by John Scalzi
“You lied a lot,” Cardenia said to Rachela, a statement rather than a question.
“Humans lie a lot,” Rachela replied.
“Yes, but you lied as a matter of policy,” Cardenia countered. “During the founding of the Interdependency.”
“I did,” Rachela agreed. “Whether on balance I lied more or less than other people, or subsequent emperoxs, is a question that would require some research. If I had to guess, I would say that I was somewhere in the middle of the distribution.”
“Did lying ever backfire for you?”
“Personally or as emperox?”
“Either. Both.”
“Of course,” Rachela said. “Telling the truth also backfired for me at times as well, in the times where it might have been kinder, easier or more politic to lie. Lies do not in themselves lead to poor outcomes, nor does truth in every circumstance lead to good ones. As with so many things, context matters.”
“It never bothered you to have such a … flexible policy about truth and lies,” Cardenia asked.
“No. I had a specific goal, which was to form the Interdependency, and then once founded to strengthen it to survive its early years. Truth and lies and everything in between were in service to those goals.”
“The ends justified the means.”
“At the time I would have said it differently.”
“What would you have said?”
“That the end was too important to foreclose any particular means.”
“That’s a convenient bit of sophistry,” Cardenia said.
“Yes it was,” Rachela concurred, and once again Cardenia was reminded that this version of Rachela was not burdened with ego, and was therefore not concerned with justifying her actions in any way. It must be nice, Cardenia thought to herself.
“Is there a reason you are asking about truth and lies?” Rachela asked.
“I withheld information from someone,” Cardenia said. “Data about the Rupture that might have been useful to him. He wasn’t happy about it at all. He was unhappy that I lied to him about Jiyi having information about it, and that I wouldn’t share it with him.”
“It’s your prerogative,” Rachela said.
“He’s also my boyfriend.”
“That complicates matters.”
“Yes it does.”
“Have you resolved this?”
“No,” Cardenia said. “I apologized to Marce for lying to him, and explained why I didn’t tell him about the data. It was because the Rupture is the reason we’re in the situation we are in now—the choice scientists and politicians made fifteen hundred years ago in setting off the Rupture made the collapse of the Flow inevitable. We aren’t responsible enough for that data. At least I don’t think we are.”
“And Marce disagreed.”
“He said we aren’t them. That we’re smarter than that. And then I did something I shouldn’t have done.”
“What did you do?”
“I laughed in his face,” Cardenia said. She looked at Rachela helplessly. “I didn’t mean to. It just came out. But he’s wrong. Every moment of my reign as emperox has shown me that we aren’t better than those people fifteen hundred years ago. We’re not better than you were when you started the Interdependency, either. Sorry.”
“I’m not offended,” Rachela said. “I don’t have the capacity to be offended.”
“Well, Marce does. And he was. And then he was angry that I wouldn’t share the Rupture data with him. That I still won’t.”
“You think he will do something terrible with the data.”
“No.” Cardenia shook her head. “Not him. I trust Marce. It’s everyone else in the universe I worry about. Once the data is out, the data is out. The people who used it before nearly killed themselves and everyone else with it. They’re going to kill us with it as an unintended consequence. We were lucky that information was lost for so long. It’s poison.”
“You don’t think Marce could keep that data to himself.”
“He can’t. He’s just one person. He can’t do all this work himself. If this data turns out to be useful in any way, he’ll need to share it with other scientists. To confirm it and to let them work on sections of the problem while he works on other things. It’s what he’s already doing. Once they start working with the data, they’ll see the implications of it. Nothing stays a secret.” Cardenia smirked as she said this. “You should know this better than anyone. You programmed Jiyi to find every secret in the Interdependency.”
“You explained this all.”
“I did. Marce wasn’t convinced. He said that if the data held useful information, and I kept it locked away, then if we failed to find a way to save the people of the Interdependency, their deaths would be on me.” Cardenia shrugged. “And I’m not sure I can say he’s wrong about that. It’s entirely possible that I will go down as history’s worst monster. Marce is angry with me for lying to him. He’s even more angry about me not giving him the data.”
“You admitted to him you lied.”
“It just kind of slipped out.”
“You probably shouldn’t have done that,” Rachela said, “if you wanted him not to be angry with you.”
“It’s a little late for that now,” Cardenia said, annoyed. “I was kind of hoping that you might have some experience that would be useful for me to fix this. Because, you know. You were good at lying. And I am evidently really not.”
“Are you asking what I would do in the same situation?” Rachela asked.
“Yes. Sure.”
“I would probably break up with this person.”
“What?”
“If there’s no personal relationship with this person, then you don’t have to worry about him being angry or upset with you. You are the emperox. You will not have difficulty finding other people to have personal relationships with.”
“Okay, one, in my experience that is very not true,” Cardenia said. “And two, let’s assume that for a moment I want to actually maintain this relationship.”
“If you say so.”
“You’d really just break up with someone like that?”
“I did break up with someone like that,” Rachela said. “My first husband.”
“And that didn’t bother you?”
“No. He’d been an ass for a while.”
“Well, Marce isn’t an ass,” Cardenia said. “I’d like to keep him.”
