22
Sign of the Bident
Citra’s days were filled with training and gleaning.
Each day Citra would go out with Scythe Curie to towns that were selected completely at random. She would watch as the scythe prowled the streets and malls and parks, becoming like a lioness in search of vulnerable prey. Citra learned to see the signs of the “stagnant,” as Scythe Curie called them—although Citra was not as convinced as she about their readiness to be gleaned. Citra wondered how many of her own days had been filled with worldweariness before becoming an apprentice to death. If Scythe Curie had come across Citra on one of those days, would the woman have gleaned her?
They passed an elementary school one day as it was letting out, and Citra had a sinking feeling that she would glean one of the students.
“I never glean children,” Scythe Curie told her. “I’ve never found a child who seemed stagnant, but even if I did, I wouldn’t do it. I’ve been admonished in conclave about it, but they’ve never taken disciplinary action against me.”
Scythe Faraday had no such rule. He had been strictly about statistics from the Age of Mortality. Fewer preadolescents died in those days, but they did die on occasion. In their time together, Citra had known him to only do one such gleaning. He did not invite Rowan or her, and at dinner that night he broke into uncontrollable sobbing and had to excuse himself. If Citra was ordained, she vowed to follow a policy like Scythe Curie, even if it got her in trouble with the selection committee.
Almost every night, she and the scythe would prepare dinner for mourning family members. Most would leave with their spirits lifted. Some would remain inconsolable, resentful, hateful, but they were in the minority. Such was life and death for Citra in the days before the Harvest Conclave. She couldn’t help but think of Rowan and wonder how he was faring. She longed to see him, but she dreaded it at the same time, because she knew in a few short months she’d be seeing him for the last time, one way or another.
And she held on to the narrow hope that if she could prove Scythe Faraday was taken out by a fellow scythe, perhaps that could be a monkey wrench hurled into the relentless gearworks of the Scythedom. A monkey wrench that would free Citra from having to glean or be gleaned by Rowan.
• • •
Most of the bereaved that Citra had to notify were the same: husbands, wives, children, parents. At first she had resented that Scythe Curie made her the front line for these heartbroken people, but soon she came to understand why. It wasn’t so that Scythe Curie could avoid it, but so that Citra could experience it and learn how to show compassion in the face of tragedy. It was emotionally exhausting, but rewarding. It was preparing her to be a scythe.
Only one time did her post-gleaning experience differ. The first part of her job was tracking down the immediate family of the gleaned. There was one woman who seemed to have no immediate family; just one estranged brother. It was odd in this time when extended families were more often than not a convoluted web that spanned six living generations or more. Yet this poor woman had only a brother. Citra mapped out the address, went there, but wasn’t paying all that much attention. She didn’t know where she was until she was right in front of the place.
It wasn’t a home—not in the traditional sense—it was a monastery. A walled adobe compound styled after the historical missions. But unlike those ancient structures, the symbol at the apex of the central steeple was not a cross, but a two-pronged tuning fork. The bident. It was a sign of the tone cults.
This was a Tonist monastery.
Citra shivered in the way anyone shivers at the prospect of something vaguely alien and darkly mystic.
“Stay away from those lunatics,” her father once told her. “People get sucked in and are never seen again.” Which was a ridiculous thing to say. No one truly disappears in this day and age. The Thunderhead knows exactly where everyone is at all times. Of course, it doesn’t have to tell.
Under other circumstances, Citra might have heeded her father’s advice. But she was making a bereavement call, and that trumped any trepidation.
She entered the compound through a gated arch. The gate wasn’t locked. She found herself in a garden full of white, rich-smelling flowers. Gardenias. Tone cults were all about aroma and sounds. They gave little value to the sense of sight. In fact, the more extreme Tonist groups actually blinded themselves, and the Thunderhead reluctantly allowed it, preventing their healing nanites from restoring sight. It was awful, and yet was one of the few expressions of religious freedom left in a world that had laid its various gods to rest.
Citra followed a stone path through the garden to the church on which stood the sign of the fork, and she pushed her way through the heavy oak doors into a chapel lined with pews. It was dim, even though there were stained glass windows on either side. They were not from the mortal age, but were Tonist in nature. They depicted various strange scenes: a shirtless man carrying a huge tuning fork on his burdened back; a stone fracturing and shooting forth bolts of lightning; crowds running from a nasty vermiform creature in the form of a double helix that spiraled out of the ground.
She didn’t like the images and didn’t know what these people believed, only that it was laughable. Ludicrous. Everyone knew that this so-called religion was just a hodgepodge of mortal age faiths slapped together into a troubling mosaic. Yet somehow there were people who found that strange ideological mosaic to be enticing.
A priest, or monk, or whatever you call a cult clergyman, was at the altar, chanting in monotone and dousing lit candles one by one.
“Excuse me,” Citra said. Her voice was much louder than she meant it to be. A trick of the chapel’s acoustics.
The man wasn’t startled by her. He put out one more candle, then set down his silver snuffer and hobbled toward her with a pronounced limp. She wondered if it was affected, or if his religious freedom allowed him to retain whatever scarring caused the limp. By the wrinkles on his face she could tell that he was long overdue to turn a corner.
