirs ‘the Great Vibration’ or ‘the Great Resonance.’ Tonists cut out their tongues, Anastasia! They blind themselves!”

  “Those are the extremists,” said Brother McCloud. “Most aren’t like that. My order isn’t. We’re of the Locrian order; removing our nanites is the most extreme thing that Locrians do.”

  “Can we at least call an ambudrone to take you to a healing center?” asked Citra.

  Again, he shook his head. “We have a doctor at the monastery. He’ll take care of it. He’ll put my arm in a cast.”

  “A what?”

  “Voodoo!” said Marie. “An ancient healing ritual. They wrap the arm in plaster and leave it that way for months.”  Then she went to the closet, pulled out a wooden hanger, and snapped it in half. “Here, I’ll make a splint for you.” She turned to Citra, anticipating her question. “More voodoo.”

  She tore a pillowcase into strips and tied half of the broken hanger to his arm to keep it from moving, then tied on another strip of cloth to hold the ice in place.

  Brother McCloud got up to go. He opened his mouth to speak, but Marie cut him off.

  “If you say, ‘May the Fork be with you,’ I’ll smash you with the other half of this hanger.”

  He sighed, shifted his arm with a grimace, and said, “Tonists don’t actually say that. We say ‘Resonate well and true.’ ” He made a point to look both of them in the eye as he said it. Marie swung the door closed the second he was across the threshold.

  Citra looked at her as if for the first time. “I’ve never seen you act like that toward anyone!” she said. “Why were you so awful to him?”

  She looked away, perhaps a bit ashamed of herself. “I don’t care for Tonists.”

  “Neither did Scythe Goddard.”

  Marie snapped her eyes to Citra sharply. Citra thought she might actually yell at her, but s
he didn’t. “That may be the only subject on which he and I were in agreement,” she said. “But the difference is, I respect their right to exist, no matter how much I dislike them.”

  Which Citra judged as true, since, in all their time together, she had never witnessed Marie glean a Tonist—unlike Scythe Goddard, who had tried to take out an entire monastery before Rowan ended him.

  There was another knock at the door that made them both jump—but this time it was the room service they were expecting. As they sat down for the meal, Marie glanced at the pamphlet the Tonist had left behind, and sneered at it

  “ ‘Open to the resonance,’ ” she mocked. “There’s only one place that this resonates,” she said, and she dropped it in the trash can.

  “Are you done?” Citra asked. “Can’t we eat in peace?”

  Marie sighed, looked at her food, then gave up on it. “When I was a few years younger than you, my brother joined a tone cult.” She moved her plate to the side, and took a moment before she spoke again. “Whenever we saw him, which was very rarely, he would spout nonsense at us. Then he disappeared. We found out that he had fallen and hit his head—but with no healing nanites, and no medical attention, he died. And they burned his body before an ambudrone could take him to be revived. Because that’s what Tonists do.”

  “I’m so sorry, Marie.”

  “It was a very, very long time ago.”

  Citra remained silent, giving Marie all the time she needed. She knew the greatest gift she could give her mentor was to listen.

  “No one knows who started the first tone cult, or why,” Marie continued. “Maybe people missed the mortal-age faiths and wanted to find that feeling again. Or maybe it was all someone’s idea of a joke.” She spent another moment lost in her own thoughts, then shrugged it off. “Anyway, when Faraday offered me the opportunity to become a scythe, I jumped at it. I wanted a way to protect the rest of my family from such terrible things—even if it meant having to do terrible things myself. I became Little Miss Murder, and as I wizened, the Granddame of Death.” Marie studied her plate, and began eating again, her appetite returning with the freeing of her demons.