The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency #1)(83)
Marce looked at the emperox and was reminded again that whatever he was expecting from this meeting, this wasn’t it. “Ma’am, it would be my honor to assist you however I can,” he said.
The emperox broke into a grin. “Thank you, Lord Marce. I am off now to tour a new tenner but will be returning late this evening. Will you have a late supper with me? I have more questions.”
“Of course,” Marce said, and then hesitated.
The emperox caught it. “What is it?”
“I’m trying to figure out my personal logistics. I’m staying at a hotel on Imperial Station. My dinner clothes are there.”
“One, I’m going to be exhausted after touring this damn ship, so dinner will be very informal. Two, you’re on staff now.” The emperox turned to Obelees. “I’ve hired Lord Marce as a special assistant for science policy. Have someone retrieve his effects from Imperial Station. Please find him quarters in the staff wing suitable to his station.” She glanced over to Marce. “Make sure they don’t look like a museum exploded in them. And have someone give him an orientation.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Obelees said.
“See you soon,” the emperox said to Marce.
“Ma’am,” Marce said, and bowed. The emperox left her office. As soon as she crossed the threshold of the office door, three assistants and a bodyguard attached themselves to her and paced her as she walked through the anteroom.
Marce watched her go and then turned to Obelees. “I have no idea what just happened here,” he said.
Obelees smiled. “It seems you had a successful meeting, Lord Marce. Now, come with me and let’s see what we can find for you, apartment-wise.”
Chapter
16
Cardenia felt almost ashamed at how exhilarated she felt after her meeting with Marce Claremont.
Ashamed because, after all, the discussion, as brief as it was, confirmed what her father had worried about, a worry she had inherited: that the human species was threatened with extinction, not in an abstract way or over a long period of time, but in a concrete fashion in the span of less than a decade. In less than ten years every human system would be isolated, alone and forced to survive solely on what resources existed in-system, and with what craft existed to exploit those resources. Habitats could theoretically last decades or even centuries before they failed, but there was the human element as well. Humans didn’t react well to the knowledge they were cut off and doomed to slow death by habitat failure. Cardenia recalled what they knew of the fall of Dalasysla. The humans malfunctioned long before their habitat did.
Feeling exhilarated about a confirmation of that fate for four dozen human systems and billions of individual humans was nothing to be proud about.
But Cardenia couldn’t help it. She was exhilarated not because she was a fatalist or a misanthrope, happy that humanity was finally getting its comeuppance. She was exhilarated because finally the hazy nebulous shape of her reign, one whose meager main accomplishment was keeping parliament and the guilds from stomping on the unsuspecting planet of End with an influx of military boots, had suddenly snapped into focus. Cardenia now knew three things:
One, she would be the very last emperox of the Interdependency.
Two, the whole of her reign would be about saving as many human lives as possible, by any and every means possible.
Three, that meant the end of the lie of the Interdependency.
Which is what it was, and what Cardenia had learned that day she summoned Rachela I in the Memory Room and made her explain it all: how the vast majorities of the star systems accessible by the Flow were not easily habitable by humans but how they proceeded anyway, undeterred. How these independent systems began to trade and become dependent on each other for resources. How a group of merchants, spearheaded by Banyamun Wu, realized true power rested not in trade but in controlling access to the Flow, and set themselves up in the Hub system as armed toll collectors.
How they camouflaged and sold their resource grab under a manufactured religious ethos of “Interdependency,” with Banyamun’s daughter Rachela as the nominative figurehead of the new church and nascent empire. How the Wus and their allies paid off those who might oppose them with titles of nobility and commerce monopolies, creating the “house and guild” economic system that ensured a permanent caste system and actively discouraged the sort of economic diversification within each system that might now better position humanity to survive its imminent isolation.
How, in short, the Interdependency codified and manipulated humanity’s actual need for intersystem trade and cooperation, for the benefit of just a few at the very top. Starting with the Wu family. Her family.
Cardenia had been shocked at the simple, unapologetic bloodymindedness with which Rachela I had recounted the Interdependency scheme. Until she remembered that the Rachela I of the Memory Room was a computer simulation without an ego. This version of Rachela I had no need to flatter herself or rationalize the actions she, her father, and the early Wu family and allies had taken. The computer simulation was unashamed.
At that moment it had occurred to Cardenia that every emperox after Rachela had had the same moment she was then having, the one where they had entered the Memory Room to converse with their ancestors about the nature of the Interdependency, only to be told flatly that the founding story every Interdependent citizen had been told and taught was a lie. Cardenia imagined that nearly every one of them had had to suspect—her own dream about Naffa telling her it was a scam was a manifestation of her subconscious, not an actual ghostly visitation, after all—but it’s one thing to suspect it, and another thing to be told it, by the simulated but verifiable representation of your ancestor.