“I am Curate Beauregard,” he said. “Have you come for atonement?”
“No,” she told him, showing her armband that bore the seal of scythes. “I need to speak to Robert Ferguson.”
“Brother Ferguson is in afternoon repose. I shouldn’t disturb him.”
“It’s important,” she told him.
The curate sighed. “Very well. That which comes can’t be avoided.” Then he hobbled off, leaving Citra alone.
She looked around, taking in the strange surroundings. The altar in the front contained a granite basin filled with water—but the water was cloudy and foul-smelling. Just behind that was the focal point of the entire church: a steel two-pronged fork similar to the one on the roof outside. This bident was six feet tall and protruded from an obsidian base. Beside it, on its own little platform, sat a rubber mallet resting on a black velvet pillow. But it was the bident that held her attention. The huge tuning fork was cylindrical, silvery smooth, and cold to the touch.
“You want to strike it, don’t you? Go on—it’s not forbidden.”
Citra jumped and silently chided herself for being caught off guard.
“I am Brother Ferguson,” said the man as he approached. “You wanted to see me?”
“I’m the apprentice of Honorable Scythe Marie Curie,” Citra told him.
“I’ve heard of her.”
“I’m here on a bereavement mission.”
“Go on.”
“I’m afraid that your sister, Marissa Ferguson, was gleaned by Scythe Curie today at one fifteen p.m. I’m very sorry for your loss.”
The man didn’t seem upset or shocked, merely resigned. “Is that all?”
“Is that all? Didn’t you hear me? I just told you that your sister was gleaned today.”
The man sighed. “That which comes can’t be avoided.”
If she didn’t already dislike the Tonists, she certainly did now. “Is that it?” she asked. “Is that your people’s ‘holy’ line?”
“It’s not a line; it’s just a simple truth we live by.”
“Yeah, whatever you say. You’ll need to make arrangements for your sister’s body—because that’s coming and can’t be avoided either.”
“But if I don’t step forward, won’t the Thunderhead provide a funeral?”
“Don’t you care at all?”
The man took a moment before answering. “Death by scythe is not a natural death. We Tonists do not acknowledge it.”
Citra cleared her throat, biting back the verbal reaming she wanted to give him, and did her best to remain professional. “There’s one more thing. Although you didn’t live with her, you are her only documented relative. That entitles you to a year of immunity from gleaning.”
“I don’t want immunity,” he said.
“Why am I not surprised.” This was the first time she had ever encountered anyone who refused immunity. Even the most downhearted would kiss the ring.
“You’ve done your job. You may go now,” Brother Ferguson said.
There was only so long Citra could restrain her frustration. She couldn’t yell at the man. She couldn’t use her Bokator moves to kick him in the neck or take him down with an elbow slam. So she did the only thing she could do. She picked up the mallet and put all of her anger into a single, powerful strike at the tuning fork.
The fork resounded so powerfully, she could feel it in her teeth and her bones. It rang not like a bell, which was a hollow sound. This tone was full and dense. It shocked the anger right out of her. Diffused it. It made her muscles loosen, her jaw unclench. It echoed in her brain, her gut, and her spine. The tone rang much longer than such a thing should, then slowly began to fade. She had never experienced anything that was quite so jarring and soothing at the same time. All she could say was, “What was that?”
“F-sharp,” said Brother Ferguson. “Although there’s a standing argument among the brethren that it’s actually A-flat.”
The fork was still ringing faintly. Citra could see it vibrating, making its edge look blurry. She touched it, and the moment she did it fell silent.
“You have questions,” said Brother Ferguson. “I’ll answer what I can.”
Citra wanted to deny that she had any questions whatsoever, but suddenly she found that she did.
“What do you people believe?”
“We believe many things.”
“Tell me one.”
“We believe that flames were not meant to burn forever.”
Citra looked to the candles by the altar. “Is that why the curate was dousing candles?”
“Part of our ritual, yes.”
“So you worship darkness.”
“No,” he said. “That’s a common misconception. People use that to vilify us. What we worship are the wavelengths and vibrations that are beyond the limits of human sight. We believe in the Great Vibration, and that it will free us from being stagnant.”
Stagnant.
It was the word Scythe Curie used to describe the people she chose to glean. Brother Ferguson smiled. “Indeed, something resonates in you now, doesn’t it?”
She looked away, not wanting to meet his intrusive gaze, and found her eyes settling on the stone basin. She pointed to it. “What’s with the dirty water?”
“That’s primordial ooze! It’s brimming with microbes! Back in the Age of Mortality, this single basin could have wiped out entire populations. It was called ‘disease.’”
“I know what it was called.”
He dipped his finger in the slimy water and swirled it around. “Smallpox, polio, Ebola, anthrax—they’re all in there, but it’s harmless to us now. We couldn’t get sick if we wanted to.” He raised his finger from the foul sludge and licked it off. “I could drink down the whole bowl and it wouldn’t even give me indigestion. Alas, we can no longer turn water into worm.”
Citra left without another word, and without turning back . . . but for the rest of the day she couldn’t get the stench of that foul-smelling water out of her nostrils.