Free Broken Circle by John Shirley

like . . . because they anticipate that person will be a danger to High Charity.”
    â€œWhat? Such a Ministry could not long remain. It’s madly unjust! People won’t stand for it!”
    â€œI suspect you’re right—in time it will be undone. But in the meantime  . . . we could run a risk by openly reproducing. R’Noh is not friendly to me. If he finds out about a pregnancy . . . and he inevitably will . . . it could lead to some dark treachery on his part. Used against both of us.”
    Cresanda looked at the floor. “I see. Then . . . we will speak only of construction and color glosses. And nothing more.”
    He clasped her hands in his. “Cresanda! Please do not mistake me! I could not keep from you. But . . . I just wanted you to know. That there is risk. I wanted to be fair to you . . . and—”
    She put a hand on his lips. “Mken, it’s always a risk to start a family. Everything joyous is a risk. Only in fear is complete safety. And then one lives in its jaws forevermore. You and I will not live that way.”
    And then she came closer, and entwined with Cresanda, Mken felt he had truly come home.

CHAPTER 3
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    The Refuge: An Uncharted Forerunner Shield World
    850 BCE
    The Age of Reconciliation
    T here are two choices only, in fact,” said Salus ‘Crolon, adjusting a dial on his scancam. “That is what I believe. Either Ussa is the true prophet of us all, the leader who will take us across a great wilderness to the promised land, or—he is simply wrong, and he has led us from our home to an alien world . . . for no real purpose. Of course, I would never espouse the second interpretation of the facts. No! I would not have the nerve to question our leader, our kaidon! But . . . some would say . . .”
    Tersa ‘Gunok was feeling very uncomfortable, listening to ‘Crolon spout what could well be sedition. The older Sangheili’s rhetoric walked along the edge, never quite slipping over the border into outright treason. But it would be enough for many kaidon to behead him, and then dismember the body.
    Still, Tersa had been assigned to work with ‘Crolon, and he could not properly snub his work partner, especially as ‘Crolon was senior to Tersa. Together they were surveying the south side of the uncompleted Forerunner devices in the Storage Chamberunder the secondary inner shell of the Refuge. Other Sangheili, thankfully out of earshot, surveyed the farther fringes of the four-acre collection of slightly wobbling tiers filled with mysterious objects. The vast chamber, with its arching metallic ceiling, contained thousands of Forerunner artifacts, relics, pieces of sacred devices, all stacked in blue stasis fields, devices that few but Ussa ‘Xellus and Sooln possibly understood. And it was doubtful, according to ‘Crolon, that even the kaidon and his mate would ever really be able to harness the secrets of all these mechanisms.
    Pondering Salus ‘Crolon’s mutterings, Tersa used the scancam to take a three-dimensional image of a cylindrical object that spun slowly in place in its stasis field, the whorl marks on its white, shiny skin seeming to react when Tersa came close, as if it were scanning Tersa even as he did likewise. And that was possible. Was this not a creation of the Forerunners? Would it not be mystically infused with their intelligence, their essence?
    What secrets vibrated within these relics?
    For ages, the Sangheili had believed that the Forerunner relics must be held in reverence, and not interfered with. Sangheili with a scientific bent, who covertly probed into them well past the point permitted, were inevitably put to death when their blasphemous inquiries came to light. But there were those who secretly studied the relics in hidden laboratories, delving into the cryptic interiors of the artifacts.