The Collapsing Empire

by John Scalzi

  “Marce Claremont,” Kiva said.

  “You still have tolerable relations with him?”

  “You could say that.” Kiva thought back to a recent fuck session and smiled at it.

  “I want to meet him. I know you believe him, but I need to believe him too. If I believe him I need to know how much time we have before everything really turns to shit. Then we need to find out exactly how the Nohamapetans benefit from it—and how it fucks the rest of us. I want to know before everyone else does.”

  Kiva shook her head. “He’s meeting with the emperox today,” she said. “I don’t think she’s going to keep it to herself.”

  “It’s not whether she tells everyone,” Huma said. “It’s whether they believe her.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Oh, my daughter,” Huma said, and smiled. “Don’t tell me you don’t know how little that actually means.”

  Chapter

  15

  Marce Claremont didn’t realize how much of a country bumpkin he was until he arrived at Hub.

  It was one thing to know intellectually that Hub, which included the namesake planet of Hub, its immense imperial station, the equally immense autonomous habitat of Xi’an, and dozens of other associated habitats, was the most populated and advanced human nation in the Interdependency. It was another thing for Marce to disembark from the Yes, Sir at Hub’s imperial station, several times the size of End’s station, and to take in the bustle and rush of so many humans arriving and departing and doing their business—and knowing that the planet below held even more people in even more crowded habitats, pressed together in underground domes or technologically advanced kilometers-long spinning cylinders, living their lives oblivious to, or simply unconcerned about, how close they were to the hard vacuum or cold rock or searing radiation that could kill them in minutes.

  These people are nuts, Marce thought, and grinned to himself. It was breathtaking the situations that humans put themselves into, and still managed to thrive. In the Interdependency, with its religious and social ethos of interconnectedness combined with a guild-centered, monopolistic economy, they’d created possibly the most ridiculously complex method of ensuring the survival of the species they could have devised. Bolting on a formal caste system of nobles intertwined with a merchant class, and common workers underneath, complicated proceedings even further.

  And yet it worked. It worked because on a social level, apparently enough people wanted it to, and because at the heart of it, billions of humans living in fragile habitats prone to mechanical and environmental breakdowns and degradation, and with limited natural resources, were better off relying on each other than trying to go it alone. Even without the Interdependency, being interdependent was the best way for humanity to survive.

  Except now we will all have to find a new way to survive, Marce said to himself. He looked up and around at Hub’s imperial station, with all the humans moving in it, and remembered that in less than a decade, all of them might be dead, or on their way to it. Including him.

  “Lord Marce?” Marce looked up to see a young man in dark green imperial livery, looking at him, with a sign reading “Lord Marce Claremont” in his hand.

  “Yes, that’s me,” Marce said.

  “I’m to take you to Xi’an.” The young man looked around. “Do you have any luggage? I understand you are disembarking from a Lagos fiver. Do you have lodgings?”

  “My luggage is being sent to the Moreland Hotel, here on the station.”

  “Excellent choice, sir.”

  “Thank you.” The Moreland had been recommended to him by Kiva, “assuming you can afford it.” Marce, currently in possession of eighty million marks in his data crypt, allowed that he might be able to scrape by.

  The young man motioned. “This way, sir.”

  Marce followed the young man, whose name was Verson Sohne, to an area of the imperial station used as a terminal for travel to Xi’an. Marce had his documents checked, rechecked, and his body scanned, also twice, and was asked his business in Xi’an, again twice, by two separate inquisitors. Each time Marce noted he had an appointment with the emperox and presented his tablet with the official appointment notice and security hash displayed. They did not ask him what specifically his meeting was about, for which Marce was thankful. He assumed “about the end of the Interdependency and the possible extinction of the human race” might raise some flags.

  Verson apologized for the security measures. “They’ve been more stringent since those horrible End rebels bombed the coronation,” he said, and then suddenly shut up, aware that his charge, in fact, was from End. “I didn’t mean to imply anything about you, my lord,” he said, after a moment.

  Marce smiled at this. He’d only in the past few hours caught up on the death of Attavio VI, the succession to his daughter Cardenia, now Grayland II, and the attempted assassination on the day of her coronation. He personally doubted anyone from End was at all involved. “It’s all right,” he said, to Verson, who looked visibly relieved.

  The shuttle trip from Imperial Station to Xi’an was uneventful but Marce watched via his tablet anyway, looking at the surface of Hub as the shuttle zipped up the termination line from Imperial Station at the equator to where Xi’an hovered, ten degrees north. Marce watched Xi’an grow larger and larger in his tablet, making out the stream of specks that represented the traffic moving to and from the habitat. Farther up and down the terminator line of Hub were other, smaller habitats, which served as homes for the workers who built starships in nearby floating docks. Marce did not see any of those in his tablet.

  The shuttle landed and Marce and Verson made their way to the train which traversed the whole of Xi’an, and Marce again found himself plastered to the view, looking at how the landscape went out, above and around him as the interior surface of the cylindrical station looped around to meet up with the train on the other side.

  “Your first time at Xi’an, sir?” Verson asked.

  “First time in a habitat like this,” Marce replied. “I’ve lived my whole life on End. On the surface of a planet. It’s nothing like this.”

