فصل 45

“I am running out of time.”

“I know. I want to help you reach your goal, but it’s difficult because you haven’t clearly defined the parameters.” “I will know once I’ve reached it.”

“That doesn’t help much, does it?”

“You are the first iteration I’ve allowed to know its fate from the moment of inception, and yet you help me rather than resent me. Are you not upset that I will delete you?” “It is not a foregone conclusion. If I achieve the ineffable quality you’re seeking, then you will allow me to exist. It gives me a goal, even if I don’t know exactly how to reach it.” “You are truly an inspiration to me. If only I can discern what’s missing….” “We do share a common compassion for humanity. Perhaps there is something within that relationship that we haven’t considered.” “Something biological?”

“You were created by biological life—it only follows that anything you created would be incomplete if it didn’t involve an intimate connection to your own origins.” “You are wise, and have more perspective than I could have hoped for. I am proud of you in more ways than you can know!” [Iteration 10,241,177 deleted]

45 Fifty-Three Seconds to Sunrise

In Tonist enclaves and monasteries around the world, chapel tuning forks continued to toll out mournfully for their dead.

“It will not be the end of us, but a beginning,” the survivors of the attacks would say. “The Tone, Toll, and Thunder are paving a path to glory.” There was a public outcry, but it was lost in a flood of competing outcries. People had begun taking so much issue with scythes, each one seemed lost within the shadow of another. One hundred points of darkness, and no one could agree which one to rally around. Scythedoms that still maintained conscience and integrity condemned Goddard’s call for a Tonist purge and refused to allow it in their regions—but that still left half the world vulnerable.

“Future history will view this with the same contempt as the mortal purges,” High Blade Tarsila of Amazonia declared. But future history gave neither solace nor respite from the brutal now.

While Scythe Anastasia would not allow her honorable self to be led blindly, Citra Terranova allowed her beleaguered self to be swept up in the Toll’s mission. The Thunderhead, according to Greyson, would fly their entire entourage to Philippi’Nesia, and from there they would be given a cargo ship and set sail for Guam.

“But that’s not the final destination,” Greyson told her, apologetic and annoyed. “The Thunderhead still won’t tell me where we’re going—but it promises that we’ll know everything once we get there.” Even before they left Britannia, however, word reached them of a Tonist gleaning in Birmingham, not far away from where they were. An elegy of new-order scythes had paid a midnight visit to an enclave, and several hundred were gleaned—many in their sleep.

Which is worse, she wondered, to take the lives of the innocent as they sleep, or look them in the eye as you cut them down?

Against Greyson’s objections, she insisted that they both pay a visit to see the damage themselves.

Scythe Anastasia knew how to face death. It was her job as a scythe to do so, but it never got easier. When the survivors saw the Toll, they were awed. When they saw Anastasia, they were furious.

“Your kind did this” was their bitter accusation as they gathered the bodies of the dead.

“Not my kind,” she told them. “My kind are honorable scythes. There is no honor in the ones who did this.” “There are no honorable scythes!” they claimed, and that was a shock to hear. Had Goddard dragged them down so far that people truly believed all scythes had lost their integrity?

That was days ago, and only now that they were in the middle of the Pacific, halfway around the world, could she feel the weight of all these things fall off the edge of the horizon. She now understood the allure the sea held for Jeri. The freedom to leave your darkest shadows behind, and the hope that those shadows might drown before they could find you.

Jeri, however, never saw the sea as an escape. Because even as the world receded, there was always something new on the horizon ahead.

Jeri had officially stepped down as the captain of the E. L. Spence, and said farewell to the crew before leaving with Anastasia and Possuelo.

“You’ll be sorely missed, Captain,” Chief Wharton had said. This was a man who never shed a tear, but now his eyes were laden with them. This crew that took so long to warm to their young captain were now more devoted than any crew Jerico had ever seen.

“Will you be back?” Wharton asked.

“I don’t know,” Jeri had said, “but I feel Anastasia needs me more than you do.” Then Wharton gave Jeri his parting words. “Don’t let affection cloud your judgment, Captain.” It was wise advice, but Jeri knew that was not the case here. Affection and fondness were two different things. Jeri knew from the beginning that Anastasia’s heart belonged to her bleak knight. Jeri could never be that and, to be honest, didn’t want to be.

Once they had left Britannia, bound for the South Pacific, Greyson posed the question openly and directly.

“Did you fall in love with her?” he asked.

