Threshold Shift (25 page)

She
didn’t have to, as she looked on, smoke rose from the forest,
causing her nostrils to flare. Soon enough she saw the flames, the
forest was on fire. A few moments later Jake and her father ran from
the tree line, a large group of ragged men, women and children
following in their wake. Between them they carried a number of lit
makeshift torches made from branches and fabric. Once clear they
turned as one and waved those torches in the direction of the burning
forest.

She
scrambled to her feet and ran to her father. A good part of the
bottom part of his shirt was missing, as was Jake’s trouser
leg.

“These
ones really don’t like fire,” Jake explained. “I
think we have them on the run.”

Roe
punched her father in the arm.

“Ow!”

“Stop
doing that to me,” she said. “I thought you were dead.”

“I’m
fine,” he replied. “Just a little singed around the
edges.”

Jake
had turned away from the forest and was gazing at the bodies near the
spaceport. “Talk about being between a rock and a hard place.”

“We
can stay here,” Roe said. “We’re not in any danger.
The Threshians are beaten.”

“I
don’t think so,” Jake replied. “That was just the
cannon fodder. I think we can rely on the more civilized Threshians
to pay us a call, probably with guns.”

“It
doesn’t matter if they come or not,” Abe interrupted. “We
have forty odd frightened and hungry people out here. They need food
and shelter, or we’ll be lucky to make it through the night.”

Jake
nodded grimly.

“We
have to take the spaceport,” Abe said. “We have to get
that message off world. If we stay out here, we’ll be finished.

“We
can’t,” Jake said. “Jeremiah is without mercy when
threatened. We have a few weapons and a few rounds. He has incendiary
rifles on the ground and worse aboard his ship. We wouldn’t
stand a chance.”

Roe
holstered the gun with the one remaining round and looked across at
the spaceport tower standing over them. There really wasn’t any
choice. “I have an idea,” she said. “But you’re
not going to like it.”

Jake
laughed loudly, drawing more than one puzzled glance from the
assembled survivors. It was the sort of laughter that made Roe just a
little afraid.

“Sweet
little Veronica,” Jake said. “I’ve been alive for
just one day. What could possibly make you believe I’ve liked
any of it?”

Chapter
Seventeen

Jon
followed Michael down to the kitchens where the ovens blazed with
overpowering heat. The Threshian cook wore a bloody apron and used a
long knife to cut strips of meat from the carcass of an animal Jon
didn’t care to recognise. The thought of what it could be
almost made him vomit. The cook smiled when he saw him, but then any
number of movements of a lizard’s wide mouth could have been
construed as a smile.

The
gentle touch of Jeremiah’s hand on his shoulder spurred him
forward and away from that horrid scene. Beyond the kitchen lay
another door and another staircase. Down again, they descended, into
a gloom alleviated by only the barest of electric light. Jon smelt
damp and oppression in the concrete tomb that surrounded him. For all
the beauty above, this was the dark place where ugly things were
buried.

Michael
paused by a heavy stone door, his back hunched under a ceiling that
was too low for a Threshian to stand upright.

“Perhaps
I should have killed him,” Michael said. “Given him rest,
given him peace. But I am sentimental, far more than I have a right
to be. I could not see him die. If our positions were reversed, he
would not have done the same.”

Jon
said nothing. He knew what was behind that door. He finally
remembered what he had done. Jacob had simply taken the blame to
shield him, as any good father would. No one, human or Threshian, had
ever discovered what had really happened in that Jopo warehouse so
long ago.

I
will hurt you more than you hurt me. Death will be a long time
coming.

Michael
pushed the door open with one outstretched arm, and there in a simple
bed was the writhing figure of a Threshian, doubled up in pain, its
eyes tightly closed and its mouth opened wide. Jon realised that even
though he couldn't hear its screaming, the scream was never-ending.

“Do
you see what your father did, young Klein? My brother has been
tortured for a decade. The best human Doctors my fortune could buy
have been unable to help him, have been unable to even ascertain
what’s causing it. There is no pain relief that is effective,
no respite, sleeping or waking, he is the same.”

