BRAVE NEW WORLD





Aldous Huxley(1894-1963)

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Chapter One

A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the mainentrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONINGCENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY,IDENTITY, STABILITY.

The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north.Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropicalheat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through thewindows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallidshape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass andnickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory. Wintrinessresponded to wintriness. The overalls of the workers were white,their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The lightwas frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow barrels of themicroscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance,lying along the polished tubes like butter, streak after lusciousstreak in long recession down the work tables.

"And this," said the Director opening the door, "is theFertilizing Room."

Bent over their instruments, three hundred Fertilizers wereplunged, as the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning enteredthe room, in the scarcely breathing silence, the absent-minded,soliloquizing hum or whistle, of absorbed concentration. A troopof newly arrived students, very young, pink and callow, followednervously, rather abjectly, at the Director's heels. Each of themcarried a notebook, in which, whenever the great man spoke, hedesperately scribbled. Straight from the horse's mouth. It was arare privilege. The D. H. C. for Central London always made apoint of personally conducting his new students round the variousdepartments.

"Just to give you a general idea," he would explain to them. Forof course some sort of general idea they must have, if they wereto do their work intelligently–though as little of one, if theywere to be good and happy members of society, as possible. Forparticulars, as every one knows, make for virtue and happiness;generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophersbut fret-sawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone ofsociety.

"To-morrow," he would add, smiling at them with a slightlymenacing geniality, "you'll be settling down to serious work. Youwon't have time for generalities. Meanwhile ..."

Meanwhile, it was a privilege. Straight from the horse's mouthinto the notebook. The boys scribbled like mad.

Tall and rather thin but upright, the Director advanced into theroom. He had a long chin and big rather prominent teeth, justcovered, when he was not talking, by his full, floridly curvedlips. Old, young? Thirty? Fifty? Fifty-five? It was hard to say.And anyhow the question didn't arise; in this year of stability,A. F. 632, it didn't occur to you to ask it.

"I shall begin at the beginning," said the D.H.C. and the morezealous students recorded his intention in their notebooks: Beginat the beginning . "These," he waved his hand, "are theincubators." And opening an insulated door he showed them racksupon racks of numbered test-tubes. "The week's supply of ova.Kept," he explained, "at blood heat; whereas the male gametes,"and here he opened another door, "they have to be kept atthirty-five instead of thirty-seven. Full blood heat sterilizes."Rams wrapped in theremogene beget no lambs.

Still leaning against the incubators he gave them, while thepencils scurried illegibly across the pages, a brief descriptionof the modern fertilizing process; spoke first, of course, of itssurgical introduction–"the operation undergone voluntarily forthe good of Society, not to mention the fact that it carries abonus amounting to six months' salary"; continued with someaccount of the technique for preserving the excised ovary aliveand actively developing; passed on to a consideration of optimumtemperature, salinity, viscosity; referred to the liquor in whichthe detached and ripened eggs were kept; and, leading his chargesto the work tables, actually showed them how this liquor wasdrawn off from the test-tubes; how it was let out drop by droponto the specially warmed slides of the microscopes; how the eggswhich it contained were inspected for abnormalities, counted andtransferred to a porous receptacle; how (and he now took them towatch the operation) this receptacle was immersed in a warmbouillon containing free-swimming spermatozoa–at a minimumconcentration of one hundred thousand per cubic centimetre, heinsisted; and how, after ten minutes, the container was liftedout of the liquor and its contents re-examined; how, if any ofthe eggs remained unfertilized, it was again immersed, and, ifnecessary, yet again; how the fertilized ova went back to theincubators; where the Alphas and Betas remained until definitelybottled; while the Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons were brought outagain, after only thirty-six hours, to undergo Bokanovsky'sProcess.

"Bokanovsky's Process," repeated the Director, and the studentsunderlined the words in their little notebooks.

One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But a bokanovskifiedegg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight toninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formedembryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Makingninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before.Progress.

"Essentially," the D.H.C. concluded, "bokanovskification consistsof a series of arrests of development. We check the normal growthand, paradoxically enough, the egg responds by budding."

Responds by budding. The pencils were busy.

He pointed. On a very slowly moving band a rack-full oftest-tubes was entering a large metal box, another, rack-full wasemerging. Machinery faintly purred. It took eight minutes for thetubes to go through, he told them. Eight minutes of hard X-raysbeing about as much as an egg can stand. A few died; of the rest,the least susceptible divided into two; most put out four buds;some eight; all were returned to the incubators, where the budsbegan to develop; then, after two days, were suddenly chilled,chilled and checked. Two, four, eight, the buds in their turnbudded; and having budded were dosed almost to death withalcohol; consequently burgeoned again and having budded–bud outof bud out of bud–were thereafter–further arrest being generallyfatal–left to develop in peace. By which time the original eggwas in a fair way to becoming anything from eight to ninety-sixembryos– a prodigious improvement, you will agree, on nature.Identical twins–but not in piddling twos and threes as in the oldviviparous days, when an egg would sometimes accidentally divide;actually by dozens, by scores at a time.

"Scores," the Director repeated and flung out his arms, as thoughhe were distributing largesse. "Scores."

But one of the students was fool enough to ask where theadvantage lay.

"My good boy!" The Director wheeled sharply round on him. "Can'tyou see? Can't you see?" He raised a hand; his expression wassolemn. "Bokanovsky's Process is one of the major instruments ofsocial stability!"

Major instruments of social stability.

Standard men and women; in uniform batches. The whole of a smallfactory staffed with the products of a single bokanovskified egg.

"Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identicalmachines!" The voice was almost tremulous with enthusiasm. "Youreally know where you are. For the first time in history." Hequoted the planetary motto. "Community, Identity, Stability."Grand words. "If we could bokanovskify indefinitely the wholeproblem would be solved."

Solved by standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas, uniform Epsilons.Millions of identical twins. The principle of mass production atlast applied to biology.

"But, alas," the Director shook his head, "we can't bokanovskifyindefinitely."

Ninety-six seemed to be the limit; seventy-two a good average.From the same ovary and with gametes of the same male tomanufacture as many batches of identical twins as possible–thatwas the best (sadly a second best) that they could do. And eventhat was difficult.

"For in nature it takes thirty years for two hundred eggs toreach maturity. But our business is to stabilize the populationat this moment, here and now. Dribbling out twins over a quarterof a century–what would be the use of that?"

Obviously, no use at all. But Podsnap's Technique had immenselyaccelerated the process of ripening. They could make sure of atleast a hundred and fifty mature eggs within two years. Fertilizeand bokanovskify–in other words, multiply by seventy-two–and youget an average of nearly eleven thousand brothers and sisters ina hundred and fifty batches of identical twins, all within twoyears of the same age.

"And in exceptional cases we can make one ovary yield us overfifteen thousand adult individuals."

Beckoning to a fair-haired, ruddy young man who happened to bepassing at the moment. "Mr. Foster," he called. The ruddy youngman approached. "Can you tell us the record for a single ovary,Mr. Foster?"

"Sixteen thousand and twelve in this Centre," Mr. Foster repliedwithout hesitation. He spoke very quickly, had a vivacious blueeye, and took an evident pleasure in quoting figures. "Sixteenthousand and twelve; in one hundred and eighty-nine batches ofidenticals. But of course they've done much better," he rattledon, "in some of the tropical Centres. Singapore has oftenproduced over sixteen thousand five hundred; and Mombasa hasactually touched the seventeen thousand mark. But then they haveunfair advantages. You should see the way a negro ovary respondsto pituitary! It's quite astonishing, when you're used to workingwith European material. Still," he added, with a laugh (but thelight of combat was in his eyes and the lift of his chin waschallenging), "still, we mean to beat them if we can. I'm workingon a wonderful Delta-Minus ovary at this moment. Only justeighteen months old. Over twelve thousand seven hundred childrenalready, either decanted or in embryo. And still going strong.We'll beat them yet."

"That's the spirit I like!" cried the Director, and clapped Mr.Foster on the shoulder. "Come along with us, and give these boysthe benefit of your expert knowledge."

Mr. Foster smiled modestly. "With pleasure." They went.

In the Bottling Room all was harmonious bustle and orderedactivity. Flaps of fresh sow's peritoneum ready cut to the propersize came shooting up in little lifts from the Organ Store in thesub-basement. Whizz and then, click! the lift-hatches hew open;the bottle-liner had only to reach out a hand, take the flap,insert, smooth-down, and before the lined bottle had had time totravel out of reach along the endless band, whizz, click! anotherflap of peritoneum had shot up from the depths, ready to beslipped into yet another bottle, the next of that slowinterminable procession on the band.

Next to the Liners stood the Matriculators. The processionadvanced; one by one the eggs were transferred from theirtest-tubes to the larger containers; deftly the peritoneal liningwas slit, the morula dropped into place, the saline solutionpoured in ... and already the bottle had passed, and it was theturn of the labellers. Heredity, date of fertilization,membership of Bokanovsky Group–details were transferred fromtest-tube to bottle. No longer anonymous, but named, identified,the procession marched slowly on; on through an opening in thewall, slowly on into the Social Predestination Room.

"Eighty-eight cubic metres of card-index," said Mr. Foster withrelish, as they entered.

"Containing all the relevant information," added the Director.

"Brought up to date every morning."

"And co-ordinated every afternoon."

"On the basis of which they make their calculations."

"So many individuals, of such and such quality," said Mr. Foster.

"Distributed in such and such quantities."

"The optimum Decanting Rate at any given moment."

"Unforeseen wastages promptly made good."

"Promptly," repeated Mr. Foster. "If you knew the amount ofovertime I had to put in after the last Japanese earthquake!" Helaughed goodhumouredly and shook his head.

"The Predestinators send in their figures to the Fertilizers."

"Who give them the embryos they ask for."

"And the bottles come in here to be predestined in detail."

"After which they are sent down to the Embryo Store."

"Where we now proceed ourselves."

And opening a door Mr. Foster led the way down a staircase intothe basement.

The temperature was still tropical. They descended into athickening twilight. Two doors and a passage with a double turninsured the cellar against any possible infiltration of the day.

"Embryos are like photograph film," said Mr. Foster waggishly, ashe pushed open the second door. "They can only stand red light."

And in effect the sultry darkness into which the students nowfollowed him was visible and crimson, like the darkness of closedeyes on a summer's afternoon. The bulging flanks of row onreceding row and tier above tier of bottles glinted withinnumerable rubies, and among the rubies moved the dim redspectres of men and women with purple eyes and all the symptomsof lupus. The hum and rattle of machinery faintly stirred theair.

"Give them a few figures, Mr. Foster," said the Director, who wastired of talking.

Mr. Foster was only too happy to give them a few figures.

Two hundred and twenty metres long, two hundred wide, ten high.He pointed upwards. Like chickens drinking, the students liftedtheir eyes towards the distant ceiling.

Three tiers of racks: ground floor level, first gallery, secondgallery.

The spidery steel-work of gallery above gallery faded away in alldirections into the dark. Near them three red ghosts were busilyunloading demijohns from a moving staircase.

The escalator from the Social Predestination Room.

Each bottle could be placed on one of fifteen racks, each rack,though you couldn't see it, was a conveyor traveling at the rateof thirty-three and a third centimetres an hour. Two hundred andsixty-seven days at eight metres a day. Two thousand one hundredand thirty-six metres in all. One circuit of the cellar at groundlevel, one on the first gallery, half on the second, and on thetwo hundred and sixty-seventh morning, daylight in the DecantingRoom. Independent existence–so called.

"But in the interval," Mr. Foster concluded, "we've managed to doa lot to them. Oh, a very great deal." His laugh was knowing andtriumphant.

"That's the spirit I like," said the Director once more. "Let'swalk around. You tell them everything, Mr. Foster."

Mr. Foster duly told them.

Told them of the growing embryo on its bed of peritoneum. Madethem taste the rich blood surrogate on which it fed. Explainedwhy it had to be stimulated with placentin and thyroxin. Toldthem of the corpus luteum extract. Showed them the jets throughwhich at every twelfth metre from zero to 2040 it wasautomatically injected. Spoke of those gradually increasing dosesof pituitary administered during the final ninety-six metres oftheir course. Described the artificial maternal circulationinstalled in every bottle at Metre 112; showed them the reservoirof blood-surrogate, the centrifugal pump that kept the liquidmoving over the placenta and drove it through the synthetic lungand waste product filter. Referred to the embryo's troublesometendency to anæmia, to the massive doses of hog's stomach extractand foetal foal's liver with which, in consequence, it had to besupplied.

Showed them the simple mechanism by means of which, during thelast two metres out of every eight, all the embryos weresimultaneously shaken into familiarity with movement. Hinted atthe gravity of the so-called "trauma of decanting," andenumerated the precautions taken to minimize, by a suitabletraining of the bottled embryo, that dangerous shock. Told themof the test for sex carried out in the neighborhood of Metre 200.Explained the system of labelling–a T for the males, a circle forthe females and for those who were destined to become freemartinsa question mark, black on a white ground.

"For of course," said Mr. Foster, "in the vast majority of cases,fertility is merely a nuisance. One fertile ovary in twelvehundred–that would really be quite sufficient for our purposes.But we want to have a good choice. And of course one must alwayshave an enormous margin of safety. So we allow as many as thirtyper cent of the female embryos to develop normally. The othersget a dose of male sex-hormone every twenty-four metres for therest of the course. Result: they're decanted asfreemartins–structurally quite normal (except," he had to admit,"that they do have the slightest tendency to grow beards), butsterile. Guaranteed sterile. Which brings us at last," continuedMr. Foster, "out of the realm of mere slavish imitation of natureinto the much more interesting world of human invention."

He rubbed his hands. For of course, they didn't contentthemselves with merely hatching out embryos: any cow could dothat.

"We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies associalized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewageworkers or future ..." He was going to say "future Worldcontrollers," but correcting himself, said "future Directors ofHatcheries," instead.

The D.H.C. acknowledged the compliment with a smile.

They were passing Metre 320 on Rack 11. A young Beta-Minusmechanic was busy with screw-driver and spanner on theblood-surrogate pump of a passing bottle. The hum of the electricmotor deepened by fractions of a tone as he turned the nuts.Down, down ... A final twist, a glance at the revolution counter,and he was done. He moved two paces down the line and began thesame process on the next pump.

"Reducing the number of revolutions per minute," Mr. Fosterexplained. "The surrogate goes round slower; therefore passesthrough the lung at longer intervals; therefore gives the embryoless oxygen. Nothing like oxygen-shortage for keeping an embryobelow par." Again he rubbed his hands.

"But why do you want to keep the embryo below par?" asked aningenuous student.

"Ass!" said the Director, breaking a long silence. "Hasn't itoccurred to you that an Epsilon embryo must have an Epsilonenvironment as well as an Epsilon heredity?"

It evidently hadn't occurred to him. He was covered withconfusion.

"The lower the caste," said Mr. Foster, "the shorter the oxygen."The first organ affected was the brain. After that the skeleton.At seventy per cent of normal oxygen you got dwarfs. At less thanseventy eyeless monsters.

"Who are no use at all," concluded Mr. Foster.

Whereas (his voice became confidential and eager), if they coulddiscover a technique for shortening the period of maturation whata triumph, what a benefaction to Society!

"Consider the horse."

They considered it.

Mature at six; the elephant at ten. While at thirteen a man isnot yet sexually mature; and is only full-grown at twenty. Hence,of course, that fruit of delayed development, the humanintelligence.

"But in Epsilons," said Mr. Foster very justly, "we don't needhuman intelligence."

Didn't need and didn't get it. But though the Epsilon mind wasmature at ten, the Epsilon body was not fit to work tilleighteen. Long years of superfluous and wasted immaturity. If thephysical development could be speeded up till it was as quick,say, as a cow's, what an enormous saving to the Community!

"Enormous!" murmured the students. Mr. Foster's enthusiasm wasinfectious.

He became rather technical; spoke of the abnormal endocrineco-ordination which made men grow so slowly; postulated agerminal mutation to account for it. Could the effects of thisgerminal mutation be undone? Could the individual Epsilon embryobe made a revert, by a suitable technique, to the normality ofdogs and cows? That was the problem. And it was all but solved.

Pilkington, at Mombasa, had produced individuals who weresexually mature at four and full-grown at six and a half. Ascientific triumph. But socially useless. Six-year-old men andwomen were too stupid to do even Epsilon work. And the processwas an all-or-nothing one; either you failed to modify at all, orelse you modified the whole way. They were still trying to findthe ideal compromise between adults of twenty and adults of six.So far without success. Mr. Foster sighed and shook his head.

Their wanderings through the crimson twilight had brought them tothe neighborhood of Metre 170 on Rack 9. From this point onwardsRack 9 was enclosed and the bottle performed the remainder oftheir journey in a kind of tunnel, interrupted here and there byopenings two or three metres wide.

"Heat conditioning," said Mr. Foster.

Hot tunnels alternated with cool tunnels. Coolness was wedded todiscomfort in the form of hard X-rays. By the time they weredecanted the embryos had a horror of cold. They were predestinedto emigrate to the tropics, to be miner and acetate silk spinnersand steel workers. Later on their minds would be made to endorsethe judgment of their bodies. "We condition them to thrive onheat," concluded Mr. Foster. "Our colleagues upstairs will teachthem to love it."

"And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is thesecret of happiness and virtue–liking what you've got to do. Allconditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapablesocial destiny."

In a gap between two tunnels, a nurse was delicately probing witha long fine syringe into the gelatinous contents of a passingbottle. The students and their guides stood watching her for afew moments in silence.

"Well, Lenina," said Mr. Foster, when at last she withdrew thesyringe and straightened herself up.

The girl turned with a start. One could see that, for all thelupus and the purple eyes, she was uncommonly pretty.

"Henry!" Her smile flashed redly at him–a row of coral teeth.

"Charming, charming," murmured the Director and, giving her twoor three little pats, received in exchange a rather deferentialsmile for himself.

"What are you giving them?" asked Mr. Foster, making his tonevery professional.

"Oh, the usual typhoid and sleeping sickness."

"Tropical workers start being inoculated at Metre 150," Mr.Foster explained to the students. "The embryos still have gills.We immunize the fish against the future man's diseases." Then,turning back to Lenina, "Ten to five on the roof this afternoon,"he said, "as usual."

"Charming," said the Director once more, and, with a final pat,moved away after the others.

On Rack 10 rows of next generation's chemical workers were beingtrained in the toleration of lead, caustic soda, tar, chlorine.The first of a batch of two hundred and fifty embryonicrocket-plane engineers was just passing the eleven hundred metremark on Rack 3. A special mechanism kept their containers inconstant rotation. "To improve their sense of balance," Mr.Foster explained. "Doing repairs on the outside of a rocket inmid-air is a ticklish job. We slacken off the circulation whenthey're right way up, so that they're half starved, and doublethe flow of surrogate when they're upside down. They learn toassociate topsy-turvydom with well-being; in fact, they're onlytruly happy when they're standing on their heads.

"And now," Mr. Foster went on, "I'd like to show you some veryinteresting conditioning for Alpha Plus Intellectuals. We have abig batch of them on Rack 5. First Gallery level," he called totwo boys who had started to go down to the ground floor.

"They're round about Metre 900," he explained. "You can't reallydo any useful intellectual conditioning till the foetuses havelost their tails. Follow me."

But the Director had looked at his watch. "Ten to three," hesaid. "No time for the intellectual embryos, I'm afraid. We mustgo up to the Nurseries before the children have finished theirafternoon sleep."

Mr. Foster was disappointed. "At least one glance at theDecanting Room," he pleaded.

"Very well then." The Director smiled indulgently. "Just oneglance."

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Chapter Two

MR. F OSTER was left in the Decanting Room. The D.H.C. and hisstudents stepped into the nearest lift and were carried up to thefifth floor.

INFANT NURSERIES. NEO-PAVLOVIAN CONDITIONING ROOMS, announced thenotice board.

The Director opened a door. They were in a large bare room, verybright and sunny; for the whole of the southern wall was a singlewindow. Half a dozen nurses, trousered and jacketed in theregulation white viscose-linen uniform, their hair asepticallyhidden under white caps, were engaged in setting out bowls ofroses in a long row across the floor. Big bowls, packed tightwith blossom. Thousands of petals, ripe-blown and silkily smooth,like the cheeks of innumerable little cherubs, but of cherubs, inthat bright light, not exclusively pink and Aryan, but alsoluminously Chinese, also Mexican, also apoplectic with too muchblowing of celestial trumpets, also pale as death, pale with theposthumous whiteness of marble.

The nurses stiffened to attention as the D.H.C. came in.

"Set out the books," he said curtly.

In silence the nurses obeyed his command. Between the rose bowlsthe books were duly set out–a row of nursery quartos openedinvitingly each at some gaily coloured image of beast or fish orbird.

"Now bring in the children."

They hurried out of the room and returned in a minute or two,each pushing a kind of tall dumb-waiter laden, on all its fourwire-netted shelves, with eight-month-old babies, all exactlyalike (a Bokanovsky Group, it was evident) and all (since theircaste was Delta) dressed in khaki.

"Put them down on the floor."

The infants were unloaded.

"Now turn them so that they can see the flowers and books."

Turned, the babies at once fell silent, then began to crawltowards those clusters of sleek colours, those shapes so gay andbrilliant on the white pages. As they approached, the sun cameout of a momentary eclipse behind a cloud. The roses flamed up asthough with a sudden passion from within; a new and profoundsignificance seemed to suffuse the shining pages of the books.From the ranks of the crawling babies came little squeals ofexcitement, gurgles and twitterings of pleasure.

The Director rubbed his hands. "Excellent!" he said. "It mightalmost have been done on purpose."

The swiftest crawlers were already at their goal. Small handsreached out uncertainly, touched, grasped, unpetaling thetransfigured roses, crumpling the illuminated pages of the books.The Director waited until all were happily busy. Then, "Watchcarefully," he said. And, lifting his hand, he gave the signal.

The Head Nurse, who was standing by a switchboard at the otherend of the room, pressed down a little lever.

There was a violent explosion. Shriller and ever shriller, asiren shrieked. Alarm bells maddeningly sounded.

The children started, screamed; their faces were distorted withterror.

"And now," the Director shouted (for the noise was deafening),"now we proceed to rub in the lesson with a mild electric shock."

He waved his hand again, and the Head Nurse pressed a secondlever. The screaming of the babies suddenly changed its tone.There was something desperate, almost insane, about the sharpspasmodic yelps to which they now gave utterance. Their littlebodies twitched and stiffened; their limbs moved jerkily as if tothe tug of unseen wires.

"We can electrify that whole strip of floor," bawled the Directorin explanation. "But that's enough," he signalled to the nurse.

The explosions ceased, the bells stopped ringing, the shriek ofthe siren died down from tone to tone into silence. The stifflytwitching bodies relaxed, and what had become the sob and yelp ofinfant maniacs broadened out once more into a normal howl ofordinary terror.

"Offer them the flowers and the books again."

The nurses obeyed; but at the approach of the roses, at the meresight of those gaily-coloured images of pussy andcock-a-doodle-doo and baa-baa black sheep, the infants shrankaway in horror, the volume of their howling suddenly increased.

"Observe," said the Director triumphantly, "observe."

Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks–already in theinfant mind these couples were compromisingly linked; and aftertwo hundred repetitions of the same or a similar lesson would bewedded indissolubly. What man has joined, nature is powerless toput asunder.

"They'll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an'instinctive' hatred of books and flowers. Reflexes unalterablyconditioned. They'll be safe from books and botany all theirlives." The Director turned to his nurses. "Take them awayagain."

Still yelling, the khaki babies were loaded on to theirdumb-waiters and wheeled out, leaving behind them the smell ofsour milk and a most welcome silence.

One of the students held up his hand; and though he could seequite well why you couldn't have lower-cast people wasting theCommunity's time over books, and that there was always the riskof their reading something which might undesirably deconditionone of their reflexes, yet ... well, he couldn't understand aboutthe flowers. Why go to the trouble of making it psychologicallyimpossible for Deltas to like flowers?

Patiently the D.H.C. explained. If the children were made toscream at the sight of a rose, that was on grounds of higheconomic policy. Not so very long ago (a century or thereabouts),Gammas, Deltas, even Epsilons, had been conditioned to likeflowers–flowers in particular and wild nature in general. Theidea was to make them want to be going out into the country atevery available opportunity, and so compel them to consumetransport.

"And didn't they consume transport?" asked the student.

"Quite a lot," the D.H.C. replied. "But nothing else."

Primroses and landscapes, he pointed out, have one grave defect:they are gratuitous. A love of nature keeps no factories busy. Itwas decided to abolish the love of nature, at any rate among thelower classes; to abolish the love of nature, but not thetendency to consume transport. For of course it was essentialthat they should keep on going to the country, even though theyhated it. The problem was to find an economically sounder reasonfor consuming transport than a mere affection for primroses andlandscapes. It was duly found.

"We condition the masses to hate the country," concluded theDirector. "But simultaneously we condition them to love allcountry sports. At the same time, we see to it that all countrysports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus. So that theyconsume manufactured articles as well as transport. Hence thoseelectric shocks."

"I see," said the student, and was silent, lost in admiration.

There was a silence; then, clearing his throat, "Once upon atime," the Director began, "while our Ford was still on earth,there was a little boy called Reuben Rabinovitch. Reuben was thechild of Polish-speaking parents."

The Director interrupted himself. "You know what Polish is, Isuppose?"

"A dead language."

"Like French and German," added another student, officiouslyshowing off his learning.

"And 'parent'?" questioned the D.H.C.

There was an uneasy silence. Several of the boys blushed. Theyhad not yet learned to draw the significant but often very finedistinction between smut and pure science. One, at last, had thecourage to raise a hand.

"Human beings used to be ..." he hesitated; the blood rushed tohis cheeks. "Well, they used to be viviparous."

"Quite right." The Director nodded approvingly.

"And when the babies were decanted ..."

"'Born,'" came the correction.

"Well, then they were the parents–I mean, not the babies, ofcourse; the other ones." The poor boy was overwhelmed withconfusion.

"In brief," the Director summed up, "the parents were the fatherand the mother." The smut that was really science fell with acrash into the boys' eye-avoiding silence. "Mother," he repeatedloudly rubbing in the science; and, leaning back in his chair,"These," he said gravely, "are unpleasant facts; I know it. Butthen most historical facts are unpleasant."

He returned to Little Reuben–to Little Reuben, in whose room, oneevening, by an oversight, his father and mother (crash, crash!)happened to leave the radio turned on.

("For you must remember that in those days of gross viviparousreproduction, children were always brought up by their parentsand not in State Conditioning Centres.")

While the child was asleep, a broadcast programme from Londonsuddenly started to come through; and the next morning, to theastonishment of his crash and crash (the more daring of the boysventured to grin at one another), Little Reuben woke up repeatingword for word a long lecture by that curious old writer ("one ofthe very few whose works have been permitted to come down tous"), George Bernard Shaw, who was speaking, according to awell-authenticated tradition, about his own genius. To LittleReuben's wink and snigger, this lecture was, of course, perfectlyincomprehensible and, imagining that their child had suddenlygone mad, they sent for a doctor. He, fortunately, understoodEnglish, recognized the discourse as that which Shaw hadbroadcasted the previous evening, realized the significance ofwhat had happened, and sent a letter to the medical press aboutit.

"The principle of sleep-teaching, or hypnopædia, had beendiscovered." The D.H.C. made an impressive pause.

The principle had been discovered; but many, many years were toelapse before that principle was usefully applied.

"The case of Little Reuben occurred only twenty-three years afterOur Ford's first T-Model was put on the market." (Here theDirector made a sign of the T on his stomach and all the studentsreverently followed suit.) "And yet ..."

Furiously the students scribbled. " Hypnopædia, first usedofficially in A.F. 214. Why not before? Two reasons. (a) ..."

"These early experimenters," the D.H.C. was saying, "were on thewrong track. They thought that hypnopædia could be made aninstrument of intellectual education ..."

(A small boy asleep on his right side, the right arm stuck out,the right hand hanging limp over the edge of the bed. Through around grating in the side of a box a voice speaks softly.

"The Nile is the longest river in Africa and the second in lengthof all the rivers of the globe. Although falling short of thelength of the Mississippi-Missouri, the Nile is at the head ofall rivers as regards the length of its basin, which extendsthrough 35 degrees of latitude ..."

At breakfast the next morning, "Tommy," some one says, "do youknow which is the longest river in Africa?" A shaking of thehead. "But don't you remember something that begins: The Nile isthe ..."

"The - Nile - is - the - longest - river - in - Africa - and -the - second - in - length - of - all - the - rivers - of - the -globe ..." The words come rushing out. "Although - falling -short - of ..."

"Well now, which is the longest river in Africa?"

The eyes are blank. "I don't know."

"But the Nile, Tommy."

"The - Nile - is - the - longest - river - in - Africa - and -second ..."

"Then which river is the longest, Tommy?"

Tommy burst into tears. "I don't know," he howls.)

That howl, the Director made it plain, discouraged the earliestinvestigators. The experiments were abandoned. No further attemptwas made to teach children the length of the Nile in their sleep.Quite rightly. You can't learn a science unless you know whatit's all about.

"Whereas, if they'd only started on moral education," said theDirector, leading the way towards the door. The students followedhim, desperately scribbling as they walked and all the way up inthe lift. "Moral education, which ought never, in anycircumstances, to be rational."

"Silence, silence," whispered a loud speaker as they stepped outat the fourteenth floor, and "Silence, silence," the trumpetmouths indefatigably repeated at intervals down every corridor.The students and even the Director himself rose automatically tothe tips of their toes. They were Alphas, of course, but evenAlphas have been well conditioned. "Silence, silence." All theair of the fourteenth floor was sibilant with the categoricalimperative.

Fifty yards of tiptoeing brought them to a door which theDirector cautiously opened. They stepped over the threshold intothe twilight of a shuttered dormitory. Eighty cots stood in a rowagainst the wall. There was a sound of light regular breathingand a continuous murmur, as of very faint voices remotelywhispering.

A nurse rose as they entered and came to attention before theDirector.

"What's the lesson this afternoon?" he asked.

"We had Elementary Sex for the first forty minutes," sheanswered. "But now it's switched over to Elementary ClassConsciousness."

The Director walked slowly down the long line of cots. Rosy andrelaxed with sleep, eighty little boys and girls lay softlybreathing. There was a whisper under every pillow. The D.H.C.halted and, bending over one of the little beds, listenedattentively.

"Elementary Class Consciousness, did you say? Let's have itrepeated a little louder by the trumpet."

At the end of the room a loud speaker projected from the wall.The Director walked up to it and pressed a switch.

"... all wear green," said a soft but very distinct voice,beginning in the middle of a sentence, "and Delta Children wearkhaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. AndEpsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to reador write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastlycolour. I'm so glad I'm a Beta."

There was a pause; then the voice began again.

"Alpha children wear grey They work much harder than we do,because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfuly glad I'ma Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much betterthan the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all weargreen, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to playwith Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're toostupid to be able ..."

The Director pushed back the switch. The voice was silent. Onlyits thin ghost continued to mutter from beneath the eightypillows.

"They'll have that repeated forty or fifty times more before theywake; then again on Thursday, and again on Saturday. A hundredand twenty times three times a week for thirty months. Afterwhich they go on to a more advanced lesson."

Roses and electric shocks, the khaki of Deltas and a whiff ofasafœtida–wedded indissolubly before the child can speak. Butwordless conditioning is crude and wholesale; cannot bring homethe finer distinctions, cannot inculcate the more complex coursesof behaviour. For that there must be words, but words withoutreason. In brief, hypnopædia.

"The greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time."

The students took it down in their little books. Straight fromthe horse's mouth.

Once more the Director touched the switch.

"... so frightfully clever," the soft, insinuating, indefatigablevoice was saying, "I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because..."

Not so much like drops of water, though water, it is true, canwear holes in the hardest granite; rather, drops of liquidsealing-wax, drops that adhere, incrust, incorporate themselveswith what they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarletblob.

"Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sumof the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mindonly. The adult's mind too–all his life long. The mind thatjudges and desires and decides–made up of these suggestions. Butall these suggestions are our suggestions!" The Director almostshouted in his triumph. "Suggestions from the State." He bangedthe nearest table. "It therefore follows ..."

A noise made him turn round.

"Oh, Ford!" he said in another tone, "I've gone and woken thechildren."

---------------------------------

Chapter Three

OUTSIDE, in the garden, it was playtime. Naked in the warm Junesunshine, six or seven hundred little boys and girls were runningwith shrill yells over the lawns, or playing ball games, orsquatting silently in twos and threes among the flowering shrubs.The roses were in bloom, two nightingales soliloquized in theboskage, a cuckoo was just going out of tune among the limetrees. The air was drowsy with the murmur of bees andhelicopters.

The Director and his students stood for a short time watching agame of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy. Twenty children were grouped ina circle round a chrome steel tower. A ball thrown up so as toland on the platform at the top of the tower rolled down into theinterior, fell on a rapidly revolving disk, was hurled throughone or other of the numerous apertures pierced in the cylindricalcasing, and had to be caught.

"Strange," mused the Director, as they turned away, "strange tothink that even in Our Ford's day most games were played withoutmore apparatus than a ball or two and a few sticks and perhaps abit of netting. imagine the folly of allowing people to playelaborate games which do nothing whatever to increaseconsumption. It's madness. Nowadays the Controllers won't approveof any new game unless it can be shown that it requires at leastas much apparatus as the most complicated of existing games." Heinterrupted himself.

"That's a charming little group," he said, pointing.

In a little grassy bay between tall clumps of Mediterraneanheather, two children, a little boy of about seven and a littlegirl who might have been a year older, were playing, very gravelyand with all the focussed attention of scientists intent on alabour of discovery, a rudimentary sexual game.

"Charming, charming!" the D.H.C. repeated sentimentally.

"Charming," the boys politely agreed. But their smile was ratherpatronizing. They had put aside similar childish amusements toorecently to be able to watch them now without a touch ofcontempt. Charming? but it was just a pair of kids fooling about;that was all. Just kids.

"I always think," the Director was continuing in the same rathermaudlin tone, when he was interrupted by a loud boo-hooing.

From a neighbouring shrubbery emerged a nurse, leading by thehand a small boy, who howled as he went. An anxious-lookinglittle girl trotted at her heels.

"What's the matter?" asked the Director.

The nurse shrugged her shoulders. "Nothing much," she answered."It's just that this little boy seems rather reluctant to join inthe ordinary erotic play. I'd noticed it once or twice before.And now again to-day. He started yelling just now ..."

"Honestly," put in the anxious-looking little girl, "I didn'tmean to hurt him or anything. Honestly."

"Of course you didn't, dear," said the nurse reassuringly. "Andso," she went on, turning back to the Director, "I'm taking himin to see the Assistant Superintendent of Psychology. Just to seeif anything's at all abnormal."

"Quite right," said the Director. "Take him in. You stay here,little girl," he added, as the nurse moved away with her stillhowling charge. "What's your name?"

"Polly Trotsky."

"And a very good name too," said the Director. "Run away now andsee if you can find some other little boy to play with."

The child scampered off into the bushes and was lost to sight.

"Exquisite little creature!" said the Director, looking afterher. Then, turning to his students, "What I'm going to tell younow," he said, "may sound incredible. But then, when you're notaccustomed to history, most facts about the past do soundincredible."

He let out the amazing truth. For a very long period before thetime of Our Ford, and even for some generations afterwards,erotic play between children had been regarded as abnormal (therewas a roar of laughter); and not only abnormal, actually immoral(no!): and had therefore been rigorously suppressed.

A look of astonished incredulity appeared on the faces of hislisteners. Poor little kids not allowed to amuse themselves? Theycould not believe it.

"Even adolescents," the D.H.C. was saying, "even adolescents likeyourselves ..."

"Not possible!"

"Barring a little surreptitious auto-erotism andhomosexuality–absolutely nothing."

"Nothing?"

"In most cases, till they were over twenty years old."

"Twenty years old?" echoed the students in a chorus of louddisbelief.

"Twenty," the Director repeated. "I told you that you'd find itincredible."

"But what happened?" they asked. "What were the results?"

"The results were terrible." A deep resonant voice brokestartlingly into the dialogue.

They looked around. On the fringe of the little group stood astranger–a man of middle height, black-haired, with a hookednose, full red lips, eyes very piercing and dark. "Terrible," herepeated.

The D.H.C. had at that moment sat down on one of the steel andrubber benches conveniently scattered through the gardens; but atthe sight of the stranger, he sprang to his feet and dartedforward, his hand outstretched, smiling with all his teeth,effusive.

"Controller! What an unexpected pleasure! Boys, what are youthinking of? This is the Controller; this is his fordship,Mustapha Mond."

In the four thousand rooms of the Centre the four thousandelectric clocks simultaneously struck four. Discarnate voicescalled from the trumpet mouths.

"Main Day-shift off duty. Second Day-shift take over. MainDay-shift off ..."

In the lift, on their way up to the changing rooms, Henry Fosterand the Assistant Director of Predestination rather pointedlyturned their backs on Bernard Marx from the Psychology Bureau:averted themselves from that unsavoury reputation.

The faint hum and rattle of machinery still stirred the crimsonair in the Embryo Store. Shifts might come and go, onelupus-coloured face give place to another; majestically and forever the conveyors crept forward with their load of future menand women.

Lenina Crowne walked briskly towards the door.

His fordship Mustapha Mond! The eyes of the saluting studentsalmost popped out of their heads. Mustapha Mond! The ResidentController for Western Europe! One of the Ten World Controllers.One of the Ten ... and he sat down on the bench with the D.H.C.,he was going to stay, to stay, yes, and actually talk to them ...straight from the horse's mouth. Straight from the mouth of Fordhimself.

Two shrimp-brown children emerged from a neighbouring shrubbery,stared at them for a moment with large, astonished eyes, thenreturned to their amusements among the leaves.

"You all remember," said the Controller, in his strong deepvoice, "you all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspiredsaying of Our Ford's: History is bunk. History," he repeatedslowly, "is bunk."

He waved his hand; and it was as though, with an invisiblefeather wisk, he had brushed away a little dust, and the dust wasHarappa, was Ur of the Chaldees; some spider-webs, and they wereThebes and Babylon and Cnossos and Mycenae. Whisk. Whisk–andwhere was Odysseus, where was Job, where were Jupiter and Gotamaand Jesus? Whisk–and those specks of antique dirt called Athensand Rome, Jerusalem and the Middle Kingdom–all were gone.Whisk–the place where Italy had been was empty. Whisk, thecathedrals; whisk, whisk, King Lear and the Thoughts of Pascal.Whisk, Passion; whisk, Requiem; whisk, Symphony; whisk ...

"Going to the Feelies this evening, Henry?" enquired theAssistant Predestinator. "I hear the new one at the Alhambra isfirst-rate. There's a love scene on a bearskin rug; they say it'smarvellous. Every hair of the bear reproduced. The most amazingtactual effects."

"That's why you're taught no history," the Controller was saying."But now the time has come ..."

The D.H.C. looked at him nervously. There were those strangerumours of old forbidden books hidden in a safe in theController's study. Bibles, poetry–Ford knew what.

Mustapha Mond intercepted his anxious glance and the corners ofhis red lips twitched ironically.

"It's all right, Director," he said in a tone of faint derision,"I won't corrupt them."

The D.H.C. was overwhelmed with confusion.

Those who feel themselves despised do well to look despising. Thesmile on Bernard Marx's face was contemptuous. Every hair on thebear indeed!

"I shall make a point of going," said Henry Foster.

Mustapha Mond leaned forward, shook a finger at them. "Just tryto realize it," he said, and his voice sent a strange thrillquivering along their diaphragms. "Try to realize what it waslike to have a viviparous mother."

