The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency) Read online

  Korbijn had rolled her eyes when she was told of this particular rumor, but stopped rolling them when she accepted a rush meeting from Tinda Louentintu. The chief of staff to the Countess Nohamapetan arrived in a startling manner, looking like her face had been used to stop weights. When Korbijn asked her if she was all right, Louentintu gave some excuse about tripping over her balcony door sill, which Korbijn immediately intuited to be entirely bullshit, but which Louentintu was making clear she didn’t want to address any further, in part by suggesting that Korbijn consider a schism in the Interdependent Church.

  “On what grounds would I do that?” Korbijn asked, instead of immediately charging Louentintu with blasphemy, which was her right as an ecclesiastical officer of the church but which was very rarely done and would needlessly complicate matters in any event.

  “For the continuation of the church, of course,” Louentintu said. “The countess knows you recently convened your bishops to talk about the emperox and her visions and what they have meant to your control of the Interdependent Church. She knows not a few of them advocated for a schism, to preserve the integrity of the church.”

  Korbijn remembered the hours-long debate/shouting match Louentintu was referring to and was annoyed that one of her bishops had chosen to leak about it. She would deal with whomever that was later. “I suppose a few did,” Korbijn said. “But I’d caution you that the meeting was understood to be a free intellectual exercise. No policy was intended to come out of it, or will come out of it.”

  “Of course not. But there could.”

  “Please come to your point, Lady Louentintu.”

  “I am saying that if you were to advocate a schism, you would find that you have allies.”

  “With all due respect to the Countess Nohamapetan, the church does not need to be seen to have allies like her.”

  “As unfortunate as your statement is, I understand why you say it. So you’ll be glad to know that you will not have to be seen with us. Other, more substantial allies will stand with you.”

  “And by ‘stand with us,’ you mean what, exactly?”

  “I would imagine it would mean financial and material support for the new church to keep the real estate holdings of the previous church, for a start.”

  “So not really a schism, merely a coup.”

  “It wouldn’t even have to be that. But a great many people—in the parliament, in the great houses and, yes, in the church—are beginning to see the necessity of inviting this emperox off the throne.”

  “‘Inviting,’” Korbijn said. “What a polite word for it.”

  “It doesn’t have to be violent,” Louentintu said. “The Countess Nohamapetan understands better than almost anyone else at this point the futility of violence against this emperox. She has felt the cost of it more than anyone else, including the emperox herself. Two dead children and the third at End, where she will never see him again. But violence can be avoided, if enough pressure is brought to bear. At the right time. And the right place.”

  A dawning realization came over Korbijn. “The emperox’s address to parliament. You’re planning something.”

  “We’re not planning it,” Louentintu said. “But it is being planned.”

  “You’re running a huge risk telling me this,” Korbijn said. “I am on the executive committee. And I’m close to this emperox.”

  “You are close to her, yes. And it is a risk. But then you could have had me arrested for blasphemy several minutes ago. You are also a power in your own right, Archbishop. Your church owes little to this emperox. And when there is a new emperox, he, or she, might decide to formally separate the office of emperox from the church and to raise the current archbishop of Xi’an to be the new cardinal of Xi’an and Hub.”

  “You have it planned that far out.”

  “Again, not the House of Nohamapetan. But we know there are plans.”

  “And yet it’s you who have come to try to tempt me, Lady Louentintu.”

  “I’m not here to tempt you, Archbishop. I am only making you aware of possibilities. And to appeal to your better angels. We are in turbulent times, and with the collapse of the Flow streams things will only get more uncertain. We are—we all are—assuredly heading into dark times. The emperox means well, but she isn’t the one to lead us through what comes next for the Interdependency. Someone else will have to do it. And it’s better for everyone to have that decided sooner than later.”

  Korbijn smiled. “It’s funny. You sound very much like someone of my acquaintance who came to see me recently on the same subject.”

  “Talk to them again. Maybe they’ll tell you the same thing.”

  “I can’t. He just died.”

  It took Louentintu a minute to get it, but she got it. “That’s unfortunate.”

  “It certainly was for him,” Korbijn said.

  “Be thinking about what I’ve talked to you about here, Archbishop,” Louentintu said. “Many things are coming. The church will have a role in those things. But what that role is and what its future will be are going to be up to you. The emperox will make her address soon. And on the day she does, time’s up.”

  Well, Korbijn thought, after Louentintu had gone, that went almost exactly like Grayland said it would.

  “They’re going to be coming to you soon, you know,” Grayland had said to her, when Korbijn had visited her to discuss what had befallen Teran Assan. They had briefly discussed Assan’s fate, and what it would mean to the functioning of the executive committee, and then Korbijn had broached the conversation she and Assan had had about her upcoming address, and how it had prompted her into meeting with her bishops. Grayland had nodded to all of that and made that cryptic pronouncement.

  “They?” Korbijn had asked.

  “I don’t mean to sound conspiratorial. On the other hand, Lord Teran is newly dead trying to rescue Nadashe Nohamapetan. I expect the Countess Nohamapetan to deny that she or her house had anything to do with it, of course. But Lord Teran, whatever his other qualities, was not someone to do things freelance.”

