A Dream of Wessex (22 page)

In this last folder he discovered the first reference to Maiden Castle.

A query had been raised in the Regional Office in London about the power-consumption of the Castle community; the answer, amid much elaborate qualification, said that the community had access to mains electrical supply, but that its consumption was negligible provided certain unidentified equipment was not in use.

Later, Harkman discovered more correspondence in the same folder, this time concerned with a query about the possible scrap- or salvage-value of the research equipment; the Commission’s answer - signed by D. Mander - took the form of a letter attached to a printed circular. The circular was a Party directive concerning self-sufficient craft cooperatives, and the desirability of minimal government interference; the typewritten note merely added that the present condition of the Ridpath apparatus was not known, and was assumed to be worthless.

The proper name of the equipment held no significance for Harkman.

In the land-registry of the previous century, Harkman discovered extracts of the deeds by which title to the land on which Maiden Castle stood was transferred formally from the Duchy of Cornwall to the Soviet Land and Agriculture Board. This was in the year 2021. The transfer was one of several hundred, in which all land not nominally State-controlled was handed over to Westminster.

There followed a fruitless search, where he found several documents relating to Maiden Castle, or referring to it, but they were normal bureaucratic fodder: population estimates, land- surveys, health reports, an advisory document on education, the findings of a team of sanitary inspectors.

Harkman had not looked at the newspaper file since locating it, thinking of it as a last resort, but on searching through he discovered that in the early years at least of the Commission’s administration, there had been diligent attempts to collect items of local interest. There were all sorts of cuttings here: details of a road-building project (since abandoned), the reconstruction of Dorchester after the earthquakes, the first ideas publicly discussed for the development of Dorchester as a tourist centre.

Then, stuffed into a pocket at the back of the file, Harkman found several other clippings from a much earlier period. He pulled them out and unfolded them carefully; they were brown with age, and as dry as the dust that lay on them.

The first one had a lurid headline, set in an old-fashioned typeface: A JOURNEY TO THE FUTURE! Underneath, written in short paragraphs and sensational English, was a report on the formation of what the newspaper called ‘an electronic think- tank’, whose members would ‘step into the future’ and ‘contact our descendants’, all with the aim of ‘solving the burning problems of today’.

There were several more of a similar ilk, each one concentrating, presumably for the benefit of a semi-literate audience, on such ideas as time-travel, exploration of the future, visiting the ends of time, and so forth. These were in cuttings dated from the beginning of 1983 until the summer of 1985. Maiden Castle (‘shrouded in antiquity’) was mentioned several times, and the name of Dr Carl Ridpath (variously a ‘boffin’, ‘inventor’ or ‘genius’) featured prominently.

Harkman read them in chronological order, learning more from each one, and recognizing also which elements of the reporting could be discounted as sensationalism or speculation.

As he finished the last cutting, Harkman felt that he had found what he had been seeking. At some time in the late twentieth century - presumably in 1985 - a scientific research foundation had developed a means whereby the future could be investigated. It was not a form of travel through time, in the sense the newspapers used it, but a controlled, conscious extrapolation, visualized and given shape by Dr Ridpath’s projection equipment. The work would be carried out in a special laboratory constructed beneath Maiden Castle.

Clearly this was the apparatus that was mentioned in the Commission files!

Harkman was suddenly struck with an intriguing notion, and he turned back through the cuttings. There was common consent in the reports on one matter: that the chosen period for the projected ‘future’ would be exactly one hundred and fifty years.

In other words, they were envisaging the year 2135 ... just two years ago!

Harkman wondered wryly what they had made of what they found.

He stared at the aged newsprint for several minutes, realizing that these ancient pieces of paper were themselves a link with that optimistic past, a time when man and his technology had not stagnated, when they could still look forward. Just as Maiden Castle itself had been built for defence against the enemies of the day, and had survived to withstand the decay of time, so these words, hastily written and hastily printed, had outlived their makers.

The men were dust, but the words and ideas lived on.

Harkman shuffled the cuttings into a pile, then slid them back into their pocket in the folder. He felt a slight obstruction, so he pulled them out again and peered inside.

At the very back, concertinaed by the pressure of the others, was one more cutting. Harkman reached inside, and pulled it out carefully.

He smoothed it with his hand, pressing it out on the desktop.

It was printed in a different style from the others, with a more sober presentation: from the printing at the top he learned that it was taken from The Times, 4th August 1985.

The headline was: MAIDEN CASTLE - AN EXPENSIVE DREAM?

Harkman read through the piece quickly.

Today, in an Ancient British hill-fort near Dorchester, a group of intellectuals, economists, sociologists and scientists will pool their conscious minds in an attempt to see into the future of Britain and, indeed, the world. Questions have been asked in Parliament, and much comment has been heard from informed sources, about the expense involved in what to some is no more than an indulgent fantasy of some of the best brains in Britain. Would the money not be better spent, say the critics, on more positive and social research - indeed, the very kinds of research that in many cases the participants have abandoned in order to take part?

In fact, although the Wessex Foundation is partly subsidized by the Government - through the Science Research Council - most of the funds have been raised from private and industrial sources.

There followed a paragraph discussing the financing of the project. Harkman glanced over this, then read on.

Much has been heard about the ‘time-travelling’ ability the participants will develop when their minds are electronically pooled, but this is strenuously denied.

Speaking at yesterday’s press-conference in Dorchester, Dr Nathan Williams of Keele University said, ‘We are imagining a future world, which is made palpable to us by the Ridpath projector. Our bodies will be inside the projector itself, and will not leave it. Even our minds, which will seem to experience the projected world, will in fact stay within the program dictated by the equipment.’