Jon
peered inside, he remembered that face so vividly, and somewhere
inside him, old wounds re-opened. He felt angry, but most of all he
felt afraid. He had run from this all his life and never looked back.

“You
have nothing to say?” Michael asked. “Nothing at all?”

Jon
looked into Daniel’s half-open eyes, and saw, a flicker, just a
flicker, an acknowledgement of his presence, and then the Threshian
convulsed more violently than before, straining against the thick
bonds around his wrists and legs that held him in place.

“He,”
Jon struggled. “He killed my mother.”

“And
we were going to kill you too,” Michael said. “You are
the sworn enemy of my people, you deserve nothing less, but even you
don’t deserve this… this perpetual torture.”

Jon
took a step back outside into a cold slimy wall. Jeremiah turned to
him, but there was no expression on his half finished face.

“I
can’t,” Jon said to him. “I can’t.”

Jeremiah
remained silent.

“I’ll
tell you what,” Michael said. “You undo what your father
did, and it’s a deal. I’ll let all the humans still
living leave the planet.”

The
Threshian reached out a clawed hand and took hold of Jon’s
forearm, wrenching him through the doorway into Daniel’s small
grey cell.

“Go
on then,” Michael said, the vocoder volume rising. “Go on
then, cure him. I dare you, cure him, and all the humans go free. I
give you my word. So go on then, what are you waiting for?”

Jon
was standing so close to Daniel that he could taste the Threshian’s
stagnant breath on his face. It was horrid, disgusting, and it took
him back to that warehouse, the memory alive in his mind again.

Help
me. Help me, please.

“Useless
ape!” Michael shouted and raised his claws to strike, but there
they remained. Jon’s eyes widened.

“I
will not permit that, Michael,” Jeremiah said.

Michael
roared, his vocoder issuing a loud hiss of accompanying static, but
he could not move.

“Our
arrangement is ended,” the Threshian leader said, “unless
you let me have him.”

Jeremiah
folded his arms. “Don’t be stupid, you would sacrifice
your people simply to end one human life.”

“We
can defend ourselves,” Michael snarled. “We don’t
need you, we don’t want you. You’re, you’re human.”

“Once
perhaps,” Jeremiah replied. “But not now, I am as far
from human as you can imagine.”

“Then
what is one human life to you? Tell me, why do you value this...
thing, so highly?”

Jeremiah
smiled a strangely distorted smile with lips that lacked any real
substance. “I heard him, across a distance you would not
believe. I heard him when I thought I was alone, so alone, when I had
lost all sense of time and place. He was a voice in the wilderness,
and he saved me. He is my brother, he is my son. I came here for
him.”

Jon
stared at Jeremiah as the avatar’s face resolved once more into
the familiar features of his father.

“What
is this?” Michael asked, turning from Jeremiah to Jon and back
again.

Jon
ignored him and looked down upon Daniel’s agony, the Threshian
straining against bonds that could never be broken.

“I
need to end this,” he said.

“Of
course,” Jeremiah replied. “One day I knew you would. The
pain you gave, you can take back.”

Jon
placed a palm on Daniel’s ridged forehead, but the touch made
no difference, and he quickly pulled the hand back. Somehow what he
was trying to do was distasteful, disgusting, he couldn’t face
it.

“Jeremiah,”
he said. “I’m afraid. I don’t know how to do this.”

“When
one is... one,” Jeremiah smiled. “Fear is natural. Asher
felt it, your father felt it, and I, well, I remember it. But there
is no need to be afraid, Jon. I am here. Remember what you did before
and undoing it will seem like child’s play.”

“He
was responsible,” Michael grimaced, the scales on his face
converging and interlocking together. “It was him all along,
the son, not the father. You have sacrificed our arrangement,
Jeremiah. I will never give you the ore now.”

“That
is a pity,” Jeremiah said. “But it does not matter. I do
not regret the decision I made today, and I am sure Wun will agree.
We are the same person after all. You will only delay me Michael, you
cannot stop me. I felt sorry for you, for your people, I remember
being a slave. I wanted to help, but not, it seems, at the cost of
Jon’s life. I surprised myself.”

