Stamping Butterflies

CHAPTER 55 Zigin Chéng, CTzu 53/Year 20 [The Future]

"You have messages."

Zaq snorted. The record for messages was one point five billion in a day, or maybe that was per hour. An entire bureau, the Tung Wen Kuan, existed to answer these, which were always dealt with individually, usually by a short cerebral link that gave each recipient the impression that he, she or it had been in direct conversation with the Emperor.

Someone, supposedly the original Chuang Tzu (though Zaq suspected it was actually the Library), had decided that every answer should equal the message received. So random mental messages got simple cerebral replies, while actual gifts were met with tokens of equal worth, that worth calculated using a complex algorithm that took time/value into account but gave it less weight than rareness or originality.

"Answer them then," he told the voice in his head.

"It's not that simple."

Zaq was about to snort when he realized he'd done this already. So he made do with a scowl. "Why not?" His voice sounded petulant, even to himself.

"Because it's the Council of Ambassadors."

"The--" Zaq had rather forgotten about the Council. On good days, of course, only on really good days, he could even forget that he had an empire. Although he'd never, no matter how hard he tried, quite managed to forget the Library, but this was probably because the Library and he were threaded through each other.

"What do they want?"

"What they wanted last time."

"Which is...?" Zaq really didn't have time to remember this stuff.

"They demand that you back yourself up and insist that I make you. For the good of the 2023 worlds."

"And what's your opinion?" asked Zaq, his voice tight. The Librarian was meant to be his mentor but it was also a facet of the Library. Neither Zaq nor the Library had any doubt that they were now at war with each other. And Zaq still believed he was winning.

"Would it make a difference?"

"What do you think?"

The Library and Zaq knew the answer to that.

"This message is from the Council..." The voice hesitated. "My opinion is irrelevant. You've made that clear."

"No back-ups," said Zaq. "And you can't make me."

"I could. Only I'm not allowed to..."

"Why not?" Zaq sounded interested.

"It's in the rules."

"And who made the rules?"

"I did," said the Librarian. There was a definite element of regret in its voice.

"General Ch'ao Kai."

The yellow-clad eunuch halted under the archway, made his announcement and then stepped back to make space for the man he'd just announced. A carpet of discarded trays, most of them full of congealing dim sum, made this last manoeuvre slightly tricky.

The kitchens continued to prepare food and the servitors continued to deliver it to the edge of the garden, which was as far as they were allowed to go. Unfortunately, no one had experience of what to do if the Emperor refused to believe the trays were actually there.

"Who?" demanded Zaq, but his major-domo was already gone.

From beneath the arch came the scrape of boots on a path. As this was not the kind of sound an assassin might make, Zaq ignored it while wondering whether or not to be disappointed.

"Tuan-Yu?" came a voice that was both old and very tired.

"What?"

The soldier in the archway was dressed in full armour and carried a snow leopard's tail attached to his lance. Zaq tried to remember the man's name but failed, so he counted the toes on the dragon on his breastplate and made do with the man's rank instead.

"General," he said, "how good to see you." Zaq's intonation made clear that he realized the elderly man was at the very top level of the banner horde and General Ch'ao Kai relaxed. The Emperor seemed aware that the General was real and this in itself was reassuring.

"Tuan-Yu," he said, "I hope you are well..." General Ch'ao Kai was still wondering how to frame the Council's demand when Zaq shook his head, stood up from where he sat and retreated further into the garden.

"We need to talk," said a voice right inside him. The voice sounded sad. Not desolate or disappointed, just sad.

It was bound to happen eventually and when it did Zaq was stunned by the sheer sense of scale that filled his mind. It was like standing on a ledge and watching mist clear across an almost endless plain or standing on that plain and looking up at a mountain which just kept rising.

And then Zaq's mind adjusted to what it really saw. A shell of worlds around a sun, each world so vast that the first Emperor's home planet could have been lost in one of its oceans. The shell was alive with communication between the worlds, endless vessels slipping in and out of individual atmospheres as they made the jump from where they were to where they were going.

It was breathtaking in its complexity.

"This is what you want to destroy." And as it spoke the Library looked through Zaq's eyes at the garden and matched this with what all the other Chuang Tzu had seen before him.

There didn't seem to be much difference.

Yet there had to be a difference, because overlying the beauty of the mulberry bushes, the butterflies and the elegant rockeries so understated that they looked natural was the sadness that Zaq had heard in the voice of the Library, not realizing it was his.

"I can get rid of the dreams," said the Library, and they both knew which dreams it meant. Something had gone wrong with this Chuang Tzu right at the beginning when Zaq was first given the apple. The Library was starting to think that it should have dealt with the matter then.

"No," said Zaq, "you can't."

"You should talk to the Council," said the Library. "They're beginning to get upset."

"The answer's no," said Zaq.

"You haven't heard their question."

"It doesn't matter," Zaq said. "The answer is still no. It was no yesterday and it will be no tomorrow."

"There may not be a tomorrow," said the Library.

When Zaq woke he was in a painting. It was a very famous painting, one reproduced widely across the 2023 worlds. The cloak studded with the memories of his predecessors lay across his bed, even though Zaq remembered burning the thing. He was naked and Winter Blossom On Broken Rock was lying next to him.

She was crying.

"How?" Zaq asked, and then he knew because the Librarian knew, and Zaq watched himself being carried back from the gardens and tucked into bed where he slept.

"Clothes," Zaq demanded, but no one came.

"The servitors have gone," said the girl. "The chief eunuch sent them home."

"They have homes?"

The girl nodded.

"I thought you just turned off," said Zaq. "Came back to life again when you were needed."

She looked at him through huge eyes. "I'm not sure I understand," she said.

Zaq dressed himself in his pale blue chao pao, the one decorated around the neck, across the shoulders and above the hem with embroidered five-clawed dragons.

The original ruling was simple. Five claws for an emperor, four for a prince and three for generals, chamberlains and dukes.

Sometime between the first Chuang Tzu and Zaq, who was the fifty-third emperor to have taken that title, imperial dragons had suffered severe inflation and so had the materials from which they were made. The dragon embroidered across the cloak that Zaq now wore had so many claws they were almost impossible to count.

"Go," Zaq told the girl.

"Where should I go?"

"Home?"

So she went, still naked. And Zaq watched her walk away until she turned a corner at the end of a corridor and he was alone again.

I may eat this, I may not eat that. I will walk this distance and stay silent for that many hours. Hold my hands out to my sides for this many minutes. Stay awake for that many hours.

The rules Zaq made for himself were no more arbitrary than those written for him by tradition. And if others failed to understand them that was not his fault.

Was it?

Wrapping the dragon cloak around him, Zaq allowed himself a red bean mini moon cake from a gold plate and headed back to the garden, stopping only to smash all the mirrors as he came to them.