The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency, #1)

by John Scalzi

“It’s the nation of systems we all live in,” said the girl.

This is us,” he said. “The second planet out from our sun. This is End, called that because it’s located as far away from anything else in the Interdependency as you can go.”

“Hub is the one place in the Interdependency where all the Flow streams converge—it’s the only place you can get directly from and to nearly every system in the Interdependency. That makes it the most important planet for trade and travel. If we couldn’t travel through Hub, some systems in the Interdependency would be years away from each other. That’s why the planet is called ‘Hub.’ It’s the center of our universe, so to speak.”

“The Flow isn’t something that we control, and

really, if we’re honest with ourselves, it’s something that we don’t understand very well. It’s like a natural feature of the universe. We can access it but we can’t really do anything with it but go where it’s going anyway. In fact, that makes for one of the really unusual features about the Interdependency.”

“Humans live in all of these star systems, but the planets in most of these star systems aren’t the kinds that are good for human life.”

Earth is where humans originally come from, and like on End, you could walk around on its surface. But the Earth isn’t part of the Interdependency. We lost contact with the Earth over a thousand years ago when the single Flow stream to it disappeared.”

In fact, it did happen again, more than seven hundred years ago, when we lost contact with a system called Dalasýsla. This was before the local Flow streams were as extensively mapped as they are now. The Flow stream to Dalasýsla was apparently already collapsing when it was first colonized, it just took a couple hundred years to close entirely. Now, as it happens, the rest of the Flow streams in the Interdependency have been robust and mostly unchanged for the last several hundred years.”

For as long as Marce could remember, Dad had called it “the Family Secret”: his father’s examination of navigation data from every ship that had ever come to End over the last four decades.

“The Flow is the Flow,” Jamies said. “It doesn’t do anything. Our access to it, on the other hand, is definitely going away. The unusual stability of the Flow streams that have allowed the development of the Interdependency is coming to an end. One by one, the streams are going to dry up. One by one, the systems of

the Interdependency are going to find themselves alone. For a long time. Possibly forever.

How long do we have?” Vrenna asked. “Ten years,” Marce said. “At the outside.” He glanced over to his father. “If Dad’s models are perfectly accurate, less than that. Probably closer to seven or eight years before all the local F...

“I’ve missed you, Kiva. You and your marvelous way with the word ‘fuck.’ ” “No you haven’t, but thank you anyway.”

were like someone with an iron glove had taken it, wrapped it around her uterus, and squeezed. Yes, Coronation Day was going along just great for Emperox Grayland II, thanks for asking. The

Xi’an from the imperial palace, symbolizing (in theory if not always in practice) the independence of the parliament from the emperox. This independence was in part belied by the fact that the emperox was always the minister of parliament for Xi’an, a seat that was generally considered honorary and ceremonial but which in fact had the same voting privileges as any other.

She turned, to face the assembly of nobles, notables, and representatives. The executive committee, save Korbijn, in the front row of pews. Behind them, representatives from the House of Wu, and among them, looking wildly out of place, her uncle Brendan Patrick and her cousins Moira and Justin, representing her mother.

here.” This took Cardenia aback. On one

But the intentional nature of the Interdependency is that each system is reliant on the others for essentials. Remove one system, and its ruling house and monopoly, and the dozens of other systems will survive.

The habitats in space and outposts on otherwise uninhabitable planets and moons will fall into disrepair and over time will become harder to fix.

Social networks will break down predictably, commensurate to failures of the physical plant and the realization that ultimately nothing can save the people in the cut-off system. Between the physical and social failures that will follow th...

“Basically: civil war, murder, violence, sabotage of life-support systems and food production, the rise of cults of personality. There’s a classified report that was prepared by my son and successor, Bruno III.”

“The survival of humanity was the point of the Interdependency!” Cardenia shouted, at the computer simulation of her father. And this is where, in her dream, both Attavio VI and Grayland I laughed in her face.

It was meant to be Rachela I but looked like Naffa, Naffa who had been caught in the explosion of the presentation balcony, Naffa, the last sight of whom that Cardenia would ever have was her being torn apart by the blast, Naffa, covered in blood, who stood in front of Cardenia now, as Rachela I, to tell her what the Interdependency was and is.

“It’s a scam,” she said.

willed herself awake, to find herself in a bed in her own very small, very secure private hospital, surrounded by imperial bodyguards, a phalanx of doctors led by Qui Drinin, and a small contingent of imperial guards, including the one, right there, who would tell her what she already knew, that her friend Naffa Dolg was dead.

Marce’s way of dealing with the fact he’d never see his father or sister or any of the people he’d ever known in his lifetime was to think about the practical issues of leaving the planet.

“The people I had with Claremont tell me they were attacked by a woman.” “It wasn’t me.” “It was Vrenna Claremont.” “You mean the sister who had years of training to murder people for the state, and then became a cop? Yes, that would be my logical guess too.”

Kiva nodded, and then stood up. “I’m heading back to the ship.” She nodded to Vrenna. “I’ll never see you again, which I figure is a tragedy.” Vrenna smiled at this.

Cardenia nodded. She was in her private apartments at the palace, ears still ringing and on a medical watch due to concussion, but otherwise unharmed. At least physically. Where her heart was, there was a Naffa-shaped hole.

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.”

“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.

“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.”

“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.”

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.

Or there was some problem shaping the bubble inside the Flow and they just disappeared in it. There’s always an explanation that doesn’t mean the Flow is the problem. They don’t want to believe it. And if

they don’t believe it, then who is going to tell the Interdependency? You? Me? Like they’re fucking going to believe us.”

Amit was the conventional one—unoriginal, unthreatening, but always ready to be out front for family and house, a tractable figurehead who would one day publicly take the reins of the House of Nohamapetan. Ghreni was the useful one, the one good with people, the “salesman”—or the confidence man

the one who could intrigue you with an idea and get you to sign your name on the line, whether or not you really understood what you were buying.

But it was Nadashe, the sister, who was the brains of the operation. She was the one who told the figurehead what to say, and pointed the salesman at the mark, and set into motion the plans that would ...

you clearly were part of some larger plan by your house to take control of the Interdependency. Good.”

“That last part, yes. It means your ambition and greed are in service for something more than just yourself. It means that you might be something other than just a grasping sociopath.

Nadashe would have no interest in being a quiet consort; she would want to rule. Which, if Cardenia was going to be entirely honest with herself, was not necessarily a bad thing. Cardenia never wanted to be emperox. All she wanted was to be the patron of a nice little arts charity or something.

Even without the Interdependency, being interdependent was the best way for humanity to survive.

“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.

Cardenia now knew three things: One, she would be the very last emperox of the Interdependency. Two, the whole of her reign would be about saving as many human lives as possible, by any and every means possible.

Three, that meant the end of the lie of the Interdependency.

how the vast majorities of the star systems accessible by the Flow were not easily habitable by humans but how they proceeded anyway, undeterred. How these independent systems began to trade and become dependent on each other for resources. How a group of merchants, spearheaded by Banyamun Wu, realized true power rested not in trade but in controlling access to the Flow, and set themselves up in the Hub system as armed toll collectors.

How, in short, the Interdependency codified and manipulated humanity’s actual need for intersystem trade and cooperation, for the benefit of just a few at the very top. Starting with the Wu family. Her family.

Emperoxs of the Interdependency were not meant to be radicals, in any political direction; ones that were found themselves discreetly removed and replaced by more tractable children or (if necessary) cousins.