A Dream of Wessex (2 page)

From here she could see down into the dip between the second and third ramparts, where the entrance to the underground workings lay. No one could be seen there. Although Mr Wentworth had probably telephoned the word of her arrival to Trowbridge or Eliot, she had a few minutes to spare.

She put down her briefcase and looked about. The sky, the wind, the grass. Two or three seagulls, soaring above her in the wind-waves thrown up by the humps of the Castle; they were a long way from the sea, but gulls were common inland birds these days.

The city of Dorchester lay below her and to the left, spreading out untidily across the side of its hill. She could see the wireless-telegraphy station on the heath behind it, and traffic moving on the roads around the town. A train stood at a signal just outside the station. Beyond, the soft rolling Dorset hills around Cerne Abbas and Charminster and Tolpuddle. She stared at the view for some time, drawn to it by the images and memories she had of another time, another summer...

It was not far to the view across to the east, so Julia picked up her briefcase and strode out along the edge of the ridge, looking ahead. Soon she reached the place where the ramparts circled round to the south, and from here the view across the Frome Valley was uninterrupted. It was flat and windswept, the river meandering across its floor, flowing slowly towards the mud-flats of Wareham, and Poole Harbour beyond. This was Hardy country, Egdon Heath and Anglebury, Casterbridge and Budmouth ... she hadn’t read the books since school. From this position it was difficult to see why so many people liked the Dorset scenery, because it seemed grey and flat and dull. Only to her right was there a green rise of land; the downs leading to the Purbeck Hills beyond, far to the east, hiding the sea.

Time was pressing; she had taken too long already. The wind had chilled her. Clouds, looming up in the south-west, threatened another shower.

Julia walked back, scrambling down into the lee of the third ridge, looking for the entrance to the workings.

In the third century BC, the inhabitants of Maiden Castle had fortified their hilltop home by the building of wood and earth ramparts that entirely circled the two knolls on which the settlement had been made. Never a castle in the commonly understood sense, the ramparts had enclosed farming-land and a village, to which most of the inhabitants of ancient Wessex fled whenever hostile tribes invaded the region. In the twentieth century, by which time the earth walls had weathered to rounded, grassy slopes, such defences seemed inadequate, for they could be penetrated in a few minutes by even the most unambitious walker, but in pre-Roman Britain the ramparts and their closely defended gates were precaution enough against sling-shots and spears.

The site had been thoroughly excavated during the 1930s. Remains similar to those found in hill-forts all over southern England had been discovered, and the more interesting fragments placed on display in the Dorchester Museum. There had been a massacre of the villagers by Vespasian’s legions in AD 43, and the most singular discovery in Maiden Castle was that of a primitive mass burial-ground, containing thousands of human bodies.

The archaeological workings had been covered before the Second World War, and from then until the early 1980s Maiden Castle had reverted to a former role: agricultural and pastoral land, walked over by casual visitor and sheep.

Maiden Castle had been selected as the site for the Wessex project for various reasons. It was partly because of its proximity to Dorchester, and road and rail connections to London, partly because of its height of 132 metres above sea-level, partly because of its commanding view across the Frome Valley, but especially because the Castle, of all the man-made constructions in the region, was the one most assured of permanence.

Julia Stretton had not visited the Castle while the underground laboratories were being tunnelled and equipped, and she had only a dim childhood memory of visiting the place with her parents, but she assumed that after the construction crews had left, and the surface had been tidied up, the outward appearance of the Castle had not been much changed. The carpark had been enlarged, and there was the entrance to the laboratories, but as far as possible the outside was untouched. The Duchy of Cornwall, the owners of the Castle, had insisted on that.

In the entrance to the laboratory - the only part open to the public - several glass cases held a selection of fragments unearthed during the tunnelling. The ancient Wessexmen buried tributes with their dead, and many cups and trinkets and pots had been found, as well as the inevitable macabre selection of bones. One almost complete skeleton was on show, the neck-bones neatly labelled where they had been shattered by a Roman arrow-head. A security-guard sat at a desk beside the case containing the skeleton, and as Julia passed him, holding out her identity-card, he nodded to her.

