The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency)

by John Scalzi

  “I doubt this rises to the level of therapy,” Cardenia said.

  “If you say so,” Attavio VI said, and it bothered Cardenia that a computer simulation could perfectly mimic doubt. “Perhaps you should just tell this person you like them. The worst that can happen is he says no.”

  “I know.”

  “And then you can have him exiled.”

  “No,” Cardenia said, and then paused. “Did you just make a joke?”

  “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 neither 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.

  Cardenia looked up at Marce, confused. “Is this accurate?”

  “Well,” Marce began.

  “Because if this is accurate, then I have a whole lot of questions for you, Lord Marce. Not all of them friendly. I’ve risked a whole lot on your predictions being correct.”

  Marce held up a hand, and then pointed at Roynold. “Ask her what ‘eventually’ means in this context.”

  Cardenia directed her attention to Roynold. “And what does ‘eventually’ mean in this context, Dr. Roynold?”

  “Somewhere between five thousand and eight thousand years from now,” Roynold said.

  Cardenia looked back at Marce, confused.

  “Dad and I were right,” Marce said. “The Flow streams as we know them are going to collapse, soon, and go away for a very long time. Enough time to bring about the effective end of civilization if we don’t act.” He pointed again at Roynold. “She was also right—the Flow streams are eventually likely to reestablish themselves in this part of space, in a different configuration than they are in now. She was just off on the timescale.”

  “No one to check my math,” Roynold said.

  “And we both missed something else, until we had access to each other’s work,” Marce continued. “The evanescence, I mean. It doesn’t change the fact the Flow streams are collapsing. It doesn’t change that the Interdependency is threatened. But it might buy us all a little more time to deal with it.”

  “How so?”

  “You asked if new Flow streams will open up where there weren’t ones before,” Marce said. “That’s correct, and some will. But there’s another effect, too.”

  “Collapsed ones will open back up again,” Roynold said. “Sometimes. Not for very long.”

  “But long enough to send ships through,” Marce said.

  “Maybe,” Roynold said. “Depends.”

  “And bring them back again,” Marce said.

  “Again, maybe and depends,” Roynold said.

  “Which brings us to the next thing.” Marce leaned forward. “And this is a big thing.”

  “It’s really big,” Roynold said.

  “What?” Cardenia asked, switching her view bet
ween the two of them. “What is it?”

  “Hatide predicted a previously closed Flow stream would be opening up imminently. After the Terhathum stream closed, I tasked one our drones to go to where this previously closed Flow shoal used to be.”

  “And?” Cardenia said.

  “It went through,” Roynold said. “The Flow stream has opened up again. And the one coming back, too. Both of them back in business.”

  “Not for long,” Marce warned.

  “No,” Roynold agreed. “They’re both going to collapse again. The outgoing stream in about a year. The incoming stream much sooner than that. Say three months.”

  “Why the difference?” Cardenia asked.

  “It’s like I told you when I first met you,” Marce said. “The incoming and outgoing streams aren’t actually related. And there’s this.” He nodded over to Roynold.

  “The incoming stream has been open for almost five years,” Roynold said.

  Cardenia blinked at this. “How is that possible?”

  “The Flow doesn’t do what it does on our schedule,” Roynold said. “The current shift has been happening for decades, maybe even centuries.”

  “No,” Cardenia said, slightly annoyed. “I mean how did we miss this open Flow shoal hanging out in Hub space?”

  Roynold shrugged. “You weren’t looking for it. Nothing was coming out of it. And the outgoing Flow shoal had collapsed so long ago, probably no one has thought about it for centuries.”

  “Except maybe for you,” Marce said, to Cardenia.

  Who threw up her hands, exasperated. “Could you please stop being mysterious, and just tell me, already?”

  “It’s Dalasýsla,” Marce said. “The lost star system of the Interdependency. And the reason your namesake was assassinated.”

  Cardenia was stunned silent by this.

  “Ask her,” Roynold said, eventually, to Marce.

  “Ask me what?” Cardenia said, also looking to Marce.

  “We think we should go,” Marce said. “To Dalasýsla.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s the system we lost,” Marce said. “What happened there could happen to every other system in the Interdependency. We need to go and find out what we can about how everything broke down, so we can learn how to avoid their mistakes.”

  “And we need to do it soon,” Roynold said. “Before the incoming stream collapses again.”

  “Hatide’s right. We need a ship. And we need it soon.”

  “And you would want to go on the ship,” Cardenia said.

  “Of course,” Marce said, and smiled. “It’ll be the most important scientific expedition in hundreds of years. I wouldn’t want to miss it.” He looked over to Roynold. “Neither of us would.”

  * * *

  It was close to midnight before Cardenia finally said fuck it to herself and sent for Marce Claremont.

  “What sort of scientists are you going to need for this expedition?” she asked, when he appeared, hastily, in her apartments. His own apartment was in the staff wing of the palace, some distance away. Cardenia knew Marce had his own money—his father had sent him to Hub with a substantial portion of his family’s wealth in a personal data vault—but Marce Claremont was apparently happy in what was essentially a studio apartment with a lavatory attached. He had walked the several minutes from his apartment to hers, stopping through layers of security on the way. The two of them stood, somewhat awkwardly, in her drawing room a bit of a distance apart.