That smutty word again. But none of them dreamed, this time, ofsmiling.

"Try to imagine what 'living with one's family' meant."

They tried; but obviously without the smallest success.

"And do you know what a 'home' was?"

They shook their heads.

From her dim crimson cellar Lenina Crowne shot up seventeenstories, turned to the right as she stepped out of the lift,walked down a long corridor and, opening the door marked GIRLS'DRESSING-ROOM, plunged into a deafening chaos of arms and bosomsand underclothing. Torrents of hot water were splashing into orgurgling out of a hundred baths. Rumbling and hissing, eightyvibro-vacuum massage machines were simultaneously kneading andsucking the firm and sunburnt flesh of eighty superb femalespecimens. Every one was talking at the top of her voice. ASynthetic Music machine was warbling out a super-cornet solo.

"Hullo, Fanny," said Lenina to the young woman who had the pegsand locker next to hers.

Fanny worked in the Bottling Room, and her surname was alsoCrowne. But as the two thousand million inhabitants of the planthad only ten thousand names between them, the coincidence was notparticularly surprising.

Lenina pulled at her zippers-downwards on the jacket, downwardswith a double-handed gesture at the two that held trousers,downwards again to loosen her undergarment. Still wearing hershoes and stockings, she walked off towards the bathrooms.

Home, home–a few small rooms, stiflingly over-inhabited by a man,by a periodically teeming woman, by a rabble of boys and girls ofall ages. No air, no space; an understerilized prison; darkness,disease, and smells.

(The Controller's evocation was so vivid that one of the boys,more sensitive than the rest, turned pale at the mere descriptionand was on the point of being sick.)

Lenina got out of the bath, toweled herself dry, took hold of along flexible tube plugged into the wall, presented the nozzle toher breast, as though she meant to commit suicide, pressed downthe trigger. A blast of warmed air dusted her with the finesttalcum powder. Eight different scents and eau-de-Cologne werelaid on in little taps over the wash-basin. She turned on thethird from the left, dabbed herself with chypre and, carrying hershoes and stockings in her hand, went out to see if one of thevibro-vacuum machines were free.

And home was as squalid psychically as physically. Psychically,it was a rabbit hole, a midden, hot with the frictions of tightlypacked life, reeking with emotion. What suffocating intimacies,what dangerous, insane, obscene relationships between the membersof the family group! Maniacally, the mother brooded over herchildren (her children) ... brooded over them like a cat over itskittens; but a cat that could talk, a cat that could say, "Mybaby, my baby," over and over again. "My baby, and oh, oh, at mybreast, the little hands, the hunger, and that unspeakableagonizing pleasure! Till at last my baby sleeps, my baby sleepswith a bubble of white milk at the corner of his mouth. My littlebaby sleeps ..."

"Yes," said Mustapha Mond, nodding his head, "you may wellshudder."

"Who are you going out with to-night?" Lenina asked, returningfrom the vibro-vac like a pearl illuminated from within, pinklyglowing.

"Nobody."

Lenina raised her eyebrows in astonishment.

"I've been feeling rather out of sorts lately," Fanny explained."Dr. Wells advised me to have a Pregnancy Substitute."

"But, my dear, you're only nineteen. The first PregnancySubstitute isn't compulsory till twenty-one."

"I know, dear. But some people are better if they begin earlier.Dr. Wells told me that brunettes with wide pelvises, like me,ought to have their first Pregnancy Substitute at seventeen. SoI'm really two years late, not two years early." She opened thedoor of her locker and pointed to the row of boxes and labelledphials on the upper shelf.

"SYRUP OF CORPUS LUTEUM," Lenina read the names aloud. "OVARIN,GUARANTEED FRESH: NOT TO BE USED AFTER AUGUST 1ST, A.F. 632.MAMMARY GLAND EXTRACT: TO BE TAKEN THREE TIMES DAILY, BEFOREMEALS, WITH A LITTLE WATER. PLACENTIN: 5cc TO BE INJECTEDINTRAVENALLY EVERY THIRD DAY ... Ugh!" Lenina shuddered. "How Iloathe intravenals, don't you?"

"Yes. But when they do one good ..." Fanny was a particularlysensible girl.

Our Ford–or Our Freud, as, for some inscrutable reason, he choseto call himself whenever he spoke of psychological matters–OurFreud had been the first to reveal the appalling dangers offamily life. The world was full of fathers–was therefore full ofmisery; full of mothers–therefore of every kind of perversionfrom sadism to chastity; full of brothers, sisters, uncles,aunts–full of madness and suicide.

"And yet, among the savages of Samoa, in certain islands off thecoast of New Guinea ..."

The tropical sunshine lay like warm honey on the naked bodies ofchildren tumbling promiscuously among the hibiscus blossoms. Homewas in any one of twenty palm-thatched houses. In the Trobriandsconception was the work of ancestral ghosts; nobody had everheard of a father.

"Extremes," said the Controller, "meet. For the good reason thatthey were made to meet."

"Dr. Wells says that a three months' Pregnancy Substitute nowwill make all the difference to my health for the next three orfour years."

"Well, I hope he's right," said Lenina. "But, Fanny, do youreally mean to say that for the next three months you're notsupposed to ..."

"Oh no, dear. Only for a week or two, that's all. I shall spendthe evening at the Club playing Musical Bridge. I suppose you'regoing out?"

Lenina nodded.

"Who with?"

"Henry Foster."

"Again?" Fanny's kind, rather moon-like face took on anincongruous expression of pained and disapproving astonishment."Do you mean to tell me you're still going out with HenryFoster?"

Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. But there were alsohusbands, wives, lovers. There were also monogamy and romance.

"Though you probably don't know what those are," said MustaphaMond.

They shook their heads.

Family, monogamy, romance. Everywhere exclusiveness, a narrowchannelling of impulse and energy.

"But every one belongs to every one else," he concluded, citingthe hypnopædic proverb.

The students nodded, emphatically agreeing with a statement whichupwards of sixty-two thousand repetitions in the dark had madethem accept, not merely as true, but as axiomatic, self-evident,utterly indisputable.

"But after all," Lenina was protesting, "it's only about fourmonths now since I've been having Henry."

"Only four months! I like that. And what's more," Fanny went on,pointing an accusing finger, "there's been nobody else exceptHenry all that time. Has there?"

Lenina blushed scarlet; but her eyes, the tone of her voiceremained defiant. "No, there hasn't been any one else," sheanswered almost truculently. "And I jolly well don't see whythere should have been."

"Oh, she jolly well doesn't see why there should have been,"Fanny repeated, as though to an invisible listener behindLenina's left shoulder. Then, with a sudden change of tone, "Butseriously," she said, "I really do think you ought to be careful.It's such horribly bad form to go on and on like this with oneman. At forty, or thirty-five, it wouldn't be so bad. But at yourage, Lenina! No, it really won't do. And you know how stronglythe D.H.C. objects to anything intense or long-drawn. Four monthsof Henry Foster, without having another man–why, he'd be furiousif he knew ..."

"Think of water under pressure in a pipe." They thought of it. "Ipierce it once," said the Controller. "What a jet!"

He pierced it twenty times. There were twenty piddling littlefountains.

"My baby. My baby ...!"

"Mother!" The madness is infectious.

"My love, my one and only, precious, precious ..."

Mother, monogamy, romance. High spurts the fountain; fierce andfoamy the wild jet. The urge has but a single outlet. My love, mybaby. No wonder these poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked andmiserable. Their world didn't allow them to take things easily,didn't allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothersand lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditionedto obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, whatwith all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what withthe uncertainties and the poverty–they were forced to feelstrongly. And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more, insolitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they bestable?

"Of course there's no need to give him up. Have somebody elsefrom time to time, that's all. He has other girls, doesn't he?"

Lenina admitted it.

"Of course he does. Trust Henry Foster to be the perfectgentleman–always correct. And then there's the Director to thinkof. You know what a stickler ..."

Nodding, "He patted me on the behind this afternoon," saidLenina.

"There, you see!" Fanny was triumphant. "That shows what hestands for. The strictest conventionality."

"Stability," said the Controller, "stability. No civilizationwithout social stability. No social stability without individualstability." His voice was a trumpet. Listening they felt larger,warmer.

The machine turns, turns and must keep on turning–for ever. It isdeath if it stands still. A thousand millions scrabbled the crustof the earth. The wheels began to turn. In a hundred and fiftyyears there were two thousand millions. Stop all the wheels. In ahundred and fifty weeks there are once more only a thousandmillions; a thousand thousand thousand men and women have starvedto death.

Wheels must turn steadily, but cannot turn untended. There mustbe men to tend them, men as steady as the wheels upon theiraxles, sane men, obedient men, stable in contentment.

Crying: My baby, my mother, my only, only love groaning: My sin,my terrible God; screaming with pain, muttering with fever,bemoaning old age and poverty–how can they tend the wheels? Andif they cannot tend the wheels ... The corpses of a thousandthousand thousand men and women would be hard to bury or burn.

"And after all," Fanny's tone was coaxing, "it's not as thoughthere were anything painful or disagreeable about having one ortwo men besides Henry. And seeing that you ought to be a littlemore promiscuous ..."

"Stability," insisted the Controller, "stability. The primal andthe ultimate need. Stability. Hence all this."

With a wave of his hand he indicated the gardens, the hugebuilding of the Conditioning Centre, the naked children furtivein the undergrowth or running across the lawns.

Lenina shook her head. "Somehow," she mused, "I hadn't beenfeeling very keen on promiscuity lately. There are times when onedoesn't. Haven't you found that too, Fanny?"

Fanny nodded her sympathy and understanding. "But one's got tomake the effort," she said, sententiously, "one's got to play thegame. After all, every one belongs to every one else."

"Yes, every one belongs to every one else," Lenina repeatedslowly and, sighing, was silent for a moment; then, takingFanny's hand, gave it a little squeeze. "You're quite right,Fanny. As usual. I'll make the effort."

Impulse arrested spills over, and the flood is feeling, the floodis passion, the flood is even madness: it depends on the force ofthe current, the height and strength of the barrier. Theunchecked stream flows smoothly down its appointed channels intoa calm well-being. (The embryo is hungry; day in, day out, theblood-surrogate pump unceasingly turns its eight hundredrevolutions a minute. The decanted infant howls; at once a nurseappears with a bottle of external secretion. Feeling lurks inthat interval of time between desire and its consummation.Shorten that interval, break down all those old unnecessarybarriers.

"Fortunate boys!" said the Controller. "No pains have been sparedto make your lives emotionally easy–to preserve you, so far asthat is possible, from having emotions at all."

"Ford's in his flivver," murmured the D.H.C. "All's well with theworld."

"Lenina Crowne?" said Henry Foster, echoing the AssistantPredestinator's question as he zipped up his trousers. "Oh, she'sa splendid girl. Wonderfully pneumatic. I'm surprised you haven'thad her."

"I can't think how it is I haven't," said the AssistantPredestinator. "I certainly will. At the first opportunity."

From his place on the opposite side of the changing-room aisle,Bernard Marx overheard what they were saying and turned pale.

"And to tell the truth," said Lenina, "I'm beginning to get justa tiny bit bored with nothing but Henry every day." She pulled onher left stocking. "Do you know Bernard Marx?" she asked in atone whose excessive casualness was evidently forced.

Fanny looked startled. "You don't mean to say ...?"

"Why not? Bernard's an Alpha Plus. Besides, he asked me to go toone of the Savage Reservations with him. I've always wanted tosee a Savage Reservation."

"But his reputation?"

"What do I care about his reputation?"

"They say he doesn't like Obstacle Golf."

"They say, they say," mocked Lenina.

"And then he spends most of his time by himself–alone." There washorror in Fanny's voice.

"Well, he won't be alone when he's with me. And anyhow, why arepeople so beastly to him? I think he's rather sweet." She smiledto herself; how absurdly shy he had been! Frightened almost–asthough she were a World Controller and he a Gamma-Minus machineminder.

"Consider your own lives," said Mustapha Mond. "Has any of youever encountered an insurmountable obstacle?"

The question was answered by a negative silence.

"Has any of you been compelled to live through a longtime-interval between the consciousness of a desire and itsfufilment?"

"Well," began one of the boys, and hesitated.

"Speak up," said the D.H.C. "Don't keep his fordship waiting."

"I once had to wait nearly four weeks before a girl I wantedwould let me have her."

"And you felt a strong emotion in consequence?"

"Horrible!"

"Horrible; precisely," said the Controller. "Our ancestors wereso stupid and short-sighted that when the first reformers camealong and offered to deliver them from those horrible emotions,they wouldn't have anything to do with them."

"Talking about her as though she were a bit of meat." Bernardground his teeth. "Have her here, have her there." Like mutton.Degrading her to so much mutton. She said she'd think it over,she said she'd give me an answer this week. Oh, Ford, Ford,Ford." He would have liked to go up to them and hit them in theface–hard, again and again.

"Yes, I really do advise you to try her," Henry Foster wassaying.

"Take Ectogenesis. Pfitzner and Kawaguchi had got the wholetechnique worked out. But would the Governments look at it? No.There was something called Christianity. Women were forced to goon being viviparous."

"He's so ugly!" said Fanny.

"But I rather like his looks."

"And then so small ." Fanny made a grimace; smallness was sohorribly and typically low-caste.

"I think that's rather sweet," said Lenina. "One feels one wouldlike to pet him. You know. Like a cat."

Fanny was shocked. "They say somebody made a mistake when he wasstill in the bottle–thought he was a Gamma and put alcohol intohis blood-surrogate. That's why he's so stunted."

"What nonsense!" Lenina was indignant.

"Sleep teaching was actually prohibited in England. There wassomething called liberalism. Parliament, if you know what thatwas, passed a law against it. The records survive. Speeches aboutliberty of the subject. Liberty to be inefficient and miserable.Freedom to be a round peg in a square hole."

"But, my dear chap, you're welcome, I assure you. You'rewelcome." Henry Foster patted the Assistant Predestinator on theshoulder. "Every one belongs to every one else, after all."

One hundred repetitions three nights a week for four years,thought Bernard Marx, who was a specialist on hypnopædia.Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth.Idiots!

"Or the Caste System. Constantly proposed, constantly rejected.There was something called democracy. As though men were morethan physico-chemically equal."

"Well, all I can say is that I'm going to accept his invitation."

Bernard hated them, hated them. But they were two, they werelarge, they were strong.

"The Nine Years' War began in A.F. 141."

"Not even if it were true about the alcohol in hisblood-surrogate."

"Phosgene, chloropicrin, ethyl iodoacetate, diphenylcyanarsine,trichlormethyl, chloroformate, dichlorethyl sulphide. Not tomention hydrocyanic acid."

"Which I simply don't believe," Lenina concluded.

"The noise of fourteen thousand aeroplanes advancing in openorder. But in the Kurfurstendamm and the Eighth Arrondissement,the explosion of the anthrax bombs is hardly louder than thepopping of a paper bag."

"Because I do want to see a Savage Reservation."

Ch 3C6 H2 (NO2) 3+Hg(CNO)2 =well, what? An enormous hole in theground, a pile of masonry, some bits of flesh and mucus, a foot,with the boot still on it, flying through the air and landing,flop, in the middle of the geraniums–the scarlet ones; such asplendid show that summer!

"You're hopeless, Lenina, I give you up."

"The Russian technique for infecting water supplies wasparticularly ingenious."

Back turned to back, Fanny and Lenina continued their changing insilence.

"The Nine Years' War, the great Economic Collapse. There was achoice between World Control and destruction. Between stabilityand ..."

"Fanny Crowne's a nice girl too," said the AssistantPredestinator.

In the nurseries, the Elementary Class Consciousness lesson wasover, the voices were adapting future demand to future industrialsupply. "I do love flying," they whispered, "I do love flying, Ido love having new clothes, I do love ..."

"Liberalism, of course, was dead of anthrax, but all the same youcouldn't do things by force."

"Not nearly so pneumatic as Lenina. Oh, not nearly.""But old clothes are beastly," continued the untiring whisper."We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending,ending is better than mending, ending is better ..."

"Government's an affair of sitting, not hitting. You rule withthe brains and the buttocks, never with the fists. For example,there was the conscription of consumption."

"There, I'm ready," said Lenina, but Fanny remained speechlessand averted. "Let's make peace, Fanny darling."

"Every man, woman and child compelled to consume so much a year.In the interests of industry. The sole result ..."

"Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the lessriches; the more stitches ..."

"One of these days," said Fanny, with dismal emphasis, "you'llget into trouble."

"Conscientious objection on an enormous scale. Anything not toconsume. Back to nature."

"I do love flying. I do love flying."

"Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can't consumemuch if you sit still and read books."

"Do I look all right?" Lenina asked. Her jacket was made ofbottle green acetate cloth with green viscose fur; at the cuffsand collar.

"Eight hundred Simple Lifers were mowed down by machine guns atGolders Green."

"Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending."

Green corduroy shorts and white viscose-woollen stockings turneddown below the knee.

"Then came the famous British Museum Massacre. Two thousandculture fans gassed with dichlorethyl sulphide."

A green-and-white jockey cap shaded Lenina's eyes; her shoes werebright green and highly polished.

"In the end," said Mustapha Mond, "the Controllers realized thatforce was no good. The slower but infinitely surer methods ofectogenesis, neo-Pavlovian conditioning and hypnopædia ..."

And round her waist she wore a silver-mounted greenmorocco-surrogate cartridge belt, bulging (for Lenina was not afreemartin) with the regulation supply of contraceptives.

"The discoveries of Pfitzner and Kawaguchi were at last made useof. An intensive propaganda against viviparous reproduction ..."

"Perfect!" cried Fanny enthusiastically. She could never resistLenina's charm for long. "And what a perfectly sweet Malthusianbelt!"

"Accompanied by a campaign against the Past; by the closing ofmuseums, the blowing up of historical monuments (luckily most ofthem had already been destroyed during the Nine Years' War); bythe suppression of all books published before A.F. 15O.''

"I simply must get one like it," said Fanny.

"There were some things called the pyramids, for example.

"My old black-patent bandolier ..."

"And a man called Shakespeare. You've never heard of them ofcourse."

"It's an absolute disgrace–that bandolier of mine."

"Such are the advantages of a really scientific education."

"The more stitches the less riches; the more stitches the less..."

"The introduction of Our Ford's first T-Model ..."

"I've had it nearly three months."

"Chosen as the opening date of the new era."

"Ending is better than mending; ending is better ..."

"There was a thing, as I've said before, called Christianity."

"Ending is better than mending."

"The ethics and philosophy of under-consumption ..."

"I love new clothes, I love new clothes, I love ..."

"So essential when there was under-production; but in an age ofmachines and the fixation of nitrogen–positively a crime againstsociety."

"Henry Foster gave it me."

"All crosses had their tops cut and became T's. There was also athing called God."

"It's real morocco-surrogate."

"We have the World State now. And Ford's Day celebrations, andCommunity Sings, and Solidarity Services."

"Ford, how I hate them!" Bernard Marx was thinking.

"There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used todrink enormous quantities of alcohol."

"Like meat, like so much meat."

"There was a thing called the soul and a thing calledimmortality."

"Do ask Henry where he got it."

"But they used to take morphia and cocaine."

"And what makes it worse, she thinks of herself as meat."

"Two thousand pharmacologists and bio-chemists were subsidized inA.P. 178."

"He does look glum," said the Assistant Predestinator, pointingat Bernard Marx.

"Six years later it was being produced commercially. The perfectdrug."

"Let's bait him."

"Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant."

"Glum, Marx, glum." The clap on the shoulder made him start, lookup. It was that brute Henry Foster. "What you need is a gramme ofsoma."

"All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of theirdefects."

"Ford, I should like to kill him!" But all he did was to say,"No, thank you," and fend off the proffered tube of tablets.

"Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come backwithout so much as a headache or a mythology."

"Take it," insisted Henry Foster, "take it."

"Stability was practically assured."

"One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments," said theAssistant Predestinator citing a piece of homely hypnopædicwisdom.

"It only remained to conquer old age."

"Damn you, damn you!" shouted Bernard Marx.

"Hoity-toity."

"Gonadal hormones, transfusion of young blood, magnesium salts..."

"And do remember that a gramme is better than a damn." They wentout, laughing.

"All the physiological stigmata of old age have been abolished.And along with them, of course ..."

"Don't forget to ask him about that Malthusian belt," said Fanny.

"Along with them all the old man's mental peculiarities.Characters remain constant throughout a whole lifetime."

"... two rounds of Obstacle Golf to get through before dark. Imust fly."

"Work, play–at sixty our powers and tastes are what they were atseventeen. Old men in the bad old days used to renounce, retire,take to religion, spend their time reading, thinking–thinking!"

"Idiots, swine!" Bernard Marx was saying to himself, as he walkeddown the corridor to the lift.

"Now–such is progress–the old men work, the old men copulate, theold men have no time, no leisure from pleasure, not a moment tosit down and think–or if ever by some unlucky chance such acrevice of time should yawn in the solid substance of theirdistractions, there is always soma, delicious soma, half a grammefor a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for atrip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon;returning whence they find themselves on the other side of thecrevice, safe on the solid ground of daily labour anddistraction, scampering from feely to feely, from girl topneumatic girl, from Electromagnetic Golf course to ..."

"Go away, little girl," shouted the D.H.C. angrily. "Go away,little boy! Can't you see that his fordship's busy? Go and doyour erotic play somewhere else."

"Suffer little children," said the Controller.

Slowly, majestically, with a faint humming of machinery, theConveyors moved forward, thirty-three centimters an hour. In thered darkness glinted innumerable rubies.

---------------------------------

Chapter Four

THE LIFT was crowded with men from the Alpha Changing Rooms, andLenina's entry wars greeted by many friendly nods and smiles. Shewas a popular girl and, at one time or another, had spent a nightwith almost all of them.

They were dear boys, she thought, as she returned theirsalutations. Charming boys! Still, she did wish that GeorgeEdzel's ears weren't quite so big (perhaps he'd been given just aspot too much parathyroid at Metre 328?). And looking at BenitoHoover, she couldn't help remembering that he was really toohairy when he took his clothes off.

Turning, with eyes a little saddened by the recollection, ofBenito's curly blackness, she saw in a corner the small thinbody, the melancholy face of Bernard Marx.

"Bernard!" she stepped up to him. "I was looking for you." Hervoice rang clear above the hum of the mounting lift. The otherslooked round curiously. "I wanted to talk to you about our NewMexico plan." Out of the tail of her eye she could see BenitoHoover gaping with astonishment. The gape annoyed her. "SurprisedI shouldn't be begging to go with him again!" she said toherself. Then aloud, and more warmly than ever, "I'd simply loveto come with you for a week in July," she went on. (Anyhow, shewas publicly proving her unfaithfulness to Henry. Fanny ought tobe pleased, even though it was Bernard.) "That is," Lenina gavehim her most deliciously significant smile, "if you still want tohave me."

Bernard's pale face flushed. "What on earth for?" she wondered,astonished, but at the same time touched by this strange tributeto her power.

"Hadn't we better talk about it somewhere else?" he stammered,looking horribly uncomfortable.

"As though I'd been saying something shocking," thought Lenina."He couldn't look more upset if I'd made a dirty joke–asked himwho his mother was, or something like that."

"I mean, with all these people about ..." He was choked withconfusion.

Lenina's laugh was frank and wholly unmalicious. "How funny youare!" she said; and she quite genuinely did think him funny."You'll give me at least a week's warning, won't you," she wenton in another tone. "I suppose we take the Blue Pacific Rocket?Does it start from the Charing-T Tower? Or is it from Hampstead?"

Before Bernard could answer, the lift came to a standstill.

"Roof!" called a creaking voice.

The liftman was a small simian creature, dressed in the blacktunic of an Epsilon-Minus Semi-Moron.

"Roof!"

He flung open the gates. The warm glory of afternoon sunlightmade him start and blink his eyes. "Oh, roof!" he repeated in avoice of rapture. He was as though suddenly and joyfully awakenedfrom a dark annihilating stupor. "Roof!"

He smiled up with a kind of doggily expectant adoration into thefaces of his passengers. Talking and laughing together, theystepped out into the light. The liftman looked after them.

"Roof?" he said once more, questioningly.

Then a bell rang, and from the ceiling of the lift a loud speakerbegan, very softly and yet very imperiously, to issue itscommands.

"Go down," it said, "go down. Floor Eighteen. Go down, go down.Floor Eighteen. Go down, go ..."

The liftman slammed the gates, touched a button and instantlydropped back into the droning twilight of the well, the twilightof his own habitual stupor.

It was warm and bright on the roof. The summer afternoon wasdrowsy with the hum of passing helicopters; and the deeper droneof the rocket-planes hastening, invisible, through the bright skyfive or six miles overhead was like a caress on the soft air.Bernard Marx drew a deep breath. He looked up into the sky andround the blue horizon and finally down into Lenina's face.

"Isn't it beautiful!" His voice trembled a little.

She smiled at him with an expression of the most sympatheticunderstanding. "Simply perfect for Obstacle Golf," she answeredrapturously. "And now I must fly, Bernard. Henry gets cross if Ikeep him waiting. Let me know in good time about the date." Andwaving her hand she ran away across the wide flat roof towardsthe hangars. Bernard stood watching the retreating twinkle of thewhite stockings, the sunburnt knees vivaciously bending andunbending again, again, and the softer rolling of thosewell-fitted corduroy shorts beneath the bottle green jacket. Hisface wore an expression of pain.

"I should say she was pretty," said a loud and cheery voice justbehind him.

Bernard started and looked around. The chubby red face of BenitoHoover was beaming down at him–beaming with manifest cordiality.Benito was notoriously good-natured. People said of him that hecould have got through life without ever touching soma . Themalice and bad tempers from which other people had to takeholidays never afflicted him. Reality for Benito was alwayssunny.

"Pneumatic too. And how!" Then, in another tone: "But, I say," hewent on, "you do look glum! What you need is a gramme of soma."Diving into his right-hand trouser-pocket, Benito produced aphial. "One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy ... But, I say!"

Bernard had suddenly turned and rushed away.

Benito stared after him. "What can be the matter with thefellow?" he wondered, and, shaking his head, decided that thestory about the alcohol having been put into the poor chap'sblood-surrogate must be true. "Touched his brain, I suppose."

He put away the soma bottle, and taking out a packet ofsex-hormone chewing-gum, stuffed a plug into his cheek and walkedslowly away towards the hangars, ruminating.

Henry Foster had had his machine wheeled out of its lock-up and,when Lenina arrived, was already seated in the cockpit, waiting.

"Four minutes late," was all his comment, as she climbed inbeside him. He started the engines and threw the helicopterscrews into gear. The machine shot vertically into the air. Henryaccelerated; the humming of the propeller shrilled from hornet towasp, from wasp to mosquito; the speedometer showed that theywere rising at the best part of two kilometres a minute. Londondiminished beneath them. The huge table-topped buildings were nomore, in a few seconds, than a bed of geometrical mushroomssprouting from the green of park and garden. In the midst ofthem, thin-stalked, a taller, slenderer fungus, the Charing-TTower lifted towards the sky a disk of shining concrete.

Like the vague torsos of fabulous athletes, huge fleshy cloudslolled on the blue air above their heads. Out of one of themsuddenly dropped a small scarlet insect, buzzing as it fell.

"There's the Red Rocket," said Henry, "just come in from NewYork." Looking at his watch. "Seven minutes behind time," headded, and shook his head. "These Atlantic services–they'rereally scandalously unpunctual."

He took his foot off the accelerator. The humming of the screwsoverhead dropped an octave and a half, back through wasp andhornet to bumble bee, to cockchafer, to stag-beetle. The upwardrush of the machine slackened off; a moment later they werehanging motionless in the air. Henry pushed at a lever; there wasa click. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, till it was acircular mist before their eyes, the propeller in front of thembegan to revolve. The wind of a horizontal speed whistled evermore shrilly in the stays. Henry kept his eye on therevolution-counter; when the needle touched the twelve hundredmark, he threw the helicopter screws out of gear. The machine hadenough forward momentum to be able to fly on its planes.

Lenina looked down through the window in the floor between herfeet. They were flying over the six kilometre zone of park-landthat separated Central London from its first ring of satellitesuburbs. The green was maggoty with fore-shortened life. Forestsof Centrifugal Bumble-puppy towers gleamed between the trees.Near Shepherd's Bush two thousand Beta-Minus mixed doubles wereplaying Riemann-surface tennis. A double row of Escalator FivesCourts lined the main road from Notting Hill to Willesden. In theEaling stadium a Delta gymnastic display and community sing wasin progress.

"What a hideous colour khaki is," remarked Lenina, voicing thehypnopædic prejudices of her caste.

The buildings of the Hounslow Feely Studio covered seven and ahalf hectares. Near them a black and khaki army of labourers wasbusy revitrifying the surface of the Great West Road. One of thehuge travelling crucibles was being tapped as they flew over. Themolten stone poured out in a stream of dazzling incandescenceacross the road, the asbestos rollers came and went; at the tailof an insulated watering cart the steam rose in white clouds.

At Brentford the Television Corporation's factory was like asmall town.

"They must be changing the shift," said Lenina.

Like aphides and ants, the leaf-green Gamma girls, the blackSemi-Morons swarmed round the entrances, or stood in queues totake their places in the monorail tram-cars. Mulberry-colouredBeta-Minuses came and went among the crowd. The roof of the mainbuilding was alive with the alighting and departure ofhelicopters.

"My word," said Lenina, "I'm glad I'm not a Gamma."

Ten minutes later they were at Stoke Poges and had started theirfirst round of Obstacle Golf.

WITH eyes for the most part downcast and, if ever they lighted ona fellow creature, at once and furtively averted, Bernardhastened across the roof. He was like a man pursued, but pursuedby enemies he does not wish to see, lest they should seem morehostile even than he had supposed, and he himself be made to feelguiltier and even more helplessly alone.

"That horrible Benito Hoover!" And yet the man had meant wellenough. Which only made it, in a way, much worse. Those who meantwell behaved in the same way as those who meant badly. EvenLenina was making him suffer. He remembered those weeks of timidindecision, during which he had looked and longed and despairedof ever having the courage to ask her. Dared he face the risk ofbeing humiliated by a contemptuous refusal? But if she were tosay yes, what rapture! Well, now she had said it and he was stillwretched–wretched that she should have thought it such a perfectafternoon for Obstacle Golf, that she should have trotted away tojoin Henry Foster, that she should have found him funny for notwanting to talk of their most private affairs in public.Wretched, in a word, because she had behaved as any healthy andvirtuous English girl ought to behave and not in some other,abnormal, extraordinary way.

He opened the door of his lock-up and called to a lounging coupleof Delta-Minus attendants to come and push his machine out on tothe roof. The hangars were staffed by a single Bokanovsky Group,and the men were twins, identically small, black and hideous.Bernard gave his orders in the sharp, rather arrogant and evenoffensive tone of one who does not feel himself too secure in hissuperiority. To have dealings with members of the lower casteswas always, for Bernard, a most distressing experience. Forwhatever the cause (and the current gossip about the alcohol inhis blood-surrogate may very likely–for accidents willhappen–have been true) Bernard's physique as hardly better thanthat of the average Gamma. He stood eight centimetres short ofthe standard Alpha height and was slender in proportion. Contactwith members of he lower castes always reminded him painfully ofthis physical inadequacy. "I am I, and wish I wasn't"; hisself-consciousness was acute and stressing. Each time he foundhimself looking on the level, instead of downward, into a Delta'sface, he felt humiliated. Would the creature treat him with therespect due to his caste? The question haunted him. Not withoutreason. For Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons had been to some extentconditioned to associate corporeal mass with social superiority.Indeed, a faint hypnopædic prejudice in favour of size wasuniversal. Hence the laughter of the women to whom he madeproposals, the practical joking of his equals among the men. Themockery made him feel an outsider; and feeling an outsider hebehaved like one, which increased the prejudice against him andintensified the contempt and hostility aroused by his physicaldefects. Which in turn increased his sense of being alien andalone. A chronic fear of being slighted made him avoid hisequals, made him stand, where his inferiors were concerned,self-consciously on his dignity. How bitterly he envied men likeHenry Foster and Benito Hoover! Men who never had to shout at anEpsilon to get an order obeyed; men who took their position forgranted; men who moved through the caste system as a fish throughwater–so utterly at home as to be unaware either of themselves orof the beneficent and comfortable element in which they had theirbeing.

Slackly, it seemed to him, and with reluctance, the twinattendants wheeled his plane out on the roof.

"Hurry up!" said Bernard irritably. One of them glanced at him.Was that a kind of bestial derision that he detected in thoseblank grey eyes? "Hurry up!" he shouted more loudly, and therewas an ugly rasp in his voice.

He climbed into the plane and, a minute later, was flyingsouthwards, towards the river.

The various Bureaux of Propaganda and the College of EmotionalEngineering were housed in a single sixty-story building in FleetStreet. In the basement and on the low floors were the pressesand offices of the three great London newspapers– The HourlyRadio, an upper-caste sheet, the pale green Gamma Gazette, and,on khaki paper and in words exclusively of one syllable, TheDelta Mirror. Then came the Bureaux of Propaganda by Television,by Feeling Picture, and by Synthetic Voice and Musicrespectively–twenty-two floors of them. Above were the searchlaboratories and the padded rooms in which Sound-Track Writersand Synthetic Composers did the delicate work. The top eighteenfloors were occupied the College of Emotional Engineering.

Bernard landed on the roof of Propaganda House and stepped out.

"Ring down to Mr. Helmholtz Watson," he ordered the Gamma-Plusporter, "and tell him that Mr. Bernard Marx is waiting for him onthe roof."

He sat down and lit a cigarette.

Helmholtz Watson was writing when the message came down.

"Tell him I'm coming at once," he said and hung up the receiver.Then, turning to his secretary, "I'll leave you to put my thingsaway," he went on in the same official and impersonal tone; and,ignoring her lustrous smile, got up and walked briskly to thedoor.

He was a powerfully built man, deep-chested, broad-shouldered,massive, and yet quick in his movements, springy and agile. Theround strong pillar of his neck supported a beautifully shapedhead. His hair was dark and curly, his features strongly marked.In a forcible emphatic way, he was handsome and looked, as hissecretary was never tired of repeating, every centimetre an AlphaPlus. By profession he was a lecturer at the College of EmotionalEngineering (Department of Writing) and the intervals of hiseducational activities, a working Emotional Engineer. He wroteregularly for The Hourly Radio, composed feely scenarios, and hadthe happiest knack for slogans and hypnopædic rhymes.

"Able," was the verdict of his superiors. "Perhaps, (and theywould shake their heads, would significantly lower their voices)"a little too able."

Yes, a little too able; they were right. A mental excess hadproduced in Helmholtz Watson effects very similar to those which,in Bernard Marx, were the result of a physical defect. Too littlebone and brawn had isolated Bernard from his fellow men, and thesense of this apartness, being, by all the current standards, amental excess, became in its turn a cause of wider separation.That which had made Helmholtz so uncomfortably aware of beinghimself and all alone was too much ability. What the two menshared was the knowledge that they were individuals. But whereasthe physically defective Bernard had suffered all his life fromthe consciousness of being separate, it was only quite recentlythat, grown aware of his mental excess, Helmholtz Watson had alsobecome aware of his difference from the people who surroundedhim. This Escalator-Squash champion, this indefatigable lover (itwas said that he had had six hundred and forty different girls inunder four years), this admirable committee man and best mixerhad realized quite suddenly that sport, women, communalactivities were only, so far as he was concerned, second bests.Really, and at the bottom, he was interested in something else.ut in what? In what? That was the problem which Bernard had cometo discuss with him–or rather, since it was always Helmholtz whodid all the talking, to listen to his friend discussing, yet oncemore.

Three charming girls from the Bureau of Propaganda by SyntheticVoice waylaid him as he stepped out of the lift.

"Oh, Helmholtz, darling, do come and have a picnic supper with uson Exmoor." They clung round him imploringly.

He shook his head, he pushed his way through them. "No, no."

"We're not inviting any other man."

But Helmholtz remained unshaken even by this delightful promise."No," he repeated, "I'm busy." And he held resolutely on hiscourse. The girls trailed after him. It was not till he hadactually climbed into Bernard's plane and slammed the door thatthey gave up pursuit. Not without reproaches.

"These women!" he said, as the machine rose into the air. "Thesewomen!" And he shook his head, he frowned. "Too awful," Bernardhypocritically agreed, wishing, as he spoke the words, that hecould have as many girls as Helmholtz did, and with as littletrouble. He was seized with a sudden urgent need to boast. "I'mtaking Lenina Crowne to New Mexico with me," he said in a tone ascasual as he could make it.

"Are you?" said Helmholtz, with a total absence of interest. Thenafter a little pause, "This last week or two," he went on, "I'vebeen cutting all my committees and all my girls. You can'timagine what a hullabaloo they've been making about it at theCollege. Still, it's been worth it, I think. The effects ..." Hehesitated. "Well, they're odd, they're very odd."

A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. Theprocess, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce,for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness ofdeliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism.

The rest of the short flight was accomplished in silence. Whenthey had arrived and were comfortably stretched out on thepneumatic sofas in Bernard's room, Helmholtz began again.

Speaking very slowly, "Did you ever feel," he asked, "as thoughyou had something inside you that was only waiting for you togive it a chance to come out? Some sort of extra power that youaren't using–you know, like all the water that goes down thefalls instead of through the turbines?" He looked at Bernardquestioningly.

"You mean all the emotions one might be feeling if things weredifferent?"

Helmholtz shook his head. "Not quite. I'm thinking of a queerfeeling I sometimes get, a feeling that I've got somethingimportant to say and the power to say it–only I don't know whatit is, and I can't make any use of the power. If there was somedifferent way of writing ... Or else something else to writeabout ..." He was silent; then, "You see," he went on at last,"I'm pretty good at inventing phrases–you know, the sort of wordsthat suddenly make you jump, almost as though you'd sat on a pin,they seem so new and exciting even though they're about somethinghypnopædically obvious. But that doesn't seem enough. It's notenough for the phrases to be good; what you make with them oughtto be good too."

"But your things are good, Helmholtz."

"Oh, as far as they go." Helmholtz shrugged his shoulders. "Butthey go such a little way. They aren't important enough, somehow.I feel I could do something much more important. Yes, and moreintense, more violent. But what? What is there more important tosay? And how can one be violent about the sort of things one'sexpected to write about? Words can be like X-rays, if you usethem properly–they'll go through anything. You read and you'repierced. That's one of the things I try to teach my students–howto write piercingly. But what on earth's the good of beingpierced by an article about a Community Sing, or the latestimprovement in scent organs? Besides, can you make words reallypiercing–you know, like the very hardest X-rays–when you'rewriting about that sort of thing? Can you say something aboutnothing? That's what it finally boils down to. I try and I try..."

"Hush!" said Bernard suddenly, and lifted a warning finger; theylistened. "I believe there's somebody at the door," he whispered.

Helmholtz got up, tiptoed across the room, and with a sharp quickmovement flung the door wide open. There was, of course, nobodythere.

"I'm sorry," said Bernard, feeling and looking uncomfortablyfoolish. "I suppose I've got things on my nerves a bit. Whenpeople are suspicious with you, you start being suspicious withthem."

He passed his hand across his eyes, he sighed, his voice becameplaintive. He was justifying himself. "If you knew what I'd hadto put up with recently," he said almost tearfully–and the uprushof his self-pity was like a fountain suddenly released. "If youonly knew!"

