The Last Emperox

by John Scalzi

  “You want my assent to this,” Korbijn said.

  “I would like it,” Proster said. “We don’t need it. We already have the nobles behind us. But yes. I would like your assent, and your personal endorsement, and the cooperation of the Church of the Interdependency. It would make things easier, and it would have benefits for you personally as well.”

  “How so?”

  “Nadashe is aware that her history makes her a … contentious choice to be the head of the church and the cardinal of Xi’an and Hub. She is prepared to devolve those titles and powers onto you, as archbishop, for the duration of her reign, or your tenancy in the position, whichever is shorter. If your tenure is shorter, then the titles go to Nadashe’s heir on your death or retirement. If yours is longer, you have the option of returning the titles to the new emperox when they take the throne, but the titles will return to the new emperox whenever it is that you leave your office.”

  Korbijn shook her head. “Not me,” she said.

  “Pardon?”

  “I said, ‘Not me.’ I can speak for the church when I say that it will not stand in the way of your choice for emperox, as foolish as it may be. And I accept your offer with regard to the cardinalship of Xi’an and Hub going to the archbishop of Xi’an for the term of Nadashe Nohamapetan’s reign as emperox. But it will not be going to me. I intend to resign.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I will not stand in the cathedral, bless Nadashe Nohamapetan and pray for her success and be the instrument of her coronation. You forget, Proster Wu, that I served with Nadashe Nohamapetan on the executive committee. I was able to take her full measure there. You are deluding yourself, sir, if you believe that she can be controlled or contained by you, or the House of Wu, or any agreements that she says that she will live by.”

  “It’s possible you are overly pessimistic.”

  “You should fervently hope I am,” Korbijn said. “For my part I will wash my hands of it. You may expect me to announce my intent to resign the archbishopric and to resume my role as a common priest within the next several hours.”

  “I look forward to meeting with your successor about the coronation.”

  “I look forward to it as well, when it happens a month from now.”

  “Excuse me?” Proster said.

  Korbijn smiled. “My dear Proster, I see you are not a particularly faithful son of the church. Then let me explain. As the de facto head of the Church of the Interdependency—and because there is in fact no currently reigning emperox, de jure head as well—I do not have the luxury of handpicking my successor. There must be a convocation of bishops, and there must be a quorum. The number of bishops whose dioceses are in the Hub system is not quite the required number for a quorum, so there must also be bishops from other systems. This is by design, incidentally. If there are enough other bishops visiting Hub, as there may be, then we can use them. But we must also extend the invitation to bishops from other systems as well. The absolute bare minimum of time required by church law for this is a month.”

  “Even if there is a quorum of bishops in the Hub system.”

  “Yes. The quorum is the minimum. The more bishops who can participate the better. Usually, if the archbishop of Xi’an plans to retire, we set a date as far in advance as possible. A year, usually. Not unusually, two years, so bishops from End can appear if they like. But End is cut off from us now in any event.”

  “And you won’t perform the coronation before then.”

  “Once I announce my resignation, I can’t,” Korbijn said. “I may perform the standard rites any priest may do, and I’m sure the church will allow me to continue to be a representative on the executive committee in the interim. But all my archbishopric responsibilities will pass temporarily to Bishop Hill, who administers Parliament Cathedral.”

  Proster opened his mouth.

  “All archbishopric responsibilities except the coronation of the emperox, which canonically falls explicitly under the responsibilities of the archbishop of Xi’an.”

  Proster closed his mouth again.

  “And before you ask—or don’t ask, but think, Proster—no emperox is legitimate without a church coronation. An heir presumptive may act with certain powers prior to their formal ascendance, but those powers are largely ceremonial and limited to administration of the imperial household. That’s why we have an executive committee for the interim.”

  “I see what you’re doing, you know,” Proster said.

  “I should certainly hope so; I’m being obvious enough about it,” Korbijn said. “But let me tell you just in case I’m not. You will have your coronation, Proster Wu. Nadashe Nohamapetan will be emperox, and on your head be it. But that coronation must be legitimate and it must be by the rules—the rules of the church and the law of the Interdependency—or your foolish game will fall into ruin. Which means, for now, you have to play by my rules. This is my last move. I know it and you know it. But it is still my move to play, and I’m going to play it.”

  Proster said nothing for a longish time. Then he nodded.

  “Good,” Korbijn said. “Then my successor, whoever it is, will see you here in a month. Probably.”

  Proster raised his eyebrows. “Probably?”

  “The bishops usually select the next archbishop from the host assembled,” Korbijn said. “But sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they’ll pick one not present. When they do, that bishop must be notified. Then they must accept. Then they must travel. That could take months.”

  “It’s not likely, you say.”

  “It’s not,” Korbijn agreed. “But it’s possible. You should hope they don’t pick a bishop from End.”

  Chapter 21

  Marce and Chenevert found the emerging evanescent Flow shoal right where it should have been, doing what Marce had hypothesized it would be doing—expanding and moving—and more than that, throwing off even more Flow shoals that whipped out and forward and then evaporated in minutes or seconds. Marce hadn’t been expecting that, and it didn’t quite fit his model, and he knew that he could spend an entire career digging into just that one aspect of the emergent evanescent Flow shoals and would never run out of things to say about it.

