Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“ Business ?” Antonia, the only merchant in the room, took especial note of the word.

“Yes, Miss Bocker. It was a natural progression, this being America, the most capitalistic country on earth. And remember that Tiadaghton came along in the 1880s during that first golden age of capitalistic excess. It was a time of unprecedented agglomeration of individual wealth, during which an industrial titan could make as much money as he was able to squeeze from the strained sinews of the men who laboured beneath him. This was the period during which Dingley Dell came into its own. You have somewhat the same sort of dynamic at work here in the Dell, albeit in microcosm: the privileged, entitled few lording their privileges and sense of entitlement over all the rest of you. From very early on we sought out your Bashaws for their inside assistance in our undertaking in exchange for generous compensation.”

“You’re speaking of the ones that Graham and I have come to call the Moles,” said Upwitch.

“Yes. It is they who have always helped us to keep things running smoothly, they to whom the Project has always been historically indebted.”

“And their compensation—?” asked Upwitch.

“The Moles, as you call them, have been and continue to be rewarded for their assistance with those little baubles of modern civilisation that we felt inclined to bestow upon them — all of which have been kept largely out of the view of the rest of you — the calculators, the radios, the televisions, the phonographs, the laptop computers, the food processors, the espresso makers, the hand-vacs, the Walkmans, the iPods—”

Upwitch shook his head in stupefaction. “Aside from the calculator, I don’t know what—”

“I’ll explain them all in time, Reverend Upwitch. My point is that the world has progressed apace. Electricity alone powers a good many things that serve to make a Beyonder’s life far less toilsome than your own. What was shared with the Moles was always meant to be kept well hidden. Unfortunately, Mr. Pupker, for his part, hasn’t been as scrupulous in recent days with the distribution of these twenty-first century lagniappes to his comrades as the administrators would like to see, but that’s a subject for some later discussion.”

“So you know about the sub-cellar?” I asked.

Miss Wolf nodded. “It served, until Wednesday night, as the subterranean warehouse for all of our little gifts of gratitude to our inside agents.”

“How appropriate,” observed Muntle with a dark grin, “that the Moles should take their presents from a hole in the ground!”

Following a moment of subdued collective laughter, Miss Wolf painted a vivid picture of how Bashaw cellars throughout the Dell had been secretly used for years as playrooms of Outland design and accouterment.

“But what may be found in these cellars doesn’t hold a candle to what you would actually find in the Outland,” continued Miss Wolf. “Suffice it to say that it is a highly mechanised, electrified, electronic world that lies beyond this valley — one which your Returnees could hardly put into words — or having described it with a small modicum of success, they could only be thought mad from the utter outrageousness of their reports. Can a Dinglian even begin to wrap his brain round the concept of airplanes that fly faster than the fleetest bird, traversing the entire globe in only a matter of hours?”

“‘Airplanes.’ You mean ‘ aerial planes,’” interposed Mr. Graham in polite rectification. “A Dinglian may wrap his brain around it quite easily when he considers that the Ensyke predicted that it was only a matter of time before the problem of artificial flight would be solved. It has always been believed that the Beyonders had, as a result of the ravages of that pandemic — the one that we now know was counterfeited — abandoned all attempts to fly by mechanical means. We now see that what the Ensyke predicted did indeed come true.”

“And yet,” struck in Muntle, the inveterate sky-gazer amongst us, “if Outlanders are flying hither and thither in their expeditious contraptions, why have we never seen a single one above our heads?”

A correction from Mr. Graham: “There was one, Sheriff Muntle, which was observed in the summer of 1949.”

Miss Wolf nodded. “I’ll confirm the incursion. A plane accidentally entered the restricted air space over your valley.”

“I recall something about the event from my childhood,” said the vicar. “My great uncle Thomas was one of those who saw it, though few of the witnesses were believed. He said that it buzzed and hummed and was most decidedly mechanical. I remember thinking how much I should have liked to see it myself. Still would, in fact.”

“Yet, Reverend Upwitch, you see airplanes in flight every day. Or at least their contrails.”

“Contrails, Miss Wolf?” asked Graham.

“Yes. A shortened name for condensation trails. Above 26,000 feet, Mr. Graham, visible trails of condensed water vapour are formed — a byproduct of engine exhaust.”

“I have seen them!” exclaimed Graham. “But I always assumed them to be of some unfamiliar meteorological origin.”

“Whilst my sky-gazing nephew Newman,” I struck in with a smile, “once surmised that they might very well be laid down by some manner of man-made machine.”

Through an open window at the opposite end of the dark room now appeared a bright shaft of reflective moonlight, as that orb became fully unveiled in the sky by retreating clouds. I shifted in my chair to look up at the glowing satellite, to think of aerial-planes flying at incomprehensible speeds in silhouette across its luminous face.

“And we’ve been there , too,” declared Miss Wolf, noting my temporary attendance to the moon.

I did not doubt the truth of what Miss Wolf had said, though I knew that she hadn’t been honest in every answer she’d given us to-night — most notably pertaining to the whereabouts of my nephew Newman, and perhaps even to the location of Newman’s father. She had some reason there to prevaricate, but why would one lie about such a thing as flying to the moon? Was it not simply indicative of the fact that life outside the Dell had moved forward, just as Bevan Dabber had said that it did — and at a most extraordinary pace? It deeply wrenched my soul to think upon it — to think of all that Dinglians had missed during the many years of their imposed isolation. I spoke my regretful thoughts aloud in a contemplative underbreath: “All the books never read. All the plays and musical concerts never attended.”

“Or the thousands of movies that you missed,” added Ruth Wolf.

“ Movies ?” asked Mr. Graham.

“Motion pictures. Magic lantern shows that move and speak and sing and reflect the world upon a wall. Americans became quite good at making movies. But while I sympathise with the utter abjection of all you have missed, I also envy your hundred and twenty-one years of blissful ignorance about everything that has gone wrong in our world during that time.”

“It hasn’t always been bliss, Miss Wolf,” said I. “Life for us, as you must know from having studied our society, has never been as idyllic as one would think.”

Miss Wolf nodded. She had been standing at the window, gazing thoughtfully at the moon. Now she withdrew her gaze, turned, and settled herself into an empty chair.

After a brief contemplative interval, I directed us back onto the original thoroughfare of our discussion: “You said that the Project strayed by necessity from its original purpose. That somewhere along the way it became a commercial enterprise of significant size. What did you mean?”