فصل 9

9

The First Casualty

The Terranova family always had a four-breasted turkey for Thanksgiving, because everyone in the family preferred white meat. A four-breasted turkey had no legs. So not only couldn’t their Thanksgiving turkeys fly when they were alive, they couldn’t walk, either.

As a child, Citra always felt bad for them, even though the Thunderhead took great pains to make sure such birds—and all livestock—were raised humanely. Citra had seen a video on it in third grade. The turkeys, from the moment of their hatching, were suspended in a warm gel, and their small brains were wet-wired into a computer that produced for them an artificial reality in which they experienced flight, freedom, reproduction, and all the things that would make a turkey content.

Citra had found it both funny and terribly sad at the same time. She had asked the Thunderhead about it, for in those days before being chosen for the scythedom, she could talk to the Thunderhead freely.

“I have flown with them over the green expanses of temperate forests, and can testify to you that the lives they experience are deeply satisfying,” the Thunderhead had told her. “But yes, it is sad to live and die without knowing the truth of one’s existence. Only sad to us, however. Not to them.” Well, whether or not this year’s Thanksgiving turkey had lived a fulfilling virtual life, at least its demise was purposeful.

• • •

Citra arrived wearing her scythe robe. She had been home several times since becoming a scythe, but coming home was one of the few times she felt she needed to be Citra Terranova, so before today, she came in her street clothes. She knew it was a childish thing to do, but in the bosom of her family, didn’t she still have the right to play the child? Maybe. But it had to stop sooner or later. Now was as good a time as ever.

Her mother almost gasped when she answered the door, but embraced Citra anyway. Citra was stiff about the hug for a moment, until she remembered that there were no weapons in the robe’s many secret pockets. It made the robe feel unusually light.

“It’s lovely,” she told Citra.

“I’m not sure if you’re supposed to call a scythe robe ‘lovely.’ ”

“Well, it is. I like the color.”

“I chose it,” her younger brother, Ben, proudly announced. “I was the one who said you should be turquoise.” “Yes, you did!” Citra smiled and gave him a hug, refraining from telling him how much he’d grown since her last visit three months ago.

Her father, an enthusiast of classic sports, watched an archival video of a mortal-age football game, which looked much the same as the sport did now, but somehow seemed more exciting. He paused the game to give her his undivided attention.

“How is it living with Scythe Curie? Is she treating you well?”

“Yes, very well. We’ve become good friends.”

“You sleeping okay?”

Citra thought that an odd question, until she realized what he was really asking. “I’ve gotten used to my ‘day job,’ ” she told him. “I sleep fine at night.” Which wasn’t entirely true, but the truth about such things wouldn’t do anyone any good today.

She made small talk with her father until they couldn’t find anything more to talk about. Which was all of five minutes.

There were only four of them for Thanksgiving dinner this year.  Although the Terranovas had hordes of extended family on both sides, and many friends, Citra requested that they neither accept nor extend invitations this year.

“It will create a lot of drama if no one is invited,” her mother had pointed out.

“Fine, then invite them,” Citra said, “but tell them that scythes are obliged to glean one of the guests at Thanksgiving.” “Is that true?”

“Of course not. But they don’t need to know that.”

Scythe Curie had warned Citra of what she called “holiday opportunism.” Relatives and family friends would swarm Citra like bees, seeking favor from the young scythe. “You were always my favorite niece,” they would say, or, “We brought this gift just for you.” “Everyone in your life will expect to be granted immunity from gleaning,” Scythe Curie had warned her, “and that expectation will quickly turn into resentment when they don’t receive it. Not just resentment of you, but of your parents and brother, because they now have immunity for as long as you live.” Citra decided it was best to avoid all those people.

She went into the kitchen to help her mother prepare the meal. Since she was a food synthesis engineer, several of the side dishes were beta prototypes of new foodstuffs. Her mother, by force of habit, told Citra to be careful when she chopped onions.

“I think I know my way around a knife,” Citra told her, and then regretted it, because her mother became quiet—so she tried to imply a different meaning. “I mean that Scythe Curie and I always prepare a meal for the family of her gleaning subjects. I’ve become a pretty good sous chef.” Apparently saying that was even worse.

“Well, isn’t that nice,” her mother said in the cold sort of way that made it clear she found nothing nice about it. It wasn’t just her general distaste for Scythe Curie—it was jealousy. Scythe Curie had replaced Jenny Terranova in Citra’s life, and they both knew it.

The meal was served. Her father carved, and although Citra knew she could do a much better job of carving, she didn’t offer.