Helmholtz Watson listened with a certain sense of discomfort."Poor little Bernard!" he said to himself. But at the same timehe felt rather ashamed for his friend. He wished Bernard wouldshow a little more pride.---------------------------------

Chapter Five

BY EIGHT O'CLOCK the light was failing. The loud speaker in thetower of the Stoke Poges Club House began, in a more than humantenor, to announce the closing of the courses. Lenina and Henryabandoned their game and walked back towards the Club. From thegrounds of the Internal and External Secretion Trust came thelowing of those thousands of cattle which provided, with theirhormones and their milk, the raw materials for the great factoryat Farnham Royal.

An incessant buzzing of helicopters filled the twilight. Everytwo and a half minutes a bell and the screech of whistlesannounced the departure of one of the light monorail trains whichcarried the lower caste golfers back from their separate courseto the metropolis.

Lenina and Henry climbed into their machine and started off. Ateight hundred feet Henry slowed down the helicopter screws, andthey hung for a minute or two poised above the fading landscape.The forest of Burnham Beeches stretched like a great pool ofdarkness towards the bright shore of the western sky. Crimson atthe horizon, the last of the sunset faded, through orange,upwards into yellow and a pale watery green. Northwards, beyondand above the trees, the Internal and External Secretions factoryglared with a fierce electric brilliance from every window of itstwenty stories. Beneath them lay the buildings of the GolfClub–the huge Lower Caste barracks and, on the other side of adividing wall, the smaller houses reserved for Alpha and Betamembers. The approaches to the monorail station were black withthe ant-like pullulation of lower-caste activity. From under theglass vault a lighted train shot out into the open. Following itssoutheasterly course across the dark plain their eyes were drawnto the majestic buildings of the Slough Crematorium. For thesafety of night-flying planes, its four tall chimneys wereflood-lighted and tipped with crimson danger signals. It was alandmark.

"Why do the smoke-stacks have those things like balconies aroundthem?" enquired Lenina.

"Phosphorus recovery," explained Henry telegraphically. "On theirway up the chimney the gases go through four separate treatments.P2O5 used to go right out of circulation every time they crematedsome one. Now they recover over ninety-eight per cent of it. Morethan a kilo and a half per adult corpse. Which makes the bestpart of four hundred tons of phosphorus every year from Englandalone." Henry spoke with a happy pride, rejoicing whole-heartedlyin the achievement, as though it had been his own. "Fine to thinkwe can go on being socially useful even after we're dead. Makingplants grow."

Lenina, meanwhile, had turned her eyes away and was lookingperpendicularly downwards at the monorail station. "Fine," sheagreed. "But queer that Alphas and Betas won't make any moreplants grow than those nasty little Gammas and Deltas andEpsilons down there."

"All men are physico-chemically equal," said Henry sententiously."Besides, even Epsilons perform indispensable services."

"Even an Epsilon ..." Lenina suddenly remembered an occasionwhen, as a little girl at school, she had woken up in the middleof the night and become aware, for the first time, of thewhispering that had haunted all her sleeps. She saw again thebeam of moonlight, the row of small white beds; heard once morethe soft, soft voice that said (the words were there,unforgotten, unforgettable after so many night-long repetitions):"Every one works for every one else. We can't do without any one.Even Epsilons are useful. We couldn't do without Epsilons. Everyone works for every one else. We can't do without any one ..."Lenina remembered her first shock of fear and surprise; herspeculations through half a wakeful hour; and then, under theinfluence of those endless repetitions, the gradual soothing ofher mind, the soothing, the smoothing, the stealthy creeping ofsleep. ...

"I suppose Epsilons don't really mind being Epsilons," she saidaloud.

"Of course they don't. How can they? They don't know what it'slike being anything else. We'd mind, of course. But then we'vebeen differently conditioned. Besides, we start with a differentheredity."

"I'm glad I'm not an Epsilon," said Lenina, with conviction.

"And if you were an Epsilon," said Henry, "your conditioningwould have made you no less thankful that you weren't a Beta oran Alpha." He put his forward propeller into gear and headed themachine towards London. Behind them, in the west, the crimson andorange were almost faded; a dark bank of cloud had crept into thezenith. As they flew over the crematorium, the plane shot upwardson the column of hot air rising from the chimneys, only to fallas suddenly when it passed into the descending chill beyond.

"What a marvellous switchback!" Lenina laughed delightedly.

But Henry's tone was almost, for a moment, melancholy. "Do youknow what that switchback was?" he said. "It was some human beingfinally and definitely disappearing. Going up in a squirt of hotgas. It would be curious to know who it was–a man or a woman, anAlpha or an Epsilon. ..." He sighed. Then, in a resolutelycheerful voice, "Anyhow," he concluded, "there's one thing we canbe certain of; whoever he may have been, he was happy when he wasalive. Everybody's happy now."

"Yes, everybody's happy now," echoed Lenina. They had heard thewords repeated a hundred and fifty times every night for twelveyears.

Landing on the roof of Henry's forty-story apartment house inWestminster, they went straight down to the dining-hall. There,in a loud and cheerful company, they ate an excellent meal. Somawas served with the coffee. Lenina took two half-gramme tabletsand Henry three. At twenty past nine they walked across thestreet to the newly opened Westminster Abbey Cabaret. It was anight almost without clouds, moonless and starry; but of this onthe whole depressing fact Lenina and Henry were fortunatelyunaware. The electric sky-signs effectively shut off the outerdarkness. "CALVIN STOPES AND HIS SIXTEEN SEXOPHONISTS." From thefaçade of the new Abbey the giant letters invitingly glared."LONDON'S FINEST SCENT AND COLOUR ORGAN. ALL THE LATEST SYNTHETICMUSIC."

They entered. The air seemed hot and somehow breathless with thescent of ambergris and sandalwood. On the domed ceiling of thehall, the colour organ had momentarily painted a tropical sunset.The Sixteen Sexophonists were playing an old favourite: "Thereain't no Bottle in all the world like that dear little Bottle ofmine." Four hundred couples were five-stepping round the polishedfloor. Lenina and Henry were soon the four hundred and first. Thesaxophones wailed like melodious cats under the moon, moaned inthe alto and tenor registers as though the little death were uponthem. Rich with a wealth of harmonics, their tremulous chorusmounted towards a climax, louder and ever louder–until at last,with a wave of his hand, the conductor let loose the finalshattering note of ether-music and blew the sixteen merely humanblowers clean out of existence. Thunder in A flat major. Andthen, in all but silence, in all but darkness, there followed agradual deturgescence, a diminuendo sliding gradually, throughquarter tones, down, down to a faintly whispered dominant chordthat lingered on (while the five-four rhythms still pulsed below)charging the darkened seconds with an intense expectancy. And atlast expectancy was fulfilled. There was a sudden explosivesunrise, and simultaneously, the Sixteen burst into song:

"Bottle of mine, it's you I've always wanted!

Bottle of mine, why was I ever decanted?

Skies are blue inside of you,

The weather's always fine;

For

There ain't no Bottle in all the world

Like that dear little Bottle of mine."

Five-stepping with the other four hundred round and roundWestminster Abbey, Lenina and Henry were yet dancing in anotherworld–the warm, the richly coloured, the infinitely friendlyworld of soma -holiday. How kind, how good-looking, howdelightfully amusing every one was! "Bottle of mine, it's youI've always wanted ..." But Lenina and Henry had what they wanted... They were inside, here and now-safely inside with the fineweather, the perennially blue sky. And when, exhausted, theSixteen had laid by their saxophones and the Synthetic Musicapparatus was producing the very latest in slow Malthusian Blues,they might have been twin embryos gently rocking together on thewaves of a bottled ocean of blood-surrogate.

"Good-night, dear friends. Good-night, dear friends." The loudspeakers veiled their commands in a genial and musicalpoliteness. "Good-night, dear friends ..."

Obediently, with all the others, Lenina and Henry left thebuilding. The depressing stars had travelled quite some wayacross the heavens. But though the separating screen of thesky-signs had now to a great extent dissolved, the two youngpeople still retained their happy ignorance of the night.

Swallowing half an hour before closing time, that second dose ofsoma had raised a quite impenetrable wall between the actualuniverse and their minds. Bottled, they crossed the street;bottled, they took the lift up to Henry's room on thetwenty-eighth floor. And yet, bottled as she was, and in spite ofthat second gramme of soma, Lenina did not forget to take all thecontraceptive precautions prescribed by the regulations. Years ofintensive hypnopædia and, from twelve to seventeen, Malthusiandrill three times a week had made the taking of these precautionsalmost as automatic and inevitable as blinking.

"Oh, and that reminds me," she said, as she came back from thebathroom, "Fanny Crowne wants to know where you found that lovelygreen morocco-surrogate cartridge belt you gave me."

§ 2

ALTERNATE Thursdays were Bernard's Solidarity Service days. Afteran early dinner at the Aphroditzeum (to which Helrnholtz hadrecently been elected under Rule Two) he took leave of his friendand, hailing a taxi on the roof told the man to fly to theFordson Community Singery. The machine rose a couple of hundredmetres, then headed eastwards, and as it turned, there beforeBernard's eyes, gigantically beautiful, was the Singery.Flood-lighted, its three hundred and twenty metres of whiteCarrara-surrogate gleamed with a snowy incandescence over LudgateHill; at each of the four corners of its helicopter platform animmense T shone crimson against the night, and from the mouths oftwenty-four vast golden trumpets rumbled a solemn syntheticmusic.

"Damn, I'm late," Bernard said to himself as he first caughtsight of Big Henry, the Singery clock. And sure enough, as he waspaying off his cab, Big Henry sounded the hour. "Ford," sang outan immense bass voice from all the golden trumpets. "Ford, Ford,Ford ..." Nine times. Bernard ran for the lift.

The great auditorium for Ford's Day celebrations and other massedCommunity Sings was at the bottom of the building. Above it, ahundred to each floor, were the seven thousand rooms used bySolidarity Groups for their fortnight services. Bernard droppeddown to floor thirty-three, hurried along the corridor, stoodhesitating for a moment outside Room 3210, then, having woundhimself up, opened the door and walked in.

Thank Ford! he was not the last. Three chairs of the twelvearranged round the circular table were still unoccupied. Heslipped into the nearest of them as inconspicuously as he couldand prepared to frown at the yet later comers whenever theyshould arrive.

Turning towards him, "What were you playing this afternoon?" thegirl on his left enquired. "Obstacle, or Electro-magnetic?"

Bernard looked at her (Ford! it was Morgana Rothschild) andblushingly had to admit that he had been playing neither. Morganastared at him with astonishment. There was an awkward silence.

Then pointedly she turned away and addressed herself to the moresporting man on her left.

"A good beginning for a Solidarity Service," thought Bernardmiserably, and foresaw for himself yet another failure to achieveatonement. If only he had given himself time to look aroundinstead of scuttling for the nearest chair! He could have satbetween Fifi Bradlaugh and Joanna Diesel. Instead of which he hadgone and blindly planted himself next to Morgana. Morgana! Ford!Those black eyebrows of hers–that eyebrow, rather–for they metabove the nose. Ford! And on his right was Clara Deterding. True,Clara's eyebrows didn't meet. But she was really too pneumatic.Whereas Fifi and Joanna were absolutely right. Plump, blonde, nottoo large ... And it was that great lout, Tom Kawaguchi, who nowtook the seat between them.

The last arrival was Sarojini Engels.

"You're late," said the President of the Group severely. "Don'tlet it happen again."

Sarojini apologized and slid into her place between JimBokanovsky and Herbert Bakunin. The group was now complete, thesolidarity circle perfect and without flaw. Man, woman, man, in aring of endless alternation round the table. Twelve of them readyto be made one, waiting to come together, to be fused, to losetheir twelve separate identities in a larger being.

The President stood up, made the sign of the T and, switching onthe synthetic music, let loose the soft indefatigable beating ofdrums and a choir of instruments–near-wind and super-string–thatplangently repeated and repeated the brief and unescapablyhaunting melody of the first Solidarity Hymn. Again, again–and itwas not the ear that heard the pulsing rhythm, it was themidriff; the wail and clang of those recurring harmonies haunted,not the mind, but the yearning bowels of compassion.

The President made another sign of the T and sat down. Theservice had begun. The dedicated soma tablets were placed in thecentre of the table. The loving cup of strawberry ice-cream somawas passed from hand to hand and, with the formula, "I drink tomy annihilation," twelve times quaffed. Then to the accompanimentof the synthetic orchestra the First Solidarity Hymn was sung.

"Ford, we are twelve; oh, make us one,

Like drops within the Social River,

Oh, make us now together run

As swiftly as thy shining Flivver."

Twelve yearning stanzas. And then the loving cup was passed asecond time. "I drink to the Greater Being" was now the formula.All drank. Tirelessly the music played. The drums beat. Thecrying and clashing of the harmonies were an obsession in themelted bowels. The Second Solidarity Hymn was sung.

"Come, Greater Being, Social Friend,

Annihilating Twelve-in-One!

We long to die, for when we end,

Our larger life has but begun."

Again twelve stanzas. By this time the soma had begun to work.Eyes shone, cheeks were flushed, the inner light of universalbenevolence broke out on every face in happy, friendly smiles.Even Bernard felt himself a little melted. When MorganaRothschild turned and beamed at him, he did his best to beamback. But the eyebrow, that black two-in-one–alas, it was stillthere; he couldn't ignore it, couldn't, however hard he tried.The melting hadn't gone far enough. Perhaps if he had beensitting between Fifi and Joanna ... For the third time the lovingcup went round; "I drink to the imminence of His Coming," saidMorgana Rothschild, whose turn it happened to be to initiate thecircular rite. Her tone was loud, exultant. She drank and passedthe cup to Bernard. "I drink to the imminence of His Coming," herepeated, with a sincere attempt to feel that the coming wasimminent; but the eyebrow continued to haunt him, and the Coming,so far as he was concerned, was horribly remote. He drank andhanded the cup to Clara Deterding. "It'll be a failure again," hesaid to himself. "I know it will." But he went on doing his bestto beam.

The loving cup had made its circuit. Lifting his hand, thePresident gave a signal; the chorus broke out into the thirdSolidarity Hymn.

"Feel how the Greater Being comes!

Rejoice and, in rejoicings, die!

Melt in the music of the drums!

For I am you and you are I."

As verse succeeded verse the voices thrilled with an everintenser excitement. The sense of the Coming's imminence was likean electric tension in the air. The President switched off themusic and, with the final note of the final stanza, there wasabsolute silence–the silence of stretched expectancy, quiveringand creeping with a galvanic life. The President reached out hishand; and suddenly a Voice, a deep strong Voice, more musicalthan any merely human voice, richer, warmer, more vibrant withlove and yearning and compassion, a wonderful, mysterious,supernatural Voice spoke from above their heads. Very slowly,"Oh, Ford, Ford, Ford," it said diminishingly and on a descendingscale. A sensation of warmth radiated thrillingly out from thesolar plexus to every extremity of the bodies of those wholistened; tears came into their eyes; their hearts, their bowelsseemed to move within them, as though with an independent life."Ford!" they were melting, "Ford!" dissolved, dissolved. Then, inanother tone, suddenly, startlingly. "Listen!" trumpeted thevoice. "Listen!" They listened. After a pause, sunk to a whisper,but a whisper, somehow, more penetrating than the loudest cry."The feet of the Greater Being," it went on, and repeated thewords: "The feet of the Greater Being." The whisper almostexpired. "The feet of the Greater Being are on the stairs." Andonce more there was silence; and the expectancy, momentarilyrelaxed, was stretched again, tauter, tauter, almost to thetearing point. The feet of the Greater Being–oh, they heard them,they heard them, coming softly down the stairs, coming nearer andnearer down the invisible stairs. The feet of the Greater Being.And suddenly the tearing point was reached. Her eyes staring, herlips parted. Morgana Rothschild sprang to her feet.

"I hear him," she cried. "I hear him."

"He's coming," shouted Sarojini Engels.

"Yes, he's coming, I hear him." Fifi Bradlaugh and Tom Kawaguchirose simultaneously to their feet.

"Oh, oh, oh!" Joanna inarticulately testified.

"He's coming!" yelled Jim Bokanovsky.

The President leaned forward and, with a touch, released adelirium of cymbals and blown brass, a fever of tom-tomming.

"Oh, he's coming!" screamed Clara Deterding. "Aie!" and it was asthough she were having her throat cut.

Feeling that it was time for him to do something, Bernard alsojumped up and shouted: "I hear him; He's coming." But it wasn'ttrue. He heard nothing and, for him, nobody was coming. Nobody–inspite of the music, in spite of the mounting excitement. But hewaved his arms, he shouted with the best of them; and when theothers began to jig and stamp and shuffle, he also jigged andshuffled.

Round they went, a circular procession of dancers, each withhands on the hips of the dancer preceding, round and round,shouting in unison, stamping to the rhythm of the music withtheir feet, beating it, beating it out with hands on the buttocksin front; twelve pairs of hands beating as one; as one, twelvebuttocks slabbily resounding. Twelve as one, twelve as one. "Ihear Him, I hear Him coming." The music quickened; faster beatthe feet, faster, faster fell the rhythmic hands. And all at oncea great synthetic bass boomed out the words which announced theapproaching atonement and final consummation of solidarity, thecoming of the Twelve-in-One, the incarnation of the GreaterBeing. "Orgy-porgy," it sang, while the tom-toms continued tobeat their feverish tattoo:

"Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun,

Kiss the girls and make them One.

Boys at One with girls at peace;

Orgy-porgy gives release."

"Orgy-porgy," the dancers caught up the liturgical refrain,"Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun, kiss the girls ..." And as they sang,the lights began slowly to fade–to fade and at the same time togrow warmer, richer, redder, until at last they were dancing inthe crimson twilight of an Embryo Store. "Orgy-porgy ..." Intheir blood-coloured and foetal darkness the dancers continuedfor a while to circulate, to beat and beat out the indefatigablerhythm. "Orgy-porgy ..." Then the circle wavered, broke, fell inpartial disintegration on the ring of couches whichsurrounded–circle enclosing circle–the table and its planetarychairs. "Orgy-porgy ..." Tenderly the deep Voice crooned andcooed; in the red twilight it was as though some enormous negrodove were hovering benevolently over the now prone or supinedancers.

They were standing on the roof; Big Henry had just sung eleven.The night was calm and warm.

"Wasn't it wonderful?" said Fifi Bradlaugh. "Wasn't it simplywonderful?" She looked at Bernard with an expression of rapture,but of rapture in which there was no trace of agitation orexcitement–for to be excited is still to be unsatisfied. Hers wasthe calm ecstasy of achieved consummation, the peace, not of merevacant satiety and nothingness, but of balanced life, of energiesat rest and in equilibrium. A rich and living peace. For theSolidarity Service had given as well as taken, drawn off only toreplenish. She was full, she was made perfect, she was still morethan merely herself. "Didn't you think it was wonderful?" sheinsisted, looking into Bernard's face with those supernaturallyshining eyes.

"Yes, I thought it was wonderful," he lied and looked away; thesight of her transfigured face was at once an accusation and anironical reminder of his own separateness. He was as miserablyisolated now as he had been when the service began–more isolatedby reason of his unreplenished emptiness, his dead satiety.Separate and unatoned, while the others were being fused into theGreater Being; alone even in Morgana's embrace–much more alone,indeed, more hopelessly himself than he had ever been in his lifebefore. He had emerged from that crimson twilight into the commonelectric glare with a self-consciousness intensified to the pitchof agony. He was utterly miserable, and perhaps (her shining eyesaccused him), perhaps it was his own fault. "Quite wonderful," herepeated; but the only thing he could think of was Morgana'seyebrow.

---------------------------------

Chapter Six

O DD, ODD, odd, was Lenina's verdict on Bernard Marx. So odd,indeed, that in the course of the succeeding weeks she hadwondered more than once whether she shouldn't change her mindabout the New Mexico holiday, and go instead to the North Polewith Benito Hoover. The trouble was that she knew the North Pole,had been there with George Edzel only last summer, and what wasmore, found it pretty grim. Nothing to do, and the hotel toohopelessly old-fashioned–no television laid on in the bedrooms,no scent organ, only the most putrid synthetic music, and notmore than twenty-five Escalator-Squash Courts for over twohundred guests. No, decidedly she couldn't face the North Poleagain. Added to which, she had only been to America once before.And even then, how inadequately! A cheap week-end in New York–hadit been with Jean-Jacques Habibullah or Bokanovsky Jones? Shecouldn't remember. Anyhow, it was of absolutely no importance.The prospect of flying West again, and for a whole week, was veryinviting. Moreover, for at least three days of that week theywould be in the Savage Reservation. Not more than half a dozenpeople in the whole Centre had ever been inside a SavageReservation. As an Alpha-Plus psychologist, Bernard was one ofthe few men she knew entitled to a permit. For Lenina, theopportunity was unique. And yet, so unique also was Bernard'soddness that she had hesitated to take it, had actually thoughtof risking the Pole again with funny old Benito. At least Benitowas normal. Whereas Bernard ...

"Alcohol in his blood-surrogate," was Fanny's explanation ofevery eccentricity. But Henry, with whom, one evening when theywere in bed together, Lenina had rather anxiously discussed hernew lover, Henry had compared poor Bernard to a rhinoceros.

"You can't teach a rhinoceros tricks," he had explained in hisbrief and vigorous style. "Some men are almost rhinoceroses; theydon't respond properly to conditioning. Poor Devils! Bernard'sone of them. Luckily for him, he's pretty good at his job.Otherwise the Director would never have kept him. However," headded consolingly, "I think he's pretty harmless."

Pretty harmless, perhaps; but also pretty disquieting. Thatmania, to start with, for doing things in private. Which meant,in practice, not doing anything at all. For what was there thatone could do in private. (Apart, of course, from going to bed:but one couldn't do that all the time.) Yes, what was there?Precious little. The first afternoon they went out together wasparticularly fine. Lenina had suggested a swim at Toquay CountryClub followed by dinner at the Oxford Union. But Bernard thoughtthere would be too much of a crowd. Then what about a round ofElectro-magnetic Golf at St. Andrew's? But again, no: Bernardconsidered that Electro-magnetic Golf was a waste of time.

"Then what's time for?" asked Lenina in some astonishment.

Apparently, for going walks in the Lake District; for that waswhat he now proposed. Land on the top of Skiddaw and walk for acouple of hours in the heather. "Alone with you, Lenina."

"But, Bernard, we shall be alone all night."

Bernard blushed and looked away. "I meant, alone for talking," hemumbled.

"Talking? But what about?" Walking and talking–that seemed a veryodd way of spending an afternoon.

In the end she persuaded him, much against his will, to fly overto Amsterdam to see the Semi-Demi-Finals of the Women'sHeavyweight Wrestling Championship.

"In a crowd," he grumbled. "As usual." He remained obstinatelygloomy the whole afternoon; wouldn't talk to Lenina's friends (ofwhom they met dozens in the ice-cream soma bar between thewrestling bouts); and in spite of his misery absolutely refusedto take the half-gramme raspberry sundae which she pressed uponhim. "I'd rather be myself," he said. "Myself and nasty. Notsomebody else, however jolly."

"A gramme in time saves nine," said Lenina, producing a brighttreasure of sleep-taught wisdom. Bernard pushed away theproffered glass impatiently.

"Now don't lose your temper," she said. "Remember one cubiccentimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments."

"Oh, for Ford's sake, be quiet!" he shouted.

Lenina shrugged her shoulders. "A gramme is always better than adamn," she concluded with dignity, and drank the sundae herself.

On their way back across the Channel, Bernard insisted onstopping his propeller and hovering on his helicopter screwswithin a hundred feet of the waves. The weather had taken achange for the worse; a south-westerly wind had sprung up, thesky was cloudy.

"Look," he commanded.

"But it's horrible," said Lenina, shrinking back from the window.She was appalled by the rushing emptiness of the night, by theblack foam-flecked water heaving beneath them, by the pale faceof the moon, so haggard and distracted among the hasteningclouds. "Let's turn on the radio. Quick!" She reached for thedialling knob on the dash-board and turned it at random.

"... skies are blue inside of you," sang sixteen tremoloingfalsettos, "the weather's always ..."

Then a hiccough and silence. Bernard had switched of the current.

"I want to look at the sea in peace," he said. "One can't evenlook with that beastly noise going on."

"But it's lovely. And I don't want to look."

"But I do," he insisted. "It makes me feel as though ..." hehesitated, searching for words with which to express himself, "asthough I were more me , if you see what I mean. More on my own,not so completely a part of something else. Not just a cell inthe social body. Doesn't it make you feel like that, Lenina?"

But Lenina was crying. "It's horrible, it's horrible," she keptrepeating. "And how can you talk like that about not wanting tobe a part of the social body? After all, every one works forevery one else. We can't do without any one. Even Epsilons ..."

"Yes, I know," said Bernard derisively. "'Even Epsilons areuseful'! So am I. And I damned well wish I weren't!"

Lenina was shocked by his blasphemy. "Bernard!" She protested ina voice of amazed distress. "How can you?"

In a different key, "How can I?" he repeated meditatively. "No,the real problem is: How is it that I can't, or rather–because,after all, I know quite well why I can't–what would it be like ifI could, if I were free–not enslaved by my conditioning."

"But, Bernard, you're saying the most awful things."

"Don't you wish you were free, Lenina?"

"I don't know what you mean. I am free. Free to have the mostwonderful time. Everybody's happy nowadays."

He laughed, "Yes, 'Everybody's happy nowadays.' We begin givingthe children that at five. But wouldn't you like to be free to behappy in some other way, Lenina? In your own way, for example;not in everybody else's way."

"I don't know what you mean," she repeated. Then, turning to him,"Oh, do let's go back, Bernard," she besought; "I do so hate ithere."

"Don't you like being with me?"

"But of course, Bernard. It's this horrible place."

"I thought we'd be more ... more together here–with nothing butthe sea and moon. More together than in that crowd, or even in myrooms. Don't you understand that?"

"I don't understand anything," she said with decision, determinedto preserve her incomprehension intact. "Nothing. Least of all,"she continued in another tone "why you don't take soma when youhave these dreadful ideas of yours. You'd forget all about them.And instead of feeling miserable, you'd be jolly. So jolly," sherepeated and smiled, for all the puzzled anxiety in her eyes,with what was meant to be an inviting and voluptuous cajolery.

He looked at her in silence, his face unresponsive and verygrave–looked at her intently. After a few seconds Lenina's eyesflinched away; she uttered a nervous little laugh, tried to thinkof something to say and couldn't. The silence prolonged itself.

When Bernard spoke at last, it was in a small tired voice. "Allright then," he said, "we'll go back." And stepping hard on theaccelerator, he sent the machine rocketing up into the sky. Atfour thousand he started his propeller. They flew in silence fora minute or two. Then, suddenly, Bernard began to laugh. Ratheroddly, Lenina thought, but still, it was laughter.

"Feeling better?" she ventured to ask.

For answer, he lifted one hand from the controls and, slippinghis arm around her, began to fondle her breasts.

"Thank Ford," she said to herself, "he's all right again."

Half an hour later they were back in his rooms. Bernard swallowedfour tablets of soma at a gulp, turned on the radio andtelevision and began to undress.

"Well," Lenina enquired, with significant archness when they metnext afternoon on the roof, "did you think it was fun yesterday?"

Bernard nodded. They climbed into the plane. A little jolt, andthey were off.

"Every one says I'm awfully pneumatic," said Lenina reflectively,patting her own legs.

"Awfully." But there was an expression of pain in Bernard's eyes."Like meat," he was thinking.

She looked up with a certain anxiety. "But you don't think I'mtoo plump, do you?"

He shook his head. Like so much meat.

"You think I'm all right." Another nod. "In every way?"

"Perfect," he said aloud. And inwardly. "She thinks of herselfthat way. She doesn't mind being meat."

Lenina smiled triumphantly. But her satisfaction was premature.

"All the same," he went on, after a little pause, "I still ratherwish it had all ended differently."

"Differently?" Were there other endings?

"I didn't want it to end with our going to bed," he specified.

Lenina was astonished.

"Not at once, not the first day."

"But then what ...?"

He began to talk a lot of incomprehensible and dangerousnonsense. Lenina did her best to stop the ears of her mind; butevery now and then a phrase would insist on becoming audible."... to try the effect of arresting my impulses," she heard himsay. The words seemed to touch a spring in her mind.

"Never put off till to-morrow the fun you can have to-day," shesaid gravely.

"Two hundred repetitions, twice a week from fourteen to sixteenand a half," was all his comment. The mad bad talk rambled on. "Iwant to know what passion is," she heard him saying. "I want tofeel something strongly."

"When the individual feels, the community reels," Leninapronounced.

"Well, why shouldn't it reel a bit?"

"Bernard!"

But Bernard remained unabashed.

"Adults intellectually and during working hours," he went on."Infants where feeling and desire are concerned."

"Our Ford loved infants."

Ignoring the interruption. "It suddenly struck me the other day,"continued Bernard, "that it might be possible to be an adult allthe time."

"I don't understand." Lenina's tone was firm.

"I know you don't. And that's why we went to bed togetheryesterday–like infants–instead of being adults and waiting."

"But it was fun," Lenina insisted. "Wasn't it?"

"Oh, the greatest fun," he answered, but in a voice so mournful,with an expression so profoundly miserable, that Lenina felt allher triumph suddenly evaporate. Perhaps he had found her tooplump, after all.

"I told you so," was all that Fanny said, when Lenina came andmade her confidences. "It's the alcohol they put in hissurrogate."

"All the same," Lenina insisted. "I do like him. He has suchawfully nice hands. And the way he moves his shoulders–that'svery attractive." She sighed. "But I wish he weren't so odd."

§ 2

HALTING for a moment outside the door of the Director's room,Bernard drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders, bracinghimself to meet the dislike and disapproval which he was certainof finding within. He knocked and entered.

"A permit for you to initial, Director," he said as airily aspossible, and laid the paper on the writing-table.

The Director glanced at him sourly. But the stamp of the WorldController's Office was at the head of the paper and thesignature of Mustapha Mond, bold and black, across the bottom.Everything was perfectly in order. The director had no choice. Hepencilled his initials–two small pale letters abject at the feetof Mustapha Mond–and was about to return the paper without a wordof comment or genial Ford-speed, when his eye was caught bysomething written in the body of the permit.

"For the New Mexican Reservation?" he said, and his tone, theface he lifted to Bernard, expressed a kind of agitatedastonishment.

Surprised by his surprise, Bernard nodded. There was a silence.

The Director leaned back in his chair, frowning. "How long agowas it?" he said, speaking more to himself than to Bernard."Twenty years, I suppose. Nearer twenty-five. I must have beenyour age ..." He sighed and shook his head.

Bernard felt extremely uncomfortable. A man so conventional, soscrupulously correct as the Director–and to commit so gross asolecism! lt made him want to hide his face, to run out of theroom. Not that he himself saw anything intrinsicallyobjectionable in people talking about the remote past; that wasone of those hypnopædic prejudices he had (so he imagined)completely got rid of. What made him feel shy was the knowledgethat the Director disapproved–disapproved and yet had beenbetrayed into doing the forbidden thing. Under what inwardcompulsion? Through his discomfort Bernard eagerly listened.

"I had the same idea as you," the Director was saying. "Wanted tohave a look at the savages. Got a permit for New Mexico and wentthere for my summer holiday. With the girl I was having at themoment. She was a Beta-Minus, and I think" (he shut his eyes), "Ithink she had yellow hair. Anyhow she was pneumatic, particularlypneumatic; I remember that. Well, we went there, and we looked atthe savages, and we rode about on horses and all that. Andthen–it was almost the last day of my leave–then ... well, shegot lost. We'd gone riding up one of those revolting mountains,and it was horribly hot and oppressive, and after lunch we wentto sleep. Or at least I did. She must have gone for a walk,alone. At any rate, when I woke up, she wasn't there. And themost frightful thunderstorm I've ever seen was just bursting onus. And it poured and roared and flashed; and the horses brokeloose and ran away; and I fell down, trying to catch them, andhurt my knee, so that I could hardly walk. Still, I searched andI shouted and I searched. But there was no sign of her. Then Ithought she must have gone back to the rest-house by herself. SoI crawled down into the valley by the way we had come. My kneewas agonizingly painful, and I'd lost my soma. It took me hours.I didn't get back to the rest-house till after midnight. And shewasn't there; she wasn't there," the Director repeated. There wasa silence. "Well," he resumed at last, "the next day there was asearch. But we couldn't find her. She must have fallen into agully somewhere; or been eaten by a mountain lion. Ford knows.Anyhow it was horrible. It upset me very much at the time. Morethan it ought to have done, I dare say. Because, after all, it'sthe sort of accident that might have happened to any one; and, ofcourse, the social body persists although the component cells maychange." But this sleep-taught consolation did not seem to bevery effective. Shaking his head, "I actually dream about itsometimes," the Director went on in a low voice. "Dream of beingwoken up by that peal of thunder and finding her gone; dream ofsearching and searching for her under the trees." He lapsed intothe silence of reminiscence.

"You must have had a terrible shock," said Bernard, almostenviously.

At the sound of his voice the Director started into a guiltyrealization of where he was; shot a glance at Bernard, andaverting his eyes, blushed darkly; looked at him again withsudden suspicion and, angrily on his dignity, "Don't imagine," hesaid, "that I'd had any indecorous relation with the girl.Nothing emotional, nothing long-drawn. It was all perfectlyhealthy and normal." He handed Bernard the permit. "I reallydon't know why I bored you with this trivial anecdote." Furiouswith himself for having given away a discreditable secret, hevented his rage on Bernard. The look in his eyes was now franklymalignant. "And I should like to take this opportunity, Mr.Marx," he went on, "of saying that I'm not at all pleased withthe reports I receive of your behaviour outside working hours.You may say that this is not my business. But it is. I have thegood name of the Centre to think of. My workers must be abovesuspicion, particularly those of the highest castes. Alphas areso conditioned that they do not have to be infantile in theiremotional behaviour. But that is all the more reason for theirmaking a special effort to conform. lt is their duty to beinfantile, even against their inclination. And so, Mr. Marx, Igive you fair warning." The Director's voice vibrated with anindignation that had now become wholly righteous andimpersonal–was the expression of the disapproval of Societyitself. "If ever I hear again of any lapse from a proper standardof infantile decorum, I shall ask for your transference to aSub-Centre–preferably to Iceland. Good morning." And swivellinground in his chair, he picked up his pen and began to write.

"That'll teach him," he said to himself. But he was mistaken. ForBernard left the room with a swagger, exulting, as he banged thedoor behind him, in the thought that he stood alone, embattledagainst the order of things; elated by the intoxicatingconsciousness of his individual significance and importance. Eventhe thought of persecution left him undismayed, was rather tonicthan depressing. He felt strong enough to meet and overcomeaffliction, strong enough to face even Iceland. And thisconfidence was the greater for his not for a moment reallybelieving that he would be called upon to face anything at all.People simply weren't transferred for things like that. Icelandwas just a threat. A most stimulating and life-giving threat.Walking along the corridor, he actually whistled.

Heroic was the account he gave that evening of his interview withthe D.H.C. "Whereupon," it concluded, "I simply told him to go tothe Bottomless Past and marched out of the room. And that wasthat." He looked at Helmholtz Watson expectantly, awaiting hisdue reward of sympathy, encouragement, admiration. But no wordcame. Helmholtz sat silent, staring at the floor.

He liked Bernard; he was grateful to him for being the only manof his acquaintance with whom he could talk about the subjects hefelt to be important. Nevertheless, there were things in Bernardwhich he hated. This boasting, for example. And the outbursts ofan abject self-pity with which it alternated. And his deplorablehabit of being bold after the event, and full, in absence, of themost extraordinary presence of mind. He hated these things–justbecause he liked Bernard. The seconds passed. Helmholtz continuedto stare at the floor. And suddenly Bernard blushed and turnedaway.

§ 3

THE journey was quite uneventful. The Blue Pacific Rocket was twoand a half minutes early at New Orleans, lost four minutes in atornado over Texas, but flew into a favourable air current atLongitude 95 West, and was able to land at Santa Fé less thanforty seconds behind schedule time.

"Forty seconds on a six and a half hour flight. Not so bad,"Lenina conceded.

They slept that night at Santa Fé. The hotel wasexcellent–incomparably better, for example, than that horribleAurora Bora Palace in which Lenina had suffered so much theprevious summer. Liquid air, television, vibro-vacuum massage,radio, boiling caffeine solution, hot contraceptives, and eightdifferent kinds of scent were laid on in every bedroom. Thesynthetic music plant was working as they entered the hall andleft nothing to be desired. A notice in the lift announced thatthere were sixty Escalator-Squash-Racket Courts in the hotel, andthat Obstacle and Electro-magnetic Golf could both be played inthe park.

"But it sounds simply too lovely," cried Lenina. "I almost wishwe could stay here. Sixty Escalator-Squash Courts ..."

"There won't be any in the Reservation," Bernard warned her. "Andno scent, no television, no hot water even. If you feel you can'tstand it, stay here till I come back."

Lenina was quite offended. "Of course I can stand it. I only saidit was lovely here because ... well, because progress is lovely,isn't it?"

"Five hundred repetitions once a week from thirteen toseventeen," said Bernard wearily, as though to himself.

"What did you say?"

"I said that progress was lovely. That's why you mustn't come tothe Reservation unless you really want to."

"But I do want to."

"Very well, then," said Bernard; and it was almost a threat.

Their permit required the signature of the Warden of theReservation, at whose office next morning they duly presentedthemselves. An Epsilon-Plus negro porter took in Bernard's card,and they were admitted almost immnediately.

The Warden was a blond and brachycephalic Alpha-Minus, short,red, moon-faced, and broad-shouldered, with a loud booming voice,very well adapted to the utterance of hypnopædic wisdom. He was amine of irrelevant information and unasked-for good advice. Oncestarted, he went on and on–boomingly.

"... five hundred and sixty thousand square kilometres, dividedinto four distinct Sub-Reservations, each surrounded by ahigh-tension wire fence."

At this moment, and for no apparent reason, Bernard suddenlyremembered that he had left the Eau de Cologne tap in hisbathroom wide open and running.

"... supplied with current from the Grand Canyon hydro-electricstation."

"Cost me a fortune by the time I get back." With his mind's eye,Bernard saw the needle on the scent meter creeping round andround, antlike, indefatigable. "Quickly telephone to HelmholtzWatson."

"... upwards of five thousand kilometres of fencing at sixtythousand volts."

"You don't say so," said Lenina politely, not knowing in theleast what the Warden had said, but taking her cue from hisdramatic pause. When the Warden started booming, she hadinconspicuously swallowed half a gramme of soma, with the resultthat she could now sit, serenely not listening, thinking ofnothing at all, but with her large blue eyes fixed on theWarden's face in an expression of rapt attention.

"To touch the fence is instant death," pronounced the Wardensolemnly. "There is no escape from a Savage Reservation."

The word "escape" was suggestive. "Perhaps," said Bernard, halfrising, "we ought to think of going." The little black needle wasscurrying, an insect, nibbling through time, eating into hismoney.

"No escape," repeated the Warden, waving him back into his chair;and as the permit was not yet countersigned Bernard had no choicebut to obey. "Those who are born in the Reservation–and remember,my dear young lady," he added, leering obscenely at Lenina, andspeaking in an improper whisper, "remember that, in theReservation, children still are born, yes, actually born,revolting as that may seem ..." (He hoped that this reference toa shameful subject would make Lenina blush; but she only smiledwith simulated intelligence and said, "You don't say so!"Disappointed, the Warden began again. ) "Those, I repeat who areborn in the Reservation are destined to die there."

Destined to die ... A decilitre of Eau de Cologne every minute.Six litres an hour. "Perhaps," Bernard tried again, "we ought..."