“You
won’t get out alive,” Michael said. “Even your
powers can’t overcome hundreds of my followers. They will come
to find me soon. They know where I am.”

“No
need for that Michael,” Jeremiah said. “Jon is going to
heal your beloved brother for you, after which I am sure you will
keep your word.”

“We’ll
see,” Michael replied, glancing at Jon. “He doesn’t
look like he has it in him.”

“He
can do it,” Jeremiah said. “Don’t underestimate
him.”

Jon
heard the exchange but remained silent. His hand wavering over
Daniel’s scaled green snout. The disgust was fading, to be
replaced by guilt. He had done this so long ago without realising
what he had been doing. Wun had helped. He knew that, the energy had
come from outside but the decision had been his, the anger had been
his. This thing had murdered his mother, for nothing, he deserved all
of this. Why should he free it from its pain?

Jon
took a deep breath. Like Michael had said, what Daniel had
experienced was worse than death. He had tortured the creature for
ten years. The debt had been paid in full, had been more than paid.
The disgust returned, but it was self-disgust, what had he done? But
then he had been a child, a frightened lonely child in danger, and he
had struck out with powers he hadn’t understood. It wasn’t
his fault, it wasn’t. Exhaling the breath he had been holding,
he felt all the blame recede, the weight lift. The room around him
seemed brighter, the Threshian below him more sharply defined.
Without any further delay he placed his palm on the creature’s
forehead and reached in.

*

Darkness,
cold, dampness and the rhythmic drip drop of water, somewhere high
above. Jon rubbed his bare arms to keep warm and tentatively stepped
forward, the rocky floor rough beneath his clenching toes. He
continued until his outstretched hands encountered a wall, uneven and
curved. He could feel, with fingertips so sensitive, imprints in that
wall, imprints he knew had been placed there for him to find. A fire
burst into life in the centre of the cave, and flickering flames
illuminated it, revealing cave paintings, crudely coloured, a deep
red against a light burgundy. He looked up, but the light from the
fire could not reach the ceiling, and all he saw there were long
shadows dissolving into inky blackness. By the fire a Threshian sat
alone, his scales pitted and scarred, a pasty film covering his eyes.
Jon smelt old age, and with that, a despised weakness.

“Look,”
the ancient one ordered. The word intoned slowly, with effort, the
vocoder an inefficient model long out of use.

Jon
obeyed, and studied a series of paintings that travelled the length
of the wall. In the first he recognised a crudely drawn Threshian on
all fours climbing from what appeared to be a body of water onto dry
land. In the next scene the Threshian encountered what appeared to be
a Kloma, Threshold’s closest analogue to a reptilian Mammoth.
The Threshian was beaten, hurt, but in the next painting it returned
with another six of its brethren. What followed was a battle depicted
in crude frames that ended with the Threshians defeating and then
consuming the flesh of the Kloma. A single Kloma could defeat a
single Threshian, but it was alone, always alone. The Threshians were
many, and their numbers gave them power.

“Do
you understand?” the old one asked.

“I
do,” Jon replied. His own vocoder was a little faster, a little
more under his control. It was then that he realised his arms were
covered in scales, and that the shape of his mouth and tongue did not
allow him to truly speak. The vocoder interpreted, and he had
possessed it for six years as the humans termed time. It had not
always been so easy to make words, but he had worked hard to master
the device.

But
he hadn’t, he remembered speaking with his own mouth, he
remembered arms pink, soft and freckly. No, the humans were ugly,
repellent and weak. He was not one of them, he was strong, proud, and
he could rip out a human heart with the simplest swipe of his claws.
He was better than they were, and one day he would lead his people
against them and kill them all. It would be easy, so easy, just like
the defeat of the Kloma. The name they had given him would be chanted
in victory over the face of the entire planet.

“Your
intentions are revealed, my son,” the old one said. “You
forget I can smell your thoughts, as you could smell mine, if only
you could remember how. These devices around our necks only allow us
to lie to each other as the humans do.”

“It
is a better way,” Jon said. “Before we were simple,
stupid, now we understand concepts and ideas, and technology. We have
grown.”