There was way too much to eat. The table was a promise of leftovers that would last until “turkey” became a dirty word. Citra had always been a quick eater, but Scythe Curie insisted she slow down and savor her sense of taste—so now as Scythe Anastasia, she ate slowly. She wondered if her parents noticed these little differences in her.

Citra thought the meal would go without incident—but halfway through, her mother decided to create one.

“I hear that boy who you apprenticed with has gone missing,” her mother said.

Citra took a healthy spoonful of something purple that tasted like mashed potatoes genetically merged with dragon fruit. She hated the way her parents, from the very beginning, referred to Rowan as “that boy.” “I hear he went crazy or something,” Ben said, with a mouth full of food. “And since he was almost a scythe, the Thunderhead wasn’t allowed to fix him.” “Ben!” said their father. “Let’s not talk about this at dinner.” Although he kept his eyes on Ben, Citra knew it was really directed at their mother.

“Well, I’m glad you’re not associated with him anymore,” her mother said.  And when Citra did not respond, her mother simply had to push it even further. “I know the two of you were close during your apprenticeship.” “We weren’t close,” Citra insisted. “We weren’t anything.” And that hurt to admit more than her parents could possibly know. How could she and Rowan have any kind of relationship when they were forced to be lethal adversaries? Even now, when he was hunted and she was yoked with the heavy responsibility of scythehood, how could there be anything between them but a dark well of longing?

“If you know what’s good for you, Citra, you’ll distance yourself from that boy,” her mother said. “Just forget you ever knew him, or you’ll come to regret it.” Then her father sighed, and gave up trying to change the subject. “Your mother’s right, honey. They chose you over him for a reason. . . .” Citra let her knife fall to the table. Not because she feared she might use it, but because Scythe Curie had taught her to never hold a weapon when angry—even if that weapon was a dinner knife. She tried to choose her words carefully, but maybe she wasn’t careful enough.

“I am a scythe,” she said with steel severity. “I might be your daughter, but you should show me the respect that my position deserves.” Ben’s eyes looked as wounded as they had on the night she was forced to put a knife through his heart. “So do we all have to call you Scythe Anastasia now?” he asked her.

“Of course not,” she told him.

“No—just ‘Your Honor,’ ” sniped her mother.

That’s when something that Scythe Faraday once said came back to her. Family is the first casualty of scythehood.

There was no further conversation for the rest of the meal, and as soon as the plates were cleared and in the dishwasher, Citra said, “I should probably go now.” Her parents didn’t try to convince her to stay. This had become as awkward for them as it was for her. Her mother was no longer bitter about things. Now she just seemed resigned. There were tears in her eyes that she quickly hid by hugging Citra tightly, so Citra couldn’t see them—but she had.

“Come back soon, honey,” her mother said. “This is still your home.”

But it wasn’t anymore, and they all knew it.

• • •

“I’m going to learn how to drive, no matter how many times it kills me.” Only a day after Thanksgiving,  Anastasia—and today she was Anastasia—was more determined than ever to be at the wheel of her own destiny.  The uneasy meal with her family reminded her that she needed to create distance between who she had once been and who she was now. The schoolgirl who rode around in publicars had to be left behind if she were ever to fill the shoes in which she now stood.

“You will drive us to today’s gleanings,” Marie told her.

“I can do that,” she told Scythe Curie, although she didn’t feel as confident as she sounded. On their last lesson, Citra had run them into a ditch.

“It’s mostly country roads,” Marie told her as they went out to her car, “so it will test your skills without putting too many in harm’s way.” “We’re scythes,” Citra pointed out. “We are harm’s way.”

The small town on today’s agenda hadn’t seen a gleaning in over a year. Today it would see two. Scythe Curie’s would be swift, and Scythe Anastasia’s would come with a month’s delay. They had found a rhythm to their joint gleaning excursions that suited both of them.

They pulled out from Fallingwater’s carport haltingly, as Citra still had trouble with the Porsche’s manual transmission. The concept of a clutch felt to Citra like some sort of medieval punishment.

“What’s the point of three foot pedals?” Citra complained. “People only have two feet.” “Think of it as a piano, Anastasia.”

“I hate the piano.”

The banter made it a little bit easier on Citra, and her driving became smoother when she could complain. Still, she was only on the upswing of her learning curve . . . so things would have turned out very differently had Scythe Curie been driving.

They were barely a quarter mile down Fallingwater’s winding private road when a figure leaped out at them from the woods.

