“So twenty million people died because of politics and bureaucracy.”
“Yes. Not immediately, of course. But the intentional nature of the Interdependency is that each system is reliant on the others for essentials. Remove one system, and its ruling house and monopoly, and the dozens of other systems will survive. But that one system will not. Over time it will begin to fail. The habitats in space and outposts on otherwise uninhabitable planets and moons will fall into disrepair and over time will become harder to fix. Farms and food production factories will also start to fail. Social networks will break down predictably, commensurate to failures of the physical plant and the realization that ultimately nothing can save the people in the cut-off system. Between the physical and social failures that will follow the collapse of the Flow stream, system-wide death is inevitable.”
“How long did it take?”
“When the Dalasysla collapse happened, I ordered radio observatories in the Kaipara system to train in on Dalasysla. Kaipara was the closest system by physical distance, seventeen light-years away. I was dead before they heard anything.”
“But they heard something.”
“Briefly. Most in-system communication in my era was through focused streams of data, so it would have been difficult to eavesdrop randomly. When I ordered the radio telescopes to listen I hoped someone at Dalasysla would have the presence of mind to point a wide-spectrum transmitter at Kaipara. And as I understand it, someone did, for about a month, two years after the collapse.”
“What did it say?”
“Basically: civil war, murder, violence, sabotage of life-support systems and food production, the rise of cults of personality. There’s a classified report that was prepared by my son and successor, Bruno III.”
“Classified?” Cardenia turned to Attavio VI. “Is it still classified?”
“I didn’t unclassify it, no,” Attavio said.
“Why not? Especially if you believe the Flow is in danger of collapsing?”
“Because the problems that existed in Grayland’s era exist in ours, or mine, I should say. The parliament would still see raising the concern as a political move to marginalize them. No one wants to disrupt trade or the privileges of the guild houses. And in this case it won’t be just one system, like Dalasysla. It will be all of them. There won’t be anywhere to run. What happened at Dalasysla will happen everywhere. Unless I was absolutely sure, I wasn’t going to open that particular box of trouble.”
And here is where Cardenia, in her dream, departed from her script. “This is all stupid,” she said, to Attavio VI and Grayland I. “We’re doomed only if we keep doing what we’re doing. If we know a collapse is coming, we have to reform the Interdependency. End the house monopolies. Help every system prepare for the collapse.”
“It won’t happen,” Attavio VI said.
“You don’t know that.”
“Of course I know that. I’m the emperox. Or was.”
Cardenia turned to Grayland I. “You saw a collapse happen. In your time, they must have responded.”
“I was assassinated,” Grayland I said. “And after a brief vogue for entertainment about the lost system of Dalasysla, everyone decided to forget about it. The other Flow streams looked stable, and thinking about Dalasysla was inconvenient.”
“No one wants the Interdependency to end. Including the House of Wu. There’s too much money and power at stake,” Attavio VI said.
“And the survival of humanity doesn’t matter?” Cardenia asked, incredulously.
“Not if it means the end of the Interdependency.”
“The survival of humanity was the point of the Interdependency!” Cardenia shouted, at the computer simulation of her father.
And this is where, in her dream, both Attavio VI and Grayland I laughed in her face.
“My child, that’s never been the point of the Interdependency,” Attavio VI said.
“It’s just the excuse we gave for it,” Grayland I affirmed, nodding.
“Then what is the point?” Cardenia asked, still shouting. “What is the Interdependency?”
And here there was another shimmer, and another figure walked toward Cardenia, a figure that Cardenia knew was meant to be Rachela I, prophet-emperox, the legendary founder of the Interdependency. It was meant to be Rachela I but looked like Naffa, Naffa who had been caught in the explosion of the presentation balcony, Naffa, the last sight of whom that Cardenia would ever have was her being torn apart by the blast, Naffa, covered in blood, who stood in front of Cardenia now, as Rachela I, to tell her what the Interdependency was and is.
“It’s a scam,” she said.
And then Cardenia, who even dreaming could no longer pretend not to know what had happened, willed herself awake, to find herself in a bed in her own very small, very secure private hospital, surrounded by imperial bodyguards, a phalanx of doctors led by Qui Drinin, and a small contingent of imperial guards, including the one, right there, who would tell her what she already knew, that her friend Naffa Dolg was dead.
PART TWO
Chapter
7
The fighting near the University of Opole had subsided enough that Marce Claremont had been able to return to his apartment in graduate housing to pack for a trip from which he would likely never return.
Which did bring up the question: If you are leaving forever, what do you take with you?
Marce’s triage was helped by certain factors. With regard to clothing, Marce was already packed; he had enough clothes at home in Claremont that he didn’t need any from his apartment in Opole. The only thing his apartment had to offer in that regard were some casual shirts with clever astrophysics comments silkscreened on them. Marce was reasonably sure he could leave those behind. The clothing he did pack was mostly neutral in color and design. His father pointed out that fashion on Hub would be so dramatically different that he would have to restock anyway.
All the music, books, pictures, entertainment, and much of the personal communication that Marce treasured was stored in a thumb-sized data crypt, along with what appeared to be close to one hundred thousand marks of spending money, the latter accessible only through Marce’s biometrics, theoretically. Marce wouldn’t have to waste space on any of those.
That left things—objects of sentimental value. The large majority of these sorts of objects also resided in Claremont Palace, both because that’s where Marce had lived most of his life, and also because the apartment in graduate housing was ridiculously small. Of the objects that were at the apartment, Marce chose four. Two were books, given to him by his father, one on his thirteenth standard birthday, and one when he received his doctorate.
The third was an obsolete music player given to him by Vrenna, who took the player to a Green Gods concert and managed to get it signed by three of the four members of the band. The player didn’t work anymore and the Green Gods had broken up years ago, members dispersing into oblivion and/or ill-advised solo careers. But he kept it to remember that time in his life, and to remind him that Vrenna, despite often being a pain in his ass as they grew up, was occasionally capable of being thoughtful and kind.