The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency #1)(80)
“My luggage is being sent to the Moreland Hotel, here on the station.”
“Excellent choice, sir.”
“Thank you.” The Moreland had been recommended to him by Kiva, “assuming you can afford it.” Marce, currently in possession of eighty million marks in his data crypt, allowed that he might be able to scrape by.
The young man motioned. “This way, sir.”
Marce followed the young man, whose name was Verson Sohne, to an area of the imperial station used as a terminal for travel to Xi’an. Marce had his documents checked, rechecked, and his body scanned, also twice, and was asked his business in Xi’an, again twice, by two separate inquisitors. Each time Marce noted he had an appointment with the emperox and presented his tablet with the official appointment notice and security hash displayed. They did not ask him what specifically his meeting was about, for which Marce was thankful. He assumed “about the end of the Interdependency and the possible extinction of the human race” might raise some flags.
Verson apologized for the security measures. “They’ve been more stringent since those horrible End rebels bombed the coronation,” he said, and then suddenly shut up, aware that his charge, in fact, was from End. “I didn’t mean to imply anything about you, my lord,” he said, after a moment.
Marce smiled at this. He’d only in the past few hours caught up on the death of Attavio VI, the succession to his daughter Cardenia, now Grayland II, and the attempted assassination on the day of her coronation. He personally doubted anyone from End was at all involved. “It’s all right,” he said, to Verson, who looked visibly relieved.
The shuttle trip from Imperial Station to Xi’an was uneventful but Marce watched via his tablet anyway, looking at the surface of Hub as the shuttle zipped up the termination line from Imperial Station at the equator to where Xi’an hovered, ten degrees north. Marce watched Xi’an grow larger and larger in his tablet, making out the stream of specks that represented the traffic moving to and from the habitat. Farther up and down the terminator line of Hub were other, smaller habitats, which served as homes for the workers who built starships in nearby floating docks. Marce did not see any of those in his tablet.
The shuttle landed and Marce and Verson made their way to the train which traversed the whole of Xi’an, and Marce again found himself plastered to the view, looking at how the landscape went out, above and around him as the interior surface of the cylindrical station looped around to meet up with the train on the other side.
“Your first time at Xi’an, sir?” Verson asked.
“First time in a habitat like this,” Marce replied. “I’ve lived my whole life on End. On the surface of a planet. It’s nothing like this.”
“What’s it like, sir?”
“Flat.” Marce kept looking at the ground rising up at him. “Even our foothills are flat compared to this. I don’t know how anyone here looks up without wondering why they don’t fall right down to the other side of the station.”
“Well, it’s because Xi’an rotates,” Verson began.
Marce laughed at this. “I understand the physics of it. That’s not what I mean. But there’s a difference between knowing something intellectually and the animal portion of your brain telling you to grab hold of something.” He looked at Verson, who had a polite smile on his face. “You grew up in a habitat like this?”
Verson nodded. “I’m from Ancona. It’s an associated nation here in the Hub system.”
“Right. So you’re used to this.” Marce looked back out the window. “I’m … not.”
“Do you think you’ll ever get used to it, sir?”
“I hope I will,” Marce said. “And I kind of hope I don’t, too.”
They left the train at the palace station and Verson led Marce to a landing for people who had business at the imperial palace. Because Marce had an actual appointment with the emperox, Verson led him to the front of the line, annoying everyone who was waiting. Marce mouthed his apologies as Verson directed him forward. Another presentation of documents, another scan, another brief questioning, and then they were through, and Marce was handed off to a young woman, Obelees Atek, who worked at the palace proper. She gave Marce a pass to affix to his blouse, and then started walking, inviting Marce to follow. Marce waved good-bye to Verson and walked after Obelees.
Ten minutes later Marce sat in the anteroom of Emperox Grayland II’s office, having passed through a few public areas that displayed more opulence than Marce had ever seen in his life. Until this moment he’d thought the ducal palace on End was the standard for obnoxious opulence, but the imperial palace made it look like the loft of an arriviste, and made his own home, a mansion by any definition, look like a hovel. The imperial palace was stuffed with a millennium of gilded baubles, a testament to the self-interest of a family and the political system that supported it. The anteroom was likewise tastefully stuffed with treasure, including the statue of Prophet-Emperox Rachela I by the sculptor Meis Fujimoro. It was famous throughout the Interdependency and probably worth more than the incomes of some entire human habitats.
Marce looked around and wondered how an emperox, someone so intimately invested in the preservation of a system like the Interdependency, could ever be able to act on the news he had to give her.