Dark Earth: A New Jerusalem

Also in payload capability.

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Stanley Barton thought of himself as many things. A decent Godfearing family man, for certain; a proud Englishman and loyal subject of the Queen, without a question; a Labour man and friend to the ordinary worker, of course; and captain of his team, not its lord and master. He knew the Army and Navy well and true, but never had he thought himself a master of this subject.

Magic.

The Prime Minister held many responsibilities, yet the command and oversight of the Ministry of Magic and the other supernatural forces of the realm was not one he particularly relished. Oh, he was far from the ranks of one of the Arkists, but wizardry was something beyond his area of comfort and true trust. Nevertheless, it was his duty. The position of Minister of Magic was one of a handful of ones in the Cabinet that were not held by Members of Parliament and even that particular custom was one that some wanted to change under the rallying cry of modernisation.

Neither the necessarily most powerful nor the most senior of the wizards of the realm, the role of the Minister had grown to become akin to the chancellorship of one of the great universities in its mixture of ceremony and administration. The man who sat opposite him now was in many ways the epitome of that modern tendency, yet his skills in organisation, delegation and coordinating the oft fragile egos of wizardkind were not doubted by any who had worked with him. Alcuin Spong had held the position of Minister of Magic for almost twelve years now, longer than any other since Professor Tolkien during the war, and had been responsible for considerable change.

The groundwork for the expansion of the magical personnel resources of the British Empire had been laid in the final years of the Second World War, as the massive expansion in the arcane capacity of the United States and the Soviet Union had threatened to leave Britain behind in the dust. The Arcane Education Act of 1944 had established the framework for universal magical aptitude testing at 6 and 11 and considerably expanded the educational machinery for training those with the potential spark to learn the Art, founding four new magical colleges, bringing Britain’s total to nine. Whilst this increased the raw numbers going through the exacting trials and learning that would grant them entry into magical apprenticeship, it could not shorten that complex and sometimes dangerous process. Spong had been the one to come up with the three pronged solution to the conundrum and it remained an elegant one to this day.

Firstly, specialised offers would be extended to the independent wizards of the realm to attempt to persuade them to register with the Ministry, which had encountered middling success. Secondly, the Great Reclassification of 1952 brought hundreds back into the fold who had previously failed one of their tests of mastery by offering them second opportunities or technical employment. Finally, there has been the British Empire Wizardly Scheme. Like many of the grand plans of Imperial cooperation, it had been slow to start, but, to Barton’s pleasure, Spong was the bearer of good tidings on this day.

That is correct. The figure of 9% in non-operational maintenance reflects the maturity of the aircraft in service and their primarily nuclear deterrent role at that precise time.

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“680 a year, Prime Minister, rising to 1000 within five years. A thousand apprentices per annum is considerably more than we currently turn out in Britain on a good year, and we’re on track to increase that as well as the college system begins to crank up to full speed.”

“What does that mean for us in bottom line terms?”

“We’ll nearly double the current number of apprentices within a year, from 2437 as of last Thursday. Where we currently have three hundred and fifty qualifying for their Tests every year, we’ll have at least six hundred by the end of the 1960s. Factoring in the gradual improvement in survival rates and a maintenance of current standards and there will be up to two hundred and fifty newly qualified adepts every year. That is on top of the hundred Commonwealth adepts from their own institutions that we get under the primary article of the BEWS.”

“And those British apprentices who live but do not pass...”

“Are funnelled back into either retraining or the technical services. We estimate that from the current pool of some four thousand Reclassifieds, we can get a good eight hundred qualified over the next five years.”

“Five hundred wizards a year. Factoring in your current Ministry roll of 2837 and the 1174 independents, that would put paid to the deficits in the service numbers and government requirements to boot. Good.”

“All well and good indeed, Prime Minister, but much, much more can be done than merely focussing our wizardly resources on the military and civil service. For example, our Technomantic Research Department has come up with a list of twelve new projects, as you can see here, ranging from improvements to quality of life to industrial production. We defend the land from its foes, both arcane and profane, but this is but the tip of the iceberg.”

