فصل 3

We have wished Scythes Anastasia and Curie luck on their trip to Endura and the inquest against Goddard. I can only hope that the Grandslayers, in their wisdom, will disqualify him, thereby ending his bid for High Blade. As for Munira and me, we must travel halfway around the world to find the answers we seek.

My faith in this perfect world now hangs by the final thread of a fraying tether. That which was perfect will not remain so for long. Not while our own flaws fill the cracks and crevices, eroding all that we have labored to create.

Only the Thunderhead is beyond reproach, but I do not know its mind. I share none of its thoughts, for I am a scythe, and the Thunderhead’s realm is beyond my reach, just as my solemn work is outside of its global jurisdiction.

The founding scythes feared our own hubris—feared that we couldn’t maintain the virtue, selflessness, and honor that our job as scythes requires. They worried that we might grow so full of ourselves—so bloated by our own enlightenment—that we would, like Icarus, fly too close to the sun.

For more than two hundred years we have proved ourselves worthy. We have lived up to their grand expectations. But things have changed in the blink of an eye.

There is, I know, a fail-safe left by the founding scythes. A contingency should the scythedom fail. But if I find it, will I have the courage to take action?

—From the “postmortem” journal of Scythe Michael Faraday, March 31st, Year of the Raptor 3 An Invigorating Way to Start One’s Week

On the day that Endura sank, a small, off-grid plane flew to a place that didn’t exist.

Munira Atrushi, a former night librarian at the Great Library of Alexandria, was the passenger. Scythe Michael Faraday was the pilot.

“I learned to pilot aircraft in my early years as a scythe,” Faraday told her. “I find that flying a plane is calming. It brings one’s mind to a different, more peaceful place.” That might work for him, but apparently it didn’t work for passengers, because every bump had Munira white-knuckling her seat.

Munira was never a fan of air travel. Yes, it was perfectly safe, and no one had been known to be permanently killed by an airplane. The one post-mortal incident on record took place more than fifty years before she was born, involving a passenger liner that had the profoundly bad luck to be struck by a meteorite.

The Thunderhead immediately ejected all the passengers to avoid the inevitable crash and burn. Instead, they were quickly rendered deadish by the rarefied air at cruising altitude. Within seconds they were frozen solid by the cold and fell to the forest far below. Ambudrones were dispatched even before they landed, and recovered each and every body within an hour. They were brought to revival centers, and in a couple of days they happily boarded a new flight to their destination.

“An invigorating way to start one’s week,” one of the passengers had quipped in an interview.

Be that as it may, Munira still did not like planes. She knew her fear was completely irrational. Or at least it had been irrational until Scythe Faraday pointed out that once they crossed out of known airspace, they’d be on their own.

“Once we’re in the Pacific ‘blind spot,’ no one will be tracking us—not even the Thunderhead,” Faraday told her. “No one will know if we live or die.” It meant that if they did have the bad luck of being struck by a meteorite, or met with some other unexpected catastrophe, no ambudrones would arrive to airlift them to a revival center. They would stay dead just as permanently as mortals once did. Just as irrevocably as if they were gleaned.

It didn’t help that the plane was being flown by Faraday instead of being allowed to fly itself. She trusted the venerable scythe, but still, he was, like everyone else, subject to human error.

This was all her own fault. She was the one who had deduced that the Thunderhead had a blind spot in the South Pacific. A spot filled with islands. Or, more accurately, atolls—ridges of ancient volcanoes that now formed a series of circular island chains. This was an entire region hidden from the Thunderhead—and indeed the world—by the founding scythes. The question was why?

Just three days ago, they had met with Scythes Curie and Anastasia to tell them of their suspicions. “Be careful, Michael,” Scythe Curie had said. The fact that Curie was concerned with what they had uncovered was troubling to Munira. Scythe Curie was fearless… and yet she feared for them. That was no small thing.

Faraday, too, had his misgivings, but he chose not to share them with Munira. Better she see him as stalwart. After that meeting, they had made their way, ever incognito, to WestMerica using commercial transit. The rest of the way would be by private craft; they just had to get themselves a plane. While Faraday was entitled to take anything he wanted, no matter how large or who it belonged to, he rarely did so. It was always his objective to leave as small a footprint as possible on the lives of those he encountered. Unless, of course, his purpose was to glean them. In that case, his footprint would be definitive, and heavy.

He had not gleaned a single soul since faking his own death. As a dead man, he could not take life—because if he did, the scythedom would be alerted, as the scythedom database logged all gleanings by way of his ring. He had considered disposing of it, but chose not to. It was a matter of honor, a matter of pride. He was still a scythe and would not disrespect the ring by parting with it.