Leaning forward, the Warden tapped the table with his forefinger."You ask me how many people live in the Reservation. And Ireply"–triumphantly–"I reply that we do not know. We can onlyguess."

"You don't say so."

"My dear young lady, I do say so."

Six times twenty-four–no, it would be nearer six timesthirty-six. Bernard was pale and trembling with impatience. Butinexorably the booming continued.

"... about sixty thousand Indians and half-breeds ... absolutesavages ... our inspectors occasionally visit ... otherwise, nocommunication whatever with the civilized world ... stillpreserve their repulsive habits and customs ... marriage, if youknow what that is, my dear young lady; families ... noconditioning ... monstrous superstitions ... Christianity andtotemism and ancestor worship ... extinct languages, such as Zuñiand Spanish and Athapascan ... pumas, porcupines and otherferocious animals ... infectious diseases ... priests ...venomous lizards ..."

"You don't say so?"

They got away at last. Bernard dashed to the telephone. Quick,quick; but it took him nearly three minutes to get on toHelmholtz Watson. "We might be among the savages already," hecomplained. "Damned incompetence!"

"Have a gramme," suggested Lenina.

He refused, preferring his anger. And at last, thank Ford, he wasthrough and, yes, it was Helmholtz; Helmholtz, to whom heexplained what had happened, and who promised to go round atonce, at once, and turn off the tap, yes, at once, but took thisopportunity to tell him what the D.H.C. had said, in public,yesterday evening ...

"What? He's looking out for some one to take my place?" Bernard'svoice was agonized. "So it's actually decided? Did he mentionIceland? You say he did? Ford! Iceland ..." He hung up thereceiver and turned back to Lenina. His face was pale, hisexpression utterly dejected.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"The matter?" He dropped heavily into a chair. "I'm going to besent to Iceland."

Often in the past he had wondered what it would be like to besubjected ( soma -less and with nothing but his own inwardresources to rely on) to some great trial, some pain, somepersecution; he had even longed for affliction. As recently as aweek ago, in the Director's office, he had imagined himselfcourageously resisting, stoically accepting suffering without aword. The Director's threats had actually elated him, made himfeel larger than life. But that, as he now realized, was becausehe had not taken the threats quite seriously, he had not believedthat, when it came to the point, the D.H.C. would ever doanything. Now that it looked as though the threats were really tobe fulfilled, Bernard was appalled. Of that imagined stoicism,that theoretical courage, not a trace was left.

He raged against himself–what a fool!–against the Director–howunfair not to give him that other chance, that other chancewhich, he now had no doubt at all, he had always intended totake. And Iceland, Iceland ...

Lenina shook her head. "Was and will make me ill," she quoted, "Itake a gramme and only am."

In the end she persuaded him to swallow four tablets of soma.Five minutes later roots and fruits were abolished; the flower ofthe present rosily blossomed. A message from the porter announcedthat, at the Warden's orders, a Reservation Guard had come roundwith a plane and was waiting on the roof of the hotel. They wentup at once. An octoroon in Gamma-green uniform saluted andproceeded to recite the morning's programme.

A bird's-eye view of ten or a dozen of the principal pueblos,then a landing for lunch in the valley of Malpais. The rest-housewas comfortable there, and up at the pueblo the savages wouldprobably be celebrating their summer festival. It would be thebest place to spend the night.

They took their seats in the plane and set off. Ten minutes laterthey were crossing the frontier that separated civilization fromsavagery. Uphill and down, across the deserts of salt or sand,through forests, into the violet depth of canyons, over crag andpeak and table-topped mesa, the fence marched on and on,irresistibly the straight line, the geometrical symbol oftriumphant human purpose. And at its foot, here and there, amosaic of white bones, a still unrotted carcase dark on the tawnyground marked the place where deer or steer, puma or porcupine orcoyote, or the greedy turkey buzzards drawn down by the whiff ofcarrion and fulminated as though by a poetic justice, had cometoo close to the destroying wires.

"They never learn," said the green-uniformed pilot, pointing downat the skeletons on the ground below them. "And they never willlearn," he added and laughed, as though he had somehow scored apersonal triumph over the electrocuted animals.

Bernard also laughed; after two grammes of soma the joke seemed,for some reason, good. Laughed and then, almost immediately,dropped off to sleep, and sleeping was carried over Taos andTesuque; over Nambe and Picuris and Pojoaque, over Sia andCochiti, over Laguna and Acoma and the Enchanted Mesa, over Zuñiand Cibola and Ojo Caliente, and woke at last to find the machinestanding on the ground, Lenina carrying the suit-cases into asmall square house, and the Gamma-green octoroon talkingincomprehensibly with a young Indian.

"Malpais," explained the pilot, as Bernard stepped out. "This isthe rest-house. And there's a dance this afternoon at the pueblo.He'll take you there." He pointed to the sullen young savage."Funny, I expect." He grinned. "Everything they do is funny." Andwith that he climbed into the plane and started up the engines."Back to-morrow. And remember," he added reassuringly to Lenina,"they're perfectly tame; savages won't do you any harm. They'vegot enough experience of gas bombs to know that they mustn't playany tricks." Still laughing, he threw the helicopter screws intogear, accelerated, and was gone.

---------------------------------

Chapter Seven

THE MESA was like a ship becalmed in a strait of lion-coloureddust. The channel wound between precipitous banks, and slantingfrom one wall to the other across the valley ran a streak ofgreen-the river and its fields. On the prow of that stone ship inthe centre of the strait, and seemingly a part of it, a shapedand geometrical outcrop of the naked rock, stood the pueblo ofMalpais. Block above block, each story smaller than the onebelow, the tall houses rose like stepped and amputated pyramidsinto the blue sky. At their feet lay a straggle of low buildings,a criss-cross of walls; and on three sides the precipices fellsheer into the plain. A few columns of smoke mountedperpendicularly into the windless air and were lost.

"Queer," said Lenina. "Very queer." It was her ordinary word ofcondemnation. "I don't like it. And I don't like that man." Shepointed to the Indian guide who had been appointed to take themup to the pueblo. Her feeling was evidently reciprocated; thevery back of the man, as he walked along before them, washostile, sullenly contemptuous.

"Besides," she lowered her voice, "he smells."

Bernard did not attempt to deny it. They walked on.

Suddenly it was as though the whole air had come alive and werepulsing, pulsing with the indefatigable movement of blood. Upthere, in Malpais, the drums were being beaten. Their feet fellin with the rhythm of that mysterious heart; they quickened theirpace. Their path led them to the foot of the precipice. The sidesof the great mesa ship towered over them, three hundred feet tothe gunwale.

"I wish we could have brought the plane," said Lenina, looking upresentfully at the blank impending rock-face. "I hate walking.And you feel so small when you're on the ground at the bottom ofa hill."

They walked along for some way in the shadow of the mesa, roundeda projection, and there, in a water-worn ravine, was the way upthe companion ladder. They climbed. It was a very steep path thatzigzagged from side to side of the gully. Sometimes the pulsingof the drums was all but inaudible, at others they seemed to bebeating only just round the corner.

When they were half-way up, an eagle flew past so close to themthat the wind of his wings blew chill on their faces. In acrevice of the rock lay a pile of bones. It was all oppressivelyqueer, and the Indian smelt stronger and stronger. They emergedat last from the ravine into the full sunlight. The top of themesa was a flat deck of stone.

"Like the Charing-T Tower," was Lenina's comment. But she was notallowed to enjoy her discovery of this reassuring resemblance forlong. A padding of soft feet made them turn round. Naked fromthroat to navel, their dark brown bodies painted with white lines("like asphalt tennis courts," Lenina was later to explain),their faces inhuman with daubings of scarlet, black and ochre,two Indians came running along the path. Their black hair wasbraided with fox fur and red flannel. Cloaks of turkey feathersfluttered from their shoulders; huge feather diadems explodedgaudily round their heads. With every step they took came theclink and rattle of their silver bracelets, their heavy necklacesof bone and turquoise beads. They came on without a word, runningquietly in their deerskin moccasins. One of them was holding afeather brush; the other carried, in either hand, what looked ata distance like three or four pieces of thick rope. One of theropes writhed uneasily, and suddenly Lenina saw that they weresnakes.

The men came nearer and nearer; their dark eyes looked at her,but without giving any sign of recognition, any smallest signthat they had seen her or were aware of her existence. Thewrithing snake hung limp again with the rest. The men passed.

"I don't like it," said Lenina. "I don't like it."

She liked even less what awaited her at the entrance to thepueblo, where their guide had left them while he went inside forinstructions. The dirt, to start with, the piles of rubbish, thedust, the dogs, the flies. Her face wrinkled up into a grimace ofdisgust. She held her handkerchief to her nose.

"But how can they live like this?" she broke out in a voice ofindignant incredulity. (It wasn't possible.)

Bernard shrugged his shoulders philosophically. "Anyhow," hesaid, "they've been doing it for the last five or six thousandyears. So I suppose they must be used to it by now."

"But cleanliness is next to fordliness," she insisted.

"Yes, and civilization is sterilization," Bernard went on,concluding on a tone of irony the second hypnopædic lesson inelementary hygiene. "But these people have never heard of OurFord, and they aren't civilized. So there's no point in ..."

"Oh!" She gripped his arm. "Look."

An almost naked Indian was very slowly climbing down the ladderfrom the first-floor terrace of a neighboring house–rung afterrung, with the tremulous caution of extreme old age. His face wasprofoundly wrinkled and black, like a mask of obsidian. Thetoothless mouth had fallen in. At the corners of the lips, and oneach side of the chin, a few long bristles gleamed almost whiteagainst the dark skin. The long unbraided hair hung down in greywisps round his face. His body was bent and emaciated to thebone, almost fleshless. Very slowly he came down, pausing at eachrung before he ventured another step.

"What's the matter with him?" whispered Lenina. Her eyes werewide with horror and amazement.

"He's old, that's all," Bernard answered as carelessly as hecould. He too was startled; but he made an effort to seemunmoved.

"Old?" she repeated. "But the Director's old; lots of people areold; they're not like that."

"That's because we don't allow them to be like that. We preservethem from diseases. We keep their internal secretionsartificially balanced at a youthful equilibrium. We don't permittheir magnesium-calcium ratio to fall below what it was atthirty. We give them transfusion of young blood. We keep theirmetabolism permanently stimulated. So, of course, they don't looklike that. Partly," he added, "because most of them die longbefore they reach this old creature's age. Youth almostunimpaired till sixty, and then, crack! the end."

But Lenina was not listening. She was watching the old man.Slowly, slowly he came down. His feet touched the ground. Heturned. In their deep-sunken orbits his eyes were stillextraordinarily bright. They looked at her for a long momentexpressionlessly, without surprise, as though she had not beenthere at all. Then slowly, with bent back the old man hobbledpast them and was gone.

"But it's terrible," Lenina whispered. "It's awful. We ought notto have come here." She felt in her pocket for her soma–only todiscover that, by some unprecedented oversight, she had left thebottle down at the rest-house. Bernard's pockets were also empty.

Lenina was left to face the horrors of Malpais unaided. They camecrowding in on her thick and fast. The spectacle of two youngwomen giving breast to their babies made her blush and turn awayher face. She had never seen anything so indecent in her life.And what made it worse was that, instead of tactfully ignoringit, Bernard proceeded to make open comments on this revoltinglyviviparous scene. Ashamed, now that the effects of the soma hadworn off, of the weakness he had displayed that morning in thehotel, he went out of his way to show himself strong andunorthodox.

"What a wonderfully intimate relationship," he said, deliberatelyoutrageous. "And what an intensity of feeling it must generate! Ioften think one may have missed something in not having had amother. And perhaps you've missed something in not being amother, Lenina. Imagine yourself sitting there with a little babyof your own. ..."

"Bernard! How can you?" The passage of an old woman withophthalmia and a disease of the skin distracted her from herindignation.

"Let's go away," she begged. "I don't like it."

But at this moment their guide came back and, beckoning them tofollow, led the way down the narrow street between the houses.They rounded a corner. A dead dog was lying on a rubbish heap; awoman with a goitre was looking for lice in the hair of a smallgirl. Their guide halted at the foot of a ladder, raised his handperpendicularly, then darted it horizontally forward. They didwhat he mutely commanded–climbed the ladder and walked throughthe doorway, to which it gave access, into a long narrow room,rather dark and smelling of smoke and cooked grease andlong-worn, long-unwashed clothes. At the further end of the roomwas another doorway, through which came a shaft of sundight andthe noise, very loud and close, of the drums.

They stepped across the threshold and found themselves on a wideterrace. Below them, shut in by the tall houses, was the villagesquare, crowded with Indians. Bright blankets, and feathers inblack hair, and the glint of turquoise, and dark skins shiningwith heat. Lenina put her handkerchief to her nose again. In theopen space at the centre of the square were two circularplatforms of masonry and trampled clay–the roofs, it was evident,of underground chambers; for in the centre of each platform wasan open hatchway, with a ladder emerging from the lower darkness.A sound of subterranean flute playing came up and was almost lostin the steady remorseless persistence of the drums.

Lenina liked the drums. Shutting her eyes she abandoned herselfto their soft repeated thunder, allowed it to invade herconsciousness more and more completely, till at last there wasnothing left in the world but that one deep pulse of sound. Itreminded her reassuringly of the synthetic noises made atSolidarity Services and Ford's Day celebrations. "Orgy-porgy,"she whispered to herself. These drums beat out just the samerhythms.

There was a sudden startling burst of singing–hundreds of malevoices crying out fiercely in harsh metallic unison. A few longnotes and silence, the thunderous silence of the drums; thenshrill, in a neighing treble, the women's answer. Then again thedrums; and once more the men's deep savage affirmation of theirmanhood.

Queer–yes. The place was queer, so was the music, so were theclothes and the goitres and the skin diseases and the old people.But the performance itself–there seemed to be nothing speciallyqueer about that.

"It reminds me of a lower-caste Community Sing," she toldBernard.

But a little later it was reminding her a good deal less of thatinnocuous function. For suddenly there had swarmed up from thoseround chambers underground a ghastly troop of monsters. Hideouslymasked or painted out of all semblance of humanity, they hadtramped out a strange limping dance round the square; round andagain round, singing as they went, round and round–each time alittle faster; and the drums had changed and quickened theirrhythm, so that it became like the pulsing of fever in the ears;and the crowd had begun to sing with the dancers, louder andlouder; and first one woman had shrieked, and then another andanother, as though they were being killed; and then suddenly theleader of the dancers broke out of the line, ran to a big woodenchest which was standing at one end of the square, raised the lidand pulled out a pair of black snakes. A great yell went up fromthe crowd, and all the other dancers ran towards him without-stretched hands. He tossed the snakes to the first-comers,then dipped back into the chest for more. More and more, blacksnakes and brown and mottled-he flung them out. And then thedance began again on a different rhythm. Round and round theywent with their snakes, snakily, with a soft undulating movementat the knees and hips. Round and round. Then the leader gave asignal, and one after another, all the snakes were flung down inthe middle of the square; an old man came up from underground andsprinkled them with corn meal, and from the other hatchway came awoman and sprinkled them with water from a black jar. Then theold man lifted his hand and, startlingly, terrifyingly, there wasabsolute silence. The drums stopped beating, life seemed to havecome to an end. The old man pointed towards the two hatchwaysthat gave entrance to the lower world. And slowly, raised byinvisible hands from below, there emerged from the one a paintedimage of an eagle, from the other that of a man, naked, andnailed to a cross. They hung there, seemingly self-sustained, asthough watching. The old man clapped his hands. Naked but for awhite cotton breech-cloth, a boy of about eighteen stepped out ofthe crowd and stood before him, his hands crossed over his chest,his head bowed. The old man made the sign of the cross over himand turned away. Slowly, the boy began to walk round the writhingheap of snakes. He had completed the first circuit and washalf-way through the second when, from among the dancers, a tallman wearing the mask of a coyote and holding in his hand a whipof plaited leather, advanced towards him. The boy moved on asthough unaware of the other's existence. The coyote-man raisedhis whip, there was a long moment of expectancy, then a swiftmovement, the whistle of the lash and its loud flat-soundingimpact on the flesh. The boy's body quivered; but he made nosound, he walked on at the same slow, steady pace. The coyotestruck again, again; and at every blow at first a gasp, and thena deep groan went up from the crowd. The boy walked. Twice,thrice, four times round he went. The blood was streaming. Fivetimes round, six times round. Suddenly Lenina covered her faceshish her hands and began to sob. "Oh, stop them, stop them!" sheimplored. But the whip fell and fell inexorably. Seven timesround. Then all at once the boy staggered and, still without asound, pitched forward on to his face. Bending over him, the oldman touched his back with a long white feather, held it up for amoment, crimson, for the people to see then shook it thrice overthe snakes. A few drops fell, and suddenly the drums broke outagain into a panic of hurrying notes; there was a great shout.The dancers rushed forward, picked up the snakes and ran out ofthe square. Men, women, children, all the crowd ran after them. Aminute later the square was empty, only the boy remained, pronewhere he had fallen, quite still. Three old women came out of oneof the houses, and with some difficulty lifted him and carriedhim in. The eagle and the man on the cross kept guard for alittle while over the empty pueblo; then, as though they had seenenough, sank slowly down through their hatchways, out of sight,into the nether world.

Lenina was still sobbing. "Too awful," she kept repeating, andall Bernard's consolations were in vain. "Too awful! That blood!"She shuddered. "Oh, I wish I had my soma."

There was the sound of feet in the inner room.

Lenina did not move, but sat with her face in her hands,unseeing, apart. Only Bernard turned round.

The dress of the young man who now stepped out on to the terracewas Indian; but his plaited hair was straw-coloured, his eyes apale blue, and his skin a white skin, bronzed.

"Hullo. Good-morrow," said the stranger, in faultless butpeculiar English. "You're civilized, aren't you? You come fromthe Other Place, outside the Reservation?"

"Who on earth ... ?" Bernard began in astonishment.

The young man sighed and shook his head. "A most unhappygentleman." And, pointing to the bloodstains in the centre of thesquare, "Do you see that damned spot?" he asked in a voice thattrembled with emotion.

"A gramme is better than a damn," said Lenina mechanically frombehind her hands. "I wish I had my soma!"

" I ought to have been there," the young man went on. "Whywouldn't they let me be the sacrifice? I'd have gone round tentimes–twelve, fifteen. Palowhtiwa only got as far as seven. Theycould have had twice as much blood from me. The multitudinousseas incarnadine." He flung out his arms in a lavish gesture;then, despairingly, let them fall again. "But they wouldn't letme. They disliked me for my complexion. It's always been likethat. Always." Tears stood in the young man's eyes; he wasashamed and turned away.

Astonishment made Lenina forget the deprivation of soma . Sheuncovered her face and, for the first time, looked at thestranger. "Do you mean to say that you wanted to be hit with thatwhip?"

Still averted from her, the young man made a sign of affirmation."For the sake of the pueblo–to make the rain come and the corngrow. And to please Pookong and Jesus. And then to show that Ican bear pain without crying out. Yes," and his voice suddenlytook on a new resonance, he turned with a proud squaring of theshoulders, a proud, defiant lifting of the chin "to show that I'ma man ... Oh!" He gave a gasp and was silent, gaping. He hadseen, for the first time in his life, the face of a girl whosecheeks were not the colour of chocolate or dogskin, whose hairwas auburn and permanently waved, and whose expression (amazingnovelty!) was one of benevolent interest. Lenina was smiling athim; such a nice-looking boy, she was thinking, and a reallybeautiful body. The blood rushed up into the young man's face; hedropped his eyes, raised them again for a moment only to find herstill smiling at him, and was so much overcome that he had toturn away and pretend to be looking very hard at something on theother side of the square.

Bernard's questions made a diversion. Who? How? When? From where?Keeping his eyes fixed on Bernard's face (for so passionately didhe long to see Lenina smiling that he simply dared not look ather), the young man tried to explain himself. Linda and he–Lindawas his mother (the word made Lenina look uncomfortable)–werestrangers in the Reservation. Linda had come from the Other Placelong ago, before he was born, with a man who was his father.(Bernard pricked up his ears.) She had gone walking alone inthose mountains over there to the North, had fallen down a steepplace and hurt her head. ("Go on, go on," said Bernardexcitedly.) Some hunters from Malpais had found her and broughther to the pueblo. As for the man who was his father, Linda hadnever seen him again. His name was Tomakin. (Yes, "Thomas" wasthe D.H.C.'s first name.) He must have flown away, back to theOther Place, away without her–a bad, unkind, unnatural man.

"And so I was born in Malpais," he concluded. "In Malpais." Andhe shook his head.

The squalor of that little house on the outskirts of the pueblo!

A space of dust and rubbish separated it from the village. Twofamine-stricken dogs were nosing obscenely in the garbage at itsdoor. Inside, when they entered, the twilight stank and was loudwith flies.

"Linda!" the young man called.

From the inner room a rather hoarse female voice said, "Coming."

They waited. In bowls on the floor were the remains of a meal,perhaps of several meals.

The door opened. A very stout blonde squaw stepped across thethreshold and stood looking at the strangers staringincredulously, her mouth open. Lenina noticed with disgust thattwo of the front teeth were missing. And the colour of the onesthat remained ... She shuddered. It was worse than the old man.So fat. And all the lines in her face, the flabbiness, thewrinkles. And the sagging cheeks, with those purplish blotches.And the red veins on her nose, the bloodshot eyes. And thatneck–that neck; and the blanket she wore over her head–ragged andfilthy. And under the brown sack-shaped tunic those enormousbreasts, the bulge of the stomach, the hips. Oh, much worse thanthe old man, much worse! And suddenly the creature burst out in atorrent of speech, rushed at her with outstretched arms and–Ford!Ford! it was too revolting, in another moment she'd besick–pressed her against the bulge, the bosom, and began to kissher. Ford! to kiss, slobberingly, and smelt too horrible,obviously never had a bath, and simply reeked of that beastlystuff that was put into Delta and Epsilon bottles (no, it wasn'ttrue about Bernard), positively stank of alcohol. She broke awayas quickly as she could.

A blubbered and distorted face confronted her; the creature wascrying.

"Oh, my dear, my dear." The torrent of words flowed sobbingly."If you knew how glad–after all these years! A civilized face.Yes, and civilized clothes. Because I thought I should never seea piece of real acetate silk again." She fingered the sleeve ofLenina's shirt. The nails were black. "And those adorable viscosevelveteen shorts! Do you know, dear, I've still got my oldclothes, the ones I came in, put away in a box. I'll show themyou afterwards. Though, of course, the acetate has all gone intoholes. But such a lovely white bandolier–though I must say yourgreen morocco is even lovelier. Not that it did me much good,that bandolier." Her tears began to flow again. "I suppose Johntold you. What I had to suffer–and not a gramme of soma to behad. Only a drink of mescal every now and then, when Popé used tobring it. Popé is a boy I used to know. But it makes you feel sobad afterwards. the mescal does, and you're sick with the peyotl;besides it always made that awful feeling of being ashamed muchworse the next day. And I was so ashamed. Just think of it: me, aBeta–having a baby: put yourself in my place." (The meresuggestion made Lenina shudder.) "Though it wasn't my fault, Iswear; because I still don't know how it happened, seeing that Idid all the Malthusian Drill–you know, by numbers, One, two,three, four, always, I swear it; but all the same it happened,and of course there wasn't anything like an Abortion Centre here.Is it still down in Chelsea, by the way?" she asked. Leninanodded. "And still floodlighted on Tuesdays and Fridays?" Leninanodded again. "That lovely pink glass tower!" Poor Linda liftedher face and with closed eyes ecstatically contemplated thebright remembered image. "And the river at night," she whispered.Great tears oozed slowly out from behind her tight-shut eyelids."And flying back in the evening from Stoke Poges. And then a hotbath and vibro-vacuum massage ... But there." She drew a deepbreath, shook her head, opened her eyes again, sniffed once ortwice, then blew her nose on her fingers and wiped them on theskirt of her tunic. "Oh, I'm so sorry," she said in response toLenina's involuntary grimace of disgust. "I oughtn't to have donethat. I'm sorry. But what are you to do when there aren't anyhandkerchiefs? I remember how it used to upset me, all that dirt,and nothing being aseptic. I had an awful cut on my head whenthey first brought me here. You can't imagine what they used toput on it. Filth, just filth. 'Civilization is Sterilization,' Iused to say t them. And 'Streptocock-Gee to Banbury-T, to see afine bathroom and W.C.' as though they were children. But ofcourse they didn't understand. How should they? And in the end Isuppose I got used to it. And anyhow, how can you keep thingsclean when there isn't hot water laid on? And look at theseclothes. This beastly wool isn't like acetate. It lasts andlasts. And you're supposed to mend it if it gets torn. But I'm aBeta; I worked in the Fertilizing Room; nobody ever taught me todo anything like that. It wasn't my business. Besides, it neverused to be right to mend clothes. Throw them away when they'vegot holes in them and buy new. 'The more stitches, the lessriches.' Isn't that right? Mending's anti-social. But it's alldifferent here. It's like living with lunatics. Everything theydo is mad." She looked round; saw John and Bernard had left themand were walking up and down in the dust and garbage outside thehouse; but, none the less confidentially lowering her voice, andleaning, while Lenina stiffened and shrank, so close that theblown reek of embryo-poison stirred the hair on her cheek. "Forinstance," she hoarsely whispered, "take the way they have oneanother here. Mad, I tell you, absolutely mad. Everybody belongsto every one else–don't they? don't they?" she insisted, tuggingat Lenina's sleeve. Lenina nodded her averted head, let out thebreath she had been holding and managed to draw another one,relatively untainted. "Well, here," the other went on, "nobody'ssupposed to belong to more than one person. And if you havepeople in the ordinary way, the others think you're wicked andanti-social. They hate and despise you. Once a lot of women cameand made a scene because their men came to see me. Well, why not?And then they rushed at me ... No, it was too awful. I can't tellyou about it." Linda covered her face with her hands andshuddered. "They're so hateful, the women here. Mad, mad andcruel. And of course they don't know anything about MalthusianDrill, or bottles, or decanting, or anything of that sort. Sothey're having children all the time–like dogs. It's toorevolting. And to think that I ... Oh, Ford, Ford, Ford! And yetJohn was a great comfort to me. I don't know what I should havedone without him. Even though he did get so upset whenever a man... Quite as a tiny boy, even. Once (but that was when he wasbigger) he tried to kill poor Waihusiwa–or was it Popé?–justbecause I used to have them sometimes. Because I never could makehim understand that that was what civilized people ought to do.Being mad's infectious I believe. Anyhow, John seems to havecaught it from the Indians. Because, of course, he was with thema lot. Even though they always were so beastly to him andwouldn't let him do all the things the other boys did. Which wasa good thing in a way, because it made it easier for me tocondition him a little. Though you've no idea how difficult thatis. There's so much one doesn't know; it wasn't my business toknow. I mean, when a child asks you how a helicopter works or whomade the world–well, what are you to answer if you're a Beta andhave always worked in the Fertilizing Room? What are you toanswer?"

---------------------------------

Chapter Eight

OUTSIDE, in the dust and among the garbage (there were four dogsnow), Bernard and John were walking slowly up and down.

"So hard for me to realize," Bernard was saying, "to reconstruct.As though we were living on different planets, in differentcenturies. A mother, and all this dirt, and gods, and old age,and disease ..." He shook his head. "It's almost inconceivable. Ishall never understand, unless you explain."

"Explain what?"

"This." He indicated the pueblo. "That." And it was the littlehouse outside the village. "Everything. All your life."

"But what is there to say?"

"From the beginning. As far back as you can remember."

"As far back as I can remember." John frowned. There was a longsilence.

It was very hot. They had eaten a lot of tortillas and sweetcorn. Linda said, "Come and lie down, Baby." They lay downtogether in the big bed. "Sing," and Linda sang. Sang"Streptocock-Gee to Banbury-T" and "Bye Baby Banting, soon you'llneed decanting." Her voice got fainter and fainter ...

There was a loud noise, and he woke with a start. A man wassaying something to Linda, and Linda was laughing. She had pulledthe blanket up to her chin, but the man pulled it down again. Hishair was like two black ropes, and round his arm was a lovelysilver bracelet with blue stones in it. He liked the bracelet;but all the same, he was frightened; he hid his face againstLinda's body. Linda put her hand on him and he felt safer. Inthose other words he did not understand so well, she said to theman, "Not with John here." The man looked at him, then again atLinda, and said a few words in a soft voice. Linda said, "No."But the man bent over the bed towards him and his face was huge,terrible; the black ropes of hair touched the blanket. "No,"Linda said again, and he felt her hand squeezing him moretightly. "No, no!" But the man took hold of one of his arms, andit hurt. He screamed. The man put up his other hand and liftedhim up. Linda was still holding him, still saying, "No, no." Theman said something short and angry, and suddenly her hands weregone. "Linda, Linda." He kicked and wriggled; but the man carriedhim across to the door, opened it, put him down on the floor inthe middle of the other room, and went away, shutting the doorbehind him. He got up, he ran to the door. Standing on tiptoe hecould just reach the big wooden latch. He lifted it and pushed;but the door wouldn't open. "Linda," he shouted. She didn'tanswer.

He remembered a huge room, rather dark; and there were big woodenthings with strings fastened to them, and lots of women standinground them–making blankets, Linda said. Linda told him to sit inthe corner with the other children, while she went and helped thewomen. He played with the little boys for a long time. Suddenlypeople started talking very loud, and there were the womenpushing Linda away, and Linda was crying. She went to the doorand he ran after her. He asked her why they were angry. "BecauseI broke something," she said. And then she got angry too. "Howshould I know how to do their beastly weaving?" she said."Beastly savages." He asked her what savages were. When they gotback to their house, Popé was waiting at the door, and he came inwith them. He had a big gourd full of stuff that looked likewater; only it wasn't water, but something with a bad smell thatburnt your mouth and made you cough. Linda drank some and Popédrank some, and then Linda laughed a lot and talked very loud;and then she and Popé went into the other room. When Popé wentaway, he went into the room. Linda was in bed and so fast asleepthat he couldn't wake her.

Popé used to come often. He said the stuff in the gourd wascalled mescal; but Linda said it ought to be called soma; only itmade you feel ill afterwards. He hated Popé. He hated themall–all the men who came to see Linda. One afternoon, when he hadbeen playing with the other children–it was cold, he remembered,and there was snow on the mountains–he came back to the house andheard angry voices in the bedroom. They were women's voices, andthey said words he didn't understand, but he knew they weredreadful words. Then suddenly, crash! something was upset; heheard people moving about quickly, and there was another crashand then a noise like hitting a mule, only not so bony; thenLinda screamed. "Oh, don't, don't, don't!" she said. He ran in.There were three women in dark blankets. Linda was on the bed.One of the women was holding her wrists. Another was lying acrossher legs, so that she couldn't kick. The third was hitting herwith a whip. Once, twice, three times; and each time Lindascreamed. Crying, he tugged at the fringe of the woman's blanket."Please, please." With her free hand she held him away. The whipcame down again, and again Linda screamed. He caught hold of thewoman's enormous brown hand between his own and bit it with allhis might. She cried out, wrenched her hand free, and gave himsuch a push that he fell down. While he was lying on the groundshe hit him three times with the whip. It hurt more than anythinghe had ever felt–like fire. The whip whistled again, fell. Butthis time it was Linda who screamed.

"But why did they want to hurt you, Linda?'' he asked that night.He was crying, because the red marks of the whip on his backstill hurt so terribly. But he was also crying because peoplewere so beastly and unfair, and because he was only a little boyand couldn't do anything against them. Linda was crying too. Shewas grown up, but she wasn't big enough to fight against three ofthem. It wasn't fair for her either. "Why did they want to hurtyou, Linda?"

"I don't know. How should I know?" It was difficult to hear whatshe said, because she was lying on her stomach and her face wasin the pillow. "They say those men are their men," she went on;and she did not seem to be talking to him at all; she seemed tobe talking with some one inside herself. A long talk which shedidn't understand; and in the end she started crying louder thanever.

"Oh, don't cry, Linda. Don't cry."

He pressed himself against her. He put his arm round her neck.Linda cried out. "Oh, be careful. My shoulder! Oh!" and shepushed him away, hard. His head banged against the wall. "Littleidiot!" she shouted; and then, suddenly, she began to slap him.Slap, slap ...

"Linda," he cried out. "Oh, mother, don't!"

"I'm not your mother. I won't be your mother."

"But, Linda ... Oh!" She slapped him on the cheek.

"Turned into a savage," she shouted. "Having young ones like ananimal ... If it hadn't been for you, I might have gone to theInspector, I might have got away. But not with a baby. That wouldhave been too shameful."

He saw that she was going to hit him again, and lifted his arm toguard his face. "Oh, don't, Linda, please don't."

"Little beast!" She pulled down his arm; his face was uncovered.

"Don't, Linda." He shut his eyes, expecting the blow.

But she didn't hit him. After a little time, he opened his eyesagain and saw that she was looking at him. He tried to smile ather. Suddenly she put her arms round him and kissed him again andagain.

Sometimes, for several days, Linda didn't get up at all. She layin bed and was sad. Or else she drank the stuff that Popé broughtand laughed a great deal and went to sleep. Sometimes she wassick. Often she forgot to wash him, and there was nothing to eatexcept cold tortillas. He remembered the first time she foundthose little animals in his hair, how she screamed and screamed.

The happiest times were when she told him about the Other Place."And you really can go flying, whenever you like?"

"Whenever you like." And she would tell him about the lovelymusic that came out of a box, and all the nice games you couldplay, and the delicious things to eat and drink, and the lightthat came when you pressed a little thing in the wall, and thepictures that you could hear and feel and smell, as well as see,and another box for making nice smells, and the pink and greenand blue and silver houses as high as mountains, and everybodyhappy and no one ever sad or angry, and every one belonging toevery one else, and the boxes where you could see and hear whatwas happening at the other side of the world, and babies inlovely clean bottles–everything so clean, and no nasty smells, nodirt at all–and people never lonely, but living together andbeing so jolly and happy, like the summer dances here in Malpais,but much happier, and the happiness being there every day, everyday. ... He listened by the hour. And sometimes, when he and theother children were tired with too much playing, one of the oldmen of the pueblo would talk to them, in those other words, ofthe great Transformer of the World, and of the long fight betweenRight Hand and Left Hand, between Wet and Dry; of Awonawilona,who made a great fog by thinking in the night, and then made thewhole world out of the fog; of Earth Mother and Sky Father; ofAhaiyuta and Marsailema, the twins of War and Chance; of Jesusand Pookong; of Mary and Etsanatlehi, the woman who makes herselfyoung again; of the Black Stone at Laguna and the Great Eagle andOur Lady of Acoma. Strange stories, all the more wonderful to himfor being told in the other words and so not fully understood.Lying in bed, he would think of Heaven and London and Our Lady ofAcoma and the rows and rows of babies in clean bottles and Jesusflying up and Linda flying up and the great Director of WorldHatcheries and Awonawilona.

Lots of men came to see Linda. The boys began to point theirfingers at him. In the strange other words they said that Lindawas bad; they called her names he did not understand, but that heknew were bad names. One day they sang a song about her, againand again. He threw stones at them. They threw back; a sharpstone cut his cheek. The blood wouldn't stop; he was covered withblood.

Linda taught him to read. With a piece of charcoal she drewpictures on the wall–an animal sitting down, a baby inside abottle; then she wrote letters. THE CAT IS ON THE MAT. THE TOT ISIN THE POT. He learned quickly and easily. When he knew how toread all the words she wrote on the wall, Linda opened her bigwooden box and pulled out from under those funny little redtrousers she never wore a thin little book. He had often seen itbefore. "When you're bigger," she had said, "you can read it."Well, now he was big enough. He was proud. "I'm afraid you won'tfind it very exciting," she said. "But it's the only thing Ihave." She sighed. "If only you could see the lovely readingmachines we used to have in London!" He began reading. TheChemical and Bacteriological Conditioning of the Embryo .Practical Instructions for Beta Embryo-Store Workers. It took hima quarter of an hour to read the title alone. He threw the bookon the floor. "Beastly, beastly book!" he said, and began to cry.

The boys still sang their horrible song about Linda. Sometimes,too, they laughed at him for being so ragged. When he tore hisclothes, Linda did not know how to mend them. In the Other Place,she told him, people threw away clothes with holes in them andgot new ones. "Rags, rags!" the boys used to shout at him. "But Ican read," he said to himself, "and they can't. They don't evenknow what reading is." It was fairly easy, if he thought hardenough about the reading, to pretend that he didn't mind whenthey made fun of him. He asked Linda to give him the book again.

The more the boys pointed and sang, the harder he read. Soon hecould read all the words quite well. Even the longest. But whatdid they mean? He asked Linda; but even when she could answer itdidn't seem to make it very clear, And generally she couldn'tanswer at all.

"What are chemicals?" he would ask.

"Oh, stuff like magnesium salts, and alcohol for keeping theDeltas and Epsilons small and backward, and calcium carbonate forbones, and all that sort of thing."

"But how do you make chemicals, Linda? Where do they come from?"

"Well, I don't know. You get them out of bottles. And when thebottles are empty, you send up to the Chemical Store for more.It's the Chemical Store people who make them, I suppose. Or elsethey send to the factory for them. I don't know. I never did anychemistry. My job was always with the embryos. It was the samewith everything else he asked about. Linda never seemed to know.The old men of the pueblo had much more definite answers.

"The seed of men and all creatures, the seed of the sun and theseed of earth and the seed of the sky–Awonawilona made them allout of the Fog of Increase. Now the world has four wombs; and helaid the seeds in the lowest of the four wombs. And gradually theseeds began to grow ..."

One day (John calculated later that it must have been soon afterhis twelfth birthday) he came home and found a book that he hadnever seen before lying on the floor in the bedroom. It was athick book and looked very old. The binding had been eaten bymice; some of its pages were loose and crumpled. He picked it up,looked at the title-page: the book was called The Complete Worksof William Shakespeare.

Linda was lying on the bed, sipping that horrible stinking mescalout of a cup. "Popé brought it," she said. Her voice was thickand hoarse like somebody else's voice. "It was lying in one ofthe chests of the Antelope Kiva. It's supposed to have been therefor hundreds of years. I expect it's true, because I looked atit, and it seemed to be full of nonsense. Uncivilized. Still,it'll be good enough for you to practice your reading on." Shetook a last sip, set the cup down on the floor beside the bed,turned over on her side, hiccoughed once or twice and went tosleep.

He opened the book at random.

Nay, but to live

In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,

Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love

Over the nasty sty ...

The strange words rolled through his mind; rumbled, like talkingthunder; like the drums at the summer dances, if the drums couldhave spoken; like the men singing the Corn Song, beautiful,beautiful, so that you cried; like old Mitsima saying magic overhis feathers and his carved sticks and his bits of bone andstone–kiathla tsilu silokwe silokwe silokwe. Kiai silu silu,tsithl–but better than Mitsima's magic, because it meant more,because it talked to him, talked wonderfully and onlyhalf-understandably, a terrible beautiful magic, about Linda;about Linda lying there snoring, with the empty cup on the floorbeside the bed; about Linda and Popé, Linda and Popé.

He hated Popé more and more. A man can smile and smile and be avillain. Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain.What did the words exactly mean? He only half knew. But theirmagic was strong and went on rumbling in his head, and somehow itwas as though he had never really hated Popé before; never reallyhated him because he had never been able to say how much he hatedhim. But now he had these words, these words like drums andsinging and magic. These words and the strange, strange story outof which they were taken (he couldn't make head or tail of it,but it was wonderful, wonderful all the same)–they gave him areason for hating Popé; and they made his hatred more real; theyeven made Popé himself more real.

