Crossing the Line (36 page)

There were so many fragments from the shattered hull of
Actaeon
that isenj actually froze their constant river of movement to watch the fireballs streaking across the sky above Jejeno even during daylight.

A couple had crashed into the suburbs of Tivsk on the next landmass. There were a lot of casualties, the sort of numbers you couldn't avoid in crowded places. If
Actaeon
hadn't been easing out of orbit, running up her engines after the last emergency evacuation to Umeh, it would have been far worse.

It was quite a display. Eddie watched it too. It continued into the dusk. If you dissociated it from the circumstances, it was spectacularly beautiful. But he couldn't do that sort of mind-trick, not any more.

He kept wondering if what he had told Malcolm Okurt about
c'naatat
had been the root cause of this. He had been so sure he was doing the right thing. But he had told him—and Lindsay Neville—where it was, and where Shan might be found. It was an agonizing thought. He didn't want it in his head.

Umeh Station boiled with angry ussissi. Shan had summed it up succinctly, as she always did: take on one ussissi, and you took on all of them.

Eddie hadn't realized he had made such an impact on them. Apparently they admired his pluck for facing them after the destruction of Ouzhari.

So they had sought him out first to tell him that Shan Frank- land and Vijissi were dead.

They had become a pack. They roamed among the workers and military personnel in the biodome, sniffing and darting away. Eddie had never seen that before. It made them look like hunting animals, like mongooses on to a cobra. It seemed only a matter of time before they attacked.

Even Serrimissani joined then for a while, weaving around and becoming one part of a single, increasingly angry creature.

Eddie sat on a trestle made up of a sheet of greenhouse composite and two stacks of pallets that would eventually become composting bins if Umeh Station was ever completed. He should have been very glad that he had decided against returning to
Actaeon
: but all he could think about was Shan.

“Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ
.” Eddie said it so many times that the words didn't sound like English any more, just a mantra, a sound, a song in a foreign language. “Shan.
Shan.
”

Serrimissani had gathered her belongings in a sack. She lowered her head as if something was raining down on it. “This is the last place I would want to be at this moment.”

“You're leaving?”

“The
gethes
have killed
Shan Chail
and Vijissi. There may be more retribution, and they may target every human here.” She took Eddie's arm. “If you have sense, you will come with me. I am returning to Wess'ej. Come with me and beg forgiveness of the matriarchs, and perhaps they will spare you. You have done a favor for them.” She looked up anxiously. “And you have been honest. Come on.”

“The humans didn't kill them. Not actual murder.”

“And would they still be alive had they not been captured?”

“Yes.”

“Then spare me your sophistry.”

Eddie reached for the urine vial in his pocket and pressed it against his chest to make sure it was still there with its single ruby-beaded quill. He'd hand it over. He wouldn't have the slightest trouble doing that now.

Eddie had run for his life a few times. It was always several hours after everyone else had come up with the idea first. There was something about seeing a world through a camera lens that made you feel less vulnerable: added to the detachment of being a reporter, it made for a poor sense of mortality. Journalists in danger zones got killed with depressing frequency. Eddie didn't plan on joining them, not because he was scared—and he was, oh God yes he
was
—but because he hadn't told his story yet.

He owed Shan that much. He wanted to know everything. He hoped they wouldn't execute Ade Bennett before he could talk to him.

“Okay,” he said. “When we get the evacuation warning, I'll come.”

“Warning? They will not warn you. You didn't warn them. The vengeance will come, and soon.”

Eddie pulled out the bee-cam. “Tight on me until further notice, divert for explosive and sudden movement,” he told it. “And upload every five minutes.” He didn't want to die with an unfiled story in the system. He hoped the isenj link would relay his material now that
Actaeon
was no more than a spectacular shower of false meteors.

He quickened his pace behind Serrimissani. At least she had come back for him; he'd had native guides abandon him in the middle of riots. As they walked, they saw ground cars trundling materials towards the Jejeno sphere. One slowed down and an orange-suited foreman leaned out of the cab.