For the Trustees of the Wessex Foundation, Mr Thomas Benedict, who is himself to take part in the experiment, added, ‘In terms of what we hope to achieve, we believe that what we shall learn from the world of 2135 will amply repay every penny of what has been invested here.’

There is a total of thirty-nine participants in the project, and together their qualifications present a formidable array of talent. Many have taken indefinite leave of absence from their university posts to contribute to the Ridpath projection, and several more have left brilliant industrial careers for a chance to deploy their speciality in this experiment.

Dr Carl Ridpath, who developed his mental visualization and projection equipment at the University of London, was unable to attend yesterday’s press-conference. Speaking from a West London clinic, where he is recovering from an operation, he said, ‘This is the fulfilment of a dream.’

Alongside the article were eight photographs of some of the participants, tiny faces staring out at Harkman across the years. One was of Ridpath, a small, intense expression; another was of Dr Williams, a middle-aged, balding man with a square, intelligent face.

At the very bottom of the double column of photographs were two at which Harkman stared uncomprehendingly.

The first face was his own. Underneath, the caption said:
Mr David Harkman, 41, Reader in Social History, London School of Economics.

The second photograph was of a pretty, dark-haired girl:
Miss Julia Stretton, 27, Geologist (Durham University). Miss Stretton is the youngest of the participants.

Harkman’s first reaction to this was disbelief, and he closed his eyes and turned away his face, as if this would remove some incredible sight. Then he stared again at the pictures, and glanced through the article, his heart speeding up as his nervous response stimulated the adrenal gland. The girl’s photograph was unmistakably Julia; the man given his name was undoubtedly himself.

Harkman felt something akin to a jolt of electricity pass through his mind, like a short-circuit in the synapses, and his head jerked back involuntarily; reality blurred.

He tried to be calm, tried to understand.

According to the newspaper, a hundred and fifty years ago - a hundred and fifty-two, to be precise - a man called David Harkman had joined this mind-projection experiment. The chosen year was 2135.
(How could they imagine it? On what did they base their information?)

Julia, or a girl with her name and appearance, had also joined the project.

And yet he, the real David Harkman, lived here in the year 2137. Julia lived here.

He had been born in 2094
(he was 43, like his alter ego would be!)
... he had been born in 2094, had been educated at Bracknell State School, had studied at the London Collegiate, had graduated in Social History, had married ... this was what he knew!

The year, the world, the people ... they were all around him. He was of this world, this real, uncomfortable and dangerous world.

Was this the sort of world these twentieth-century academics could visualize?

Harkman shook his head, disbelieving. No one could grapple with the innumerable subtleties of an entire social order.

(1985: before the destruction of the British union, during the last years of the monarchy, before the collectivization of industry and agriculture, before the absorption into the Soviet bloc. No one who was alive then could have foreseen this society!)

Extrapolation, in the social sense, meant the opposite of history. It implied the ability to draw inferences about the future from observations of the present. Harkman did not doubt the ability of these academics to speculate intelligently, but he knew as a certainty that any speculation about his world would be wrong. This history of the last century and a half, with all its complexities, was known to him almost as thoroughly as he knew the story of his own life.

History was the critical order that the present imposed on the past; it could not be created forwards!

This sudden urge to dispute the principles of the theory was his intellect’s way of evading the true emotional shock.

Who was this David Harkman?

He stared with renewed amazement at the photograph in the cutting, then reached into the back pocket of his trousers and found his Commission identity-card. He laid it next to the photograph, still disbelieving.

The newspaper picture looked stiff and unnatural, as if it had been taken in a cold studio, and he seemed older than he looked in the identity-photograph. His face was fuller now, his hair was longer and he had greater poise.

Nevertheless, the two photographs were indisputably of the same man.

And he had only to look at the ancient photograph of the girl called Julia Stretton to know that it was her.

Confronted with the impossible, Harkman found that he could not cope. His first impulse was to stand up and walk away from the desk, but he had gone no further than the nearest rack of old folders before he returned. He stumbled as he sat down, nearly fell off his chair.

His hands were shaking, and he could feel his shirt clinging damply to his back.

For a few minutes he sat quite still, holding the edge of the desk in each hand.

At last he looked again at the text of the newspaper cutting, and reread the quoted words of Dr Williams: ‘... our minds, which will seem to experience the projected world, will in fact stay within the program…‘

For a moment Harkman felt that in these words lay the clue: there had been a mistake, something had gone wrong. All that apparent sensationalism in the other newspapers was, after all, right:
he had travelled in time!

It seemed to be the only solution to the dilemma, and irrational and incomprehensible as it was it would explain...

The notion took hold for a few seconds, then slackened its grip, fell away.

It could
not
be so: he had no memory of the twentieth century, nor of any time before his own life. Forty-three years, perhaps thirty-eight of them remembered with any clarity. No more. An ordinary life.

He looked again at Williams’s words: ‘... our minds will seem to experience ...’

It was possible, just marginally possible, that this was the central statement.

In effect, everything he saw, everything about him, what he ate, what he read, what he remembered ... was a mental illusion.

Again, he kicked back his chair and walked in torment from the desk and along the nearest aisle.

He paced agitatedly to and fro.

All
this
was reality. He could touch it, smell it. He breathed the musty air of the vault, sweated in the unventilated room, kicked up clouds of ancient dust: this was the world of external reality, and it was necessarily so. As he strode past the seemingly endless rows of files and books, each of which contained its own fragments of remembered past, he concentrated on what he himself conceived as reality.

Was there an inner reality of the mind which was more plausible than that of external sensations? Did the fact that he could touch something mean that it was as a consequence real? Could it not also be that the mind itself was able to
create
, to the last detail, every sensual experience? That he dreamed of this dust, that he hallucinated this heat?