A Dream of Wessex (14 page)

‘I’m interested in the notion of communist control,’ Paul said. ‘Surely this would have seemed unlikely? Is it really possible that Britain could ever accept state socialism?’

‘We felt it was,’ Eliot said. ‘Remember, it’s not Britain as a whole that’s being considered. One important feature is the assumption that Scotland will eventually break away from the union, and keep control of the oil-deposits in the North Sea. We’ve also assumed a different economic role for the oil itself; the natural deposits become state reserves, like gold. The oil left in the ground would be worth more than that taken out and used. Without this kind of commodity asset, England by itself would have no economic strength. It would be ripe for takeover.’

‘But why the eastern bloc, Dr Eliot?’

There was a reason for everything, Julia thought. In spite of herself and her intense feelings, she was being beguiled by Paul’s reasonable manner. He was, after all, only asking the sort of question anyone might. It occurred to her, for approximately the thousandth time in her life, that it might be only she who ever saw the bad side of Paul, that her prejudice was unfair.

She realized that the coffee she had poured herself had gone cold, so she went to the sideboard and took a fresh cup. Mary glanced at her as she walked back to her chair; both she and Colin were as quiet as Julia. Colin, affecting disinterest, was sprawling back across the sofa.

Julia had always liked this room, with its blackened beams and its huge Portland stone fireplace. Someone famous had lived here during the nineteenth century, and the house was listed as a monument to preserve it for future generations. But Julia had walked across these downs one day - one day in Wessex - and the house had no longer been here. She had been saddened when she realized it after retrieval, and lying in her room at the other end of the house she’d remembered the future when the place was gone. Bincombe House was warm with age, full of glad memories of other centuries. The sort of tensions that Paul created had no place here.

She tried to concentrate on what Eliot and Mander were explaining to Paul, hoping to come to terms with the new situation by involving herself in it more.

Mander was talking about the political shape of the twenty-second century, as conceived in the projection: the Muslim-dominated Emirate States that half the world would comprise, and which would include both Americas, most of Africa, the Middle East, southern Europe. The communist bloc that made up most of the rest: northern Europe, England, Iceland, Scandinavia, most of Asia including India. A few countries still independent of both: Canada, Scotland, Switzerland, Eire, Australia. No Third World, unless you counted southern Africa, which called itself independent.

Part of the scenario had concentrated on energy resources. Oil would not be refined on such a universal scale: there would be petrol, but only for the very rich, or for reserved uses. Coal and hydro-electrics would still generate electricity, but there would be much more use of local resources: solar energy in the tropics; wood burning; geothermal drilling; wave and tidal power.

Julia had worked with the energy-resources team for a while. There was known to be some oil beneath Dorset, and, to a much more exploitable degree, a deep layer of hot rocks.

Don Mander was telling Paul of the geophysical nature of this speculated future world, and for the first time Julia heard her name mentioned. Paul glanced at her; he was still playing his part, for he nodded politely.

Geothermal drilling had so far only been tried on a small scale, and with limited success. Julia, working with the other people, had reached the conclusion that if the particular deposit of rocks five miles beneath the Frome Valley was exploited for its energy content, then several dangers would appear. The main one of these was that the rocks would cool when water was injected to tap the heat. This would probably result in seismic activity. The Wessex project included a seismologist - Kieran Santesson, who was presently inside the projection - and he had calculated that in an otherwise stable seismic zone, large earthquakes and widespread subsidence could occur. In an early test-run of the Ridpath, results indicated that certain parts of Dorset could sink as much as two hundred and fifty feet, thus effectively cutting off the West Country from the mainland.

This notion, that Wessex could become an island, had appealed to everyone in the project, and it had immediately become a dominant image in the program.

Eliot was saying: ‘... you see, Mason, the conscious shape of the projection can be predetermined. What we cannot control is the unconscious nature of the landscape, nor the roles played by the alter egos.’

This had been Don Mander’s province during the planning. Mander, one of the two psychologists on the project, had described the projection as a psychodrama of the mind, and for Julia the term had had sinister undertones, as if a clinical experiment was to take place. She had not been alone in this reaction. Many of the participants had had their doubts from the beginning; there was something almost indecent about the idea of pooling one’s unconscious mind with comparative strangers. No one could rape the mind of anyone else, though, for the effect of the Ridpath was to blend the unconscious, to produce a kind of corporate dream.

The unconscious produced its illogicalities, especially in the way it treated the lives of the alter egos. The participants took roles that reflected not their training or qualifications, but some deeper wish. Mander became a bureaucrat, Mary a potter; Kieran - the seismologist - worked as a chef in one of the waterfront restaurants; Colin Willment was a labourer in the docks. To one extent or another these could be traced to the real lives of the participants: Mary Rickard did pottery for relaxation, Colin often spoke of his frustrations about the purely theoretical nature of his work as an economist, Kieran was known to be an excellent cook.

The landscape, too, reflected the unconscious. It had its idiosyncrasies and illogicalities - the climate was either dramatically good or dramatically bad, the days seemed longer, the hills seemed higher and the valleys deeper - but it was still a recognizable version of the true Dorset.

Someone had remarked at the beginning that the collective unconscious would produce archetypal horrors, nightmare images, dreamlike situations. It had been a semi-facetious remark, but many had taken it seriously. Unlike the dream-state, though, the Wessex of the group mind was controllable. There was constant correction stemming from reason, sanity, experience; the conscious mind could override the unconscious. The nightmare fantasies did not appear.

But the dreamlike quality was always there, and they all shared it. The participants had grown used to each other. Wessex had been shaped, and it belonged to those who had shaped it. An outsider trying to interfere with it presented a threat which acted on the deepest levels of identity, memory and mind.

