The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency)

by John Scalzi

  Cardenia shook her head. “The information was out there once upon a time. Who knows if it’s still extant anywhere other than in Jiyi right now.”

  “It’s creepy, Cardenia.”

  “It is, and you know what’s weird about it is that, as far as I can tell, none of the other emperoxs besides Rachela knew that Jiyi was doing it at all. They just used it to talk to other emperoxs.”

  “Like you did, until just today,” Marce pointed out. “Because that’s what you were told the Memory Room does. Also, it’s called the Memory Room, not the Hidden Information Room.”

  “It makes me curious how things would be different if other emperoxs had known.”

  “It would have been terrible,” Marce said. “It’s a form of absolute knowledge, on top of the absolute power you already have.”

  “I don’t have absolute power,” Cardenia protested.

  “Of course not,” Marce said. “That’s why no one’s worried at all that you are offering up mystical visions of the future of the Interdependency, or concerned that you are going to declare martial law when you address the parliament, which you can do at your whim, like any normal person without absolute power.”

  “I don’t feel like I have absolute power,” Cardenia amended.

  “Just promise me that you will never tell your children that Jiyi can do that,” Marce said. “You were almost married to a Nohamapetan. It terrifies me to think about what would happen if one of them ever knew what Jiyi could do.”

  “I have more bad news for you.”

  “Oh dear God.”

  Cardenia pointed to the back of her neck. “I have a network in my body and brain,” she said. “Everything I think and feel and say and do is recorded. And when I die, all of that is going to be in the Memory Room too. So even if I never tell my kids, it doesn’t mean they won’t hear it from me. Just after I’m dead.”

  “That’s got to be unsettling for you,” Marce said, after a minute’s consideration.

  Cardenia shrugged and snuggled into Marce. “A little. But there are benefits. I didn’t get to spend much time with my father growing up. I loved him and he loved me, but we didn’t know each other at all. And now in the Memory Room I get to speak to him every day, if I want. It’s like I get him back. And that’s a blessing.”

  “It is,” Marce agreed.

  “If you like your parent, that is,” Cardenia said. “I don’t see Dad talking to his mother all that often. She was awful to him and the rest of the universe as I heard.”

  “Did you ever speak to her?”

  “I brought her up once to ask her a specific question about a policy she made. After talking to her for five minutes I decided that I probably didn’t ever have to speak to her again.”

  The two of them were silent for a moment.

  “So … you’re recording now?” Marce asked.

  “I’m always recording,” Cardenia murmured.

  “So, uh—”

  “No, it didn’t record us having sex. I mean, it did,” Cardenia qualified, and then watched the mild panic on Marce’s face. “But it’s not recording it that way. It’s recording how I felt about it, and you, and this moment.”

  “And what will your ghost tell anyone who asks?”

  “That all of the above are pretty great, actually.”

  “Just, you know. Don’t go into detail.”

  “Maybe it’ll be your kid too,” Cardenia said, and then couldn’t believe a thing like that had actually come out of her mouth, but it was too late, fuck, so she would just have to roll with it now.

  “You can’t marry me,” Marce said, lightly. “I’m waaaay below your station. I’m barely even a lord. I’m a lord on a technicality.”

  Cardenia slapped his chest (lightly) in mock outrage. “Don’t tell us what we can do, Lord Marce! We are the emperox! And we have absolute power! We shall marry you if we want.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Marce said. “Sorry, ma’am. Reporting for marriage duty, ma’am.”

  “Not yet. We’re still trying you out.”

  “Try me out all you like. But please stop using the royal ‘we.’ That’s a little too kinky for me.”

  Cardenia laughed and climbed on top of Marce and started kissing him and was soon lost in everything that followed, except for that one practical part of her brain, which was saying, You know, you really do have absolute power and absolute knowledge now. Maybe it’s time to put them to use.

  Fine, yes, I will think about it, Cardenia said. Just shut up for right now. I’m busy.

