Cardenia turned to Grayland I. “You saw a collapse happen. In your time, they must have responded.”

“I was assassinated,” Grayland I said. “And after a brief vogue for entertainment about the lost system of Dalasýsla, everyone decided to forget about it. The other Flow streams looked stable, and thinking about Dalasýsla was inconvenient.”

“No one wants the Interdependency to end. Including the House of Wu. There’s too much money and power at stake,” Attavio VI said.

“And the survival of humanity doesn’t matter?” Cardenia asked, incredulously.

“Not if it means the end of the Interdependency.”

“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.

“My child, that’s never been the point of the Interdependency,” Attavio VI said.

“It’s just the excuse we gave for it,” Grayland I affirmed, nodding.

“Then what is the point?” Cardenia asked, still shouting. “What is the Interdependency?”

And here there was another shimmer, and another figure walked toward Cardenia, a figure that Cardenia knew was meant to be Rachela I, prophet-emperox, the legendary founder of the Interdependency. 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.

And then Cardenia, who even dreaming could no longer pretend not to know what had happened, 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.

PART TWO

Chapter 7

The fighting near the University of Opole had subsided enough that Marce Claremont had been able to return to his apartment in graduate housing to pack for a trip from which he would likely never return.

Which did bring up the question: If you are leaving forever, what do you take with you?