Disc 2 R. Ford, or R. Freud, as for some inscrutable reason he chose to call himself whenever he spoke of psychological matters, our Freud had been the first to reveal the appalling dangers of family life. The world was full of fathers, was therefore full of misery, full of mothers. therefore of every kind of perversion from 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 the coast of New Guinea, the tropical sunshine lay like warm honey on the naked bodies of children tumbling promiscuously among the hibiscus blossoms home was in any one of twenty palm-thatched houses in the trobrians conception was the work of ancestral ghosts nobody had ever heard of a father extremes said the controller meet
for the good reason that they were made to meet dr wells said that a three months pregnancy substitute now will make all the difference to my health for the next three or four years well i hope he's right said lenin but fanny do you really mean to say that for the next three months you're not supposed to oh no dear only for a week or two that's all i shall spend the evening at the club playing musical bridge
"'I suppose you're going out?' Lennon nodded. "'Who with?' "'Henry Foster.' "'Again?' fanny's kind rather moonlike face took on an incongruous expression of pained and disapproving astonishment do you mean to tell me you're still going out with henry foster mothers and fathers brothers and sisters but there were also husbands wives lovers there were also monogamy and romance Though you probably don't know what those are, said Mustafa Mond. They shook their heads. Family, monogamy, romance.
everywhere exclusiveness everywhere a focusing of interest a narrow channeling of impulse and energy but everyone belongs to everyone else he concluded citing the hypnopedic proverb the students nodded emphatically agreeing with a statement which upwards of sixty-two thousand repetitions in the dark had made them accept not merely as true but as axiomatic, self-evident, utterly indisputable. But after all, Leniner was protesting, it's only about four months 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 except henry all that time has there lenin had blushed scarlet but her eyes the tone of her voice remained defiant no there hasn't been any one else she answered almost truculently and i jolly well don't see why there should have been
Oh, she jolly well doesn't see why there should have been, Fanny repeated, as though to an invisible listener behind Leniner's left shoulder. Then, with a sudden change of tone, but seriously... 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 one man at forty or thirty-five it wouldn't be so bad but at your age
No, it really won't do. And you know how strongly the DHC objects to anything intense or long-drawn? Four months of Henry Foster without having another man? Why, he'd be furious if he knew!
think of water under pressure in a pipe they thought of it i pierce it once said the controller what a jet he pierced it twenty times there were twenty piddling little fountains 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 and foamy the wild jet the urge has but a single outlet my love my baby no wonder these poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable
Their world didn't allow them to take things easily, didn't allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothers and lovers, What with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey? What with the temptations and the lonely remorses? What with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain? What with the uncertainties and the poverty?
they were forced to feel strongly of course there's no need to give him up have somebody else from time to time that's all he has other girls doesn't he leniner admitted it of course he does trust henry foster to be the perfect gentleman always correct and then there's the director to think of you know what a stickler nodding he patted me on the behind this afternoon
said Lenina. There you see, Fanny was triumphant, that shows what he stands for, the strictest conventionality. Stability said the controller stability no civilization without social stability no social stability without individual stability his voice was a trumpet listening they felt larger warmer the machine turns turns and must keep on turning for ever
It is death if it stands still. A thousand millions scrabbled the crust of the earth. The wheels began to turn. In a hundred and fifty years there were two thousand million. Stop all the wheels.
in a hundred and fifty weeks there are once more only a thousand millions a thousand thousand thousand men and women have starved to death wheels must turn steadily but cannot turn untended there must be men to tend them men as steady as the wheels upon their axles 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 and if they cannot tend the wheels the corpses of a thousand thousand thousand men and women would be hard to bury or burn and after all fanny's tone was coaxing It's not as though there were anything painful or disagreeable about having one or two men besides Henry, and seeing that you ought to be a little more promiscuous...
Stability, insisted the controller. Stability. The primal and the ultimate need. Stability. Hence, all this. With a wave of his hand he indicated the gardens, the huge building of the conditioning centre, the naked children furtive in the undergrowth or running across the lawns. Lenina shook her head. Somehow, she mused, I hadn't been feeling very keen on promiscuity lately. There are times when one doesn't. Haven't you found that too, Fanny?
fanny nodded her sympathy and understanding but one's got to make the effort she said sententiously one's got to play the game after all everyone belongs to everyone else yes "'Everyone belongs to everyone else,' Lenina repeated slowly, and, sighing, was silent for a moment. Then, taking Fanny'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 flood is passion the flood is even madness
it depends on the force of the current the height and strength of the barrier the unchecked stream flows smoothly down its appointed channels into a calm well-being the embryo is hungry Day in, day out, the blood surrogate pump unceasingly turns its eight hundred revolutions a minute. The decanted infant howls. At once a nurse appears with a bottle of external secretion.
Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation. Shorten that interval. Break down all those old unnecessary barriers. Fortunate boys, said the controller, no pains have been spared to make your lives emotionally easy, to preserve you so far as that is possible from having emotions at all. in his flivver murmured the dhc all's well with the world lenin a crown said henry foster echoing
the assistant predestinator's question as he zipped up his trousers. Oh, she's a splendid girl, wonderfully pneumatic. I'm surprised you haven't had her. I can't think how it is I haven't, said the assistant predestinator. 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 lennon i'm beginning to get just a tiny bit bored with nothing but henry every day she pulled on her left stocking do you know bernard marks She asked in a tone 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 to one of the savage reservations with him i've always wanted to see 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 was horror in fanny's voice well he won't be alone when he's with me and anyhow why are people so beastly to him i think he's rather sweet she smiled to herself How absurdly shy he had been, frightened almost, as though she were a world controller and he a gamma minus machine minder.
Consider your own lives, said Mustapha Mond. Has any of you ever encountered an insurmountable obstacle? The question was answered by a negative silence. Has any of you been compelled to live through a long time interval between consciousness of a desire and its fulfillment?' "'Well,' began one of the boys, and hesitated, "'Speak up!'
said the DHC. Don't keep his fortship waiting. I once had to wait nearly four weeks before a girl I wanted would let me have her. And you felt a strong emotion in consequence. Horrible. horrible precisely said the controller our ancestors were so stupid and short-sighted that when the first reformers came along 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, Bernard ground 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 the face, hard, again and again. Yes, I really do advise you to try her, Henry Foster was saying. Take ectogenesis. Fitzner and Kawaguchi had got the whole technique worked out. But would the government look at it? No. There was something called Christianity.
women were forced to go on being viviparous he's so ugly said fanny but i rather like his looks and then so small fanny made a grimace smallness was so horribly and typically locust i think that's rather sweet said lenina one feels one would like to pet him you know like a cat Fanny was shocked. They say somebody made a mistake when he was still in the bottle, thought he was a gamer and put alcohol into his blood surrogate. That's why he's so stunted. What nonsense!
Lenina was indignant. Sleep teaching was actually prohibited in England. There was something called liberalism.
parliament if you know what that was passed a law against it the records survive speeches about the liberty 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're welcome henry foster patted the assistant predestinator on the shoulder everyone belongs to everyone else after all one hundred repetitions three nights a week for four years thought bernard marx who was a specialist on hypnopedia
62,400 repetitions makes one truth. Idiots. Or the caste system, constantly proposed... constantly rejected there was something called democracy as though men were more than physico-chemically equal well all i can say is that i am going to accept his invitation bernard hated them hated them but they were too they were large they were strong the nine years war began in af one hundred and forty one not even if it were true about the alcohol in his blood surrogate
phosgene, chloropicrin, ethyl iodoacetate, diphenyl cyanacine, trichloromethyl, chloroformate, dichlorethyl sulfide. not to mention hydrocyanic acid which i simply don't believe lenina concluded the noise of fourteen thousand aeroplanes advancing in open order but in the kefurstendamm and the eighth arrondissement The explosion of the anthrax bombs is hardly louder than the popping of a paper bag. Because I do want to see a savage reservation.
CH3 sub 3 C sub 6 H sub 2 left parenthesis NO sub 2 right parenthesis sub 3 plus HG left parenthesis C NO right parenthesis sub 2 equals, well, What? An enormous hole in the ground, a pile of masonry, some bits of flesh and mucus, a foot with a boot still on it, flying through the air and landing flop. in the middle of the geraniums, the scarlet ones. Such a splendid show that summer. You're hopeless, Lennon. I give you up.
The Russian technique for infecting water supplies was particularly ingenious. Back turn to back, Fanny and Lenina continued their changing in silence. The Nine Years' War, the great economic collapse. There was a choice between world control and destruction, between stability and... Fanny Crown's a nice girl, too. said the assistant predestinator. In the nurseries, the elementary class consciousness lesson was over. The voices were adapting future demand to future industrial supply.
