Scythe

by Neal Shusterman

  “Yes.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your scythe is okay with that?”

  The scythe nodded. “I support Citra entirely.”

  Rhonda considered the proposal. She supposed she could. How many times had there been someone in her life she wanted to dispose of—even just temporarily? Just last year she had come remarkably close to “accidentally” electrocuting her lab partner in science because he was such an ass. But in the end she realized that he’d get a few days vacation, and she’d have to finish the lab alone. This situation was different. It was a free revenge ticket. The question was, how badly did she want revenge?

  “Listen, it’s tempting and all,” said Rhonda, “but I’ve got homework, and dance class later.”

  “So . . . you don’t want to?”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to, I’m just busy today. Can I throw you under a truck some other time?”

  Citra hesitated. “Okay . . .”

  “Or better yet, maybe you can just take me out to lunch or something.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “Just next time, please give us some warning so you don’t freak out my mother.” Then she said good-bye, stepped inside, and closed the door.

  “How bizarre . . . ,” said Rhonda.

  “What was that all about?” her mother asked.

  And since she didn’t want to get into it, Rhonda said, “Nothing important,” which irritated her mother, just as it was intended to.

  Then she went back to the kitchen, where she found her ramen had gotten cold. Great.

  • • •

  Citra felt both relieved and humiliated at once. For years she had held onto this secret crime. Her gripe with Rhonda had been petty, as most childhood resentments are. It was the way Rhonda always spoke of her dancing as if she were the most talented ballerina in the world. Citra was in the same dance class, back in that magical childhood time when little girls nurtured the delusion that they were as graceful as they were cute.

  Rhonda had led the pack in disabusing Citra of that delusion through eyeball rolls and exasperated exhales each time Citra took an imperfect step.

  The push wasn’t premeditated. It was a crime of opportunity, and that one act had cast a shadow over Citra that she hadn’t even realized until she faced the girl today.

  And Rhonda didn’t even care. It was water under a very old bridge. Citra felt stupid about the whole thing now.

  “You realize that in the Age of Mortality, you would have been treated much differently.” Scythe Curie didn’t look at her as she spoke—she never looked away from the road when she was driving. Citra was still getting used to the odd habit. How strange to actually have to see the path of your journey in order to make it.

  “If it was the Age of Mortality, I wouldn’t have done it,” Citra told her with confidence, “because I’d know she wouldn’t be back. Pushing her then would have been more like gleaning.”

  “They had a word for it. ‘Murder.’”

  Citra chuckled at the archaic word. “That’s funny. Like a bunch of crows.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t funny at the time.” She did a quick maneuver to avoid a squirrel on the winding road. Then Scythe Curie took a rare moment to glance over at Citra, when the road ahead straightened. “So now the penance you’ve given yourself is to be a scythe, forever doomed to take lives as punishment for that one childhood act.”

  “I didn’t give it to myself.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  Citra opened her mouth to answer, but then stopped. Because what if Scythe Curie was right? What if, deep down, Citra had accepted the apprenticeship with Scythe Faraday to punish herself for the crime only she cared about. If so, it was an unusually harsh judgment. Had she been caught, or had she confessed, her punishment would have been a short suspension from school, at most, plus a fine for her parents, and a stern reprimand. It would even have had an up side: Her schoolmates would have been afraid to cross her.

  “The difference between you and most other people, Citra, is that another person would not have cared once that girl was revived. They would have simply forgotten about it. Scythe Faraday saw something in you when he chose you—perhaps the weight of your conscience.” And then she added, “It was that same weight that let me know you were lying in conclave.”

  “I’m actually surprised the Thunderhead didn’t see me push her,” Citra said off-handedly.  Then the scythe said something that began a chain reaction in Citra’s mind that changed everything.

  “I’m sure it did,” she said. “The Thunderhead sees just about everything, what with cameras everywhere. But it also decides what infractions are worth the effort to address and which ones are not.”

  • • •

  The Thunderhead sees just about everything.

  It had a record of practically every human interaction since the moment it became aware—but unlike in mortal days, that knowledge was never abused. Before the Thunderhead achieved consciousness, when it was merely known as “the cloud,” criminals—and even public agencies—would find ways into people’s private doings, against the law, and exploit that information. Every school child knew of the information abuses that nearly brought down civilization before the Thunderhead condensed into power. Since that time there had not been a single breach of personal information. People waited for it. People prophesized doom at the hands of a soulless machine. But apparently the machine had a purer soul than any human.

  It watched the world from millions of eyes, listened from millions of ears. It either acted, or chose not to act on, the countless things it perceived.

  Which meant that somewhere in its memory lurked a record of Scythe Faraday’s movements on the day his life ended.

  Citra knew it was probably a pointless endeavor to track those movements, but what if Faraday’s demise was not an act of self-gleaning at all? What if he was pushed, just as Citra had pushed Rhonda all those years ago? But this wouldn’t have been a childish crime of the moment. It would have been cruelly premeditated. What if Faraday’s death was, to use the word Scythe Curie had taught her, murder?

