8
A Matter of Choice
“I will glean alone today,” Scythe Faraday told Rowan and Citra one day in February, the second month of their apprenticeship. “While I am gone I have a task for each of you.” He took Citra into the weapons den. “You, Citra, shall polish each of my blades.”
She had been in the weapons den nearly every day for lessons, but to be there alone, nothing but her and instruments of death, was entirely different.
The scythe went to the blade wall, which had everything from swords to switchblades. “Some are merely dusty, others tarnished. You shall decide what type of care each one needs.”
She watched the way his eyes moved from one blade to another, lingering long enough, perhaps, to recall a memory.
“You’ve used them all?” she asked
“Only about half of them—and even then, for only one gleaning.” He reached up and pulled a rapier from the fourth wall—the one with the older-looking weapons. This one looked like the kind one of the Three Musketeers might have used. “When I was young, I had much more of a flair for drama. I went to glean a man who fancied himself a fencer. So I challenged him to a duel.”
“And you won?”
“No, I lost. Twice. He skewered me through the neck the first time and tore open my femoral artery the second—he was very good. Each time, after I woke up in the revival center, I returned to challenge him. His wins bought him time—but he was chosen to be gleaned, and I would not relent. Some scythes will change their minds, but that leads to compromise, and it favors the persuasive. I make my decisions firm.
“In the fourth bout, I pierced his heart with the tip of my blade. As he breathed his last, he thanked me for allowing him to die fighting. It was the only time in all my years as a scythe that I had been thanked for what I do.”
He sighed, and put the rapier back in what Citra realized was a place of honor.
“If you have all these weapons, why did you take our knife that day you came to glean my neighbor?” Citra had to ask.
The scythe grinned. “To gauge your reaction.”
“I threw it away,” she told him.
“I suspected as much,” he said. “But these you will polish.” Then he left her there.
When he was gone, Citra studied the weapons. She was not particularly morbid, but she found herself wanting to know which blades had been used, and how. It seemed to her that a noble weapon deserved to have its story passed down, and if not to her and Rowan, then who?
She pulled a scimitar from the wall. A heavy beast that could decapitate you with a single swing. Had Scythe Faraday used it for a beheading? It was, in a way, his style: swift, painless, efficient. As she moved it clumsily through the air, she wondered if she had the strength to behead someone.
My god, what am I becoming?
She put the weapon on the table, grabbed the rag, and rubbed polish on it, and when she finished she went to the next, and the next, trying not to see her reflection in each of the gleaming blades.
• • •
Rowan’s task was not as visceral, but was even more troubling.
“Today, you shall lay the groundwork for my next gleaning,” Scythe Faraday told him, then gave him a list of parameters that tomorrow’s subject should have. “All the information you need is in the Thunderhead, if you’re clever enough to find it.” Then he left for the day’s gleaning.
Rowan almost made the mistake of giving the list of parameters to the Thunderhead and asking it for a subject—until he remembered that asking the Thunderhead for assistance was strictly forbidden for scythes. They had full access to the great cloud’s wealth of information, but could not access its algorithmic “conscious” mind. Scythe Faraday had told them of a scythe who tried to do so. The Thunderhead itself reported him to the High Blade, and he was “severely disciplined.”
“How is a scythe disciplined?” Rowan had asked.
“He was put to death twelvefold by a jury of scythes, then revived each time. After the twelfth revival, he was on probation for a year.”
Rowan imagined a jury of scythes would be very creative in their methods of punishment. He suspected that dying twelve times at the hands of scythes would be a lot worse than splatting.
He began to enter search parameters. He was instructed to have his search include not just their city, but all of MidMerica—which stretched nearly a thousand miles across the middle of the continent. Then he narrowed the search to towns with populations under ten thousand that were also on the banks of rivers. Then to homes or apartments that were within one hundred feet of the river bank. Then he searched for people twenty and older who lived in those residences.
That gave him more than forty thousand people.
He had done that in five minutes. The next few requirements were not going to be as easy to nail down.