He found that he missed gleaning less and less as time went on. Besides, right now he had other things to do.

Once in WestMerica, they spent a day in Angel City, a place that, in mortal days, was the subject of much glittering fascination and personal misery. Now it was just a theme park. Then the following morning, Faraday donned his robe, which he hadn’t worn much since slipping off the scythedom’s radar, went to a marina, and appropriated the best seaplane there: an eight-passenger amphibious jet.

“Make sure we have sufficient fuel cells for a transpacific journey,” he told the manager of the marina. “We intend to depart as soon as possible.” Faraday was a formidable figure already without the robe. Munira had to admit that with his robe, he was commanding in a way that only the best scythes are.

“I’ll have to talk to the owner,” the marina manager said with a quiver in his voice.

“No,” Faraday calmly told him. “You’ll have to tell the owner after we’ve gone, as I have no time to wait. Inform them that the craft shall be returned once I’m done with it, and I shall pay a sizeable rental fee.” “Yes, Your Honor,” said the man, for what else could he say to a scythe?

While Faraday was alert at the controls, Munira kept checking to make sure he wasn’t dozing or losing focus. And she counted every pocket of turbulence they hit on the way. Seven so far.

“If the Thunderhead controls weather, why doesn’t it smooth out the flight channels?” she griped.

“It doesn’t control weather,” Faraday pointed out. “The Thunderhead merely influences it. And besides, the Thunderhead cannot intervene for a scythe, no matter how much his esteemed associate despises choppy air.” Munira appreciated that he did not refer to her as his assistant anymore. She had proved herself to be much more than that by finding the blind spot in the first place. Curse her own ingenuity! She could have happily stayed at the Library of Alexandria none the wiser, but she had to be curious. And what was that old mortal-age saying? Curiosity was a cat killer?

As they flew over featureless Pacific seas, a strange and sudden feedback began to wail over their radio. It was nearly deafening, and it lasted for almost a minute, even after Faraday had tried to turn it off. Munira felt her eardrums would burst from it, and Faraday had to let go of the controls just to cover his ears, which sent them careening wildly. Then the terrible sound stopped just as abruptly as it had begun. Faraday quickly regained control of the plane.

“What on Earth was that?” Munira asked, her ears still ringing.

Faraday kept both hands on the controls, still getting over it himself. “My guess is that it’s some sort of electromagnetic barrier. I believe that means we’ve just crossed into the blind spot.” Neither of them gave the noise much thought after that. And neither had any way of knowing that the same sound had been heard simultaneously all over the world—a sound that would come to be known in certain circles as “the Great Resonance.” It was the moment that marked the sinking of Endura, as well as the Thunderhead’s global silence.

But as Faraday and Munira were out of the Thunderhead’s sphere of influence once they finally did cross into the blind spot, they remained unaware of anything in the outside world.

From so high up, the submerged volcanic craters of the Marshall Atolls were clearly visible—massive lagoons within the dots and ribbons of the many islands that rimmed them. Ailuk Atoll, Likiep Atoll. There were no buildings, no docks, no visible ruins at all to suggest that people had ever been here. There were many wilderness areas around the world, but those places were all meticulously maintained by the Thunderhead’s wilderness corps. Even in the deepest, darkest forests there were communication towers and ambudrone pads, should visitors find themselves seriously injured or temporarily killed. But out here, there was nothing. It was eerie.

“People lived here once, I’m sure,” Faraday said. “But the founding scythes either gleaned them or, more likely, relocated them outside of the blind spot, to keep all activities here as secret as possible.” Finally, in the distance ahead, Kwajalein Atoll came into view.

“ ’So let’s escape, due south of Wake, and make for the Land of Nod,’ ” said Faraday, quoting the old nursery rhyme. And here they were, seven hundred miles due south of Wake Island, in the very center of the blind spot.

“Are you excited, Munira?” Faraday asked. “To know what Prometheus and the other founding scythes knew? To unravel the riddle they left for us?” “There’s no guarantee we’ll find anything,” Munira pointed out.

“Always the optimist.”

As all scythes knew, the founding scythes claimed to have prepared a fail-safe for society, should their whole concept of the scythedom not succeed. An alternative solution to the immortality problem. No one took it seriously anymore. Why should they, when the scythedom had been the perfect solution for a perfect world for over two hundred years? No one cared about a fail-safe until something failed.