Barton glanced through the vellum pages that Spong had handed to him; always with their little touches to emphasise their difference, the wizards were. It was all very slick and persuasive, which rather ironic in light of the eleventh suggestion, sorcerous augmentation of BBC broadcasts by enchantment specialists to influence opinions abroad. Britain had always been a more magical country than some, down to the very pattern of the ley lines cross-crossing the land itself and the various heritage of the elven days of yore, but this inherent nature had been harnessed to impressive effect since the Arcane Revolution. The great magical railways, imaginariums, lush farmlands and forests and the grand spell engines were the most obvious of these, but there were also the dozens of smaller, everyday inventions and spells that made life easier and richer. It wasn’t the worst expenditure of the government’s time, treasure and effort, really.

The first three proposals were solidly practical - a system of protective and safety dweomers over airports and railway stations to prevent any crashes; deep delving and mining magics to both extend and explore the nation’s mineral resources, but also expand to subterranean facilities; and automated regular town and street cleaning devices. Nothing truly groundbreaking, apart from the delving in a literal sense, but decent improvements in their own small ways. The fourth proposal, for the development, testing, creation and mass production of specialised potions to augment strength, growth, dental health and associated endurance that would then be distributed through the water supply, was again a tangible public good, provided all contingencies were thoroughly thought through prior to execution. Speed enhancement devices for machinery had quite a few applications of use, as did the development of large scale shrinking and enlarging artifacts; being able to carry up to six times the amount of cargo in an aircraft or ship would open up quite a few possibilities. That type of enchantment had only been used on foodstuffs to this point due to the requirement of temperature and their already small scale, but if it could be applied to other goods...interesting...

The second half of Spong’s list built further upon this tantalising potential in a similar fashion. A telepathic communications network over a wide area offered considerable advantages, as did interactive television. In the former case, it would cut down reaction times, allow to redirection of effort and provide for rather more secure lines of communication in some circumstances, provided that the lessons from the IPCRESS affair could be properly incorporated and the relevant networks geas-locked. The employment of “artificer intelligences” in newly advanced robotic automatons seemed dangerously close to Dr. Frankenstein’s benighted territory in some respects, but the safeguards seemed stringent enough and there were many advantages to robotic machines, as the American Professor Asimov had demonstrated when Barton had been over at the Pentagon. The tenth proposal seemed to be the product of a fervent lover of Venn diagrams addicted to pervitin, but amidst the sixteen intersecting ellipses superimposed over London, there were some interesting confluences of zones of influence, repulsion and suggestion that could be of utility for Scotland Yard and the City alike. Curious.

The last two items seemed banal on the surface - sunlight gathering and localised chronological distorters - but Barton’s heart skipped a beat when the consequences sunk in. Being able to convert and focus energy into controlled sorecerous beams could solve some serious issues that the Ministry of Space had been lamenting over and as for the other...

“How far could this distortion be extended?”

“A very limited area, Prime Minister, and at the cost of a lot of thaumaturgical power; not so much area either, given that we’re working in four dimensions. Something the size of yon cupboard is the current limit.”

“Good. Good. That one is definitely approved, straight off the bat. I’d like to see how your experiments work at altitude and in vacuums.”

“Very well.” Spong looked at Barton as if he was clearly quite, quite potty. “The simple matter is that we cannot pursue all of them, not with our present numbers, budget and power. We do have some other more abstract projects currently underway at Darkmoor and Stonehenge that are rather more theoretical in nature, but just as vital to our future as an arcane superpower, chief of which is Project Iris. We know that both the Americans and Russians are working on finding or creating new colours of magic and we simply cannot afford to be left behind. We cannot!”

“I quite agree. That, the dimensional studies and the Grand Spell Engine can continue. I’ll have to consider my decision on the project list carefully. It is the calculus of war and peace, just as it always is. Every one of you that is working on something to make this world better is one that isn’t working on ways to better destroy it.”

Steve,

Regarding the pockets of time distortion, what might be the utility of a number of stasis fields (that capture objects that enter them and hold them in a certain point in time) on certain predictable points up in inner space that lie along ballistic trajectories from certain unspecified points in a large unspecified socialist state to the east?

Simon