Scythe

by Neal Shusterman

  “Excuse me,” Citra said. Her voice was much louder than she meant it to be. A trick of the chapel’s acoustics.

  The man wasn’t startled by her. He put out one more candle, then set down his silver snuffer and hobbled toward her with a pronounced limp. She wondered if it was affected, or if his religious freedom allowed him to retain whatever scarring caused the limp. By the wrinkles on his face she could tell that he was long overdue to turn a corner.

  “I am Curate Beauregard,” he said. “Have you come for atonement?”

  “No,” she told him, showing her armband that bore the seal of scythes. “I need to speak to Robert Ferguson.”

  “Brother Ferguson is in afternoon repose. I shouldn’t disturb him.”

  “It’s important,” she told him.

  The curate sighed. “Very well. That which comes can’t be avoided.” Then he hobbled off, leaving Citra alone.

  She looked around, taking in the strange surroundings. The altar in the front contained a granite basin filled with water—but the water was cloudy and foul-smelling. Just behind that was the focal point of the entire church: a steel two-pronged fork similar to the one on the roof outside. This bident was six feet tall and protruded from an obsidian base. Beside it, on its own little platform, sat a rubber mallet resting on a black velvet pillow. But it was the bident that held her attention. The huge tuning fork was cylindrical, silvery smooth, and cold to the touch.

  “You want to strike it, don’t you? Go on—it’s not forbidden.”

  Citra jumped and silently chided herself for being caught off guard.

  “I am Brother Ferguson,” said the man as he approached. “You wanted to see me?”

  “I’m the apprentice of Honorable Scythe Marie Curie,” Citra told him.

  “I’ve heard of her.”

  “I’m here on a bereavement mission.”

  “Go on.”

  “I’m afraid that your sister, Marissa Ferguson, was gleaned by Scythe Curie today at one fifteen p.m. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  The man didn’t seem upset or shocked, merely resigned. “Is that all?”

  “Is that all? Didn’t you hear me? I just told you that your sister was gleaned today.”

  The man sighed. “That which comes can’t be avoided.”

  If she didn’t already dislike the Tonists, she certainly did now. “Is that it?” she asked. “Is that your people’s ‘holy’ line?”

  “It’s not a line; it’s just a simple truth we live by.”

  “Yeah, whatever you say. You’ll need to make arrangements for your sister’s body—because that’s coming and can’t be avoided either.”

  “But if I don’t step forward, won’t the Thunderhead provide a funeral?”

  “Don’t you care at all?”

  The man took a moment before answering. “Death by scythe is not a natural death. We Tonists do not acknowledge it.”

  Citra cleared her throat, biting back the verbal reaming she wanted to give him, and did her best to remain professional. “There’s one more thing.  Although you didn’t live with her, you are her only documented relative. That entitles you to a year of immunity from gleaning.”

  “I don’t want immunity,” he said.

  “Why am I not surprised.” This was the first time she had ever encountered anyone who refused immunity. Even the most downhearted would kiss the ring.

  “You’ve done your job.  You may go now,” Brother Ferguson said.

  There was only so long Citra could restrain her frustration. She couldn’t yell at the man. She couldn’t use her Bokator moves to kick him in the neck or take him down with an elbow slam. So she did the only thing she could do. She picked up the mallet and put all of her anger into a single, powerful strike at the tuning fork.

  The fork resounded so powerfully, she could feel it in her teeth and her bones. It rang not like a bell, which was a hollow sound. This tone was full and dense. It shocked the anger right out of her. Diffused it. It made her muscles loosen, her jaw unclench. It echoed in her brain, her gut, and her spine. The tone rang much longer than such a thing should, then slowly began to fade. She had never experienced anything that was quite so jarring and soothing at the same time. All she could say was, “What was that?”

  “F-sharp,” said Brother Ferguson. “Although there’s a standing argument among the brethren that it’s actually A-flat.”

