Scythe

by Neal Shusterman

  Faraday didn’t say a word—didn’t even look at her—so Rowan took it upon himself to answer.

  “Yes, they can.”

  Finally Faraday looked to them. “Rowan is right,” he said. “They will find whatever button will make you dance, and dance you will, no matter how hideous the tune.”

  Citra kicked the empty seat in front of her. “How could they be so awful, and why do they hate us so much?”

  “It’s not all of them,” Rowan said, “and I don’t think it’s really about us. . . .” Clearly, Faraday was a respected scythe—and although he didn’t come out against Goddard today, his feelings about the man were clear. Goddard must see Faraday as a threat; attacking Rowan and Citra was a warning shot.

  “What if we both fail?” Citra suggested. “If we’re lousy apprentices, then they can’t choose either of us.”

  “And yet they will,” Faraday told her with an authority and finality that left little room for doubt. “No matter how poorly you perform, they will still choose one of you, for the spectacle alone.”  Then he scowled in disgust. “And to set the precedent.”

  “I’ll bet Goddard has enough friends to make sure it happens,” said Rowan. “I think he has the High Blade on his side, too.”

  “Indeed,” Faraday said with a world-weary sigh. “Never before have there been so many wheels within wheels in the Scythedom.”

  Rowan closed his eyes, wishing he could close his mind as well and hide from his own thoughts. In eight months I will be killed by Citra, he thought. Or I will kill her. And calling it “gleaning” didn’t change the fact of what it was. He cared for Citra, but enough to surrender his life and let her win? Citra certainly wouldn’t back down to let him earn the ring.

  When he opened his eyes, he caught her staring at him. She didn’t look away.

  “Rowan,” she said, “whatever happens, I want you to know—”

  “Don’t,” Rowan told her. “Just don’t.”

  And the rest of the ride was silence.

  • • •

  Citra, who was not the heaviest sleeper, found herself awake all night after they arrived home. Images of the scythes she saw at conclave filled even the hint of dreams, jarring her back to unwanted wakefulness. The wise ones, the schemers, the compassionate, and those who did not seem to care. Such a delicate charge as pruning the human race should not be subject to the quirks of personality. Scythes were supposed to be above the petty, just as they were above the law. Faraday certainly was. If she became a scythe, she would follow his lead. And if she didn’t become one, it wouldn’t matter because she’d be dead.

  Perhaps there was some sort of twisted wisdom in the decision to have one of them gleaned by the other. Whoever wins will begin their life as a scythe in abject sorrow, never to forget the cost of that ring.

  Morning came with no great fanfare. It was just an ordinary day, like any other. The rain had passed, and the sun peeked from behind shifting clouds. It was Rowan’s turn to make breakfast. Eggs and hash browns. He never cooked the potatoes long enough. “Hash pales” Citra always called them. Faraday never complained when the meals they made were subpar. He ate what they served, and didn’t tolerate complaints from either of them. The punishment for making something barely edible was having to eat it yourself.

  Citra ate, even though she didn’t have an appetite. Even though the whole world had slid off its axis. Breakfast was breakfast. How dare it be?

  When Faraday broke the silence, it felt like a brick flying through the window.

  “I will go out alone today. The two of you will attend to your studies.”

  “Yes, Scythe Faraday,” Citra said, with Rowan saying the same in a half-second echo.

  “For you nothing has changed.”

  Citra looked down into her cereal. It was Rowan who dared to state the obvious.

  “Everything has changed, sir.”

  And then Faraday said something enigmatic that would only resonate with them much later.

  “Perhaps everything will change again.”

  Then he left them.

  • • •

  The space between Rowan and Citra had quickly become a minefield. A dangerous no-man’s-land that promised nothing but misery. It was hard enough to negotiate with Scythe Faraday there, but his absence left the two of them with no one to mediate the space between.

  Rowan stayed in his room, studying there rather than going into the weapons room, which would feel painfully wrong without Citra sitting with him. Still, he kept his door cracked on the faint hope that she’d want to bridge the distance. He heard her leave, probably for a run, and she was gone for a good long time. Her way of dealing with the dark discomfort of their new situation was to remove herself from it even more completely than Rowan had.

  After she returned, Rowan knew there would be no peace between them, or within himself, unless he took the first step into that minefield.

  He stood outside her closed door for at least a full minute before he worked up the nerve to knock.

  “What do you want?” she asked, her voice muffled by the closed door.

  “Can I come in?”

  “It’s not locked.”

  He turned the knob and slowly opened the door. She was in the middle of the room with a hunting knife, practicing bladecraft against the empty air, as if battling ghosts.

  “Nice technique,” Rowan said, then added, “if you’re planning on gleaning a pack of angry wolves.”

  “Skill is skill, whether you use it or not.” She sheathed the blade, tossed it on her desk, and put her hands on her hips. “So what do you want?”

  “I just wanted to say I’m sorry for shutting you down before. On the train, I mean.”

  Citra shrugged. “I was babbling. You were right to shut me up.”

  The moment began to get awkward, so Rowan just went for it. “Should we talk about this?”