  * * *

  As a young man, I marveled at the stupidity and hypocrisy of the mortal age. In those days, the purposeful act of ending human life was considered the most heinous of crimes. How ridiculous! I know how hard it is to imagine that what is now humanity’s highest calling was once considered a crime. How small-minded and hypocritical mortal man was, for even as they despised the enders of life, they loved nature—which, in those days, took every human life ever conceived. Nature deemed that to be born was an automatic sentence to death, and then brought about that death with vicious consistency.

  We changed that.

  We are now a force greater than nature.

  For this reason, scythes must be as loved as a glorious mountain vista, as revered as a redwood forest, and as respected as an approaching storm.

  —From the gleaning journal of H.S. Goddard

  * * *

  20

  Guest of Honor

  I am going to die.

  Rowan had begun repeating this to himself like a mantra, hoping it would make it easier to digest. Yet he seemed no closer to accepting it. Even under different scythes, the edict pronounced at conclave still stood. He would kill Citra at the end of their apprenticeship, or she would kill him. It was too juicy a bit of drama for the scythes to cancel just because they were no longer apprentices of Scythe Faraday. Rowan knew he could not kill Citra. And the only way to avoid the possibility would be to throw the competition; to perform so poorly between now and the final conclave that they had no choice but to grant scythehood to Citra. Then, her first honor-bound duty would be to glean Rowan. He trusted she would make it quick, and that she would be merciful. The trick would be to not make his failure obvious. He must appear to be doing his best. No one must know his true plan. He was up to the task.

  I am going to die.

  Befor
e that fateful day in the principal’s office with Kohl Whitlock, Rowan hadn’t even known anyone who died. Gleaning had always been at least three degrees removed. The relative of someone who knew someone he knew. But over the past four months, he’d witnessed dozens upon dozens of gleanings firsthand.

  I am going to die.

  Eight more months. He would see his seventeenth birthday, but not much more. Even though it would be his choice, the thought of being just another statistic for the scythes’ records infuriated him. His life had been a whole lot of nothing. Lettuce-kid. He had thought the label was funny—a badge of honor—but now it was an indictment. His was a life without substance, and now it would end. He should never have accepted Scythe Faraday’s invitation to be a scythe’s apprentice. He should have just gone on with his unremarkable life—because then, maybe, just maybe, he might have had the chance to do something remarkable with it in time.

  “You’ve barely said a word since you got into the car.”

  “I’ll talk when I have something to say.”

  He rode with Scythe Volta in an off-grid Rolls Royce perfectly maintained since the Age of Mortality, the scythe’s yellow robe in stark contrast to the dark earth tones of the vehicle’s interior. Volta didn’t do the driving; there was a chauffeur. They wove through a neighborhood where the homes became increasingly larger and the grounds more vast, until the residences disappeared entirely behind gates and ivy-covered walls.

  Volta, one of Goddard’s disciples, had golden citrine gems embedded in his yellow robe. He was clearly a junior scythe, just a few years out of apprenticeship, in his early twenties perhaps—still an age where numbering one’s years felt important. His features and skin tone had an Afric leaning, which made the yellow of his garment seem even brighter.

  “So is there a reason why you chose your robes to be the color of piss?”

  Volta laughed. “I think you’ll fit in just fine. Scythe Goddard likes those close to him to be as sharp as his blades.”

  “Why do you follow him?”

  The honest question seemed to bother him more than the urinary barb. Volta became the tiniest bit defensive. “Scythe Goddard is a visionary. He sees our future. I’m much more interested in being a part of the Scythedom’s future than its past.”

  Rowan turned back to the window. The day was bright but the tinted windows dimmed it, as if they were in the midst of a partial eclipse. “You glean people by the hundreds. Is that the future you mean?”

  “We have the same quota as all other scythes,” was all Volta said on the matter.

  Rowan turned back to look at Volta, who now seemed to have trouble keeping eye contact. “Who did you train under?” Rowan asked.

  “Scythe Nehru.”

  Rowan seemed to recall Scythe Faraday chatting with Scythe Nehru during conclave. They appeared to be on good terms.

  “How does he feel about you hanging around with Goddard?”

  “To you, he’s Honorable Scythe Goddard,” Volta said, a bit indignant. “And I couldn’t care less how Scythe Nehru feels. Old-guard scythes have obsolete ideas. They’re too set in their ways to see the wisdom of the Change.”

  He spoke of “the Change” as if it were a tangible thing. A thing that, by its very weight, could make a person strong simply by pushing it.

  They stopped at a pair of wrought iron gates, which slowly swung open to admit them. “Here we are,” said Volta.

  A quarter-mile driveway ended at a palatial estate. A servant greeted them and led them into the mansion.

  Rowan was immediately assaulted by loud dance music. There were people everywhere, reveling as if it were New Year’s Eve. The whole estate seemed to undulate in the throes of the relentless beat. People laughing, drinking, and laughing some more. Some of the guests were scythes—and not just Goddard’s obvious disciples, other scythes as well. There were also some minor celebrities. The rest seemed to be beautiful people who were probably professional party guests. His friend Tyger aspired to be one of those. A lot of kids said that, but Tyger really meant it.