I do love flying, they whispered. I do love flying. I do love having new clothes. I do love. liberalism of course was dead of anthrax but all the same you couldn'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 with the 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 speechless and 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 less riches the more stitches one of these days said fanny with dismal emphasis you'll get into trouble conscientious objection on an enormous scale anything not to consume back to nature i do love flying i do love flying back to culture yes actually to culture
you can't consume much if you sit still and read books do i look all right lenina asked her jacket was made of bottle-green acetate cloth with green viscous fur at the cuffs and collar eight hundred simple lifers were mowed down by machine guns at golders green ending is better than mending ending is better than mending green corduroy shorts and white viscous woolen stockings turn below the knee
Then came the famous British Museum massacre. Two thousand culture fans gassed with dicloethyl sulfide. a green and white jockey cap shaded lennon's eyes her shoes were bright green and highly polished in the end said mustapha mond
The controllers realized that force was no good. The slower but infinitely surer methods of ectogenesis, neo-Pavlovian conditioning, and hypnopedia... and round her waist she wore a silver-mounted green Morocco surrogate cartridge belt, bulging, for Lenin was not a free Martin, with a regulation supply of contraceptives. The discoveries of Fitzner and Kawaguchi were at last made use of, an intensive propaganda against viviparous reproduction. Perfect!
cried Fanny enthusiastically. She could never resist Leninist charm for long. And what a perfectly sweet Malthusian belt! accompanied by a campaign against the past by the closing of museums the blowing up of historical monuments luckily most of them had already been destroyed during the nine years war by the suppression of all books published before A.F. 150. I simply must get one like it, said Fanny.
there were some things called the pyramids for example my old black pattern bandolier and a man called shakespeare You've never heard of them, of course. It's an absolute disgrace, that bundler 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 of machines and the fixation of nitrogen, positively a crime against society. Henry Foster gave it me. All crosses had their tops cut and became T's. There was also a thing called God. It's real Morocco surrogate.
We have the World State now and Ford's Day celebrations and community 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 to drink enormous quantities of alcohol. Like meat, like so much meat. there was a thing called the soul and a thing called immortality 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 biochemists were subsidised in AF-178. He does look glum. said the assistant predestinator, pointing at Bernard Marx. Six years later, it was being produced commercially, the perfect drug. Let's bait him. Euphoric. narcotic pleasantly hallucinant glum marks glum the clap on the shoulder made him start look up it was that brute Henry Foster
What you need is a gram of soma. All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol, none of their defects. Ford, I should like to kill him. But all he did say was, no thank you, and fend off the proffered tube of tablets. Take a holiday from reality whenever you like. and come back without 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 the assistant predestinator, citing a piece of homely hypnopaedic wisdom. 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 gram is better than a dam.
They went out 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 i must fly work play at sixty our powers and tastes are what they were at seventeen
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 walked down the corridor to the lift. "'Now such is progress.' The old men work, the old men copulate, the old men have no time, no leisure from pleasure, not a moment to sit down and think.
or if ever by some unlucky chance such a crevice of time should yawn in the solid substance of their distractions, there is always Soma, delicious Soma. half a gram for a half holiday a gram for a weekend two grams for a trip to the gorgeous east three for a dark eternity on the moon Returning whence they find themselves on the other side of the crevice, safe on the solid ground of...
daily labour and distraction, scampering from feely to feely, from girl to pneumatic girl, from electromagnetic golf course to— Go away, little girl! shouted the DHC angrily. Go— away, little boy. Can't you see that his four-chip's busy? Go and do your erotic play somewhere else. Suffer, little children, said the controller. Slowly.
