by John Scalzi
“Oh, no,” Deng said. “She would have rolled right over you. Uh, or so your father believed,” he added, quickly.
“My father didn’t think much of me.”
“On the contrary, he thought very well of you, ma’am. He just wished your brother had lived to be emperox.”
“Well, Gell. So do I. But he didn’t. So here we are.”
“Yes, ma’am. And what are the emperox’s wishes?”
“When is Naffa’s funeral?”
“It is two days from now.”
“I will attend.” Deng looked pained again. “What is it?”
“I have a note from a Dolg family representative, ma’am. It arrived earlier and I’ve waited to speak to you about it. The family notes that your presence at the funeral would be a disruption, because the security around you would be immense, especially now. Also, Naffa’s parents are republicans, as will be many of the people at the service, and your presence might provoke some of those friends to do or say something improper.”
“They don’t want me to start a riot.”
“That’s the gist of it, I’m afraid.”
“I want to talk to her parents, then.”
“The letter also suggests that you wait on that, too. My understanding is that the parents have said they don’t blame you. But there’s a difference between not blaming you, and being reminded their daughter is dead because she worked for you. It would be … difficult for them right now.”
Cardenia hitched in her breath at that and sat silently with it for a few moments.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Deng said, eventually.
Cardenia waved him off. “At the very least, I don’t want them to pay for anything.”
“Her parents?” Deng asked. Cardenia nodded. “You mean regarding funeral expenses.”
“I mean for anything, ever again. Their daughter’s dead. She was my friend. If I can’t do anything else right now, at least I can do this. Yes?”
“You are the emperox,” Deng said. “This is something you may do.”
“Then do it, please.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Deng stood. “Will there be anything else?”
Cardenia shook her head. Deng bowed, collected his materials, and moved to leave.
“Where will you be?” Cardenia asked. “In case I need you?”
Deng turned and smiled. “I am always nearby, ma’am. All you have to do is call.”
“Thank you, Gell.”
“Ma’am.” He left.
Cardenia waited until he was well out of the room before she had a good long cry, maybe the seventh or eighth she’d had since Naffa’s death.
Then she remembered where she last saw Naffa, and what Naffa had said to her. Not in real life, but in her dream.
Cardenia looked over to the door to the Memory Room, sat there for a couple of minutes thinking. Then got up and let herself into it.
Jiyi appeared the moment she entered. “Hello, Emperox Grayland II. How are you?”
“I am alone,” Cardenia said, and immediately hated the adolescent drama of the statement, but it was true, and there it was.
“You are always alone in the Memory Room,” Jiyi said. “And in another sense, you are never alone in it.”
“Did you think that up yourself?”
“I do not think,” Jiyi said. “It was programmed into me years ago.”
“Why?”
“Because eventually every emperox tells me they are alone.”
“Every emperox?”
“Yes.”
“That … weirdly makes me feel better.”
“That is a frequent reaction.”
“The Prophet is in here, yes? Rachela I.”
“Yes.”
“I would like to speak to her, please.”
Jiyi nodded and shimmered out, replaced by a woman. She was small and in this image nondescriptively middle-aged, which was different from the usual depictions of the Prophet, which showed her young and with flowing hair and striking cheekbones. The image did not look anything like this.
It also did not look anything like Naffa. Cardenia felt a momentary spasm of disappointment about this, then inwardly chastised herself for it. There was no reason she should have expected the Prophet to be Naffa outside of her dream.
“You are Rachela I,” Cardenia asked the image.
“I am.”
“The founder of the Interdependency, and the Interdependent Church.”
“Basically.”
“Basically?”
“It’s a little more complicated than that, in both cases. But we decided that having me be the founder of both would serve the mythology the best, so that’s what we said.”
“Were you an actual prophet?”
“Yes.”
“So you knew the things you were saying about the Interdependency and the principles of interdependency would come true.”
“No, of course not.”
“But you just said you were a prophet.”
“Anyone can be a prophet. You just have to say that what you’re talking about is a reflection of God. Or of the gods. Or of some divine spirit. However you want to put it. Whether those things come true isn’t one way or another about it.”
“But what you said did come true. You preached for interdependency and it happened.”
“Yes, it was good for me that it turned out that way.”
“So you didn’t know they would.”
“I already told you that I didn’t. But we certainly worked hard to make them happen, and to give it the appearance of inevitability. And of course the whole mystical angle helped too.”
Cardenia furrowed her brow. “You’re a founder of a church.”
“Yes.”
“But listening to you, you don’t seem to be particularly religious.”
“Not really, no.”
“Or to believe in God. Or gods.”
“I really don’t. And when we designed the church, we intentionally made the divine aspect of it as ambiguous as possible. People don’t mind having the mystical aspect of a church being poorly defined as long as you make the rules of the church clear. We did that. We modeled a bit off of Confucianism, which strictly speaking wasn’t a religion, and added bits we thought would be useful from other religions.”
