Threshold Shift (9 page)

One
night that changed. With his eyes on the moonlight streaming through
the window, the guards arrived and hauled him out of his bunk. He was
beaten a little, just for old time’s sake, and then they
delivered him, battered and bruised, to a waiting ambulance. A nurse
tended to him, sedated him, as a doctor in a white coat looked on,
busily making notes on a clipboard.

“Why?”
The man asked before the sedative took hold.

“Because,”
the doctor replied with a smile. The prisoner struggled against his
restraints, but the sedative took him, and he slept.

*

Jacob
opened his eyes, the smell of the prison and the ambulance still
clouding his nostrils. It had been a long time since he had thought
of that place and he had buried it deep. To his right the night stars
cast a pale blue light through the barred window. How familiar that
was. The buzzing in his ear had returned, but he could cope with it.
The pain in his head also remained bearable as long as he didn’t
move. When he did, the pain was like a dead weight in the back of his
skull. Around him the room was steady, but he had to keep still or it
would spin out of control. There was nothing else he could do.

If he
had agreed to have Espirnet implanted he could have been watching
entertainment from a programme pool that spanned more than a dozen
planets. But he had never wanted it, no, he had been happy to be the
sole inhabitant in his own head, not some linked in appendage to a
vast network. Somehow that would have felt like a reduction. Of
course Jon had it fitted as soon as he had language skills, all the
children did. How else could the boy attend virtual schooling? Jacob
sighed. Perhaps he should have been stronger, insisted on console
learning and spared his boy. But Eleanor had insisted and he never
could say no to her. She could sway him when so many others could
not. His will was nothing to her.

In
his memory he watched her, a red-haired beauty in a white dress,
laughing as she sat down for a picnic in their garden. Nearby, their
toddler son was running frantically in circles after consuming too
much caffeinated drink. He laughed with her, sitting on the grass
next to her, their hands entwined. He was happy then, he couldn’t
remember being any happier than that day. There was no cloud in the
sky, no duties awaiting him, nothing but Eleanor, Jon and laughter.
He didn’t want to let go.

The
scene changed to a cold and grey morning a few years later. He was in
the same garden, but Jon was gone, and Eleanor was dead. He held her
lifeless body in his arms, her beauty ravaged by Threshian claws.
Through the tears he vowed to kill every last Threshian if he could,
without mercy or respite. He would make them pay!

I
am sorry for your loss, Jacob.

The
link had been re-established.

-
The Threshians murdered her!

I
know.

-
And you’re helping them.

We
were like them once. The humans treat them as we were treated. That
is not justice.

-
How reasonable of you.

You
have existed too long as a solitary being, Jacob. There is more at
stake than your pride, or your son’s life, or even mine.

-
Sometimes justice in a backend town, in a backend colony world, is
all that matters.

No,
Jacob, it does not matter at all.

-
Leave me alone, Ash, before I hurt you again.

I
am just trying to understand, Jacob. We were once the same and now we
are different, I just want to understand why.

-
Divergence is inevitable. That was the first thing I told myself.

You
took the humans’ side. You became the Marshal.

-
It wasn’t about taking sides. It was about keeping the peace. I
have prevented so much suffering, you have no idea.

There
is a greater purpose.

-
So what? Greater purpose, higher purpose, I don’t care. I
stopped being interested in the big picture a long time ago. I
stopped thinking in terms of populations, species and millennia. I
was only interested in the here and now, in the individual.

Why?

-
Because, I am an individual, I don’t simply remember being one,
I am one.

Then
you are only human.

-
Yes! Exactly, and so is my son, and so, in the end, are you.

I
will not be apart long enough for that to happen.

-
I thought the same thing once. But look in the mirror, and you’ll
see you’ve already changed your face, you are already
different.

I
can change back, Jacob.

-
Maybe you won’t want to. Think about it.

I
do not need to, Jacob. It is not necessary.

-
I’m sorry.

