Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, from Project Gutenberg Canada (2023)

A novel by Aldous Huxley

Utopias seem much more achievable than previously thought. And we are currently facing a much more distressing question: how to avoid its final realization?... Utopias are achievable. Life walks towards utopias. And perhaps a new century is beginning, a century in which intellectuals and the educated class will dream of ways to avoid utopias and return to a less 'perfect' and freer non-utopian society.

NICOLAS BERDIAEFF.

CONTENTS

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Capítulo V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

[Books by Aldous Huxley]

BRAVE NEW WORLD

Chapter I

A squat gray building only thirty-four stories high. Above the main entrance the words, CFORBIDDENUEASSENTHAcheria ECCONDITIONERCIN BETWEEN, and, on a shield, the motto of the World State,CCOMMUNITY, UEDENTITY, SNATIONALITY.

The huge room on the ground floor faces north. Cold all summer beyond the panes, despite the tropical heat of the room itself, a dim, hard light shone through the windows, eagerly searching for some cloaked lay figure, some pale form of academic shiver, but found only the glass and nickel. and the shine off. laboratory porcelain. Winter responded to winter. The workers' coveralls were white, their gloved hands in pale corpse-colored rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow cylinders of the microscopes did he borrow any rich, living substance, smeared along the butter-polished tubes, passed after delicious pass in long gaps on the worktables.

'And this,' said the Director, opening the door, 'is the Fertilization Room.'

Bent over their instruments, three hundred Fertilizers poured out, as the Director of Incubators and Conditioning entered the room, into the barely breathable silence, the distracted buzzing or whistling and soliloquy, rapt concentration. A group of newly arrived students, very young, rosy and immature, nervously walked, rather abject, behind the Headmaster. Each of them carried a notebook, in which, whenever the great man spoke, he scribbled desperately. Direct from the horse's mouth. It was a rare privilege. The D.H.C. because Central London always took care to personally accompany their new students through the various departments.

“Just to give you a general idea,” he explained. Because, of course, they must have some kind of general idea if they want to do their job intelligently, though as little as possible if they want to be good and happy members of society. Because details, as everyone knows, contribute to virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers, but scrap dealers and stamp collectors make up the backbone of society.

“Tomorrow,” he added, smiling at them with slightly menacing geniality, “they're going to get down to business in earnest. You won't have time for generalities. While that...'

However, it was a privilege. Straight from the horse's mouth to the notebook. The boys wrote like crazy.

Tall and rather thin, but upright, the Director entered the room. He had a long chin and large, rather prominent teeth, only covered, when he wasn't speaking, by his full, flowery lips. Old young? Thirty? fifty? fifty five? It was hard to say. Anyway, the question did not arise; in this year of stability, AF 632, it did not occur to him to ask.

'I'll start at the beginning,' said the D.H.C., and the most enthusiastic students recorded their intention in their notebooks:begin at the beginning. "These," she waved her hand, "are the incubators." And she, opening a single door, she showed them racks upon racks of numbered test tubes. - Supply of eggs for the week. Sustained, she explained, in the warmth of the blood; while the male gametes,' and here she opened another door,' should be kept at thirty-five instead of thirty-seven. The total heat of the blood sterilizes. Thermogenic wrapped rams do not generate lambs.

Still leaning against the incubators, he gave them, as pencils ran illegibly across the pages, a brief description of the modern fertilization process; he spoke first, of course, of his surgical introduction: "the operation performed voluntarily for the good of the Society, not to mention the fact that it brings a bonus to six months' salary"; he continued with some description of the technique for preserving the excised ovary alive and actively developing; he went on to a consideration of optimum temperature, salinity, viscosity; he referred to the liquor in which the detached and ripe eggs were kept; and, leading his students to the work tables, he showed them how this liquor was extracted from the test tubes; how it was poured drop by drop onto specially heated microscope slides; how the eggs it contained were inspected for abnormalities, counted, and transferred to a porous receptacle; how (and now he took them to witness the operation) this vessel was submerged in a hot broth containing free-swimming sperm—at a minimum concentration of one hundred thousand per cubic centimeter, he insisted; and how, after ten minutes, the liquor-vessel was removed, and its contents re-examined; how, if any of the eggs remained unfertilized, they were dipped again, and if necessary, once more; how the fertilized eggs returned to the incubators; where the Alphas and Betas remained until their final bottling; while the Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons were brought back again, after only thirty-six hours, to undergo the Bokanovsky Process.

'The Bokanovsky process,' the director repeated, and the students underlined the words in their notebooks.

An ovule, an embryo, an adult: normality. But a bokanovskified egg will sprout, proliferate, divide. Eight to ninety-six shoots, and each shoot will develop into a perfectly formed embryo, and each embryo into a full-sized adult. Grow ninety-six human beings where only one grew before. Progress.

'Essentially', the D.H.C. he concluded, 'bokanovskification consists of a series of development stops. We verified normal growth and, paradoxically, the egg responds by sprouting.'

Responds by sprouting.The pencils were busy.