  Cardenia’s brain shut up.

  But then woke her up a few hours later, and started talking to her again. She listened and after a time, stroked Marce’s hair to wake him up. “I think I’m ready,” she said.

  “Oh, good,” Marce said, sleepily. “Ready for what?”

  “To move things forward,” she said. “Will you help me?”

  “Yes,” Marce said. “But does it have to be now? I’d like to go back to sleep.”

  Cardenia let him go back to sleep, and then got up, walked over to the Memory Room, and let herself in.

  Chapter

  22

  And just like that, everyone and all of their plans ran out of time.

  Archbishop Gunda Korbijn was sitting in a small Xi’an Cathedral Complex courtyard, taking her morning tea, when the announcement came that the emperox would address the parliament that afternoon at 6 p.m. Korbijn read the announcement, nodded, finished her tea and then instructed Ubes Ici to make a call to Tinda Louentintu, chief of staff to the Countess Nohamapetan, and then to connect her in when he did.

  Tinda Louentintu took the call, spoke very briefly to Archbishop Korbijn, no more than a few words, and then after an exchange of final pleasantries broke the connection and made a call to the Countess Nohamapetan, cloistered as she was in the Blame. Louentintu’s voice was jubilant.

  On the Blame, the Countess Nohamapetan also expressed jubilance and then gave her chief of staff instructions on whom to reach and in what order. Some of those people would have their own people to contact, so were to be contacted first, followed by other people of importance, followed by others who, while not as important, would offer safety in numbers and a quorum. That finished, the countess connected with Jasin Wu.

  Jasin Wu by this time had already heard about the parliamentary address and was about to start his own round of coded messages and calls when the countess called and reminded him of everything he already knew, as if he was her lackey and not the actual Managing Director of the Actual Largest and Most Important House in the Interdependency, Thank You Very Much. But Jasin held his irritation in check because he understood the value of long-term alliances and planning. When the call was done, he then proceeded with his own list, which included Admiral Emblad of the Imperial Navy, and then he had his assistant call Deran Wu’s assistant and invite his cousin to come to his office for a chat.

  Deran Wu, also aware by this point of the announcement, went into his cousin’s office at his invitation, and when the assistants were cleared out and the door shut, went over their own mutual set of plans and contacts, which were different but related to the plans and contacts that the Countess Nohamapetan was aware of. The House of Wu may have found itself in an alliance of convenience with the House of Nohamapetan, but one thing that would be essential is for it to be made clear, quietly but definitively, that this was not an alliance of equals and that the House of Wu, both in its incarnation as a noble house and its soon-to-be-remodeled incarnation as the imperial house, was and would always be the senior partner.

  After leaving his cousin’s office, Deran Wu did his own set of calls and messages as discussed, informed his assistant that he had an emergency meeting across town so to reschedule his meetings for the rest of the day, and then, when in the elevator down to his car, sent an encrypted message to Nadashe Nohamapetan, acknowledging that he was moving forward with their plan, and then, having done that, expressing in what he thought was a manner both j
ocular and sexy his own enthusiastic anticipation of how the two of them would celebrate their imminent success. Then he went to his meeting, with someone who didn’t know he was coming.

  Nadashe Nohamapetan read the second message from Deran Wu with mild disgust, then put the lesser Wu cousin out of her mind for the moment, because there were other more urgent things to worry about—namely, the transferring of close to a hundred million marks out of her secret accounts and into a secure and compact data crypt she had with her on the Blame. Nadashe had had a mild panic attack when a couple of her smaller secret accounts were locked and seized and decided now was the perfect time for her to get liquid.

  A hundred million marks was nothing compared to her overall share of the House of Nohamapetan corporation, but seeing as she was temporarily and inconveniently meant to be dead, her ability to access her legitimate accounts had been severely compromised. Nadashe’s mother was meant to repatriate those shares to her own holdings, but hadn’t done so yet, and at this point a hundred million marks in liquidity was better than nothing.