One day, when he came in from playing, the door of the inner roomwas open, and he saw them lying together on the bed, asleep–whiteLinda and Popé almost black beside her, with one arm under hershoulders and the other dark hand on her breast, and one of theplaits of his long hair lying across her throat, like a blacksnake trying to strangle her. Popé's gourd and a cup werestanding on the floor near the bed. Linda was snoring.

His heart seemed to have disappeared and left a hole. He wasempty. Empty, and cold, and rather sick, and giddy. He leanedagainst the wall to steady himself. Remorseless, treacherous,lecherous ... Like drums, like the men singing for the corn, likemagic, the words repeated and repeated themselves in his head.From being cold he was suddenly hot. His cheeks burnt with therush of blood, the room swam and darkened before his eyes. Heground his teeth. "I'll kill him, I'll kill him, I'll kill him,"he kept saying. And suddenly there were more words.

When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage

Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed ...

The magic was on his side, the magic explained and gave orders.He stepped back in the outer room. "When he is drunk asleep ..."The knife for the meat was lying on the floor near the fireplace.He picked it up and tiptoed to the door again. "When he is drunkasleep, drunk asleep ..." He ran across the room and stabbed–oh,the blood!–stabbed again, as Popé heaved out of his sleep, liftedhis hand to stab once more, but found his wrist caught, heldand–oh, oh!–twisted. He couldn't move, he was trapped, and therewere Popé's small black eyes, very close, staring into his own.He looked away. There were two cuts on Popé's left shoulder. "Oh,look at the blood!" Linda was crying. "Look at the blood!" Shehad never been able to bear the sight of blood. Popé lifted hisother hand–to strike him, he thought. He stiffened to receive theblow. But the hand only took him under the chin and turned hisface, so that he had to look again into Popé's eyes. For a longtime, for hours and hours. And suddenly–he couldn't help it–hebegan to cry. Popé burst out laughing. "Go," he said, in theother Indian words. "Go, my brave Ahaiyuta." He ran out into theother room to hide his tears.

"You are fifteen," said old Mitsima, in the Indian words. "Now Imay teach you to work the clay."

Squatting by the river, they worked together.

"First of all," said Mitsima, taking a lump of the wetted claybetween his hands, "we make a little moon." The old man squeezedthe lump into a disk, then bent up the edges, the moon became ashallow cup.

Slowly and unskilfully he imitated the old man's delicategestures.

"A moon, a cup, and now a snake." Mitsima rolled out anotherpiece of clay into a long flexible cylinder, trooped it into acircle and pressed it on to the rim of the cup. "Then anothersnake. And another. And another." Round by round, Mitsima builtup the sides of the pot; it was narrow, it bulged, it narrowedagain towards the neck. Mitsima squeezed and patted, stroked andscraped; and there at last it stood, in shape the familiar waterpot of Malpais, but creamy white instead of black, and still softto the touch. The crooked parody of Mitsima's, his own stoodbeside it. Looking at the two pots, he had to laugh.

"But the next one will be better," he said, and began to moistenanother piece of clay.

To fashion, to give form, to feel his fingers gaining in skilland power–this gave him an extraordinary pleasure. "A, B, C,Vitamin D," he sang to himself as he worked. "The fat's in theliver, the cod's in the sea." And Mitsima also sang–a song aboutkilling a bear. They worked all day, and all day he was filledwith an intense, absorbing happiness.

"Next winter," said old Mitsima, "I will teach you to make thebow."

He stood for a long time outside the house, and at last theceremonies within were finished. The door opened; they came out.Kothlu came first, his right hand out-stretched and tightlyclosed, as though over some precious jewel. Her clenched handsimilarly outstretched, Kiakimé followed. They walked in silence,and in silence, behind them, came the brothers and sisters andcousins and all the troop of old people.

They walked out of the pueblo, across the mesa. At the edge ofthe cliff they halted, facing the early morning sun. Kothluopened his hand. A pinch of corn meal lay white on the palm; hebreathed on it, murmured a few words, then threw it, a handful ofwhite dust, towards the sun. Kiakimé did the same. Then Khakimé'sfather stepped forward, and holding up a feathered prayer stick,made a long prayer, then threw the stick after the corn meal.

"It is finished," said old Mitsima in a loud voice. "They aremarried."

"Well," said Linda, as they turned away, "all I can say is, itdoes seem a lot of fuss to make about so little. In civilizedcountries, when a boy wants to have a girl, he just ... But whereare you going, John?"

He paid no attention to her calling, but ran on, away, away,anywhere to be by himself.

It is finished Old Mitsima's words repeated themselves in hismind. Finished, finished ... In silence and from a long way off,but violently, desperately, hopelessly, he had loved Kiakimé. Andnow it was finished. He was sixteen.

At the full moon, in the Antelope Kiva, secrets would be told,secrets would be done and borne. They would go down, boys, intothe kiva and come out again, men. The boys were all afraid and atthe same time impatient. And at last it was the day. The sun wentdown, the moon rose. He went with the others. Men were standing,dark, at the entrance to the kiva; the ladder went down into thered lighted depths. Already the leading boys had begun to climbdown. Suddenly, one of the men stepped forward, caught him by thearm, and pulled him out of the ranks. He broke free and dodgedback into his place among the others. This time the man struckhim, pulled his hair. "Not for you, white-hair!" "Not for the sonof the she-dog," said one of the other men. The boys laughed."Go!" And as he still hovered on the fringes of the group, "Go!"the men shouted again. One of them bent down, took a stone, threwit. "Go, go, go!" There was a shower of stones. Bleeding, he ranaway into the darkness. From the red-lit kiva came the noise ofsinging. The last of the boys had climbed down the ladder. He wasall alone.

All alone, outside the pueblo, on the bare plain of the mesa. Therock was like bleached bones in the moonlight. Down in thevalley, the coyotes were howling at the moon. The bruises hurthim, the cuts were still bleeding; but it was not for pain thathe sobbed; it was because he was all alone, because he had beendriven out, alone, into this skeleton world of rocks andmoonlight. At the edge of the precipice he sat down. The moon wasbehind him; he looked down into the black shadow of the mesa,into the black shadow of death. He had only to take one step, onelittle jump. ... He held out his right hand in the moonlight.From the cut on his wrist the blood was still oozing. Every fewseconds a drop fell, dark, almost colourless in the dead light.Drop, drop, drop. To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow ...

He had discovered Time and Death and God.

"Alone, always alone," the young man was saying.

The words awoke a plaintive echo in Bernard's mind. Alone, alone... "So am I," he said, on a gush of confidingness. "Terriblyalone."

"Are you?" John looked surprised. "I thought that in the OtherPlace ... I mean, Linda always said that nobody was ever alonethere."

Bernard blushed uncomfortably. "You see," he said, mumbling andwith averted eyes, "I'm rather different from most people, Isuppose. If one happens to be decanted different ..."

"Yes, that's just it." The young man nodded. "If one's different,one's bound to be lonely. They're beastly to one. Do you know,they shut me out of absolutely everything? When the other boyswere sent out to spend the night on the mountains–you know, whenyou have to dream which your sacred animal is–they wouldn't letme go with the others; they wouldn't tell me any of the secrets.I did it by myself, though," he added. "Didn't eat anything forfive days and then went out one night alone into those mountainsthere." He pointed.

Patronizingly, Bernard smiled. "And did you dream of anything?"he asked.

The other nodded. "But I mustn't tell you what." He was silentfor a little; then, in a low voice, "Once," he went on, "I didsomething that none of the others did: I stood against a rock inthe middle of the day, in summer, with my arms out, like Jesus onthe Cross."

"What on earth for?"

"I wanted to know what it was like being crucified. Hanging therein the sun ..."

"But why?"

"Why? Well ..." He hesitated. "Because I felt I ought to. IfJesus could stand it. And then, if one has done something wrong... Besides, I was unhappy; that was another reason."

"It seems a funny way of curing your unhappiness," said Bernard.But on second thoughts he decided that there was, after all, somesense in it. Better than taking soma ...

"I fainted after a time," said the young man. "Fell down on myface. Do you see the mark where I cut myself?" He lifted thethick yellow hair from his forehead. The scar showed, pale andpuckered, on his right temple.

Bernard looked, and then quickly, with a little shudder, avertedhis eyes. His conditioning had made him not so much pitiful asprofoundly squeamish. The mere suggestion of illness or woundswas to him not only horrifying, but even repulsive and ratherdisgusting. Like dirt, or deformity, or old age. Hastily hechanged the subject.

"I wonder if you'd like to come back to London with us?" heasked, making the first move in a campaign whose strategy he hadbeen secretly elaborating ever since, in the little house, he hadrealized who the "father" of this young savage must be. "Wouldyou like that?"

The young man's face lit up. "Do you really mean it?"

"Of course; if I can get permission, that is."

"Linda too?"

"Well ..." He hesitated doubtfully. That revolting creature! No,it was impossible. Unless, unless ... It suddenly occurred toBernard that her very revoltingness might prove an enormousasset. "But of course!" he cried, making up for his firsthesitations with an excess of noisy cordiality.

The young man drew a deep breath. "To think it should be comingtrue–what I've dreamt of all my life. Do you remember whatMiranda says?"

"Who's Miranda?"

But the young man had evidently not heard the question. "Owonder!" he was saying; and his eyes shone, his face was brightlyflushed. "How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteousmankind is!" The flush suddenly deepened; he was thinking ofLenina, of an angel in bottle-green viscose, lustrous with youthand skin food, plump, benevolently smiling. His voice faltered."O brave new world," he began, then-suddenly interrupted himself;the blood had left his cheeks; he was as pale as paper.

"Are you married to her?" he asked.

"Am I what?"

"Married. You know–for ever. They say 'for ever' in the Indianwords; it can't be broken."

"Ford, no!" Bernard couldn't help laughing.

John also laughed, but for another reason–laughed for pure joy.

"O brave new world," he repeated. "O brave new world that hassuch people in it. Let's start at once."

"You have a most peculiar way of talking sometimes," saidBernard, staring at the young man in perplexed astonishment."And, anyhow, hadn't you better wait till you actually see thenew world?"

---------------------------------

Chapter Nine

L ENINA felt herself entitled, after this day of queerness andhorror, to a complete and absolute holiday. As soon as they gotback to the rest-house, she swallowed six half-gramme tablets ofsoma, lay down on her bed, and within ten minutes had embarkedfor lunar eternity. It would be eighteen hours at the leastbefore she was in time again.

Bernard meanwhile lay pensive and wide-eyed in the dark. It waslong after midnight before he fell asleep. Long after midnight;but his insomnia had not been fruitless; he had a plan.

Punctually, on the following morning, at ten o'clock, thegreen-uniformed octoroon stepped out of his helicopter. Bernardwas waiting for him among the agaves.

"Miss Crowne's gone on soma -holiday," he explained. "Can hardlybe back before five. Which leaves us seven hours."

He could fly to Santa Fé, do all the business he had to do, andbe in Malpais again long before she woke up.

"She'll be quite safe here by herself?"

"Safe as helicopters," the octoroon assured him.

They climbed into the machine and started off at once. At tenthirty-four they landed on the roof of the Santa Fé Post Office;at ten thirty-seven Bernard had got through to the WorldController's Office in Whitehall; at ten thirty-seven he wasspeaking to his fordship's fourth personal secretary; at tenforty-four he was repeating his story to the first secretary, andat ten forty-seven and a half it was the deep, resonant voice ofMustapha Mond himself that sounded in his ears.

"I ventured to think," stammered Bernard, "that your fordshipmight find the matter of sufficient scientific interest ..."

"Yes, I do find it of sufficient scientific interest," said thedeep voice. "Bring these two individuals back to London withyou."

"Your fordship is aware that I shall need a special permit ..."

"The necessary orders," said Mustapha Mond, "are being sent tothe Warden of the Reservation at this moment. You will proceed atonce to the Warden's Office. Good-morning, Mr. Marx."

There was silence. Bernard hung up the receiver and hurried up tothe roof.

"Warden's Office," he said to the Gamma-green octoroon.

At ten fifty-four Bernard was shaking hands with the Warden.

"Delighted, Mr. Marx, delighted." His boom was deferential. "Wehave just received special orders ..."

"I know," said Bernard, interrupting him. "I was talking to hisfordship on the phone a moment ago." His bored tone implied thathe was in the habit of talking to his fordship every day of theweek. He dropped into a chair. "If you'll kindly take all thenecessary steps as soon as possible. As soon as possible," heemphatically repeated. He was thoroughly enjoying himself.

At eleven three he had all the necessary papers in his pocket.

"So long," he said patronizingly to the Warden, who hadaccompanied him as far as the lift gates. "So long."

He walked across to the hotel, had a bath, a vibro-vac massage,and an electrolytic shave, listened in to the morning's news,looked in for half an hour on the televisor, ate a leisuredluncheon, and at half-past two flew back with the octoroon toMalpais.

The young man stood outside the rest-house.

"Bernard," he called. "Bernard!" There was no answer.

Noiseless on his deerksin moccasins, he ran up the steps andtried the door. The door was locked.

They were gone! Gone! It was the most terrible thing that hadever happened to him. She had asked him to come and see them, andnow they were gone. He sat down on the steps and cried.

Half an hour later it occurred to him to look through the window.The first thing he saw was a green suit-case, with the initialsL.C. painted on the lid. Joy flared up like fire within him. Hepicked up a stone. The smashed glass tinkled on the floor. Amoment later he was inside the room. He opened the greensuit-case; and all at once he was breathing Lenina's perfume,filling his lungs with her essential being. His heart beatwildly; for a moment he was almost faint. Then, bending over theprecious box, he touched, he lifted into the light, he examined.The zippers on Lenina's spare pair of viscose velveteen shortswere at first a puzzle, then solved, a delight. Zip, and thenzip; zip, and then zip; he was enchanted. Her green slippers werethe most beautiful things he had ever seen. He unfolded a pair ofzippicamiknicks, blushed, put them hastily away again; but kisseda perfumed acetate handkerchief and wound a scarf round his neck.Opening a box, he spilt a cloud of scented powder. His hands werefloury with the stuff. He wiped them on his chest, on hisshoulders, on his bare arms. Delicious perfume! He shut his eyes;he rubbed his cheek against his own powdered arm. Touch of smoothskin against his face, scent in his nostrils of musky dust–herreal presence. "Lenina," he whispered. "Lenina!"

A noise made him start, made him guiltily turn. He crammed up histhieveries into the suit-case and shut the lid; then listenedagain, looked. Not a sign of life, not a sound. And yet he hadcertainly heard something–something like a sigh, something likethe creak of a board. He tiptoed to the door and, cautiouslyopening it, found himself looking on to a broad landing. On theopposite side of the landing was another door, ajar. He steppedout, pushed, peeped.

There, on a low bed, the sheet flung back, dressed in a pair ofpink one-piece zippyjamas, lay Lenina, fast asleep and sobeautiful in the midst of her curls, so touchingly childish withher pink toes and her grave sleeping face, so trustful in thehelplessness of her limp hands and melted limbs, that the tearscame to his eyes.

With an infinity of quite unnecessary precautions–for nothingshort of a pistol shot could have called Lenina back from hersoma-holiday before the appointed time–he entered the room, heknelt on the floor beside the bed. He gazed, he clasped hishands, his lips moved. "Her eyes," he murmured,

"Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice;Handlest in thy discourse O! that her hand,In whose comparison all whites are inkWriting their own reproach; to whose soft seizureThe cygnet's down is harsh ..."

A fly buzzed round her; he waved it away. "Flies," he remembered,

"On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand, may seizeAnd steal immortal blessing from her lips,Who, even in pure and vestal modesty,Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin."

Very slowly, with the hesitating gesture of one who reachesforward to stroke a shy and possibly rather dangerous bird, heput out his hand. It hung there trembling, within an inch ofthose limp fingers, on the verge of contact. Did he dare? Dare toprofane with his unworthiest hand that ... No, he didn't. Thebird was too dangerous. His hand dropped back. How beautiful shewas! How beautiful!

Then suddenly he found himself reflecting that he had only totake hold of the zipper at her neck and give one long, strongpull ... He shut his eyes, he shook his head with the gesture ofa dog shaking its ears as it emerges from the water. Detestablethought! He was ashamed of himself. Pure and vestal modesty ...

There was a humming in the air. Another fly trying to stealimmortal blessings? A wasp? He looked, saw nothing. The humminggrew louder and louder, localized itself as being outside theshuttered windows. The plane! In a panic, he scrambled to hisfeet and ran into the other room, vaulted through the openwindow, and hurrying along the path between the tall agaves wasin time to receive Bernard Marx as he climbed out of thehelicopter.

---------------------------------

Chapter Ten

THE HANDS of all the four thousand electric clocks in all theBloomsbury Centre's four thousand rooms marked twenty-sevenminutes past two. "This hive of industry," as the Director wasfond of calling it, was in the full buzz of work. Every one wasbusy, everything in ordered motion. Under the microscopes, theirlong tails furiously lashing, spermatozoa were burrowing headfirst into eggs; and, fertilized, the eggs were expanding,dividing, or if bokanovskified, budding and breaking up intowhole populations of separate embryos. From the SocialPredestination Room the escalators went rumbling down into thebasement, and there, in the crimson darkness, stewingly warm ontheir cushion of peritoneum and gorged with blood-surrogate andhormones, the foetuses grew and grew or, poisoned, languishedinto a stunted Epsilonhood. With a faint hum and rattle themoving racks crawled imperceptibly through the weeks and therecapitulated aeons to where, in the Decanting Room, thenewly-unbottled babes uttered their first yell of horror andamazement.

The dynamos purred in the sub-basement, the lifts rushed up anddown. On all the eleven floors of Nurseries it was feeding time.From eighteen hundred bottles eighteen hundred carefully labelledinfants were simultaneously sucking down their pint ofpasteurized external secretion.

Above them, in ten successive layers of dormitory, the littleboys and girls who were still young enough to need an afternoonsleep were as busy as every one else, though they did not knowit, listening unconsciously to hypnopædic lessons in hygiene andsociability, in class-consciousness and the toddler's love-life.Above these again were the playrooms where, the weather havingturned to rain, nine hundred older children were amusingthemselves with bricks and clay modelling, hunt-the-zipper, anderotic play.

Buzz, buzz! the hive was humming, busily, joyfully. Blithe wasthe singing of the young girls over their test-tubes, thePredestinators whistled as they worked, and in the Decanting Roomwhat glorious jokes were cracked above the empty bottles! But theDirector's face, as he entered the Fertilizing Room with HenryFoster, was grave, wooden with severity.

"A public example," he was saying. "In this room, because itcontains more high-caste workers than any other in the Centre. Ihave told him to meet me here at half-past two."

"He does his work very well," put in Henry, with hypocriticalgenerosity.

"I know. But that's all the more reason for severity. Hisintellectual eminence carries with it corresponding moralresponsibilities. The greater a man's talents, the greater hispower to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer thanthat many should be corrupted. Consider the matterdispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offence isso heinous as unorthodoxy of behaviour. Murder kills only theindividual–and, after all, what is an individual?" With asweeping gesture he indicated the rows of microscopes, thetest-tubes, the incubators. "We can make a new one with thegreatest ease–as many as we like. Unorthodoxy threatens more thanthe life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself. Yes,at Society itself," he repeated. "Ah, but here he comes."

Bernard had entered the room and was advancing between the rowsof fertilizers towards them. A veneer of jaunty self-confidencethinly concealed his nervousness. The voice in which he said,"Good-morning, Director," was absurdly too loud; that in which,correcting his mistake, he said, "You asked me to come and speakto you here," ridiculously soft, a squeak.

"Yes, Mr. Marx," said the Director portentously. "I did ask youto come to me here. You returned from your holiday last night, Iunderstand."

"Yes," Bernard answered.

"Yes-s," repeated the Director, lingering, a serpent, on the "s."Then, suddenly raising his voice, "Ladies and gentlemen," hetrumpeted, "ladies and gentlemen."

The singing of the girls over their test-tubes, the preoccupiedwhistling of the Microscopists, suddenly ceased. There was aprofound silence; every one looked round.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the Director repeated once more, "excuseme for thus interrupting your labours. A painful duty constrainsme. The security and stability of Society are in danger. Yes, indanger, ladies and gentlemen. This man," he pointed accusingly atBernard, "this man who stands before you here, this Alpha-Plus towhom so much has been given, and from whom, in consequence, somuch must be expected, this colleague of yours–or should Ianticipate and say this ex-colleague?–has grossly betrayed thetrust imposed in him. By his heretical views on sport and soma,by the scandalous unorthodoxy of his sex-life, by his refusal toobey the teachings of Our Ford and behave out of office hours,'even as a little infant,'" (here the Director made the sign ofthe T), "he has proved himself an enemy of Society, a subverter,ladies and gentlemen, of all Order and Stability, a conspiratoragainst Civilization itself. For this reason I propose to dismisshim, to dismiss him with ignominy from the post he has held inthis Centre; I propose forthwith to apply for his transference toa Subcentre of the lowest order and, that his punishment mayserve the best interest of Society, as far as possible removedfrom any important Centre of population. In Iceland he will havesmall opportunity to lead others astray by his unfordly example."The Director paused; then, folding his arms, he turnedimpressively to Bernard. "Marx," he said, "can you show anyreason why I should not now execute the judgment passed uponyou?"

"Yes, I can," Bernard answered in a very loud voice.

Somewhat taken aback, but still majestically, "Then show it,"said the Director.

"Certainly. But it's in the passage. One moment." Bernard hurriedto the door and threw it open. "Come in," he commanded, and thereason came in and showed itself.

There was a gasp, a murmur of astonishment and horror; a younggirl screamed; standing on a chair to get a better view some oneupset two test-tubes full of spermatozoa. Bloated, sagging, andamong those firm youthful bodies, those undistorted faces, astrange and terrifying monster of middle-agedness, Linda advancedinto the room, coquettishly smiling her broken and discolouredsmile, and rolling as she walked, with what was meant to be avoluptuous undulation, her enormous haunches. Bernard walkedbeside her.

"There he is," he said, pointing at the Director.

"Did you think I didn't recognize him?" Linda asked indignantly;then, turning to the Director, "Of course I knew you; Tomakin, Ishould have known you anywhere, among a thousand. But perhapsyou've forgotten me. Don't you remember? Don't you remember,Tomakin? Your Linda." She stood looking at him, her head on oneside, still smiling, but with a smile that became progressively,in face of the Director's expression of petrified disgust, lessand less self-confident, that wavered and finally went out."Don't you remember, Tomakin?" she repeated in a voice thattrembled. Her eyes were anxious, agonized. The blotched andsagging face twisted grotesquely into the grimace of extremegrief. "Tomakin!" She held out her arms. Some one began totitter.

"What's the meaning," began the Director, "of this monstrous ..."

"Tomakin!" She ran forward, her blanket trailing behind her,threw her arms round his neck, hid her face on his chest.

A howl of laughter went up irrepressibly.

"... this monstrous practical joke," the Director shouted.

Red in the face, he tried to disengage himself from her embrace.Desperately she clung. "But I'm Linda, I'm Linda."' The laughterdrowned her voice. "You made me have a baby," she screamed abovethe uproar. There was a sudden and appalling hush; eyes floateduncomfortably, not knowing where to look. The Director wentsuddenly pale, stopped struggling and stood, his hands on herwrists, staring down at her, horrified. "Yes, a baby–and I wasits mother." She flung the obscenity like a challenge into theoutraged silence; then, suddenly breaking away from him, ashamed,ashamed, covered her face with her hands, sobbing. "It wasn't myfault, Tomakin. Because I always did my drill, didn't I? Didn'tI? Always ... I don't know how ... If you knew how awful, Tomakin... But he was a comfort to me, all the same." Turning towardsthe door, "John!" she called. "John!"

He came in at once, paused for a moment just inside the door,looked round, then soft on his moccasined feet strode quicklyacross the room, fell on his knees in front of the Director, andsaid in a clear voice: "My father!"

The word (for "father" was not so much obscene as–with itsconnotation of something at one remove from the loathsomeness andmoral obliquity of child-bearing–merely gross, a scatologicalrather than a pornographic impropriety); the comically smuttyword relieved what had become a quite intolerable tension.Laughter broke out, enormous, almost hysterical, peal after peal,as though it would never stop. My father–and it was the Director!My father! Oh Ford, oh Ford! That was really too good. Thewhooping and the roaring renewed themselves, faces seemed on thepoint of disintegration, tears were streaming. Six moretest-tubes of spermatozoa were upset. My father!

Pale, wild-eyed, the Director glared about him in an agony ofbewildered humiliation.

My father! The laughter, which had shown signs of dying away,broke out again more loudly than ever. He put his hands over hisears and rushed out of the room.

---------------------------------

Chapter Eleven

AFTER the scene in the Fertilizing Room, all upper-caste Londonwas wild to see this delicious creature who had fallen on hisknees before the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning–orrather the ex-Director, for the poor man had resigned immediatelyafterwards and never set foot inside the Centre again–had floppeddown and called him (the joke was almost too good to be true!)"my father." Linda, on the contrary, cut no ice; nobody had thesmallest desire to see Linda. To say one was a mother–that waspast a joke: it was an obscenity. Moreover, she wasn't a realsavage, had been hatched out of a bottle and conditioned like anyone else: so couldn't have really quaint ideas. Finally–and thiswas by far the strongest reason for people's not wanting to seepoor Linda–there was her appearance. Fat; having lost her youth;with bad teeth, and a blotched complexion, and that figure(Ford!)–you simply couldn't look at her without feeling sick,yes, positively sick. So the best people were quite determinednot to see Linda. And Linda, for her part, had no desire to seethem. The return to civilization was for her the return to soma,was the possibility of lying in bed and taking holiday afterholiday, without ever having to come back to a headache or a fitof vomiting, without ever being made to feel as you always feltafter peyotl, as though you'd done something so shamefullyanti-social that you could never hold up your head again. Somaplayed none of these unpleasant tricks. The holiday it gave wasperfect and, if the morning after was disagreeable, it was so,not intrinsically, but only by comparison with the joys of theholiday. The remedy was to make the holiday continuous. Greedilyshe clamoured for ever larger, ever more frequent doses. Dr. Shawat first demurred; then let her have what she wanted. She took asmuch as twenty grammes a day.

"Which will finish her off in a month or two," the doctorconfided to Bernard. "One day the respiratory centre will beparalyzed. No more breathing. Finished. And a good thing too. Ifwe could rejuvenate, of course it would be different. But wecan't."

Surprisingly, as every one thought (for on soma-holiday Linda wasmost conveniently out of the way), John raised objections.

"But aren't you shortening her life by giving her so much?"

"In one sense, yes," Dr. Shaw admitted. "But in another we'reactually lengthening it." The young man stared, uncomprehending."Soma may make you lose a few years in time," the doctor went on."But think of the enormous, immeasurable durations it can giveyou out of time. Every soma-holiday is a bit of what ourancestors used to call eternity."

John began to understand. "Eternity was in our lips and eyes," hemurmured.

"Eh?"

"Nothing."

"Of course," Dr. Shaw went on, "you can't allow people to gopopping off into eternity if they've got any serious work to do.But as she hasn't got any serious work ..."

"All the same," John persisted, "I don't believe it's right."

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "Well, of course, if youprefer to have her screaming mad all the time ..."

In the end John was forced to give in. Linda got her soma.Thenceforward she remained in her little room on thethirty-seventh floor of Bernard's apartment house, in bed, withthe radio and television always on, and the patchouli tap justdripping, and the soma tablets within reach of her hand–there sheremained; and yet wasn't there at all, was all the time away,infinitely far away, on holiday; on holiday in some other world,where the music of the radio was a labyrinth of sonorous colours,a sliding, palpitating labyrinth, that led (by what beautifullyinevitable windings) to a bright centre of absolute conviction;where the dancing images of the television box were theperformers in some indescribably delicious all-singing feely;where the dripping patchouli was more than scent–was the sun, wasa million saxophones, was Popé making love, only much more so,incomparably more, and without end.

"No, we can't rejuvenate. But I'm very glad," Dr. Shaw hadconcluded, "to have had this opportunity to see an example ofsenility in a human being. Thank you so much for calling me in."He shook Bernard warmly by the hand.

It was John, then, they were all after. And as it was onlythrough Bernard, his accredited guardian, that John could beseen, Bernard now found himself, for the first time in his life,treated not merely normally, but as a person of outstandingimportance. There was no more talk of the alcohol in hisblood-surrogate, no gibes at his personal appearance. HenryFoster went out of his way to be friendly; Benito Hoover made hima present of six packets of sex-hormone chewing-gum; theAssistant Predestinator came out and cadged almost abjectly foran invitation to one of Bernard's evening parties. As for thewomen, Bernard had only to hint at the possibility of aninvitation, and he could have whichever of them he liked.

"Bernard's asked me to meet the Savage next Wednesday," Fannyannounced triumphantly.

"I'm so glad," said Lenina. "And now you must admit that you werewrong about Bernard. Don't you think he's really rather sweet?"

Fanny nodded. "And I must say," she said, "I was quite agreeablysurprised."

The Chief Bottler, the Director of Predestination, three DeputyAssistant Fertilizer-Generals, the Professor of Feelies in theCollege of Emotional Engineering, the Dean of the WestminsterCommunity Singery, the Supervisor of Bokanovskification–the listof Bernard's notabilities was interminable.

"And I had six girls last week," he confided to Helmholtz Watson."One on Monday, two on Tuesday, two more on Friday, and one onSaturday. And if I'd had the time or the inclination, there wereat least a dozen more who were only too anxious ..."

Helmholtz listened to his boastings in a silence so gloomilydisapproving that Bernard was offended.

"You're envious," he said.

Helmholtz shook his head. "I'm rather sad, that's all," heanswered.

Bernard went off in a huff. Never, he told himself, never wouldhe speak to Helmholtz again.

The days passed. Success went fizzily to Bernard's head, and inthe process completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicantshould do) to a world which, up till then, he had found veryunsatisfactory. In so far as it recognized him as important, theorder of things was good. But, reconciled by his success, he yetrefused to forego the privilege of criticizing this order. Forthe act of criticizing heightened his sense of importance, madehim feel larger. Moreover, he did genuinely believe that therewere things to criticize. (At the same time, he genuinely likedbeing a success and having all the girls he wanted.) Before thosewho now, for the sake of the Savage, paid their court to him,Bernard would parade a carping unorthodoxy. He was politelylistened to. But behind his back people shook their heads. "Thatyoung man will come to a bad end," they said, prophesying themore confidently in that they themselves would in due coursepersonally see to it that the end was bad. "He won't find anotherSavage to help him out a second time," they said. Meanwhile,however, there was the first Savage; they were polite. Andbecause they were polite, Bernard felt positivelygigantic–gigantic and at the same time light with elation,lighter than air.

"Lighter than air," said Bernard, pointing upwards.

Like a pearl in the sky, high, high above them, the WeatherDepartment's captive balloon shone rosily in the sunshine.

"... the said Savage," so ran Bernard's instructions, "to beshown civilized life in all its aspects. ..."

He was being shown a bird's-eye view of it at present, abird's-eye view from the platform of the Charing-T Tower. TheStation Master and the Resident Meteorologist were acting asguides. But it was Bernard who did most of the talking.Intoxicated, he was behaving as though, at the very least, hewere a visiting World Controller. Lighter than air.

The Bombay Green Rocket dropped out of the sky. The passengersalighted. Eight identical Dravidian twins in khaki looked out ofthe eight portholes of the cabin–the stewards.

"Twelve hundred and fifty kilometres an hour," said the StationMaster impressively. "What do you think of that, Mr. Savage?"

John thought it very nice. "Still," he said, "Ariel could put agirdle round the earth in forty minutes."

"The Savage," wrote Bernard in his report to Mustapha Mond,"shows surprisingly little astonishment at, or awe of, civilizedinventions. This is partly due, no doubt, to the fact that he hasheard them talked about by the woman Linda, his m–––."

(Mustapha Mond frowned. "Does the fool think I'm too squeamish tosee the word written out at full length?")

"Partly on his interest being focussed on what he calls 'thesoul,' which he persists in regarding as an entity independent ofthe physical environment, whereas, as I tried to point out to him..."

The Controller skipped the next sentences and was just about toturn the page in search of something more interestingly concrete,when his eye was caught by a series of quite extraordinaryphrases. " ... though I must admit," he read, "that I agree withthe Savage in finding civilized infantility too easy or, as heputs it, not expensive enough; and I would like to take thisopportunity of drawing your fordship's attention to ..."

Mustapha Mond's anger gave place almost at once to mirth. Theidea of this creature solemnly lecturing him–him-about the socialorder was really too grotesque. The man must have gone mad. "Iought to give him a lesson," he said to himself; then threw backhis head and laughed aloud. For the moment, at any rate, thelesson would not be given.

It was a small factory of lighting-sets for helicopters, a branchof the Electrical Equipment Corporation. They were met on theroof itself (for that circular letter of recommendation from theController was magical in its effects) by the Chief Technicianand the Human Element Manager. They walked downstairs into thefactory.

"Each process," explained the Human Element Manager, "is carriedout, so far as possible, by a single Bokanovsky Group."

And, in effect, eighty-three almost noseless black brachycephalicDeltas were cold-pressing. The fifty-six four-spindle chuckingand turning machines were being manipulated by fifty-six aquilineand ginger Gammas. One hundred and seven heat-conditioned EpsilonSenegalese were working in the foundry. Thirty-three Deltafemales, long-headed, sandy, with narrow pelvises, and all within20 millimetres of 1 metre 69 centimetres tall, were cuttingscrews. In the assembling room, the dynamos were being puttogether by two sets of Gamma-Plus dwarfs. The two lowwork-tables faced one another; between them crawled the conveyorwith its load of separate parts; forty-seven blonde heads wereconfronted by forty-seven brown ones. Forty-seven snubs byforty-seven hooks; forty-seven receding by forty-sevenprognathous chins. The completed mechanisms were inspected byeighteen identical curly auburn girls in Gamma green, packed incrates by thirty-four short-legged, left-handed maleDelta-Minuses, and loaded into the waiting trucks and lorries bysixty-three blue-eyed, flaxen and freckled Epsilon Semi-Morons.

"O brave new world ..." By some malice of his memory the Savagefound himself repeating Miranda's words. "O brave new world thathas such people in it."

"And I assure you," the Human Element Manager concluded, as theyleft the factory, "we hardly ever have any trouble with ourworkers. We always find ..."

But the Savage had suddenly broken away from his companions andwas violently retching, behind a clump of laurels, as though thesolid earth had been a helicopter in an air pocket.

"The Savage," wrote Bernard, "refuses to take soma, and seemsmuch distressed because of the woman Linda, his m–––, remainspermanently on holiday. It is worthy of note that, in spite ofhis m–––'s senility and the extreme repulsiveness of herappearance, the Savage frequently goes to see her and appears tobe much attached to her–an interesting example of the way inwhich early conditioning can be made to modify and even runcounter to natural impulses (in this case, the impulse to recoilfrom an unpleasant object)."

At Eton they alighted on the roof of Upper School. On theopposite side of School Yard, the fifty-two stories of Lupton'sTower gleamed white in the sunshine. College on their left and,on their right, the School Community Singery reared theirvenerable piles of ferro-concrete and vita-glass. In the centreof the quadrangle stood the quaint old chrome-steel statue of OurFord.

Dr. Gaffney, the Provost, and Miss Keate, the Head Mistress,received them as they stepped out of the plane.

"Do you have many twins here?" the Savage asked ratherapprehensively, as they set out on their tour of inspection.

"Oh, no," the Provost answered. "Eton is reserved exclusively forupper-caste boys and girls. One egg, one adult. It makeseducation more difficult of course. But as they'll be called uponto take responsibilities and deal with unexpected emergencies, itcan't be helped." He sighed.

Bernard, meanwhile, had taken a strong fancy to Miss Keate. "Ifyou're free any Monday, Wednesday, or Friday evening," he wassaying. Jerking his thumb towards the Savage, "He's curious, youknow," Bernard added. "Quaint."

Miss Keate smiled (and her smile was really charming, hethought); said Thank you; would be delighted to come to one ofhis parties. The Provost opened a door.

Five minutes in that Alpha Double Plus classroom left John atrifle bewildered.

"What is elementary relativity?" he whispered to Bernard. Bernardtried to explain, then thought better of it and suggested thatthey should go to some other classroom.

From behind a door in the corridor leading to the Beta-Minusgeography room, a ringing soprano voice called, "One, two, three,four," and then, with a weary impatience, "As you were."

"Malthusian Drill," explained the Head Mistress. "Most of ourgirls are freemartins, of course. I'm a freemartin myself." Shesmiled at Bernard. "But we have about eight hundred unsterilizedones who need constant drilling."

In the Beta-Minus geography room John learnt that "a savagereservation is a place which, owing to unfavourable climatic orgeological conditions, or poverty of natural resources, has notbeen worth the expense of civilizing." A click; the room wasdarkened; and suddenly, on the screen above the Master's head,there were the Penitentes of Acoma prostrating themselves beforeOur Lady, and wailing as John had heard them wail, confessingtheir sins before Jesus on the Cross, before the eagle image ofPookong. The young Etonians fairly shouted with laughter. Stillwailing, the Penitentes rose to their feet, stripped off theirupper garments and, with knotted whips, began to beat themselves,blow after blow. Redoubled, the laughter drowned even theamplified record of their groans.

"But why do they laugh?" asked the Savage in a painedbewilderment.

"Why?" The Provost turned towards him a still broadly grinningface. "Why? But because it's so extraordinarily funny."

In the cinematographic twilight, Bernard risked a gesture which,in the past, even total darkness would hardly have emboldened himto make. Strong in his new importance, he put his arm around theHead Mistress's waist. It yielded, willowily. He was just aboutto snatch a kiss or two and perhaps a gentle pinch, when theshutters clicked open again.

"Perhaps we had better go on," said Miss Keate, and moved towardsthe door.

"And this," said the Provost a moment later, "is HypnopædicControl Room."

Hundreds of synthetic music boxes, one for each dormitory, stoodranged in shelves round three sides of the room; pigeon-holed onthe fourth were the paper sound-track rolls on which the varioushypnopædic lessons were printed.

"You slip the roll in here," explained Bernard, interrupting Dr.Gaffney, "press down this switch ..."

"No, that one," corrected the Provost, annoyed.

"That one, then. The roll unwinds. The selenium cells transformthe light impulses into sound waves, and ..."

"And there you are," Dr. Gaffney concluded.

"Do they read Shakespeare?" asked the Savage as they walked, ontheir way to the Bio-chemical Laboratories, past the SchoolLibrary.

"Certainly not," said the Head Mistress, blushing.

"Our library," said Dr. Gaffney, "contains only books ofreference. If our young people need distraction, they can get itat the feelies. We don't encourage them to indulge in anysolitary amusements."

Five bus-loads of boys and girls, singing or in a silentembracement, rolled past them over the vitrified highway.

"Just returned," explained Dr. Gaffney, while Bernard,whispering, made an appointment with the Head Mistress for thatvery evening, "from the Slough Crematorium. Death conditioningbegins at eighteen months. Every tot spends two mornings a weekin a Hospital for the Dying. All the best toys are kept there,and they get chocolate cream on death days. They learn to takedying as a matter of course."

"Like any other physiological process," put in the Head Mistressprofessionally.

Eight o'clock at the Savoy. It was all arranged.

On their way back to London they stopped at the TelevisionCorporation's factory at Brentford.

"Do you mind waiting here a moment while I go and telephone?"asked Bernard.