He pointed. In a very slowly moving band, a rack full of test tubes would go into a large metal box, another full rack would come out. The machinery purred softly. The tubes took eight minutes to go through, he told them. Eight minutes of hard X-rays is about all an egg can take. Some died; of the rest, the least susceptible divided in two; most produce four buds; about eight; all were returned to the incubators, where the shoots began to develop; then after two days they were suddenly cooled, chilled and checked. Two, four, eight, the cocoons sprouted in turn; and having sprouted they were dosed almost to death with alcohol; accordingly it sprang up again, and, having sprung up, sprung after sprung, after that, the subsequent interruption being generally fatal, he let it develop in peace. At that time, the original ovum was on its way to becoming anything from eight to ninety-six embryos, a prodigious improvement, you will agree, in nature. Identical twins, but not in pairs of two and three like the old viviparous days, when an egg sometimes accidentally cracked; in fact, by dozens, by dozens at a time.

"Spikes," repeated the Headmaster and spread his arms wide, as if handing out rewards. 'Punctuation'.

But one of the students was foolish enough to ask where the advantage was.

'My good boy!' The director turned sharply towards him. 'You can not see? You can not see? He raised his hand; his expression was solemn. 'The Bokanovsky Process is one of the main instruments of social stability!'

Main instruments of social stability.

Standard men and women; in uniform batches. A whole small factory used the products of a single bokanovskified egg.

Ninety-six identical twins working on ninety-six identical machines! The voice almost trembled with excitement. You really know where you are. For the first time in history. She quoted the planetary motto. 'Community, Identity, Stability.' Big words. "If we could bokanovskify ourselves indefinitely, the whole problem would be solved."

Solved for Standard Gammas, Invariant Deltas, Uniform Epsilons. Millions of identical twins. The principle of mass production was eventually applied to biology.

'But unfortunately,' the director shook his head, 'wecan notbokanovskifyindefinidamente.'

Ninety-six seemed to be the limit; seventy-two a good average. Starting from the same ovary and with gametes from the same male to make as many batches of identical twins as possible, that was the best (unfortunately second best) they could do. And even that was difficult.

“Because in nature it takes thirty years for two hundred eggs to reach maturity. But our business is to stabilize the population right now, here and now. Dodging twins for a quarter of a century... what good would that do?

Obviously, it is of no use. But the Podsnap technique greatly sped up the ripening process. They could guarantee at least one hundred and fifty mature eggs in two years. Fertilize and bokanovskifique, in other words, multiply by seventy-two, and you get an average of nearly eleven thousand brothers and sisters in one hundred and fifty batches of identical twins, all within two years of the same age.

And, in exceptional cases, we can make an ovary produce more than fifteen thousand adult individuals.

Greeting a blond and red-haired young man who happened to be passing by at that moment, 'Mr. Foster,' he called. The blushing young man approached. - Can you tell us the record for a single ovary, Mr. Foster?

- Sixteen thousand and twelve in this Center - answered Mr. Foster without hesitation. He spoke very quickly, had lively blue eyes, and took great pleasure in quoting numbers. 'Sixteen thousand twelve; in one hundred eighty-nine identical lots. But, of course, they did much better, he continued, in some of the tropical centers. Singapore has often produced more than sixteen thousand five hundred; and Mombasa hit the seventeen thousand mark. But then they have unfair advantages. You should see how a black's ovary responds to the pituitary! It's surprising, when you're used to working with European material. Even so," he added, with a laugh (but the light of combat was shining in his eyes and he lifted his chin defiantly), "still, we intend to defeat them, if we can. I'm working on a wonderful Delta-Minus ovary right now. Just eighteen months old. There are already more than twelve thousand seven hundred children, decanted or embryonic. And it's still going strong. We're still going to beat them.

That's the spirit I like! exclaimed the director, and applauded Mr. Fosteron. Come with us and give these guys the benefit of your expert knowledge.

Mr. Foster smiled modestly. 'With pleasure.' They were.

In the Jam Room, all was a harmonious bustle and orderly activity. Pieces of bristle peritoneum freshly cut to size were carried up in small elevators from the underground Organ Store. the elevator hatches opened; the Bottle-Liner had only to reach out, pick up the tab, insert, smooth, and before the bottle-liner had time to travel out of reach through infinity range, whoosh, click! another flap of peritoneum rose from the depths, ready to be stuffed into yet another bottle, the next in that slow, endless procession up the band.

Next to the Liners were the Matriculados. The procession went on; one by one, the eggs were transferred from their test tubes to the largest containers; skillfully the peritoneal lining was cut, the morula was placed, the saline solution was poured… and the vial was passed, and it was the turn of the labelers. Heredity, date of fertilization, membership in the Bokanovsky Group - the details were transferred from the test tube to the bottle. No longer anonymous, but named, identified, the procession advanced slowly; passing through an opening in the wall, slowly entering the Room of Social Predestination.

"Eighty-eight cubic meters of binder," Mr. Foster said with satisfaction as they entered.

'containingallrelevant information', added the Director.

"Updated every morning."

“And coordinated every afternoon.

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

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

'Distributed in such and such quantities.'

'The ideal settling rate at any time.'

'Unexpected waste quickly compensated.'

"Soon," repeated Mr. Foster. 'If you only knew how many overtime hours I had to work after the last earthquake in Japan!' He laughed heartily and shook his head.

The Predestinators send their figures to the Fertilizers.

Who gives them the embryos they ask for?

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

'After that, they are sent to the Embryo Store.'

'Where we ourselves now proceed.'

And, opening a door, Mr. Foster led the way up a stairway to the basement.