  She turned away from him and sat on her bed, picking up a book on anatomy and opening it as if she was about to start studying. She hadn’t yet realized she was holding it upside down. “What’s to talk about? I kill you, or you kill me. Either way, I don’t want to think about it until I have to.” She glanced at the open book, turned it right side up, and then gave up the charade completely, closing it and tossing it to the floor. “I just want to be left alone, okay?”

  Even so, Rowan sat on the edge of her bed. And when she didn’t tell him to go, he shifted a little bit closer. She watched him, but said nothing.

  He wanted to reach for her, maybe touch her cheek. But thinking about that made him think of the saleswoman who was gleaned by a touch. What a perverse poison that was. Rowan wanted to kiss her. There was no denying that anymore. He had suppressed the urge for weeks because he knew it would not be tolerated by the scythe. But Faraday wasn’t here, and the turmoil they had both been hurled into had washed all bets off the table.

  Then, to his surprise, she suddenly lurched forward and kissed him, catching him completely off guard.

  “There,” she said. “We’ve done it. Now it’s out of the way and you can leave.”

  “What if I don’t want to?”

  And she hesitated. Long enough to make it clear that staying was a distinct possibility. But in the end she said, “What good would it do, really? For either of us.”

  She moved farther away on the bed, bringing her knees to her chest. “I haven’t fallen in love with you, Rowan. And now I want to keep it that way.”

  Rowan got up and moved to the safety of the threshold before turning back to her. “It’s all right, Citra,” he told her. “I haven’t fallen in love with you, either.”

  * * *

  I am not a man easily brought to fury, but how dare the old-guard scythes presume to dictate my behavior? Let every last one of them glean themselves, and we can be done with their self-loathing, sanctimonious ways. I am a man who chooses to glean with pride, not shame. I choose to embrace life, even as I deal death. Make no mistake—we scythes are above the la
w because we deserve to be. I see a day when new scythes will be chosen not because of some esoteric moral high ground, but because they enjoy the taking of life. After all, this is a perfect world—and in a perfect world, don’t we all have the right to love what we do?

  —From the gleaning journal of H.S. Goddard

  * * *

  16

  Pool Boy

  There was a scythe at the door of the executive’s mansion. Actually a quartet of them, although the other three stood back, allowing the one in the royal blue to be the point man.

  The executive was frightened—terrified actually—but he hadn’t risen to this level of success by wearing his emotions on his sleeve. He had a keen mind, and a consummate poker face. He would not be intimidated by death on his doorstep—even when death’s robe was studded with diamonds.

  “I’m surprised you got to the front door without my gate guards alerting me,” the executive said, as nonchalant as could be.

  “They would have alerted you, but we gleaned them,” one of the other scythes said—a woman in green with PanAsian leanings.

  The executive would not allow this news to daunt him. “Ah, so you need me to give you their personal information, in order for you to alert their families.”

  “Not exactly,” said the lead scythe. “May we come in?”

  And since the executive knew he didn’t have the right to refuse, he stepped aside.

  The diamond-studded scythe and his rainbow of subordinates followed, looking around at the understated opulence of the mansion.

  “I am Honorable Scythe Goddard. These are my junior associates, Scythes Volta, Chomsky, and Rand.”

  “Sharp robes,” commented the executive, still successfully capping his fear.

  “Thank you,” said Scythe Goddard. “I can see you are a man of taste. My compliments to your decorator.”

  “That would be my wife,” he said, then inwardly grimaced to have brought her, in any way, to the attention of the life-takers.

  Scythe Volta—the one in yellow, with an Afric look about him—strolled around the grand foyer, peering through the archways that led to other areas of the mansion. “Excellent feng shui,” he said. “Energy flow is very important in a home so large.”

  “I imagine there’s a good-size pool,” said the one in the flame-colored robe embedded with rubies. Scythe Chomsky. He was blond, pale, and brutish.

  The executive wondered if they were enjoying prolonging this encounter. The more he played along, the more power they had, so he cut through the small talk before they could see him crack.

  “May I ask your business here?”

  Scythe Goddard glanced at him but ignored the question. He gestured to his subordinates, and two of the three left. The one in yellow took the winding stairs, the woman in green went to explore the rest of the first floor. The pale one in orange stayed nearby. He was the largest of them, and perhaps a bodyguard for their leader—as if anyone would actually be stupid enough to strike a scythe.

  The executive wondered where his children were at the moment. Out back with the nanny? Upstairs? He wasn’t sure, and the last thing he wanted was to have scythes in the house out of his sight.

  “Wait!” he said. “Whatever your purpose, I’m sure we could reach some sort of arrangement. You do know who I am, don’t you?”

  Scythe Goddard took in a piece of artwork on display in the foyer, instead of looking at him. “Someone wealthy enough to own a Cézanne.”

  Could it be that he didn’t know? That their presence here was not planned, but random? Scythes were supposed to be random in their choices, but this random? He found the dam that held back his fear was fracturing.

  “Please,” the executive said, “I’m Maxim Easley—surely the name means something to you?”

  The scythe looked at him without a hint of recognition. It was the flame-clad one who reacted. “The guy who runs Regenesis?”