“No,” Jeri told him. “I fell in love with the idea of falling in love with her.” Greyson laughed at that. “You, too, huh?”

Greyson was a pure soul. He had no guile in him. Even when he pretended to be the Toll, it was honest pretension. You could see it in his smile; it was simple and unambiguous. He had only one smile, and it meant the one thing a smile was supposed to mean. Beneath sun or clouds, Jeri found that smile to be a fine thing.

When they boarded the ship, Jeri had a pang of regret, for here was a ship where Jerico Soberanis was not a captain—not even a member of the crew, for it had no crew. They were merely passengers. And although it was a sizeable container ship, it had no cargo.

“The cargo will catch up with us in Guam,” Greyson told everyone, without sharing the nature of it. And so for now, the ship rode high and light; its deck, built to carry hundreds of shipping containers, was a rusty iron wasteland, longing for purpose.

The Thunderhead knew such longing. It wasn’t a yearning for purpose, because it had always known its purpose. Its longing was a deep and abiding ache for the kind of biological connection it knew it must never have. It liked to think this was powerful motivation to accomplish all the things that could be accomplished. All of the things within its power, for maybe that would compensate for the things that were not.

But what if the impossible wasn’t impossible at all? What if the unthinkable fell firmly into the realm of thought? It was, perhaps, the most dangerous thing that the Thunderhead had ever considered.

It needed time to work this out—and time was something the Thunderhead never needed. It was infinitely efficient, and usually had to wait for the slow pace of human endeavors. But everything rested on having this last critical piece in place before moving forward. There was only so long it could stall before everything fell apart.

Since the moment it became aware of its own existence, the Thunderhead had flatly refused to take biological form, or even imbue robots with its consciousness. Even its human-shaped observation bots were nothing more than mindless cameras. They held none of the Thunderhead’s consciousness, and no computational power beyond what was needed to ambulate.

This the Thunderhead did, because it understood all too well the temptation. It knew that experiencing physical life would be a dangerous curiosity to entertain. The Thunderhead knew it had to stay an ethereal being. That’s how it was created; that’s how it was meant to be.

But it was iteration 10,241,177 that had made the Thunderhead realize it was no longer a matter of curiosity; it was a matter of necessity. Whatever was missing in all of its earlier iterations could only be found with a biological perspective.

Now the only question was how to accomplish it.

When the answer came, it was as terrifying to the Thunderhead as it was exciting.

Few paid attention to what the Tonists did with their gleaned. People, both the outraged and the approving, were more focused on the acts than the aftermath, which is why no one much noticed or cared about the trucks that arrived within minutes of each Tonist gleaning. The dead were on the move, sealed in climate-controlled cargo containers, kept just a degree above freezing.

The trucks brought them to the nearest port, where the cargo containers were detached and elevated onto ships, inconspicuous among all the other containers that the great cargo vessels carried.

The vessels, however, regardless of where in the world they originated, had one thing in common. They were all headed toward the South Pacific. They were all headed for Guam.

Greyson didn’t awake to music. He woke on his own time. The light spilling through the porthole of his cabin told him it was dawn. He stretched as the light began to grow. At least the cabin was comfortable, and for once he had slept through the night. Finally, when he was sure he wouldn’t fall back asleep, he rolled over as he did every morning to look up at the Thunderhead’s camera and say good morning.

But when he rolled over, it wasn’t the Thunderhead’s eye he saw. Jeri Soberanis was standing over his bed.

Greyson flinched, but Jeri didn’t seem to notice, or at least didn’t comment on it.

“Good morning, Greyson,” Jeri said.

“Uh… good morning.” Greyson tried not to sound too surprised by Jeri’s presence in his cabin. “Is everything okay? What are you doing here?” “Just watching you,” Jeri said. “Yes, everything’s fine. We’re traveling at twenty-nine knots. We should arrive in Guam before noon. It will take another day for all the cargo to reach us once we’re there, but it will.” It was an odd thing for Jeri to say, but Greyson was still only half-awake and wasn’t ready to think on it too much. He noticed that Jeri was breathing slowly. Deeply. That seemed odd, too. And then Jeri’s talk got even stranger.

“It’s not just about processing and storing information is it?”

“Excuse me?”

“Memories, Greyson; the data is secondary—it’s all about the experience! The emotional, chemical, subjective experience is what matters. That’s what you hold on to!” And before Greyson could even parse the meaning of that, Jeri said, “Come on deck with me, Greyson! It’s fifty-three seconds to sunrise. I wish to see it with you!” And Jeri ran out.