The Savage waited and watched. The Main Day-Shift was just goingoff duty. Crowds of lower-caste workers were queued up in frontof the monorail station-seven or eight hundred Gamma, Delta andEpsilon men and women, with not more than a dozen faces andstatures between them. To each of them, with his or her ticket,the booking clerk pushed over a little cardboard pillbox. Thelong caterpillar of men and women moved slowly forward.

"What's in those" (remembering The Merchant of Venice ) "thosecaskets?" the Savage enquired when Bernard had rejoined him.

"The day's soma ration," Bernard answered rather indistinctly;for he was masticating a piece of Benito Hoover's chewing-gum."They get it after their work's over. Four half-gramme tablets.Six on Saturdays."

He took John's arm affectionately and they walked back towardsthe helicopter.

Lenina came singing into the Changing Room.

"You seem very pleased with yourself," said Fanny.

"I am pleased," she answered. Zip! "Bernard rang up half an hourago." Zip, zip! She stepped out of her shorts. "He has anunexpected engagement." Zip! "Asked me if I'd take the Savage tothe feelies this evening. I must fly." She hurried away towardsthe bathroom.

"She's a lucky girl," Fanny said to herself as she watched Leninago.

There was no envy in the comment; good-natured Fanny was merelystating a fact. Lenina was lucky; lucky in having shared withBernard a generous portion of the Savage's immense celebrity,lucky in reflecting from her insignificant person the moment'ssupremely fashionable glory. Had not the Secretary of the YoungWomen's Fordian Association asked her to give a lecture about herexperiences? Had she not been invited to the Annual Dinner of theAphroditeum Club? Had she not already appeared in the FeelytoneNews–visibly, audibly and tactually appeared to countlessmillions all over the planet?

Hardly less flattering had been the attentions paid her byconspicuous individuals. The Resident World Controller's SecondSecretary had asked her to dinner and breakfast. She had spentone week-end with the Ford Chief-Justice, and another with theArch-Community-Songster of Canterbury. The President of theInternal and External Secretions Corporation was perpetually onthe phone, and she had been to Deauville with the Deputy-Governorof the Bank of Europe.

"It's wonderful, of course. And yet in a way," she had confessedto Fanny, "I feel as though I were getting something on falsepretences. Because, of course, the first thing they all want toknow is what it's like to make love to a Savage. And I have tosay I don't know." She shook her head. "Most of the men don'tbelieve me, of course. But it's true. I wish it weren't," sheadded sadly and sighed. "He's terribly good-looking; don't youthink so?"

"But doesn't he like you?" asked Fanny.

"Sometimes I think he does and sometimes I think he doesn't. Healways does his best to avoid me; goes out of the room when Icome in; won't touch me; won't even look at me. But sometimes ifI turn round suddenly, I catch him staring; and then–well, youknow how men look when they like you."

Yes, Fanny knew.

"I can't make it out," said Lenina.

She couldn't make it out; and not only was bewildered; was alsorather upset.

"Because, you see, Fanny, I like him."

Liked him more and more. Well, now there'd be a real chance, shethought, as she scented herself after her bath. Dab, dab, dab–areal chance. Her high spirits overflowed in a song.

''Hug me till you drug me, honey;

Kiss me till I'm in a coma;

Hug me, honey, snuggly bunny;

Love's as good as soma."

The scent organ was playing a delightfully refreshing HerbalCapriccio–rippling arpeggios of thyme and lavender, of rosemary,basil, myrtle, tarragon; a series of daring modulations throughthe spice keys into ambergris; and a slow return throughsandalwood, camphor, cedar and newmown hay (with occasionalsubtle touches of discord–a whiff of kidney pudding, the faintestsuspicion of pig's dung) back to the simple aromatics with whichthe piece began. The final blast of thyme died away; there was around of applause; the lights went up. In the synthetic musicmachine the sound-track roll began to unwind. It was a trio forhyper-violin, super-cello and oboe-surrogate that now filled theair with its agreeable languor. Thirty or forty bars–and then,against this instrumental background, a much more than humanvoice began to warble; now throaty, now from the head, now hollowas a flute, now charged with yearning harmonics, it effortlesslypassed from Gaspard's Forster's low record on the very frontiersof musical tone to a trilled bat-note high above the highest C towhich (in 1770, at the Ducal opera of Parma, and to theastonishment of Mozart) Lucrezia Ajugari, alone of all thesingers in history, once piercingly gave utterance.

Sunk in their pneumatic stalls, Lenina and the Savage sniffed andlistened. It was now the turn also for eyes and skin.

The house lights went down; fiery letters stood out solid and asthough self-supported in the darkness. THREE WEEKS IN AHELICOPTER . AN ALL-SUPER-SINGING, SYNTHETIC-TALK1NG, COLOURED,STEREOSCOPIC FEELY. WITH SYNCHRONIZED SCENT-ORGAN ACCOMPANIMENT.

"Take hold of those metal knobs on the arms of your chair,"whispered Lenina. "Otherwise you won't get any of the feelyeffects."

The Savage did as he was told.

Those fiery letters, meanwhile, had disappeared; there were tenseconds of complete darkness; then suddenly, dazzling andincomparably more solid-looking than they would have seemed inactual flesh and blood, far more real than reality, there stoodthe stereoscopic images, locked in one another's arms, of agigantic negro and a golden-haired young brachycephalic Beta-Plusfemale.

The Savage started. That sensation on his lips! He lifted a handto his mouth; the titillation ceased; let his hand fall back onthe metal knob; it began again. The scent organ, meanwhile,breathed pure musk. Expiringly, a sound-track super-dove cooed"Oo-ooh"; and vibrating only thirty-two times a second, a deeperthan African bass made answer: "Aa-aah." "Ooh-ah! Ooh-ah!" thestereoscopic lips came together again, and once more the facialerogenous zones of the six thousand spectators in the Alhambratingled with almost intolerable galvanic pleasure. "Ooh ..."

The plot of the film was extremely simple. A few minutes afterthe first Oohs and Aahs (a duet having been sung and a littlelove made on that famous bearskin, every hair of which–theAssistant Predestinator was perfectly right–could be separatelyand distinctly felt), the negro had a helicopter accident, fellon his head. Thump! what a twinge through the forehead! A chorusof ow's and aie's went up from the audience.

The concussion knocked all the negro's conditioning into a cockedhat. He developed for the Beta blonde an exclusive and maniacalpassion. She protested. He persisted. There were struggles,pursuits, an assault on a rival, finally a sensationalkidnapping. The Beta blond was ravished away into the sky andkept there, hovering, for three weeks in a wildly anti-socialtête-à-tête with the black madman. Finally, after a whole seriesof adventures and much aerial acrobacy three handsome youngAlphas succeeded in rescuing her. The negro was packed off to anAdult Re-conditioning Centre and the film ended happily anddecorously, with the Beta blonde becoming the mistress of all herthree rescuers. They interrupted themselves for a moment to singa synthetic quartet, with full super-orchestral accompaniment andgardenias on the scent organ. Then the bearskin made a finalappearance and, amid a blare of saxophones, the last stereoscopickiss faded into darkness, the last electric titillation died onthe lips like a dying moth that quivers, quivers, ever morefeebly, ever more faintly, and at last is quiet, quite still.

But for Lenina the moth did not completely die. Even after thelights had gone up, while they were shuffling slowly along withthe crowd towards the lifts, its ghost still fluttered againsther lips, still traced fine shuddering roads of anxiety andpleasure across her skin. Her cheeks were flushed. She caughthold of the Savage's arm and pressed it, limp, against her side.He looked down at her for a moment, pale, pained, desiring, andashamed of his desire. He was not worthy, not ... Their eyes fora moment met. What treasures hers promised! A queen's ransom oftemperament. Hastily he looked away, disengaged his imprisonedarm. He was obscurely terrified lest she should cease to besomething he could feel himself unworthy of.

"I don't think you ought to see things like that," he said,making haste to transfer from Lenina herself to the surroundingcircumstances the blame for any past or possible future lapsefrom perfection.

"Things like what, John?"

"Like this horrible film."

"Horrible?" Lenina was genuinely astonished. "But I thought itwas lovely."

"It was base," he said indignantly, "it was ignoble."

She shook her head. "I don't know what you mean." Why was he soqueer? Why did he go out of his way to spoil things?

In the taxicopter he hardly even looked at her. Bound by strongvows that had never been pronounced, obedient to laws that hadlong since ceased to run, he sat averted and in silence.Sometimes, as though a finger had plucked at some taut, almostbreaking string, his whole body would shake with a sudden nervousstart.

The taxicopter landed on the roof of Lenina's apartment house."At last," she thought exultantly as she stepped out of the cab.At last–even though he had been so queer just now. Standing undera lamp, she peered into her hand mirror. At last. Yes, her nosewas a bit shiny. She shook the loose powder from her puff. Whilehe was paying off the taxi–there would just be time. She rubbedat the shininess, thinking: "He's terribly good-looking. No needfor him to be shy like Bernard. And yet ... Any other man wouldhave done it long ago. Well, now at last." That fragment of aface in the little round mirror suddenly smiled at her.

"Good-night," said a strangled voice behind her. Lenina wheeledround. He was standing in the doorway of the cab, his eyes fixed,staring; had evidently been staring all this time while she waspowdering her nose, waiting–but what for? or hesitating, tryingto make up his mind, and all the time thinking, thinking–shecould not imagine what extraordinary thoughts. "Good-night,Lenina," he repeated, and made a strange grimacing attempt tosmile.

"But, John ... I thought you were ... I mean, aren't you? ..."

He shut the door and bent forward to say something to the driver.The cab shot up into the air.

Looking down through the window in the floor, the Savage couldsee Lenina's upturned face, pale in the bluish light of thelamps. The mouth was open, she was calling. Her foreshortenedfigure rushed away from him; the diminishing square of the roofseemed to be falling through the darkness.

Five minutes later he was back in his room. From its hiding-placehe took out his mouse-nibbled volume, turned with religious careits stained and crumbled pages, and began to read Othello .Othello, he remembered, was like the hero of Three Weeks in aHelicopter–a black man.

Drying her eyes, Lenina walked across the roof to the lift. Onher way down to the twenty-seventh floor she pulled out her somabottle. One gramme, she decided, would not be enough; hers hadbeen more than a one-gramme affliction. But if she took twogrammes, she ran the risk of not waking up in time to-morrowmorning. She compromised and, into her cupped left palm, shookout three half-gramme tablets.

---------------------------------

Chapter Twelve

BERNARD had to shout through the locked door; the Savage wouldnot open.

"But everybody's there, waiting for you."

"Let them wait," came back the muffled voice through the door.

"But you know quite well, John" (how difficult it is to soundpersuasive at the top of one's voice!) "I asked them on purposeto meet you."

"You ought to have asked me first whether I wanted to meet them."

"But you always came before, John."

"That's precisely why I don't want to come again."

"Just to please me," Bernard bellowingly wheedled. "Won't youcome to please me?"

"No."

"Do you seriously mean it?"

"Yes."

Despairingly, "But what shall I do?" Bernard wailed.

"Go to hell!" bawled the exasperated voice from within.

"But the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury is thereto-night." Bernard was almost in tears.

"Ai yaa tákwa!" It was only in Zuñi that the Savage couldadequately express what he felt about theArch-Community-Songster. "Háni!" he added as an after-thought;and then (with what derisive ferocity!): "Sons éso tse-ná." Andhe spat on the ground, as Popé might have done.

In the end Bernard had to slink back, diminished, to his roomsand inform the impatient assembly that the Savage would not beappearing that evening. The news was received with indignation.The men were furious at having been tricked into behavingpolitely to this insignificant fellow with the unsavouryreputation and the heretical opinions. The higher their positionin the hierarchy, the deeper their resentment.

"To play such a joke on me," the Arch-Songster kept repeating,"on me!"

As for the women, they indignantly felt that they had been had onfalse pretences–had by a wretched little man who had had alcoholpoured into his bottle by mistake–by a creature with aGamma-Minus physique. It was an outrage, and they said so, moreand more loudly. The Head Mistress of Eton was particularlyscathing.

Lenina alone said nothing. Pale, her blue eyes clouded with anunwonted melancholy, she sat in a corner, cut off from those whosurrounded her by an emotion which they did not share. She hadcome to the party filled with a strange feeling of anxiousexultation. "In a few minutes," she had said to herself, as sheentered the room, "I shall be seeing him, talking to him, tellinghim" (for she had come with her mind made up) "that I likehim–more than anybody I've ever known. And then perhaps he'll say..."

What would he say? The blood had rushed to her cheeks.

"Why was he so strange the other night, after the feelies? Soqueer. And yet I'm absolutely sure he really does rather like me.I'm sure ..."

It was at this moment that Bernard had made his announcement; theSavage wasn't coming to the party.

Lenina suddenly felt all the sensations normally experienced atthe beginning of a Violent Passion Surrogate treatment–a sense ofdreadful emptiness, a breathless apprehension, a nausea. Herheart seemed to stop beating.

"Perhaps it's because he doesn't like me," she said to herself.And at once this possibility became an established certainty:John had refused to come because he didn't like her. He didn'tlike her. ...

"It really is a bit too thick," the Head Mistress of Eton wassaying to the Director of Crematoria and Phosphorus Reclamation."When I think that I actually ..."

"Yes," came the voice of Fanny Crowne, "it's absolutely trueabout the alcohol. Some one I know knew some one who was workingin the Embryo Store at the time. She said to my friend, and myfriend said to me ..."

"Too bad, too bad," said Henry Foster, sympathizing with theArch-Community-Songster. "It may interest you to know that ourex-Director was on the point of transferring him to Iceland."

Pierced by every word that was spoken, the tight balloon ofBernard's happy self-confidence was leaking from a thousandwounds. Pale, distraught, abject and agitated, he moved among hisguests, stammering incoherent apologies, assuring them that nexttime the Savage would certainly be there, begging them to sitdown and take a carotene sandwich, a slice of vitamin A pâté, aglass of champagne-surrogate. They duly ate, but ignored him;drank and were either rude to his face or talked to one anotherabout him, loudly and offensively, as though he had not beenthere.

"And now, my friends," said the Arch-Community-Songster ofCanterbury, in that beautiful ringing voice with which he led theproceedings at Ford's Day Celebrations, "Now, my friends, I thinkperhaps the time has come ..." He rose, put down his glass,brushed from his purple viscose waistcoat the crumbs of aconsiderable collation, and walked towards the door.

Bernard darted forward to intercept him.

"Must you really, Arch-Songster? ... It's very early still. I'dhoped you would ..."

Yes, what hadn't he hoped, when Lenina confidentially told himthat the Arch-Community-Songster would accept an invitation if itwere sent. "He's really rather sweet, you know." And she hadshown Bernard the little golden zipper-fastening in the form of aT which the Arch-Songster had given her as a memento of theweek-end she had spent at Lambeth. To meet theArch-Community-Songster of Canterbury and Mr. Savage. Bernard hadproclaimed his triumph on every invitation card. But the Savagehad chosen this evening of all evenings to lock himself up in hisroom, to shout "Háni!" and even (it was lucky that Bernard didn'tunderstand Zuñi) "Sons éso tse-ná!" What should have been thecrowning moment of Bernard's whole career had turned out to bethe moment of his greatest humiliation.

"I'd so much hoped ..." he stammeringly repeated, looking up atthe great dignitary with pleading and distracted eyes.

"My young friend," said the Arch-Community-Songster in a tone ofloud and solemn severity; there was a general silence. "Let megive you a word of advice." He wagged his finger at Bernard."Before it's too late. A word of good advice." (His voice becamesepulchral.) "Mend your ways, my young friend, mend your ways."He made the sign of the T over him and turned away. "Lenina, mydear," he called in another tone. "Come with me."

Obediently, but unsmiling and (wholly insensible of the honourdone to her) without elation, Lenina walked after him, out of theroom. The other guests followed at a respectful interval. Thelast of them slammed the door. Bernard was all alone.

Punctured, utterly deflated, he dropped into a chair and,covering his face with his hands, began to weep. A few minuteslater, however, he thought better of it and took four tablets ofsoma.

Upstairs in his room the Savage was reading Romeo and Juliet.

Lenina and the Arch-Community-Songster stepped out on to the roofof Lambeth Palace. "Hurry up, my young friend–I mean, Lenina,"called the Arch-Songster impatiently from the lift gates. Lenina,who had lingered for a moment to look at the moon, dropped hereyes and came hurrying across the roof to rejoin him.

"A New Theory of Biology" was the title of the paper whichMustapha Mond had just finished reading. He sat for some time,meditatively frowning, then picked up his pen and wrote acrossthe title-page: "The author's mathematical treatment of theconception of purpose is novel and highly ingenious, butheretical and, so far as the present social order is concerned,dangerous and potentially subversive. Not to be published." Heunderlined the words. "The author will be kept under supervision.His transference to the Marine Biological Station of St. Helenamay become necessary." A pity, he thought, as he signed his name.It was a masterly piece of work. But once you began admittingexplanations in terms of purpose–well, you didn't know what theresult might be. It was the sort of idea that might easilydecondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes–makethem lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and taketo believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond,somewhere outside the present human sphere, that the purpose oflife was not the maintenance of well-being, but someintensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargementof knowledge. Which was, the Controller reflected, quite possiblytrue. But not, in the present circumstance, admissible. He pickedup his pen again, and under the words "Not to be published" drewa second line, thicker and blacker than the first; then sighed,"What fun it would be," he thought, "if one didn't have to thinkabout happiness!"

With closed eyes, his face shining with rapture, John was softlydeclaiming to vacancy:

"Oh! she doth teach the torches to burn bright.

It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night,

Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear;

Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear ..."

The golden T lay shining on Lenina's bosom. Sportively, theArch-Community-Songster caught hold of it, sportively he pulled,pulled. "I think," said Lenina suddenly, breaking a long silence,"I'd better take a couple of grammes of soma."

Bernard, by this time, was fast asleep and smiling at the privateparadise of his dreams. Smiling, smiling. But inexorably, everythirty seconds, the minute hand of the electric clock above hisbed jumped forward with an almost imperceptible click. Click,click, click, click ... And it was morning. Bernard was backamong the miseries of space and time. It was in the lowestspirits that he taxied across to his work at the ConditioningCentre. The intoxication of success had evaporated; he wassoberly his old self; and by contrast with the temporary balloonof these last weeks, the old self seemed unprecedentedly heavierthan the surrounding atmosphere.

To this deflated Bernard the Savage showed himself unexpectedlysympathetic.

"You're more like what you were at Malpais," he said, whenBernard had told him his plaintive story. "Do you remember whenwe first talked together? Outside the little house. You're likewhat you were then."

"Because I'm unhappy again; that's why."

"Well, I'd rather be unhappy than have the sort of false, lyinghappiness you were having here."

"I like that," said Bernard bitterly. "When it's you who were thecause of it all. Refusing to come to my party and so turning themall against me!" He knew that what he was saying was absurd inits injustice; he admitted inwardly, and at last even aloud, thetruth of all that the Savage now said about the worthlessness offriends who could be turned upon so slight a provocation intopersecuting enemies. But in spite of this knowledge and theseadmissions, in spite of the fact that his friend's support andsympathy were now his only comfort, Bernard continued perverselyto nourish, along with his quite genuine affection, a secretgrievance against the Savage, to mediate a campaign of smallrevenges to be wreaked upon him. Nourishing a grievance againstthe Arch-Community-Songster was useless; there was no possibilityof being revenged on the Chief Bottler or the AssistantPredestinator. As a victim, the Savage possessed, for Bernard,this enormous superiority over the others: that he wasaccessible. One of the principal functions of a friend is tosuffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that weshould like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.

Bernard's other victim-friend was Helmholtz. When, discomfited,he came and asked once more for the friendship which, in hisprosperity, he had not thought it worth his while to preserve.Helmholtz gave it; and gave it without a reproach, without acomment, as though he had forgotten that there had ever been aquarrel. Touched, Bernard felt himself at the same timehumiliated by this magnanimity–a magnanimity the moreextraordinary and therefore the more humiliating in that it owednothing to soma and everything to Helmholtz's character. It wasthe Helmholtz of daily life who forgot and forgave, not theHelmholtz of a half-gramme holiday. Bernard was duly grateful (itwas an enormous comfort to have his friend again) and also dulyresentful (it would be pleasure to take some revenge on Helmholtzfor his generosity).

At their first meeting after the estrangement, Bernard poured outthe tale of his miseries and accepted consolation. It was nottill some days later that he learned, to his surprise and with atwinge of shame, that he was not the only one who had been introuble. Helmholtz had also come into conflict with Authority.

"It was over some rhymes," he explained. "I was giving my usualcourse of Advanced Emotional Engineering for Third Year Students.Twelve lectures, of which the seventh is about rhymes. 'On theUse of Rhymes in Moral Propaganda and Advertisement,' to beprecise. I always illustrate my lecture with a lot of technicalexamples. This time I thought I'd give them one I'd just writtenmyself. Pure madness, of course; but I couldn't resist it." Helaughed. "I was curious to see what their reactions would be.Besides," he added more gravely, "I wanted to do a bit ofpropaganda; I was trying to engineer them into feeling as I'dfelt when I wrote the rhymes. Ford!" He laughed again. "What anoutcry there was! The Principal had me up and threatened to handme the immediate sack. l'm a marked man."

"But what were your rhymes?" Bernard asked.

"They were about being alone."

Bernard's eyebrows went up.

"I'll recite them to you, if you like." And Helmholtz began:

"Yesterday's committee,

Sticks, but a broken drum,

Midnight in the City,

Flutes in a vacuum,

Shut lips, sleeping faces,

Every stopped machine,

The dumb and littered places

Where crowds have been: ...

All silences rejoice,

Weep (loudly or low),

Speak–but with the voice

Of whom, I do not know.

Absence, say, of Susan's,

Absence of Egeria's

Arms and respective bosoms,

Lips and, ah, posteriors,

Slowly form a presence;

Whose? and, I ask, of what

So absurd an essence,

That something, which is not,

Nevertheless should populate

Empty night more solidly

Than that with which we copulate,

Why should it seem so squalidly?

Well, I gave them that as an example, and they reported me to thePrincipal."

"I'm not surprised," said Bernard. "It's flatly against all theirsleep-teaching. Remember, they've had at least a quarter of amillion warnings against solitude."

"I know. But I thought I'd like to see what the effect would be."

"Well, you've seen now."

Helmholtz only laughed. "I feel," he said, after a silence, asthough I were just beginning to have something to write about. Asthough I were beginning to be able to use that power I feel I'vegot inside me–that extra, latent power. Something seems to becoming to me." In spite of all his troubles, he seemed, Bernardthought, profoundly happy.

Helmholtz and the Savage took to one another at once. Socordially indeed that Bernard felt a sharp pang of jealousy. Inall these weeks he had never come to so close an intimacy withthe Savage as Helmholtz immediately achieved. Watching them,listening to their talk, he found himself sometimes resentfullywishing that he had never brought them together. He was ashamedof his jealousy and alternately made efforts of will and tooksoma to keep himself from feeling it. But the efforts were notvery successful; and between the soma-holidays there were, ofnecessity, intervals. The odious sentiment kept on returning.

At his third meeting with the Savage, Helmholtz recited hisrhymes on Solitude.

"What do you think of them?" he asked when he had done.

The Savage shook his head. "Listen to this," was his answer; andunlocking the drawer in which he kept his mouse-eaten book, heopened and read:

"Let the bird of loudest lay

On the sole Arabian tree,

Herald sad and trumpet be ..."

Helmholtz listened with a growing excitement. At "sole Arabiantree" he started; at "thou shrieking harbinger" he smiled withsudden pleasure; at "every fowl of tyrant wing" the blood rushedup into his cheeks; but at "defunctive music" he turned pale andtrembled with an unprecedented emotion. The Savage read on:

"Property was thus appall'd,

That the self was not the same;

Single nature's double name

Neither two nor one was call'd

Reason in itself confounded

Saw division grow together ..."

"Orgy-porgy!" said Bernard, interrupting the reading with a loud,unpleasant laugh. "It's just a Solidarity Service hymn." He wasrevenging himself on his two friends for liking one another morethan they liked him.

In the course of their next two or three meetings he frequentlyrepeated this little act of vengeance. It was simple and, sinceboth Helmholtz and the Savage were dreadfully pained by theshattering and defilement of a favourite poetic crystal,extremely effective. In the end, Helmholtz threatened to kick himout of the room if he dared to interrupt again. And yet,strangely enough, the next interruption, the most disgraceful ofall, came from Helmholtz himself.

The Savage was reading Romeo and Juliet aloud–reading (for allthe time he was seeing himself as Romeo and Lenina as Juliet)with an intense and quivering passion. Helmholtz had listened tothe scene of the lovers' first meeting with a puzzled interest.The scene in the orchard had delighted him with its poetry; butthe sentiments expressed had made him smile. Getting into such astate about having a girl–it seemed rather ridiculous. But, takendetail by verbal detail, what a superb piece of emotionalengineering! "That old fellow," he said, "he makes our bestpropaganda technicians look absolutely silly." The Savage smiledtriumphantly and resumed his reading. All went tolerably welluntil, in the last scene of the third act, Capulet and LadyCapulet began to bully Juliet to marry Paris. Helmholtz had beenrestless throughout the entire scene; but when, patheticallymimed by the Savage, Juliet cried out:

"Is there no pity sitting in the clouds,

That sees into the bottom of my grief?

O sweet my mother, cast me not away:

Delay this marriage for a month, a week;

Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed

In that dim monument where Tybalt lies ..."

when Juliet said this, Helmholtz broke out in an explosion ofuncontrollable guffawing.

The mother and father (grotesque obscenity) forcing the daughterto have some one she didn't want! And the idiotic girl not sayingthat she was having some one else whom (for the moment, at anyrate) she preferred! In its smutty absurdity the situation wasirresistibly comical. He had managed, with a heroic effort, tohold down the mounting pressure of his hilarity; but "sweetmother" (in the Savage's tremulous tone of anguish) and thereference to Tybalt lying dead, but evidently uncremated andwasting his phosphorus on a dim monument, were too much for him.He laughed and laughed till the tears streamed down hisface–quenchlessly laughed while, pale with a sense of outrage,the Savage looked at him over the top of his book and then, asthe laughter still continued, closed it indignantly, got up and,with the gesture of one who removes his pearl from before swine,locked it away in its drawer.

"And yet," said Helmholtz when, having recovered breath enough toapologize, he had mollified the Savage into listening to hisexplanations, "I know quite well that one needs ridiculous, madsituations like that; one can't write really well about anythingelse. Why was that old fellow such a marvellous propagandatechnician? Because he had so many insane, excruciating things toget excited about. You've got to be hurt and upset; otherwise youcan't think of the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases.But fathers and mothers!" He shook his head. "You can't expect meto keep a straight face about fathers and mothers. And who'sgoing to get excited about a boy having a girl or not havingher?" (The Savage winced; but Helmholtz, who was staringpensively at the floor, saw nothing.) "No." he concluded, with asigh, "it won't do. We need some other kind of madness andviolence. But what? What? Where can one find it?" He was silent;then, shaking his head, "I don't know," he said at last, "I don'tknow."

---------------------------------

Chapter Thirteen

HENRY FOSTER loomed up through the twilight of the Embryo Store.

"Like to come to a feely this evening?"

Lenina shook her head without speaking.

"Going out with some one else?" It interested him to know whichof his friends was being had by which other. "Is it Benito?" hequestioned.

She shook her head again.

Henry detected the weariness in those purple eyes, the pallorbeneath that glaze of lupus, the sadness at the corners of theunsmiling crimson mouth. "You're not feeling ill, are you?" heasked, a trifle anxiously, afraid that she might be sufferingfrom one of the few remaining infectious diseases.

Yet once more Lenina shook her head.

"Anyhow, you ought to go and see the doctor," said Henry. "Adoctor a day keeps the jim-jams away," he added heartily, drivinghome his hypnopædic adage with a clap on the shoulder. "Perhapsyou need a Pregnancy Substitute," he suggested. "Or else anextra-strong V.P.S. treatment. Sometimes, you know, the standardpassion surrogate isn't quite ..."

"Oh, for Ford's sake," said Lenina, breaking her stubbornsilence, "shut up!" And she turned back to her neglected embryos.

A V.P.S. treatment indeed! She would have laughed, if she hadn'tbeen on the point of crying. As though she hadn't got enough V.P. of her own! She sighed profoundly as she refilled her syringe."John," she murmured to herself, "John ..." Then "My Ford," shewondered, "have I given this one its sleeping sickness injection,or haven't I?" She simply couldn't remember. In the end, shedecided not to run the risk of letting it have a second dose, andmoved down the line to the next bottle.

Twenty-two years, eight months, and four days from that moment, apromising young Alpha-Minus administrator at Mwanza-Mwanza was todie of trypanosomiasis–the first case for over half a century.Sighing, Lenina went on with her work.

An hour later, in the Changing Room, Fanny was energeticallyprotesting. "But it's absurd to let yourself get into a statelike this. Simply absurd," she repeated. "And what about? Aman–one man."

"But he's the one I want."

"As though there weren't millions of other men in the world."

"But I don't want them."

"How can you know till you've tried?"

"I have tried."

"But how many?" asked Fanny, shrugging her shoulderscontemptuously. "One, two?"

"Dozens. But," shaking her head, "it wasn't any good," she added.

"Well, you must persevere," said Fanny sententiously. But it wasobvious that her confidence in her own prescriptions had beenshaken. "Nothing can be achieved without perseverance."

"But meanwhile ..."

"Don't think of him."

"I can't help it."

"Take soma, then."

"I do."

"Well, go on."

"But in the intervals I still like him. I shall always like him."

"Well, if that's the case," said Fanny, with decision, "why don'tyou just go and take him. Whether he wants it or no."

"But if you knew how terribly queer he was!"

"All the more reason for taking a firm line."

"It's all very well to say that."

"Don't stand any nonsense. Act." Fanny's voice was a trumpet; shemight have been a Y.W.F.A. lecturer giving an evening talk toadolescent Beta-Minuses. "Yes, act–at once. Do it now."

"I'd be scared," said Lenina

"Well, you've only got to take half a gramme of soma first. Andnow I'm going to have my bath." She marched off, trailing hertowel.

The bell rang, and the Savage, who was impatiently hoping thatHelmholtz would come that afternoon (for having at last made uphis mind to talk to Helmholtz about Lenina, he could not bear topostpone his confidences a moment longer), jumped up and ran tothe door.

"I had a premonition it was you, Helmholtz," he shouted as heopened.

On the threshold, in a white acetate-satin sailor suit, and witha round white cap rakishly tilted over her left ear, stoodLenina.

"Oh!" said the Savage, as though some one had struck him a heavyblow.

Half a gramme had been enough to make Lenina forget her fears andher embarrassments. "Hullo, John," she said, smiling, and walkedpast him into the room. Automatically he closed the door andfollowed her. Lenina sat down. There was a long silence.

"You don't seem very glad to see me, John," she said at last.

"Not glad?" The Savage looked at her reproachfully; then suddenlyfell on his knees before her and, taking Lenina's hand,reverently kissed it. "Not glad? Oh, if you only knew," hewhispered and, venturing to raise his eyes to her face, "AdmiredLenina," he went on, "indeed the top of admiration, worth what'sdearest in the world." She smiled at him with a luscioustenderness. "Oh, you so perfect" (she was leaning towards himwith parted lips), "so perfect and so peerless are created"(nearer and nearer) "of every creature's best." Still nearer. TheSavage suddenly scrambled to his feet. "That's why," he saidspeaking with averted face, "I wanted to do something first ... Imean, to show I was worthy of you. Not that I could ever reallybe that. But at any rate to show I wasn't absolutely un-worthy. Iwanted to do something."

"Why should you think it necessary ..." Lenina began, but leftthe sentence unfinished. There was a note of irritation in hervoice. When one has leant forward, nearer and nearer, with partedlips–only to find oneself, quite suddenly, as a clumsy oafscrambles to his feet, leaning towards nothing at all–well, thereis a reason, even with half a gramme of soma circulating in one'sblood-stream, a genuine reason for annoyance.

"At Malpais," the Savage was incoherently mumbling, "you had tobring her the skin of a mountain lion–I mean, when you wanted tomarry some one. Or else a wolf."

"There aren't any lions in England," Lenina almost snapped.

"And even if there were," the Savage added, with suddencontemptuous resentment, "people would kill them out ofhelicopters, I suppose, with poison gas or something. I wouldn'tdo that, Lenina." He squared his shoulders, he ventured to lookat her and was met with a stare of annoyed incomprehension.Confused, "I'll do anything," he went on, more and moreincoherently. "Anything you tell me. There be some sports arepainful–you know. But their labour delight in them sets off.That's what I feel. I mean I'd sweep the floor if you wanted."

"But we've got vacuum cleaners here," said Lenina inbewilderment. "It isn't necessary."

"No, of course it isn't necessary. But some kinds of baseness arenobly undergone. I'd like to undergo something nobly. Don't yousee?"

"But if there are vacuum cleaners ..."

"That's not the point."

"And Epsilon Semi-Morons to work them," she went on, "well,really, why?"

"Why? But for you, for you. Just to show that I ..."

"And what on earth vacuum cleaners have got to do with lions ..."

"To show how much ..."

"Or lions with being glad to see me ..." She was getting more andmore exasperated.

"How much I love you, Lenina," he brought out almost desperately.

An emblem of the inner tide of startled elation, the blood rushedup into Lenina's cheeks. "Do you mean it, John?"

"But I hadn't meant to say so," cried the Savage, clasping hishands in a kind of agony. "Not until ... Listen, Lenina; inMalpais people get married."

"Get what?" The irritation had begun to creep back into hervoice. What was he talking about now?

"For always. They make a promise to live together for always."

"What a horrible idea!" Lenina was genuinely shocked.

"Outliving beauty's outward with a mind that cloth renew swifterthan blood decays."

"What?"

"It's like that in Shakespeare too. 'If thou cost break hervirgin knot before all sanctimonious ceremonies may with full andholy rite ...'"

"For Ford's sake, John, talk sense. I can't understand a word yousay. First it's vacuum cleaners; then it's knots. You're drivingme crazy." She jumped up and, as though afraid that he might runaway from her physically, as well as with his mind, caught him bythe wrist. "Answer me this question: do you really like me, ordon't you?"

There was a moment's silence; then, in a very low voice, "I loveyou more than anything in the world," he said.

"Then why on earth didn't you say so?" she cried, and so intensewas her exasperation that she drove her sharp nails into the skinof his wrist. "Instead of drivelling away about knots and vacuumcleaners and lions, and making me miserable for weeks and weeks."

She released his hand and flung it angrily away from her.

"If I didn't like you so much," she said, "I'd be furious withyou."

And suddenly her arms were round his neck; he felt her lips softagainst his own. So deliciously soft, so warm and electric thatinevitably he found himself thinking of the embraces in ThreeWeeks in a Helicopter. Ooh! ooh! the stereoscopic blonde and anh!the more than real blackamoor. Horror, horror, horror ... hefired to disengage himself; but Lenina tightened her embrace.

"Why didn't you say so?" she whispered, drawing back her face tolook at him. Her eyes were tenderly reproachful.

"The murkiest den, the most opportune place" (the voice ofconscience thundered poetically), "the strongest suggestion ourworser genius can, shall never melt mine honour into lust. Never,never!" he resolved.

"You silly boy!" she was saying. "I wanted you so much. And ifyou wanted me too, why didn't you? ..."

"But, Lenina ..." he began protesting; and as she immediatelyuntwined her arms, as she stepped away from him, he thought, fora moment, that she had taken his unspoken hint. But when sheunbuckled her white patent cartridge belt and hung it carefullyover the back of a chair, he began to suspect that he had beenmistaken.

"Lenina!" he repeated apprehensively.

She put her hand to her neck and gave a long vertical pull; herwhite sailor's blouse was ripped to the hem; suspicion condensedinto a too, too solid certainty. "Lenina, what are you doing?"

Zip, zip! Her answer was wordless. She stepped out of herbell-bottomed trousers. Her zippicamiknicks were a pale shellpink. The Arch-Community-Songster's golden T dangled at herbreast.

"For those milk paps that through the window bars bore at men'seyes...." The singing, thundering, magical words made her seemdoubly dangerous, doubly alluring. Soft, soft, but how piercing!boring and drilling into reason, tunnelling through resolution."The strongest oaths are straw to the fire i' the blood. Be moreabstemious, or else ..."

Zip! The rounded pinkness fell apart like a neatly divided apple.A wriggle of the arms, a lifting first of the right foot, thenthe left: the zippicamiknicks were lying lifeless and as thoughdeflated on the floor.

Still wearing her shoes and socks, and her rakishly tilted roundwhite cap, she advanced towards him. "Darling. Darling! If onlyyou'd said so before!" She held out her arms.

But instead of also saying "Darling!" and holding out his arms,the Savage retreated in terror, flapping his hands at her asthough he were trying to scare away some intruding and dangerousanimal. Four backwards steps, and he was brought to bay againstthe wall.

"Sweet!" said Lenina and, laying her hands on his shoulders,pressed herself against him. "Put your arms round me," shecommanded. "Hug me till you drug me, honey." She too had poetryat her command, knew words that sang and were spells and beatdrums. "Kiss me"; she closed her eyes, she let her voice sink toa sleepy murmur, "Kiss me till I'm in a coma. Hug me, honey,snuggly ..."

The Savage caught her by the wrists, tore her hands from hisshoulders, thrust her roughly away at arm's length.

"Ow, you're hurting me, you're ... oh!" She was suddenly silent.Terror had made her forget the pain. Opening her eyes, she hadseen his face–no, not his face, a ferocious stranger's, pale,distorted, twitching with some insane, inexplicable fury. Aghast,"But what is it, John?" she whispered. He did not answer, butonly stared into her face with those mad eyes. The hands thatheld her wrists were trembling. He breathed deeply andirregularly. Faint almost to imperceptibility, but appalling, shesuddenly heard the grinding of his teeth. "What is it?" shealmost screamed.

And as though awakened by her cry he caught her by the shouldersand shook her. "Whore!" he shouted "Whore! Impudent strumpet!"

"Oh, don't, do-on't," she protested in a voice made grotesquelytremulous by his shaking.

"Whore!"

"Plea-ease."

"Damned whore!"

"A gra-amme is be-etter ..." she began.

The Savage pushed her away with such force that she staggered andfell. "Go," he shouted, standing over her menacingly, "get out ofmy sight or I'll kill you." He clenched his fists.

Lenina raised her arm to cover her face. "No, please don't, John..."

"Hurry up. Quick!"

One arm still raised, and following his every movement with aterrified eye, she scrambled to her feet and still crouching,still covering her head, made a dash for the bathroom.

The noise of that prodigious slap by which her departure wasaccelerated was like a pistol shot.

"Ow!" Lenina bounded forward.

Safely locked into the bathroom, she had leisure to take stock ofher injuries. Standing with her back to the mirror, she twistedher head. Looking over her left shoulder she could see theimprint of an open hand standing out distinct and crimson on thepearly flesh. Gingerly she rubbed the wounded spot.

Outside, in the other room, the Savage was striding up and down,marching, marching to the drums and music of magical words. "Thewren goes to't and the small gilded fly does lecher in my sight."Maddeningly they rumbled in his ears. "The fitchew nor the soiledhorse goes to't with a more riotous appetite. Down from the waistthey are Centaurs, though women all above. But to the girdle dothe gods inherit. Beneath is all the fiend's. There's hell,there's darkness, there is the sulphurous pit, burning scalding,stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie, pain, pain! Give me an ounceof civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination."

"John!" ventured a small ingratiating voice from the bathroom."John!"

"O thou weed, who are so lovely fair and smell'st so sweet thatthe sense aches at thee. Was this most goodly book made to write'whore' upon? Heaven stops the nose at it ..."

