Zero Point Keys

The Price of Zero Point Keys

  The following extract is taken from "Memoirs of a Stability Council Agent" by Agent Cantor.   I didn't like Jonah II. Something horrible had happened here a long time ago. It melted the tops of towers and broke the domes of the otherwise beautiful skylines of its ancient and now deserted cities. I don't know what it was. Perhaps Lady Leilani Leigh knew. I rather suspect she did. In any case it didn't seem to bother her.     We met in one of her laboratories in an old tower block overlooking the ruins of a place she told me was once called Kanjamex. The air was warm, sticky and heavy with the pollen of the fecund green vines that hung from the ceiling.   "I hope you won't think my invitation presumptuous," she began. "I know we haven't always seen things from the same perspective. By 'we', I just mean the relationship between my people and your employers. I'm not speaking of any relationship you and I might have in a personal capacity. That could be entirely another matter, if we wanted it to be. A private matter. Let's see how it goes shall we?"   Her smile was disconcerting. Flirting already? Not very subtle to be honest, but I had been warned about it. Her enemies called her Lady Lust. Unkind, but perhaps not entirely unjustified. I would certainly have to be careful but I knew that. She was, after all, no mere mortal. She was a Power, a sorceress, a serious political player and probably not really human in the traditional sense, even if she chose to look that way.   "Business first," she resumed briskly. "I know you're wondering about that. Now here's the thing. We have something in common. Or we could have. A common interest perhaps. What do you know about Magicians' End?"   "That you've been seen there," I answered. "And in company with another man."   I arched my eyebrow provocatively. Two could play teasing games, although I suspected I would quickly be outmatched.   She laughed. "Stability Council intelligence gathering is good! We had hoped to be more discrete. But I can satisfy your curiosity and tell you who it is if you don't know. My beau is Prince Bohfulli an eligible bachelor, a Limit Prince of the Limit Lands and a thoughtful, intelligent and ambitious aristocrat. We've made plans together. Lots of them."     "So you've asked me here to indulge in some kind of kiss and tell have you?" I responded, but I was thinking furiously.   The Limit Princes were of great concern to the Stability Council. Their lands lay just beyond the borders of the most precarious evolutions and whilst they were usually too busy squabbling with one another to endanger external realms, occasionally they were a credible threat. It was a long time ago now, in fact before there was a Stability Council, but we know that Prince Rygarde once successfully invaded Magicians' End and established a brief government he called the Limit Protectorate. If he had not been thwarted with great difficulty by the Loyalist Thaumatic Army Council at the Fortress of Ocroven in a battle they called the Eviction he might have absorbed Magicians' End into the Limit Lands and turned it into an archetype. It was disconcerting to find that another Limit Prince had found a way into Magicians' End.   "Oh I think we've gone beyond kissing. You could say, I'm in bed with him."   "Metaphorically speaking," I suggested.   "That too. But you see, I'm just wondering if he's really as gallant as he presents himself to me. He promises me the earth but then I hear two of his brothers might be trying to carve out their own slice of it. It's really very vexing! I expect commitment from my partners. And when they don't give it to me, well you can hardly blame me for looking elsewhere, can you? And that's where you come in! I know the Stability Council wouldn't want to see anything bad happen to Magicians' End. Neither would I. So how about a deal?"   "What kind of deal?"   "Oh nothing too much. First let me tell you what I'm offering you. I've seen the way your agents drool when they see a zero point key. So how would you like not just to catch the odd one that goes astray but to actually have the secret of how to make them? Am I tempting you?"   She pouted her lips and leaned forward in a provocative manner that would have been hard for any normal red blooded male to ignore unless he reminded himself forcibly that she was an abnormal red skinned sorceress. The cloying perfume of the dank vegetation was making me sweat. Probably it was the vegetation.   "I'm tempted," I confessed. "Tell me more."   "Your agents are going to need something special if they are going to go all the way. They won't get where I need them to be without a little help. I don't have the equipment but perhaps you can supply it if I tell you exactly how to do it?"   She batted her eyelids in an overly stagey manner. The levels of double entendre were getting unbearable. But that is how the deal was sealed. In return for detailed plans that would allow the Stability Council to make zero point keys I promised that the agency would have certain agents in certain places at certain times prepared to act in certain ways, none of which I am at liberty to disclose in this memoir. But Lady Leilani Leigh's interests and the Council's were aligned, that much was true.   Or, as she told me later, "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours". But that was in rather another context.