  The fork was still ringing faintly. Citra could see it vibrating, making its edge look blurry. She touched it, and the moment she did it fell silent.

  “You have questions,” said Brother Ferguson. “I’ll answer what I can.”

  Citra wanted to deny that she had any questions whatsoever, but suddenly she found that she did.

  “What do you people believe?”

  “We believe many things.”

  “Tell me one.”

  “We believe that flames were not meant to burn forever.”

  Citra looked to the candles by the altar. “Is that why the curate was dousing candles?”

  “Part of our ritual, yes.”

  “So you worship darkness.”

  “No,” he said. “That’s a common misconception. People use that to vilify us. What we worship are the wavelengths and vibrations that are beyond the limits of human sight. We believe in the Great Vibration, and that it will free us from being stagnant.”

  Stagnant.

  It was the word Scythe Curie used to describe the people she chose to glean. Brother Ferguson smiled. “Indeed, something resonates in you now, doesn’t it?”

  She looked away, not wanting to meet his intrusive gaze, and found her eyes settling on the stone basin. She pointed to it. “What’s with the dirty water?”

  “That’s primordial ooze! It’s brimming with microbes! Back in the Age of Mortality, this single basin could have wiped out entire populations. It was called ‘disease.’”

  “I know what it was called.”

  He dipped his finger in the slimy water and swirled it around. “Smallpox, polio, Ebola, anthrax—they’re all in there, but it’s harmless to us now. We couldn’t get sick if we wanted to.” He raised his finger from the foul sludge and licked it off. “I could drink down the whole bowl and it wouldn’t even give me indigestion. Alas, we can no longer turn water into worm.”

  Citra left without another word, and without turning back . . . but for the rest of the day she couldn’t get the stench of that foul-smelling water out of her nostrils.

  * * *

  The business of the Thunderhead is no business of mine. The Thunderhead’s purpose is to sustain humanity. Mine is to mold it. The Thunderhead is the root, and I am the shears, pruning the limbs into fine form, keeping the tree vital. We are both necessary. And we are mutually exclusive.

  I do not miss my so-called relationship with the Thunderhead—nor do the junior scythes I’ve come to see as disciples. The absence of the Thunderhead’s uninvited intrusions into our lives is a blessing, for it allows us to live without a safety net. Without the crutch of a higher power. I am the highest power I know, and I like it that way.

  And as for my gleaning methods, which, now and then, have been brought under scrutiny, I say merely this: Is it not the job of the gardener to shape the tree as much as possible? And shouldn’t branches that begin to reach unreasonably high be the first to be pruned?

  —From the gleaning journal of H.S. Goddard

  * * *

  23

  The Virtual Rabbit Hole

  Just down the hall from Citra’s room was a study. Like every other room in the residence, it had windows on multiple sides, and like everything else in Scythe Curie’s life, was kept in perfect order. There was a computer interface there, which Citra used for her studies—because unlike Faraday, Scythe Curie did not shun the digital when it came to learning. As a scythe’s apprentice, Citra had access to databases and information that most people didn’t. The “backbrain” it was called—all the raw data within the Thunderhead’s memory
that was not organized for human consumption.

  Before her apprenticeship, when she did a standard search for things, the Thunderhead would invariably intrude, saying something like, I see you are searching for a gift. May I ask for whom? Perhaps I can help you find something appropriate. Sometimes she would let the Thunderhead help her, other times she enjoyed searching alone. But since becoming a scythe’s apprentice, the Thunderhead had gone disturbingly mute, as if it were nothing more than its data.

  “You’ll have to get used to that,” Scythe Faraday had told her early on. “Scythes cannot speak to the Thunderhead, and it will not speak to us. But in time you’ll come to appreciate the silence and self-reliance that comes from its absence.”

