Threshold Shift (27 page)

The
colour had drained from Jon’s face. The effort of being in two
places at once was too much. Jeremiah worried.

“Yes,
Jon.”

“I
remember killing my mother,” Jon said. “I put my hands
around her neck, exerted pressure, and... Humans are such fragile
creatures, so easy to kill.”

“They
are, indeed, my brother,” Jeremiah replied.

“It’s
not my memory,” Jon said. “It’s his. I have all of
it now, the hate boiling, even my cold blood.” He laughed
twice. “I even remember kidnapping me, pathetic child, what
possible worth does this little ape have? Me? Him? Me?”

“You
are normalising,” Jeremiah said. “I cannot imagine what
that is like. I have only ever absorbed myself. Like minds, little
conflict. Daniel is a part of you, but you are dominant. Eventually
it will balance out.”

Jeremiah
felt Jon suddenly reach over and clutch his wrist tightly. “Stop
this!” Jon ordered. “Please.”

The
avatar shook his head. “It cannot be undone, but it will get
easier. When you leave the planet, you will be separated. The
memories will remain, but you will no longer be two at once.”

“What
do you mean?” Jon asked, and Jeremiah could see his brother’s
eyes were opened wide, frantic, panicked in a way he could only guess
at.

“You
will leave yourself behind,” Jeremiah said. “You will be
reduced, individualised, and perhaps it is better that way.”

“I’ll
be trapped here, forced to play Daniel for the rest of his life.”
Jon’s grip tightened. “I’ll never see Roe again.”

“You
will also escape,” Jeremiah said. “You must prepare
yourself for both eventualities.”

“How
can I?” Jon asked. “I should never have done it.”

Jon
released his grip and Jeremiah could see that he was holding his
head, hands over his ears, rocking back and forth.

“I
am sorry, my brother,” Jeremiah said. “I would end your
pain if it was within my power.”

Jon
turned to him suddenly. “You do have that power, you can absorb
me. If I became part of you, you would cope.”

“I
could,” Jeremiah said. “But I choose not to, please don’t
ask me that.”

“But,
I thought that’s what you wanted all along.”

“That
was never my intention,” Jeremiah said. “Not now, not
ever. I misled your father.” He smiled. “If I absorbed
you, I would be you, but I would never be able to talk to you again,
I would never be surprised by you. I would never earn your love. When
you contacted me ten years ago, I was a million minds in one. I could
contemplate notions and ideas beyond your comprehension. But I could
not share them with anyone. I continued, I grew, and that was all.
You offered me something new.”

Jon
turned away. “You won’t help.”

Jeremiah
eased the transporter to a halt. With the engine silenced, he heard
distant creatures calling to each other, so simple and unaware of all
the conflict and pain around them. At that moment he realised how
beautiful it was outside, the twin moons shining down from an evening
sky filling with stars. He did not know what the humans called those
stars, but he had named each one himself.

“I
will do what I can,” he said. Beside him Jon was sweating, his
eyes bloodshot, and his mouth quivering. Jeremiah could see madness
on the horizon, a madness that must be checked.

“The
memories you have cannot be removed, little brother,” he said
gently. “But the emotions they embody can be blunted, blocked.
Do you want me to try?”

“Yes,”
Jon said.

“Then
sit back, close your eyes”

Jeremiah
watched as Jon gritted his teeth and threw himself back into the
chair, bouncing off the headrest before becoming still.

“Relax,”
the avatar said, placing his fingertips on Jon’s tensed
forehead. “There is nothing to fear.”

***

Wearing
Daniel's body, Jon sat upon a hill overlooking the blackened wreckage
of the town of Argon. In some places the fires were still burning, he
could just make out the remains of The Colonial Captain, its corpse
discharging thick black smoke into the midday sky. Two days had
passed since his awakening, three days since the uprising had begun,
and every human construction, barring the spaceport, had been
targeted and destroyed by Threshian torchbearers. Very soon, he
thought, the people of Threshold would build their own homes, based
on their own designs, their own culture. It would be glorious.

“Father,”
Paul’s vocoder intoned. Jon turned to see the youngling
approach from the road below, the canopy of a two-seater vehicle left
open in his wake.