“Share the data with him.”
“I already explained why I’m not sharing it.”
“Share it with him and sequester those he would share the data with.”
“‘Sequester,’” Cardenia said. “That sounds suspiciously like ‘put them in science prison so they can’t leak.’”
“It would offer second-order issues,” Rachela agreed.
“I don’t think I could do that,” Cardenia said, and then stopped. Rachela waited, patiently, because as a simulation there was no reason for her not to.
“Jiyi,” Cardenia called, after a moment. The humanoid avatar appeared, standing next to Rachela. “I understand that you’ve tried to access the computer of the Auvergne. The ship that is currently docked in my berth.”
“Yes,” Jiyi said.
“You’ve not been successful.”
“Not so far, no.”
“You’re also aware that Tomas Chenevert, the artificial person who inhabits the Auvergne’s computer, has extended an invitation to you to chat with him.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you take him up on the offer?”
“I’m not programmed to accept such an offer,” Jiyi said. “I am designed to interact with emperoxs in the Memory Room, and to seek out hidden information. Aside from a very limited ability to address maintenance staff for issues I cannot resolve myself, I have no protocols for other interactions.”
Cardenia turned her attention to Rachela. “Why not? You programmed Jiyi. There’s no reason not to make it able to deal with other people.”
“And no other emperox ever thought to have Jiyi address anyone else?”
“Every other emperox accepted what Jiyi told them about its role.”
“So I’m just that weird,” Cardenia said.
“I wouldn’t have put it that way, but yes.”
Cardenia smiled at this, and then addressed Jiyi. “I would like you to take Tomas Chenevert up on his invitation to chat,” she said. “He’s already informed me that he can create a ‘sandbox’ area within his servers where the two of you can meet. You won’t otherwise be able to access his servers, and he won’t be able to access yours. It will be neutral ground. Make the arrangements and have your meeting as soon as possible.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Jiyi said, and disappeared.
“To what end?” Rachela asked.
“Marce already shares information with Chenevert,” Cardenia said. “And Chenevert has been getting up to speed on Flow physics. If I’m satisfied he can be trusted, I can share data about the Rupture with Marce on the condition that the only person he shares it with is Chenevert. He’s an artificial person, and he’s spent the last three hundred years being sequestered. It wouldn’t be cruel to keep him cut off from everyone else. He already is.”
Cardenia spent a few more moments in the Memory Room before rounding out her session. Marce was waiting for her when she came out.
“I have things I need to tell you,” she said. “Important things.”
“They can wait,” Marce said. His face was drawn and upset.
Cardenia frowned. “What is it?”
“Something’s happened,” he said. “To Kiva Lagos.”
Chapter 14
Things were looking up for Nadashe Nohamapetan.
To begin, she’d taken out some trash, in the form of Drusin Wolfe and Kiva Lagos.
But also—and at the moment this was the thing she was luxuriating in—she had a new address. She had been sprung from the dank, fetid confines of the Our Love Couldn’t Go On and was now residing on the White Spats and Lots of Dollars. It, like the Our Love, was an in-system trader craft; unlike the Our Love, the White Spats didn’t require antibiotics just to look at the thing.
The White Spats had been a lease, and now that the lease was up it had been returned to the House of Wu, to be reconditioned before being leased once more. As it was between leases, it was off the roster of ships tracked for commercial use. Proster Wu had flagged it for temporary personal duty, a prerogative of senior House of Wu executives for off-lease ships, and berthed it at the Wu family personal dock complex, where no imperial inspector or assessor would ever trouble it. Unless it moved out of dock, it was effectively invisible.
Nadashe was delighted. The White Spats was clean and modern, and the previous leaseholder had configured it to hold passengers as well as cargo, so her living quarters were no longer clad in groaning, discolored metal and occasional spots of mold. Proster Wu had populated the ship with a skeleton crew of technicians and domestics, all gleaned from the Countess Nohamapetan’s still-in-system fiver, which had been confiscated when she was arrested for treason and murder. Nadashe accepted their fealty as acting head of her house, and then in true Nohamapetan fashion proceeded to forget they existed unless she wanted something specific from them.
Living even temporarily on the sufferance of the Wu family did have its downsides, however, as Nadashe was reminded when her suite was invaded by Proster Wu, who entered without preamble or indeed so much as a knock.
“You murdered Drusin Wolfe,” he said.
“Not I,” Nadashe said, mildly. She was sitting idly on a chaise longue, flipping through her tablet. “I was here the entire time. I have witnesses.”
“You cannot go about murdering your allies. That’s how they stop being your allies. You need all of your allies. We need them.”
Nadashe set her tablet down. “Well, Proster. There are two ways of explaining what happened to our dear friend Drusin Wolfe. The first is that I did not have him murdered. As it happens, when this is looked into by the various law enforcement sorts who will invariably look into these things, mail will be discovered that reveals Drusin Wolfe had lured Kiva Lagos to that park in order to have her assassinated—the two of them had recent contentious business dealings, after all. Bring her out into the park; have a wandering hit man pop her in the head; we’re done.”
“Except for the fact that Wolfe is dead.”