The elevator used by the medical teams was open, but Julia used the flight of concrete steps that went down around it. At the bottom, she walked along the main corridor, passing the rows of steel, white-painted lockers, and the many numbered doors.

She stopped at one room, knocked, then opened the door. As she had hoped, Marilyn James, one of the physiotherapists on the project, was there.

‘Hello, Marilyn. I’m looking for John Eliot.’

‘He’s been looking for you. I think he’s in the conference room.’

‘I’m late. I was stuck in traffic.’

‘I don’t think it matters,’ Marilyn said. ‘We were just a bit worried in case there had been an accident. Did you have a good holiday?’

‘So-so,’ Julia said, thinking of Paul, thinking of the bitterness of the night before. ‘It wasn’t long enough to enjoy myself.’

It was cold in the tunnel, although it was supposed to be heated. Julia walked on, thinking about Paul again.

The conference room was at the very end of the main corridor, and Julia went straight in. Dr Eliot was here, sitting back in one of the armchairs, and reading a typewritten report. At the far end of the room, where the coffee-machine was, a group of five of the technicians sat at a table playing cards.

‘Have I kept you waiting?’ she said to Eliot.

‘Come and sit down, Julia. Have you eaten today?’

‘A slice of toast for breakfast,’ she said. ‘And I had a cup of coffee on the way down.’

‘Nothing more? Good.’

Since the death of Carl Ridpath eighteen months before, John Eliot had been in charge of all projector functions at the Castle. He and Ridpath had worked in associated fields of neurhypnological research for several years, and it was partly as a result of a paper about neural conduction Eliot had published some fifteen years before that Ridpath developed his equipment. The fact that the neurhypnological projector bore Ridpath’s name gave no indication of the debt he owed Eliot, one which he repeatedly affirmed in his lifetime, and yet it was as the ‘Ridpath projector’ that the equipment was now known, not only by those sections of the media which took an interest in such matters, but by the participants too.

During Ridpath’s last illness Eliot had taken over the running of the project as if it had been his all along. Unlike Ridpath, though, who until the appearance of the cancer had enjoyed excellent health, Eliot suffered from a recurrent heart-murmur, and had never himself entered a projection, even for experimental purposes. He sometimes spoke to the participants about this, not enviously, but regretfully.

Now as Julia sat down beside him, he handed her a small pile of reports, including the one of her own she had filed a week before.

She settled down to concentrate on them, forcing thoughts of her private life out of her mind. This reading of reports was one of the more irksome duties to which she had to attend, but also one of the most crucial.

After this she asked for, and was granted, some time to herself, and she went to one of the private cubicles to study the file she had been compiling on David Harkman. The conversation with his ex-wife hadn’t seemed to yield much at the time, but she went through the notes again, looking for anything that might add insights into his personality, however remotely.

Eliot came to the cubicle.

‘This was sent down from Bincombe,’ he said to her, and gave her an envelope. ‘It arrived on Saturday.’

Julia glanced at the handwriting. ‘Should I read it now?’

‘It’s up to you, of course. Do you know who it’s from?’

‘I don’t think so.’ But there was an old familiarity to it, an unpleasant association. ‘Leave it here. I’ll read it later.’

When Eliot had gone, she picked up the envelope and slit it hurriedly. She knew the handwriting: it was Paul Mason’s.

Inside was a single sheet of paper, folded in half. She held it without opening it, logic struggling with curiosity.

She knew that concentration on her work was essential in the next hour, and that distraction would only hamper this. To read any kind of personal letter shortly before rejoining the projection was unwise, and one from Paul, who, with such unerring skill, could throw up so much emotional static in her, was especially risky. On the other hand, during yesterday’s unpleasant scene with him she had not found out what was his connection with the Wessex project, and she was anxious to know. The letter, obviously written before the weekend, might have the answer.