  Marce Claremont’s life was a ridiculously full festival of data.

  Enough so that it fell to Chenevert to remind him that while all the data they were gathering were glorious, they had a task and focus, and maybe they should work on that. So Marce grudgingly set aside anything that was not related to gauging the baseline resonance of the Flow medium and mapping the continuing effects of the now-ancient cavitation, to see how the remaining data related to his hypothesized values of each.

  These, too, were intriguingly different—close, but different, and Marce as a scientist appreciated how even small variations meant vast changes would propagate down the line, vastly changing the predictions for the appearance and duration of evanescent Flow streams, both in the near future and in decades and even centuries to come.

  It also reinforced Marce’s belief that the next step was to get more readings from emergent evanescent Flow shoals and their attendant streams. Incremental refining of hypotheses with new, pertinent data was not sexy, but it was important. It also suggested—just suggested, but even so—that there might even be a way to do the thing they wanted: to shape the Flow shoals, and move them, and even perhaps get them to swallow human habitats whole.

  Which would open up a whole raft of second-order problems that Marce wasn’t sure he wanted to confront, including the question of how to shape a timespace bubble of such volume that it could include a kilometers-long habitat inside of it. But he also realized that he didn’t have to solve every problem. If he solved this problem, other people could handle the rest. And solving this problem was enough for anyone.

  Marce was so wrapped up in his own world of data and hypotheses that he almost forgot to send a note to Cardenia, to initiate their evening chat of short bursts of text punctuated by long pauses. This nig
ht, Marce simply put “Soooo much data. Love you” as his text, hoping that Cardenia would understand he was too distracted by shiny, shiny science to be a useful conversationalist to her tonight. Cardenia responded, simply, “Love you too,” and in those words he could imagine her smiling at his guileless enthusiasm for science.

  He was glad she did, and could, and for the umpteenth time since the night before he and Chenevert departed to observe this emerging Flow shoal, Marce took a second to be amazed, simply and profoundly amazed, that Cardenia had proposed marriage to him.

  It had been, Marce knew, an impulsive decision on her part, and perhaps even a rash one. Cardenia had long before filled him in on how she had been intended to marry the ill-fated Amit Nohamapetan, and how someone in her position was not always or even often afforded the luxury of marrying for love. That was for people who didn’t have so much power that they literally couldn’t give it away, the sort of power Cardenia had as emperox. She had told him this with such plaintive matter-of-factness that Marce had been surprised when he felt something akin to pity for her, the most powerful person among the billions in the Interdependency.

  Marce had already known this about her, even before she told him, and had always kept some part of himself in reserve. Not his heart, because he knew he loved Cardenia and there was no point in deluding himself about that. But the quiet, logical parts in his head that made him aware that this relationship would end one day—if he was lucky, by the simple entropy of overfamiliar people falling out of love with each other, but by some other, more heart-wrenching process if not. And when it happened—when, not if—he would have to be able to have the grace to accept it, and to know that love was never part of an emperox’s inheritance.

  And yet Cardenia had proposed anyway, to him, and despite his initial fumble of it, he had accepted. With that Marce was done holding back the quiet and logical parts in his head. Marce and Cardenia might perhaps one day mess up their relationship—people did that, and Marce didn’t delude himself that just because he loved Cardenia it didn’t mean he wouldn’t aggravate the crap out of her sometimes—but they would do it from a state that would encourage constancy and reconciliation as a baseline. Marce was pretty sure he could work with that: every day a new day to start again, building a life together.

  Hours later, when at last Marce couldn’t keep the streams of data clear in his vision or his head, he headed to his stateroom on the Auvergne and put his head on his pillow and thought muzzy and contented thoughts of Cardenia as he was swiftly pulled into a full and dreamless sleep. As he surfaced out from that sleep, almost twelve hours later, he thought he heard Cardenia say, simply, “Marce,” just as he opened his eyes.

  Marce Claremont pulled himself up from his bed, yawned and stretched, put on clothes, and then walked to the bridge of the Auvergne, where Tomas Chenevert, who had intentionally let Marce sleep as late as he possibly could, was waiting for him to tell him that Cardenia, the Emperox Grayland II, was dead.

  The voyage back to Xi’an took eight days, and a thousand years.

  The Xi’an that Marce returned to was not the one he had left. His formal position on the imperial staff was as a special advisor for science to the emperox, which was an appointment personal to the emperox herself. When Grayland died, all her personal appointments—advisors, assistants and consultants—were suspended, pending the pleasure of the incoming emperox, who, historically, would be bringing in their own staff and therefore would have little need of the former emperox’s staff.

  For Marce this meant that every project or initiative that he had undertaken on behalf of Grayland—which meant all of them—was halted, held up pending review by the incoming emperox. Marce was no longer able to access files or data on the imperial servers, or to share the new data he had collected with other scientists, until such time as the new emperox or their appointed representative(s) for the emperox’s personal science and research initiatives allowed him to do so.