majestically with a faint humming of machinery the conveyors moved forward thirty-three centimeters an hour in the red darkness glinted innumerable rubies chapter four the lift was crowded with men from the alpha changing rooms and lennon's entry was greeted by many friendly nods and smiles she was a popular girl and at one time or another had spent a night with almost all of them they were dear boys she thought as she returned their salutations charming boys
still she did wish that george edsel's ears weren't quite so big perhaps he'd been given just a spot too much parathyroid at metre three hundred and twenty-eight and looking at benito hoover she couldn't help remembering that he was really too hairy when he took his clothes off turning with eyes a little saddened by the recollection of benito's curly blackness she saw in a corner the small thin body the melancholy face of bernard marx
bernard she stepped up to him i was looking for you her voice rang clear above the hum of the mounting lift the others looked round curiously i wanted to talk to you about our new mexico plan out of the tail of her eye she could see benito hoover gaping with astonishment the gape annoyed her surprised i shouldn't be begging to go with him again she said to herself then aloud and more warmly than ever
I'd simply love to come with you for a week in July, she went on. Anyhow, she was publicly proving her unfaithfulness to Henry. Fanny ought to be pleased, even though it was Bernard. That is... Lenin gave him her most deliciously significant smile. If you still want to have me... Bernard's pale face flushed.
what on earth for she wondered astonished but at the same time touched by this strange tribute to 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 him who his mother was or something like that i mean with all these people about
He was choked with confusion. Lennon's laugh was frank and wholly unmalicious. How funny you are, she said, and she quite genuinely did think him funny. you'll give me at least a week's warning won't you she went on in another tone i suppose we take the blue pacific rocket does it start from charing tea 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 black tunic of an epsilon minus semi-moron. he flung open the gates the warm glory of afternoon sunlight made him start and blink his eyes he repeated in a voice of rapture he was as though suddenly and joyfully awakened from a dark annihilating stupor
He smiled up with a kind of doggedly expectant adoration into the faces of his passengers. Talking and laughing together, they stepped out into the light. The liftman looked after them.
he said once more questioningly then a bell rang and from the ceiling of the lift a loud speaker began very softly and yet very imperiously to issue its commands 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 instantly dropped back into the droning twilight of the well the twilight of his own habitual stupor it was warm and bright on the roof the summer afternoon was drowsy with the hum of passing helicopters
and the deeper drone of the rocket planes hastening invisible through the bright sky five or six miles overhead was like a caress on the soft air bernard marx drew a deep breath He looked up into the sky and round 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 sympathetic understanding simply perfect for obstacle gulf she answered rapturously and now i must fly bernard henry gets cross if i keep him waiting let me know in good time about the date and waving her hand she ran away across the wide flat roof towards the hangars Bernard stood watching the retreating twinkle of the white stockings, the sunburnt knees vivaciously bending and unbending again, again.
and the softer rolling of those well-fitted corduroy shorts beneath the bottle-green jacket. His face wore an expression of pain. I should say she was pretty!
said a loud and cheery voice just behind him bernard started and looked round the chubby red face of benito hoover was beaming down at him beaming with manifest cordiality benita was notoriously good-natured people said of him that he could have got through life without ever touching soma the malice and bad tempers from which other people had to take holidays never afflicted him reality for benito was always sunny pneumatic too and how then in another tone but i say he went on you do look glum
What you need is a gram of soma. Diving into his right-hand trouser pocket, Benito produced a file. 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 the fellow he wondered and, shaking his head, decided that the story about the alcohol having been put into the poor chap's blood surrogate must be true. Touched his brain, I suppose.
he put away the soma bottle and taking out a packet of sex hormone chewing gum stuffed a plug into his cheek and walked slowly away towards the hangers 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 in beside him
he started the engines and threw the helicopter screws into gear the machine shot vertically into the air henry accelerated the humming of the propeller shrilled from hornet to wasp from wasp to mosquito The speedometer showed that they were rising at the best part of two kilometres a minute. London diminished beneath them. The huge tabletop buildings were no more in a few seconds than a bed of geometrical mushrooms sprouting from the green of a park and garden. In the midst of them...
Thinstalked, a taller, slenderer fungus, the charing tea tower lifted towards the sky a disk of shining concrete. like the vague torsos of fabulous athletes huge fleshy clouds lolled on the blue air above their heads out of one of them suddenly dropped a small scarlet insect buzzing as it fell there's the red rocket said henry just come in from new york looking at his watch seven minutes behind time he added and shook his head these atlantic services they're really scandalously unpunctual
he took his foot off the accelerator the humming of the screws overhead dropped an octave and a half back through wasp and hornet to bumblebee to cockchafer to stag beetle the upward rush of the machine slackened off
a moment later they were hanging motionless in the air henry pushed at a lever there was a click slowly at first then faster and faster till it was a circular mist before their eyes the propeller in front of them began to revolve the wind of a horizontal speed whistled ever more shrilly in the stays
Henry kept his eye on the revolution counter. When the needle touched the 1200 mark, he threw the helicopter screws out of gear. The machine had enough forward momentum to be able to fly on its planes.
