47 Federation by Judith Reeves-Stevens & Garfield Reeves-Stevens

Author:Judith Reeves-Stevens & Garfield Reeves-Stevens [Reeves-Stevens, Judith & Reeves-Stevens, Garfield]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Fiction, Science Fiction, Space Opera, Adventure, Interplanetary voyages, Performing Arts, Kirk; James T. (Fictitious character), Television, Star trek (Television program), Spock (Fictitious character)
ISBN: 9780671894238
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 1995-09-30T23:00:00+00:00

Part Two

METAMORPHOSIS

THORSEN

Some of them had been doctors once.

But the Optimum had closed the universities. The Optimum had believed in the survival of the fittest, and medical care was considered a luxury. To the Optimum, those who were too old, unhealthy, incomplete, were little different from those of the wrong color, the wrong religion, the wrong political beliefs. Doctors were unnecessary because those who were nonoptimal would be cleansed ,/horn the Earth by the raging fire of change, of purification, of rebirth.

But the fire had come to Adrik Thorsen first.

In the long weeks of his recovery, he remembered little of how that last night in Battersea had ended. He remembered Cochrane, O/'course. He remembered how the scientist had mocked him, had lied to him. had dared to touch him.

He remembered how the scientist had raised his laser, rejecting Thors'en, rejecting the.future.

Cochrane , light had cut across Thorsen's face, seared his eve, so t/at in all the years ever after, whenever he was in darkness, the xcintillation of that laser still echoed in what remained of his optic nerve. A flickering shadow, a shimmering souvenir of his.first and

only meeting with the one man who could have guaranteed a new life for the Earth. The one man who, through his refusal of the Optimum, had brought about all that had followed in the vacuum of the Optimum's collapse.

Thorsen had crawled along the turf of Battersea, the laser afterimage burning in his eye, his brain. He had screamed Cochrane's name as he had crawled, tasting blood, feeling pain, seeking darkness and coolness and relief He had crawled onto concrete, down rough stairs, to a place where cameras had once been installed, when the Battersea Stadium had meant something.

Then the night had caught fire and he remembered nothing else until they woke him up to scrub the dead skin from his body with wire bristles that found each nerve on his shiny new skin.

Eventually, the worst of the pain faded, except for the light that would shine forever in his missing eye, and the ache that would haunt his arms and legs.

Although those who had been doctors explained that he had no arms and legs.

Adrik Thorsen had been cleansed by fire.

And been left incomplete.

Nonoptimal.

As he lay helpless in his sterile bed, what had happened to Thorsen happened also to his dreams of salvation.

The mistakes of Khan had been avoided. But new mistakes had been made. The Optimum collapsed. Pilloried by those who had no vision.

From his sterile bed, Adrik Thorsen called for doctors to make him whole, so he could escape with the others of the cadre. Go into hiding. Learn from their mistakes and try again.

But those who answered his call were no longer doctors. He had helped see to that. They were interface experts now. And Adrik Thorsen learned firsthand None,hat happened to human nervous tissue when Josephson probes were inserted into the brain.

When they were through with him, Thorsen was whole, after a fashion. He could walk, he could pick up and manipulate objects, after a fashion.

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