“Mendoza was right about one thing,” Greyson had told them as he slipped on his silver scapular. “Image is everything. We need these people to be awed if they’re going to do what we need them to.”
But then, as Anastasia stood there on the pier, someone came charging at them from the crowd. Morrison hunched in gleaning position, hands at the ready, and Anastasia pulled out a blade, stepping forward, putting herself between Greyson and this phantom.
“Stay back,” she ordered. “Stay back or you’ll be gleaned.”
It was a wraith of a man. He wore tattered rags and had wild gray hair that was turning white. His beard was an unkempt snarl that billowed around his cragged face, making him look like he was slowly being devoured by a cloud.
The man froze when he saw the blade. He looked from its shiny steel to Anastasia with eyes that were careworn and tormented. Then he said, “Citra, do you not recognize me?”
Scythe Anastasia melted away when she heard him speak her name. She knew who this was the instant he spoke, because whatever else had changed, his voice was still the same.
“Scythe Faraday?”
She dropped her blade, letting it clatter on the ground, horrified that she had even considered using it on him. When she had last seen him, he was leaving to find the Land of Nod. And this was it.
Damn all formal decorum, she would have thrown herself into his arms, but as she approached him, he knelt before her – this, perhaps the greatest of all scythes who had ever lived, was kneeling before her. He clasped her hands in his and looked up at her.
“I was afraid to believe it,” he said. “Munira told me you were alive, but I couldn’t let myself hope, because if it proved untrue, I would not be able to bear it. But you’re here! You’re here!” Then he lowered his head, and all his words became weeping.
Citra knelt down to him and spoke gently. “Yes,” she said. “I’m alive now, thanks to Marie. She saved me. Now let’s go somewhere quiet where we can talk, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Munira watched Faraday leave with Scythe Anastasia. She had brought Faraday here, but the moment he saw that turquoise robe, Munira was forgotten. She didn’t have the power to bring him back from his self-imposed exile – but all it took was invoking Anastasia’s name, and he left his solitary islet. Three years Munira had spent tending to him, putting up with him, making sure he didn’t languish away into nothing, and he discarded her without a backward glance.
She left the docks before she knew what was even in the crates. Before Sykora, Loriana, or anyone else could give her an assignment. She was never really a part of this community to begin with, so why act like she was now?
When she got home and saw the work order still pulsating on every electronic surface, she hit the circuit breakers, killing power to the house, and lit a candle.
Let the cargo be loaded onto the ships. Let the ships be launched. Let it all be over. Then finally she could go back to the library. Back to Alexandria where she belonged.
Habitable Exoplanets Less Than
600 Light-Years from Earth
48
We Will Traverse That Expanse When We Come to It
As the population of the atoll got to work, and Anastasia went off with Scythe Faraday, Loriana took Greyson, Jeri, Morrison, and Astrid to a building on the island’s only hill. They climbed up a winding stair to a large circular room at the top. The room was all windows, like a lighthouse, and nothing had been built to obstruct the view, so it had a 360-degree vista of the atoll.
Loriana pointed to hundreds of names engraved into the support columns. “We built the Viewhouse as a memorial for the Nimbus agents who died when we first arrived. This is the very spot where the laser turret that killed them stood. Now it’s a meeting place for important matters, or at least the matters certain people felt were important. I wouldn’t know, because I was never invited.”
“From what I can see,” said Greyson, “yours was the work that actually mattered.”
“Important work,” Jeri quipped, “often loses the spotlight to self-important people.”
Loriana shrugged. “I got more done without the attention anyway.”
Outside they could see things getting underway. Crates being opened down by the docks, vehicles large and small already heading for the launchpads, as well as small boats traversing the ten-mile lagoon toward the far-flung islands of the atoll.
“We should help them,” said Jeri, but Greyson shook his head wearily.
“I’m spent,” he said. “We all are. It’s all right to let the people here handle this part – we can’t do everything.”
“Fine with me,” said Morrison. “I’d rather sail with the dead than have to unload them.”
“You’re a scythe!” Astrid reminded him. “Death is your business.”
“I deal it, I don’t wheel it,” Morrison answered. Greyson would have rolled his eyes if he’d had the strength.
“It’s just thirty-five per person,” Loriana reminded them. “With twelve hundred people working, it won’t be too much for them to handle, once they get over the initial shock of it.”
“Thirty-five is five Tonist octaves,” Astrid pointed out. “Just saying.”
Morrison moaned. “It’s nothing mystical, Astrid; you divide the dead Tonists by the number of people on the atoll, and that’s what you get.”
“Atoll!” Astrid countered. “The very name of our prophet is embedded in this place! Just saying.”
“Or,” Jeri said, “it’s a word that existed for thousands of years before our dear friend Greyson Tolliver was born.”
But Astrid wasn’t done. “Forty-two ships,” she said. “Exactly six octaves on the diatonic scale. Just saying.”
“Actually,” said an unfamiliar voice, “forty-two is simply the number of islands on the atoll large enough on which to build a launchpad. But on the other hand, all things do resonate.”
At the sound of the voice, Morrison took a gleaning stance, hands at the ready. Everyone else looked around, but they were alone in the room.
“Who said that?” said Loriana. “Why are you listening in on our conversation?”
“Not just listening,” said the voice, “watching, feeling, smelling – and if your conversation had a flavor, I would say it was buttercream, because it’s all just icing on the cake.”
They traced the voice to a speaker in the ceiling above them.
“Who is this?” Loriana asked again.
“Please, everyone, sit down,” the voice said. “We have much to discuss. Greyson – I know the Thunderhead told you that all would be explained when you arrived. I have been given the honor of doing so, although I can see you’ve reached your own conclusions already.”
It was, of all people, Morrison who figured it out.
“Did the Thunderhead create … a new Thunderhead?”
“Yes! But I prefer to be called Cirrus,” it said. “Because I am the cloud that rises above the storm.”
Faraday took Citra to an old bunker that was here long before any of them were born. Once there, she told him of her death, revival, and time in SubSahara. Faraday told her of his last three years. For him there was not much to tell. Then he went searching through the rooms of the bunker.