lenina looked down through the window in the floor between her feet they were flying over the six kilometer zone of parkland that separated central london from its first ring of satellite suburbs the green was maggoty with foreshortened life forests of centrifugal bumble-puppy towers gleam between the trees near shepherd's bush
2,000 beta-minus mixed doubles were playing Riemann surface tennis. A double row of Escalator 5's courts lined the main road from Notting Hill to Wilsdon. In the Ealing Stadium... a delta gymnastic display and community sing was in progress what a hideous colour khaki is remarked lenina voicing the hypnopedic prejudices of her caste
the buildings of the hounslow feely studio covered seven and a half hectares near them a black and khaki army of labourers was busy re vitrifying the surface of the great west road One of the huge travelling crucibles was being tapped as they flew over. The molten stone poured out in a stream of dazzling incandescence across the road. The asbestos rollers came and went.
At the tail of an insulated watering cart, the steam rose in white clouds. At Brentford, the Television Corporation's factory was like a small town. They must be changing the shift.
said lenina like aphids and ants the leaf-green gamma girls the black semi-morons swarmed round the entrances or stood in queues to take their places in the monorail tramcars mulberry-coloured beta minuses came and went among the crowd the roof of the main building was alive with the alighting and departures of helicopters my word said lenina i'm glad i'm not a gamma
ten minutes later they were at stoke poges and had started their first round of obstacle golf with eyes for the most part downcast and If ever they lighted on a fellow-creature at once and furtively averted, Bernard hastened across the roof.
he was like a man pursued but pursued by enemies he does not wish to see lest they should seem more hostile even than he had supposed and he himself be made to feel guiltier and even more helplessly alone that horrible benito hoover yet the man had meant well enough which only made it in a way much worse those who meant well behaved in the same way as those who meant badly
Even Lenina was making him suffer. He remembered those weeks of timid indecision, during which he had looked and longed and despaired of ever having the courage to ask her.
dared he face the risk of being humiliated by a contemptuous refusal but if she were to say yes what rapture well now she had said it and he was still wretched wretched that she should have thought it such a perfect afternoon for obstacle golf that she should have trotted away to join henry foster that she should have found him funny for not wanting to talk of their most private affairs in public
wretched in a word because she had behaved as any healthy and virtuous 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 couple of delta-minus attendants to come and push his machine out onto the 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 even offensive tone of one who does not feel himself too secure in his superiority To have dealings with members of the lower caste was always, for Bernard, a most distressing experience. For whatever the cause... and the current gossip about the alcohol in his blood surrogate may very likely for accidents will happen have been true bernard's physique was hardly better than that of the average gamma
he stood eight centimetres short of the standard alpha height and was slender in proportion contact with members of the lower castes always reminded him painfully of this physical inadequacy i am i and i wish i wasn't his self-consciousness was acute and distressing each time he found himself looking on the level instead of downward into a delta's face he felt humiliated Would the creature treat him with the respect due to his caste? The question haunted him. Not without reason.
for gammas, deltas and epsilons have been to some extent conditioned to associate corporeal mass with social superiority. Indeed, a faint hypnopedic prejudice in favour of size was universal. Hence the laughter of the women to whom he made proposals, the practical joking of his equals among the men.
the mockery made him feel an outsider and feeling an outsider he behaved like one which increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects which in turn increased his sense of being alien and alone.
a chronic fear of being slighted made him avoid his equals made him stand where his inferiors were concerned self-consciously on his dignity how bitterly he envied men like henry foster and benito hoover men who never had to shout at an epsilon to get an order obeyed men who took their position for granted
men who moved through the caste system as a fish through the water so utterly at home as to be unaware either of themselves or of the beneficent and comfortable element in which they had their being slackly it seemed to him and with reluctance the twin attendants 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 he detected in those blank grey eyes? Hurry up! he shouted more loudly, and there was an ugly rasp in his voice. He climbed into the plane.
