The shining instrument had not been a hypodermic needle.
* * * * *
"You're tough," Sergeant said as I eased back into focus.
"You aren't, not without help," I told him in disgust.
"Spunky, aren't you? I meant mental toughness. That's the one thing
we can never judge. I think you could have taken the shock right from
the start. Of course, you would still have needed the conditioning to
integrate properly."
"Conditioning? Conditioning?" It came out of me, vortexing up, outside
of my piloting. "What have you done to my mind?"
"We've been trying to get it to grow back up," Sergeant said
reasonably. "Think of this. Fountain of Youth. Immortality.
Rejuvenation. This is it. Never mind how it works. Most minds can't
stand being young and knowing they will have to go through the same
damned thing all over again. We use synapse-shift to switch your upper
conscious memories to your id and super-ego, leaving room for new
memories. You remember only those things out of the past you _have_ to,
to retain your identity."
"Identity," I repeated. "I have no identity. My identity is a dream. I
have two identities--one of them years beyond the other."
Sergeant tilted his head and his eyes at me and slapped me across the
face. "Don't go back on me now. We gave you the best we could. The
Rejuvenation Service couldn't help it if you were too old for a _beta_.
You shouldn't have waited until you were so old, so very old. We used
the very oldest sets and mock-ups we had for _betas_, but you, you had
to keep wandering onto _alpha_ territory, while they were striking
sets, even. _Beta_ or not, we gave you good service. Don't slip now."
I heard the voice and I heard another voice, and it said "What could
you expect of a _beta_?" and they were only some of the voices I was
hearing, and I wondered what you could expect from a _beta_, and I
didn't know, or think that I would ever know.