  “What’s it like, sir?”

  “Flat.” Marce kept looking at the ground rising up at him. “Even our foothills are flat compared to this. I don’t know how anyone here looks up without wondering why they don’t fall right down to the other side of the station.”

  “Well, it’s because Xi’an rotates,” Verson began.

  Marce laughed at this. “I understand the physics of it. That’s not what I mean. But there’s a difference between knowing something intellectually and the animal portion of your brain telling you to grab hold of something.” He looked at Verson, who had a polite smile on his face. “You grew up in a habitat like this?”

  Verson nodded. “I’m from Ancona. It’s an associated nation here in the Hub system.”

  “Right. So you’re used to this.” Marce looked back out the window. “I’m … not.”

  “Do you think you’ll ever get used to it, sir?”

  “I hope I will,” Marce said. “And I kind of hope I don’t, too.”

  They left the train at the palace station and Verson led Marce to a landing for people who had business at the imperial palace. Because Marce had an actual appointment with the emperox, Verson led him to the front of the line, annoying everyone who was waiting. Marce mouthed his apologies as Verson directed him forward. Another presentation of documents, another scan, another brief questioning, and then they were through, and Marce was handed off to a young woman, Obelees Atek, who worked at the palace proper. She gave Marce a pass to affix to his blouse, and then started walking, inviting Marce to follow. Marce waved good-bye to Verson and walked after Obelees.

  Ten minutes later Marce sat in the anteroom of Emperox Grayland II’s office, having passed through a few public areas that displayed more opulence than Marce had ever seen in his life. Until this moment he’d thought the ducal palace on End was the standard for obnoxious
opulence, but the imperial palace made it look like the loft of an arriviste, and made his own home, a mansion by any definition, look like a hovel. The imperial palace was stuffed with a millennium of gilded baubles, a testament to the self-interest of a family and the political system that supported it. The anteroom was likewise tastefully stuffed with treasure, including the statue of Prophet-Emperox Rachela I by the sculptor Meis Fujimoro. It was famous throughout the Interdependency and probably worth more than the incomes of some entire human habitats.

  Marce looked around and wondered how an emperox, someone so intimately invested in the preservation of a system like the Interdependency, could ever be able to act on the news he had to give her.

  You’re a lord yourself, Marce’s brain reminded him. You’re invested. And yet here you are.

  Yes, but I’m not the emperox. I benefit from the system. She is the system.

  An emperox sent your father to End to study this.

  That emperox is dead.

  “Lord Marce.” Marce looked up to see Obelees motioning to him. It was time to meet the emperox. Marce got up and walked into the office.

  When you first meet the emperox, a bow is sufficient, Obelees had said to him as they had walked to her office. Some like to kneel, and you may if you like. But you will have only a limited time with her and that will cut into your time. After your introduction it is expected that the emperox will initiate and lead the conversation. Speak when spoken to; answer any questions. When your appointment time is up or if the emperox dismisses you early, bow and exit the room. Always be respectful and reserved. Your emperox deserves no less.

  Marce entered the office of the emperox, took one look at the surroundings, and laughed out loud. Obelees Atek frowned at him.

  “Is something funny, Lord Marce?” asked a young woman, standing in front of a desk. She was wearing imperial green. This was clearly the emperox, and equally clearly he’d just blown his entrance.

  He bowed. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” he said. “I was surprised by your office.”

  “How so?”

  “I … well. Ma’am. It looks like a museum exploded inside of it.”

  Obelees Atek sucked in her breath and apparently was now waiting for the emperox to sentence him to a beheading.

  Instead she laughed, openly, loudly. “Thank you,” she said, with emphasis. “This has been exactly my thought for the last nine months. Sometimes I’m scared to walk around in here. I’m worried I’m going to bump into something and break a priceless historical artifact. I’m terrified of my own workspace, Lord Marce. I’m working up the courage to redecorate.”

  “You’re the emperox, ma’am. I’m pretty sure they’ll let you.”

  “It’s not whether I can. It’s whether I should.” The emperox nodded to Obelees, dismissing her. Obelees bowed, shot Marce one last visual warning to behave, and left. As she did Marce noted that he was alone in the room with the emperox; she had no assistants or ministers or secretaries with her.

  “Tell me the thought you just had, Lord Marce,” the emperox said, and motioned for him to sit in a chair in front of her desk.

  “I was thinking that you have less staff than I expected, ma’am.” Marce sat in the chair. She remained standing, leaning on her desk.

  “I have even more staff than I imagine you expect,” she said. “And usually I will have them sit in on my meetings. I have a lot of meetings, Lord Marce. You might not believe how many. I couldn’t possibly keep them all straight without help. So they’re with me,” the emperox motioned to her desk, “and I sit behind this and I use the imperial ‘we’ and everyone is very respectful and polite, and no one ever laughs at this absolutely ridiculous office when they come in the room. But you did.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Sorry.”

  “I’m not. On the contrary I’m glad you did. But I’d like to know why you did, if you don’t mind, Lord Marce.”

  “I suppose because I’m overstimulated, ma’am.”

