Threshold Shift (28 page)

“You
go,” Jake said. “I’ll be in soon, let them finish
their lunch in peace.”

Jeremiah
bowed stiffly and marched back towards the spaceport tower. Jake
watched him disappear inside, and then turned his attention back to
the forest. Ignoring the burnt down area he found himself studying
the tallest tree he could find, its branches green with so many
leaves, forming so many interconnecting patterns. Could one branch,
torn off, seed an entirely new tree?

A
drop of rain fell on his head, swiftly followed by another and
another. He held his head up and opened his mouth, trying to catch a
single droplet on his tongue. The rain swiftly became a torrent,
soaking deep into his uniform and washing away the grime and sweat of
his entire short existence. Finally when it was too much, he ran for
the spaceport.

###

Hunter
No More

Excerpt

Chapter One

“Summer clothes only, Samantha,” her father ordered, “and
nothing electronic.”

“Dad?”

Sam looked down at the open fabric bag spread out across her bed. It
wasn’t even big enough for her favourite clothes, let alone the
possessions she prized the most. How much of her life was she meant
to leave behind?

Her father frowned. “We're going on foot, Sam. No vehicle, no
storage compartment. If it's too heavy for you to carry, then it
won’t get carried.”

“But...” Sam’s fingers idly swam through the three
dimensional model of an ascending moon projected by her SongCom. She
had completed it as an art assignment earlier that week without
knowing its creation was in vain.

“We're not coming back are we?”

Her father stared blankly at the panoramic image. She was sure he
could appreciate none of the subtle beauty inherent in each imperfect
crater or understand how the shadows cast by an unseen sun promised
so much serenity. He saw nothing except a rock in space.

“Just what you can carry, Sam, and change into something
black.” He paused by the door. “We don’t want to
be seen.”

Sam watched him go and then leaned into her window, digging her nails
into the sill. How was it so easy for him to just abandon everything?
This was her life.

In the hallway she heard him talking to her mother with that same
measured voice of his, asking her to dispose of everything simply
because it wasn’t needed.

He didn’t care.

Sam looked up at the stars, ignoring her own pained reflection in the
glass. How she wished for that permanence, that strength. Then she
buried her head in her hands, the tears flowing freely.

When she finished, a growing tangle of inevitability and despair
filled her stomach. She didn’t want to do this. Opening her
wardrobe, she pulled out a few random armfuls of clothes and filled
the bag. That would do; why make choices when those choices were
impossible?

Lying down on the bed, her SongCom stared at her from the side table.
She switched off the moon projection and picked it up, cradling the
plastic multimedia module tentatively between her thumb and
forefinger. It contained all her images, her video and her music,
memories of friends and experiences she could recreate whenever she
wished. Better times that could be trusted not to disappoint. She
even possessed and prized the chiselled visage of a boy she had loved
but never kissed.

She would never kiss him now.

But no, no. Her father had banned electronics for a reason. Every
piece of electronic hardware on Borealis was fitted with locators. If
she took it, then it could be used to find her. Her father was
probably being paranoid, but then again, she had never known him to
be paranoid without just cause. Closing her eyes, she hurled the
SongCom across the room and heard it bounce off the wall. It was gone
for good.

Burying her head in the pillows, Samantha thought back over
everything that had happened over the last two months. How the world
of Borealis had gradually changed around her into something she could
barely recognise anymore. She was only thirteen, but she was not
ignorant, even though sometimes she wanted to be. The riots in the
streets were getting closer and closer, becoming ever more violent
and desperate. She saw the results every day on the news reports. A
recent breakdown in trade with the neighbouring systems had caused
widespread poverty, starvation and lethal unrest. The security forces
were ill-equipped, unpaid and very steadily the government was being
routed by rebel forces crying out for change. It was all happening,
and her family was trapped in the middle of it.

Her father would have called that a simplistic explanation, but her
mother would have nodded in agreement. He had tried to explain the
fine granularities of economic chaos and the way human psychology
dictated a panicked and destructive response. Her mother had pushed
him aside.

“The people are poor, the people are unhappy, and the
government has to pay.”

Sam’s parents were both government analysts which in itself
made picking a side in the conflict impossible. They were already on
the losing side. Only the week before Sam had been set upon by a
group of girls she had previously considered to be among her closest
friends. Her left eye was still a little swollen and the dull ache in
her jaw was a constant reminder of what had happened. It was not the
physical pain that troubled her, just the shock that her friends
could desert her so easily, could hate her without provocation. Her
parents had responded to the beating by taking her out of school. She
had become a virtual prisoner in the family apartment. Then two days
ago the Planetary Network became unavailable. Information was only
obtainable via official government reports.

After that her father declared his decision to leave the city. It was
not a sudden decision; her father’s mind didn’t work like
that. He was the planet’s foremost economic forecaster and he
had warned the government of what was coming years in advance. He had
watched it happening like an accident in slow motion. If he said it
was time to go, then there was no other choice.

But that didn’t mean she had to like it.

Changing into a pair of black jeans, long sleeved T-shirt and a dark
blue body warmer, Sam zipped up her bag, picked it up and walked out
into the hall, setting it down beside her father's larger bag.

“Roger's waiting for us, Anna,” she heard her father say
from the master bedroom. “But he can't wait forever. We have to
go now.”

Sam walked across the hall and peered into her parents' room. Her
mother’s clothes were scattered all over the bed, along with
jewellery, figurines and pieces of pottery that she had accumulated
over the last dozen years. At the centre of the chaos Sam’s
father held her mother in a silent embrace.

“It's just stuff,” Keith Marriot said, delicately lifting
his wife's chin. “Just stuff. We can live without it.”

She gently pulled free of him and turned away. “I know. I know.
Just give me a minute.”

“Anna?”

“Just give me a minute!”

