A Dream of Wessex by Christopher Priest Page B

‘
    ‘In Wessex?’
    ‘It was the strangest thing.’ The memory was there in full now. ‘I was holding his hand, he was ill. There was no doctor, no proper treatment. Then he vanished. He ceased to exist. And no one could remember him!‘
    She felt tears in her eyes, and she turned away and found a Kleenex.
    ‘Tom was a friend of yours, wasn’t he?’ Marilyn said.
    ‘A friend of my father’s. It was Tom who got me this job. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.’ She blew her nose, then tucked the crumpled tissue into the sleeve of her dress. ‘Of course, it makes sense now. I couldn’t understand it when he vanished! But it must have been when he died. He simply stopped projecting.’
    When she was in Wessex she had no way of recognizing it, but whenever she returned she was intrigued by the way her deeper feelings found parallels. Tom Benedict had always been like one of her family; one of her earliest memories was of sitting on his lap when she was four, trying to catch soap-bubbles as he blew them. He and her father had known each other for years, and Tom, who had never married in spite of frequent urgings by his closest friends, often spent his holidays with the family. As she grew older, and made her own friends and left home, Julia had seen less of Tom, but his avuncular interest was always there in the background. Four years ago, while she was still in the two-year vacuum that had followed the break-up with Paul Mason, Tom had recommended her for a job with the Wessex Foundation. He was one of the trustees of the Foundation fund that financed the operation, and with his influence on the other trustees her appointment had gone through after the most cursory of interviews. She felt she had made her own way after that, and worked as hard and contributed as much as anyone else, but she and Tom had always been close. It was inevitable that when they were in the projector, in Wessex, there would be a similar harmony, and so it was. She had only seen Tom once since the beginning - seen him here in the real world, that is - and they had enjoyed their reminiscences of the future.
    As he had been in his own life, Tom in Wessex had been wise, jolly, warm. It seemed a pitiless, lonely death, to die inside the projector, but his consciousness had been in Wessex, and he had known she was beside him.
    Julia realized she had been silent for some time, and that Marilyn was watching her uncomfortably.
    ‘Has Tom been buried yet?’
    ‘No, the funeral’s tomorrow. Will you go?’
    ‘Of course. Have his relatives been told?’
    Marilyn nodded. ‘I believe your parents will be there.’
    Julia thought about seeing them again; it would be very strange. Her memories of them were partly confused with those of her ‘parents’ in Wessex. Once, during a period of leave, she had telephoned her father and during the conversation she had asked him some question about the farming cooperative. He owned a large and prospering dairy-farm near Hereford, and to say the least he hadn’t understood. She had made a weak joke to cover the slip; to explain would have taken far too long. Her parents had only the vaguest notion of what her work entailed.
    It was a quarter to eleven.
    Marilyn said: ‘I suppose you had better go along to the meeting. I take it you haven’t made a report yet?’
    ‘I haven’t had a chance.’
    They went out into the corridor, and Julia said: ‘By the way, I’ve found David Harkman. He’s working at - ’
    ‘At the Regional Commission,’ Marilyn said. ‘Don Mander told us.’
    ‘Is Don back too?’
    ‘He wants to talk to you about David. He thinks you’re up to something.’
    Julia smiled at her memories.
    She called in at the office on her way to the meeting, and picked up the mail that had accumulated over the last three weeks. There were about fifteen letters in all, and she sorted through them quickly. Most had been forwarded on from her flat in London, and most were bills. These she