“Want a lift?” he asked.

“I'm leaving,” Eddie said. “But thanks. Have you had a security alert yet?”

“No. Why?”

“I don't think Jejeno is going to be the safest place to be after what happened earlier.”

“What?”

“Doesn't matter. There's a war starting. Don't be here when it does.”

The foreman shrugged and heaved himself back into the seat. Eddie and Serrimissani walked on, quickening their pace. Isenj were obviously starting to work out who would be next after
Actaeon
: there was a definite thinning out of the crowds in the neighborhoods closest to the sphere, and some isenj were carrying bundles on their flat heads, children trailing behind them in orderly lines. They knew the wess'har well enough to have come to the same conclusion as Serrimissani.

“And where will your humans go now that
Actaeon
is destroyed?” Serrimissani asked. They flagged down an isenj vehicle and she chattered at the driver. “They are stranded here.”

“Is Lin back yet? Where's the shuttle?”

“I would not waste concern on her.”

“I was thinking of Mart Barencoin, actually.” Shan liked the marines. She would have wanted them kept out of the aftermath. “How can I check what's happened—”

“Think of your own safety.” Serrimissani reached down and pulled Eddie up into the seat, and they sat in silence until they came to the outskirts of the airport. The driver was anxious to get as far away from Jejeno as he could, and taking them to the terminal seemed to be asking for more time than he was willing to spare. They began a brisk walk up the main approach road, dodging isenj workers who seemed simply to be going about their tasks.

Eddie motioned the bee-cam to get shots of them. “How many of them will still be alive next week?” he asked.

“If the wess'har attack, they will only target the sphere. If the isenj stay clear of it, very few will die. There will be substantial disruption, though.” It sounded like a few traffic jams: but Eddie imagined water pipes spurting and power lines cut and fires raging and food shortages. And very high casualties. There was no room in this tight-packed infrastructure to have any sort of emergency without the isenj suffering too. Ual would be busy in his serene aquamarine offices.

He thought again of Shan and wondered if anyone had broken the news to Aras. His grief would be terrible.

“Jesus, I still can't believe she's gone,” he said, not caring if the bee-cam picked it up. It shot back to concentrate on his face, intruding into his own grief, a fitting punishment for his calling. “Oh God.
Oh God.
”

“She was a good wess'har,” Serrimissani said. “She accepted Targassat. To die to preserve the balance of life is a commendable act.”

It seemed that every ussissi on Umeh had the same premonition of war as they did. Anxious little faces and chattering teeth greeted them as they pushed through the lobby and out onto the apron nearest the ussissi shuttle. One had already left, packed to just above safe lading weight. They were loyal creatures if they had a personal charge to care for, but they weren't stupid.

“I have to make some calls,” said Eddie.

“We must go.”

“I need to ask Ual for a few favors. The ministry is at least fifteen kay from here. Even if they start bombing now—”

“You have until this evening. I will stay with you, in case you become foolish and try to get more stories that end up killing you.”

“You're a doll,” Eddie said, and meant it. Yes, they were loyal, dog-loyal. But Serrimissani didn't understand, and nor did it appear that she was interested in doing so. She stared at the vessel filling up with ussissi. So did Eddie.

“Sinking ship,” he said.

“It will fly,” said Serrimissani.

“I meant—never mind. Rats leaving sinking ships—they're supposed to be the first to know when a ship is in trouble.” He was gibbering. He always did that when fighting down emotions that threatened to overwhelm him. “Doesn't matter.”

“What are rats?” she asked.

Eddie thought hard. “Another kind of people.”

His mind was a mess of fragments, personal fears, professional worries, loss, confusion. But he centered on what he was at his core—a reporter. It anchored him again and he felt calmer. If Ual's link was denied to him, he could ask the matriarchs of F'nar to hack into the ITX link. He had to get that story filed: it was the least he owed Shan Frankland.