She turned him around in an attempt to propel him out of the room.
After a moment’s hesitation, he let her, the door slamming shut
behind him.

“Again?” Keith Marriot said, raising an eyebrow. Then he
saw his daughter.

“She’ll be OK,” Sam said.

“I know,” he replied. “I’m just not used to
all these slamming doors. Are you packed?”

“I'm done,” Sam declared.

Her father turned and nodded approvingly at her chosen attire. “That
will do. Hmmm, maybe a hat to cover all that blonde hair.”

Sam nodded. The population of Borealis was mainly dark haired and
olive skinned. Sam and her father were noticeably different, their
light skin and blond hair marking them out as offworlders even though
Sam had never been off world in her life. It was another mark against
them as far as the rebels were concerned. Neither she nor her father
really belonged on Borealis.

Her father stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I could cut it.”

“Don’t you dare,” Sam said and reached back over
her shoulders, pulling on the hood that was attached to the body
warmer. It nestled just above her eyebrows.

Keith smiled. “You'll do.” He held open his hands. “What
do you think?”

Like her he was dressed all in black, a V-neck with tight corduroys
emphasising his wiry frame. It wasn’t stylish, it was
functional. Her father had never possessed a sense of fashion. It was
why she had always gone shopping with her mother.

“Good,” she said.

He nodded. “Let's check the local government newscasts. See if
things are still relatively quiet.”

A wizened virtual newscaster in the family room advised people to
stay in their homes. The latest riots in the eastern quarter were
being dealt with by the security forces.

“Getting closer,” Keith commented. “I think we're
leaving just in time.”

Sam agreed, aware that the Interplanetary Authority embassy was
located in the eastern quarter. There were other embassies as well,
representing the system’s other human inhabited worlds, but it
was the IA embassy that was important. The machine mind culture of
mother Earth ran everything.

“What do the rebels hope to gain?” she asked.

“The usual,” Keith replied briskly. “They want to
change the world. Beyond that I couldn't tell you. Violence does not
breed a caring sharing society.”

Sam grunted in agreement as Keith switched off the tabletop. For a
moment the apartment was eerily silent. Sam shivered.

“I’m ready,” Anna Marriot declared from the
hallway.

Sam followed her father outside. Her mother was waiting, dressed from
head to toe in a black unitard, her bag slung over her shoulder, and
her long dark hair tied up in a bun.

Keith raised an eyebrow. “Won’t you be cold?”

Sam saw that her mother was shaking, but it wasn’t from cold
or fear, instead her eyes flashed with a barely suppressed rage. It
was a strange contrast to her father. He almost seemed supernaturally
calm, as if all the problems he encountered were only the slightest
of insignificant annoyances.

“I'm comfortable,” Anna answered, staring him in the eye.
“Now, let’s go and meet my brother.”

“Good,” Keith smiled, and hefting his own bag over his
shoulder, he led the way to the front door. Sam felt a surge of panic
as her father released the latch. The apartment was her home, and
despite all the troubles in the city, it had remained untouched, an
ocean of calm, a sanctuary. In the apartment she could almost believe
that nothing had changed. Once outside she knew that illusion would
crumble.

“If we get separated, make for the Forday Dock,” Keith
said, pulling on a hat and then kissing his wife on the lips and his
daughter on the forehead. “Station six.”

Sam didn't even feel embarrassed by the display of affection; instead
she simply followed her parents to the public staircase. Their living
quarters were located on the fourth floor of the building, and as
they descended, Sam glanced out of a stairway window into the outside
world. There were fires in the Trading Park five streets over. It was
where her parents took her to buy the groceries. Just a ten minute
walk away, and it was on fire.

“So much for the trouble being isolated to the eastern
quarter,” Keith said. “We'll have to go round.”

They exited the stairway into a dim street illuminated only by the
glow emanating from the nearby high rise buildings. The overhead
lights were out.

Anna took Sam's free hand as they both struggled to keep up with
Keith's rapid pace.

“Quickly now,” she said.

Sam's grip on her mother’s hand tightened as they turned the
corner. A group of figures were walking with their backs to them,
sharing obscenities as they banged sticks and other makeshift weapons
against metallic waste bins.

Her father didn’t even slow down, leading the family silently
across the street and away.

“It's beginning,” Anna said. “They're targeting
government worker accommodation.”

Sam nodded, noting the lack of any security forces. “Where are
the soldiers?”

“Busy fighting somewhere else,” Anna said. “Whatever
the newsfeeds say, the government don't have enough men to contain
this. They have to prioritise, and we...” Sam’s mother
looked up at the surrounding buildings, some windows buffeted by
heavy but twitching curtains. “We’re not a priority.”

Lights were going out one by one in the residential buildings. Sam
guessed that no-one wanted to announce their presence to the rioters.
That maybe anonymity would keep them safe. It was an act of
desperation, the hope that by morning the chaos would dissolve in the
harsh light of day. Maybe it would. Maybe...

Slowly but surely they threaded their way around the worst of the
troubles, moving not quickly, but constantly, so that even the small
bag she carried made Sam's arm ache.

They were within a kilometre of the dock when one disparate group of
rioters finally sighted them.

“There!” A voice shouted.

Sam turned to see perhaps twenty armed men and women surge towards
them. Her mouth gaped open as she met their eyes. They didn't know
her, had never met her, and yet she knew instinctively they meant her
harm. There was no justification for this, no personal motive, just
hate and the need to hurt.

“Drop everything,” Keith ordered, wrenching the bag from
his wife's shoulder. “Run!”

Sam did as she was told; no longer worried about even the meagre
possessions she had saved. Her only motivation was to escape the
screams of those who pursued her.

She lost her mother's hand in the panic, and then slowly realised
that her father was no longer ahead of them. He had dropped behind.