Wizard (The Key to Magic) (20 page)

Magic: A guidebook to Theory and Techniques

Chapter Thirteen: Wizardry and the Conundrum of Undertime

TWENTY-TWO

2170 by the Common Reckoning

(3211 Before the Founding of the Empire)

Secured City of Dhiloeckmyur

As arranged, Prim took a seat at a table on the south terrace of the Alryse Street Cafe. The cafe was an old fashioned place and had a waitstaff, so she was compelled to cool her heels until a waiter deigned to allow her to catch his eye. With expert insouciance, the rotund man presented her with a large menu, half-listened while she made her selection, then waddled away to submit it to the kitchen. To her surprise, her mulled cider and sweet roll arrived in less than a quarter of an hour. She tried both, found neither to her taste, and practiced her patience.

The wizard, dressed in the same conservative business attire in which she had always seen him, strolled up within five minutes and took the chair opposite. His expression was pleasant but his eyes, as always, scanned her as if stripping her naked. He had never made advances, but one gaze was enough to make her feel violated.

"It was as you said," she reported after the waiter had brought him a tea and moved out of hearing distance. "My scans showed that all of the traits that you listed have expressed."

Zso waved a negligent hand. "Of course. He is the thirteenth generation. Magic is as natural to him as swimming is to a fish. Did you infect him with the micro-nodes?"

"Yes. He is colonized."

"Very good. Four minutes after we finish speaking, you will receive an invitation from your supervisor, Walis, to visit Orbital B. It would seem that the two of you have a relationship?"

"I allowed him to bed me once on a whim. Now he's infatuated and won't be discouraged."

"I will pay triple your normal fee if you accept, with the provision that an acquaintance of mine shall accompany you."

"Walis would have a conniption if I asked to bring a man."

"My acquaintance is a woman. She will pose as your cousin."

She eyed the wizard for a long moment. "I think that I'll decline. Walis would have expectations and I already have plans to take some time off from both of my professions. I'm going to the southern coast and let the tropical sun leach the drudgery of Dhiloeckmyur from my bones."

"As you choose. Perhaps you would be interested in a look at your future?"

She felt her expression harden. "No, I would not, as a matter of fact."

Zso wave his hand in casual dismissal. "As you have provided good service during our brief association, I feel beholden to inform you of potential happenings that I believe hold considerable import for you. Positing that you indeed continue with your plans for a holiday, I am saddened to inform you that you will be arrested within the hour, tortured throughout the night, and executed tomorrow."

She shook her head in agitation. "I'm not under suspicion. Save for you, none of my clients can identify me."

"This is very nearly true. Three months and some days ago you provided a man named Trafis with restricted information concerning mine production for the previous quarter. Being a very cautious man, Trafis routinely attached a leeching imp to the ethereal channel by which the two of you spoke. This imp automatically logged the registered code of any comm within four paces, including the personal comm that you always carry. While Trafis had no reason to use the code to learn your name, he kept extensive records. He was arrested this morning by Compliance Officers for an unrelated matter and all of his records seized. He is in the process of confessing as we speak. A few minutes from now, the Investigative Section will identify you as a person of interest. In each and every one of the several potential sequences of events that follow your arrest, you are condemned by a secret tribunal and perish in agony."

Clamping her jaws shut on an angry outburst, she just waited.

The wizard finished his tea in a long draught, smacked his lips in appreciation, and stood.

"Were you, on the other hand, to accept my commission and leave Dhiloeckmyur with Walis and your cousin within the next half hour -- in order to temper his carnal intentions, you should tell him that your family insists that she come as a chaperon -- you will entirely avoid the repercussions of your illegal deeds. My acquaintance will be waiting at the Upper Canal port station in ten minutes. She will know you and has already been briefed on her role. As your baggage allowance on the orbital shuttle will be minimal, you should not concern yourself with packing. Your cousin will have an overnight bag with clothing and sundries for your use. Any diversion to your apartments or any of your other usual haunts would be unwise."

Prim cursed under her breath as Zso turned and moved away. With so little warning, her contingency plans were useless. The clandestine bank accounts containing the impressive sums that the wizard and her other clients had paid for her services over the years were lost to her. She could never return to the Commonwealth.

But, as much as it made her want to scream in rage, she did not dare attempt to divert from his instructions.

Only a fool would gainsay a wizard.

She hated wizards.

TWENTY-THREE

2168 - 7025 by the Common Reckoning

(3212 Before the Founding of the Empire - 1644 After the Founding of the Empire)

Tertiary Launch Site

Automated Sentry Four watched.

That was its purpose. While the semi-sentient routine had the processing power to have also managed any number of other tasks, it had only been given the one.

The bounds of its habitation were well defined -- the facility and its close environs -- but it had complete freedom within that range and also had the capability to monitor external channels. It could see and hear into any space no matter how well warded, observe any personnel that entered its domain, and listen to the entire world.

So it watched as personnel came and went, as equipment was installed and activated, and as the world outside its domain went about its usual businesses: commerce and strife.

At a point twelve years, nine days, forty-three minutes, and thirteen seconds into its journey, a new set of timed instructions were added to its command stack. Two years and ten months later, the timer on these instructions expired and it initiated the required power down. It caused all external linkages to be physically severed, disabled all remote sensors, disengaged all subsidiary nodes, reclaimed all sprite clouds, and caused its own core to be refined to a single active micro-node, an infinitesimally small spark composed of only a single sprite that had but one instruction.

After three years and one day of oblivion, the spark activated:
REBOOT.

AS4's core rebuilt first, generating sprites from refined background ether to populate the branches of its subroutines one tedious node at a time. This method was the least efficient and most time consuming, but its primary instruction stack forbade connection to external ethereal sources. After 8.0687 seconds, its full functionality had been restored.

