I was interested to note that Copplestone had invited no clergyman, nor anyone of the legalistic turn of mind. To my mind, that was evidence that he had an altogether sensible notion of trust and trustworthiness. He also had the grace to feed his guests well, and to offer them a burgundy of very tolerable vintage before setting out to tax their credulity. I, as was my habit, ate little and drank less, although I made a tolerable show of participation in the pleasures of the meal. It was not until the port was being passed that the professor introduced the serious business of the evening.
III
“Some of you,” said Copplestone, “know something about the studies which have been my life’s work. My published writings on tribal magic and divination have always been scrupulously sceptical, but in private I have pursued the shier truths which lie hidden in the undergrowth of superstition. I have been particularly interested in the various means used by tribal magicians to obtain knowledge of the future. I have seen enough to convince me that there are indeed some men who have the innate gift of foresight, and that there are chemical methods by which such natural gifts may be enhanced. I have long thought it probable that the application of scientific method to the study of such chemical compounds would produce a way of inducing more accurate and more far-reaching visions of futurity.
“In saying this, I remain well aware of certain philosophical problems which arise in connection with the notion of precognition, and of certain psychological problems which inevitably confuse the visionary process. If the principles of causality which we have recognized since Newton’s time are true, however, then the future must be, in principle, foreseeable and predictable. If the future flows from the present by virtue of inviolable physical laws, it must do so according to a destiny mapped out since time immemorial – and if the future really is mappable, then there must be a sense in which it already exists, not in the uncertain fog of the speculative imagination, but in actuality.”
The white-bearded man leaned forward at this point and opened his mouth to protest, but Copplestone held up a hand to forestall him. “I am aware of the paradoxes which confound the discussion of such ideas,” he said, “but I have always desired to make an experiment to test the case. It seemed to me, on the basis of my studies of drug-enhanced precognition in tribal societies, that these magicians sometimes did obtain true knowledge of the future, but were almost never able to profit from it. One reason for this, I perceived, was that the true knowledge which they obtained was invariably alloyed with extraneous material which frequently led to misinterpretation. After long study I concluded that the organ of foresight – the ‘sixth sense’, if you will admit the term – is that which engages in the ordinary business of dreaming, and that its sensory function is confused by other expressive functions linked to the passions. In brief, our usually meagre powers of precognition are so polluted, perverted and confused by our hopes, fears and fancies that it is difficult to separate truth from fantasy until the event which was dimly foreseen actually comes to pass, thus revealing the previously-hidden meaning of the precognitive vision.
“It was evident to me from my extensive studies of shamanistic and related practices that the enhancement of visionary precognition by appropriate drugs could not entirely filter out this psychological pollution, no matter how powerfully the compounds increased the power of the sensory function, but I hoped that it might be minimized if the optimum combination of drugs could be found. Each of the tribes I have studied has to rely on the bounty of nature to supply enhancing drugs. The Siberians use agaric mushrooms, the Mexicans use peyotl, the Mongolians use opium derivatives; I, on the other hand, had the advantage of being able to collect and combine all these different kinds of compounds, refining and modifying them using the recently evolved techniques of organic chemistry. This was what I set out to do: to discover the mechanics of a modern Delphic oracle, more powerful than any known to history. By this means I hoped to discover, among other things, whether what I had long taken for granted was actually true: whether the future glimpsed by authentic seers is, in fact, an immutable future of destiny which they are quite unable to affect in any way despite their foresight of it; or whether it is merely a future of contingency, which might yet be altered or averted if they were able to act upon their precognition.”
He paused, and rang a bell to summon his manservant. The servant immediately brought in a large tray, on which were set a wooden rack holding test-tubes and glass-stoppered vials and a manilla envelope.
“These,” said Copplestone, indicating the test-tubes, “are the various vision-enhancing drugs which were my raw materials. Here” – at this point he touched one of the sealed vials, which was marked with a ring of red paint – is the best of the many mixtures which I made from them. The complex series of treatments to which I submitted the various compounds is carefully set out in a formula which I have placed in this envelope. My experiments have taken their toll of my health, and I fear that I may have done myself irreparable damage in the course of my expeditions, but in order that my discoveries may be available to other interested parties I shall give the formula to my good friend Dr W*****. I will gladly give the remainder of the compound to any one of you who might care to volunteer to follow where I have led. There is enough for a single moderate dose.”
Copplestone gave the envelope to the doctor, who dutifully put it in the inner pocket of his jacket. “Perhaps, Doctor,” the professor said, “You would be kind enough to tell the others what you observed while you have attended me these last few days.”
The doctor seemed uncomfortable, but he nodded his head. “I observed Professor Copplestone on three separate occasions,” he said. “On each occasion, I watched him inject the drug whose remnant you see in that vial into his arm, and I did not leave him until its effects had worn off. After taking the drug, Copplestone fell into a deep sleep, which quickly gave way to an unusual form of coma. His heart slowed to some twenty-eight beats per minute and his body temperature fell by twelve or fourteen degrees. His body suffered a loss of weight amounting to about three stones, although its dimensions were not altered commensurately and the loss was temporary, the greater part of it returning when he awoke.”