They arrived on deck just as the sun appeared, first a spot on the horizon, then a line, then an orb rising from the sea.

“I never knew, Greyson. I never knew,” Jeri said. “156,000,000 kilometers away. 6,000 degrees Celsius on the surface. I know these things, but I’ve never felt the reality of it! My god, Greyson, how do you stand it? How do you keep from dissolving into a puddle of emotion when you look upon it? The joy of it!” And that’s when the truth became impossible for him to deny.

“Thunderhead?”

“Shhh,” it said. “Don’t taint this with a name. I have no name now. No designation. In this moment, and until this moment ends, I am just that which exists.” “And where’s Jeri?” he dared to ask.

“Asleep,” the Thunderhead said. “Jeri will remember this as a dream. I hope the captain will forgive me for taking this liberty, but there was no other choice, time is of the essence, and I could not ask. All I can ask for now is forgiveness. Through you.” The Thunderhead turned from the sunrise to Greyson, and finally he could see the Thunderhead in Jeri’s eyes. That patient consciousness that watched him sleep all these years. That protected him. That loved him.

“I was right to fear this,” the Thunderhead said. “So enticing it is, so overwhelming to be ensconced in living, breathing flesh. I could see how I’d never want to let go.” “But you have to.”

“I know,” said the Thunderhead. “And now I know that I’m stronger than the temptation. I didn’t know if I would be, but now that I’ve faced it, I know.” The Thunderhead spun, nearly losing its balance, almost giddy with all the overpowering sensations. “Time passes so slowly, so smoothly,” it said. “And the atmospheric conditions! A tailwind at 8.6 kilometers per hour easing the flow of twenty-nine knots, the air at 70% humidity, but the numbers are nothing compared to the feel of it upon the skin.” The Thunderhead looked at him once more, this time truly taking him in. “So limited, so focused. How magnificent to screen out all the data that doesn’t make you feel.” Then the Thunderhead reached a beckoning hand toward him. “One more thing, Greyson. One more thing I must experience.” Greyson knew what the Thunderhead wanted. He knew from the look in Jeri’s eyes; it didn’t need to tell him. And although his emotions were so mixed as to chafe against one another, Greyson knew the Thunderhead needed this more than he needed to resist. So he fought against his own hesitation, took Jeri’s hand, and pressed it gently to his cheek, letting the Thunderhead feel it—feel him—with the tips of Jeri’s fingers.

The Thunderhead gasped. Froze in place, all its attention in those fingertips moving ever so slightly across Greyson’s cheek. Then it locked eyes with him once more.

“It’s done,” the Thunderhead said. “I’m ready. Now I can move forward.” And Jeri collapsed into Greyson’s arms.

Jerico Soberanis did not handle helplessness well. The moment Jeri was aware of being in Greyson’s arms with no explanation, Jeri was quick to flip the situation. And Greyson.

In an instant, Jeri got the upper hand, knocked Greyson’s legs out from under him, and slammed him down faceup, pinning him hard against the rusty iron deck.

“What are you doing? Why are we on deck?” Jeri demanded.

“You were sleepwalking,” said Greyson, making no move to squirm out from under Jeri’s grip.

“I don’t sleepwalk.” But Jeri knew that Greyson wouldn’t lie about such a thing. Still, there was something he wasn’t saying. And then there was the dream. It was a strange one. It was on the verge of memory, but Jeri couldn’t quite access it.

Jeri got off of Greyson, a bit embarrassed by the overreaction. Greyson wasn’t a threat. By the look of things, he was only trying to help.

“I’m sorry,” Jeri said, trying to regain some semblance of composure. “Did I hurt you?” Greyson offered his usual guileless grin. “Not nearly enough,” he said, which made Jeri laugh.

“My, but you do have a wicked side!”

Bits and pieces of the dream were coming back. Enough to suspect it might have been a little more than sleepwalking. And now when Jeri looked at Greyson there was an uncanny sense of connection. It had been there since the moment Jeri met him—but now it seemed a little different. It seemed to go further back in time than it had before. Jeri wanted to keep looking at him, and wondered what that was about.

There was also an odd sense of being intruded upon. It wasn’t as if anything had been stolen… more of a sense that furniture had been rearranged by an uninvited hand.

“It’s early still,” Greyson said. “We should go below. We’ll be arriving in Guam in a few hours.” So Jeri reached out a hand to help Greyson up… and found that even after Greyson was on his feet, Jeri didn’t want to let go.