"You can do it without."

"Of course I can. But some kind of public remorse and an appeal for clemency would make things a lot simpler."

"In which case I wouldn't hold your breath."

President Newman looked at her.

"I've been reading Dr. Petrov's file. Half the time I'm not even sure the man is aware he's even human. Of course, Ed's got his own ideas on how to handle this."

Gene Newman's Security Advisor had a theory on everything.

"Don't tell me," said the President. "We take Prisoner Zero down to a cellar and sweat the equations out of him."

"Even better," Paula said. "We kidnap Prisoner Zero and replace him with a decoy, then we execute the decoy as a matter of principle, ride out the public storm and give the original back to our North African allies to extract the information we need."

"Yeah, right," said Gene Newman. "Like we hadn't thought of that."

The sex was slow and gentle and rather a surprise to both of them. In his private study the next morning, preparing to telephone Petra Mayer, the President was unable to remember who began it but completely aware that, once started, neither Paula nor he had been in any hurry to stop.

It lacked the fire of their Paris days and when Gene reached up to wrap one arm around her naked back, supporting Paula while he rolled both of them over to put himself on top, he realized she was heavier than before and he was less strong. Fumbling the turn, Gene lost his rhythm.

"We're getting old," he said.

"No," said Paula Zarte. "You are. I'm just not as young as I was."

Afterwards Gene Newman pillowed his head on one breast and listened to the slowing of her heart. And then when he could put it off no longer, he showered, dressed and came back to sit on the chair next to their bed. The problem seemed like something he should discuss while wearing his clothes.

"You want to tell me how this happened?"

"What's to tell?" Paula shrugged. "We got it wrong. Prisoner Zero's real name is Marzaq al-Turq, he's part German and wholly a genius. It looks like Jake Razor really died in that fire in Amsterdam."

"So," said President Newman, "Prisoner Zero stole his identity."

"What would you do?" Paula said. "You're penniless, drug-addicted, surviving on small sums paid into an account by a family who refuses even to see your only friend and suddenly that friend dies. Prisoner Zero didn't steal Jake's identity. He just kept cashing the cheques."

"Who knows this?"

"Me," said Paula, "you, Petra Mayer and Prisoner Zero." She managed to say the Professor's name without making it sound like a swear word. "That's all, so far."

"What about Jake's family?"

"So far as they know it was Marzaq al-Turq who died in the fire. The flat in Paris was their way of getting Jake away from Amsterdam. Off the record, they even accept that Prisoner Zero is Jake, no matter what they've been saying to the press."

"What are the chances we can keep them believing that?"

Paula Zarte thought about it. "You want my suggestion?"

The President nodded.

"Leave it to me," she said. It would take a certain amount of juggling of records and a couple of fingerprint swaps, but nothing that hadn't been done before.

"You can do it?"

"Oh yes," she said, "we're the CIA. We can do anything."

CHAPTER 49

Northern Mountains, CTzu 53/Year 20 [The Future]

As Tris and Luca headed towards the end of their bridge, Zaq sat under his willow in the walled garden, holding a peach and watching butterflies flicker in and out of sight, not yet warmed enough by the sun to do more than make small hops from one flower to another, wings beating lazily.

"Almost time," Zaq said.

Inside his head a boy stood over the broken body of a girl and Zaq knew, beyond doubt, that the boy had just died there in the dusty graveyard and the man who walked away was never more than a ghost. It was unfair, unjust and, for all Zaq knew, destined to produce only failure, but he still let it happen.

Sometimes the Chuang Tzu surprised even himself with his ability to make others cry. Wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, Zaq stared round at the mulberry bushes fat with purple fruit.

"Wait," he told a butterfly.

The way it was meant to work was that the Chuang Tzu would reach out his hand and the butterfly would alight, bringing its message. After delivering the message the butterfly would die. As would anyone else in the garden unwise enough to reach for a butterfly without being the Chuang Tzu.

Only the reborn could communicate in this fashion with the Library and live. Since Zaq refused to reach out and welcome the hovering butterfly it fluttered at the edge of his vision, puzzled but willing to wait.

It was a very small butterfly, presumably to reassure Zaq that the Librarian's question was not really that important, a mere trifle that Zaq could make disappear simply by answering.

If Zaq didn't reach out his hand soon the butterfly would die anyway and another would take its place. The creatures had very short life-spans. A point he was meant to ponder as all emperors had pondered before him; except that Zaq was busy refusing to be emperor, he was being Zaq.

Which was the cause of his original war against the Library. And maybe this was his last chance to be himself before everything changed.

The peach Zaq held was fresh, perfect in its plumpness and the bloom of its unmarked skin, so perfect, in fact, that it reminded him of the servitor girl whose name he'd now forgotten. There were a dozen peaches like it on a small tree so close to the willow that he could almost reach for fruit without moving and a dozen trees within easy walk if that tree would not do.

The garden held a strange place in the affections of the Library; Zaq could think of no other way to put it. Maybe it was because of the link between gardens and perfection, gardens and heaven, gardens and the afterlife. Actually, there was no maybe about it. Zaq knew this was true because he'd asked the Librarian.

When the Library first talked with Major Commissar Chuang Tzu, who was obviously not the original Chuang Tzu, merely the original for the purposes of the Library who'd never met Homo sapiens before and had not realized the universe was still inhabited, its creators having moved.

When it first trawled though the young Chinese officer's deepest memories it had noticed the single-minded importance put on a vegetable garden and the wild grasses growing on a hillside above a waterfall. A search through the AI and the memories of the cold eternals aboard the SZ Loyal Prince revealed that most faith systems on the world from which the ship originated bound heaven and gardens together.

So the darkness (as it then was) gave the Chinese officer the garden he'd known only in the abstract. A place of butterflies, messages and memories. Zaq didn't need to hear the message and he already knew what it would say, some riff on what General Ch'ao Kai had said yesterday.

He had time to change his mind. The situation was not irreversible. The best way to make peace with the Library was accept his role as Emperor and reinstate the imperial guard.

Let them kill this assassin.

All General Ch'ao Kai needed was permission to mobilize his troops.

Nothing Zaq hadn't already heard. And, more to the point, nothing he hadn't already refused to contemplate. Zaq wanted an end to this and his orders stood. He was to be regarded as invisible. All of those living within the Forbidden City were to go about their everyday business as if he had never been. He would remain in the garden and wait for his assassin.

Zaq smiled and a billion people wept at his sadness.