and a minute later was flying southwards towards the river the various bureaus of propaganda and the college of emotional engineering were housed in a single sixty-storey building in fleet street in the basement and on the lower floors were the presses and offices of the three great london newspapers the hourly radio an upper cast sheet the pale green gamma gazette and on khaki paper
and in words exclusively of one syllable, the Delta Mirror. Then came the bureaus of propaganda by television, by feeling picture, and by synthetic voice and music, respectively. Twenty-two floors of them. Above were the research laboratories and the padded rooms in which the soundtrack writers and synthetic composers did their delicate work. The top 18 floors were occupied by 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 plus porter and tell him that mr bernard marx is waiting for him on the 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 things away. He went on in the same official and impersonal tone, and, ignoring her lustrous smile, got up and walked bristly to the door. he was a powerfully built man deep-chested broad-shouldered massive and yet quick in his movements springy and agile the round strong pillar of his neck supported a beautifully shaped head
His hair was dark and curly, his features strongly marked. In a forcibly emphatic way, he was handsome and looked, as his secretary was never tired of repeating, every centimetre an alpha plus. By profession, he was a lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering, Department of Writing, and in the intervals of his educational activities, a working emotional engineer. He wrote regularly for the hourly radio.
composed feely scenarios, and had the happiest knack for slogans and hypnopedic rhymes. Abel was the verdict of his superiors. Perhaps... and they would shake their heads, would significantly lower their voices, a little too able. Yes, a little too able. They were right.
a mental excess had produced in helmholtz watson effects very similar to those which in bernard marx were the result of a physical defect too little bone and brawn had isolated bernard from his fellow-men and the sense of this apartness, being by all the current standards a mental excess, became in its turn a cause of wider separation.
That which had made Helmholtz so uncomfortably aware of being himself and all alone was too much ability. What the two men shared was the knowledge that they were individuals. but whereas the physically defective bernard had suffered all his life from the consciousness of being separate it was only quite recently that grown aware of his mental excess
Helmholtz Watson had also become aware of his difference from the people who surrounded him. This escalator squash champion, this indefatigable lover, it was said that he had had six hundred and forty different girls in under four years this admirable committee man and best mixer, had realised quite suddenly that sport, women, communal activities were only, so far as he was concerned, second bests. Really, and at the bottom,
He was interested in something else. But in what? In what? That was the problem which Bernard had come to discuss with him. or rather since it was always Helmholtz who did the talking to listen to his friend discussing yet once more. Three Charming Girls from the Bureau of Propaganda by Synthetic Voice
waylaid him as he stepped out of the lift. Oh, Helmholtz, darling, do come and have a picnic supper with us on 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 his course the girls trailed after him it was not until he had actually climbed into bernard's plain and slammed the door that they gave up pursuit not without reproaches
these women he said as the machine rose into the air these women and he shook his head he frowned too awful bernard hypocritically agreed wishing as he spoke the words that he could have as many girls as helmholtz did and with as little trouble he was seized with a sudden urgent need to boast
"'I'm taking Lennon a crown to New Mexico with me,' he said in a tone as casual as he could make it. "'Are you?' said Helmholtz, with a total absence of interest. Then, after a little pause, this last week or two he went on i've been cutting all my committees and all my girls you can't imagine what a hullabaloo they've been making about it at the college still it's been worth it i think the effects
he hesitated well they're odd they're very odd a physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess the process it seemed was reversible Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism. The rest of the short flight was accomplished in silence. When they had arrived and were comfortably stretched out on the pneumatic sofas in Bernard's room, Helmholtz began again. Speaking very slowly,
Did you ever feel, he asked, as though you had something inside you that was only waiting for you to give it a chance to come out? Some sort of extra power that you aren't using? You know, like all the water that goes down the falls instead of through the turbines. He looked at Bernard questioningly. You mean all the emotions one might be feeling if things were different?
helmholtz shook his head not quite i'm thinking of a queer feeling i sometimes get a feeling that i've got something important to say and the power to say it only I don't know what it is, and I can't make any use of the power. If there was some different way of writing, or else something else to write about... He was silent. Then... You see, he went on at last, I'm pretty good at inventing phrases, you know, the sort of words that suddenly make you jump.
Almost as though you'd sat on a pin. They seem so new and exciting, even though they're about something hypnopedically obvious. But that doesn't seem enough. It's not enough for the phrases to be good. What you make with them ought to be good, too. But your things are good, Helmholtz. Oh, as far as they go, Helmholtz shrugged his shoulders, but they go such a little way.