  In itself this presented little problem for Marce. He had always kept copies of his work on his own devices, and all the work had been shared with Chenevert, anyway. He could get the information to others if he chose, and work on it himself in the meanwhile. But being officially closed off from his work, and what that act represented with respect to his relationship with the imperial apparatus, unmoored him.

  (Speaking of being unmoored, the Auvergne was now no longer permitted to berth at the emperox’s private space dock at Xi’an—Marce, whose ship it was assumed to be, had to make arrangements elsewhere at the habitat, paying the exorbitant fee for a temporary berthing out of the vault of marks that he had carried with him from End. The berthing would indeed have to be temporary, because its cost would quickly whittle down Marce’s stash of money. Thus Marce was reminded that there was a difference between being merely rich, as he was, and profoundly rich, which he was going to have to be to keep a ship the size of the Auvergne parked anywhere in the system.)

  Pending the disposition of his employment with the new emperox, Marce was permitted to stay in his palace quarters, the bachelor studio that he had only rarely slept in the last several months. Marce had not been allowed to retrieve his things from the emperox’s apartments. His effects—clothes, toiletries, a few other personal items—had been delivered to his palace quarters before he and the Auvergne had even returned to Xi’an. Marce had been shut out of the personal aspects of the imperial world as effectively and efficiently as he had been shut out of its professional aspects.

  Of course, everyone knew that Marce and Grayland had had a “close friendship,” as the euphemism went. Back in his bachelor quarters, Marce had received kindness and sympathy from other members of the imperial staff, some of whom found themselves, like Marce, waiting to hear if their positions would be retained. What they nor anyone else understood was the quality of that close friendship—that it had not been a “close friendship” at all, but actual love, genuine and true.

  Marce understood that others in the imperial household could not be faulted for thinking that he had been nothing more than a fond plaything for a powerful person. He had never chosen to capitalize or brag about the relationship. It wasn’t anyone else’s business. But that unwillingness to speak casually about what he shared with Grayland—with Cardenia—meant that in the eyes of everyone else, except those very few who knew the emperox the best, Marce had no special claim to the emperox or her person.

  No one else knew that Cardenia had proposed to him.

  Marce was widowed, in all the ways one could be, without the benefit of a single soul to understand his pain and bereavement. He hadn’t even told Chenevert; he felt it wasn’t his place to share that information first. When one’s fiancée was the emperox, you let her make the announcements.

  He could tell Chenevert now, clearly. He could tell anyone who would choose to listen. But he would not, because Cardenia wasn’t there to offer her side of it. Marce knew with certainty what would be thought of him, if he declared the engagement here and now.

  That was fine with Marce. He didn’t need anyone else to know Cardenia had asked him to marry her. He knew, and he would carry it with him forever.

  Marce did not stay in his bachelor quarters, and did not wait to discover the disposition of his role in the imperial household. Marce had come to Hub to deliver the news his father had asked him to, the news about the collapse of the Flow. He had stayed because the emperox—because Cardenia—had asked him to stay. She was gone, and his responsibilities, to her and to his father, had been fulfilled.

  Besides, the new emperox was going to be Nadashe Nohamapetan.

  Marce resigned his position, cleaned out his quarters, and moved into the Auvergne, both because Chenevert had invited him to and because, as Marce figured it, he was already paying rent in the form of the appallingly high docking fee.

  “What is your plan now?” Chenevert asked him, after he had moved in.

  “I don’t know,” Marce said. “My original plan was to go back to
End. That’s difficult now because the Nohamapetans have the planet blockaded.”

  “Grayland had a plan to send an armada.”

  “That’s been cancelled, obviously. Nadashe is the incoming emperox. She’s not going to move against her own brother.”

  “We could still slip in through that back door,” Chenevert said. “It’s still open. If we hurry.”

  “We?”

  “I have no ties here, clearly. And we’re friends.”

  “Thank you,” Marce said, genuinely touched. “But I couldn’t ask you to risk that. Even if no one’s watching that one Flow shoal, that doesn’t mean we won’t be spotted approaching the planet. The Auvergne is not small.”

  “You underestimate my stealth,” Chenevert said.

  “I’d rather underestimate your stealth than underestimate their ability to destroy you as an unidentified craft.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “No, I can’t go back to End. Not yet. Maybe not ever.”

  “Then I return to my original question,” Chenevert said.

  “I return to my original answer,” Marce replied. “I don’t know. Not yet. I’ll figure it out soon. If nothing else, you and I have a lot of data left to work through. Maybe we’ll find answers there.” He smiled and looked over to the apparition of Chenevert. “We’re still the Interdependency’s last hope, after all. We could keep working on that, whether the incoming emperox wants us to or not.”

  “I like that idea. It appeals to the futile romantic in me.”

  “I’m sorry you’ve been dragged into all of this,” Marce said. “When we found you, you were sleeping comfortably. We woke you up, put you in the middle of a space battle, and when you came here I got you involved in the same sort of political machinations that you had fled from. I wouldn’t blame you if you purged me into space while I was sleeping.”