The subject must be a strong swimmer.
He got a list of every high school and university in each river town, and cross-referenced everyone who had been on a swim team for the past twenty years or had registered for a triathlon. About eight hundred people.
The subject must be a dog lover.
Using Scythe Faraday’s access code, he found the subscription lists of every publication and blog dealing with dogs. He accessed pet store databases to get a list of anyone who made regular purchases of dog food over the past few years. That brought the number down to one hundred twelve names.
The subject must have a history of heroism in a nonprofessional capacity.
He painstakingly searched for words like “hero,” “bravery,” and “rescue,” for all one hundred twelve names. He thought he’d be lucky if a single one came up—but to his surprise, four of them were noted as having done something heroic at some point in their lives.
He clicked on each name and brought up four pictures. He immediately regretted it, because the moment those names had faces, they became people instead of parameters.
A man with a round face and a winning smile.
A woman who could have been anyone’s mother.
A guy with a bad case of bed-hair.
A man who looked like he hadn’t shaved in three days.
Four people. And Rowan was about to decide which one would die tomorrow.
He immediately found himself leaning toward the unshaven man, but realized he was showing a bias. A person shouldn’t be discriminated against because he hadn’t shaved for a picture. And was he ruling out the woman just because she was a woman?
Okay then, the guy with the smile. But was Rowan overcompensating now by choosing the most pleasant-looking of them?
He decided to learn more about each of them, using Faraday’s access code to dig up more personal information than he really should have been allowed to; but this was a person’s life he was dealing with—shouldn’t he use any means necessary to make his decision fair?
This one had run into a burning building in his youth to save a family member. But this one has three young kids. But this one volunteers at an animal shelter. But this one’s brother was gleaned just two years ago. . . .
He thought each fact would help him, but the more he came to know about each of them, the harder the decision became. He kept digging into their lives, getting more and more desperate, until the front door opened and Scythe Faraday returned. It was dark out. When had night fallen?
The scythe looked weary, and his robes were splattered with blood.
“Today’s gleaning was . . . more troublesome than expected,” he said. Citra came out of the weapons den. “All blades are now polished to a perfect shine!” she announced.
Faraday gave her his nod of approval. Then he turned to Rowan, who still sat at the computer. “And who do we glean next?”
“I . . . uh . . . narrowed it down to four.”
“And?” said the scythe.
“All four fit the profile.”
“And?” said the scythe again.
“Well, this one just got married, and this one just bought a house—”
“Pick one,” said the scythe.
“—and this one received a humanitarian award last year—”
“PICK ONE!” yelled the scythe with a ferocity Rowan had never heard from the man. The very walls seemed to recoil from his voice. Rowan though he might get a reprieve, as he had when Faraday asked him to hand that woman the cyanide pill. But no; today’s test was very different. Rowan looked to Citra, who still stood in the doorway of the weapons den, frozen like a bystander at an accident. He was truly alone in this awful decision.
Rowan looked to the screen, grimacing, and pointed to the man with bed-hair. “Him,” Rowan said. “Glean him.”
Rowan closed his eyes. He had just condemned a man to death because he’d had a bad hair day.
Then he felt Faraday put a firm hand on his shoulder. He thought he’d get a reprimand, but instead, the scythe said, “Well done.”
Rowan opened his eyes. “Thank you, sir.”
“Were this not the hardest thing you’ve ever done, I’d be concerned.”
“Does it ever get easier?” Rowan asked.
“I certainly hope not,” the scythe said.
• • •
The following afternoon, Bradford Ziller returned from work to find a scythe sitting in his living room. The scythe stood up as Bradford entered. His instincts told him to turn and run, but before he did, a teenage boy with a green armband, who had been standing off to the side, closed the door behind him.
He waited with increasing dread for the scythe to speak, but instead the scythe gestured to the boy, who cleared his throat and said, “Mr. Ziller, you have been chosen for gleaning.”
“Tell him the rest, Rowan,” said the scythe patiently.
