فصل 19

That door, that door, that accursed door!

I have not seen it for almost a year. I have sworn never to seek what lies behind it. I am done with it, just as I am done with the world, and yet there is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of that infernal door.

Were the founding scythes insane? Or perhaps they were wiser than anyone gave them credit for. Because by requiring two scythes present to open that door, it ensured that a madman like myself could not access the fail-safe, whatever it might be. Only two scythes in perfect agreement could breach the chamber and save the scythedom.

Fine. I could not care less. Let the world tear itself to shreds. Let the secrets of the founders remain hidden for all eternity. It serves them right for leaving it so well concealed. It was their choice to consign it to myth and nursery rhyme. To bury it in esoteric maps locked in arcane rooms. Did they truly expect someone to come along and solve their riddle? Let it all crumble to nothing. My sleep is peaceful without testing the weight of the world. I am responsible only for myself now. No gleaning. No endless moral quandaries. I have become a simple man, content with simple thoughts. The patching of my roof. The patterns of the tide. Yes, simple. I must remember not to complicate. I must remember.

But that damnable door! Perhaps the founders were not wise at all. Perhaps they were ignorant and terrified and sorely naive in their idealism. Here were twelve people who dared imagine themselves angels of death, clothing themselves in flamboyant robes just to be noticed. They must have seemed ridiculous until the day they actually did change the world.

Did they ever doubt themselves? They must have, because they had a backup plan. But would the backup plan of frightened revolutionaries be elegant? Or would it be ugly and reek of mediocrity? For, after all, it was the plan they didn’t choose.

What if their alternate solution is worse than the problem?

Which is one more reason to stop thinking about it, to renew my resolve to never, ever seek it, and to stay far, far away from that infuriating, detestable door.

—From the “postmortem” journal of Scythe Michael Faraday, June 1st, Year of the Ibex 19 Islet of Solitude

Faraday wanted no part of Kwajalein anymore. On the horizon he could see structures rising; ships came each week with more supplies, more workers toiling like drones to turn the atoll into something it was not. What was the Thunderhead up to in this place?

Kwajalein was his find. His triumphant discovery. The Thunderhead had brazenly jumped his claim. Although Faraday was curious, he didn’t give in to that curiosity. He was a scythe, and he flatly refused to have anything to do with a work of the Thunderhead.

He could have banished it from the atoll if he’d chosen to—after all, as a scythe, and above the law, he could demand anything, and the Thunderhead would have to abide by it. He could have proclaimed that it was not allowed within a hundred nautical miles of Kwajalein, and it would have had no choice but to retreat to the precise distance he had ordered it to, taking all its construction equipment and workers with it.

But Faraday didn’t assert his claim. He didn’t banish the Thunderhead.

Because ultimately, he trusted its instincts more than he trusted his own. So Faraday banished himself instead.

There were ninety-seven islands in the Kwajalein Atoll, making up the broken, dotted rim of a submerged volcanic crater. Surely he could claim one as his own. He set aside his mission in those early days and appropriated a small raft that had arrived with the first supply ships. Then he took it to one of the islands on the far rim of the atoll. The Thunderhead respected his choice and left him alone. It kept his tiny little island out of its plans.

But not the other islands.

Some of the islets were barely large enough for a person to stand upon, but on every one that could withstand construction, something was being built.

Faraday did his best to ignore it. He cobbled himself together a shack with tools he had taken from construction crews before he left. It wasn’t much, but he didn’t need much. It was a quiet place to live out his eternity. And eternity it would be—or at least a fair slice of it—because he decided he would not self-glean, though he was greatly tempted. He vowed to live at least as long as Goddard lived, if only to secretly spite him.

As a scythe, he had a responsibility to the world, but he was done with all that. He felt no guilt in defying that first all-important scythe commandment of Thou shalt kill. He had. It was sufficient. Knowing Goddard, he was sure there was plenty of that going on without him.

Was it wrong to be separate and apart from a world he’d come to despise? He had tried this once before—in Playa Pintada on the serene northern coast of Amazonia. He was only jaded then. He didn’t yet loathe the world, just mildly disliked it. It was Citra who had rousted him out of his complacency. Yes, Citra—and look what became of all her boldness and bright intentions. Now Faraday had gone beyond jaded to being downright misanthropic. What purpose could there be for a scythe who detested the world and everyone in it? No, this time he would not be pulled back into the fray. Munira might try to drag him in, but she would fail, and she would eventually give up.

She didn’t give up, of course, but he still held on to the hope that she would. Munira would come to see him once a week, bringing food and water and seeds to grow, although his patch of the world was too small and the soil too rocky to grow much of anything. She would bring fruit and other treats that he secretly enjoyed—but he never thanked her. Not for any of it. He hoped his ungrateful nature would finally put her off, and she’d return to Israebia, and the Library of Alexandria. That’s where she belonged. He should never have pulled her off her path. Another life ruined by his meddling.

On one particular visit, Munira brought him, of all things, a bag of artichokes.

“They don’t grow here, but I suppose the Thunderhead sensed a need, and they arrived on the last supply ship,” she told him.