  The servant led them out back to a huge pool that seemed more suited to a resort than a home. There were waterfalls and a swim-up bar, and more beautiful people happily bobbing. Scythe Goddard was in a cabana beyond the deep end, its front open to the festivities before him. He was attended by more than one fawning bimbotech. He wore his signature royal blue robe, but as Rowan got closer, he could see it was a sheerer variation than the one he had worn at conclave. His leisure robe. Rowan wondered if the man had a diamond-studded bathing suit in his wardrobe as well.

  “Rowan Damisch!” said Scythe Goddard as they approached. He told a servant passing with a tray of drinks to give Rowan a glass of champagne. When Rowan didn’t take it, Scythe Volta grabbed one and put it in Rowan’s hand before disappearing into the throng, leaving Rowan to fend for himself.

  “Please—enjoy,” said Goddard. “I serve only Dom Pérignon.”

  Rowan took a sip, wondering if an underage scythe’s apprentice could get marked down for drinking. Then he remembered that such rules didn’t apply to him anymore. So he took another sip.

  “I arranged this little bacchanal in your honor,” the scythe said, gesturing to the party around them.

  “What do you mean, in my honor?”

  “Exactly that. This is your party. Do you like it?”

  The surreal display of excess was even more intoxicating than the champagne, but did he like it? Mostly he just felt weird, and weirder still to know that he was the guest of honor.

  “I don’t know. I’ve never had a party before,” Rowan told him. It was true—his parents had seen so many birthdays by the time Rowan was born, they had stopped celebrating them. He was lucky if they even remembered to get him a gift.

  “Well then,” said Scythe Goddard, “let this be the first of many.”

  Rowan had to remind himself that this man with the perfect smile, secreting charisma instead of sweat, was the man who had manipulated him and Citra into mortal competition. But it was hard not to be dazzled by his style. And as distasteful as all this spectacle was, it still made his adrenaline flow.

  The scythe patted the seat beside him for Rowan to sit, and Rowan took his place at the scythe’s right hand.

  “Doesn’t the eighth commandment say that a scythe can’t own anything but his robe, ring, and journal?”

  “Correct,” said Scythe Goddard brightly. “And I own none of this. The food is donated by generous benefactors, the guests are here by choice, and this fine estate has been graciously loaned to me for as long as I choose to grace its halls.”

  Upon the mention of the estate, a man cleaning the pool looked up at them for a moment before returning to his labors.

  “You should reread the commandments,” Scythe Goddard said. “You’ll find that nothing in them demands that scythes shun the creature comforts that make life worth living. That bleak interpretation by old-guard scythes is a relic from another time.”

  Rowan did not offer any further opinion on the subject. It was Scythe Faraday’s humble and serious “old-guard” nature that had made an impression on Rowan. Had he been approached by Scythe Goddard with enticements of rock star glamour in exchange for the taking of lives, he would have declined. But Faraday was dead, and Rowan was here, looking out on strangers that were here for his benefit.

  “If it’s my party, shouldn’t it have people I know?”

  “A scythe is a friend to the world. Open your arms and embrace it.” It seemed Scythe Goddard had an answer for everything. “Your life is about to change, Rowan Damisch,” he said, waving his arm to indicate the pool and the partiers and the servants and the elaborate spread of food just past the shallow end that kept being replenished. “In fact, it already has.”

  Among the party guests was a girl who seemed markedly out of place. She was young—nine or ten at the most, and completely oblivious to the party around her as she frolicked in the shallow end of the pool.

  “It loo
ks like one of your guests brought their kid to the party,” Rowan commented.

  “That,” said Goddard, “is Esme, and you would be wise to treat her well. She is the most important person you will meet today.”

  “How so?”

  “That chubby little girl is the key to the future. So you’d better hope she likes you.”

  Rowan would have continued picking at Goddard’s enigmatic responses, but his attention was grabbed by a beautiful party girl approaching in a bikini that seemed almost painted on. Rowan realized a moment too late that he was staring. She grinned and he blushed, looking away.

  “Ariadne, would you be so kind as to give my apprentice a massage?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” said the girl.

  “Uh . . . maybe later,” Rowan said.

  “Nonsense,” said the scythe. “You need to loosen up, and Ariadne has magical hands skilled in Swedish technique. Your body will thank you.”

  She took Rowan by the hand, and that killed any resistance. He rose and let himself be led away.

  “If our young man is pleased by your efforts,” Scythe Goddard called after them, “I will allow you to kiss my ring.”

  As Ariadne led him to the massage tent, Rowan thought, In eight months I am going to die. So perhaps he could allow himself a little indulgence on the way.

  * * *

  I am disturbed by those who revere us far more than those who disdain us. Too many put us on a pedestal. Too many long to be one of us—and knowing that they can never be makes their longing even greater, for all scythes are apprenticed in their youth.

  It is either naivete in thinking that we are somehow of a higher order of being, or it is the product of a depraved heart—for who but the depraved would revel in the taking of life?

  For a time years ago, there were groups who would emulate and imitate us. They would fashion robes like those of scythes. They would wear rings that looked similar to ours. For many it was just costume play, but some would actually pretend to be scythes, fooling others, granting false immunity. Everything short of gleaning.