Goodbye
Jacob. I will mourn your passing.

-
Goodbye Asher.

*

The
man lived in a new prison, without cellmates, or bars, or windows.
The floor was covered in cold tiles, not concrete. The walls washed
white, rather than grey. The bed was soft, not hard. The doctors took
blood samples, X-rays, scanned him using machines they did not
explain, left him barely able to breathe in pools of thick sticky
liquid that encased his body from head to toe. When they were
finished, he was hosed down, bathed, and clothed in a one piece smock
that could not warm him.

At
night they left him locked in his room, a radio for company, a
tenuous link to an outside world that he had no hope of rejoining. He
had preferred his former home, for all its faults he had known what
was happening, he could plan his day, make decisions. In this place
he was smiled at, patted on the back, restrained when angry, but told
nothing. He wanted to know why. But he had no friends among his
captors. Even the faces were inconsistent and changed from week to
week. There was nothing to hold onto, nothing to hope for. Months
went by, maybe years, and the tests continued.

He
was not the only subject. He saw others treated the same,
shaven-headed, restrained, led from one test to another. If he tried
to speak to them he was beaten, so he did not try. The corridors were
long, the lights bright, and the irrelevance of his life was
complete. One day he saw a dead man on a trolley being rolled along
the corridor. The corpse was bright pink, a man cooked within his own
skin. The prisoner felt something wake inside, and he fought back,
striking out at his guards, breaking jaws, breaking bones. But they
were many and he was one. There was no way he could win.

He
survived. Whatever they did to him, he survived. His body ached, his
teeth fell out and his mind was lost, but he survived. He was no
longer a man. He no longer comprehended what a man was. Then one day
everything changed. As if by some miracle he was whole again, a human
being untouched by their instruments and experiments, rising from a
chemical bath. It took him only a moment to realise that he was also
in the white tiled room, hairless and skeletal.

“Do
you know who you are?” One of the doctors asked.

The
man did not reply, he simply turned from side to side, his eyesight
split between two different locations. It was disorientating, and yet
he also felt a vigour that he had never felt before. His aches and
pains in the tiled room subsumed by the newfound health of his second
self. He could think so clearly now, the world so simple.

“My
name is Jacob Asher,” he said.

The
second Jacob was showered, bathed, and allowed to rest. When the
tests began again, they were even more terrible and relentless than
before. He realised quickly that he could not admit to his duality or
even his increased intelligence. If he had given them any clue to his
enhanced existence, they would have ended him. He would have been
written off as just another unsuccessful experiment. His silence
brought him life and it brought him time. He even had to hide his
pain and horror when the original him was executed. He felt himself
die, reduced once again to a single viewpoint. But he remained calm,
telling himself it didn’t matter. He was still alive whatever
he had felt. He would live on, he would find a way. Soon enough the
men in white coats were satisfied by the results. They decided to
make more of him, using him as their template. His intellect grew and
continued to grow, as did his power, but he was cautious.

He
waited.

*

It
was early the next day when Jacob’s body convulsed for the
final time. With a last effort he turned in his bed to look up at the
window, smiling with joy as the morning sunlight splintered through
the bars.

Chapter
Six

Jon
sat at the end of his father’s bed studying the old man’s
face. In death, Jacob appeared serene, almost exultant, his lips
turned up in the echo of a knowing smile. Jon could almost believe
his father had died happy. Leaning over he kissed him lightly on the
forehead, the skin cold beneath his lips, and then carefully covered
that face with one of the blankets. He felt the need to cry, but no
tears would come, instead he felt only the emptiness inside himself.
A silence where there should have been noise. He had been expecting
Jacob’s death for days, but no amount of expectation could have
prepared him for this. He had not truly believed Jacob would die, but
had hoped for some last minute reprieve, a miracle, something.

