'No doubt it has been used for ill in the past. But surely you can imagine a situation where it could be important to the lives of innocent people to keep some things out of the public gaze?'
'Now, that's a slippery argument. No-one is going to argue against the lives of innocent people. But once a precedent has been set, then it's always easier to find other cases where secrecy is useful.'
'You're right.' Aubrey scowled. 'Hmm. What about if I leave it to you? You need more information before you can put together anything meaningful. I need more information before I can see if there is anything useful or meaningful. Then you decide what you'll do with it. As long as you talk with me before you send anything anywhere.'
'Dash it all, old man, of course I'd talk to you. And your father, too. I'm not a simpleton. These are delicate times, for all of us.'
'That they are. And Caroline? She's back in college?'
'Arrived before you did. Obviously caught an earlier train.'
'She didn't have a midnight excursion to the hydraulic railway to contend with. Not that I saw, anyway.'
'Mustn't underestimate Caroline Hepworth.'
'Not under any circumstances.' Aubrey stood and brushed off his jacket. 'Now, if I hurry, I can do my pre-reading for my Parameters and Parallels lecture.' He groaned. 'Don't you hate it when professors try to come up with a snappy title for their subjects?'
'Smacks of desperation. They may as well call it "Dry as Dust: an Introduction".'
THE NEXT DAY, AUBREY WAS LIKE AN ARROW. DESPITE HIS misgivings, his Parameters and Parallels lecture was stimulating, full of knotty stuff. Professor Maxwell covered the blackboard with dense equations, using strange Eastern characters, intermingled with more modern operator symbols. Then he wove a freeform lattice of connectors and explanations until the whole array was a tangled basketwork of fiendish complexity. The professor – a rotund, balding fellow – stood back and smiled at his handiwork before asking, without any guile at all, whether the group had any questions.
After that it was Introduction to Ancient Languages. Just as stimulating, but in a completely different way. Aubrey found he needed two notebooks – the first to jot down the course of the lecture, another to scribble down his thoughts about a universal language of magic, thoughts that were continually sparked by Professor Mansfield's points. At the end of the lecture, with some ambivalence, Aubrey realised the second notebook was much, much fuller than the first.
As Aubrey wandered out of Professor Mansfield's lecture he felt as if his head was bursting. Language was the key to magic, it was a well-established principle. The more he learned about early languages, the closer he came to the basic building blocks of enchantment.
It made his head buzz.
A blow came from behind and nearly knocked him off his feet.
'Sorry, old fellow,' the gowned undergraduate who had collided with him said, but he didn't wait to see if Aubrey had been hurt. He galloped off with a number of others, all heading along the cloisters in the same direction.
Aubrey shook his head to clear it and realised that dozens of others – students and dons – were all on the move. Portly, gangly, old, young, it was as if the entire campus had become lemmings and were stampeding towards a particularly juicy cliff.
Then Aubrey realised where they were going. His feet came to the same conclusion a few seconds early so that he was already moving when he confirmed that the Sheffield Lecture Theatre – one of the largest on campus – lay ahead.
He was quickly part of a throng. 'What is it?' he asked a frantic-looking don who was waddling as fast as his bulk would allow.
'Haven't you heard? Ravi is going to give his first lecture!'
Aubrey soon left the don behind, which was fortunate, because he just slipped into the lecture theatre before the doors were closed.
The seats were all taken. Aubrey contented himself with standing at the back.
Dwarfed by the massive lectern, Lanka Ravi was arranging his notes.
Lanka Ravi was a small man, extremely neat in everything apart from his hair, which was black and shiny. It had been pushed back behind his ears but threatened to escape at any minute. If it did, Aubrey feared for those in the front row of seats.
The excited chatter in the theatre ceased immediately Lanka Ravi looked up from his notes. Then he launched into his presentation.
For an hour, the small man detailed several new spells, applications of the Law of Action at a Distance. These spells covered the blackboard and were clever, if not startlingly innovative. His voice was as his appearance: neat, precise. He had a distinct Tamil accent.
Aubrey was starting to wonder what all the fuss was about when Lanka Ravi cleaned the board and returned to the lectern. He shrugged, gave a small smile and held up a finger.
'We all know and appreciate Verulam's Law of Transformations,' he said and Aubrey was immediately alert. 'This law is a fundamental part of our understanding of spell-casting. 'Indulge me, if you will, while I write this law on the blackboard.'
In a clear hand, Ravi wrote: 'The bigger the transformation, the more complex the spell.'
No-one stirred in the lecture theatre. It was an anticipatory silence. The audience was learned enough to understand that such a simple opening was only a preliminary to more complex findings.
'In Baron Verulam's time this was a revolution, such a bold and clear statement of something that had hitherto been half-understood and imperfectly applied. Since then, it has been proven again and again by rigorous experimentation.'
Lanka Ravi looked up from his notes. He smiled, hesitantly. 'Baron Verulam's principle applies very specifically to the magic of transformations, of turning one thing into another. He, of course, proposed a second law, the Law of Transference. Much as for transformations, this law says that the further a magician proposes to move an object by magical means, the more complex the spell. This, too, has been shown to be the case, through repeated experiments.'
Ravi paused and winced. He took a handkerchief from his pocket, coughed into it, and frowned before going on. 'Of course, Baron Verulam's revolutionary work on Transformations and Transference has pointed the way to more general understanding of how magic works. In the centuries since his groundbreaking work the community of magic has established the Principle of Complexity – the more powerful the spell, the more complex the spell construction – and the Principle of Cost – the more complex the spell construction, the more effort is required from the spell-caster.' He looked up and gave his small nervous smile again. 'But, of course, I am telling you things that you already know.'
For a long moment, Ravi shuffled his papers. Remarkably, there was no impatient murmuring, no clearing of throats, no restless shifting of position. The audience had a shared understanding that this was an occasion of great importance; the anticipation, however, was mixed with curiosity. What was he going to say next?
He looked up. He blinked, slowly, then began. 'Magic and humanity,' he announced, and an almost silent wave of satisfaction rolled through the audience. This was what they were waiting for. 'The connection between the two has been much speculated upon. I now believe I can encapsulate the relationship in quantifiable terms.' He abandoned his notes. He took two steps to the blackboard and seized the chalk. 'Let x represent the measure of individual human consciousness . . .'