“I mean to say that . . . that I chose you for gleaning.”
Bradford looked between the two of them, suddenly deeply relieved, because this was clearly some sort of joke. “Okay, who the hell are you? Who put you up to this?”
Then the scythe held up his hand, showing his ring. And Bradford’s spirits fell again like the second drop of a roller coaster. That was no fake—it was the real thing “The boy is one of my apprentices,” the scythe said.
“I’m sorry,” said the boy. “It’s not personal—you just fit a certain profile. Back in the Age of Mortality lots of people died trying to perform rescues. A lot of them were people who jumped into flooded rivers to save their pets. Most of them were good swimmers, but that doesn’t matter in a flood.”
The dogs! thought Bradford. That’s right, the dogs! “You can’t hurt me!” he said. “You do, and my dogs’ll rip you to pieces.” But where were they?
Then a girl came out of his bedroom, wearing the same armband as the boy. “I sedated all three,” she said. “They’ll be fine, but they won’t be bothering anyone.” There was blood on her arm. Not the dogs’ but her own. They had bitten her. Good for them.
“It’s not personal,” the boy said again. “I’m sorry.”
“One apology is enough,” the scythe told the boy. “Especially when it’s genuine.”
Bradford guffawed, even though he knew this was real. He just somehow found this funny. His knees weak, he settled onto the sofa and his laughter resolved into misery. How was this fair? How was any of this fair?”
But then the boy knelt down before him, and when Bradford looked up, he was caught by the boy’s gaze. It was as if he were looking into the eyes of a much older soul.
“Listen to me, Mr. Ziller,” the boy said. “I know you saved your sister from a fire when you were my age. I know how hard you struggled to save your marriage. And I know you think that your daughter doesn’t love you, but she does.”
Bradford stared at him, incredulous. “How do you know all this?”
The boy pursed his lips. “It’s our job to know. Your gleaning won’t change any of that. You lived a good life. Scythe Faraday is here to complete it for you.”
Bradford begged to make a phone call, pleaded for just one more day, but of course, those things were not granted. They said he could write a note, but he couldn’t bring himself to find anything to write.
“I know how that feels,” the boy told him.
“How will you do it?” he finally asked them.
The scythe responded. ‘“I have chosen for you a traditional drowning. We shall take you to the river. I shall submerge you until your life leaves you.”
Bradford clenched his eyes. “I’ve heard that drowning is a bad way to go.”
“Can I give him some of the stuff I gave the dogs?” the girl asked. “Knock him out so that he’ll already be unconscious?”
The scythe considered it and nodded. “If you choose, we can spare you the suffering.”
But Bradford shook his head, realizing he wanted every second he had left. “No, I want to be awake.” If drowning was to be his last experience, then let him experience it. He could feel his heart beating faster, his body trembling with the surge of adrenaline. He was afraid, but fear meant he was still alive.
“Come then,” the scythe told him gently. “We’ll all go down to the river together.”
• • •
Citra was awed by how Rowan handled himself. Although he began a little shaky when he first spoke to the man, he took charge. He took the reigns of that man’s fear and gave him peace. Citra only hoped that when it came her turn to make a choice, she could keep her composure as well as Rowan had. All she had done today was tranquilize a few dogs. Sure, she got bitten in the process, but it was nothing, really. She tried to convince Faraday to take the dogs to a shelter, but he wouldn’t have it. He did allow her to call the shelter to come for the dogs. And the coroner to come for the man. The scythe offered to take her to a hospital for some speedhealing of the dog bite on her arm, but she declined. Her own nanites would heal it by morning, and besides, there was something compelling about the discomfort. She owed it to the dead man to hurt a little for him.
“That was impressive,” she told Rowan on the long ride home.
“Yeah, right until I puked on the riverbank.”
“But that was only after he was gleaned,” Citra pointed out. “You gave that man strength to face death.”
Rowan shrugged. “I guess.”
Citra found it both maddening and endearing how modest he could be.