Nadashe shrugged. “A bump. A jostle. This is what you get for hiring cut-rate assassins.”
“And you expect anyone in the world to believe that.”
“I expect law enforcement to believe it, yes,” Nadashe said. “You give them a simple answer, they’ll take it every time. It’s so much less work, and the simplest answer is usually the correct one. The trail is there. Wolfe verifiably ordered a hit on Kiva Lagos. Then he rather unfortunately got in the way. I hope his contractor had already gotten paid. Coming back for the second half of his payment would be awkward.”
Proster Wu did not look in the least impressed. “That’s one way of looking at it. You said there was another.”
“The other way of looking at it is that Drusin Wolfe went out of his way to gloat to Kiva Lagos that she was going to get hers, which inspired her to find out what he was up to, implicating several other houses and me and you, Proster, in the bargain. Kiva Lagos is the very last person you want to cross, because she’s smart and she’ll punch you in the throat if you piss her off. And that’s exactly what she did to Drusin Wolfe. She maneuvered him right where she wanted him and made him jump through her hoops.”
Nadashe stretched on her chaise longue. “She had to go, obviously. But he had to go, too. To tie up loose ends and seal off leaks. But also to remind our people that they have to stay focused. There will be time for settling personal scores after the coup. As emperox, I will encourage all their petty vendettas, as reward for their service. But not until after Grayland is gone and I am sitting in the imperial palace.”
“So you’re sending a message.”
“I’m not doing anything,” Nadashe said. “Like I said. But if any fearful and paranoid allies take a lesson from this and make an extra effort not to do anything stupid between now and when the coup happens, then that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” She shrugged. “It’s a cheap lesson in any event. The House of Wolfe isn’t significant to our plans. They’re a minor house. And now we have the benefit of Kiva Lagos out of the picture and the House of Nohamapetan that much closer to being back in family control, which is going to be simpler for me when the time comes.”
“So what do you want me to tell our allies? Because they are already howling to me about it.”
“Tell them whatever you like. But make the point to them that if Drusin Wolfe had kept his mouth shut—had not felt the need to crow to someone who uncovered what he was up to as easily as you or I might tie our shoes—he wouldn’t be dead right now. That would be the case no matter which of the two scenarios you believe happened. You might also remind our allies that Drusin’s bragging led Kiva Lagos to finding out about their involvement as well. If Kiva hadn’t had that falling out with Grayland, Drusin’s indiscretion would mean we’d all already be awaiting our treason trials.” Nadashe paused. “Well, they would. As would you, Proster.”
“I wasn’t in any of Lagos’s documents,” Proster said.
Nadashe smiled. “I think it’s delightful you think our allies, as you call them, wouldn’t sell you out the instant they were caught.”
“I see your point.”
“I thought you might.”
“You think the falling-out between Lagos and Grayland was real, then.”
“No one in our little club is in jail. Grayland’s last roundup of traitors doesn’t suggest she wastes any time hauling them off when she learns about them. And Kiva is an asshole, so I can see anyone getting tired of her qui
ckly.”
“That’s a yes, then.”
“It’s an ‘I’m not worrying about Kiva Lagos anymore,’” Nadashe said. She picked her tablet back up. “I have other things I’m focused on. Our so-called allies should be focusing on other things as well.”
Proster picked up that he had been dismissed, and left her on her chaise longue.
In truth, Nadashe had not been nearly so sanguine as she had suggested to Proster about Kiva Lagos. She wasn’t convinced Kiva hadn’t been trying to play double-agent with Drusin Wolfe; when Wolfe had come to her with the news that Kiva wanted in on their plans, she had nearly pushed him into an airlock and cycled it, fraught as she was with worry and fear (inwardly, of course—it wouldn’t do to let someone like Drusin Wolfe know what she was actually thinking). It had taken a couple of days to have her people deliver the documents that suggested it was as Kiva had represented it—Grayland had gotten tired of dealing with Kiva’s ass, and found a way to push her out.
This delighted Nadashe, because she had come to loathe Kiva Lagos. She respected Kiva, and she worked hard not to underestimate her, and she was well aware that although Kiva was a formidable opponent, as the all-too-large number of frozen supposedly hidden financial accounts made clear, she could also be a formidable ally, with inside knowledge of the imperial household to boot.
But at the end of the day Nadashe just couldn’t take Kiva—her confidence, her vulgarity, her outer layer of complete anarchy masking a weirdly inflexible inner layer of morality. Also the fact that Kiva had banged her brother Ghreni senseless in college made Nadashe feel queasy, although Ghreni was never the most discerning person in terms of partners. Nadashe and Kiva would never be allies.
It was a shame, Nadashe thought. When Drusin Wolfe had revealed his gaffe and Kiva’s attempt to capitalize on it, Nadashe didn’t waste more than a second thinking about his fate. He was going to have to die, and the sooner the better. But in spite of everything, Nadashe had to think about what to do with Kiva. For as much as she loathed her (and had no doubt that Kiva felt the same about Nadashe), it seemed almost a waste to give her the same fate as Drusin Wolfe. Wolfe would not be missed for even the amount of time it took him to hit the ground. Kiva would, for at least slightly longer.
