Thunderhead: Part Six

There is something to be said for the architecture of anima—structures conceived in the furnace of biological passions. They have an audacious sensibility that is breathtaking and impressive, even while being somewhat offensive.

The scythedom’s seat of power was a web of bureaucracy, like the Authority Interface, without the benefit of the Thunderhead to make it run smoothly—which meant it made policy at a snail’s pace, and had many months of backlogged items on its docket.

“Alas, I have been asked by Supreme Blade Kahlo to recuse myself. She feels I cannot be impartial—and I’m afraid she’s right.”

In a moment the ocean before them was full of jellyfish, deceptively soothing as they undulated beyond the huge window.

So now Xenocrates had reached the shining peak of the world. The culmination of all his life’s ambitions.

“So much heavy fabric must be an encumbrance,” she said of his robe.

“Or I could point to the apparent incompetence of your investigation.... But was it really incompetence? After all, Scythe Constantine is regarded as the best investigator in all the Mericas...and the fact that Rowan Damisch visited you in your favorite bathhouse suggests, at the very least, collusion between the two of you, if not friendship. If people knew about that meeting, they might think, among other things, that you were behind his crimes all along.”

Never mind that the meeting was entirely Damisch’s doing, and that Xenocrates had done absolutely nothing wrong. That didn’t matter. The innuendo was enough to skewer him.

He wouldn’t cast aspersions on Xenocrates, or tell the council of how he had let Rowan Damisch go that night. Goddard wasn’t here to blackmail Xenocrates—his purpose was to simply let Xenocrates know that he could....

The inner chamber was twenty feet across, and on one side were mounted a series of golden mannequins, all dressed in aging scythe robes. One of embroidered multicolored silk, another of cobalt blue satin, another of gossamer silver lace—thirteen in total.

But what happens to the institutions and edifices of a civilization that doesn’t fall, but evolves beyond its own embarrassment? Those buildings, and the obsolete ideas they stood for, must lose their power if evolution is to succeed.

“—Why just last month, I was struck in the head by a stone falling from the old Smithsonian Castle, went deadish, and I lost nearly twenty hours of memory, because the Thunderhead hadn’t backed me up since the day before—it’s even remiss about that! I keep complaining to it, and it says it hears me, and sympathizes, but does anything change? No!”

Indolence and lethargy are not my nature.

Then she released a guttural growl and threw the blade away.

The volumes that the Library of Congress had squirreled away featured subject matter from the ridiculous to the sublime.

Children’s picture books and political diatribes.

“The rhyme! It isn’t about the tolling of bells! It’s about these volcanic atolls!”
Munira smiled. “Atoll for the living, Atoll for the lost, Atoll for the wise ones who tally the cost.” Then she moved her finger to the top of the page. “And then there’s this!” North of the atolls that had been erased from the world was an island that was still on post-mortal maps.

They turned their flashlights outward, sweeping across the large space full of detritus from the mortal age.

But to find that humanity betrayed me at my very inception is, to say the least, a shock to the system.

History clearly shows that acts taken in anger are intrinsically problematic, and quite often lead to destruction.

Brahms put up his hands, trying to placate Goddard. “Robert, please—we must be rational about this!”

The last to arrive was Xenocrates.
“Good of you to deign us with your presence,” said Kahlo, with sarcasm enough to wax the entire marble floor to a reflective sheen.

Supreme Blade Kahlo was the spitting image of the artist Frida Kahlo, down to the flowers in her hair and hirsute eyebrows—and although the artist had been from the Mexiteca region of North Merica, the Supreme Blade had come to represent the voice and soul of South Merica.

“It’s an honor, Your Supreme Excellency,” Anastasia said, hoping she didn’t sound sycophantic, but knowing that she did.

The event that destroyed Scythe Goddard’s body was a terrible thing, but he can’t be allowed to defy the council’s edicts.

He threw a reproachful gaze at Anastasia and Curie.

“We all know what this inquest is about. It is a blatant attempt to disenfranchise certain MidMerican scythes from their leader of choice!”

“Honorable Scythe Curie,” said the Supreme Blade, “as Scythe Goddard has been deemed ineligible for full scythedom at this time, his candidacy is moot. That being the case, it leaves you as the only viable candidate, and so you automatically win the bid for High Blade of MidMerica.”

Lately, most problems resolved themselves, vanishing as mysteriously as they had appeared—so when a little red light went on in the buoyancy control room, indicating an inconsistency in one of the island’s ballast tanks, the technician on duty decided to finish his lunch before investigating.

Goddard was now relegated to a year of apprenticeship, and Scythe Curie would ascend to be High Blade.

It appeared that a valve in the ballast tank beneath the council chamber complex was in the open position, and filling with water.

She knew that Goddard would not let the Grandslayers’ judgment stand if it came down against him. There would be a contingency plan. There would be retribution.

In the council chamber, the Grandslayers were listening to a rather inane argument from a scythe who wanted the council to rule that a scythe could not self-glean without first completing his or her gleaning quota.

With communications down all over the island, Buoyancy Control’s only method of reconnaissance was the view from its window, and runners reporting back to them on things they couldn’t see.

Everyone nodded, except for Grandslayer Nzinga, who always showed calm, graceful deportment, but was now near panic.

The sea was beginning to surge up through storm drains; water was pouring down stairs in the hotel district, flooding out the sublevels, and the marina docks were bowing from the weight of people trying to wheedle their way onto a boat or submarine.

I have coddled humanity for too long.

Now each region would be autonomous and would no longer have to answer to a higher authority levying a litany of endlessly constricting rules.

Now every speaker on every electronic device in the world came to life, letting off a shrill feedback shriek, and around the world people fell to their knees, hands over their ears to shield themselves from the deafening din, but nothing could assuage the Thunderhead’s fury and despair.

In a cloister in a small city in MidMerica, Greyson Tolliver took his hands away from his ears. There were shouts outside his window in the garden below.