This, although it might not appear like it to Munira, was a substantial development. A moment worthy of note. Because artichokes were Faraday’s favorite, which meant their delivery to the island was no accident. Although the Thunderhead did not interact with scythes, it clearly knew them. It knew him. And it was, in an indirect way, reaching out to him. Well, if this was some sort of sideways gesture of goodwill from the Thunderhead, it was buttering the wrong scythe. Still, he took the artichokes from Munira along with the other foodstuffs in the crate.

“I’ll eat them if I feel like it,” he said flatly.

Munira was not put off by his rudeness. She never was. She had come to expect it. Rely on it, even. As for her life on Kwajalein’s main island, it wasn’t all that different from her life before she came into Scythe Faraday’s service. She had lived a solitary existence, even when surrounded by people at the Library of Alexandria. Now she lived alone in the old bunker on an island surrounded by people, and only interacted when it suited her. She no longer had access to the scythe journals that filled the stone halls of the great library, but she had plenty of reading material. There were many crumbling books left behind by the mortals who had run this place before the rise of the Thunderhead and scythedom. Volumes of curious facts and fictions of people who lived each day of their lives with the ravages of age and relentless approach of death. The brittle pages were filled with melodramatic intrigue and passionate short-sightedness that seemed laughable now. People who believed that their slightest actions mattered and that they could find a sense of completion before death inevitably took them, along with everyone they ever knew and loved. It was entertaining reading, but hard for Munira to relate to at first… but the more she read, the more she came to understand the fears and the dreams of mortals. The trouble they all had living in the moment, in spite of the fact that the moment was all they had.

Then there were the recordings and journals left behind by the militaristic folk who had used the Marshall Atolls, as they were once called, for the testing of large-scale weaponry. Ballistic radiation bombs and such. These activities were also driven by fear, but masked behind a facade of science and professionalism. She read it all—and what would have been dry and reportorial to others was a tapestry of hidden history to Munira. She felt she had become an expert on what it must have been like to be mortal in a world before the benevolent protection of the Thunderhead, and the wise gleaning of scythes.

Not so wise anymore.

Gossip among the workers was filled with tales of mass gleanings—and not just in MidMerica, but in region after region. She wondered if the outside world had begun to, in some ways, resemble the mortal one. But rather than being fearful, the workers just seemed blasé.

“It never happens to us,” they would say, “or to anyone we know.”

Because, after all, a thousand people gleaned in a mass event was such a small drop in the bucket, it was hardly noticeable. What was noticeable, however, was that people tended to stay away from theaters and clubs, as well as to disassociate from unprotected social groups. “Why tempt the blade?” had become a common expression. So ever since the rise of Goddard’s new order, and the silence of the Thunderhead, people lived smaller lives. A sort of post-mortal feudalism, where people kept to themselves and didn’t bother with the tumultuous doings of the high and mighty and things that affected other people, in other places.

“I’m a bricklayer in paradise,” one of the workers on the main island told her. “My husband enjoys the sun, and my children love the beach. Why stress my emotional nanites by thinking of terrible things?” A fine philosophy until the terrible thing comes to you.

On the day Munira brought Faraday artichokes, she dined with him at the small table he had built and positioned on the beach, just above high tide. It afforded him a view of the structures rising in the distance. And in spite of what he said, he did roast the artichokes for them.

“Who’s running things over there?” Faraday asked, glancing at the other islands across the massive lagoon. He never usually asked about what was happening around the rest of the atoll—but tonight he did. Munira saw this as a good sign.

“The Nimbus agents call any of the shots that aren’t already taken care of by the Thunderhead,” she told him. “The construction workers call them Thunderrhoids, because they’re such a pain in the ass.” She paused, because she thought Faraday might laugh at that, but he didn’t. “Anyway, Sykora blusters like he’s in control, but it’s Loriana who gets things done.” “What sorts of things?” Faraday asked. “No, don’t tell me; I don’t wish to know.” Still, Munira pushed the conversation further, trying to bait his curiosity. “You wouldn’t recognize the place,” she said. “It’s become… like an outpost of civilization. A colony.” “I’m surprised Goddard hasn’t sent his emissaries here, to find out what the commotion is all about,” Faraday said.

“The outside world still doesn’t know this place exists,” Munira told him. “Apparently the Thunderhead has kept it a blind spot to everyone else.” Faraday gave her a dubious look. “You’re telling me that those supply ships don’t bring stories home about the place that’s not supposed to exist?” Munira shrugged. “The Thunderhead has always had projects in far-flung places. No one who’s come has left yet, and the people here have no idea where they even are, much less what they’re building.” “And what are they building?”

Munira took her time in answering. “I don’t know,” she told him. “But I have my suspicions. I’ll share them with you when they feel a little less foolish… and when you end your prolonged pouting.” “Pouting is a passing thing,” he told her dismissively. “What I have is a mind-set. I will not suffer this world again. It has done me no good.” “But you’ve done much good for it,” she reminded him.

“And received no reward for my efforts, only pain.”

“I didn’t think you were doing it to be rewarded.”

Faraday stood up from the table, indicating that the meal and the conversation were over. “When you come back next week, bring tomatoes. It’s been a long time since I had a good tomato.”