The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency #2)(34)

“If it will make you feel better about what I just said, then yes, I did,” said Attavio VI.

As Cardenia walked through the imperial palace toward her personal apartments, she realized that her father, or the computer simulation thereof, was not wrong. Ultimately Marce and she were adults and could approach this in an adult manner. She suspected he liked her as well but was shy about making any first move, first because he was kind of a nerd, and second because she was, after all, the emperox, and despite her father’s attestations otherwise, Cardenia suspected it took nerves of steel to let an emperox know you were into them. Marce, entirely understandably, was waiting for Cardenia to make that first move.

All right, then, I will, Cardenia said to herself. It’s been weeks since we met. It’s time. The worst that can happen is he says no.

Cardenia walked into her apartments, nodded goodbye to Atek, who made her way back to her own office until she was called for, and then walked into her private dining room, where she knew Marce would be waiting, and was, in fact, waiting.

With another woman.

“Who the hell are you?” Cardenia blurted, before she could stop herself.

*

“We’re calling it ‘evanescence,’” Marce said. “Flow streams that arise out of the shifting of the Flow topography in our part of space. So even as the streams that we’ve seen as long-term and stable are collapsing—and they are—these other streams will arise and connect star systems for an indeterminate period of time.”

“Right,” said Hatide Roynold, the woman Marce had brought to their engagement. “Although by ‘indeterminate’ we don’t mean that we can’t estimate how long the stream will remain open. We can, probably. What we mean is that the individual streams might be open for a day. Or a couple of weeks. Or even years.”

“But they’ll still collapse quickly, relative to the streams we’ve been used to, the ones that were open for a thousand years,” Marce said. “That’s why we’re calling the phenomenon evanescence.”

“Now you see them, now you don’t,” Roynold said.

Cardenia nodded dumbly at the two of them as they raced through the details of their latest discoveries, and tried to gather her thoughts. She had made a mess of her entrance, and nei ther Marce nor Roynold had seemed to figure out why exactly that was. Marce had apologized for springing Roynold on Cardenia, but noted that he had cleared the addition with the emperox’s secretary and assumed that Cardenia knew he was bringing a guest.

This was entirely possible, since Cardenia had not bothered to check her own personal schedule on her tablet between her appointments, on the basis that she knew where she was going and with whom she was having her next meeting. Roynold’s presence meant that she was essentially harmless to Cardenia; security would not have cleared her as an addition if she could have been in any way a threat.

Marce had brought Roynold because of all the Flow physicists currently cranking their way through the Count Claremont’s work on the Flow collapse, she was the only one who was already up to speed on the work. She had done her own work on the subject, albeit only relatedly, and also for the Nohamapetans, who then used her work to try to overthrow the Interdependency.

No one seemed to be holding it against Roynold, however. Apparently not the Imperial Guard, which allowed her into the palace, and clearly not Marce, who was talking animatedly with her, with the both of them trading off sentences.

Cardenia watched the way the two of them talked about the subject of the Flow and was aware of a tang of jealousy creeping into her emotions. Marce and Roynold had a communion of ideas that felt to Cardenia like love at first sight—they were obviously into each other, or at least into each other’s brains. Roynold was a bit older than Marce, but that wouldn’t be that much of an impediment if everything else lined up.

Maybe you should actually pay attention to what they’re saying to you, that one annoying voice in her head said. You can moon after the boy later. Cardenia made a note to try to find that voice later and strangle it, possibly with alcohol.

So Cardenia held up a hand to stop the both of them from talking. Marce picked up on it right away; Roynold kept prattling on until Marce put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. Cardenia noted it and felt a small pinprick in the general area of her heart.

“I don’t need to know the details here,” Cardenia said. “I wouldn’t understand the details even if you tried to tell them to me, and I have to be at another meeting in a few minutes. So let me see if I understand what you’re saying so far.”

“Okay,” Marce said.

“One, the Flow streams are still collapsing.”

“Yes,” Marce said.

“Two, every once in a while a new Flow stream will appear where there wasn’t one before.”

“Yes.”

“Three, these new Flow streams are only around for a short time; they won’t replace the old streams.”

“Yes.”

“Well,” Roynold said.

“Well, what?” Cardenia asked.

“Our preliminary work—” Roynold began.

“And this all super preliminary,” Marce interjected.

“—shows that eventually a new network of Flow streams with long-term stability is likely to appear in this part of space. Like I’d predicted before, for the Nohamapetans,” Roynold finished.