“So you don’t believe in your own church!”
“Of course I do,” Rachela said. “We created a set of moral precepts to bind the various human systems together. We did it because we thought it was desirable and to some extent necessary. Since I believe in those precepts, I believe in the mission of the church. At least, the mission of the church when we founded it. Human institutions tend to drift from their creators’ intent over time. Another reason to have clear rules.”
“But the divine element is fake.”
“We decided that it was no more fake than the divine aspect of any other religion. As far as the evidence goes, in any event.”
Cardenia felt a little light-headed. It was one thing to believe the predominant church of the Interdependency was bunk, which was a thing Cardenia had believed for as long as she could remember thinking about it. It was inconvenient when, strictly speaking, you were now head of that church, but she could at least keep that to herself. It was another thing to have the founder of the church, or at least the core of memories that comprised her, confirm it was bunk.
“Naffa was right,” Cardenia said. “The Interdependency is a scam.”
“I don’t know who Naffa is,” Rachela I said.
“She was a friend of mine,” Cardenia said. “I had a dream where she appeared to me, as you, telling me the Interdependency was a scam.”
“If I were telling this story, I would have said that I had had a mystical vision of the Prophet,” Rachela I said.
“It was just a dream.”
“In our line of business there is no such thing. Emperoxs never just dream. They have visions. That’s what we do. Or what we were supposed to do, when I became the first
emperox.”
“Well, I had the thing, and it wasn’t a vision. It was a dream.”
“It was a dream that made you think. A dream that caused you to search for wisdom. A dream that made you consult me, the Prophet. Sounds like a vision to me.”
Cardenia gawked at Rachela I. “You’re unbelievable.”
“I worked in marketing,” Rachela I said. “Before I was a prophet. After, too, but we didn’t call it that after that point.”
“I’m having a hard time believing what you’re telling me.”
Rachela I nodded. “That’s not unusual. Sooner or later every emperox activates me to have a conversation like this. Most of them respond like you do.”
“Most of them? What about the others?”
“They feel happy they guessed it correctly.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“I don’t feel anything about it. I’m not alive. Strictly speaking, I’m not here.”
“‘You’re always alone in the Memory Room, and never alone in the Memory Room.’”
Rachela I nodded again. “I said that. Or something close enough to it, anyway.”
“Is the Interdependency a scam?” Cardenia asked, directly.
“The answer to that is complicated.”
“Give me the short version.”
“The short version is ‘Yes, but.’ The slightly longer version is ‘No, and.’ Which version would you like?”
Cardenia stared at Rachela I for a moment. Then she went to the bench in the Memory Room and sat.
“Tell me everything,” she said.
Chapter
10
“I have an itch,” Marce Claremont said to his sister.
“Where?” Vrenna asked.
“My entire head,” Marce replied.
As required, Marce had shaved his entire head short of eyebrows and eyelashes, and had been fitted with cultivated hair and a beard, each embedded in an epidermis-thin substrate of actual skin, which had been secured to his own with the use of a glue made from, or so the person applying it to his face told him, real human collagens. Next came the thumb pad, which made Marce feel like he had tape on his hand, against which he had to mightily fight the urge to pick it off. Then the contacts which changed his eye color and iris pattern, and which included holographic fake corneas that would give the illusion of depth to the fake retinal pattern.
“I can barely see out of these contacts, either.”
“It’s not a bad eye color for you, though,” Vrenna observed. “Maybe keep those in after you get on the ship.”
“You’re funny.”
The two of them were waiting on the elevator that would take Marce down to the lobby. The newly hired crew for the Yes, Sir were told to collect there in order for their papers to be processed and then to be bussed to port, to head to the ship. That was convenient for Marce, who could blend in with the rest of the new crew.
But it also meant that these were literally the last moments he would spend with his sister, possibly in his entire life.
“Tell Dad I’m sorry I didn’t get to say good-bye,” he said, to Vrenna.
“I will. He’ll understand. He won’t be happy, but he’ll understand. He’ll be okay.”
“And how about you? Are you going to be okay?”
Vrenna smiled. “I’m pretty good at being okay. If nothing else, I’m good at keeping busy. And the thing is, rumor has it that no matter what, everyone on End is going to be really busy soon. I have an agenda, anyway.”
“What’s on the agenda?”
“The first thing is to dangle Ghreni Nohamapetan off a building for kidnapping my brother.”
Marce laughed at this, and then the elevator bell dinged and the door opened.
Vrenna grabbed her brother in a fierce hug, gave him a peck on the cheek, and then pushed him, gently, into the elevator. “Go on,” she said. “Go tell the emperox everything. Save everyone if you can. And then come back.”
“I’ll try.”
“Love you, Marce,” Vrenna said, as the door started to close.
“Love you, Vrenna,” Marce said, just before it did.
Marce had twenty floors to get his emotions in check.
The elevator opened up to a couple dozen people milling about and three people in official House of Lagos crew uniforms. One of them looked over to Marce as the elevator opened up. “What the hell are you doing in the elevator?” she asked.