But her perfume still hung about him, his jacket was white withthe powder that had scented her velvety body. "Impudent strumpet,impudent strumpet, impudent strumpet." The inexorable rhythm beatitself out. "Impudent ..."

"John, do you think I might have my clothes?"

He picked up the bell-bottomed trousers, the blouse, thezippicamiknicks.

"Open!" he ordered, kicking the door.

"No, I won't." The voice was frightened and defiant.

"Well, how do you expect me to give them to you?"

"Push them through the ventilator over the door."

He did what she suggested and returned to his uneasy pacing ofthe room. "Impudent strumpet, impudent strumpet. The devil Luxurywith his fat rump and potato finger ..."

"John."

He would not answer. "Fat rump and potato finger."

"John."

"What is it?" he asked gruffly.

"I wonder if you'd mind giving me my Malthusian belt."

Lenina sat, listening to the footsteps in the other room,wondering, as she listened, how long he was likely to go trampingup and down like that; whether she would have to wait until heleft the flat; or if it would be safe, after allowing his madnessa reasonable time to subside, to open the bathroom door and makea dash for it.

She was interrupted in the midst of these uneasy speculations bythe sound of the telephone bell ringing in the other room.Abruptly the tramping ceased. She heard the voice of the Savageparleying with silence.

"Hullo."

. . . . .

"Yes."

. . . . .

"If I do not usurp myself, I am."

. . . . .

"Yes, didn't you hear me say so? Mr. Savage speaking."

. . . . .

"What? Who's ill? Of course it interests me."

. . . . .

"But is it serious? Is she really bad? I'll go at once ..."

. . . . .

"Not in her rooms any more? Where has she been taken?"

. . . . .

"Oh, my God! What's the address?"

. . . . .

"Three Park Lane–is that it? Three? Thanks."

Lenina heard the click of the replaced receiver, then hurryingsteps. A door slammed. There was silence. Was he really gone?

With an infinity of precautions she opened the door a quarter ofan inch; peeped through the crack; was encouraged by the view ofemptiness; opened a little further, and put her whole head out;finally tiptoed into the room; stood for a few seconds withstrongly beating heart, listening, listening; then darted to thefront door, opened, slipped through, slammed, ran. It was nottill she was in the lift and actually dropping down the well thatshe began to feel herself secure.

---------------------------------

Chapter Fourteen

THE Park Lane Hospital for the Dying was a sixty-story tower ofprimrose tiles. As the Savage stepped out of his taxicopter aconvoy of gaily-coloured aerial hearses rose whirring from theroof and darted away across the Park, westwards, bound for theSlough Crematorium. At the lift gates the presiding porter gavehim the information he required, and he dropped down to Ward 81(a Galloping Senility ward, the porter explained) on theseventeenth floor.

It was a large room bright with sunshine and yellow paint, andcontaining twenty beds, all occupied. Linda was dying incompany–in company and with all the modern conveniences. The airwas continuously alive with gay synthetic melodies. At the footof every bed, confronting its moribund occupant, was a televisionbox. Television was left on, a running tap, from morning tillnight. Every quarter of an hour the prevailing perfume of theroom was automatically changed. "We try," explained the nurse,who had taken charge of the Savage at the door, "we try to createa thoroughly pleasant atmosphere here–something between afirst-class hotel and a feely-palace, if you take my meaning."

"Where is she?" asked the Savage, ignoring these politeexplanations.

The nurse was offended. "You are in a hurry," she said.

"Is there any hope?" he asked.

"You mean, of her not dying?" (He nodded.) "No, of course thereisn't. When somebody's sent here, there's no ..." Startled by theexpression of distress on his pale face, she suddenly broke off."Why, whatever is the matter?" she asked. She was not accustomedto this kind of thing in visitors. (Not that there were manyvisitors anyhow: or any reason why there should be manyvisitors.) "You're not feeling ill, are you?"

He shook his head. "She's my mother," he said in a scarcelyaudible voice.

The nurse glanced at him with startled, horrified eyes; thenquickly looked away. From throat to temple she was all one hotblush.

"Take me to her," said the Savage, making an effort to speak inan ordinary tone.

Still blushing, she led the way down the ward. Faces still freshand unwithered (for senility galloped so hard that it had no timeto age the cheeks–only the heart and brain) turned as theypassed. Their progress was followed by the blank, incurious eyesof second infancy. The Savage shuddered as he looked.

Linda was lying in the last of the long row of beds, next to thewall. Propped up on pillows, she was watching the Semi-finals ofthe South American Riemann-Surface Tennis Championship, whichwere being played in silent and diminished reproduction on thescreen of the television box at the foot of the bed. Hither andthither across their square of illuminated glass the littlefigures noiselessly darted, like fish in an aquarium–the silentbut agitated inhabitants of another world.

Linda looked on, vaguely and uncomprehendingly smiling. Her pale,bloated face wore an expression of imbecile happiness. Every nowand then her eyelids closed, and for a few seconds she seemed tobe dozing. Then with a little start she would wake up again–wakeup to the aquarium antics of the Tennis Champions, to theSuper-Vox-Wurlitzeriana rendering of "Hug me till you drug me,honey," to the warm draught of verbena that came blowing throughthe ventilator above her head–would wake to these things, orrather to a dream of which these things, transformed andembellished by the soma in her blood, were the marvellousconstituents, and smile once more her broken and discolouredsmile of infantile contentment.

"Well, I must go," said the nurse. "I've got my batch of childrencoming. Besides, there's Number 3." She pointed up the ward."Might go off any minute now. Well, make yourself comfortable."She walked briskly away.

The Savage sat down beside the bed.

"Linda," he whispered, taking her hand.

At the sound of her name, she turned. Her vague eyes brightenedwith recognition. She squeezed his hand, she smiled, her lipsmoved; then quite suddenly her head fell forward. She was asleep.He sat watching her–seeking through the tired flesh, seeking andfinding that young, bright face which had stooped over hischildhood in Malpais, remembering (and he closed his eyes) hervoice, her movements, all the events of their life together."Streptocock-Gee to Banbury T ..." How beautiful her singing hadbeen! And those childish rhymes, how magically strange andmysterious!

A, B, C, vitamin D:

The fat's in the liver, the cod's in the sea.

He felt the hot tears welling up behind his eyelids as herecalled the words and Linda's voice as she repeated them. Andthen the reading lessons: The tot is in the pot, the cat is onthe mat; and the Elementary Instructions for Beta Workers in theEmbryo Store. And long evenings by the fire or, in summertime, onthe roof of the little house, when she told him those storiesabout the Other Place, outside the Reservation: that beautiful,beautiful Other Place, whose memory, as of a heaven, a paradiseof goodness and loveliness, he still kept whole and intact,undefiled by contact with the reality of this real London, theseactual civilized men and women.

A sudden noise of shrill voices made him open his eyes and, afterhastily brushing away the tears, look round. What seemed aninterminable stream of identical eight-year-old male twins waspouring into the room. Twin after twin, twin after twin, theycame–a nightmare. Their faces, their repeated face–for there wasonly one between the lot of them–puggishly stared, all nostrilsand pale goggling eyes. Their uniform was khaki. All their mouthshung open. Squealing and chattering they entered. In a moment, itseemed, the ward was maggoty with them. They swarmed between thebeds, clambered over, crawled under, peeped into the televisionboxes, made faces at the patients.

Linda astonished and rather alarmed them. A group stood clusteredat the foot of her bed, staring with the frightened and stupidcuriosity of animals suddenly confronted by the unknown.

"Oh, look, look!" They spoke in low, scared voices. "Whatever isthe matter with her? Why is she so fat?"

They had never seen a face like hers before–had never seen a facethat was not youthful and taut-skinned, a body that had ceased tobe slim and upright. All these moribund sexagenarians had theappearance of childish girls. At forty-four, Linda seemed, bycontrast, a monster of flaccid and distorted senility.

"Isn't she awful?" came the whispered comments. "Look at herteeth!"

Suddenly from under the bed a pug-faced twin popped up betweenJohn's chair and the wall, and began peering into Linda'ssleeping face.

"I say ..." he began; but the sentence ended prematurely in asqueal. The Savage had seized him by the collar, lifted him clearover the chair and, with a smart box on the ears, sent himhowling away.

His yells brought the Head Nurse hurrying to the rescue.

"What have you been doing to him?" she demanded fiercely. "Iwon't have you striking the children."

"Well then, keep them away from this bed." The Savage's voice wastrembling with indignation. "What are these filthy little bratsdoing here at all? It's disgraceful!"

"Disgraceful? But what do you mean? They're beingdeath-conditioned. And I tell you," she warned him truculently,"if I have any more of your interference with their conditioning,I'll send for the porters and have you thrown out."

The Savage rose to his feet and took a couple of steps towardsher. His movements and the expression on his face were somenacing that the nurse fell back in terror. With a great efforthe checked himself and, without speaking, turned away and satdown again by the bed.

Reassured, but with a dignity that was a trifle shrill anduncertain, "I've warned you," said the nurse, "I've warned you,"said the nurse, "so mind." Still, she led the too inquisitivetwins away and made them join in the game of hunt-the-zipper,which had been organized by one of her colleagues at the otherend of the room.

"Run along now and have your cup of caffeine solution, dear," shesaid to the other nurse. The exercise of authority restored herconfidence, made her feel better. "Now children!" she called.

Linda had stirred uneasily, had opened her eyes for a moment,looked vaguely around, and then once more dropped off to sleep.Sitting beside her, the Savage tried hard to recapture his moodof a few minutes before. "A, B, C, vitamin D," he repeated tohimself, as though the words were a spell that would restore thedead past to life. But the spell was ineffective. Obstinately thebeautiful memories refused to rise; there was only a hatefulresurrection of jealousies and uglinesses and miseries. Popé withthe blood trickling down from his cut shoulder; and Lindahideously asleep, and the flies buzzing round the spilt mescal onthe floor beside the bed; and the boys calling those names as shepassed. ... Ah, no, no! He shut his eyes, he shook his head instrenuous denial of these memories. "A, B, C, vitamin D ..." Hetried to think of those times when he sat on her knees and sheput her arms about him and sang, over and over again, rockinghim, rocking him to sleep. "A, B, C, vitamin D, vitamin D,vitamin D ..."

The Super-Vox-Wurlitzeriana had risen to a sobbing crescendo; andsuddenly the verbena gave place, in the scent-circulating system,to an intense patchouli. Linda stirred, woke up, stared for a fewseconds bewilderly at the Semi-finalists, then, lifting her face,sniffed once or twice at the newly perfumed air and suddenlysmiled–a smile of childish ecstasy.

"Popé!" she murmured, and closed her eyes. "Oh, I do so like it,I do ..." She sighed and let herself sink back into the pillows.

"But, Linda!" The Savage spoke imploringly, "Don't you know me?"He had tried so hard, had done his very best; why wouldn't sheallow him to forget? He squeezed her limp hand almost withviolence, as though he would force her to come back from thisdream of ignoble pleasures, from these base and hatefulmemories–back into the present, back into reality: the appallingpresent, the awful reality–but sublime, but significant, butdesperately important precisely because of the imminence of thatwhich made them so fearful. "Don't you know me, Linda?"

He felt the faint answering pressure of her hand. The tearsstarted into his eyes. He bent over her and kissed her.

Her lips moved. "Popé!" she whispered again, and it was as thoughhe had had a pailful of ordure thrown in his face.

Anger suddenly boiled up in him. Balked for the second time, thepassion of his grief had found another outlet, was transformedinto a passion of agonized rage.

"But I'm John!" he shouted. "I'm John!" And in his furious miseryhe actually caught her by the shoulder and shook her.

Linda's eyes fluttered open; she saw him, knew him–"John!"–butsituated the real face, the real and violent hands, in animaginary world–among the inward and private equivalents ofpatchouli and the Super-Wurlitzer, among the transfiguredmemories and the strangely transposed sensations that constitutedthe universe of her dream. She knew him for John, her son, butfancied him an intruder into that paradisal Malpais where she hadbeen spending her soma -holiday with Popé. He was angry becauseshe liked Popé, he was shaking her because Popé was there in thebed–as though there were something wrong, as though all civilizedpeople didn't do the same. "Every one belongs to every ..." Hervoice suddenly died into an almost inaudible breathless croaking.Her mouth fell open: she made a desperate effort to fill herlungs with air. But it was as though she had forgotten how tobreathe. She tried to cry out–but no sound came; only the terrorof her staring eyes revealed what she was suffering. Her handswent to her throat, then clawed at the air–the air she could nolonger breathe, the air that, for her, had ceased to exist.

The Savage was on his feet, bent over her. "What is it, Linda?What is it?" His voice was imploring; it was as though he werebegging to be reassured.

The look she gave him was charged with an unspeakable terror–withterror and, it seemed to him, reproach.

She tried to raise herself in bed, but fell back on to thepillows. Her face was horribly distorted, her lips blue.

The Savage turned and ran up the ward.

"Quick, quick!" he shouted. "Quick!"

Standing in the centre of a ring of zipper-hunting twins, theHead Nurse looked round. The first moment's astonishment gaveplace almost instantly to disapproval. "Don't shout! Think of thelittle ones," she said, frowning. "You might decondition ... Butwhat are you doing?" He had broken through the ring. "Becareful!" A child was yelling.

"Quick, quick!" He caught her by the sleeve, dragged her afterhim. "Quick! Something's happened. I've killed her."

By the time they were back at the end of the ward Linda was dead.

The Savage stood for a moment in frozen silence, then fell on hisknees beside the bed and, covering his face with his hands,sobbed uncontrollably.

The nurse stood irresolute, looking now at the kneeling figure bythe bed (the scandalous exhibition!) and now (poor children!) atthe twins who had stopped their hunting of the zipper and werestaring from the other end of the ward, staring with all theireyes and nostrils at the shocking scene that was being enactedround Bed 20. Should she speak to him? try to bring him back to asense of decency? remind him of where he was? of what fatalmischief he might do to these poor innocents? Undoing all theirwholesome death-conditioning with this disgusting outcry–asthough death were something terrible, as though any one matteredas much as all that! It might give them the most disastrous ideasabout the subject, might upset them into reacting in the entirelywrong, the utterly anti-social way.

She stepped forward, she touched him on the shoulder. "Can't youbehave?" she said in a low, angry voice. But, looking around, shesaw that half a dozen twins were already on their feet andadvancing down the ward. The circle was disintegrating. Inanother moment ... No, the risk was too great; the whole Groupmight be put back six or seven months in its conditioning. Shehurried back towards her menaced charges.

"Now, who wants a chocolate éclair?" she asked in a loud,cheerful tone.

"Me!" yelled the entire Bokanovsky Group in chorus. Bed 20 wascompletely forgotten.

"Oh, God, God, God ..." the Savage kept repeating to himself. Inthe chaos of grief and remorse that filled his mind it was theone articulate word. "God!" he whispered it aloud. "God ..."

"Whatever is he saying?" said a voice, very near, distinct andshrill through the warblings of the Super-Wurlitzer.

The Savage violently started and, uncovering his face, lookedround. Five khaki twins, each with the stump of a long éclair inhis right hand, and their identical faces variously smeared withliquid chocolate, were standing in a row, puggily goggling athim.

They met his eyes and simultaneously grinned. One of them pointedwith his éclair butt.

"Is she dead?" he asked.

The Savage stared at them for a moment in silence. Then insilence he rose to his feet, in silence slowly walked towards thedoor.

"Is she dead?" repeated the inquisitive twin trotting at hisside.

The Savage looked down at him and still without speaking pushedhim away. The twin fell on the floor and at once began to howl.The Savage did not even look round.

---------------------------------

Chapter Fifteen

T HE menial staff of the Park Lane Hospital for the Dyingconsisted of one hundred and sixty-two Deltas divided into twoBokanovsky Groups of eighty-four red headed female andseventy-eight dark dolychocephalic male twins, respectively. Atsix, when their working day was over, the two Groups assembled inthe vestibule of the Hospital and were served by the DeputySub-Bursar with their soma ration.

From the lift the Savage stepped out into the midst of them. Buthis mind was elsewhere–with death, with his grief, and hisremorse; mechanicaly, without consciousness of what he was doing,he began to shoulder his way through the crowd.

"Who are you pushing? Where do you think you're going?"

High, low, from a multitude of separate throats, only two voicessqueaked or growled. Repeated indefinitely, as though by a trainof mirrors, two faces, one a hairless and freckled moon haloed inorange, the other a thin, beaked bird-mask, stubbly with twodays' beard, turned angrily towards him. Their words and, in hisribs, the sharp nudging of elbows, broke through his unawareness.He woke once more to external reality, looked round him, knewwhat he saw–knew it, with a sinking sense of horror and disgust,for the recurrent delirium of his days and nights, the nightmareof swarming indistinguishable sameness. Twins, twins. ... Likemaggots they had swarmed defilingly over the mystery of Linda'sdeath. Maggots again, but larger, full grown, they now crawledacross his grief and his repentance. He halted and, withbewildered and horrified eyes, stared round him at the khaki mob,in the midst of which, overtopping it by a full head, he stood."How many goodly creatures are there here!" The singing wordsmocked him derisively. "How beauteous mankind is! O brave newworld ..."

" Soma distribution!" shouted a loud voice. "In good order,please. Hurry up there."

A door had been opened, a table and chair carried into thevestibule. The voice was that of a jaunty young Alpha, who hadentered carrying a black iron cash-box. A murmur of satisfactionwent up from the expectant twins. They forgot all about theSavage. Their attention was now focused on the black cash-box,which the young man had placed on the table, and was now inprocess of unlocking. The lid was lifted.

"Oo-oh!" said all the hundred and sixty-two simultaneously, asthough they were looking at fireworks.

The young man took out a handful of tiny pill-boxes. "Now," hesaid peremptorily, "step forward, please. One at a time, and noshoving."

One at a time, with no shoving, the twins stepped forward. Firsttwo males, then a female, then another male, then three females,then ...

The Savage stood looking on. "O brave new world, O brave newworld ..." In his mind the singing words seemed to change theirtone. They had mocked him through his misery and remorse, mockedhim with how hideous a note of cynical derision! Fiendishlylaughing, they had insisted on the low squalor, the nauseousugliness of the nightmare. Now, suddenly, they trumpeted a callto arms. "O brave new world!" Miranda was proclaiming thepossibility of loveliness, the possibility of transforming eventhe nightmare into something fine and noble. "O brave new world!"It was a challenge, a command.

"No shoving there now!" shouted the Deputy Sub-Bursar in a fury.He slammed down he lid of his cash-box. "I shall stop thedistribution unless I have good behaviour."

The Deltas muttered, jostled one another a little, and then werestill. The threat had been effective. Deprivation ofsoma–appalling thought!

"That's better," said the young man, and reopened his cash-box.

Linda had been a slave, Linda had died; others should live infreedom, and the world be made beautiful. A reparation, a duty.And suddenly it was luminously clear to the Savage what he mustdo; it was as though a shutter had been opened, a curtain drawnback.

"Now," said the Deputy Sub-Bursar.

Another khaki female stepped forward.

"Stop!" called the Savage in a loud and ringing voice. "Stop!"

He pushed his way to the table; the Deltas stared at him withastonishment.

"Ford!" said the Deputy Sub-Bursar, below his breath. "It's theSavage." He felt scared.

"Listen, I beg of you," cried the Savage earnestly. "Lend me yourears ..." He had never spoken in public before, and found it verydifficult to express what he wanted to say. "Don't take thathorrible stuff. It's poison, it's poison."

"I say, Mr. Savage," said the Deputy Sub-Bursar, smilingpropitiatingly. "Would you mind letting me ..."

"Poison to soul as well as body."

"Yes, but let me get on with my distribution, won't you? There'sa good fellow." With the cautious tenderness of one who strokes anotoriously vicious animal, he patted the Savage's arm. "Just letme ..."

"Never!" cried the Savage.

"But look here, old man ..."

"Throw it all away, that horrible poison."

The words "Throw it all away" pierced through the enfoldinglayers of incomprehension to the quick of the Delta'sconsciousness. An angry murmur went up from the crowd.

"I come to bring you freedom," said the Savage, turning backtowards the twins. "I come ..."

The Deputy Sub-Bursar heard no more; he had slipped out of thevestibule and was looking up a number in the telephone book.

"Not in his own rooms," Bernard summed up. "Not in mine, not inyours. Not at the Aphroditaum; not at the Centre or the College.Where can he have got to?"

Helmholtz shrugged his shoulders. They had come back from theirwork expecting to find the Savage waiting for them at one orother of the usual meeting-places, and there was no sign of thefellow. Which was annoying, as they had meant to nip across toBiarritz in Helmholtz's four-seater sporticopter. They'd be latefor dinner if he didn't come soon.

"We'll give him five more minutes," said Helmholtz. "If hedoesn't turn up by then, we'll ..."

The ringing of the telephone bell interrupted him. He picked upthe receiver. "Hullo. Speaking." Then, after a long interval oflistening, "Ford in Flivver!" he swore. "I'll come at once."

"What is it?" Bernard asked.

"A fellow I know at the Park Lane Hospital," said Helmholtz. "TheSavage is there. Seems to have gone mad. Anyhow, it's urgent.Will you come with me?"

Together they hurried along the corridor to the lifts.

"But do you like being slaves?" the Savage was saying as theyentered the Hospital. His face was flushed, his eyes bright withardour and indignation. "Do you like being babies? Yes, babies.Mewling and puking," he added, exasperated by their bestialstupidity into throwing insults at those he had come to save. Theinsults bounced off their carapace of thick stupidity; theystared at him with a blank expression of dull and sullenresentment in their eyes. "Yes, puking!" he fairly shouted. Griefand remorse, compassion and duty–all were forgotten now and, asit were, absorbed into an intense overpowering hatred of theseless than human monsters. "Don't you want to be free and men?Don't you even understand what manhood and freedom are?" Rage wasmaking him fluent; the words came easily, in a rush. "Don't you?"he repeated, but got no answer to his question. "Very well then,"he went on grimly. "I'll teach you; I'll make you be free whetheryou want to or not." And pushing open a window that looked on tothe inner court of the Hospital, he began to throw the littlepill-boxes of soma tablets in handfuls out into the area.

For a moment the khaki mob was silent, petrified, at thespectacle of this wanton sacrilege, with amazement and horror.

"He's mad," whispered Bernard, staring with wide open eyes."They'll kill him. They'll ..." A great shout suddenly went upfrom the mob; a wave of movement drove it menacingly towards theSavage. "Ford help him!" said Bernard, and averted his eyes.

"Ford helps those who help themselves." And with a laugh,actually a laugh of exultation, Helmholtz Watson pushed his waythrough the crowd.

"Free, free!" the Savage shouted, and with one hand continued tothrow the soma into the area while, with the other, he punchedthe indistinguishable faces of his assailants. "Free!" Andsuddenly there was Helmholtz at his side–"Good oldHelmholtz!"–also punching–"Men at last!"–and in the interval alsothrowing the poison out by handfuls through the open window."Yes, men! men!" and there was no more poison left. He picked upthe cash-box and showed them its black emptiness. "You're free!"

Howling, the Deltas charged with a redoubled fury.

Hesitant on the fringes of the battle. "They're done for," saidBernard and, urged by a sudden impulse, ran forward to help them;then thought better of it and halted; then, ashamed, steppedforward again; then again thought better of it, and was standingin an agony of humiliated indecision–thinking that they might bekilled if he didn't help them, and that he might be killed if hedid–when (Ford be praised!), goggle-eyed and swine-snouted intheir gas-masks, in ran the police.

Bernard dashed to meet them. He waved his arms; and it wasaction, he was doing something. He shouted "Help!" several times,more and more loudly so as to give himself the illusion ofhelping. "Help! Help! HELP!"

The policemen pushed him out of the way and got on with theirwork. Three men with spraying machines buckled to their shoulderspumped thick clouds of soma vapour into the air. Two more werebusy round the portable Synthetic Music Box. Carrying waterpistols charged with a powerful anæsthetic, four others hadpushed their way into the crowd and were methodically laying out,squirt by squirt, the more ferocious of the fighters.

"Quick, quick!" yelled Bernard. "They'll be killed if you don'thurry. They'll ... Oh!" Annoyed by his chatter, one of thepolicemen had given him a shot from his water pistol. Bernardstood for a second or two wambling unsteadily on legs that seemedto have lost their bones, their tendons, their muscles, to havebecome mere sticks of jelly, and at last not even jelly-water: hetumbled in a heap on the floor.

Suddenly, from out of the Synthetic Music Box a Voice began tospeak. The Voice of Reason, the Voice of Good Feeling. Thesound-track roll was unwinding itself in Synthetic Anti-RiotSpeech Number Two (Medium Strength). Straight from the depths ofa non-existent heart, "My friends, my friends!" said the Voice sopathetically, with a note of such infinitely tender reproachthat, behind their gas masks, even the policemen's eyes weremomentarily dimmed with tears, "what is the meaning of this? Whyaren't you all being happy and good together? Happy and good,"the Voice repeated. "At peace, at peace." It trembled, sank intoa whisper and momentarily expired. "Oh, I do want you to behappy," it began, with a yearning earnestness. "I do so want youto be good! Please, please be good and ..."

Two minutes later the Voice and the soma vapour had producedtheir effect. In tears, the Deltas were kissing and hugging oneanother–half a dozen twins at a time in a comprehensive embrace.Even Helmholtz and the Savage were almost crying. A fresh supplyof pill-boxes was brought in from the Bursary; a new distributionwas hastily made and, to the sound of the Voice's richlyaffectionate, baritone valedictions, the twins dispersed,blubbering as though their hearts would break. "Good-bye, mydearest, dearest friends, Ford keep you! Good-bye, my dearest,dearest friends, Ford keep you. Good-bye my dearest, dearest ..."

When the last of the Deltas had gone the policeman switched offthe current. The angelic Voice fell silent.

"Will you come quietly?" asked the Sergeant, "or must weanæsthetize?" He pointed his water pistol menacingly.

"Oh, we'll come quietly," the Savage answered, dabbingalternately a cut lip, a scratched neck, and a bitten left hand.

Still keeping his handkerchief to his bleeding nose Helmholtznodded in confirmation.

Awake and having recovered the use of his legs, Bernard hadchosen this moment to move as inconspicuously as he could towardsthe door.

"Hi, you there," called the Sergeant, and a swine-maskedpoliceman hurried across the room and laid a hand on the youngman's shoulder.

Bernard turned with an expression of indignant innocence.Escaping? He hadn't dreamed of such a thing. "Though what onearth you want me for," he said to the Sergeant, "I really can'timagine."

"You're a friend of the prisoner's, aren't you?"

"Well ..." said Bernard, and hesitated. No, he really couldn'tdeny it. "Why shouldn't I be?" he asked.

"Come on then," said the Sergeant, and led the way towards thedoor and the waiting police car.

---------------------------------

Chapter Sixteen

THE ROOM into which the three were ushered was the Controller'sstudy.

"His fordship will be down in a moment." The Gamma butler leftthem to themselves.

Helmholtz laughed aloud.

"It's more like a caffeine-solution party than a trial," he said,and let himself fall into the most luxurious of the pneumaticarm-chairs. "Cheer up, Bernard," he added, catching sight of hisfriend's green unhappy face. But Bernard would not be cheered;without answering, without even looking at Helmholtz, he went andsat down on the most uncomfortable chair in the room, carefullychosen in the obscure hope of somehow deprecating the wrath ofthe higher powers.

The Savage meanwhile wandered restlessly round the room, peeringwith a vague superficial inquisitiveness at the books in theshelves, at the sound-track rolls and reading machine bobbins intheir numbered pigeon-holes. On the table under the window lay amassive volume bound in limp black leather-surrogate, and stampedwith large golden T's. He picked it up and opened it. MY LIFE ANDWORK, BY OUR FORD. The book had been published at Detroit by theSociety for the Propagation of Fordian Knowledge. Idly he turnedthe pages, read a sentence here, a paragraph there, and had justcome to the conclusion that the book didn't interest him, whenthe door opened, and the Resident World Controller for WesternEurope walked briskly into the room.

Mustapha Mond shook hands with all three of them; but it was tothe Savage that he addressed himself. "So you don't much likecivilization, Mr. Savage," he said.

The Savage looked at him. He had been prepared to lie, tobluster, to remain sullenly unresponsive; but, reassured by thegood-humoured intelligence of the Controller's face, he decidedto tell the truth, straightforwardly. "No." He shook his head.

Bernard started and looked horrified. What would the Controllerthink? To be labelled as the friend of a man who said that hedidn't like civilization–said it openly and, of all people, tothe Controller–it was terrible. "But, John," he began. A lookfrom Mustapha Mond reduced him to an abject silence.

"Of course," the Savage went on to admit, "there are some verynice things. All that music in the air, for instance ..."

"Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about myears and sometimes voices."

The Savage's face lit up with a sudden pleasure. "Have you readit too?" he asked. "I thought nobody knew about that book here,in England."

"Almost nobody. I'm one of the very few. It's prohibited, yousee. But as I make the laws here, I can also break them. Withimpunity, Mr. Marx," he added, turning to Bernard. "Which I'mafraid you can't do."

Bernard sank into a yet more hopeless misery.

"But why is it prohibited?" asked the Savage. In the excitementof meeting a man who had read Shakespeare he had momentarilyforgotten everything else.

The Controller shrugged his shoulders. "Because it's old; that'sthe chief reason. We haven't any use for old things here."

"Even when they're beautiful?"

"Particularly when they're beautiful. Beauty's attractive, and wedon't want people to be attracted by old things. We want them tolike the new ones."

"But the new ones are so stupid and horrible. Those plays, wherethere's nothing but helicopters flying about and you feel thepeople kissing." He made a grimace. "Goats and monkeys!" Only inOthello's word could he find an adequate vehicle for his contemptand hatred.

"Nice tame animals, anyhow," the Controller murmuredparenthetically.

"Why don't you let them see Othello instead?"

"I've told you; it's old. Besides, they couldn't understand it."

Yes, that was true. He remembered how Helmholtz had laughed atRomeo and Juliet. "Well then," he said, after a pause, "somethingnew that's like Othello, and that they could understand."

"That's what we've all been wanting to write," said Helmholtz,breaking a long silence.

"And it's what you never will write," said the Controller."Because, if it were really like Othello nobody could understandit, however new it might be. And if were new, it couldn'tpossibly be like Othello."

"Why not?"

"Yes, why not?" Helmholtz repeated. He too was forgetting theunpleasant realities of the situation. Green with anxiety andapprehension, only Bernard remembered them; the others ignoredhim. "Why not?"

"Because our world is not the same as Othello's world. You can'tmake flivvers without steel–and you can't make tragedies withoutsocial instability. The world's stable now. People are happy;they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get.They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're notafraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and oldage; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got nowives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they're soconditioned that they practically can't help behaving as theyought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there's soma.Which you go and chuck out of the window in the name of liberty,Mr. Savage. Liberty! " He laughed. "Expecting Deltas to know whatliberty is! And now expecting them to understand Othello! My goodboy!"

The Savage was silent for a little. "All the same," he insistedobstinately, " Othello's good, Othello's better than thosefeelies."

"Of course it is," the Controller agreed. "But that's the pricewe have to pay for stability. You've got to choose betweenhappiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificedthe high art. We have the feelies and the scent organ instead."

"But they don't mean anything."

"They mean themselves; they mean a lot of agreeable sensations tothe audience."

"But they're ... they're told by an idiot."

The Controller laughed. "You're not being very polite to yourfriend, Mr. Watson. One of our most distinguished EmotionalEngineers ..."

"But he's right," said Helmholtz gloomily. "Because it isidiotic. Writing when there's nothing to say ..."

"Precisely. But that require the most enormous ingenuity. You'remaking flivvers out of the absolute minimum of steel–works of artout of practically nothing but pure sensation."

The Savage shook his head. "It all seems to me quite horrible."

"Of course it does. Actual happiness always looks pretty squalidin comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, ofcourse, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. Andbeing contented has none of the glamour of a good fight againstmisfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle withtemptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happinessis never grand."

"I suppose not," said the Savage after a silence. "But need it bequite so bad as those twins?" He passed his hand over his eyes asthough he were trying to wipe away the remembered image of thoselong rows of identical midgets at the assembling tables, thosequeued-up twin-herds at the entrance to the Brentford monorailstation, those human maggots swarming round Linda's bed of death,the endlessly repeated face of his assailants. He looked at hisbandaged left hand and shuddered. "Horrible!"

"But how useful! I see you don't like our Bokanovsky Groups; but,I assure you, they're the foundation on which everything else isbuilt. They're the gyroscope that stabilizes the rocket plane ofstate on its unswerving course." The deep voice thrillinglyvibrated; the gesticulating hand implied all space and the onrushof the irresistible machine. Mustapha Mond's oratory was almostup to synthetic standards.

"I was wondering," said the Savage, "why you had them atall–seeing that you can get whatever you want out of thosebottles. Why don't you make everybody an Alpha Double Plus whileyou're about it?"

Mustapha Mond laughed. "Because we have no wish to have ourthroats cut," he answered. "We believe in happiness andstability. A society of Alphas couldn't fail to be unstable andmiserable. Imagine a factory staffed by Alphas–that is to say byseparate and unrelated individuals of good heredity andconditioned so as to be capable (within limits) of making a freechoice and assuming responsibilities. Imagine it!" he repeated.

The Savage tried to imagine it, not very successfully.

"It's an absurdity. An Alpha-decanted, Alpha-conditioned manwould go mad if he had to do Epsilon Semi-Moron work–go mad, orstart smashing things up. Alphas can be completely socialized–butonly on condition that you make them do Alpha work. Only anEpsilon can be expected to make Epsilon sacrifices, for the goodreason that for him they aren't sacrifices; they're the line ofleast resistance. His conditioning has laid down rails alongwhich he's got to run. He can't help himself; he's foredoomed.Even after decanting, he's still inside a bottle–an invisiblebottle of infantile and embryonic fixations. Each one of us, ofcourse," the Controller meditatively continued, "goes throughlife inside a bottle. But if we happen to be Alphas, our bottlesare, relatively speaking, enormous. We should suffer acutely ifwe were confined in a narrower space. You cannot pour upper-castechampagne-surrogate into lower-caste bottles. It's obvioustheoretically. But it has also been proved in actual practice.The result of the Cyprus experiment was convincing."

"What was that?" asked the Savage.

Mustapha Mond smiled. "Well, you can call it an experiment inrebottling if you like. It began in A.F. 473. The Controllers hadthe island of Cyprus cleared of all its existing inhabitants andre-colonized with a specially prepared batch of twenty-twothousand Alphas. All agricultural and industrial equipment washanded over to them and they were left to manage their ownaffairs. The result exactly fulfilled all the theoreticalpredictions. The land wasn't properly worked; there were strikesin all the factories; the laws were set at naught, ordersdisobeyed; all the people detailed for a spell of low-grade workwere perpetually intriguing for high-grade jobs, and all thepeople with high-grade jobs were counter-intriguing at all coststo stay where they were. Within six years they were having afirst-class civil war. When nineteen out of the twenty-twothousand had been killed, the survivors unanimously petitionedthe World Controllers to resume the government of the island.Which they did. And that was the end of the only society ofAlphas that the world has ever seen."

The Savage sighed, profoundly.

"The optimum population," said Mustapha Mond, "is modelled on theiceberg–eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above."

"And they're happy below the water line?"

"Happier than above it. Happier than your friend here, forexample." He pointed.

"In spite of that awful work?"

"Awful? They don't find it so. On the contrary, they like it.It's light, it's childishly simple. No strain on the mind or themuscles. Seven and a half hours of mild, unexhausting labour, andthen the soma ration and games and unrestricted copulation andthe feelies. What more can they ask for? True," he added, "theymight ask for shorter hours. And of course we could give themshorter hours. Technically, it would be perfectly simple toreduce all lower-caste working hours to three or four a day. Butwould they be any the happier for that? No, they wouldn't. Theexperiment was tried, more than a century and a half ago. Thewhole of Ireland was put on to the four-hour day. What was theresult? Unrest and a large increase in the consumption of soma;that was all. Those three and a half hours of extra leisure wereso far from being a source of happiness, that people feltconstrained to take a holiday from them. The Inventions Office isstuffed with plans for labour-saving processes. Thousands ofthem." Mustapha Mond made a lavish gesture. "And why don't we putthem into execution? For the sake of the labourers; it would besheer cruelty to afflict them with excessive leisure. It's thesame with agriculture. We could synthesize every morsel of food,if we wanted to. But we don't. We prefer to keep a third of thepopulation on the land. For their own sakes–because it takeslonger to get food out of the land than out of a factory.Besides, we have our stability to think of. We don't want tochange. Every change is a menace to stability. That's anotherreason why we're so chary of applying new inventions. Everydiscovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even sciencemust sometimes be treated as a possible enemy. Yes, evenscience."

Science? The Savage frowned. He knew the word. But what itexactly signified he could not say. Shakespeare and the old menof the pueblo had never mentioned science, and from Linda he hadonly gathered the vaguest hints: science was something you madehelicopters with, some thing that caused you to laugh at the CornDances, something that prevented you from being wrinkled andlosing your teeth. He made a desperate effort to take theController's meaning.

"Yes," Mustapha Mond was saying, "that's another item in the costof stability. It isn't only art that's incompatible withhappiness; it's also science. Science is dangerous; we have tokeep it most carefully chained and muzzled."

"What?" said Helmholtz, in astonishment. "But we're always sayingthat science is everything. It's a hypnopædic platitude."

"Three times a week between thirteen and seventeen," put inBernard.

"And all the science propaganda we do at the College ..."

"Yes; but what sort of science?" asked Mustapha Mondsarcastically. "You've had no scientific training, so you can'tjudge. I was a pretty good physicist in my time. Too good–goodenough to realize that all our science is just a cookery book,with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed toquestion, and a list of recipes that mustn't be added to exceptby special permission from the head cook. I'm the head cook now.But I was an inquisitive young scullion once. I started doing abit of cooking on my own. Unorthodox cooking, illicit cooking. Abit of real science, in fact." He was silent.

"What happened?" asked Helmholtz Watson.

The Controller sighed. "Very nearly what's going to happen to youyoung men. I was on the point of being sent to an island."

The words galvanized Bernard into violent and unseemly activity."Send me to an island?" He jumped up, ran across the room, andstood gesticulating in front of the Controller. "You can't sendme. I haven't done anything. lt was the others. I swear it wasthe others." He pointed accusingly to Helmholtz and the Savage."Oh, please don't send me to Iceland. I promise I'll do what Iought to do. Give me another chance. Please give me anotherchance." The tears began to flow. "I tell you, it's their fault,"he sobbed. "And not to Iceland. Oh please, your fordship, please..." And in a paroxysm of abjection he threw himself on his kneesbefore the Controller. Mustapha Mond tried to make him get up;but Bernard persisted in his grovelling; the stream of wordspoured out inexhaustibly. In the end the Controller had to ringfor his fourth secretary.

"Bring three men," he ordered, "and take Mr. Marx into a bedroom.Give him a good soma vaporization and then put him to bed andleave him."

The fourth secretary went out and returned with threegreen-uniformed twin footmen. Still shouting and sobbing. Bernardwas carried out.

"One would think he was going to have his throat cut," said theController, as the door closed. "Whereas, if he had the smallestsense, he'd understand that his punishment is really a reward.He's being sent to an island. That's to say, he's being sent to aplace where he'll meet the most interesting set of men and womento be found anywhere in the world. All the people who, for onereason or another, have got too self-consciously individual tofit into community-life. All the people who aren't satisfied withorthodoxy, who've got independent ideas of their own. Every one,in a word, who's any one. I almost envy you, Mr. Watson."

