“So what place of safety do you propose?” Jeri asked. “Is there such a place anymore?”
“Who can say?” Possuelo said. “Safe places are dwindling just as quickly as enemies mount.” He paused, considering something. “There are rumors … of a place so out of sight not even the most well-traveled scythes know of it.”
“Sounds more like wishful thinking,” Jeri said. “Where did you hear this?”
Possuelo offered an apologetic shrug. “Rumors are like rain through an old roof. The effort of finding the source is greater than the cost of a new roof.” Then he paused again. “There’s another rumor, though, that might be more useful to us. This one’s about the Toll – the Tonists’ so-called prophet.”
Tonists, thought Anastasia. Just the mention of them brought her to the edge of fury.
“There’s no proof that the Toll ever even existed,” Jeri pointed out. “He could be just another lie the Sibilants use to justify the things they do.”
“I believe he existed,” Possuelo said. “There’s evidence to suggest that he still does – and that he’s been standing against sibilant sects – we have such a sect in Amazonia who swore he visited them and turned them from their violent ways. If it’s true, he might be a worthwhile ally to have.”
“Well, whoever he is,” said Anastasia, “he’s got a lot of explaining to do.”
Ezra Van Otterloo didn’t dress like a Tonist. He didn’t quote platitudes, he didn’t insist on traveling in groups of seven or twelve, and he definitely did not intone. He did go by Brother Ezra, however – that was the only concession he made to his calling. It was his audience with the Toll over two years ago that brought him into the fold, giving him his purpose and setting him on his path. Whether or not the Toll was divine didn’t matter to Ezra. All that mattered was that the Thunderhead still spoke to him, and that made him worthy of being followed.
Ezra traveled the world, painting whatever he wanted, wherever he wanted, just as the Toll said he should do, throwing up guerilla murals everywhere he went. And just as the Toll promised, he found his bliss. He had to be quick, he had to be quiet, and in all this time he had never been caught.
He would travel the world telling local Tonists wherever he went that he was on a mission from the Toll, and they would give him food and shelter. But then he started running into Tonists who claimed that the Toll had appeared to them after he was gleaned. They told him how they’d been sibilant, but the Toll reformed them. Ezra didn’t believe it at first, but still he’d listen to their testimony. Then during the night, he’d paint a scene of the Toll’s visitation somewhere in the city, in some place where no such painting was supposed to be.
After the third set of reformed Sibilants he came across, he realized there had to be some truth to it – so he began to seek out more such encounters. He’d track down groups known to be the worst of the worst, to see if they’d also been reformed. About half of them had, and the other half he imagined were probably on the Toll’s list. Then one day he showed up at an airport, uncertain of where to go next – and lo and behold, a ticket was already in the system for him. The Thunderhead had taken over his travels, sending him to sects the Toll had reformed, so he could visit them and leave behind a mural to honor the Toll. That’s how Ezra knew he was part of the Toll’s entourage, part of his story, even if the Toll didn’t know it.
Then, when he was caught in Amazonia, he had to believe it was also part of the Thunderhead’s plan. But on the other hand, if it was just bad luck, the Thunderhead had ways of using that to its advantage, too.
While the entire SubSaharan scythedom was searching for the Sibilants who had killed their High Blade, it was an Amazonian scythe who knew where they were – thanks to a single Tonist in Scythe Possuelo’s custody.
“We caught him painting a scene of the Toll turning into a flock of birds, on the wall of our High Blade’s residence,” Scythe Possuelo told Anastasia.
“It’s what I do,” Ezra said with a smile.
They were all safely aboard Possuelo’s plane. Possuelo had even brought a brand-new turquoise robe for Anastasia. It felt good to be clothed as herself again.
“Punishment for defacing scythe property is gleaning,” Possuelo said, “but High Blade Tarsila didn’t have the heart to glean an artist. Then he told us what he’d been doing.”
“I could paint you, Scythe Anastasia,” he offered. “It won’t be as good as a mortal artist, of course. I’ve come to accept that, but I’m less mediocre than most.”
“Save your brushes,” she told him. Perhaps it was vanity on her part, but the last thing she wanted was to be immortalized by an artist who was “less mediocre than most.”
“He’s been in our custody for several months – but then two tickets appeared for him on the global travel system after Tenkamenin had been killed,” Possuelo told her. “One to Onitsha, a small SubSaharan city – but the second one was baffling. It was a tour ticket to a protected wilderness where there hadn’t been tours for over a hundred years. The Ogbunike Caves.”
To that, Ezra shrugged and smiled. “I’m special. Sure you don’t want a portrait?”
The fact that the tickets showed up in the system after Ezra was in scythe custody could really mean only one thing: The Thunderhead wanted the Amazonian scythedom to know where the Sibilants – and the Toll – were.
“Normally it would be a short flight,” Possuelo told Anastasia, “but we’ll have to take a roundabout route – engaging first in some bogus business elsewhere – otherwise, we might inadvertently lead the SubSaharan scythes right to the Toll.”
“That’s all right,” Anastasia told him. “I need time to dig into the backbrain again for my next broadcast. I’m close to something on the Mars disaster.”
“And the orbital colony?” Possuelo asked.
Anastasia sighed and shook her head. “One catastrophe at a time.”
“ There were 9,834 colonists on Mars. Even more than had lost their lives on the moon in the world’s first mass gleaning. And there were extensive plans to make our sister planet a home for millions, eventually billions. But something went terribly wrong.
“Have you done your homework on Mars? Have you scanned the list of names of those doomed colonists? I don’t expect you to remember or even recognize any of them – not even the ones who were famous at the time, because fame comes and goes, and mostly their fame is gone. But look again, because there’s one name I want you to see.
“Carson Lusk.
“He was there when the disaster occurred, and was lucky enough to be one of the few survivors. He was in the right place at the right time, and managed to get onboard the one escape vessel that wasn’t incinerated when the colony’s reactor blew.
“There was a big celebration when that small group of survivors finally made it back to Earth, but after that, Carson Lusk disappeared from public view.
“Or did he?
“Let’s back up a bit to three months before the reactor took out the colony. If you look at the transport records for craft coming to and from Mars, you’ll see a name that I’m sure you’ll find familiar. Xenocrates. He was a young scythe at the time – and the only one known to ever visit the Mars colony. It was controversial, because it implied that scythes would continue their business on the red planet. Why, people wondered, when there was an entire planet on which to expand? It would be maybe 100,000 years before a scythe would ever be needed on Mars.