  Of course, if everything worked as planned, Nadashe would soon be back from the dead, for starters. But much of that depended on Deran, which is why Nadashe tolerated the appalling messages from him for now. The other part of it depended on another person entirely: Admiral Emblad of the Imperial Navy. Nadashe decided it was time to put in a call to him.

  Admiral Lonsen Emblad was shocked to receive messages from a dead woman. But after her identity hash checked out and Emblad was sure it wasn’t a prankster or an agent of either Naval Intelligence or the Ministry of Investigation, he and Nadashe had a long and fruitful discussion detailing promises made, payments received and plans already long set in motion, and Nadashe’s expectation of those plans to continue apace. When Nadashe had hung up, Emblad mused on messages from the dead, and also on whom he would want to place his bet on: the House of Wu or the House of Nohamapetan. He had a few hours to decide. Admiral Emblad decided to do some of that thinking at the officers’ club, with a drink.

  Kiva Lagos, who had been the one to fuck with Nadashe’s smaller accounts, just to see what whoever was withdrawing money would do about it, received notice of the parliamentary address while visiting with Senia Fundapellonan, who was celebrating having that fucking breathing tube removed from her throat. Kiva smiled at the announcement because she was aware that plans were now set in motion and it was going to be an absolute fucking delight to see how things played out.

  In the meantime she caught Fundapellonan up on the events of the day, because these days Fundapellonan had no love left for the Nohamapetans, and it would give her joy to hear of their travails, and also because Kiva just liked talking to her. Kiva considered that she might be developing a thing for Fundapellonan, which on one hand would be a very not-Kiva thing to do, but on the other hand who gave a fuck if it was “not-Kiva,” because she wasn’t some fucking fictional character destined to do whatever some goddamn hack wanted her to do.

  Fundapellonan smiled at Kiva, because she kind of liked her too.

  Marce Claremont did not have to be informed about the parliamentary address because he had been there when the decision had been made, a fact that still stunned and amazed him. Not about being there when the decision was made so much as where the decision was made—the emperox’s bed—and what he was doing there when it had been made, which was lying there naked after some really enjoyable morning sex. By now Marce was aware he was falling more than a little bit in love with Cardenia, not because she was the emperox (that part sort of scared the crap out of him, in point of fact) but because they were awkward in complementary ways.

  And while he was now happy being a little in love with Cardenia, there was already a beginning melancholy background hum to Marce’s emotions because he knew the relationship was doomed, not because they weren’t compatible but because she was emperox, and he really was below her station. Emperoxs didn’t marry for love, and they don’t marry people who are lords basically by courtesy. Difficult times were coming, and Cardenia was going to be making some hard choices. Marce was, in a small and nearly subconscious way, preparing himself for when the hard choice Cardenia was going to have to make involved him.

  Until then, however, he was doing what she asked of him: running the data he and Roynold (Come on, it was pretty much all Roynold, his brain said) had gathered from Dalasýsla, adding it to the data set she and he had already had, and then adding to that the frankly astounding amount of historical Flow stream data that Chenevert had in his possession for the Assembly and for Earth and even the Free Systems. All the data in question was no younger than three hundred and sometimes as much as fifteen hundred years old. But it meant that Marce’s understanding of the general topography of the Flow was tripling, and with that information came more, newer and hopefully better understandings of how the Flow moved in their area of space. If Chenevert were something more than virtual, Marce would have hugged him.

  Tomas Reynauld Chenevert, the former Tomas XII, who if he wanted to be truthful about it had not been entirely unjustly overthrown, was aware of the parliamentary address but was not particularly concerned about it because he did not see that it involved his current interests to any significant extent. At the moment he was more interested in the small agent program that he had sequestered in a virtual sandbox environment. The agent program had tried to access the Auvergne and had been flummoxed by its entirely different—and in this part of space, unique—processing environment. Chenevert had snagged it, pulled it apart momentarily to understand its code and its programming, and understood it to be an agent of the semiautonomous AI that Emperox Grayland II had mentioned.