Helmholtz laughed. "Then why aren't you on an island yourself?"

"Because, finally, I preferred this," the Controller answered. "Iwas given the choice: to be sent to an island, where I could havegot on with my pure science, or to be taken on to theControllers' Council with the prospect of succeeding in duecourse to an actual Controllership. I chose this and let thescience go." After a little silence, "Sometimes," he added, "Irather regret the science. Happiness is a hardmaster–particularly other people's happiness. A much hardermaster, if one isn't conditioned to accept it unquestioningly,than truth." He sighed, fell silent again, then continued in abrisker tone, "Well, duty's duty. One can't consult one's ownpreference. I'm interested in truth, I like science. But truth'sa menace, science is a public danger. As dangerous as it's beenbeneficent. It has given us the stablest equilibrium in history.China's was hopelessly insecure by comparison; even the primitivematriarchies weren't steadier than we are. Thanks, l repeat, toscience. But we can't allow science to undo its own good work.That's why we so carefully limit the scope of itsresearches–that's why I almost got sent to an island. We don'tallow it to deal with any but the most immediate problems of themoment. All other enquiries are most sedulously discouraged. It'scurious," he went on after a little pause, "to read what peoplein the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress.They seemed to have imagined that it could be allowed to go onindefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was thehighest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondaryand subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then.Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis fromtruth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass productiondemanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadilyturning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever themasses seized political power, then it was happiness rather thantruth and beauty that mattered. Still, in spite of everytung,unrestricted scientific research was still permitted. Peoplestill went on talking about truth and beauty as though they werethe sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War.That made them change their tune all right. What's the point oftruth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are poppingall around you? That was when science first began to becontrolled–after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to haveeven their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life.We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very goodfor truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. Onecan't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paidfor. You're paying for it, Mr. Watson–paying because you happento be too much interested in beauty. I was too much interested intruth; I paid too."

"But you didn't go to an island," said the Savage, breaking along silence.

The Controller smiled. "That's how I paid. By choosing to servehappiness. Other people's–not mine. It's lucky," he added, aftera pause, "that there are such a lot of islands in the world. Idon't know what we should do without them. Put you all in thelethal chamber, I suppose. By the way, Mr. Watson, would you likea tropical climate? The Marquesas, for example; or Samoa? Orsomething rather more bracing?"

Helmholtz rose from his pneumatic chair. "I should like athoroughly bad climate," he answered. "I believe one would writebetter if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind andstorms, for example ..."

The Controller nodded his approbation. "I like your spirit, Mr.Watson. I like it very much indeed. As much as I officiallydisapprove of it." He smiled. "What about the Falkland Islands?"

"Yes, I think that will do," Helmholtz answered. "And now, if youdon't mind, I'll go and see how poor Bernard's getting on."

---------------------------------

Chapter Seventeen

ART, SCIENCE–you seem to have paid a fairly high price for yourhappiness," said the Savage, when they were alone. "Anythingelse?"

"Well, religion, of course," replied the Controller. "There usedto be something called God–before the Nine Years' War. But I wasforgetting; you know all about God, I suppose."

"Well ..." The Savage hesitated. He would have liked to saysomething about solitude, about night, about the mesa lying paleunder the moon, about the precipice, the plunge into shadowydarkness, about death. He would have liked to speak; but therewere no words. Not even in Shakespeare.

The Controller, meanwhile, had crossed to the other side of theroom and was unlocking a large safe set into the wall between thebookshelves. The heavy door swung open. Rummaging in the darknesswithin, "It's a subject," he said, "that has always had a greatinterest for me." He pulled out a thick black volume. "You'venever read this, for example."

The Savage took it. "The Holy Bible, containing the Old and NewTestaments," he read aloud from the title-page.

"Nor this." It was a small book and had lost its cover.

"The Imitation of Christ."

"Nor this." He handed out another volume.

"The Varieties of Religious Experience. By William James."

"And I've got plenty more," Mustapha Mond continued, resuming hisseat. "A whole collection of pornographic old books. God in thesafe and Ford on the shelves." He pointed with a laugh to hisavowed library–to the shelves of books, the rack full ofreading-machine bobbins and sound-track rolls.

"But if you know about God, why don't you tell them?" asked theSavage indignantly. "Why don't you give them these books aboutGod?"

"For the same reason as we don't give them Othello: they're old;they're about God hundreds of years ago. Not about God now."

"But God doesn't change."

"Men do, though."

"What difference does that make?"

"All the difference in the world," said Mustapha Mond. He got upagain and walked to the safe. "There was a man called CardinalNewman," he said. "A cardinal," he exclaimed parenthetically,"was a kind of Arch-Community-Songster."

"'I Pandulph, of fair Milan, cardinal.' I've read about them inShakespeare."

"Of course you have. Well, as I was saying, there was a mancalled Cardinal Newman. Ah, here's the book." He pulled it out."And while I'm about it I'll take this one too. It's by a mancalled Maine de Biran. He was a philosopher, if you know whatthat was."

"A man who dreams of fewer things than there are in heaven andearth," said the Savage promptly.

"Quite so. I'll read you one of the things he did dream of in amoment. Meanwhile, listen to what this oldArch-Community-Songster said." He opened the book at the placemarked by a slip of paper and began to read. "'We are not our ownany more than what we possess is our own. We did not makeourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not ourown masters. We are God's property. Is it not our happiness thusto view the matter? Is it any happiness or any comfort, toconsider that we are our own? It may be thought so by the youngand prosperous. These may think it a great thing to haveeverything, as they suppose, their own way–to depend on no one–tohave to think of nothing out of sight, to be without theirksomeness of continual acknowledgment, continual prayer,continual reference of what they do to the will of another. Butas time goes on, they, as all men, will find that independencewas not made for man–that it is an unnatural state–will do for awhile, but will not carry us on safely to the end ...'" MustaphaMond paused, put down the first book and, picking up the other,turned over the pages. "Take this, for example," he said, and inhis deep voice once more began to read: "'A man grows old; hefeels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness,of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age; and, feelingthus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with thenotion that this distressing condition is due to some particularcause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. Vainimaginings! That sickness is old age; and a horrible disease itis. They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes afterdeath that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years.But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quiteapart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religioussentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because,as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities areless excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubledin its working, less obscured by the images, desires anddistractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon Godemerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turnstowards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably;for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its lifeand charms has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenalexistence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within orfrom without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides,something that will never play us false–a reality, an absoluteand everlasting truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for thisreligious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful tothe soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all ourother losses.'" Mustapha Mond shut the book and leaned back inhis chair. "One of the numerous things in heaven and earth thatthese philosophers didn't dream about was this" (he waved hishand), "us, the modern world. 'You can only be independent of Godwhile you've got youth and prosperity; independence won't takeyou safely to the end.' Well, we've now got youth and prosperityright up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can beindependent of God. 'The religious sentiment will compensate usfor all our losses.' But there aren't any losses for us tocompensate; religious sentiment is superfluous. And why should wego hunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthfuldesires never fail? A substitute for distractions, when we go onenjoying all the old fooleries to the very last? What need havewe of repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight inactivity? of consolation, when we have soma ? of somethingimmovable, when there is the social order?"

"Then you think there is no God?"

"No, I think there quite probably is one."

"Then why? ..."

Mustapha Mond checked him. "But he manifests himself in differentways to different men. In premodern times he manifested himselfas the being that's described in these books. Now ..."

"How does he manifest himself now?" asked the Savage.

"Well, he manifests himself as an absence; as though he weren'tthere at all."

"That's your fault."

"Call it the fault of civilization. God isn't compatible withmachinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. Youmust make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery andmedicine and happiness. That's why I have to keep these bookslocked up in the safe. They're smut. People would be shocked it..."

The Savage interrupted him. "But isn't it natural to feel there'sa God?"

"You might as well ask if it's natural to do up one's trouserswith zippers," said the Controller sarcastically. "You remind meof another of those old fellows called Bradley. He definedphilosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes byinstinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believesthings because one has been conditioned to believe them. Findingbad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons–that'sphilosophy. People believe in God because they've beenconditioned to.

"But all the same," insisted the Savage, "it is natural tobelieve in God when you're alone–quite alone, in the night,thinking about death ..."

"But people never are alone now," said Mustapha Mond. "We makethem hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it'salmost impossible for them ever to have it."

The Savage nodded gloomily. At Malpais he had suffered becausethey had shut him out from the communal activities of the pueblo,in civilized London he was suffering because he could neverescape from those communal activities, never be quietly alone.

"Do you remember that bit in King Lear?" said the Savage at last."'The gods are just and of our pleasant vices make instruments toplague us; the dark and vicious place where thee he got cost himhis eyes,' and Edmund answers–you remember, he's wounded, he'sdying–'Thou hast spoken right; 'tis true. The wheel has come fullcircle; I am here.' What about that now? Doesn't there seem to bea God managing things, punishing, rewarding?"

"Well, does there?" questioned the Controller in his turn. "Youcan indulge in any number of pleasant vices with a freemartin andrun no risks of having your eyes put out by your son's mistress.'The wheel has come full circle; I am here.' But where wouldEdmund be nowadays? Sitting in a pneumatic chair, with his armround a girl's waist, sucking away at his sex-hormone chewing-gumand looking at the feelies. The gods are just. No doubt. Buttheir code of law is dictated, in the last resort, by the peoplewho organize society; Providence takes its cue from men."

"Are you sure?" asked the Savage. "Are you quite sure that theEdmund in that pneumatic chair hasn't been just as heavilypunished as the Edmund who's wounded and bleeding to death? Thegods are just. Haven't they used his pleasant vices as aninstrument to degrade him?"

"Degrade him from what position? As a happy, hard-working,goods-consuming citizen he's perfect. Of course, if you choosesome other standard than ours, then perhaps you might say he wasdegraded. But you've got to stick to one set of postulates. Youcan't play Electro-magnetic Golf according to the rules ofCentrifugal Bumble-puppy."

"But value dwells not in particular will," said the Savage. "Itholds his estimate and dignity as well wherein 'tis precious ofitself as in the prizer."

"Come, come," protested Mustapha Mond, "that's going rather far,isn't it?"

"If you allowed yourselves to think of God, you wouldn't allowyourselves to be degraded by pleasant vices. You'd have a reasonfor bearing things patiently, for doing things with courage. I'veseen it with the Indians."

"l'm sure you have," said Mustapha Mond. "But then we aren'tIndians. There isn't any need for a civilized man to bearanything that's seriously unpleasant. And as for doingthings–Ford forbid that he should get the idea into his head. Itwould upset the whole social order if men started doing things ontheir own."

"What about self-denial, then? If you had a God, you'd have areason for self-denial."

"But industrial civilization is only possible when there's noself-denial. Self-indulgence up to the very limits imposed byhygiene and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning."

"You'd have a reason for chastity!" said the Savage, blushing alittle as he spoke the words.

"But chastity means passion, chastity means neurasthenia. Andpassion and neurasthenia mean instability. And instability meansthe end of civilization. You can't have a lasting civilizationwithout plenty of pleasant vices."

"But God's the reason for everything noble and fine and heroic.If you had a God ..."

"My dear young friend," said Mustapha Mond, "civilization hasabsolutely no need of nobility or heroism. These things aresymptoms of political inefficiency. In a properly organizedsociety like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being nobleor heroic. Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable beforethe occasion can arise. Where there are wars, where there aredivided allegiances, where there are temptations to be resisted,objects of love to be fought for or defended–there, obviously,nobility and heroism have some sense. But there aren't any warsnowadays. The greatest care is taken to prevent you from lovingany one too much. There's no such thing as a divided allegiance;you're so conditioned that you can't help doing what you ought todo. And what you ought to do is on the whole so pleasant, so manyof the natural impulses are allowed free play, that there reallyaren't any temptations to resist. And if ever, by some unluckychance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there'salways soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there'salways soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies,to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you couldonly accomplish these things by making a great effort and afteryears of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or threehalf-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuousnow. You can carry at least half your mortality about in abottle. Christianity without tears–that's what soma is."

"But the tears are necessary. Don't you remember what Othellosaid? 'If after every tempest came such calms, may the winds blowtill they have wakened death.' There's a story one of the oldIndians used to tell us, about the Girl of Mátaski. The young menwho wanted to marry her had to do a morning's hoeing in hergarden. It seemed easy; but there were flies and mosquitoes,magic ones. Most of the young men simply couldn't stand thebiting and stinging. But the one that could–he got the girl."

"Charming! But in civilized countries," said the Controller, "youcan have girls without hoeing for them, and there aren't anyflies or mosquitoes to sting you. We got rid of them allcenturies ago."

The Savage nodded, frowning. "You got rid of them. Yes, that'sjust like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead oflearning to put up with it. Whether 'tis better in the mind tosuffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to takearms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them ... Butyou don't do either. Neither suffer nor oppose. You just abolishthe slings and arrows. It's too easy."

He was suddenly silent, thinking of his mother. In her room onthe thirty-seventh floor, Linda had floated in a sea of singinglights and perfumed caresses–floated away, out of space, out oftime, out of the prison of her memories, her habits, her aged andbloated body. And Tomakin, ex-Director of Hatcheries andConditioning, Tomakin was still on holiday–on holiday fromhumiliation and pain, in a world where he could not hear thosewords, that derisive laughter, could not see that hideous face,feel those moist and flabby arms round his neck, in a beautifulworld ...

"What you need," the Savage went on, "is something with tears fora change. Nothing costs enough here."

("Twelve and a half million dollars," Henry Foster had protestedwhen the Savage told him that. "Twelve and a half million–that'swhat the new Conditioning Centre cost. Not a cent less.")

"Exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, deathand danger dare, even for an eggshell. Isn't there something inthat?" he asked, looking up at Mustapha Mond. "Quite apart fromGod–though of course God would be a reason for it. Isn't theresomething in living dangerously?"

"There's a great deal in it," the Controller replied. "Men andwomen must have their adrenals stimulated from time to time."

"What?" questioned the Savage, uncomprehending.

"It's one of the conditions of perfect health. That's why we'vemade the V.P.S. treatments compulsory."

"V.P.S.?"

"Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We flood thewhole system with adrenin. It's the complete physiologicalequivalent of fear and rage. All the tonic effects of murderingDesdemona and being murdered by Othello, without any of theinconveniences."

"But I like the inconveniences."

"We don't," said the Controller. "We prefer to do thingscomfortably."

"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want realdanger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."

"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to beunhappy."

"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming theright to be unhappy."

"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; theright to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too littleto eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constantapprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catchtyphoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of everykind." There was a long silence.

"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.

Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. "You're welcome," he said.

---------------------------------

Chapter Eighteen

THE DOOR was ajar; they entered.

"John!"

From the bathroom came an unpleasant and characteristic sound.

"Is there anything the matter?" Helmholtz called.

There was no answer. The unpleasant sound was repeated, twice;there was silence. Then, with a click the bathroom door openedand, very pale, the Savage emerged.

"I say," Helmholtz exclaimed solicitously, "you do look ill,John!"

"Did you eat something that didn't agree with you?" askedBernard.

The Savage nodded. "I ate civilization."

"What?"

"It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then," he added, in a lowertone, "I ate my own wickedness."

"Yes, but what exactly? ... I mean, just now you were ..."

"Now I am purified," said the Savage. "I drank some mustard andwarm water."

The others stared at him in astonishment. "Do you mean to saythat you were doing it on purpose?" asked Bernard.

"That's how the Indians always purify themselves." He sat downand, sighing, passed his hand across his forehead. "I shall restfor a few minutes," he said. "I'm rather tired."

"Well, I'm not surprised," said Helmholtz. After a silence,"We've come to say good-bye," he went on in another tone. "We'reoff to-morrow morning."

"Yes, we're off to-morrow," said Bernard on whose face the Savageremarked a new expression of determined resignation. "And by theway, John," he continued, leaning forward in his chair and layinga hand on the Savage's knee, "I want to say how sorry I am abouteverything that happened yesterday." He blushed. "How ashamed,"he went on, in spite of the unsteadiness of his voice, "howreally ..."

The Savage cut him short and, taking his hand, affectionatelypressed it.

"Helmholtz was wonderful to me," Bernard resumed, after a littlepause. "If it hadn't been for him, I should ..."

"Now, now," Helmholtz protested.

There was a silence. In spite of their sadness–because of it,even; for their sadness was the symptom of their love for oneanother–the three young men were happy.

"I went to see the Controller this morning," said the Savage atlast.

"What for?"

"To ask if I mightn't go to the islands with you."

"And what did he say?" asked Helmholtz eagerly.

The Savage shook his head. "He wouldn't let me."

"Why not?"

"He said he wanted to go on with the experiment. But I'm damned,"the Savage added, with sudden fury, "I'm damned if I'll go onbeing experimented with. Not for all the Controllers in theworld. l shall go away to-morrow too."

"But where?" the others asked in unison.

The Savage shrugged his shoulders. "Anywhere. I don't care. Solong as I can be alone."

From Guildford the down-line followed the Wey valley toGodalming, then, over Milford and Witley, proceeded to Haslemereand on through Petersfield towards Portsmouth. Roughly parallelto it, the upline passed over Worplesden, Tongham, Puttenham,Elstead and Grayshott. Between the Hog's Back and Hindhead therewere points where the two lines were not more than six or sevenkilometres apart. The distance was too small for carelessflyers–particularly at night and when they had taken half agramme too much. There had been accidents. Serious ones. It hadbeen decided to deflect the upline a few kilometres to the west.Between Grayshott and Tongham four abandoned air-lighthousesmarked the course of the old Portsmouth-to-London road. The skiesabove them were silent and deserted. It was over Selborne, Bordonand Farnham that the helicopters now ceaselessly hummed androared.

The Savage had chosen as his hermitage the old light-house whichstood on the crest of the hill between Puttenham and Elstead. Thebuilding was of ferro-concrete and in excellent condition–almosttoo comfortable the Savage had thought when he first explored theplace, almost too civilizedly luxurious. He pacified hisconscience by promising himself a compensatingly harderself-discipline, purifications the more complete and thorough.His first night in the hermitage was, deliberately, a sleeplessone. He spent the hours on his knees praying, now to that Heavenfrom which the guilty Claudius had begged forgiveness, now inZuñi to Awonawilona, now to Jesus and Pookong, now to his ownguardian animal, the eagle. From time to time he stretched outhis arms as though he were on the Cross, and held them thusthrough long minutes of an ache that gradually increased till itbecame a tremulous and excruciating agony; held them, involuntary crucifixion, while he repeated, through clenched teeth(the sweat, meanwhile, pouring down his face), "Oh, forgive me!Oh, make me pure! Oh, help me to be good!" again and again, tillhe was on the point of fainting from the pain.

When morning came, he felt he had earned the right to inhabit thelighthouse; yet, even though there still was glass in most of thewindows, even though the view from the platform was so fine. Forthe very reason why he had chosen the lighthouse had becomealmost instantly a reason for going somewhere else. He haddecided to live there because the view was so beautiful, because,from his vantage point, he seemed to be looking out on to theincarnation of a divine being. But who was he to be pampered withthe daily and hourly sight of loveliness? Who was he to be livingin the visible presence of God? All he deserved to live in wassome filthy sty, some blind hole in the ground. Stiff and stillaching after his long night of pain, but for that very reasoninwardly reassured, he climbed up to the platform of his tower,he looked out over the bright sunrise world which he had regainedthe right to inhabit. On the north the view was bounded by thelong chalk ridge of the Hog's Back, from behind whose easternextremity rose the towers of the seven skyscrapers whichconstituted Guildford. Seeing them, the Savage made a grimace;but he was to become reconciled to them in course of time; for atnight they twinkled gaily with geometrical constellations, orelse, flood-lighted, pointed their luminous fingers (with agesture whose significance nobody in England but the Savage nowunderstood) solemnly towards the plumbless mysteries of heaven.

In the valley which separated the Hog's Back from the sandy hillon which the lighthouse stood, Puttenham was a modest littlevillage nine stories high, with silos, a poultry farm, and asmall vitamin-D factory. On the other side of the lighthouse,towards the South, the ground fell away in long slopes of heatherto a chain of ponds.

Beyond them, above the intervening woods, rose the fourteen-storytower of Elstead. Dim in the hazy English air, Hindhead andSelborne invited the eye into a blue romantic distance. But itwas not alone the distance that had attracted the Savage to hislighthouse; the near was as seductive as the far. The woods, theopen stretches of heather and yellow gorse, the clumps of Scotchfirs, the shining ponds with their overhanging birch trees, theirwater lilies, their beds of rushes–these were beautiful and, toan eye accustomed to the aridities of the American desert,astonishing. And then the solitude! Whole days passed duringwhich he never saw a human being. The lighthouse was only aquarter of an hour's flight from the Charing-T Tower; but thehills of Malpais were hardly more deserted than this Surreyheath. The crowds that daily left London, left it only to playElectro-magnetic Golf or Tennis. Puttenham possessed no links;the nearest Riemann-surfaces were at Guildford. Flowers and alandscape were the only attractions here. And so, as there was nogood reason for coming, nobody came. During the first days theSavage lived alone and undisturbed.

Of the money which, on his first arrival, John had received forhis personal expenses, most had been spent on his equipment.Before leaving London he had bought four viscose-woollenblankets, rope and string, nails, glue, a few tools, matches(though he intended in due course to make a fire drill), somepots and pans, two dozen packets of seeds, and ten kilogrammes ofwheat flour. "No, not synthetic starch and cotton-wasteflour-substitute," he had insisted. "Even though it is morenourishing." But when it came to pan-glandular biscuits andvitaminized beef-surrogate, he had not been able to resist theshopman's persuasion. Looking at the tins now, he bitterlyreproached himself for his weakness. Loathesome civilized stuff!He had made up his mind that he would never eat it, even if hewere starving. "That'll teach them," he thought vindictively. Itwould also teach him.

He counted his money. The little that remained would be enough,he hoped, to tide him over the winter. By next spring, his gardenwould be producing enough to make him independent of the outsideworld. Meanwhile, there would always be game. He had seen plentyof rabbits, and there were waterfowl on the ponds. He set to workat once to make a bow and arrows.

There were ash trees near the lighthouse and, for arrow shafts, awhole copse full of beautifully straight hazel saplings. He beganby felling a young ash, cut out six feet of unbranched stem,stripped off the bark and, paring by paring, shaved away thewhite wood, as old Mitsima had taught him, until he had a staveof his own height, stiff at the thickened centre, lively andquick at the slender tips. The work gave him an intense pleasure.After those weeks of idleness in London, with nothing to do,whenever he wanted anything, but to press a switch or turn ahandle, it was pure delight to be doing something that demandedskill and patience.

He had almost finished whittling the stave into shape, when herealized with a start that he was singing-singing! It was asthough, stumbling upon himself from the outside, he had suddenlycaught himself out, taken himself flagrantly at fault. Guiltilyhe blushed. After all, it was not to sing and enjoy himself thathe had come here. It was to escape further contamination by thefilth of civilized life; it was to be purified and made good; itwas actively to make amends. He realized to his dismay that,absorbed in the whittling of his bow, he had forgotten what hehad sworn to himself he would constantly remember–poor Linda, andhis own murderous unkindness to her, and those loathsome twins,swarming like lice across the mystery of her death, insulting,with their presence, not merely his own grief and repentance, butthe very gods themselves. He had sworn to remember, he had swornunceasingly to make amends. And there was he, sitting happilyover his bow-stave, singing, actually singing. ...

He went indoors, opened the box of mustard, and put some water toboil on the fire.

Half an hour later, three Delta-Minus landworkers from one of thePuttenham Bokanovsky Groups happened to be driving to Elsteadand, at the top of the hill, were astonished to see a young manstanding 0utside the abandoned lighthouse stripped to the waistand hitting himself with a whip of knotted cords. His back washorizontally streaked with crimson, and from weal to weal ranthin trickles of blood. The driver of the lorry pulled up at theside of the road and, with his two companions, staredopen-mouthed at the extraordinary spectacle. One, two three–theycounted the strokes. After the eighth, the young man interruptedhis self-punishment to run to the wood's edge and there beviolently sick. When he had finished, he picked up the whip andbegan hitting himself again. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve ...

"Ford!" whispered the driver. And his twins were of the sameopinion.

"Fordey!" they said.

Three days later, like turkey buzzards settling on a corpse, thereporters came.

Dried and hardened over a slow fire of green wood, the bow wasready. The Savage was busy on his arrows. Thirty hazel sticks hadbeen whittled and dried, tipped with sharp nails, carefullynocked. He had made a raid one night on the Puttenham poultryfarm, and now had feathers enough to equip a whole armoury. Itwas at work upon the feathering of his shafts that the first ofthe reporters found him. Noiseless on his pneumatic shoes, theman came up behind him.

"Good-morning, Mr. Savage," he said. "I am the representative ofThe Hourly Radio."

Startled as though by the bite of a snake, the Savage sprang tohis feet, scattering arrows, feathers, glue-pot and brush in alldirections.

"I beg your pardon," said the reporter, with genuine compunction."I had no intention ..." He touched his hat–the aluminumstove-pipe hat in which he carried his wireless receiver andtransmitter. "Excuse my not taking it off," he said. "It's a bitheavy. Well, as I was saying, I am the representative of TheHourly ..."

"What do you want?" asked the Savage, scowling. The reporterreturned his most ingratiating smile.

"Well, of course, our readers would be profoundly interested ..."He put his head on one side, his smile became almost coquettish."Just a few words from you, Mr. Savage." And rapidly, with aseries of ritual gestures, he uncoiled two wires connected to theportable battery buckled round his waist; plugged themsimultaneously into the sides of his aluminum hat; touched aspring on the crown–and antennæ shot up into the air; touchedanother spring on the peak of the brim–and, like ajack-in-the-box, out jumped a microphone and hung there,quivering, six inches in front of his nose; pulled down a pair ofreceivers over his ears; pressed a switch on the left side of thehat-and from within came a faint waspy buzzing; turned a knob onthe right–and the buzzing was interrupted by a stethoscopicwheeze and cackle, by hiccoughs and sudden squeaks. "Hullo," hesaid to the microphone, "hullo, hullo ..." A bell suddenly ranginside his hat. "Is that you, Edzel? Primo Mellon speaking. Yes,I've got hold of him. Mr. Savage will now take the microphone andsay a few words. Won't you, Mr. Savage?" He looked up at theSavage with another of those winning smiles of his. "Just tellour readers why you came here. What made you leave London (holdon, Edzel!) so very suddenly. And, of course, that whip." (TheSavage started. How did they know about the whip?) "We're allcrazy to know about the whip. And then something aboutCivilization. You know the sort of stuff. 'What I think of theCivilized Girl.' Just a few words, a very few ..."

The Savage obeyed with a disconcerting literalness. Five words heuttered and no more-five words, the same as those he had said toBernard about the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury. "Háni!Sons éso tse-ná!" And seizing the reporter by the shoulder, hespun him round (the young man revealed himself invitinglywell-covered), aimed and, with all the force and accuracy of achampion foot-and-mouth-baller, delivered a most prodigious kick.

Eight minutes later, a new edition of The Hourly Radio was onsale in the streets of London. "HOURLY RADIO REPORTER HAS COCCYXKICKED BY MYSTERY SAVAGE," ran the headlines on the front page."SENSATION IN SURREY."

"Sensation even in London," thought the reporter when, on hisreturn, he read the words. And a very painful sensation, what wasmore. He sat down gingerly to his luncheon.

Undeterred by that cautionary bruise on their colleague's coccyx,four other reporters, representing the New York Times, theFrankfurt Four-Dimensional Continuum , The Fordian ScienceMonitor , and The Delta Mirror , called that afternoon at thelighthouse and met with receptions of progressively increasingviolence.

From a safe distance and still rubbing his buttocks, "Benightedfool!" shouted the man from The Fordian Science Monitor , "whydon't you take soma?"

"Get away!" The Savage shook his fist.

The other retreated a few steps then turned round again. "Evil'san unreality if you take a couple of grammes."

"Kohakwa iyathtokyai!" The tone was menacingly derisive.

"Pain's a delusion."

"Oh, is it?" said the Savage and, picking up a thick hazelswitch, strode forward.

The man from The Fordian Science Monitor made a dash for hishelicopter.

After that the Savage was left for a time in peace. A fewhelicopters came and hovered inquisitively round the tower. Heshot an arrow into the importunately nearest of them. It piercedthe aluminum floor of the cabin; there was a shrill yell, and themachine went rocketing up into the air with all the accelerationthat its super-charger could give it. The others, in future, kepttheir distance respectfully. Ignoring their tiresome humming (helikened himself in his imagination to one of the suitors of theMaiden of Mátsaki, unmoved and persistent among the wingedvermin), the Savage dug at what was to be his garden. After atime the vermin evidently became bored and flew away; for hoursat a stretch the sky above his head was empty and, but for thelarks, silent.

The weather was breathlessly hot, there was thunder in the air.He had dug all the morning and was resting, stretched out alongthe floor. And suddenly the thought of Lenina was a realpresence, naked and tangible, saying "Sweet!" and "Put your armsround me!"–in shoes and socks, perfumed. Impudent strumpet! Butoh, oh, her arms round his neck, the lifting of her breasts, hermouth! Eternity was in our lips and eyes. Lenina ... No, no, no,no! He sprang to his feet and, half naked as he was, ran out ofthe house. At the edge of the heath stood a clump of hoaryjuniper bushes. He flung himself against them, he embraced, notthe smooth body of his desires, but an armful of green spikes.Sharp, with a thousand points, they pricked him. He tried tothink of poor Linda, breathless and dumb, with her clutchinghands and the unutterable terror in her eyes. Poor Linda whom hehad sworn to remember. But it was still the presence of Leninathat haunted him. Lenina whom he had promised to forget. Eventhrough the stab and sting of the juniper needles, his wincingflesh was aware of her, unescapably real. "Sweet, sweet ... Andif you wanted me too, why didn't you ..."

The whip was hanging on a nail by the door, ready to hand againstthe arrival of reporters. In a frenzy the Savage ran back to thehouse, seized it, whirled it. The knotted cords bit into hisflesh.

"Strumpet! Strumpet!" he shouted at every blow as though it wereLenina (and how frantically, without knowing it, he wished itwere), white, warm, scented, infamous Lenina that he was doggingthus. "Strumpet!" And then, in a voice of despair, "Oh, Linda,forgive me. Forgive me, God. I'm bad. I'm wicked. I'm ... No, no,you strumpet, you strumpet!"

From his carefully constructed hide in the wood three hundredmetres away, Darwin Bonaparte, the Feely Corporation's mostexpert big game photographer had watched the whole proceedings.Patience and skill had been rewarded. He had spent three dayssitting inside the bole of an artificial oak tree, three nightscrawling on his belly through the heather, hiding microphones ingorse bushes, burying wires in the soft grey sand. Seventy-twohours of profound discomfort. But now me great moment hadcome–the greatest, Darwin Bonaparte had time to reflect, as hemoved among his instruments, the greatest since his taking of thefamous all-howling stereoscopic feely of the gorillas' wedding."Splendid," he said to himself, as the Savage started hisastonishing performance. "Splendid!" He kept his telescopiccameras carefully aimed–glued to their moving objective; clappedon a higher power to get a close-up of the frantic and distortedface (admirable!); switched over, for half a minute, to slowmotion (an exquisitely comical effect, he promised himself);listened in, meanwhile, to the blows, the groans, the wild andraving words that were being recorded on the sound-track at theedge of his film, tried the effect of a little amplification(yes, that was decidedly better); was delighted to hear, in amomentary lull, the shrill singing of a lark; wished the Savagewould turn round so that he could get a good close-up of theblood on his back–and almost instantly (what astonishing luck!)the accommodating fellow did turn round, and he was able to takea perfect close-up.

"Well, that was grand!" he said to himself when it was all over."Really grand!" He mopped his face. When they had put in thefeely effects at the studio, it would be a wonderful film. Almostas good, thought Darwin Bonaparte, as the Sperm Whale'sLove-Life–and that, by Ford, was saying a good deal!

Twelve days later The Savage of Surrey had been released andcould be seen, heard and felt in every first-class feely-palacein Western Europe.

The effect of Darwin Bonaparte's film was immediate and enormous.On the afternoon which followed the evening of its release John'srustic solitude was suddenly broken by the arrival overhead of agreat swarm of helicopters.

He was digging in his garden–digging, too, in his own mind,laboriously turning up the substance of his thought. Death–and hedrove in his spade once, and again, and yet again. And all ouryesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Aconvincing thunder rumbled through the words. He lifted anotherspadeful of earth. Why had Linda died? Why had she been allowedto become gradually less than human and at last ... He shuddered.A good kissing carrion. He planted his foot on his spade andstamped it fiercely into the tough ground. As flies to wantonboys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport. Thunderagain; words that proclaimed themselves true–truer somehow thantruth itself. And yet that same Gloucester had called themever-gentle gods. Besides, thy best of rest is sleep and thatthou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st thy death which is nomore. No more than sleep. Sleep. Perchance to dream. His spadestruck against a stone; he stooped to pick it up. For in thatsleep of death, what dreams? ...

A humming overhead had become a roar; and suddenly he was inshadow, there was something between the sun and him. He lookedup, startled, from his digging, from his thoughts; looked up in adazzled bewilderment, his mind still wandering in that otherworld of truer-than-truth, still focused on the immensities ofdeath and deity; looked up and saw, close above him, the swarm ofhovering machines. Like locusts they came, hung poised, descendedall around him on the heather. And from out of the bellies ofthese giant grasshoppers stepped men in white viscose-flannels,women (for the weather was hot) in acetate-shantung pyjamas orvelveteen shorts and sleeveless, half-unzippered singlets–onecouple from each. In a few minutes there were dozens of them,standing in a wide circle round the lighthouse, staring,laughing, clicking their cameras, throwing (as to an ape)peanuts, packets of sex-hormone chewing-gum, pan-glandular petitebeurres. And every moment–for across the Hog's Back the stream oftraffic now flowed unceasingly–their numbers increased. As in anightmare, the dozens became scores, the scores hundreds.

The Savage had retreated towards cover, and now, in the postureof an animal at bay, stood with his back to the wall of thelighthouse, staring from face to face in speechless horror, likea man out of his senses.

From this stupor he was aroused to a more immediate sense ofreality by the impact on his cheek of a well-aimed packet ofchewing-gum. A shock of startling pain–and he was broad awake,awake and fiercely angry.

"Go away!" he shouted.

The ape had spoken; there was a burst of laughter andhand-clapping. "Good old Savage! Hurrah, hurrah!" And through thebabel he heard cries of: "Whip, whip, the whip!"

Acting on the word's suggestion, he seized the bunch of knottedcords from its nail behind the door and shook it at histormentors.

There was a yell of ironical applause.

Menacingly he advanced towards them. A woman cried out in fear.The line wavered at its most immediately threatened point, thenstiffened again, stood firm. The consciousness of being inoverwhelming force had given these sightseers a courage which theSavage had not expected of them. Taken aback, he halted andlooked round.

"Why don't you leave me alone?" There was an almost plaintivenote in his anger.

"Have a few magnesium-salted almonds!" said the man who, if theSavage were to advance, would be the first to be attacked. Heheld out a packet. "They're really very good, you know," headded, with a rather nervous smile of propitiation. "And themagnesium salts will help to keep you young."

The Savage ignored his offer. "What do you want with me?" heasked, turning from one grinning face to another. "What do youwant with me?"

"The whip," answered a hundred voices confusedly. "Do thewhipping stunt. Let's see the whipping stunt."

Then, in unison and on a slow, heavy rhythm, "We-want-the whip,"shouted a group at the end of the line. "We–want–the whip."

Others at once took up the cry, and the phrase was repeated,parrot-fashion, again and again, with an ever-growing volume ofsound, until, by the seventh or eighth reiteration, no other wordwas being spoken. "We–want–the whip."

They were all crying together; and, intoxicated by the noise, theunanimity, the sense of rhythmical atonement, they might, itseemed, have gone on for hours-almost indefinitely. But at aboutthe twenty-fifth repetition the proceedings were startlinglyinterrupted. Yet another helicopter had arrived from across theHog's Back, hung poised above the crowd, then dropped within afew yards of where the Savage was standing, in the open spacebetween the line of sightseers and the lighthouse. The roar ofthe air screws momentarily drowned the shouting; then, as themachine touched the ground and the engines were turned off:"We–want–the whip; we–want–the whip," broke out again in the sameloud, insistent monotone.

The door of the helicopter opened, and out stepped, first a fairand ruddy-faced young man, then, in green velveteen shorts, whiteshirt, and jockey cap, a young woman.

At the sight of the young woman, the Savage started, recoiled,turned pale.

The young woman stood, smiling at him–an uncertain, imploring,almost abject smile. The seconds passed. Her lips moved, she wassaying something; but the sound of her voice was covered by theloud reiterated refrain of the sightseers.

"We–want–the whip! We–want–the whip!"

The young woman pressed both hands to her left side, and on thatpeach-bright, doll-beautiful face of hers appeared a strangelyincongruous expression of yearning distress. Her blue eyes seemedto grow larger, brighter; and suddenly two tears rolled down hercheeks. Inaudibly, she spoke again; then, with a quick,impassioned gesture stretched out her arms towards the Savage,stepped forward.

"We–want–the whip! We–want ..."

And all of a sudden they had what they wanted.

"Strumpet!" The Savage had rushed at her like a madman."Fitchew!" Like a madman, he was slashing at her with his whip ofsmall cords.

Terrified, she had turned to flee, had tripped and fallen in theheather. "Henry, Henry!" she shouted. But her ruddy-facedcompanion had bolted out of harm's way behind the helicopter.

With a whoop of delighted excitement the line broke; there was aconvergent stampede towards that magnetic centre of attraction.Pain was a fascinating horror.

"Fry, lechery, fry!" Frenzied, the Savage slashed again.

Hungrily they gathered round, pushing and scrambling like swineabout the trough.

"Oh, the flesh!" The Savage ground his teeth. This time it was onhis shoulders that the whip descended. "Kill it, kill it!"

Drawn by the fascination of the horror of pain and, from within,impelled by that habit of cooperation, that desire for unanimityand atonement, which their conditioning had so ineradicablyimplanted in them, they began to mime the frenzy of his gestures,striking at one another as the Savage struck at his ownrebellious flesh, or at that plump incarnation of turpitudewrithing in the heather at his feet.

"Kill it, kill it, kill it ..." The Savage went on shouting.

Then suddenly somebody started singing "Orgy-porgy" and, in amoment, they had all caught up the refrain and, singing, hadbegun to dance. Orgy-porgy, round and round and round, beatingone another in six-eight time. Orgy-porgy ...

It was after midnight when the last of the helicopters took itsflight. Stupefied by soma, and exhausted by a long-drawn frenzyof sensuality, the Savage lay sleeping in the heather. The sunwas already high when he awoke. He lay for a moment, blinking inowlish incomprehension at the light; then suddenlyremembered–everything.

"Oh, my God, my God!" He covered his eyes with his hand.

That evening the swarm of helicopters that came buzzing acrossthe Hog's Back was a dark cloud ten kilometres long. Thedescription of last night's orgy of atonement had been in all thepapers.

"Savage!" called the first arrivals, as they alighted from theirmachine. "Mr. Savage!"

There was no answer.

The door of the lighthouse was ajar. They pushed it open andwalked into a shuttered twilight. Through an archway on thefurther side of the room they could see the bottom of thestaircase that led up to the higher floors. Just under the crownof the arch dangled a pair of feet.

"Mr. Savage!"

Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feetturned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east,south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds,turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west,south, south-east, east. ...

END