When that outsider was someone like Paul, who, even when Julia disregarded her private feelings, was by his own account self-seeking and ambitious, the unconscious quality of the projection would be inevitably affected.

She was trying to be rational, trying to argue with herself. There was always a chance that if Paul entered the projection the results would not be as bad as she feared. He was intelligent enough, after all, and from his manner he seemed prepared to cooperate, to blend his will with that of the others.

She wondered what had been happening to him in the last six years. There must have been another woman in that time, perhaps several women. He had not mentioned them to her, either today or during her last weekend in London. Perhaps there was someone he was involved with now. Could it be just Julia’s own paranoid imaginings that he was still motivated to control and dominate her? Had that scarring, devastating affaire been simply a product of youth, and they had both matured since?

And when the worst happened, what then? When Paul entered the projection, and they were together in Wessex, was it possible that the old differences would be forgotten, along with their memories of the real world?

It was a possibility. Many of the participants had written about this in the personal sections of their reports. They found that the identity assumed by their alter egos lacked the cares of their real lives.

Thinking of this, Julia remembered Greg. He did not exist in reality; he was not a member of the projection.

Greg was one of the people of Wessex, imagined into being by the group unconscious. To use Don Mander’s psychodrama analogy, Greg was one of the thousands of unscripted supporting roles, the auxiliary egos. Most of these were in the background, like extras in a film ... but sometimes the participants gave minor speaking parts to these players. Julia’s unconscious had written a script for Greg, one that had a direct bearing on some inner need of her own. Greg became a physical lover, an incubus of the mind.

But the unconscious played its tricks: Greg was an unsatisfactory sexual partner.

In her own reports Julia had described the fact of the sexual relationship with Greg, but she had never detailed the way he almost invariably left her unsatisfied. In this, her reports were less than complete, but, realizing that the nature of the relationship with Greg would reveal a very personal and intimate inadequacy, Julia felt justified in omitting this.

It was all directly relevant to Paul Mason.

She had long ago come to the conclusion that Paul’s destructive, poisonous attitude to her came from an inner need of his own, a compensation for some physical failing.

If Paul still felt this failing, and he entered the projection, then it was almost certain that he too would find himself in some imagined, unconscious relationship with an auxiliary ego of his own. Perhaps he would learn from this, as she had learned from Greg.

It was a pious hope, but still a hope ... and when, a few minutes later, the discussion was interrupted by the lunch-bell, Julia felt calmer about the prospects than she had since she met Paul that morning.

David Harkman had set his alarm-clock for six-thirty in the morning, and in spite of his late night was awake in seconds. The previous day, knowing that Julia was going to deliver his new skimmer, he had made inquiries about the times of the tides. There was usually only one tidal bore a day which could be ridden, and as the time of the tides moved forward about half an hour every day the evening flood was now too close to nightfall to be safe. Today’s tidal wave suitable for riders was due to appear at about eight forty-five in the morning, and Harkman was eager to try his skill.

He dressed hurriedly, putting on a pair of swimming trunks beneath his trousers, and left the Commission hostel.

Dorchester had a grey, dismal appearance. The humid weather of the day before had broken, and a heavy, wetting drizzle drifted across the town, making the buildings look dank and cheerless. It was difficult to imagine that Marine Boulevard, in this deadening early-morning light, could have been the scene of colourful revelry only a few hours before. The lights were off, the bars and cafes were shuttered.

There were only a few people about, and most of those, like himself, were heading for the harbour.

He went first to the skimmer-shop, which adjusted its opening hours to those of the tides. At this time of day the management knew its customers and their needs exactly, and there was no sign of the careless indifference that Harkman had seen on his first visit. As he went into the shop an assistant came forward, and within twenty minutes Harkman was equipped with the necessary rubber wet-suit and breathing-apparatus.

At low tide the harbour was unnavigable, and the Child Okeford launch was waiting in the deeper water against the outside of the harbour wall. There were already more than two dozen people sitting on the benches of the forward deck, many of them wearing their shiny black wet-suits, like so many seals clustered on a rock.

The rear part of the boat was filled with the riders’ equipment: the skimmers were stacked on special wooden racks, so that one did not rest on another, and there were several piles of clothing, wet-suits and breathing- and flotation-apparatus.

Harkman went down the concrete steps to the two men standing by the rail of the launch, paid his fare and dumped his newly bought gear on the deck.

There were several boys from the town standing around - such occasions inevitably brought them out to watch - and Harkman got two of them to help him remove his skimmer from its mooring, and carry it to a place on one of the racks. After this, he went to the forward deck and waited with the others for the launch to depart.-

The drizzle persisted, soaking his clothes and slicking his hair over his forehead. Sitting in the crowd, Harkman reflected that the idea of wearing a wet-suit was not such a bad one after all.

Most of the other riders were men, but there was also a small group of women sitting together. They looked muscular and masculine in the padded rubber suits, and Harkman tried to imagine what Julia’s slim body would look like in one. The thought of her immediately reminded him of the unusual sense of false memory he had felt the previous night - indeed, the recollection itself had the same abstract quality that had so disconcerted him - and he looked away from the women, and stared into the harbour at the rows of private yachts, dripping and melancholy at their moorings.

At last the craft nosed slowly away from the harbour wall, seeking the deeper water. The craft was flat-bottomed, but even so it bumped and scraped on the pebbly sea-bed. As soon as they were out of the shallows, the captain lowered the keel, and the engine accelerated the launch towards the east.

Harkman watched the coast as they roared past, seeing the broad flat beaches that during the days attracted so many visitors.

The journey to Blandford Passage took more than half an hour, and it was after eight o’clock when the launch moved slowly into the harbour at Child Okeford. There was a slight delay during disembarkation as Okeford was on mainland England and the visas of the overseas visitors had to be checked.