“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.
The bowie knife is a brutish, boorish weapon. Crude. A thing suitable for a mortal-age brawl. Offensive. Perhaps appropriate for the Sandbar Fight, where its namesake first used it, but is there a place for it in the post-mortal world? A butcher knife? Appalling. Yet every LoneStar scythe swears by it. Their only method of gleaning.
We Rising Sun scythes value elegance in our gleanings. Grace. Those who use blades will often employ ancestral samurai swords. Honorable. Refined. But the bowie knife? It is suitable to gut a pig, not glean a human. It is an ugly thing. As uncouth as the region that wields it.
—From an interview with
Honorable Scythe Kurosawa
of the Region of the Rising Sun
46
East Toward Nowhere
From the moment he was revived, Rowan was a prisoner.
First he was the Amazonian scythedom’s captive, then Goddard’s, and now the LoneStars’. But if he was going to be honest, he had become a prisoner of his own rage the instant he donned the black robe and became Scythe Lucifer.
The problem with setting out to change the world was that you were never the only one. It was an endless tug-of-war with powerful players pulling – not just against you, but in every direction – so that whatever you did, even if you made progress against all those vectors, at some point you were bound to go sideways.
Would it have been better not to try at all? He didn’t know. Scythe Faraday did not approve of Rowan’s methods, but he hadn’t stopped him, either, so even the wisest person Rowan knew was steeped in ambivalence. All Rowan could say for sure was that his time pulling relentlessly on that rope was over. And yet here he was in the Region of the Rising Sun, with his eyes on yet another scythe, ready to end his existence.
There was an odd justice to it. Not so much live-by-the-blade/die-by-the-blade; it was more becoming the blade, and losing oneself. Scythe Faraday had once told him and Citra that they were called scythes rather than reapers, because they were not the ones who killed; they were merely the tool that society used to bring fair-handed death to the world. But once you’re the weapon, you’re nothing more than a tool for someone else to wield. The hand of society was one thing, but the hand wielding him now was that of the LoneStar scythedom. He supposed, now that he was out of their grasp, that he could disappear – but what would become of his family then? Did he trust Coleman and Travis and the rest of the LoneStar scythes to keep their promise and protect them, even if he went AWOL?
If there was one thing Rowan had learned, it was that no one could be trusted to stay true. Ideals eroded, virtue tarnished, and even the high road had dimly lit detours.
He had set out to be judge and jury – the consequence for those who knew no consequences. And now he was nothing more than an assassin. If this was what his life was to be, then he would somehow learn to make peace with it. And if so, he hoped Citra would never find out. He had managed to see some of her broadcasts and knew she was out there doing good in the world, revealing Goddard for the monster he truly was. Whether it brought Goddard down was yet to be seen, but at least she was fighting the good fight. Which was more than Rowan could say about his current ignoble mission.