  Chenevert thought about everything that could be done with the agent, decided at this point small steps were best, and sent the thing on its way with an invitation by Chenevert to its boss, to meet.

  Jiyi, who had not received that invitation yet, knew about the parliamentary address because Emperox Grayland II had spent a significant part of the early morning discussing it with the imperial avatars in the Memory Room, most especially Rachela I and Attavio VI, and with Jiyi itself about information it had, outside of the realm of knowledge of the emperoxs themselves. Jiyi, which had no emotions or feelings in itself, outside of accessing the recorded thoughts and emotions of the emperoxs and having their avatars describe them to the current emperox, did not think anything in itself one way or another about the parliamentary address. If it had been asked to consider it, it would probably say it would have to wait until the current emperox, Grayland II, was dead and asked about it by her successor in order to give it any thought.

  The current emperox, Grayland II, who was not dead yet, did not need to be informed about the parliamentary address since she was the one who was giving it, and the one who had informed everyone when it would be. And after sufficient time had passed for the announcement to diffuse into the world. Grayland II ordered something else: individual invitations to a special reception prior to the address, beginning at 4 p.m., at the imperial palace ballroom. The reception would be short, to allow for all assembled, including the emperox herself, to make their way from the imperial palace to the parliament, on the other end of the Xi’an habitat. But, the invitations said, it promised to be unforgettable.

  Each invitation came with a small printed note from the emperox herself that said that the recipient was to be recognized for their achievements and service to the Interdependency. Regrets were not to be accepted, presence required by imperial command, arrivals no later than 4:10 p.m.

  Grayland was not really worried about the attendance. She was certain no one invited would want to miss it.

  * * *

  Kiva had arrived, as requested, at 4 p.m. sharp, dressed in a ridiculous fucking pantsuit that was nevertheless somehow in fashion and therefore acceptable for an event like this, whatever the hell that was; Grayland’s assistant was light on details but stressed that the emperox herself had requested Kiva’s presence. Well, okay, fi
ne. It looked like to Kiva that maybe the two of them might end up doing each other’s hair and giggling about boys after all.

  This prompted Kiva to look for Marce Claremont, whom Kiva was almost certain the emperox was now banging, and good for her. Kiva had liked Marce, who had been a solid if not especially imaginative lover and a decent human being in a universe that didn’t put a premium on that. That made him probably a good match for the emperox, who also appeared fundamentally decent and was probably also a solid if not adventurous bang. Not everyone could be an adventurous bang. Not everyone needed to be an adventurous bang.

  That said, Kiva didn’t see Marce anywhere in the room. It was instead filled with the Interdependency’s political and economic A-list: important members of parliament, the heads or directors of noble houses, a smattering of admirals and generals, even a few bishops, including Archbishop Korbijn. Everybody at the party who was not serving drinks or finger foods outranked Kiva by a significant margin, which confirmed to her that she was at the party because she and Grayland were now gal pals or something.

  Something spangly caught Kiva’s eye; she turned and saw the fucking Countess Nohamapetan on the floor, talking animatedly to Jasin Wu and Admiral Emblad, both of whom were politely attentive but also clearly didn’t give a shit about whatever she was blabbering about. Kiva starting doing the calculus of just how much trouble she would be in if she tuned up the countess right there on the fucking ballroom floor. The calculus was not in her favor; Kiva decided to get a drink to see if that would change any variables.

  Before she could flag down a drink mule, one of the side doors to the ballroom opened and the emperox was announced; everyone stood and clapped while Grayland II entered, accepted their applause and walked toward an ornate lectern at the front of the ballroom. The emperox was clearly poised to give some remarks, and possibly give out some pointless fucking awards. Kiva groaned inwardly. If she’d known it was going to be that kind of event, she might have skipped out. She looked around the room and saw a couple hundred really important people who were having roughly the same thought as she was.