“I was looking for a bathroom,” Marce said.
“Well, there’s not one in there. Get out of that.”
Marce got out. The crew member held out her hand for his papers; he handed them over.
“Kristian Jansen,” she said, looking at them.
“That’s me.”
“Any relation to Knud Jansen?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I shipped with him once. He was from End, too.”
“There’s a lot of Jansens.”
The crew member nodded, and then held up her tablet. “Thumb.” Marce pressed his fake thumb on the tablet, which scanned the print on it. The crew member then held up the tablet close to Marce’s eyes. “Don’t blink.” The camera on the back of the tablet scanned Marce’s contacts.
“Well, you really are Kristian Jansen, and you don’t have any outstanding warrants or debts, your guild union dues are paid up, and your personnel ratings are good,” the crew member said. “Welcome aboard.”
“Thank you, uh…”
“Ndan. Petty Officer Gtan Ndan.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“You’re welcome, crewman.” Ndan looked at Marce’s rucksack. “You’re traveling light.”
“My other bag got boosted.”
Ndan nodded. “Sucks. When you get squared away go to the quartermaster and get new kit. You’ll be charged extortionate rates but that’s your problem. You got marks?”
“A few.”
“If you’re short, come find me. I can lend.”
“That’s very kind.”
“No it’s not. It’s business. My interest rates are also extortionate.” Ndan pointed out of the lobby to a bus waiting outside. “Get on that. We leave in about five minutes. Do you still need a head?”
It took a second for it to register that Ndan was talking about a bathroom. “I’m fine.”
“Off you go, then.” She turned to see who else she needed to process.
It took five seconds for Marce to get from the lobby door to the bus and he felt exposed the entire way. But he managed to get on the bus without incident, find a seat, and wait. He looked up through the window at the House of Lagos building and wondered if Vrenna was looking down. He felt briefly sorry for Ghreni Nohamapetan, whom Vrenna was likely to thump the crap out of sometime soon. Then in the distance there was a brief thump that sounded like a shell hitting a building, and Marce remembered there were other things Vrenna and their father might still have to worry about first.
From the bus to the port he went, through another paper check and thumb scan at imperial customs, then up the beanstalk, which was disappointing to Marce because there were no windows and the video screen in the cramped passenger cabin showed nothing but informational customs videos and ads.
At a certain point in the trip up the beanstalk, Marce was aware that his (fake) hair felt like it was being pressed down onto his scalp. He mentioned this to his seatmate, who nodded but didn’t look up from whatever he was reading on his tablet. “Push field,” he said, then went back to his reading.
Marce nodded to himself. Push fields were humanity’s best approximation for artificial gravity, in which objects were pushed on from “above”—whatever “above” was in any particular scenario—rather than pulled on from below, as gravity was generally understood to work. The physics of push fields were discovered accidentally. Researchers back on Earth had tried to work out the problem of shaping a small bubble of local space-time around a starship in order to take advantage of the then newly discovered Flow,
and ended up taking a lot of side detours in the math. Most of these detours offered nothing of any benefit, but one of them did, and it was pressing on Marce’s hair.
Marce looked up and found the push field generator tubes, running down the length of the passenger compartment like fluorescent lighting. He of course understood the physics of the push field, since it was a consonant subset of the Flow physics. But he’d never been off End. He’d never experienced one. As he was experiencing it now, he found it slightly unsettling. He didn’t like what basically felt like a giant hand pressing down on his head and shoulders, and he didn’t like how it made his fake hair lay on his scalp. He looked around the compartment and noted there was a reason why most of the experienced crew kept their hair either very short or in tightly wrapped braids and queues.
From the beanstalk now to Imperial Station, which featured a rotating ring section for the marines and imperial staff who stayed at the station long term, and a separate merchant section managed by push fields, where visiting ships unloaded and managed their cargo. Marce and the other crew got out in the merchant area, and he immediately understood why long-term residents would prefer to live in the ring. The push fields here, set to a standard G, were almost intolerably pushy.
As Marce and the rest of the crew were led to the crew muster area for the Yes, Sir, he saw a collection of people in the cargo hold, waiting. Those would be the Yes, Sir’s passengers, he knew, with whom he would have been, if Ghreni Nohamapetan hadn’t kidnapped him and marked him. The passengers certainly didn’t look like refugees. They looked like what they were—wealthy people. They were milling with their children and their stacks of cargo at a thousand marks a kilo as if they were about to have an adventure, rather than flee a planet forever.
Despite the fact that he fully intended to be one of them, Marce managed to feel resentment toward them, toward the people who could, in fact, leave their problems behind through the simple application of money.
Well, you’re a hypocrite, his brain told him. Well, maybe he was. But then again he wasn’t leaving to escape. He was leaving because someone needed to tell the emperox, and then explain to the parliament and everyone else, how the end was coming. That person just happened to be Marce.