He had once made a mistake and thought she was like everyone else, available at the right price, but he'd been wrong. And he was glad he had the chance to tell her so.

Everyone needed heroes. He still had his, intact and immutable, and now he always would.

 

Aras suddenly realized he was kneeling on the floor, and he had no idea how long he had been there. His forehead was on his knees, his hands tucked in under his chest.

It hurt too much to move. It certainly hurt to think.

“
Actaeon
has been destroyed,” said Nevyan gently. “I made certain of it.”

He knew he was back on Wess'ej. He heard her but the pressure in his throat had taken over. He had forgotten about Josh and he had forgotten about the bezeri and he had forgotten about his failure to protect Bezer'ej after so many, many years of standing sentinel.

They had taken his
isan.
Shan was gone. He couldn't move for grief.

He tried to focus on the pain. It was a trick he had learned when he was a prisoner of the isenj, when he couldn't die but wanted to very badly, when every second was infinite. He found that if he concentrated on the pain, on the moment, the enormity of the unspecified void ahead of him was pushed to one side.

“Can he hear us?” It was Mestin's voice.

“I think so. Leave us. I'll stay with him for the while.”

Aras tried not to think of Shan and failed. She consumed him. And he thought of Askiniyas, and he hadn't seen her or held her for centuries. There had been a time when he couldn't summon up her face or scent despite his perfect wess'har recall, but now she was vivid—and astonishingly alien. But he wanted Shan. He wanted to hold her.

They had even denied him the comfort of cradling her body one last time.

Wess'har males who lost their
isan
remated or else they died. He could do neither. And he didn't want to. He never wanted to move beyond this grief even though it was burning him alive.

“You can come and stay with us,” said Nevyan.

He couldn't form any words. Even breathing was an effort.

“Or we can bring you whatever you need. You need not see anyone until you want to.” Nevyan moved, sending a cloud of very dominant scent into the air, and knelt down beside him. The smell triggered a primeval urge to placate her, but he felt as if he would fall apart, limb from limb, if he tried to move. “We have had messages from their leaders. They want to talk and apologize. But I have sent word to the World Before. I await their reply.”

Nevyan waited an uncharacteristically long time for a senior matriarch. She waited, kneeling, but Aras was frozen.

She's gone. She's dead.

“Eddie has asked to live in F'nar. He'll be alone here. I doubt he will ever get home.”

Aras struggled to think. His mind was trapped in a loop of reliving the first realization that Shan was gone. He could not imagine the pain ever stopping. It kept rolling over him again and again.

“I think you and Eddie could be a great comfort to each other,” Nevyan persisted. “Shall I tell him he's welcome?”

Aras wanted oblivion. If he could have moved, he would have gone and taken the grenades Shan kept as bizarre souvenirs and laid upon them and
died.

He forced his head up.

“She's
c'naatat,
” said Nevyan. “You must not lose hope. We have no idea what the parasite's limits are.”

Aras hated Nevyan suddenly for that suggestion.
C'naatat
was remarkable: but it could not bring back the dead. That was a conjuring trick for the humans'god. He managed to pound his fists on the stone floor. He felt the skin tear and the blood flow, albeit briefly. The pain helped.

They always seemed to think a
c'naatat
couldn't feel pain. They were wrong.

“We'll bring her body home,” Nevyan said. “We'll find her. Every wess'har has the right to return home to the cycle. She'll be taken back into the world, however long we have to search.”

Aras thought how much it would have meant to Shan to be spoken of as a wess'har. He wanted to see her body. He wanted to hold her one last time. He didn't give a damn about the cycle. He wanted his
isan.

Nevyan was still staring at Shan's few personal items on a shelf that was rapidly taking on the appearance of a human shrine. She put her hand out towards an imperfect emerald glass bowl but stopped short of touching it.

“I would like something of her,” she said. “She made this, yes?”