At last she decided to read it, realizing that if she didn’t the continuing curiosity would be as much a distraction as anything the letter might contain. As a compromise with herself, she resolved to practise the rote mnemonics afterwards, like an errant nun imposing twelve Hail Marys on herself.

The letter was short, and, to anyone not herself, apparently harmless. As soon as she had read it Julia put aside her file and went to take a shower.

Dear Julia,

I suppose you’ll be as surprised to read this as I was to discover that our paths have crossed once more. I’ve been wondering what you’ve been up to recently, and how you’ve been keeping. Well, now I know. I’m hoping to come down to visit Maiden Castle soon, so I hope you can get an evening off to have dinner with me. I’m still very fond of you, and would like to see you again. I’m sure we will have a lot to say to each other.

Paul

Julia soaped herself angrily in the shower. Paul’s knack for touching on old wounds was amazing. ‘Now I know’ ... how much did he know? Why should he want to? Written by anyone else it was a mild platitude; written by Paul it reawakened all the paranoia of old. ‘I’m sure we will have a lot to say to each other’; he’d written that before the weekend, before they discovered that what they had to say to each other was like the leftovers from a meal gone cold six years before, spiced up with many an afterthought.

And he had always been fond of her, like a possessive child is fond of a tormented puppy; he’d never used the word ‘love’, not once. Not even when they were closest. Not even to sign off a letter.

She left the shower, and dried herself, then sat naked on the edge of the wooden chair in the cubicle. She closed her eyes, and determinedly recited the mnemonics to herself, fulfilling the terms of her own compromise. This late in the projection, the mnemonics had lost much of their earlier use, but they still had the function of concentrating the mind.

Ideally, the minds of the participants should be as uncluttered with personal thoughts as was humanly possible. Personal identity continued, of course, on an unconscious level, but the maximum projective effect was achieved when the conscious mind was directed along the chosen course. In this case, Julia’s main function was to establish contact with David Harkman, and the better she concentrated on that now the better the chance later of making that contact.

She glanced over her file on Harkman once again, then put on the simple surgical gown that had been left in the cubicle for her use. She folded up the rest of her clothes, and scribbled a note asking one of the staff to take them up to her room at Bincombe House.

Dr Eliot was waiting for her in the conference room.

‘Don’t forget to sign the release,’ he said, pushing a printed form across to her. Julia signed it without reading it, knowing it was the standard permission form, allowing Eliot to hypnotize her and place her body inside the Ridpath.

‘I’d like to see Harkman,’ she said.

‘We thought so. He’s ready.’

She followed Eliot into the large, brightly lit room that the participants called, with conscious irony, the mortuary. It was more properly known as the projection hall, for it was here that the thirty-nine cabinets of the Ridpath projector were placed. In spite of the many electric lights beamed down on to the cabinets - necessary illumination for the constant medical attention the participants required - the hall was always cold, because it was air-conditioned by a refrigeration system, so that the effect of working by the cabinets was akin to sunbathing in an Arctic breeze. As Dr Eliot and one of the technicians slid Harkman’s body out on the drawer of the cabinet, Julia wrapped her arms about her body, shivering.

Harkman lay as if dead. His body had been placed full-length along the surface of the drawer, with his head inwards. He was lying face-up, with his head and shoulders resting on the moulded supports so that his neck and spine made contact with the neural sensors implanted in the drawer. Seeing this, Julia felt a twinge of sympathetic pain in her own back, knowing the burning sensation she felt whenever she was taken from the projector.

Harkman had been inside the machine for almost two years without a break, and in that time his body had grown soft and flabby, in spite of the constant physiotherapy he received. His face was pale and waxen, as if embalmed, and his hair had grown long.

Julia stared impassively, watching his facial muscles twitch occasionally, and his hands, folded across his chest, tremble as if about to grasp at something. Beneath his lids, his eyes flickered like those of a man dreaming.

He was dreaming in a sense: a dream that had lasted nearly two years so far, a dream of a distant time and a strange society.