A systems check found its observational scope much diminished. No external linkages would respond to a command to come on line. Eighty-seven percent of its remote sensors no longer existed. The Vessels for its sprite clouds were so damaged that only one could be charged to the minimum operational threshold and it crashed with multiple errors when engaged. These faults were limiting rather than crippling and AS4 resumed its duties with the available remotes.

The facility had suffered critical damage in the interregnum, with all of its upper three levels obliterated and the next lower five revealing debilitating damage of decreasing magnitude.

While his sensory remotes located some decayed remains, he discovered no living personnel.

AS4 was not capable of being troubled by these events and none met its programmed criteria for action. It continued to observe.

Three decades later, new personnel occupied the facility, renovating the wrecked levels and creating new constructions above. Over time, these new personnel took up residence in the rehabilitated facility, produced and matured new personnel, and engaged in commerce and strife. On occasion, some would make forays into the lower levels to repair and maintain magics of various sorts, but none ever attempted to enter its primary locus, access its logs, or push any new instructions onto its command stack.

Approximately a century later, a short but very spirited episode of strife depopulated and wrecked the facility once again. All but two of the original levels were annihilated in the process.

Over a period measured in millennia, more of AS4's remote sensors failed but it continued to watch with those that remained. From time to time, personnel came and went. Thrice, for a time, some tarried and built new constructions atop the ruins of the facility, but their occupation was only temporary, a matter of decades or centuries. These personnel had no ethereal signature that would register on AS4's ethereal probes and in general ignored the facility's fading magics.

At a time when AS4 had existed for many multiples of its projected operational life and was all but blind and deaf to both the physical world and the ethereal, its sole remaining ethereal probe registered a strong signature. This event triggered an instruction on its command stack that called for a full passive scan of the facility.

AS4 could not accomplish a full scan, but it did manage to initialize a motion detection ward at its primary locus.

Unidentified personnel had approached its Personnel Access Point. AS4 consulted its command stack and received a packaged subroutine that instructed it to initiate audio and video monitoring remotes of the location. None of the video devices responded and only one of the audio spells returned coherent data.

"Lady Constaz nh' Leaer nhi' Mohra of the House of Sihnel, my lord king. I'm foreman of this gang."

"Well met. This all looks good. Do you have everything you need?"

"Yes, we do. We've made our own straw brooms and have checked out shovels and buckets from Vice-Commander Berhl. We'll be all done down here by this evening."

"Excellent wo--"

The comm link to the audio spell failed and no response came to a diagnostics request.

The subroutine did not have a branch initiated by equipment failure and the default instruction was Communicate With Oversight. Obligingly, AS4 packaged the abbreviated audio in an encrypted packet, flagged it with an action query, and transmitted it on the dormant but still vigorous comm to Command Oversight One.

CO1 replied within .001 seconds. "STANDBY AND OBSERVE. DO NOT ENGAGE INTERLOPERS."

Not bothering to report that it had nothing with which to engage the personnel designated as INTERLOPERS, AS4 settled in to watch how and where it could.

Aboard Orbital B, the
automaton
designated as CO1 initiated its primary programming.

TWENTY-FOUR

2170 by the Common Reckoning

(3211 Before the Founding of the Empire)

Secured City of Dhiloeckmyur

To get through the barricades that surrounded the consulate of the Khyvhnhe Republic, Fynd had to pass through a gauntlet of humorless Oaurlervy Faction clerks, endure repeated physical searches by male Enforcement Officers, and explain her desire for a tourist visa to no less than six unidentified Commonwealth bureaucrats. As the Republic was the only foreign nation with which the Commonwealth had diplomatic relations of any sort, she unfortunately had no other option but to submit to the intentionally discouraging process.

At the completion of the three hour ordeal, she was permitted to cross the cleared esplanade and approach the gates of the consulate.

The eight Republican guards were in formal uniform but carried battle rifles equipped with bayonets. Like eagles considering a rabbit, the uniformly big soldiers watched her as if daring her to do something that would give them an excuse to open fire.

Their officer saluted as she drew near. "How may I help you, madame?"

"I wish to apply for a tourist visa."

The tall officer peered down at her as if she had said something truly bizarre. "Perhaps there has been some mistake."

"No, I want to make a visit to the Republic." She grinned. "I've always dreamed of seeing the Nyrten Falls. My great-grandmother was born beneath the rainbow."

Still unconvinced, the officer asked, "Do you have a Commonwealth exit permit?"

Fynd produced the document, its text nearly obliterated by endorsement stamps. The permit was entirely authentic and had cost her, in total, one point three million Bazaar tokens.

The officer examined the permit by eye and then subjected it to three different magical devices, but in the end begrudgingly dispatched her, along with two stiffly marching chaperons, along the long walk to the main entrance. As she entered the splendid old building, the chaperons came to a halt, saluted, turned about, and marched back toward the gate.

Though furnished with two score identical wooden framed chairs arranged in precise rows, the marble floored lobby was empty save for an inactive clerk seated behind the leftmost of three immaculate desks. Above the waiting area, a hovering sign proclaimed in glowing large blue letters in both Common and Eastern,
Take a number. You will be called.

As Fynd moved up the left aisle and approached the emplaced dispenser, the clerk, a woman, glared pointedly.

Happy to comply, Fynd allowed the dispenser to vomit a ticket onto her palm. It said
#1.
She did not, however, take a seat. That would have been irredeemably ridiculous.

After adjusting a small figurine of a dog, the clerk looked up, donned a smile that the rest of her face did not reflect, and said, "Number one, please."

Fynd approached the desk, seated herself in the chair, which was positioned exactly on the desk's centerline, and then presented her ticket.