Read Crossing the Line for Free Online

risen above the horizon but the nacreous coating on all the deliberately irregular little houses built into the west-facing slope looked luminous.
    The City of Pearl, the humans called it; the few colonists from Constantine who had seen F’nar had viewed it through religious eyes and pronounced it a miracle, and named it accordingly after a passage in one of their holy books. But Shan, in her pragmatic way, had called it insect shit, for that was what the coating actually was. He liked her pragmatism.
    It was all a matter of perception.
    Aras didn’t believe in miracles, although if one were about to present itself its timing would have been excellent. He was not afraid of dying. At several points in his artificially long life he had bitterly regretted being unable to die. What he feared most now was loss. He had put Shan in this position without her consent, and now she would be left alone to suffer the same loneliness that he had, and he would lose the one close relationship he had felt able to form in centuries. It was…unfair.
    Aras paced slowly round the room, measuring the dimensions in footsteps. Whatever happened to him, they would not harm Shan. She was too useful. She would be fine. She would be safe . He took some comfort from that, but not much. Would he have to advise Chayyas on how to have him killed? Human explosives might do the job best. Anything less immediate and catastrophic would only give his c’naatat time to regroup and keep him alive.
    He heard Chayyas coming a full minute before she appeared in the room. He could hear the swish of her long dhren against the flagstones and the scrabbling footsteps of the ussissi aide trying to keep pace with her. When she entered the room, she filled it, and not only with her size and presence: she exuded the sharp scent of agitation. A human would have tried to present a controlled façade, but any wess’har could smell another’s state of mind. There was no point in putting on a brave face.
    â€œAras, you put me in an impossible position,” she said, without greeting. She shimmered. She had a very fine dhren , as luminous as the city itself. “I have no idea what to do with you.”
    â€œIs Shan Frankland well? Is she still at Fersanye’s home?”
    â€œShe has eaten this morning and asks after you repeatedly.”
    That made him feel much worse. “I didn’t plan this.”
    â€œWhy did you do it, then? Why did you corrupt the order of things? Did you want a companion that badly?”
    â€œShe was dying. The isenj fired on her, and that was a conflict of my making so I couldn’t stand by and let her die.” He paused. It was a cheap shot to raise the matter, but it was relevant. “And it never troubled your forebears to alter the balance when you needed us as soldiers to defend this world.”
    â€œWhat was done in the past isn’t a justification for doing it in the present.”
    â€œThen you must look at the circumstances,” he said. “And I will not plead for my life. Do what you judge best.”
    â€œAras, nobody has ever deliberately harmed the common good. I have no idea whether a penalty is appropriate. But if we were to destroy all traces of c’naatat , it would save much harm in the future, and not just for us.”
    Even now that angered him, although he had a random thought that his anger—his wess’har anger—was mere irritation compared to Shan’s inner rage. “I can’t accept that. You can destroy me, and you can even destroy Shan Chail , but how can you justify wiping out the life-form in its natural place? It’s part of Bezer’ej. We have no right to end its existence because it’s inconvenient for us. That makes us no better than the isenj. Or the gethes .”
    â€œThen I would have to weigh one people’s welfare against the benefits to all the other species,” said Chayyas. “Just as I might have to