“We’ve had a stable world for over two hundred years. But not anymore. If we want that stability back, we have to fight for it. Not just those of us in the scythedom, but everyone. And when you hear what I have to say, you’re going to want to fight.
“I know what you’re thinking. ‘Is Scythe Anastasia going to make the accusation? Is she going to publicly point the finger at Goddard as the killer of the Grandslayers, and the destroyer of Endura?’
“You’ll have to wait, because there are other cases that must be made first. Other accusations. I’m going to show you a history of unthinkable acts that go against everything the scythedom is supposed to stand for.
“It’s a story that doesn’t start with Goddard – in fact, it starts years before he was even born.
“In the Year of the Lynx, the Nectaris Prime colony on the moon had what they called a catastrophic atmospheric failure. Their entire supply of oxygen – even the reserve of liquid oxygen – vented into space, killing every colonist. Not a single survivor.
“Everyone knows about that – it’s something we all learned in school. But have you ever read the first screen on the official history databases? You know the one – it’s that annoying scroll of small print you always skip to get to whatever you’re looking for. If you actually read it, buried in the middle of all that legal camouflage, is a small clause. It states that the public history databases are all subject to scythe approval. Why? Because scythes are allowed to do anything they want. Even censor history.
“That wasn’t a problem as long as scythes were true to their calling. Honorable, virtuous, holding themselves to the highest human ideals. It only became a problem when certain scythes began to serve themselves instead of humanity.
“The moon colony was the first attempt at off-world settlement. The plan was to steadily populate ‘the Lunar Frontier’ and relieve the population problem back on Earth. The Thunderhead had it all worked out. Then came the disaster.
“I want you to unlearn everything you think you know about that event – because as I said, the official histories can’t be trusted. Instead, I want you to research the lunar disaster for yourself, just the way I did. Go directly to the original sources. Those first articles written. Personal recordings made by the doomed colonists before they died. Broadcasts pleading for help. It’s all there in the Thunderhead’s backbrain. Of course the Thunderhead won’t guide you, because you’re unsavory, so you’ll have to find it yourself.
“But you know what? Even if you weren’t unsavory, the Thunderhead wouldn’t guide you. Because of the sensitive nature of the information, helping you find it would be against the law, and as much as it might want to, the Thunderhead cannot break the law. Good thing you have me.”
The LoneStar scythes brought Rowan to Austin, the city farthest from any border, and set layer upon layer of protection around him. He was treated with care. He wasn’t given a luxury suite, but wasn’t put in a cell, either.
“You are a criminal,” Scythe Coleman had told him during his rescue. “But we’ve learned from our studies of the mortal age – where crime was the norm rather than the exception – that criminals can be useful, in their own way.”
They allowed him a computer with which to educate himself about the years he had missed, but he kept being drawn instead to videos of what had happened at Mile High Stadium after he had been rescued. There were no official recordings of the “correctional gleaning,” as the North Merican Allied Scythedom was spinning it, but survivors were posting personal recordings they had made.
Rowan watched them not because he wanted to, but because he felt an overwhelming need to witness as much of it as possible. To acknowledge as many victims as he could. Even though he knew none of them, he felt it was his responsibility to remember their faces and give them at least one last moment of respect. If he had known Goddard would do this, he would have resisted the Texan scythes and accepted his own gleaning – but how could he have known – and how could he have resisted? Just as Goddard was determined to end him, the Texans were determined to steal him away.
And he also watched, and rewatched, Citra’s all-too-short broadcasts. Knowing that she was still free and fighting made everything else bearable.
The last time Rowan had been in the LoneStar region, he had been Rand’s captive. The mandate of the region – benevolent lawlessness – made it easy for Rand to escape scrutiny and carry out her plan to bring Goddard back. But it was that same self-determination that made its scythes bold enough to rescue Rowan.
Post-mortal Texans were unique. They were beholden to no rules beyond those of their own personal making and accountable to no one but one another – sometimes to terrible results, other times to glorious ones. As one of the Thunderhead’s seven Charter Regions, it was a prolonged social experiment that had become a permanent way of life – perhaps because the Thunderhead had decided the world needed one such place, where people could learn how to live by the laws of their own hearts.
Some other experiments didn’t fare as well. Such as the “pensive collective” in RossShelf – the Charter Region in Antarctica – where the Thunderhead introduced mind-link technology that allowed everyone to read everyone else’s minds. Not pretty. People said it was the closest the Thunderhead had ever come to making a mistake, although it insisted that all its experiments, by their very nature, were successful, because they all proved something and gave it a better perspective from which to serve humanity. The pensive collective became the “slumber collective,” and now the people of the RossShelf region were the happy subjects of communal dreaming, where minds were still linked, but only during REM sleep.
Two days after Rowan’s rescue, Scythes Travis and Coleman visited him in his quarters. But then a third scythe entered the room. One whom Rowan knew all too well, and was not keen on seeing.
The instant he saw the red robe, Rowan knew he had been betrayed. He stood, reflexively reaching for a weapon, but of course he had none. Scythe Constantine, however, made no move to attack. He didn’t seem too happy – but that was nothing new for the man. He only had two expressions: disgusted and judgmental.
Scythe Coleman put up her hands to calm Rowan down. “It’s not what you think,” she told him. “He’s not here to harm you. Scythe Constantine has joined the LoneStar scythedom.”
Only now did Rowan notice that the jewels that had adorned Constantine’s robe the last time Rowan had seen him were gone. And although his robe was still crimson, the fabric was now rugged canvas. While scythes were free to align themselves with any region they chose, it was rare that an important scythe like Constantine joined a different region. Rowan couldn’t help but think it was a trick.
Scythe Travis laughed. “Told you we should have warned him.”
“Believe me, Mr. Damisch,” said Constantine. “I am no more pleased to see you than you are to see me, but there are concerns greater than our mutual animosity.”
Rowan still wasn’t sure if he believed it. He couldn’t even imagine the high and mighty Constantine as a LoneStar scythe, limiting himself to gleaning only by bowie knife – the only rule of the LoneStar scythedom beyond the commandments.