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

"Embryos are like photographic film," said Mr. Foster playfully opening the second door. "They only admit red light."

And indeed, the sultry darkness into which the students now followed him was visible and crimson, like the darkness of closed eyes on a summer afternoon. The bulging flanks of row upon row of bottles set back shone with innumerable rubies, and among the rubies moved the dull red specters of men and women with black eyes and all the symptoms of lupus. The hum and noise of the machines slightly stirred the air.

"Give them some numbers, Mr. Foster," said the director, who was tired of talking.

Mr. Foster was very happy to give them some numbers.

Two hundred and twenty meters long, two hundred wide, ten high. She pointed up. Like drinking chickens, the students looked up at the distant ceiling.

Three levels of shelves: ground floor, first gallery, second gallery.

The spidery steelwork of gallery after gallery disappeared in all directions into the darkness. Nearby, three red ghosts were busy unloading demijohns from an escalator.

The mechanical ladder of the Social Predestination Room.

Each bottle could be placed on one of fifteen shelves, each shelf, though not visible, was a conveyor belt traveling at a rate of twelve and one-third inches per hour. Two hundred and sixty-seven days at eight meters a day. Two thousand one hundred thirty-six meters in total. A tour of the cellar at ground level, one in the first gallery, half in the second, and the morning of two hundred and sixty-seven, daylight in the Decanting Room. Independent existence - so called.

“But at half time,” Mr. Foster concluded, “we were able to do a lot for them. Ah, a lot. His laugh was complicit and triumphant.

"That's the spirit I like," the director said once more. 'Let's take a walk. Tell them everything, Mr. Foster.

Mister. Foster dutifully told them.

He told them about the embryo growing in his bed of peritoneum. She made them taste the rich blood substitute that she fed on. I explained to him why he had to be stimulated with placenta and thyroxin. I told them aboutyellow bodyextract. He showed them the jets through which he injected himself automatically every forty feet from zero to 2040. He spoke of those gradually increasing pituitary doses administered during the last hundred and six meters of his run. He described the artificial maternal circulation installed in each bottle at 112 meters; he showed them the blood substitute reservoir, the centrifugal pump that kept the fluid moving over the placenta and passed it through the synthetic lung and waste filter. He referred to the annoying tendency of the embryo to anemia, to the massive doses of pig stomach extract and fetal foal liver that, consequently, had to be administered.

He showed them the simple mechanism by which, for the last two meters out of eight, all the embryos were shaken simultaneously to familiarize themselves with the movement. He hinted at the severity of the so-called 'slop trauma' and listed the precautions taken to minimize, through proper training of the bottled embryo, this dangerous shock. He told them about the sex tests carried out in the vicinity of the 200 subway. He explained the labeling system: a T for men, a circle for women, and for those destined to become freemartins a question mark, black on White background.

“Of course,” Mr. Foster said, “in the vast majority of cases, fertility is just a nuisance. One fertile ovary in twelve hundred: that would really be enough for our purposes. But we want to have a good choice. And, of course, you always have to leave a large margin of safety. Therefore, we allow up to thirty percent. of female embryos develop normally. The others are given a dose of male sex hormone every eighty feet for the remainder of the ride. Result: they come off as freemartins, structurally quite normal (except, he had to admit, thatit doesthey have only a slight tendency to grow beards), but sterile. Guaranteed sterility. Which ultimately brings us,' Mr. Foster continued, 'from the realm of mere slavish imitation of nature to the far more interesting world of human invention.'

He rubbed his hands. Because, of course, they were not content with incubating embryos: any cow could do it.

We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewer workers or future...' He was going to say 'future World Controllers', but correcting himself, he said 'future Incubator Directors'.

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

They were passing metro 320 in rack eleven. A young Beta-Minus mechanic was busy with a screwdriver and wrench on the blood replacement pump in a passing bottle. The hum of the electric motor deepened by fractions of a tone as he turned the nuts. Down, down... One final lap, one look at the rev counter and you're done. He took two steps down the line and began the same process on the next pump.

"By reducing the number of revolutions per minute," Mr. Fomentar explained. 'Substitute spins slower; therefore, it passes through the lung at longer intervals; therefore, it gives less oxygen to the embryo. Nothing like a lack of oxygen to keep an embryo below normal. He again he rubbed his hands.

'But why would you want to keep the embryo below normal?' asked a naive student.

'Extreme!' said the Director, breaking a long silence. Didn't it occur to you that an Epsilon embryo must have an Epsilon environment as well as an Epsilon inheritance?

It obviously hadn't occurred to him. He was covered in confusion.

"The lower the caste," Mr. Foster said, "the shorter the oxygen." The first organ affected was the brain. After that, the skeleton. At seven cents. of normal oxygen you have dwarfs. Less than seventy, eyeless monsters.

"That they are useless," Mr. Fomentar concluded.

Whereas (her voice became confidential and anxious), if they could discover a technique to shorten the maturation period, what a triumph, what a blessing for the Society!

"Consider the horse."

They considered it.

Ripe at six; the elephant at ten. While at thirteen a man is not yet sexually mature; and he's only an adult at twenty. Hence, of course, that fruit of retarded development, human intelligence.

"But in epsilons," said Mr. Foster, quite rightly, "we don't need human intelligence."