“It’s a splatter!” shouted Scythe Curie. It had become all the new rage for thrill-seeking teens to do impersonations of windshield bugs. Not an easy challenge, because it was very hard to catch a car on the grid by surprise—and those who were off-grid were usually seasoned drivers. Had Scythe Curie been at the wheel, she would have handily swerved around the would-be splatter and continued on without a second thought—but Citra had none of the requisite reflexes. Instead, Citra found her hands frozen on the wheel, and although she tried to punch the brake, she managed to hit the loathsome clutch instead. They barreled right into the splatter, who bounced on the hood, spiderwebbed their windshield, and flipped over the roof of the car. He had already landed behind them by the time Citra found the brake and they squealed to a halt.

“Crap!”

Scythe Curie took a deep breath and released it. “That, Anastasia, would definitely have caused you to fail a mortal-age driving test.” They got out of the car, and while Scythe Curie inspected the damage to her Porsche, Citra stormed toward the splatter, determined to give him a piece of her mind. Her first real outing behind the wheel, and some stupid splatter had to ruin it!

He was still alive, but barely, and although he appeared to be in agony, Citra knew better. His pain nanites had kicked in the moment he had connected with the car—and road-splatters always had their nanites dialed high, so they could experience maximum damage with minimum discomfort. His healing nanites were already trying to repair the damage, but they only succeeded in prolonging the inevitable. He would be deadish in less than a minute.

“Are you satisfied?” Citra said as she approached him. “Did you have your little thrill at our expense? We’re scythes, you know—I should glean you before the ambudrone arrives.” Not that she would, but she could.

He met her gaze. She expected him to have a smug expression, but it seemed more desperate than anything. She wasn’t expecting that.

“B . . . . B . . . Boo,” he said through a swelling mouth.

“Boo?” said Citra. “Really? Sorry, but you missed Halloween by a month.” Then he grabbed her robe with a bloody hand, and pulled on it with more force than she thought he could have. It made her trip over her hem, and she fell to her knees.

“Boo . . . Tr . . . Tra . . . Boo . . . Tra . . .”

Then his hand let go, and he went limp. His eyes stayed open, but Citra had seen death enough to know that he was gone.

Even out here in the forest, an ambudrone would come for him shortly. They hovered over even the most sparsely populated areas.

“What a nuisance,” lamented Scythe Curie when Citra returned to her. “He’ll be up and walking again long before they can fix the damage to my car—bragging all about how he splatted a pair of scythes.” Still, the whole thing weighed on Citra. She didn’t know why it should. Perhaps it was his eyes. Or maybe the desperation in his voice. He didn’t seem the way she thought a road-splatter would. It gave her pause. Pause enough to consider what she might be missing about the situation. She looked around, and that’s when she spotted it: a thin wire stretched across the road, not ten feet in front of where the car came to a halt.

“Marie? Look at this. . . .”

The two of them approached the wire, which stretched to trees on either side. That’s when it came to her what the splatter was trying to say.

Booby trap.

They followed the wire to the tree on the left, and sure enough, just behind the tree was a detonator wired to enough explosives to blow a crater a hundred feet wide. Citra felt her breath stolen, and had to suck it back in. Scythe Curie’s face didn’t change. It stayed stoic.

“Get in the car, Citra.”

Citra didn’t argue. The fact that Marie had forgotten to call her Anastasia betrayed how worried she truly was.

The elder scythe took the wheel this time. The hood was dented, but the car still started.  They backed up, carefully avoiding the boy in the road. Then a shadow fell over them. It made Citra gasp until she realized it was just the ambudrone arriving for the boy. It ignored them and went about its business.

There was only one residence on that road—only two people who would be driving it that morning—so there was no question that they had been the targets. If that wire had been tripped, there wouldn’t be enough left of either of them to revive. But the day was saved by this mysterious boy, and Citra’s bad driving.

“Marie . . . who do you think—”

Scythe Curie cut her off before she could finish. “I am not partial to uninformed conjecture, and I would appreciate it if you did not waste your time in guessing games, either.”  Then she softened. “We’ll report this to the scythedom. They’ll investigate. We’ll get to the bottom of this.” Meanwhile, behind them, the ambudrone’s gentle grappling claws grabbed the body of the boy who had saved their lives, and carried him away.

Human immortality was inevitable. Like cracking the atom, or air travel. It is not I who choose to revive the deadish, any more than it was I who decided to halt the genetic triggers of aging. I leave all decisions on biological life to the biologically living. Humanity chose immortality, and it is my job to facilitate their choice—because to leave the deadish in that state would be a severe violation of the law.  And so I collect their bodies, bring them to the nearest revival center, and return them to full working order as quickly as possible.

What they do with their lives after they are revived is, as it has always been, entirely up to them. One might think that being rendered deadish might give a person increased wisdom and perspective on their lives. Sometimes it does—but such perspective never lasts. In the end, it is as temporary as their deaths.

—The Thunderhead