Free Threshold Shift by G. D. Tinnams Page B

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