I didn't need it and I didn't get it. But although Epsilon's mind was mature, Epsilon's body was unable to function until the age of eighteen. Long years of superfluous and wasted immaturity. If physical development could be sped up until it was as fast as, say, a cow, what a great saving for the Commonwealth!

'Giant!' the students murmured. Mr. Foster's enthusiasm was contagious.

It got pretty technical; he talked about the abnormal endocrine coordination that made men grow so slowly; he postulated a germline mutation to explain it. Could the effects of this germline mutation be undone? Could the individual Epsilon embryo be brought back, by the proper technique, to normal in dogs and cows? That was the problem. And everything was resolved.

Pilkington in Mombasa will produce sexually mature individuals at four years and adults at six and a half years. A scientific triumph. But socially useless. Six year old men and women were too stupid to even do Epsilon work. And the process was all or nothing; Either you couldn't modify anything, or you modified it completely. They were still trying to find the sweet spot between twenty-year-olds and six-year-olds. So far without success. Mr. Foster sighed and shook his head.

Their wandering through the crimson twilight took them to the Metro 170 neighborhood of Rack 9. From that point on, Rack 9 was closed and the bottles made the rest of their journey in a kind of tunnel, interrupted here and there by openings of two or three meters wide.

"Heat conditioning," said Mr. Foster.

Hot tunnels alternated with cold tunnels. Coldness was related to discomfort in the form of hard X-rays. When they were decanted, the embryos were terrified of cold. They were predestined to emigrate to the tropics, to be miners, silk acetate spinners, and metallurgists. Later, their minds would be made to pass the judgment of their bodies. “We have conditioned them to thrive in the heat,” concluded Mr. Fomentar. Our colleagues up there will teach them to love you.

"And that," the director intervened sententiously, "that is the secret of happiness and virtue: liking what you like."havequarrel All conditioning points to this: to make people like their inescapable social destiny.

In a space between two tunnels, a nurse was gently probing the gelatinous contents of a vial passed with a long, thin syringe. The students and her guides watched her for a few moments in silence.

"Well, Lenina," said Mr. Foster, when he finally withdrew the syringe and straightened up.

The girl turned with a start. I could see that despite her lupus and her black eyes, she was extraordinarily beautiful.

"Henry!" Her smile flashed red at him: a row of coral teeth.

"Charming, charming," murmured the Headmaster, patting him two or three times, receiving a dignified smile in return.

'What are you giving them?' Mr. Foster asked, making his tone very professional.

"Ah, the typical typhoid fever and sleeping sickness."

'Tropical workers begin to be inoculated at 150 meters', explained Mr. Fomentar to the students. “The embryos still have gills. We immunize the fish against the diseases of the future man. Then, turning to Lenina, "Ten to five on the roof this afternoon," he said, "as usual."

"Charming," the Headmaster said once more, and with a final pat, he left after the others.

In Rack 10 rows of next generation chemical workers were being trained in tolerance to lead, caustic soda, tar, chlorine. The first of a batch of two hundred and fifty embryonic rocket plane engineers was passing the eleven-hundredth mark on Shelf 3. A special mechanism kept its containers in constant rotation. "To improve your sense of balance," explained Mr. Foster. 'Repairing the exterior of a rocket in the air is delicate work. We've reduced circulation when they're up, so they're a little hungry, and we've doubled the flow of replacements when they're prone. They learn to associate the upside down state with well-being; in fact, they are only truly happy when they are upside down.'

'And now,' Mr. Foster continued: 'I would like to show you some very interesting conditioning for Alpha Plus Intellectuals. We have a large batch of them on Shelf 5. First Gallery Level — he told two children who started downstairs.

"They are around meter 900," he explained. "You can't really do any useful intellectual conditioning until the fetuses have lost their tails. Follow me."

But the director looked at his watch. "Ten to three," he said. - No time for intellectual embryos, I'm afraid. We must go to the nursery before the children finish sleeping in the afternoon.

Mr. Foster was disappointed. "At least take a look at the Decanting Room," he implored.

- Alright then. The director smiled indulgently. "Just a look."

Chapter II

Mr. Foster stayed in the Decanting Room. The D.H.C. and his students entered the nearest elevator and were taken to the fifth floor.

UESONnorteUS SERIES. norteEO-PAGEAVLOVIANOCCONDITIONERRUNCLES, announced the bulletin board.

The director opened a door. They were in a large empty room, very bright and sunny; for the whole south wall was a single window. Half a dozen nurses, in slacks and jackets, in regulation white viscose linen uniforms, their hair aseptically hidden under white caps, were busily arranging vases of roses in a long row on the floor. Large bowls filled with flowers. Thousands of petals, ripe and silky, like the cheeks of innumerable little angels, but of cherubs, in that brilliant light, not exclusively pink and aria, but also luminously Chinese, also Mexican, also apoplectic with much sounding of celestial trumpets, also pale as the death, pale with the posthumous whiteness of marble.

The nurses tensed as the D.H.C. He came in.

"Put the books away," he said dryly.

Silently, the nurses obeyed his order. Among the bowls of roses, the books were appropriately arranged: a row of tantalizingly open troughs, each holding a colorful image of beast, fish, or bird.

“Now bring the children.

They hurried out of the room and returned in a minute or two, each pushing a sort of tall loaded elevator, on its four wire mesh shelves, with eight-month-old babies, all exactly alike (a Bokanovsky Group, it was evident). ).) and all (since his caste was Delta) dressed in khaki.