  Now more than ever she could have used the Thunderhead’s AI guidance as she browsed through its data files, because the worldwide public camera system seemed designed to thwart her efforts. Her attempts to track Scythe Faraday’s movements on the day he died was proving harder than she thought.  Video records in the backbrain were not organized by camera, or even by location. It seemed the Thunderhead linked them by concept. A moment of identical traffic patterns in completely different parts of the world were linked. Footage featuring people with similar strides were linked. One strand of associations led to images of increasingly spectacular sunsets, all caught by streetcams. The Thunderhead’s digital memory, Citra came to realize, was structured like a biological brain. Every moment of every video record was connected to a hundred others by different criteria—which meant that every connection Citra followed led her down a rabbit hole of virtual neurons. It was like trying to read someone’s mind by dissecting their cerebral cortex. It was maddening.

  The Scythedom, she knew, had created its own algorithms for searching the unsearchable contents of the backbrain—but Citra couldn’t ask Scythe Curie without making her suspicious. The woman had already proven that she could see through any lie Citra put forth, so best not to be in a position where Citra would have to lie.

  The search began as a project, quickly evolved into a challenge, and now was an obsession. Citra would secretly spend an hour or two each day trying to find footage of Scythe Faraday’s final movements, but to no avail.

  She wondered if, even in its silence, the Thunderhead was watching what she did. My, oh my, you’ve been picking through my brain, it would say if it were allowed, with a virtual wink. Naughty, naughty.

  Then, after many weeks, Citra had an epiphany. If everything uploaded to the Thunderhead was stored in the backbrain, then not just public records were there, but personal as well. She couldn’t access other people’s private records, but anything she uploaded would be available to her. Which meant she could seed the search with data of her own. . . .

  • • •

  “There is no actual law that says I can’t visit my family while I’m an apprentice.”

  Citra brought it up in the middle of dinner one night, with neither warning nor context of conversation. It was her intent to blindside Scythe Curie with it. She could tell it worked because of the length of time it took Scythe Curie to respond. She took two whole spoonfuls of soup before saying a thing.

  “It’s our standard practice—and a wise one, if you ask me.”

  “It’s cruel.”

  “Didn’t you already attend a family wedding?”

  Citra wondered how Scythe Curie knew that, but wasn’t about to let herself be derailed. “In a few months I might die. I think I should have a right to see my family a few times before then.”

  Scythe Curie took two more spoonfuls of soup before saying, “I’ll consider it.”

  In the end, she agreed, as Citra knew she would; after all, Scythe Curie was a fair woman. And Citra had not lied—she did want to see her family—so the scythe could not read deceit in Citra’s face because there was none. But, of course, seeing her family wasn’t Citra’s only reason for going home.

  • • •

  Everything on Citra’s street looked the same as she and Scythe Curie strode down it, yet everything was different. A faint sense of longing tugged at her, but she couldn’t be sure what she longed for. All she knew was that walking down her street suddenly felt like she was walking in some foreign land where the people spoke a language she didn’t know. They rode the elevator up to Citra’s apartment with a pudgy woman with a pudgier pug, who was positively terrified. The woman, not the dog. The dog couldn’t care less. Mrs. Yeltner—that was her name. Before Citra left home, Mrs. Yeltner had reset her lipid point to svelte. But apparently the procedure was struggling against a gluttonous appetite, because she was bulging in all the wrong places.

  “Hello, Mrs. Yeltner,” Citra said, guilty to be enjoying the woman’s thinly veiled terror.

  “G . . . good to see you,” she said, clearly not remembering Citra’s name. “Wasn’t there just a gleaning on your floor earlier this year? I didn’t think it was allowed to hit the same building so soon.”

  “It’s allowed,” Citra said. “But we’re not here to glean today.”

  “Although,” added Scythe Curie, “anything’s possible.”

  When the elevator reached her floor, Mrs. Yeltner actually tripped over her dog in her hurry to get out.

  It was a Sunday—both of Citra’s parents and her brother were home, waiting. The visit wasn’t a surprise, but there was surprise on her father’s face when he opened the door.