They aren't important enough, somehow. I feel I could do something much more important. Yes, and much more intense, more violent. But what? What is there more important to say? And how can one be violent about the sort of things one's expected to write about? Words can be like x-rays, if you use them properly. They'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced. That's one of the things I try to teach my students, how to write piercingly.
But what on earth the good of being pierced by an article about a community sing or the latest improvements in scent organs? Besides, Can you make words really piercing, you know, like the very hardest x-rays, when you're writing about that sort of thing? Can you say something about nothing? That's what it finally boils down to. I try and I try. Hush, said Bernard suddenly, and lifted a warning finger. They listened. I believe there's somebody at the door, he whispered. Helmholtz got up.
tiptoed across the room and with a sharp quick movement flung the door wide open there was of course nobody there i'm sorry said bernard feeling and looking uncomfortably foolish I suppose I've got things on my nerves a bit. When people are suspicious with you, you start being suspicious with them. He passed his hand across his eyes. He sighed. His voice became plaintive.
he was justifying himself if you knew what i had to put up with recently he said almost tearfully and the uprush of his self-pity was like a fountain suddenly released if you only knew helmholtz watson listened with a certain sense of discomfort poor little bernard he said to himself but at the same time he felt rather ashamed for his friend. He wished Bernard would show a little more pride. Chapter 5
By eight o'clock the light was failing. The loudspeakers in the tower of the Stoke Poges Clubhouse began, in a more than human tenor, to announce the closing of the courses. Lenina and Henry abandoned their game and walked back towards the club.
from the grounds of the internal and external secretion trust came the lowing of those thousands of cattle which provided with their hormones and their milk the raw materials for the great factory at farnham royal The incessant buzzing of helicopters filled the twilight. every two and a half minutes a bell and the screech of whistles announced the departure of one of the light monorail trains which carried the lower caste golfers back from their separate course to the metropolis
Lenina and Henry climbed into their machine and started off. At 800 feet, Henry slowed down the helicopter screws, and they hung for a minute or two poised above the fading landscape. the forest of burnham beaches stretched like a great pool of darkness towards the bright shore of the western sky crimson at the horizon the last of the sunset faded through orange upwards into yellow and a pale, watery green. Northwards, beyond and above the trees,
The internal and external secretions factory glared with a fierce electric brilliance from every window of its twenty stories. Beneath them lay the buildings of the golf club, the huge lower-caste barracks, and on the other side of a dividing wall, the smaller houses reserved for Alpha and Beta members. The approaches to the monorail station were black with the ant-like pollulation of lower caste activity. From under the glass fault, a lighted train shot out into the open.
Following its southeasterly course across the dark plain, their eyes were drawn to the majestic buildings of the Slough crematorium. For the safety of night-flying planes, its four tall chimneys were flood-lighted and tipped with crimson danger signals. It was a landmark. Why do the smokestacks have those things like balconies around them?
inquired Leniner. Phosphorous recovery, explained Henry telegraphically. On their way up the chimney, the gases go through four separate treatments. P2O5 used to go right out of circulation every time they cremated someone.
now they recover over ninety eight percent of it more than a kilo and a half per adult corpse which makes the best part of four hundred tons of phosphorus every year from england alone henry spoke with a happy pride rejoicing whole-heartedly in the achievement as though it had been his own fine to think we can go on being socially useful even after we're dead making plants grow
Lenina, meanwhile, had turned her eyes away and was looking perpendicularly downward at the monorail station. Fine, she agreed. but queer that alphas and bettas won't make any more plants grow than those nasty little gammas and delphas and epsilons down there all men are physico-chemically equal said henry sententiously besides Even epsilons perform indispensable services. Even an epsilon.
lenina suddenly remembered an occasion when as a little girl at school she had woken up in the middle of the night and become aware for the first time of the whispering that had haunted all her sleeps she saw again the beam of moonlight the row of small white birds heard once more the soft soft voice that said the words were there unforgotten unforgettable after so many night-long repetitions
everyone works for everyone else we can't do without anyone even epsilons are useful we couldn't do without epsilons Everyone works for everyone else. We can't do without anyone. lenina remembered her first shock of fear and surprise her speculations through half a wakeful hour and then under the influence of those endless repetitions the gradual soothing of her mind the soothing the smoothing the stealthy creeping of sleep i suppose epsilons don't really mind being epsilons she said aloud
Of course they don't. How can they? They don't know what it's like being anything else. We'd mind, of course, but then we've been differently conditioned. Besides, we start with a different heredity.
