“And who else have you helped?” asked Antonia.
“I have been making secret, unscheduled visits to the patients of the Lung Hospital over the last couple of weeks, administering the same drugs to them that are used on the outside. It is a lengthy series and I pray that it will do some good. I intend shortly hereafter to give all of my Outland medical supplies over to Timberry so that he should continue in my stead. I’m not an ogre or a monster, though I will admit that some of what I do and do not do these days is motivated by fear for my own safety. I cannot help it; my situation is growing precarious.
“Now this has reminded me of the woman whose dead body was discovered by young David Scadger last month. I knew this woman, or at least I knew of her. The Tiadaghton Project is a massive construct that ably protects itself from any threat, be it large or small, and especially that of the renegade variety. Apparently, Miss Martin had become just such a threat— a cog that was set to fly off the machine and draw dangerous attention to it. The Project has its rules and those rules are adhered to without variance. Everything serves the illusion that Dingley Dell is everything you see round you: a sheltered, pastoral, Victorian entity, a quaint and curious anachronism in a modern world. But there is another deception, which must also be maintained: that which is presented to the rest of the world — that this valley is home to a highly restricted government-sponsored installation wherein sophisticated weaponry is manufactured and tested, though there be no small number of those who believe a different story entirely: that visitors from some other world reside here. It’s a fiction no one goes to great lengths to disprove since it sends the imagination far afield of the actual truth about this place.”
Here looks of astonishment were exchanged amongst Miss Wolf ’s silent auditors. To think that there are those who believed Dinglians to be ultramundane!
“It has been my job,” Miss Wolf continued, “to keep quiet those who return from what you call the Terra Incognita — to keep those who have viewed life in the twenty-first century as it truly is from threatening the health and functionality of the machine. I silence the Returnees by creating the necessary symptoms of the Returnees’ disease: I bring about narcolepsy and dementia and disorientation when it is called for. I induce seizures in the most intractable patients.”
“Were you responsible for the death of Mr. Gamfield?” I asked coldly. “I understand that he beat his head against a wall until his brains spilt out.”
Ruth Wolf lowered herself slowly into a chair. In a hushed, nearly imperceptible voice she said, “That isn’t true, nor was it my doing. Gamfield’s death came, in fact, at the hand of Dr. Fibbetson, who took it upon himself to supplement the pacifying drugs that I had already given the patient. The man is more than mere bumptious idiot. He is an imbecilic menace. The grisly, fictionalised account of Gamfield’s death was put forth to create the necessary fiction that the disease — this spurious disease — has worsened in its manifestation and symptoms. While the families of the patients have become more impatient, the patients themselves have also grown more restive. And it is no easy task to keep men and women under lock and key perpetually sedated, especially those who do not go easily into their restraints or fall most readily into the required stupor. The Tiadaghton Project would prefer that every escapee from Dingley Dell be captured and summarily executed, and a good many have been. Far too many…”
My heart leapt into my throat at that moment to hear confirmation of what I had come to fear. Antonia and Muntle were taken aback as well. Slingo took Uriah’s hand, or perhaps it was the other way round.
“But there are those, as you know, who do make it back. And they must be dealt with. Bedlam is the place where they are quarantined. It is where I do my job. And it robs me of a piece of my soul every day that I am at it. I would gladly walk away — no, run in a fast sprint from my duties here if I could. But I would be writing my own death warrant. Just like Michelena Martin did, for I am certain that she too was trying to get herself away as fast as she could.”
Muntle ran his hand across his chin in rigourous thought, then flung that hand with a sharply pointing index finger in the direction of the now most forthcoming Miss Wolf. “Tell us why the Tiadaghton Project is coming to its end.”
“It appears that Dingley Dell has been purchased by a private industrial concern. A modern steel mill is to be built here, of such size and sophistication as to make your tiny steam-puffing foundry look like a child’s play-toy. It seems that we, unknowingly, have entered the end times.”
“And you knew absolutely nothing of this?” snapped Antonia.
“Upon my honour, Miss Bocker, there were things that I had been told were coming in the offing, but nothing so immediate as this. It was only quite recently that I learnt about the Fête champêtre. I suspected that it should be the vehicle through which certain privileged residents of this valley — the Bashaws, as you call them — would receive their sanctioned release from this place, but I could not confirm it for myself until this moment, seeing here what Mrs. Pyegrave wrote on the card. Emigration is the Project’s way of rewarding its helpmates in Dingley Dell for their many years of service as insider agents.”
“Whither will they go?” asked Graham.
“I suspect that what awaits the members of your Petit-Parliament and their kinsmen and families is relocation to some secured and exotic place — perhaps an island in the South Seas, since the Project owns hundreds of acres of holiday property throughout the South Pacific. I would imagine that they’ll be spending the remainder of their days in compensatory tropical comfort.”
“And what of the rest of us once they go?” asked Antonia. “What are they to do with us?”
“I don’t know,” was all that Miss Wolf would say.
“May I guess?” asked Muntle. “Allow me to offer two possible contrasting outcomes, each dependent upon how the following questions be answered: what should happen to the administrators of the Tiadaghton Project once word of what they have perpetrated becomes known? If laws have been broken — both those of man and those of God — will our mysterious overlords be required to answer for them? Is there a price to be paid for what was done to us over all the years, and if so, will they attempt to avoid that cost by covering their tracks by any means? How these questions are answered should determine whether we shall simply be evicted, or whether we should be dealt with by some other more terminal means.”
“I believe there to be only one possible outcome,” said the Reverend Upwitch grimly. “For did we not hear Miss Wolf say that many who left the Dell were murdered to guarantee their permanent silence? I should think that our own lives are of equal negligible value to these filthy Outland assassins.”
“Consider as well the depravities to which the Bedlam inmates are daily subjected,” added Mr. Graham. “There is not a glimmer of humanity in such treatment of any of us, not within the Dell or without. Why should it be any different when the book is closed?”
“They will not — nay, cannot—permit the true story of Dingley Dell to be freely told,” I added. “The administrators of the Tiadaghton Project will have no choice but to still every voice that remains after the Bashaws have fled. There is only one solution, and we all know what it is.”
As each of the men in the room pondered the looming possibility of his own demise, the two women in our company repaired briefly to Miss Wolf ’s home to fetch an ice pail containing a certain canned beverage to be imbibed during the unveiling of the true and unvarnished history of Dingley Dell, courtesy of Miss Ruth Wolf, impromptu annalist of this nowforsaken valley. I was most eager to hear every detail that Ruth chose to offer, and was curious about the taste of the flavourful potable, which the teller had procured from her secret larder for our refreshment. The beverage was of Outlander origin. It was called Wegman’s Cola.