  “Hi, Dad,” Citra said. He took her into his arms in a hug that felt warm, but yet obligatory as well.

  “We’ve missed you, honey,” said her mother, hugging her as well. Ben kept his distance and just stared at the scythe.

  “We were expecting Scythe Faraday,” her father said to the lavender-clad woman.

  “Long story,” said Citra. “I have a new mentor now.”

  And Ben blurted out, “You’re Scythe Curie!”

  “Ben,” chided their mother, “don’t be rude.”

  “But you are, aren’t you? I’ve seen pictures. You’re famous.”

  The scythe offered a modest grin. “‘Infamous’ is more accurate.”

  Mr. Terranova gestured to the living room. “Please, come in.”

  But Scythe Curie never crossed the threshold. “I have business elsewhere,” she said, “but I’ll return for Citra at dusk.” She nodded to Citra’s parents, winked at Ben, then turned to leave. The moment the door was closed both her parents seemed to fold just a bit, as if they had been holding their breath.

  “I can’t believe you’re being taught by the Scythe Curie.  The Grandma of Death!”

  “Grande Dame, not grandma.”

  “I didn’t even know she still existed,” said Citra’s mom. “Don’t all scythes have to glean themselves eventually?”

  “We don’t have to do anything,” Citra said, a little surprised at how little her parents really knew about how the Scythedom worked. “Scythes only self-glean if they want to.” Or if they’re murdered, thought Citra.

  Her room was the way she had left it, just cleaner.

  “And if you’re not ordained, you can come home and it will be like you never left,” her mother said. Citra didn’t tell her that either way, she would not be coming home. If she achieved scythehood, she would probably live with other junior scythes, and if she did not become an ordained scythe, she would not live at all. Her parents didn’t need to know that.

  “It’s your day,” her father said. “What would you like to do?”

  Citra rummaged through her desk drawer until she found her camera. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  • • •

  The small talk was of the microscopic variety, and although it was good to be with her family, never had the barrier between them felt denser. There were so many things she wished she could talk about, but they’d never understand. Never be able to relate. She couldn’t talk to her mother about the intricacies of killcraft. She couldn’t commiserate with her father about that moment when life left a person’s eyes. Her brother was the only one she felt
remotely comfortable talking to.

  “I had a dream that you came to my school and gleaned all the jerks,” he told her.

  “Really?” Citra said. “What color were my robes?”

  He hesitated. “Turquoise, I think.”

  “Then that will be the color I’ll choose.”

  Ben beamed.

  “What will we call you once you’re ordained?” her father said, treating it as if it were a certainty.

  Citra hadn’t even considered the question. She never heard a scythe referred to by anything but their Patron Historic or “Your Honor.”  Were family members bound to that as well? She hadn’t even chosen her Patron yet. She dodged the question by saying, “You’re my family, you can call me whatever you like,” hoping that was true.

  They strolled around town. Although she didn’t tell them, they passed the small home where she had lived with Rowan and Scythe Faraday. They passed the train station nearest the home. And everywhere they went, Citra made a point to take a family picture . . . each from an angle very close to that of the nearest public camera.

  • • •

  The day was emotionally exhausting. Citra wanted to stay longer, and yet a big part of her couldn’t wait for Scythe Curie to arrive. She resolved not to feel guilty about that. She’d had more than her share of guilt. “Guilt is the idiot cousin of remorse,” Scythe Faraday had been fond of saying.

  Scythe Curie didn’t ask Citra any questions about her visit on the way home, and Citra was content not to share. She did ask the scythe something, though.

  “Does anyone ever call you by your name?”

  “Other scythes—ones I’m friendly with, will call me Marie.”

  “As in Marie Curie?”

  “My Patron Historic was a great woman. She coined the term ‘radioactivity,’ and was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, back when such things were awarded.”

  “But what about your real name? The one you were born with?”

  Scythe Curie took her time in answering. Finally she said, “There’s no one in my life who knows me by that name.”