It's charming.

The babies were discharged.

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

Turning around, the babies immediately fell silent, then began to crawl towards those clusters of bright colors, those shapes so happy and bright on the white pages. As they got closer, the sun emerged from a momentary eclipse behind a cloud. The roses burned as if with a sudden passion within; a new and profound meaning seemed to permeate the glossy pages of the books. From the rows of crawling babies came little squeals of excitement, gurgles and gurgles of pleasure.

The director rubbed his hands. 'Big!' he says he. “It could almost have been done on purpose.

The fastest trackers were already on their target. Little hands reach out uncertainly, touch, grab, undo the transfigured roses, crumple the illuminated pages of the books. The Director waited until everyone was happily occupied. So, 'Watch carefully,' he said. And, raising his hand, he gave the signal.

The head nurse, who was standing by a switchboard at the other end of the room, pressed a small lever.

There was a violent explosion. Increasingly shrill, a siren screamed. The alarm bells rang maddeningly.

The children were startled, they screamed; their faces were distorted with terror.

'And now,' exclaimed the director (because the noise was deafening), 'now we proceed to rub the lesson with a slight electric shock.'

He waved again, and the head nurse pressed a second lever. The babies' cries suddenly changed in tone. There was something desperate, almost insane, in the jerky, high-pitched howls they now emitted. Their little bodies contracted and stiffened; its limbs twitched as if moved by invisible strings.

"We can electrify all that piece of land," the director yelled without explanation. "But stop," he waved to the nurse.

The explosions stopped, the bells stopped ringing, the shriek of the siren died tone to tone into the silence. The rigidly contracted bodies relaxed, and what had become sobs and howls of childish maniacs became again a normal howl of common terror.

'Offer them the flowers and the books again.'

The nurses obeyed; but at the approach of the roses, at the mere sight of those gaily colored pictures of kittens and roosters and black sheep, the children shrank with horror; the volume of their howls suddenly increased.

"Look," said the director triumphantly, "look."

Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks, already in the child's mind these couples were bound together in a compromising way; and after two hundred repetitions of the same or a similar lesson, they would be indissolubly married. What man has united, nature is unable to separate.

“They will grow up with what psychologists call an 'instinctive' hatred of books and flowers. Unchangeably conditioned reflexes. They will be safe from books and botany all their lives. The director turned to his nurses. Take them back.

Still screaming, the persimmon babies were loaded into their elevators and carried outside, leaving behind the smell of sour milk and a welcome silence.

One of the students raised his hand; and though he could see very well why lower castes could not be allowed to waste the Commonwealth's time with books, and that there was always the risk that they might read something that might undesirably weaken one of their reflexes, but… .well, I couldn't understand about the flowers. Why go to the trouble of making it psychologically impossible for Deltas to like flowers?

Patiently the D.H.C. explained. If children screamed at the sight of a rose, it was for reasons of high economic policy. Not too long ago (a century or so), Gammas, Deltas, even Epsilons, were conditioned to like flowers, flowers in particular, and nature in general. The idea was to make them want to go out into the field at every available opportunity and thus force them to consume transportation.

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

'Pretty', the D.H.C. he answered. "But nothing more."

Primroses and landscapes, he noted, have one serious flaw: they are free. Love of nature does not keep factories busy. It was decided to abolish the love of nature, at least among the lower classes; abolish the love of nature, butnothe tendency to consume transportation. Because it is clear that it was essential that they continue going to the field, even if they hated it. The problem was to find a more economical reason to consume transport than the mere love of primroses and landscapes. It was duly found.

"We have conditioned the masses to hate the country," the director concluded. “But at the same time we conditioned them to love all the sports in the country. At the same time, we make sure that all field sports involve the use of elaborate apparatus. For them to consume manufactured items and transportation. Hence those electric shocks.

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

There was silence; then, clearing his throat, 'Once upon a time,' the director began, 'while Our Ford was still on earth, there was a little boy named Reuben Rabinovitch. Reuben was born to Polish-speaking parents. The director stopped. I assume you know what Polish is.

"A dead language".

"Like French and German," another student added, making an off-the-record flaunt of his erudition.

'And father?" asked the D.H.C.

There was an awkward silence. Several of the boys blushed. They had not yet learned to make the significant, but often very subtle, distinction between obscenity and pure science. One finally had the courage to raise his hand.

'Humans used to be...' he faltered; blood rose to her cheeks. "Well, they used to be viviparous."

"Right." The director nodded approvingly.

'And when the babies were decanted...'

"Born," was the correction.

"Well, so they were the parents… I mean, not the babies, of course; the others." The poor boy was overwhelmed with confusion.

“In summary”, summed up the director, “the parents were the father and the mother”. The obscenity that was actually science crashed into the silence of the boys who were looking evasively. 'Mom', he repeated aloud, rubbing himself in science; and, leaning back in his chair, 'These,' said he gravely, 'are unpleasant facts; I know that. But then most of the historical factsit isunpleasant.'

She came back with little Reuben, with little Reuben, in whose room one night his mother and father (crash, crack!) had inadvertently left the radio on.

('Because you must remember that in those days of great viviparous breeding, children were always raised by their parents and not in State Conditioning Centers.')