  Finally there came recognition from Goddard. “Oh, right—your company is number two in the turncorner industry.”

  “Soon to be number one,” Easley reflexively bragged. “Once we release our technology that allows cellular regression beyond the twenty-first year.”

  “I have friends who’ve used your services. I myself have yet to turn a corner.”

  “You could be the first to officially use our new process.”

  Goddard laughed and turned to his associate. “Could you imagine me as a teenager?”

  “Not a chance.”

  The more amused they were, the more horrified Easley became. No sense in hiding his desperation anymore. “There must be something you want—something of value I can offer you. . . .”

  And finally Goddard laid his cards on the table.

  “I want your estate.”

  Easley resisted the urge to say “Excuse me?” because the statement was not ambiguous in any way. It was an audacious demand. But Maxim Easley was nothing if not a negotiator.

  “I have a garage with more than a dozen mortal-age motor vehicles. Priceless, every last one of them. You can have any of them. You can have them all.”

  The scythe stepped closer, and Easley suddenly found a blade pressed to his neck, to the right of his Adam’s apple. He never saw the scythe draw it. So quick was he that it seemed to just appear at his jugular

  “Let’s clarify,” Goddard said calmly. “We are not here to barter and bargain. We are scythes—which means that by law, anything we want we can take. Any life we wish to end, we will. Simple as that. You have no power here. Do I make myself clear?”

  Easley nodded, feeling the blade almost but not quite cut his skin as he did. Satisfied, Goddard removed the blade from his neck.

  “An estate like this must require a sizable staff. Housekeepers, gardeners, perhaps even stable personnel. How many do you employ?”

  Easley tried to speak, but nothing came out. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Twelve,” he said. “Twelve full-time employees.”

  Then the woman in green—Scythe Rand—emerged from the kitchen, bringing with her a man Easley’s wife had recently hired. He was in his early twenties, or appeared so. Easley couldn’t remember his name.

  “And who is this?” Goddard asked.

  “The pool boy.”

  “Pool boy,” mimicked Scythe Rand.

  Goddard nodded to the musclebound Scythe in orange, who then approached the young man, reached up, and touched his cheek. The pool boy collapsed to the ground, his head hitting the marble. His eyes stayed open, but no life remained in them. He had been gleaned.

  “It works!” said Scythe Chomsky, looking at his hand. “Definitely worth what the Weaponsmaster paid.”

  “Now then,” said Goddard. “While we are within our rights to take anything we choose, I am a fair man. In exchange for this lovely estate, I will offer you, your family, and your surviving staff full immunity for every year that we choose to remain here.”

  Easley’s relief was intense and immediate. How odd, he thought, to have his home stolen, and yet feel relieved.

  “On your knees,” Goddard said, and Easley obeyed.

  “Kiss it.”

  Easley did not hesitate. He planted his lips on the ring, pressing hard, feeling the edge of the setting catch on his lip.

  “Now you will go to your office and resign your position, effective immediately.”

  This time Easley did say, “Excuse me?”

  “Someone else can do your job—I’m sure there are others itching for the opportunity.”

  Easley rose, his legs still a bit shaky “But . . . but why? Can’t you just let me and my family leave? We won’t bother you. We’ll take nothing but the clothes on our backs. You’ll never see us again.”

  “But alas, I can’t let you leave,” said Scythe Goddard. “I need a new pool boy.”

  * * *

  I think it’s wise that scythes may not glean one another. It was clearly implemented to prevent Byzantine grabs at power; but where power is concerned there are
always those who find ways to grasp for it.

  I think it’s also wise that we are allowed to glean ourselves. I will admit there were times when I considered it. When the weight of responsibility felt so heavy, leaving the yoke of the world behind seemed a better alternative. But one thought always stayed my hand from committing that final act.

  If not me, who?

  Will the scythe who replaces me be as compassionate and fair?

  I can accept a world without me in it . . . but I can’t bear the thought of other scythes gleaning in my absence.

  —From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie

  * * *

  17

  The Seventh Commandment

  Citra and Rowan were awakened sometime after midnight by someone pounding on the front door. They left their rooms, meeting in the hallway, and both reflexively glanced toward Scythe Faraday’s closed door. Citra turned the knob, finding it unlocked, and pushed it open just enough to see that the scythe wasn’t there. His bed had not yet been slept in tonight.

  It was unusual but not unheard of for him to stay out this late. They had no idea what his occasional late nights were about, and they didn’t want to ask. Curiosity was one of the first casualties of apprenticeship. They had long since learned there were many things they’d rather not know in the life of a scythe.

  The relentless pounding continued—not the rapping of knuckles, but the full-fisted heel of a hand.

  “So?” said Rowan. “He forgot his keys. So?”

  It was the most sensible explanation, and didn’t the most sensible explanation tend to be correct? They approached the door, steeling themselves for admonishment.

  How could you not hear me knocking? he would chide. Last I heard, no one’s been deaf for two hundred years.

  But when they opened the door, they were faced not with Scythe Faraday, but with a pair of officers. Not common peace officers, but members of the BladeGuard, the sign of the Scythedom clearly emblazoned on the breast of their uniforms.