  “You think this was part of something bigger.”

  “I think I have spooked a great number of powers with my talk of visions,” Grayland said. “Which is not a surprise. Visions are unsettling and they disrupt order, and no one in power wants order messed with. They don’t understand that disruption is coming whether they want it or not. My visions disrupt order now to prevent chaos later. But that’s not useful for them. So they’re planning something to preserve the order they know.”

  “And what is that?”

  Grayland smiled at Korbijn. “Oh, I think you know well enough.”

  “A coup.”

  Grayland nodded again. “Or something close enough to it. Not just a clumsy assassination attempt like Nadashe made. Something large and elegant and irrefutable. So of course they’re going to need you for that. You, and the church. So, yes, they’re coming to sound you out for a deal.”

  “And you want me to tell you who they are when they do,” Korbijn suggested.

  To her amazement, Grayland shrugged at this. “You give me the name of the person who comes to you, and what then? I have them investigated or I have them arrested. You can be assured that Hibert Limbar is already investigating everyone and everything, including you and me, because that’s his job. If I have them arrested, then I only arrest one person. The rest of them will cut them off and burn any connection, like they did to Lord Teran. Meanwhile the rest of them continue doing what they do in the background. So, no, Archbishop. I don’t need you to tell me who comes to see you. Either I’ll know or it won’t matter.”

  “Then what do you want me to do?”

  Grayland smiled. “I want you to ask yourself what sort of church you want the Interdependent Church to be,” she said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Actually, I think you do,” Grayland said. “Or you will, when you think about it.”

  “All right,” Korbijn said, dubiousl
y.

  Grayland laughed. “I’m not trying to be mysterious! I’m just saying that none of your predecessors in the last thousand years has been put on the spot like you have, because I had to go and sprout visions. But now that I have, you have to decide whether the church can still accommodate someone like me.”

  “A prophet.”

  “Oh, I don’t know if I would go that far,” Grayland said. “But yes.”

  Korbijn smiled at this.

  “If it can, then you’ll know what to do when you’re asked for your allegiance. And if it can’t, then I guess you’ll know what to do then, too. Either way, I apologize.”

  “For what?”

  “For being a real pain in your ass,” Grayland said. “Things would be much easier for you if I had just stuck to the script. I’m sorry.”

  “Apology accepted,” Korbijn said. And then blurted out, “They would have come for you anyway, you know.”

  Grayland had smiled again, and in remembering that, Korbijn knew why she had thought of Pritof’s sculpture at all: because in that moment, Rachela and Grayland had the same smile.

  Chapter

  16

  “What sort of ship am I looking for?” Captain Laure said.

  “A ship like this one,” Marce said. “Only larger.”

  “That narrows it down,” Laure said.

  “The Dalasýslans said that the ship didn’t have a ring on it,” Marce said. “So it’s not like a fiver or a tenner. It probably had push-field technology to mimic gravity like the Bransid does. But it was larger than us. The legend has the crew complement at two hundred, two hundred fifty.”

  “So to reiterate,” Laure said. “We’re looking for a mythical ship that appeared three hundred years ago, without a ring, big enough to have a crew of two hundred.”

  “It’s not mythical,” Marce said.

  “It sounds mythical.”

  “Dr. Gitsen did genetic typing of some of the Dalasýslans,” Marce said. “Do you know what she found?”

  “Inbreeding?”

  “No,” Marce said. “Well, yes. But not as much as you would think, considering.”

  “That’s a relief,” Laure said.

  “What Gitsen found was a genetic component that doesn’t conform to the historical genetic makeup of the Dalasýslans, and doesn’t much align with the DNA of people from the Interdependency.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that after over a thousand years, the humans of the Interdependency are distinct enough from the humans from Earth that we can tell the difference. We’re pretty good at typing people’s immediate ancestry. And a hefty part of these people’s ancestry isn’t from here. Or anywhere else in the Interdependency.”

  “Not to be cruel, but have you seen these people?” Laure said. “They spent the last century at least in a ship that doesn’t offer them much protection from cosmic rays. Their DNA is probably more scrambled than most.”

  “Gitsen controlled for that,” Marce said. “There’s still something else in there.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “It’s not ominous, but it is important. Someone else came here, Captain. Long after the Flow stream from the Interdependency collapsed. Long before we came. The Dalasýslans say the ship is still here somewhere.”

  “They’ve probably scavenged it down to parts by now.”

  Marce shook his head. “It’s apparently not convenient for scavenging. But even if it were, they said they wouldn’t because nothing on the ship would be compatible with their ships or habitats. And that tells you something, too.”

  Laure shook her head. “I still think you’re having me chase a ghost.”

  “You’re cataloging every man-made object in the area anyway,” Marce said. “All I’m asking is that if you find one that even vaguely resembles the one the Dalasýslans talk about, you tell me about it. It’s been over a thousand years since we’ve seen evidence of human civilization outside the Interdependency. I think that’s worth checking into.”