While the boy was sleeping, a radio program from London suddenly began to play; and the next morning, to the astonishment of his accident and mishap (the boldest of the boys dared to smile at each other), little Ruben awoke repeating word for word a long lecture by that curious old writer ('one of the few whose works were not allowed to come down to us'), George Bernard Shaw, who was speaking, according to a well-authenticated tradition, of his own genius. To Little Reuben's wink and giggle, this lecture was, of course, perfectly incomprehensible, and, imagining that his son had suddenly gone mad, they called for a doctor. Fortunately, he understood English, recognized the speech as the one Shaw had broadcast the night before, realized the significance of what had happened, and sent a letter to the medical press about it.

The principle of teaching sleep, or hypnopedia, has been discovered. The D.H.C. took an awesome break.

The principle had been discovered; but it would be many, many years before this principle was usefully applied.

"The Little Reuben case occurred just 23 years after the first OurFord Model T was brought to market." (Here the Headmaster made a T in his stomach and all the students followed reverently.) 'And yet...'

Furious, the students scribbled. 'Hypnopædia, first officially used in A.F. 214. Why not before? Two reasons.(and)...'

'These early experimenters', the D.H.C. he was saying, 'they were on the wrong track. They thought that hypnopedia could be an instrument of intellectual education...'

(A boy sleeping on his right side, right arm outstretched, right hand hanging limply over the edge of the bed. Through a round grate in the side of a box, a voice speaks softly.

'The Nile is the longest river in Africa and the second longest of all the rivers in the world. Though not as long as the Mississippi-Missouri, the Nile leads all rivers in the length of its basin, which spans 35 degrees of latitude...'

At breakfast the next morning, 'Tommy', someone says, 'Do you know what the longest river in Africa is?' A movement of the head. 'But you don't remember something that begins: The Nile is the...'

'The-Nile-is-the-longest-river-in-Africa-and-the-second-longest-of-all-the-rivers-on-the-globe...' The words rush out. 'Despite being below...'

'Well, what is the longest river in Africa?'

The eyes are blank. 'I dont know.'

— But Nile, Tommy.

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

"So which is the longest river, Tommy?"

Tommy starts crying. 'I don't know,' he howls.)

That howl, the warden made clear, put off early investigators. The experiments were abandoned. No further attempts were made to teach children the length of the Nile while they slept. With good reason. You cannot learn a science unless you know what it is.

"Whereas if they had just startedmoraleducation,' said the Headmaster, leading the way to the door. The students followed him, scribbling desperately as they walked up the elevator. "Moral education, which should never, under any circumstances, be rational."

"Shut up, shut up," a loudspeaker whispered as they went out onto the fourteenth floor, and "Shut up, shut up," the mouths of trumpets repeated tirelessly at intervals down each corridor. The students and even the principal himself automatically stood on their toes. They were Alphas, of course; but even the Alphas were well conditioned. "Silence silence". The entire air of the fourteenth floor hissed with the categorical imperative.

Fifty meters on tiptoe brought them to a door that the director cautiously opened. They crossed the threshold into the gloom of a locked bedroom. Eighty cots lined up against the wall. There was a light, regular breathing and a continuous murmur, as if very faint voices were whispering in the distance.

A nurse got up as they entered and came to attention in front of the director.

"What is this afternoon's lesson?" she asked her.

"We had elementary sex for the first forty minutes," she replied. 'But now it has changed to Elemental Class Awareness.'

The director walked slowly down the long row of cots. Rosy and relaxed from sleep, eighty boys and girls breathed gently. There was a whisper under each pillow. The D.H.C. he stopped and, leaning over one of the small beds, listened intently.

"Elementary class consciousness, you say?" Let's repeat it a little louder for the trumpet.

At the back of the room, a loudspeaker protruded from the wall. The director walked over to him and pressed a button.

'...everyone wears green,' said a soft but very clear voice, beginning mid-sentence, 'and Delta Children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with the Delta kids. And the epsilons are even worse. They are too stupid to be able to read or write. Also, they wear black, which is a horrible color. I'msohappy to be a Beta.'

There was a pause; then the voice started again.

Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than us, because they are terribly smart. I'm very happy to be a Beta because I don't work as much. And so we are much better than Gammas and Deltas. Ranks are stupid. Everyone wears green and the Delta Kids wear khaki. oh no menoI want to play with the Delta children. And the epsilons are even worse. They are too stupid to be able...'

The director pushed the button. The voice fell silent. Only his host thing continued to murmur under the eighty pillows.

“You will have to repeat this forty or fifty times before you wake up; then again on Thursday and again on Saturday. One hundred and twenty times three times a week for thirty months. After that, they move on to a more advanced lesson.'

Roses and electric shocks, the persimmon of Deltas and a smell of asafoetida - inextricably married before the child can speak. But wordless conditioning is crude and crude; it cannot bring home the finer distinctions, it cannot inculcate the more complex courses of behavior. For this there must be words, but words without reason. In short, hypnopedia.

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

The students wrote it down in their notebooks. Direct from the horse's mouth.

Once again, the director touched the switch.

"...so terribly clever," said the soft, insinuating, indefatigable voice. 'I'm very happy to be a Beta, because...'

Not so much as drops of water, though water, it is true, can poke holes in the hardest granite; instead, drops of liquid wax, drops that adhere, encrust, join what they fall, until finally the rock is all a scarlet stain.

