“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?”
“Exactly that. The Tiadaghton Project expanded and metamorphosed, and in the end became a profit-making enterprise of great scope and breadth. Nearly all of the Robber Barons — the name given to those business potentates who became obscenely wealthy through their industrial and financial rapaciousness — shared a fashionable fascination for this little slice of synthetic Victorian England nestled ironically in their own American backyard. And they poured millions of dollars into its upkeep, guaranteeing Dingley Dell many happy years of solvent patronage.
“It took no time at all for the Robber Barons to fall madly in love with this place and its colourful people. These and the men who came after them drew from their extravagant bank accounts to create from their obsession with Dingley Dell a secret society whose membership was kept deliberately small and select. Through the help of your Moles, mechanisms were put into place for a more detailed accounting and monitoring of the goings-on there — hidden telephones were installed, then wireless telegraphy, remote radio broadcast facilities, then secreted video cameras — or rather — how should I put this? — devices that may capture a moving and speaking image as photography captures a still picture and which transmits that image through the air to some other place. Are you keeping up with me, gentlemen…and Miss Bocker, or have I hopelessly outpaced you?”
“I think, rather, the latter,” admitted Muntle. “But proceed.”
“Suffice it to observe that there are this day a large number of ways for those who administer this present-day version of the Tiadaghton Project to keep abreast of a great deal of what you and your fellow citizens do and say, both through devices which transmit your activities and your conversations, and the reports they receive from their agents.”
“Yet we are safe to speak here?” asked the vicar looking nervously about. “You will confirm that no such devices have been put into this room?”
Miss Wolf nodded. “As a rule — and it is a rule I have never seen violated — monitoring equipment is installed only in public places.”
“And does Dingley Dell still continue to be the hobbyhorse of the very wealthy?” asked Antonia.
“Not so much now as formerly. Many have lost interest and quitted the society. There’s a tribe of pygmies, recently removed to an isolated compound in southern Utah, that is drawing a bit of attention from many of our rich members — the lives of transplanted hirsute and squat-legged African dwarfs being much more entertaining to easily-bored billionaires these days than the now rather prosy and parochial lives of bonnet-wearing, pudding-eating neo-Victorians. Which brings us then to the latest phase of the Project, of which I have not been apprised, and about which, as I earlier mentioned, I know only anecdotally what lies ahead. I should like to think that after the M.P.P.’s and their families have been gotten away, that someone will arrive to make a grand announcement, to lay out a detailed timetable for the evacuation of the valley. I should like to think that continued evacuation would be effected with gentle care and respect, that each Dinglian will be given the requisite vaccinations to guard against those illnesses from which you presently have no natural protection. I should like to think that funds would be allocated for your comfortable resettlement, that some of you will find a home with the Amish or one of the other plainliving Anabaptist denominations. There seem a number of outcomes— positive outcomes that do not allow for only pain and heartbreak and—”