  “I think we’d need all kinds,” Marce said, carefully. Cardenia could tell he wasn’t aware why he’d been summoned, and now that she’d asked the question, he wasn’t sure why this needed to be answered at 11:55 at night. “Flow physicists, obviously, but I’d also think we want biologists, chemists, astrophysicists, ordinary physicists, anthropologists and archeologists—”

  “Archeologists?”

  “Dalasýsla has been dead for centuries,” Marce said. “We need people with an understanding of how to process that sort of history. We’d need forensic scientists and pathologists; we’d need historians, particularly the ones with a knowledge of Dalasýsla and the early Interdependency. We also need engineers and people who were familiar with the computers and systems of the era. That’s who I can think of off the top of my head. I can write you a longer report, if you like.”

  “What if I wanted to keep this small?” Cardenia said. “Small and quiet?”

  “Why would you want to do that?” Marce asked.

  “Because right now the fewer people who know about it, and about the evanescent Flow streams you and Roynold have discovered, the fewer headaches I have to deal with trying to explain everything without you around,” Cardenia said, and then caught Marce’s look. “I’m not saying I want to keep this classified forever. I’m saying I want to know what this expedition has found out about Dalasýsla before I make any announcements.”

  “Other Flow physicists have been working on the data we’ve given them,” Marce pointed out. “Some of them might find out about this anyway.”

  “They’re working on your and your father’s data, yes?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And not Roynold’s.”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s a risk worth taking.”

  “If you think so.”

  “I do. Back to my question. Small and quiet. How many scientists would you need, then?”

  “We could double up jobs,” Marce said. “Flow physicists. We can do without the other sorts because we are schooled in general and classical physics, and we can make observations available for others to work with. A forensic pathologist who has some general biological expertise. There are lots of archeologists who have experience in anthropology and vice versa. We’d still need someone familiar with the computer systems of the time. And someone familiar with the habitats of the era as well. Maybe those could combine.”

  “So five or six, depending.”

  “I suppose. Plus an actual crew for the ship.”

  “How much time would you need at Dalasýsla?”

  “However much time you want to give us.”

  “Give me a time frame, Marce.”

  “Two weeks minimum, I would think.”

  “How long there and back?”

  “We estimate about eight days, going from the data we have and the historical data about the system. We’re confident this is a reopened Flow stream and not a new stream mimicking the previous stream. But there’s a plus or minus of about three days.”

  “So maximum eleven days there, two weeks at Dalasýsla, eleven days back. That’s more than a month.”

  “Now you know why we want to get this expedition going sooner than later,” Marce said.

  “Why would you need two Flow scientists?” Cardenia asked. “If you’re doubling up expertise with everyone else.”

  Marce looked a little hesitant at this. “I don’t think that’s a question of need,” he said.

  “Then what is it?”

  “This is our discovery,” Marce said. “Both mine and Hatide’s. We both want to be part of it, and I think we both deserve to be part of it. I wouldn’t want to ask her to stay here for it. And I definitely want to be part of it. Maybe it’s a luxury in terms of personnel. But I think we can afford it.”

  “What if I asked you to stay behind?” Cardenia asked.

  Marce gave Cardenia a very slight smile. “Asked?” he said.

  “Asked,” Cardenia said. “Not ordered.”

  “Your Majesty, if the emperox asks for something like this, one would be foolish to see it as anything other than an order.”

  Cardenia had a momentary flashback to her discussion with her father’s ghost the night before, on the distinction between an emperox commanding or inviting someone to bed. “Oh, forget it,” she said, and walked over to her bar to pour herself a drink.

  “I’m confused,” Marce said, after a moment.

  “Join the club,” Cardenia said, and put ice
into a tumbler.

  “What am I missing here?” Marce said.

  Cardenia poured the drink, slugged back a nontrivial amount, and then set her glass down. “I’m really, really bad at this,” she said.

  “Bad at what?”

  “Look, are you with Roynold?” Cardenia asked Marce.

  “What?”

  “Are you with Roynold? Are you two, you know”—Cardenia made wavy motions with the hand holding the tumbler, sloshing the liquid as a result—“a thing? An item? Romantically involved?”

  Cardenia watched as Marce—bless his stupid, oblivious, nerdy heart—finally put it together. “No,” he said. “No, we are not an item. We are not romantically involved.”

  “Are you sure?” Cardenia pressed. “I saw the two of you talking this afternoon. You were very animated together.”

  “It’s because we’re the only two people in the entire system who know what the other one is talking about,” Marce said. “When it comes to the Flow, at least. It’s like finding the only other person in the world who speaks your language.”

  “Well, see, that’s what I mean,” Cardenia said, and finished the rest of her drink. She went over to refill her tumbler.

  “The language is Flow physics,” Marce said. “It’s specialized. It’s very abstruse. And it’s not at all romantic.”

  “Are you sure that’s what Roynold thinks?”

  “You think she has a thing for me?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I don’t think I’m her type,” Marce said.

  “What do you think her type is?”

  “Mathematical symbols, mostly. If you spent any time with her you’d know she doesn’t really like humans all that much.”

  “She likes you.”

  “She accepts dealing with the fleshy parts of me as part of the price of getting to work with my brain. It’s not exactly the same thing.”

  Cardenia was quiet for a moment. “So, nothing between you two at all.”

  “If civilization survives we might go down in history as the co-discoverers of the Claremont-Roynold Theory of Flow Stream Distribution, along with my dad,” Marce said. “But otherwise, no.”

  “Well, fuck,” Cardenia said. She looked into her drink, which she had replenished, and then looked back up at Marce. “Did I mention I am really, really bad at this?”