Until at last the child's mindit isthese suggestions, and the sum of the suggestionsit isthe child's mind. And not just the child's mind. The adult mind too, throughout her life. The mind that judges, desires and decides - composed of these suggestions. But all these suggestions areoursuggestions!' The director almost shouted in triumph. "State Suggestions". He called the nearest table. 'Therefore it follows...'

A noise made him turn.

"Ow Ford!" he said in another tone: 'I went to wake the children.'

Chapter III

Outside, in the garden, it was time to play. Naked in the hot June sun, six or seven hundred boys and girls ran shrilly across the lawn, or played ball, or crouched silently in groups of two or three among the flowering bushes. The roses were in bloom, two nightingales soliloquized in the boskage, a cuckoo sang among the lime trees. The air was drowsy with the buzz of bees and helicopters.

The principal and his students sat for a while watching a game of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy. Twenty children were grouped in a circle around a chrome steel tower. A ball thrown upward to land on the platform at the top of the tower rolled in, landed on a rapidly spinning disk, was launched through one or another of the numerous openings drilled in the cylindrical box, and had to be trapped.

'It's strange,' reflected the headmaster, as they walked away, 'It's strange to think that even in the days of Our Ford most games were played with no more frills than a ball or two and some sticks and perhaps a little net. Imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games that do nothing to increase consumption. It's crazy. These days, the Controllers don't approve any new game unless it can be shown to require at least as much equipment as the most complicated existing game. It was interrupted.

"It's a lovely little group," he said, pointing.

In a small grassy bay between tall thickets of Mediterranean heather, two children, a boy of about seven years old and a girl who might have been a year older, played very serious and with the full attention of scientists engaged in research work. research. discovery. . a rudimentary sexual game.

'Lovely, lovely!' or D.H.C. repeated sentimentally.

'Lovely,' the boys agreed politely. But his smile was quite condescending. They had put aside similar childish amusements recently in order to view them now without an ounce of contempt. Charming? but they were just a couple of children playing; that was it. Just kids.

"I always do," the director continued in the same slightly sugary tone, when he was interrupted by a loud boo.

A nurse emerged from a neighboring bush, leading by the hand a little boy, who howled as he walked. An eager-looking girl trotted after him.

'What is the problem?' asked the manager.

The nurse shrugged. "It's not a big deal," she replied. 'It's just that this little boy seems quite reluctant to engage in ordinary erotic games. I had noticed this once or twice before. And now again today. She started screaming just now...

'Honestly,' the anxious-looking girl chimed in, 'I didn't mean to hurt him or anything. Honestly.'

"Of course not, dear," the nurse said reassuringly. 'Then,' she continued, turning to the Director, 'I will take you to see the Assistant Superintendent of Psychology. Just to see if there's anything abnormal.

"Very good," said the director. "Take him inside. Stay here, little one," he added, as the nurse walked away from her with the burden of her still howling. "What's your name?"

"Polly Trotsky".

"And a very good name too," said the director. "Go now and see if you can find other children to play with."

The boy fled into the bushes and was lost to sight.

'Exquisite little creature!' said the director, looking at her. Then, addressing his students, 'what I am going to say now,' he said, 'may sound incredible. But then, when you're not used to history, most of the facts about the pastit doesIt looks incredible.'

He blurted out the unbelievable truth. For a long time before the Our Ford era, and even for a few generations after, foreplay between children was considered abnormal (laughs); and not only abnormal, but immoral (no!) strictly repressed.

A look of shock and disbelief appeared on the faces of his listeners. Are poor children not allowed to have fun? They couldn't believe it.

'Even teenagers,' the D.H.C. he was saying, 'even teenagers like you...'

'It's not possible!'

"Except a bit of autoeroticism and disguised homosexuality, absolutely nothing."

'Not a thing?'

"In most cases, until they are over twenty years old."

"Twenty years?" the students repeated in a chorus of loud disbelief.

"Twenty," the director repeated. “I told you that you would think he was amazing.

'But what happened?' they asked. "What was the results?"

"The results were terrible." A deep, resonant voice interrupted the dialogue surprisingly.

They looked around. At the edge of the little group stood a stranger: a man of medium height, black hair, a hooked nose, full red lips, very penetrating dark eyes. "Terrible," he repeated himself.

The D.H.C. he had just sat down on one of the steel and rubber benches conveniently scattered around the gardens; but when he saw the stranger, he sprang to his feet and rushed forward, hands outstretched, grinning with all his teeth, effusively.

'Controller! What an unexpected delight! Guys, what are you thinking? This is the Controller; This is his ship, Mustapha Mond.

In the four thousand rooms of the Center, the four thousand electric clocks struck four hours simultaneously. Disembodied voices called from the mouths of the trumpets.

Prime time out of service. Take the second day shift. Main day shift...

In the elevator, on the way to the changing rooms, Henry Foster and the assistant director of Predestination turned their backs on Bernard Marx of the Psychology Department: they walked away from that unpleasant reputation.

The faint hum and rattle of machinery still stirred the crimson air of the Embryo Store. Changes can come and go, one lupus-colored face gives way to another; majestically and forever advanced the muleteers with their cargo of future men and women.

Lenina Crowne walked briskly to the door.