“Greetings,
my son,” Jon said.

Paul
sat down by his side and surveyed the town.

“Are
you pleased, father?” The youngling asked.

“I
am,” Jon said. “The humans were a plague, and now they
have been driven out.”

“What
happens now?” Paul asked. “I have waited and fought so
hard for this day, now that it has arrived, I don’t know what
to do?”

Jon
turned to study the youngling that was a child of his body. The Paul
he remembered had been arrogant, violent, angry, not this, he had
never seen the boy so lost. Many miles away he laughed with a human
mouth. Paul was by no means a boy. He was twenty-eight years old as
humanity termed time. He was older than Jon’s human side. The
Threshians matured so slowly, there was too much time for them to
make mistakes.

“Both
of us have never known a world without humans,” Jon said. “We
have never been able to communicate without the devices around our
necks, and it is too late for us to learn another way. The world
cannot return to the way it was, we cannot go back to being a host of
competing tribes, we must remain unified, we must develop and thrive.
Wun has promised to protect us from being invaded again, but we must
learn to protect ourselves, or we will always be the savage
children.”

“My
uncle works to that end,” Paul said. “He has captured the
human Espirnet database. He would have us learn everything they
know.”

“Michael
is a fool,” Jon spat. “We will never grow as a people, if
we do as he intends. We must make our own discoveries. Create our own
culture and entertainments. We must even build our own kind of
weapons.”

“But
it will take too long father,” Paul said. “We don’t
have the time to... evolve. The galaxy knows we’re here, and
what we have. They will take it from us if they can.”

Jon
stood up, pointing a gnarled claw at the ruined human settlement.
“Then we might as well just rebuild that as it was. Live in it
as they did. We might as well call ourselves human.”

“Father,”
Paul said. “We cannot go...”

“Michael
has been corrupted by all things human,” Jon interrupted. “Any
Threshian with half a mind can see that by that human designed
monstrosity he lives in. He is contaminated, we are all
contaminated.”

Paul
snarled and sprang to his feet, taller than his father by several
inches. Jon felt a shudder of expectation as the boy towered over
him. He barely had the strength to stand, let alone fight.

“You
are mad,” the youngling spat. “A decade of torture has
softened your mind. My uncle has saved us, saved you. If you continue
to speak like this, he will cast you out, or worse, and I will stand
by him.”

Jon
took a step back down the hill. “Very well my son. I will
remain silent.”

Paul
snarled in his ear and then turned away, marching angrily back to his
vehicle. Jon felt sadness as he watched him drive away. He remembered
the cave and absently traced the three-lined scar on his chest.

“It
seems, father, we will never learn.”

*

Roe
nestled her head in the crook of Jon’s shoulder, one arm spread
across his chest, the other by her side. The bunk was not really
large enough for two, meant as it was, for a single crew member of
Jeremiah’s Spaceship. The lack of space hardly mattered. She
enjoyed his warmth, and was sleepy in his embrace. Here she felt
happy, safe. There was nowhere else she wanted to be.

A
single tear trickled down Jon’s cheek from his left eye. She
stopped it with the tip of her finger and kissed him.

“What’s
wrong?” She asked quietly.

“It’s
Paul,” he replied. “I tried to reach him, but he’s
too enthralled by his uncle.”

Roe
nestled closer. Jeremiah had explained Jon’s melding with
Daniel, but she could not begin to understand it, even as hard as she
tried. Jon spoke of Paul, not as a human or as a Threshian, but as
his own child. He wanted to gain Paul’s affection, make up for
the decade they had lost, pull him away from Michael’s
influence. She was happier knowing it was all behind her, but she
knew that for Jon it was only just beginning. Soon the survivors
would leave, but no matter what, a human would remain on Threshold,
clothed in the body of one its inhabitants. She would take him with
her, but she would also have to leave him behind. The very thought
made her head spin.

“You’ll
get through to him,” she said. “Just give it time, it
will be all right.”

“I
thought he was going to kill me,” Jon replied. “He was so
angry.”

She
was alarmed. “He threatened you?”

