The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency #2)(88)

“I was just talking about you,” Cardenia said, coming up to him.

“To your imaginary friends, I see.”

“They’re not imaginary. They’re just not real.”

“Very subtle distinction.”

“I suppose it is.”

“What were you saying?”

“That you can afford to be optimistic about Flow dynamics and I can’t.”

“I don’t know that I’m optimistic about the Flow,” Marce said. “I can say I’m excited about it. We know so much more now than we did even a couple of months ago. I can tell you what I’m speculating about right now, if you want.”

“Please,” Cardenia said, fondly. She enjoyed watching Marce geek out.

“I have a pretty good feeling that the collapse of the Flow streams today is at least partially influenced by the Rupture,” he said.

“What do you mean, ‘influenced’?”

“I mean I think it did something to the stability of the Flow streams in local space. Rattled them. Shook them. I think the Rupture caused something like a pressure wave to course through the Flow, and we’re seeing destabilization as a result.”

“A pressure wave.”

“Well, not exactly a pressure wave,” Marce said. “It’s something else entirely, in fact. But I can’t really explain it in human languages. ‘Pressure wave’ is the closest I’m getting using words. If you could speak math I might be able to explain it to you.”

“Hatide Roynold spoke math to you.”

Marce nodded. “She did. Really well.”

“I’m sorry she’s gone.”

“So am I. Anyway, this is all wild speculation on my part, because fundamentally I don’t know how the Rupture worked. I can see the effect on the data Chenevert gave me from the time, but I don’t know the process. I’m trying to work backward from the effect, but that’s not really a great way to do things. Did you ever ask Jiyi if there was any record of the math behind the Rupture? Or what they made to make it happen?”

“There weren’t any records,” Cardenia lied.

“Well, that’s inconvenient,” Marce said, forging on. “But it makes the point that all along we’ve been thinking there’s nothing we could be doing that would affect the Flow. But maybe we can after all. We know we found a way to close it off.”

“Is there a way to open it up?”

“A Flow stream?”

“Yes.”

Marce shook his head. “Closing off a Flow stream is easy, relatively speaking. You just have to snap it off at the Flow shoal.”

“‘Just.’”

“I did say ‘relatively,’” Marce pointed out. “Opening a Flow shoal is a lot harder because it requires accessing and moving through the Flow medium. It’s like this: Closing off a Flow stream is like closing a door. Opening a Flow stream is like tunneling through a mountain.”

“I like it when you use human languages,” Cardenia said.

“They’re my second-favorite type of languages.”

Cardenia pointed at the tablet. “Is this stuff about Flow streams what you’re looking at here?”

“No, it’s something else entirely, from Sergeant Sherrill, who you met.”

“I remember.”

“She says that the retired fiver to Dalasysla is on its way,” he said, holding up his tablet to show the message. “Stuffed with food and seeds and hydroponics and technology and art and entertainment that’s not eight hundred years old. It’s amazing how quickly a fiver can get filled when the emperox tells someone to get something done.”

“You said they needed it.”

“They definitely did,” he said, setting down his tablet. “You should have seen their ship.”

“I told you I wished I had been able to come.”

“I’m glad you didn’t. It means you’re still here.”

Cardenia smiled at that. “Did you learn anything from the Dalasyslans that will help us?”

“I learned that survival is possible for longer than anyone would ever expect, when you have no other choice but to survive,” Marce said. “I’m not sure that’s a great lesson, but it’s a lesson. But it only works for very small numbers of people. If we want to save millions, we need to think larger than that. And the only way we can do that realistically is to bring people to End.”

“That will require sneaking past a large ship in rebellion,” Cardenia said. “If you can find a way around that that doesn’t involve just throwing ships at the Flow shoal until they run out of ammunition, I’ll make you Duke of End.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

“Are you telling me how to do my job, Lord Marce?” Cardenia joked.

“Sorry, ma’am.”

“You better be. Also, come up with a way to sneak into End.”

“Well, here’s the thing about that,” Marce said. He picked up his tablet and opened a document. “I think I may have found something.”