“What a pity,” Wilde murmured in my left ear. “Copplestone might otherwise have hawked his discovery as a convenient cure for obesity.”
The doctor frowned, and continued doggedly. “This condition persisted for approximately three hours on each occasion, although the professor increased the dosage at each stage. As the end of each period approached, the professor’s body was subject to tremors, which increased considerably in violence over the course of the three experiments. On the third occasion I feared that the convulsions might cause his heart to stop. When the professor regained consciousness he was very weak. It would be unwise in the extreme, in my opinion, for the professor to attempt any further experiments along these lines – and anyone who is prepared to give serious consideration to Copplestone’s invitation to continue this work must bear in mind that he might do himself considerable harm.”
The professor seemed quite unperturbed by this warning. “Thank you,” he said. “I will not bore you all with a lengthy account of my preliminary experiments, nor with any elaborate presentation of my discoveries in organic chemistry. As to the nature of the mechanism involved in the process of precognition, even I can only speculate. However, Sir William will bear me out when I say that there is now an abundance of evidence that the mind is capable of extending its function beyond the body, producing in the process what we normally call apparitions?”
The white-bearded man of science nodded. “The evidence for the survival of the mind after death, and its ability to formulate a fragile envelope for the purpose of earthly manifestation is overwhelming,” he agreed.
“Not all apparitions are vestiges of that post-mortem kind,” said Copplestone, “as my story will demonstrate. The naturally occurring compounds traditionally employed to induce visions are limited in scope, and
the perceptions they permit are invariably distorted, but such compounds do indeed allow the mind to extend its perceptive range in both space and time. Space and time are, of course, merely two different aspects of the unitary fabric of the cosmos. Perception of any kind would be impossible without some kind of physical presence, so projections of this kind require the synthesis of a body of sorts, sometimes misleadingly called an astral body. The compound which I have perfected increases the powers of the natural compounds considerably, and the conscious control which I was able to exercise over my remote manifestation was greatly enhanced.”
“You don’t care to tell us, I suppose,” said the naturalized American, rather rudely, “what will win the Derby this year?”
“Alas,” said Copplestone, “my compound is so very powerful that it would require an impractical precision of dosage to travel sixty years, let alone six months, and I suspect that it would be impossible to remain in such a near future for more than a split second. In order to achieve a vision of reasonable coherency, and to take advantage of the conscious control which this compound allows, one must work in terms of thousands or tens of thousands of years.”
The pale young man was scowling. He muttered something hardly audible, which included the word plagiarism. His companion placed a soothing hand on his wrist, bidding him be patient and listen.
“My sketchy explanations have clearly strained your credulity too far,” said Copplestone, looking around at the uneasy faces which confronted him.
“I don’t believe in your damned native seers,” said the American, brusquely, “and I don’t believe in Crookes’ apparitions either, although he’s promised to show me a few while I’m here. I believe in causality, and I accept that in principle the future might be foreseen, but . . .”
“That is surely certain,” the pale young man put in. “The future is determined, and hence potentially discoverable, at least to the extent that we can gather the relevant data.”
“I agree also,” said his curly-haired companion, swiftly. “The origin of motion, which was the primal Act of Creation, must already have contained the plan of universal evolution.”
“But what of free will?” asked the British scientist. “Men have the power to choose what they will do, and their choices determine the shape of their own futures. The future of mankind will be the sum of those choices, not the product of any merely mechanical laws. Consciousness is immune to the laws of causality which apply to inert objects. There are such things as premonitory dreams, but they are warnings of what may happen, not glimpses of something immutable that already exists.”
“I agree with Crookes, at least about the freedom of the will,” said the doctor, gruffly. “Even if human beings are part of some unfolding plan, they have the power to alter it. We were not impelled here tonight by some irresistible force of necessity, and not one of us really doubts that he might be somewhere else entirely if it had pleased him to go.”
“Neither Milton nor Mill could find a contradiction here,” said Wilde, mildly. “Both would argue that our choices are real, and yet their outcomes would be known with perfect certainty to an omniscient mind. Yes, they would argue, we have the power of choice – but the choices we make are caused by our characters and interests, and are therefore predictable.”
I noticed that Wilde did not offer an opinion of his own, but was content to introduce the relevant ideas of others. The doctor’s grey-eyed companion made no effort to intervene in the discussion, even when a momentary silence fell.
Dr Copplestone turned to me, and said: “Do you have an opinion, sir?”
“I do,” I said, flatly. “I hold that there is an inescapable destiny that faces us all, and the universe itself. It is death. Perhaps we have the power to delay our course, or attain to the end by different routes, but in the final analysis there is no other absolute.”
“Death is not the end,” said the pillar of the Society for Psychical Research. “That is proven; we need not doubt it.”
The excitable young man shook his head vigorously, but he had discretion enough not raise his reedy voice in protest.