“In
a way,” he said. “Yes, it was most definitely a threat.”

“He
didn’t hurt you?”

His
mouth creased into a smile. “Only my pride,” he said.

“Then
that’s something,” she replied. “You have a
chance.”

“Just
a chance,” Jon sighed and tried to sit up.

“Hey
mister,” she said, pushing her palm down onto the three lined
scar on his chest. “What are you trying to do?”

“We
should go down to the mess area,” he said. “Aren’t
you hungry?”

She
shook her head theatrically. “No, and neither should you be,
Deputy.”

“Oh,”
he said, and rested his head back down. “You are the senior
Deputy, after all.”

“Yes
I am,” she laughed, kissing him as she drew herself closer.
“How convenient of you to recognise that now.”

*

Jake
ate his lunch in the grassy field between the spaceport and the
forest. It wasn’t much to speak of, a box with a little bit of
pasta mixed in bread, and some meat he had no wish to recognise. He
had tried sitting in the spaceport mess the day before, but somehow
he felt the other survivors were accusing him. That somehow the whole
uprising had been his fault, and he had failed in his duty to protect
them. Seventy people in total had survived, just seventy of a
population of more than five hundred. He had been so concerned with
Jon that he had neglected his duty. He should have saved more.

The
Jeremiah dressed in red joined him as he paced the field.

“What
do you want, Jeremiah?” He asked as the avatar fell in step
with him.

“I
have spoken to Wun,” Jeremiah said. “He has already
intercepted the Interplanetary Authority shuttle. He is now on the
edge of the solar system, piloting a fleet of ships containing the
sum total of our population.”

“Quite
a fleet, I expect.”

“He
has listened to my report and asked me to transport the survivors to
a neighbouring system.”

“So
you’re still stuck with us,” Jake said.

“For
now,” the avatar replied. “My ship’s cargo hold is
large enough to accommodate the survivors. When I return, I will be
reabsorbed into the one mind.”

“Good
for you,” Jake said, taking a slurp of his mug of water. “I
expect he’s told you to take your time.”

“Indeed,”
Jeremiah smiled. “When the survivors contact the Interplanetary
Authority we expect a counterattack to follow very swiftly. The more
time we have to prepare, the better.”

“What
of Jon?” Jake asked.

“To
allay your concerns, Wun has asked that Daniel be the liaison between
himself and the Threshians. Jon will have an important position. It
should keep him safe and allow him to gather influence.”

“He
will be alone,” Jake said.

“No,
Wun has requested that you stay here. He has made it a condition of
the treaty that you work with Daniel.”

“Michael
won’t be happy with that.”

“Michael
has no choice,” Jeremiah said. “Roe will accompany Jon's
human side off world. Together you will aid him through the
separation.”

Jake
threw the empty mug and box far into the field. “Thank-you,”
he said. “At least I can keep an eye on his for a few months.”

“It
will be considerably longer than a few months.”

“Surely
you know?” Jake said. “I’m a ‘temporary’
Marshal, I have an expiry date.”

“Yes,
you do,” Jeremiah agreed. “You are an inferior copy, only
a shadow of Jacob Klein, but then all parts of Wun are copies,
created with a technology very similar to the technology that created
you. Your expiry date will be removed.”

“Can
you also allow me to link?” Jake asked, already knowing the
answer.

“I
am sorry Jake, you are too different. You will never be able to link,
you will always be separate.”

Jake
looked up into the sky, remembering being Wun, playing out the
experiences, the calculations he no longer understood. Most of all he
remembered being alone, sad that there was no other like him.

“What
does Wun want?” He asked.

“I
believe you already know,” Jeremiah said.

“Some
half-hearted thoughts of revenge,” Jake replied. “That’s
why he sent Jacob, and the other scouts, but he never seriously
considered returning to human space. It was boredom. He just wanted
to know what was going on.”

“You
have a unique insight into his mind,” Jeremiah said. “Perhaps
it is a good thing for Wun that you are staying here.”

“Yes,”
Jake smiled. “I see that.”

Jeremiah
placed his hand on Jake’s shoulder. “Shall we go inside?
You have an announcement to make.”