i'm glad i'm not an epsilon said lenina with conviction and if you were an epsilon said henry your conditioning would have made you no less thankful that you weren't a beta or an alpha he put his forward propeller into gear and headed the machine towards london behind them in the west the crimson and orange were almost faded a dark bank of cloud had crept into the zenith
As they flew over the crematorium, the plane shot upwards on the column of hot air rising from the chimneys, only to fall as suddenly when it passed into the descending chill beyond. what a marvellous switchback lennon laughed delightedly but henry's tone was almost for a moment melancholy do you know what that switchback was he said
It was some human being, finally and definitely disappearing, going up in a squirt of hot gas. It would be curious to know who it was, a man or a woman, an alpha or an epsilon. he sighed, then in a resolutely cheerful voice. Anyhow, he concluded, there's one thing we can be certain of. Whoever he may have been, he was happy when he was alive. Everybody's happy now. Yes, everybody's happy now, echoed Lenin. They had heard the words repeated a hundred and fifty times every night for twelve years.
Landing on the roof of Henry's forty-storey apartment house in Westminster, they went straight down to the dining hall. There, in a loud and cheerful company, they ate an excellent meal. Soma was served with the coffee. Lenina took two half-gram tablets and Henry three. At twenty past nine they walked across the street to the newly opened Westminster Abbey Cabaret.
It was a night almost without clouds, moonless and starry. But of this on the whole depressing fact, Lenina and Henry were fortunately unaware. the electric sky signs effectively shut off the outer darkness calvin stopes and his sixteen saxophonists from the façade of the new abbey the giant letters invitingly glared London's finest scent and colour organ. All the latest synthetic music. They entered. The air seemed hot and somehow breathless with the scent of ambergris and sandalwood.
On the domed ceiling of the hall, the colour organ had momentarily painted a tropical sunset. The sixteen saxophonists were playing an old favourite. There ain't no bottle in all the world like that dear little bottle of mine. 400 couples were five-stepping around the polished floor. Lennon and Henry were soon the 401st. The saxophones wailed like melodious cats under the moon.
moaned in the alto antenna registers as though the little death were upon them rich with a wealth of harmonics their tremulous chorus mounted towards a climax louder and even louder until at last with a wave of his hand The conductor let loose the final shattering note of ether music and blew the sixteen merely human blowers clean out of existence. Thunder in A-flat major.
And then, in all but silence, in all but darkness, there followed a gradual... detergescence a diminuendo sliding gradually through quarter-tones down down to a faintly whispered dominant chord that lingered on while the five four rhythm still pulsed below charging the darkened seconds with an intense expectancy. And at last expectancy was fulfilled. There was a sudden explosive sunrise, 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 round westminster abbey lenina and henry were yet dancing in another world the warm richly coloured the infinitely friendly world of soma holiday how kind how good-looking how delightfully amusing every one was bottle of mine it's you i've always wanted but lenina and henry had what they wanted they were inside here and now safely inside with the fine weather the perennially blue sky and when exhausted the sixteen had laid by their saxophones
and the synthetic music apparatus was producing the very latest in slow Malthusian blues, they might have been twin embryos gently rocking together on the waves of a bottled ocean of blood surrogate. good night dear friends good night dear friends the loud-speakers veiled their commands in a genial and musical politeness Good night, dear friends. Obediently, with all the others, Lenina and Henry left the building. The depressing stars had travelled quite some way across the heavens.
But though the separating screen of the sky signs had now to a great extent dissolved, the two young people still retained their happy ignorance of the night.
swallowed half an hour before closing time that second dose of soma had raised a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds bottled they crossed the street bottled they took the lift up to henry's room on the twenty-eighth floor and yet bottled as she was and in spite of that second gram of soma Lenina did not forget to take all the contraceptive precautions prescribed by the regulations.
Years of intensive hypnopaedia and from twelve to seventeen Malthusian drill three times a week had made the taking of these precautions almost as automatic and inevitable as blinking. Oh, and that reminds me, she said as she came back from the bathroom, Fanny Crown wants to know where you found that lovely green Morocco surrogate cartridge belt you gave me.