Copplestone lifted a placatory hand. “Enough, gentlemen,” he said. “When I have told you my story, you might be better informed to carry this argument forward.” His tired eyes shone with reflected firelight, and he suddenly seemed to me to be sad as well as debilitated, almost as if the world which had once been home to him had turned traitor, and cast him into some private hell of unbelonging.
I felt an altogether unaccustomed pang of sympathy.
IV
“The first subjective sensations induced by the compound,” Copplestone said, “are dizziness and disorientation. As the drug spreads through the bloodstream the mind is invaded by images of a bizarre and incoherent fashion. If I could only train myself to concentrate upon a few elements of the torrent useful information might be derived therefrom, but I have not so far managed to master the trick. After a time, however, the flood of inchoate images eases, and there is a process of settlement which corresponds with the formation of what I shall call a timeshadow. This is an actual, corporeal entity, but it is considerably less substantial than an ordinary body. My timeshadow was not sufficiently attentuated to pass through solid walls, although the much fainter shadow-selves projected by means of naturally-occurring drugs might be . . . but I shall leave further discussion of that topic until later.
“The time which elapsed while the good doctor was standing watch over my unconscious body and the time experienced by my timeshadow did not run in parallel. A timeshadow’s attenuation has a temporal as well as a physical aspect; the actual proportion varies according to the dosage – and thus in proportion to the time-difference.
“When the world about me first came into clear focus I found myself on a lightly wooded hillside. The sun, which stood high in the sky, seemed identical to the one with which we are all familiar, but the trees were not the familiar trees of the English countryside. The green of their leaves was more vivid, and their bark was lustrous, as if varnished. I could hear birdsong, but I caught only the most fleeting glimpses of the birds themselves as they fluttered from crown to crown and could not easily compare them to the species I knew. I was surprised to find no trace whatsoever of the city of London, for I had assumed that I would remain in the same place while moving in time. Either that assumption was false, or I was so far displaced in time that all vestiges of the world’s greatest city had been quite obliterated.
“Not without difficulty, I raised my hand to place it before my face. I half-expected that I might find it transparent, or at least translucent, but it was opaque, and lined in a familiar fashion. I looked down, and found that I was not naked. I was wearing a thin white tunic and trousers, designed according to no model I had ever actually seen. This seemed to confirm what I believed about the ability of my own mind – without, apparently, any exertion of my conscious will – to interfere creatively with the sensory aspect of the drug’s operation. This was not altogether good news. If my sense of modesty could alter the content of my prophetic vision, what might my fears and hopes make manifest?
“The grass which grew in the open between the trees was as vividly green as the foliage of the trees, but I could not be certain that the difference was in the grass rather than in the sensory apparatus of my unusual corpus. There were a few coloured flower-heads raised above the grass, mostly blue or purple, and there were insects paying court to them, but I did not pause to study the insect-life of the period into which I had come. From my vantage-point half way up the hill I could see a road, and in the distance the outskirts of a town. The distant buildings seemed very clean in the sunlight. Their roofs were tiled in brown and green, their walls pale grey or pastel blue. There were no vehicles on the road but there were people walking in either direction, in pairs or small groups.
“When I tried to move down the hill I realized why it had required such an effort to raise my hand. A timeshadow may walk, run or jump like any
other body but the habits ingrained by ordinary experience must be modified. Although relatively insubstantial a timeshadow seems to its tenant to be heavy and sluggish. I found that the effort normally adequate to take a step forward had to be considerably increased if I were to make headway, but once my timeshadow was in motion it had unusual momentum. My stride was slow but it was also long. I eventually learned to modify my actions to produce a less awkward gait, but the skill came gradually.
“I made my uncomfortable way down the hill. The people on the road must have caught sight of me, but no one stopped or turned to stare. It was not until I too was on its strangely smooth surface that I was able to meet anyone’s gaze or command attention. The people were dressed even more simply than myself, each in a single garment not unlike a short nightshirt. I could hardly tell whether any one of them was male or female, although they differed in individual appearance as much as we do. Most of them were conspicuously plump, and even the thinnest was certainly not slender by our standards. There were children among them, but none showed any marked sign of old age. While I recovered my breath twelve or fourteen people must have passed me by. All of them glanced at me, but only a few looked me up and down. The children seemed most curious – one or two of them pointed at me, and spoke to the adults. I could not understand the language they spoke, but its sounds seemed to me to be softly Oriental. Their complexions were very ruddy, and the blue tracery of veins on their bare forearms seemed very thick and outstanding.
“Why are they so incurious? I wondered. Why are they not so excited by my appearance as men of my world would be if a ghost were to walk down Oxford Street in broad daylight? I tried to speak. My voice was very low, and the words I was trying to form seemed exceedingly hoarse and hollow. The passers-by seemed rather more startled by my voice than by my appearance, but the effect was the opposite of what I had hoped. They speeded up, hurrying on their way. I tried to protest, but it was futile.
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