  Laure nodded. “We’ll look into it. Don’t expect miracles. And don’t bother me about it.”

  “Fair enough,” Marce said.

  “On another note entirely, I know you brought one of the Dalasýslans over for a tour.”

  “Chuch, their captain, yes,” Marce said. “Thank you for the permission.”

  “I thought we worried about infecting them with our germs.”

  “He was in his own suit, and it was sterilized before he came on board.”

  “He has an eight-hundred-year-old space suit.”

  “Actually he claims it’s from that newer arrival.”

  “Is it?”

  “No,” Marce said. “It’s standard-issue Interdependency from just pre-collapse.”

  “And how did he enjoy his trip?”

  “It tired him out because he wasn’t used to full gravity. We had him in a chair for a lot of the visit. He said it was interesting to see a ship that had all of its insides actually in its insides. He would still be questioning your engineering staff if we hadn’t reminded him he was about to run out of his oxygen.”

  “And he was able to understand what they were saying.”

  “Yes, Captain. Most of it. Probably more than me. They really are exceptionally intelligent. They would have to be to have survived this long out here.”

  “Everyone keeps telling me that,” Laure said. “They still look like little goblins to me.”

  “She’s not wrong,” Roynold told Marce later, as they ate. “They creep me the hell out, that’s for sure.”

  “You don’t like people anyway,” Marce reminded her. “You said so yourself.”

  “Right, but this is more so.”

  “That’s prejudiced.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Roynold said. “So I’m doing them the favor of staying away.”

  “What about the other thing we were talking about?” Marce asked her.

  “About the idea of another Flow stream opening up here from somewhere else?” Roynold shrugged. “It’s entirely possible. The Interdependency has more Flow streams in it by an order of magnitude than anywhere else in local space because of a quirk in the multidimensional topography, but there’s nothing that says they’re only confined to our local space, or that Flow streams can’t emerge in Interdependency space from elsewhere. That’s how humans originally got here.”

  “I’m asking if you’re seeing any evidence of it.”

  “Not yet, but that could change,” Roynold said. “I’ve got the probe we brought looking at the local topography and I’m feeding it into our latest models, but aside from our current streams I’m not seeing anything yet. I’ll know more the more data I get. This is what I’m doing while you are out gallivanting.”

  “I don’t gallivant,” said Marce.

  “Call it what you want. You’re not doing much Flow physics research, is what I’m saying. It’s all me so far. I’m going to want that noted when it comes time to publish, by the way.”

  “That seems fair.”

  “This is how I can tell you’re not in academia anymore. If you were still a professor you’d be screaming to be the primary author.”

  “How much more data will we need before we potentially see evidence of other streams into here?”

  “It’s hard to say, and a lot will depend on how old the streams in and out are. This aspect isn’t entirely surprising. Our model doesn’t do very well predicting individual streams more than about two decades out on either side of the timeline. Even that massive stream shift we’re predicting comes with a margin of a couple thousand years on either side.”

  “That still bothers me,” Marce said.

  “We won’t be around for it, so I don’t lose any sleep over it.”

  “That’s an interesting life philosophy.”

  “Not really,” Roynold said. “Look, if you find that ship, see if you can discover exactly where it came from and exactly when it arrived in local space. If w
e have all that data, we can work backward and maybe construct a model.”

  “If we know where it comes from, then we don’t need to construct a model,” Marce pointed out. “We already know where it comes from.”

  “If we have a model, then we can predict if that particular Flow stream is coming back anytime soon.”

  “Does it matter?” Marce said. “The Flow stream out of here is collapsing in two months. It won’t do us any good.”

  “Not us, dimwit,” Roynold said. “The goblin people.”

  “The Dalasýslans?”

  “Yes, them. Maybe they would like a way out of a life of endless desperate scavenging. Unless you think you can get their ship up and running before the Flow stream back to the Interdependency collapses.”

  “We checked their propulsion system,” said Commander Vyno Junn, the chief engineer of the Bransid, when Marce came to him for an update. “It’s shot and it can’t be fixed. Not with what I have on hand or what they have on hand, in the time we have before we have to leave.”

  “Can we raid some of the nearby habitats?” Marce asked.

  “For what?” Junn asked. “Check the schematics. Habitats don’t have propulsion or navigation systems that work even remotely like the ones on starships. They’re there to maintain rotational speed and orbital position, not to accelerate to Flow shoals or travel to planets. And before you ask, we already checked the hulls of close-by ships. These guys have already hollowed them out.”

  “So they’re screwed,” Marce said.

  “They were already screwed when we got here,” Junn said. “We’re buying them a little more time, at least. We’re helping them rebuild some of their life support and power systems, very slapdash, but better than what they have now. And I’m pretty sure we can get that ring of theirs moving again before we go, which will help them with their agriculture. And I know we’re basically carving up all the fresh fruit we have on the ship to give them the seeds. Plus bags of potatoes and turnips and all that other root vegetable stuff.”

  “We’re breaking Interdependency law to do that,” Marce said. He thought back to his friend and former lover Kiva Lagos, who probably would have skinned someone who handed out citrus seeds without a payment to her house.