If Scythes Curie and Anastasia were successful on Endura, and Scythe Curie became the High Blade of MidMerica, perhaps the scythedom could be turned from the ruinous path Goddard would take it on. But if not, the world just might need a fail-safe.

They dropped to five thousand feet, and as they approached, details of the atoll came into view. Lush groves and sandy beaches. The main island of Kwajalein Atoll was shaped like a long, slender boomerang—and here they finally saw something that was evident nowhere else in the blind spot. Telltale signs that there had once been a human presence here; strips of low growth that used to be roads: foundations outlining spots where buildings once stood.

“Jackpot!” said Faraday, and pushed the stick forward, dropping their altitude for a closer look.

Munira could actually feel her nanites registering her relief.

At last, all was well.

Until the moment that it wasn’t.

“Unregistered aircraft, please identify.”

It was an automated message barely audible through waves of powerful interference, with a generated voice that sounded too human to actually be human.

“Not to worry,” Faraday said, then transmitted the universal identification code used by the scythedom. A moment of silence and then: “Unregistered aircraft, please identify.”

“This is not good,” said Munira.

Faraday threw her a half-hearted scowl, then spoke into the transmitter again.

“This is Scythe Michael Faraday of MidMerica, requesting permission to approach the main island.” Another moment of silence, and then the voice said:

“Scythe ring detected.”

Both Faraday and Munira relaxed.

“There,” said Faraday. “All better now.”

Then the voice spoke again.

“Unregistered aircraft, please identify.”

“What? I said I’m Scythe Michael Faraday—”

“Scythe not recognized.”

“Of course it won’t acknowledge you,” Munira told him. “You weren’t even born when this system was put in place. It probably thinks you’re an imposter with a stolen ring.” “Blast!”

Which is exactly what the island did. A laser pulse shot out from somewhere on the island and took out their left engine with a reverberating boom that they could feel in their bones, as if they had been struck, and not the plane.

This was everything that Munira had feared. The culmination of all her worst-case scenarios. And yet in spite of that, she found courage and clarity in the moment that she hadn’t expected to find. The plane had a safety pod. Munira had even checked it before takeoff just to make sure it was in working order.

“The pod’s aft,” she told Faraday. “We have to hurry!”

Still, he remained obstinately on the static-filled radio. “This is Scythe Michael Faraday!” “It’s a machine,” Munira reminded him, “and not a very smart one. It can’t be reasoned with.” The proof of that was a second shot that shattered the windshield and set the cockpit on fire. At a higher altitude they would have been sucked out, but they were low enough to be spared from explosive decompression.

“Michael!” yelled Munira, using his first name, which she had never done before. “It’s no use!” Their wounded craft had already begun a lopsided dive toward the sea; there was no saving the plane now, not even by the most skilled of pilots.

Finally, Faraday gave up, left the cockpit, and together they fought the angle of the diving jet to reach the safety pod. They climbed inside but couldn’t pull it closed, because his robe kept getting caught in the latch.

“Damn this thing!” he growled, and tugged so hard that the hem ripped—but the latch was now free. The mechanism sealed them inside, gel-foam expanded to fill the remaining space, and the pod ejected.

The safety pod had no window, so there was no way to see what was going on around them. There was nothing but a sense of extreme dizziness as the pod tumbled free from the crashing plane.

Munira gasped as needles penetrated her body. She knew they were coming, but still it was a shock. They caught her in at least five places.

“I despise this part,” groaned Faraday, who, having lived as long as he had, must have experienced a safety pod before, but it was all new and horrifying to Munira.

Safety pods were specifically designed to render the subjects within unconscious—so that anyone who was injured by the pod’s landing would remain unconscious while their own nanites healed them. Then they would awaken unscathed after however many hours it took to repair the damage—and if death occurred, then they’d be whisked to a revival center. Like those passengers in the meteor strike, they would wake up and feel exhilarated by it all.

Except that would not happen to Munira and Faraday way out here, if the fall killed them.

“If we die,” said Faraday, his words already slurring, “I am truly sorry, Munira.” She wanted to respond but found herself slipping out of consciousness before she could.

There was no sense of time passing.

One moment, Munira was tumbling in darkness with Faraday, and the next, she was looking up at swaying palm trees that shaded her from the sun. She was still in the pod, but the lid had popped open, and she was alone. She sat up, wriggling out of the form-fitting foam.

Near the tree line, Faraday roasted a fish on a stick over a small fire, and drank coconut water straight from the coconut. A bit of torn linen trailed from his robe in the sand, the spot where it had caught on the latch. The hem was muddy. It seemed odd to see the great Scythe Michael Faraday in a robe that wasn’t pristine and perfect.