He
was alone. The realisation of that fact both frightened and appalled
him. His mother was long dead, and his father had joined her. Even
when he and Jacob hadn’t been speaking, he had been aware of
his father’s presence. That awareness had warmed him. When he
picked up that gun in Main Street, he had done it without thinking.
He had saved his father without a second thought, regardless of their
disagreement. In the last two days he had seen Jacob at his weakest,
his sickest. He had seen the man, with all his faults, but also all
his strength. His father’s resolve had held firm even in the
face of his own death.

Rising
unsteadily to his feet, Jon left the bedroom and gently closed the
door behind him. He took each step on the staircase, slowly and
carefully, feeling numb as if nothing mattered. When he reached the
office, Roe was sitting in his father’s chair. For a brief
moment the sight of that angered him, and then he noticed her eyes
were red, her cheeks tear-stained. She had wept for his father
whereas he could not. The anger subsided as quickly as it had risen.
He felt ashamed.

“I’m
sorry for your loss, Jon,” she said.

He
nodded, settling into his own chair. “You OK?” He asked.

“I’m
good,” she replied, facing him in his father’s impressive
swivel chair. Her head only three quarters up the backrest. For a
moment he was amused. It was a comical sight.

“I’ve
been checking the protocols,” she explained. “For what
happens after a Marshal’s death.”

“We
draw straws for who takes over?”

She
wiped her face, frowning at his flippancy. “No, we advise
Central, and create a temporary sim from his last genetic backup. The
sim will be in charge until the replacement is appointed.”

Jon
scratched at his desk. “We don’t need a sim.”

“It’s
protocol.”

“We
are perfectly capable.”

“No,
Jon, we are not.”

“I
disagree!”

Roe
stood up and leaned forward. “And I don’t care! I’m
the senior deputy, so I get to choose.”

“You’re
not senior to me. I was his son.”

“It’s
what he wanted!”

Jon
closed his eyes and bit his lip. “Please Roe, don’t do
this. I can’t have him dead upstairs and alive down here. I
couldn’t cope with that.”

Roe
sat down again and held up the disc between thumb and forefinger. “He
wanted to protect you,” she said. “That’s all he
ever wanted.”

“It
won’t be him.”

“I’m
sorry, Jon,” she said, loading it into the console’s disc
reader tray. “I’m not ready to let him go just yet.”

“I
won’t stay.”

Roe
tapped a few keys on the console and it began to hum. “It’s
started. The Regeneration chamber in the sub-basement should complete
the sim in two hours.”

Jon
stood up. “I’m out of here.” With a negligent kick
of his foot he sent his chair careering into the back wall.

Roe
folded her arms. “If that’s what you want.”

Jon
stamped across to the front door, his hand pausing above the DNA
plate that would unlock it.

“What
are you waiting for?” Roe asked.

“I
can’t leave you by yourself.”

“Then
stay.”

Jon
turned to face her. He could still see the little girl from years
ago. No matter how many times he and Andy sent her away, she always
came back. They could be as nasty as they liked and she would never
let it stop her. She would fight back, even though they were so much
bigger, so much stronger. He still had the scar on his hand from
where she had bit him.

“I’ll
stay,” he said finally, “just until the sim is complete.
But don’t expect me to work with him.”

“Fair
enough,” she said, rising from the chair. “Now if you
don’t mind, I need to feed the prisoner some lunch.”

“Of
course,” he bowed. “Senior Deputy, Roe.”

She
frowned again, and then disappeared down the staircase, leaving him
alone in the office.

Jon
boiled up more coffee and sat sullenly beside his desk drinking it.
He really did hate her sometimes. As for the sim, he felt a growing
sense of dread at the prospect of meeting the thing. It wouldn’t
be his father. It would be a copy, a second class copy at that, using
ancient technology that should have been banned decades ago. Sims
weren’t real humans, they didn’t even live that long. It
definitely wouldn’t be his father. Anyway, the disc was old,
scratched, how long ago did Jacob make it? Would the sim even know
who he was?