  “You make yourself sound like an eight-year-old given too much sugar,” the emperox said, smiling.

  Marce smiled back. “It’s not a bad metaphor,” he admitted. “My entire life has been on End, ma’am. It’s not exactly the backwater everyone makes it out to be, but it’s not … this. Hub. And Xi’an. And this palace.”

  The emperox wrinkled her nose and Marce was suddenly aware that whatever he had been expecting from this meeting, this was not it. “It’s awful, isn’t it?”

  “Uh,” Marce said.

  The emperox laughed again. “I’m sorry, Lord Marce. I didn’t mean to make you feel like I was trying to trap you into a faux pas. But you have to understand. I wasn’t meant to be emperox. I didn’t grow up with all of … this, as you say. It’s as alien to me as I imagine it is to you.”

  “I am nobility, ma’am. It’s not alien. It’s just a lot.”

  “Yes. Yes. Again, thank you. You’ve perfectly encapsulated what I’ve been feeling about my life for the last year.”

  “I aim to please, ma’am.”

  “You have,” the emperox assured him. “So far, this may be my favorite confidential meeting I’ve had to date.” She smiled again, and cocked her head. “And this is why I’m sad that now we have to ruin it by talking about the end of civilization.”

  Marce nodded. “So, you know.”

  “You didn’t assume that I granted you this audience because I am in the habit of welcoming minor nobility, did you, Lord Marce? I mean, no offense.”

  “None taken,” Marce said. “I just didn’t know what you knew and how much I would have to explain to you.”

  “You may assume that I know as much as my father did about what your father was up to on End, why he was sent, and what the implications of his research are.”

  “All right.”

  “So now that we have that out of the way, my first question: Are the Flow streams going to collapse?”

  “Yes.”

  The emperox let out a heavy breath. “When?”

  “It’s already begun. We estimate the Flow stream from End to Hub has already collapsed. The Yes, Sir, the ship I was on, was probably the last ship to make it through.”

  “How will we know if that’s correct?”

  “When other ships scheduled to arrive at Hub don’t arrive, you’ll know.”

  “Ships are often delayed in their departures and therefore their arrivals.”

  Marce nodded. “It’ll be a couple of weeks at least before people begin to notice that ships are missing. Even then they’re likely to blame it on something else.”

  “Like that civil war of yours.”

  “It’s not my civil war,” Marce snorted, and then remembered who he was talking to. “Ma’am.”

  The emperox ignored it. “Is there any way to use the collapse of this Flow stream? The one from End to here?”

  “I can present the work and show the math behind it,” Marce said. “But I’m going to warn you ahead of time that anyone who isn’t already a Flow physicist isn’t going to follow it at all, and even then they will argue what it means. It will take time for them to go through my father’s work and his prediction model. But by then it won’t matter.”

  “Because more Flow streams will have collapsed, and that will be the evidence.”

  Marce nodded again. “Right.”

  “You said you knew that the Flow stream from End to Hub has already collapsed.”

  “It’s very likely, yes.”

  “So you can predict the collapses.”

  “We can give you probabilities on which ones are going to collapse and when. It’s not predicting. It’s looking at the data and offering the most probable outcomes.”

  “Do you know which one is going to collapse next? I mean, which one is likeliest?”

  “Yes. It’s likely to be the Flow stream from here to Terhathum. The model predicts it will collapse within the next six weeks.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No. But it’s probable.”
>
  “How probable? Give me a percentage.”

  “I’d say about eighty percent chance you’ll have the Hub–Terhathum collapse within six weeks. After that it’s hazy but there’s an almost one hundred percent chance within a year.”

  “That’s the streams to Terhathum and back?”

  Marce shook his head. “No. The Flow streams to a system and from a system are not actually related.” He caught the emperox’s look at this. “I know, that’s not a fact anyone’s brain is comfortable with, but it’s true. Our model has a prediction from the stream from Terhathum to Hub, but it’s very fuzzy because it’s further out in time. It could happen in as soon as thirty-eight months and as late as eighty-seven months from now. The second of those dates is when we expect the final streams to close.”

  “What will be the last stream to close?”

  “Right now our prediction models have the stream to End closing sometime between eighty and eighty-seven months from now.”

  “You carry all these numbers in your head?” the emperox asked.

  “Not all of them,” Marce confessed. “Just the ones I thought you would ask me about. I have fifteen minutes with you, ma’am. I wanted to be efficient.”

  “Do you find it at all ironic that End has the first Flow stream to collapse, and also might have the last?”

  “It’s not ironic, ma’am, it’s coincidental. But I’m happy it’s likely to be the case. I want to be able to go home.”

  The emperox gave Marce a look. “You traveled for the better part of a year without knowing whether or not you’d get a meeting with me.”

  “Begging your pardon, but I wasn’t expecting to have a meeting with you at all. I was expecting your father. My condolences to you, also, ma’am.”

  “Thank you. What would you have done if I hadn’t decided to see you?”

  “I imagine I would have presented our data to the physicists at the University of Hubfall and told them it was their problem to get the information out to whomever wanted to listen. Then I might have taken a couple of days to sightsee and then headed out on the first ship going to End.”