“Ah,” he said jovially, “you’re awake at last!” He handed her the coconut for a sip.

“A miracle we survived,” she said. Only when she smelled the fish he was roasting did she realize how hungry she was. The pod was designed to keep its occupants hydrated for days but provided no actual nutrition. Her hunger attested to the fact that they had been there healing within the pod for at least a day or two.

“We almost didn’t survive,” Faraday told her, giving her the fish, and skewering another. “According to the pod’s record, there was a failure of the parachute—probably hit by a piece of debris, or it took a laser strike. We hit the water hard, and in spite of the foam padding, we both suffered grade-three concussions and multiple rib fractures. You also had a ruptured lung—which is why it took a few more hours for your nanites to heal you than mine.” The pod, which had a propulsion system for a water landing, had powered them safely to shore and was now half-buried in the sand, having endured two days of rising and falling tides.

Munira glanced around, and Faraday must have read the look on her face, because he said, “Oh, don’t worry; the defensive system apparently only tracks incoming craft. The pod came down close enough to the island not to be noticed.” As for as their plane—the one Faraday had promised to return to its owner—it was now in pieces at the bottom of the Pacific.

“We are officially castaways!” Faraday said.

“Then why are you so damn happy?”

“Because we’re here, Munira! We did it! We have achieved something that no one since the birth of the post-mortal age has achieved! We’ve found the Land of Nod!” The Kwajalein Atoll seemed like a small place from the sky, but now that they were on the ground, it felt massive. The main island wasn’t very wide but seemed to stretch on forever. There was evidence of old infrastructure everywhere—so, hopefully, what they were looking for would be here, and not on one of the outlying islands. The problem was they didn’t know what, exactly, they were looking for.

They explored for days, slowly zigzagging back and forth across the island from dawn until dusk, keeping a record of the relics they found—and there were relics everywhere. The broken pavement of roads that had long since given way to a new-growth forest. Stone foundations that had once supported buildings. Tumbled piles of rusted iron and worn steel.

They dined on fish and wild fowl, which were plentiful on the island, as were whimsically varied fruit trees that were clearly not indigenous. Most likely they had been cultivated in backyards, and were still here long after the homes and yards had gone.

“What if we don’t find anything?” Munira had asked early into their exploration.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said.

“There are no bridges,” she reminded him.

For the first few days—aside from the stubby defensive tower, which had sealed itself shut like some vertical sarcophagus—they had found little more than broken porcelain from old sinks and toilets, and plastic containers that would probably remain there unchanged until the sun went nova and devoured the inner planets. This place might be a mecca for archaeologists, but it brought the pair no closer to finding what they had come for.

Then, toward the end of the first week, they crested a berm to find a sand-covered expanse too geometric to be natural. Just a little bit of shallow digging revealed a layer of concrete so thick that barely anything had taken root in it. There was a sense of purpose to the place, although they couldn’t tell what that purpose might have been.

And there against the side of the berm, almost entirely hidden by vines, was a moss-covered doorway. The entrance to a bunker.

As they cleared the vines away, they found a security panel. Anything written or etched into it had been eroded away, but what remained told the only tale it needed to tell. The panel had an indentation that was the exact size and shape as the gem on a scythe ring.

“I’ve seen these before,” said Faraday. “In older scythe buildings, our rings would serve as entry keys. They actually used to have a purpose beyond granting immunity and looking impressive.” He raised his fist and pressed his ring to the indentation. They could hear the mechanism unlatch, but it took the two of them to force the old doors open.

They had brought flashlights that had been among the scant supplies in the safety pod. Now they shined them into the musty darkness as they entered a corridor that angled downward at a steep slope.

The bunker, unlike the island, was untouched by time, save for a fine layer of dust. A single wall had cracked, and roots pushed forth like an ancient tentacled creature forcing slow entry, but other than that, the outside world remained outside.

Finally, the corridor opened into a space with multiple workstations. Old screens of antique computer consoles. It reminded Munira of the secret room beneath the Library of Congress where they had found the map that led them here. That place had been cluttered, but this one was left in perfect order. Chairs were pushed against desks, as if by a cleaning crew. A coffee mug from a place that bore the name of a Herman Melville character sat beside a workstation, as if waiting for someone to fill it. This place had not been abandoned in a hurry. In fact, it hadn’t been abandoned at all—it had been prepared.

And Munira couldn’t shake the uncanny feeling that whoever had left it this way over two hundred years ago knew they were coming.