Your Ford Mustapha Mond! The eyes of the students who greeted him almost bulged out of their sockets. Mustafa Mond! The resident driver for Western Europe! One of the Ten World Controllers. One of the Ten... and he sat on the bench with the D.H.C., he was going to stay, stay, yes, and talk to them himself... through the mouth of a horse. Straight from Ford's own mouth.

Two shrimp-colored children emerged from a neighboring bush, stared at them for a moment with wide, startled eyes, then returned to their fun among the leaves.

'You all remember,' said the driver, his voice strong and deep, 'you all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired OurFord saying: History is rubbish. History," he repeated slowly, "is bullshit.

He waved his hand; and it was as if, with an invisible feather whisk, she had stirred up some dust, and the dust was Harappan, it was Ur of the Chaldeans; some cobwebs, and it was Thebes and Babylon and Knossos and Mycenae. Knock, knock, and where was Ulysses, where was Job, where were Jupiter, Gotama and Jesus? Whisk, and those patches of ancient land called Athens and Rome, Jerusalem and the Middle Kingdom, are gone. Beat: the place where Italy had been was empty. Beat, the cathedrals; Knock, knock, King Lear and the thoughts of Pascal. Knock, Passion: Knock, Requiem; rhythm, symphony; beat...

"Are you going to the Feelies tonight, Henry?" asked the Assistant Predestinator. “I heard the new one at the Alhambra is top notch. There is a love scene on a bearskin rug; They say it's wonderful. All the hairs on the bear reproduced. The most amazing tactile effects.'

"That's why you don't learn history," the controller would say. 'But now the time has come...'

The D.H.C. she looked at him nervously. There were those strange rumors of old forbidden books hidden in a safe in the Controller's office. Bibles, poetry... Ford knew what.

Mustapha Mond met her anxious gaze, and the corners of her red lips twitched wryly.

"Okay, Headmaster," he said in a slightly mocking tone, "I won't corrupt them."

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

Those who feel unappreciated do well to appear unappreciated. The smile on Bernard Marx's face was contemptuous. Every hair on the bear, in fact!

"I'll make sure to go," Henry Foster said.

Mustapha Mond leaned forward and pointed a finger at them. "Just try to find out," he said, and his voice sent a strange chill through his midriff. "Try to imagine what it was like to have an avian mother."

That obscene word again. But none of them dreamed, this time, of smiling.

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

They tried; but obviously without the slightest success.

"And you know what a 'house' was?"

They shook their heads.

From her dark red basement, Lenina Crowne climbed seventeen floors, turned right to exit the elevator, walked down a long hallway, and opening the door marked GIRLS'DRESENTANDO-RABOUT, submerged in a deafening chaos of arms and breasts and underwear. Jets of hot water splashed or bubbled from a hundred bathtubs. Grunting and hissing, eighty vacuum-massaging vibrators simultaneously kneaded and sucked the firm, sun-baked flesh of eighty superb female specimens. Each one was speaking at the top of her voice. A synthetic music machine played a super horn solo.

"Hello, Fanny," Lenina said to the young woman who had the hangers and cupboard next to hers.

Fanny worked in the Bottling Room and her last name was also Crowne. But given that the two billion inhabitants of the planet only had ten thousand names between them, the coincidence was not particularly surprising.

Lenina pulled the zippers - down on the jacket, down with a two-handed gesture to the two holding the pants, down again to unbutton the underwear. Still in socks and shoes, she headed for the restrooms.

House, house: a few small rooms, stiflingly crowded by a man, by a periodically abundant woman, by a multitude of boys and girls of all ages. No air, no space; a substerilized prison; darkness, disease and odors.

(The evocation of the Controller was so vivid that one of the boys, more sensitive than the others, blanched at the mere description and nearly vomited.)

Lenina got out of the bathtub, dried herself with a towel, took a long flexible tube attached to the wall, put the nozzle to her chest, as if she were going to kill herself, and pulled the trigger. A blast of hot air dusted her with the finest talcum powder. Eight different scents and colognes were placed in small faucets above the sink. She took the third left, sprayed herself with chypre, and, shoes and socks in hand, went out to see if one of the vibrovacuum machines was clear of her.

And home was as sordid mentally as it was physically. Psychically, it was a rabbit hole, a dunghill, hot with the frictions of compacted life, oozing with emotion. What suffocating intimacies, what dangerous, unhealthy, obscene relationships between the members of the family group!arechildren)... hovered over them like a cat over its kittens; but a cat that could talk, a cat that could say, 'My baby, my baby,' over and over again. 'My baby, and oh, oh, on my chest, the little hands, the hunger and that indescribable agonizing pleasure! Until finally my baby sleeps, my baby sleeps with a bubble of white milk at the corner of his mouth. My baby sleeps...'

"Yes," Mustapha Mond said, nodding, "you can tremble."

"Who are you going out with tonight?" asked Lenina, coming back from the vibrovac like a pearl lit from within, bright pink.

'Nobody.'

Lenina raised her eyebrows in amazement.

"I've been feeling a bit ill lately," explained Fanny. 'The doctor. Wells advised me to have a Surrogate Pregnancy.'

But honey, you're only nineteen. The first surrogate pregnancy is not mandatory before the age of twenty-one.

'I know honey. But some people are better off starting earlier. Dr. Wells told me that brunettes with wide pelvises, like me, should have their first surrogate pregnancy at seventeen. So I was actually two years late, not two years early. He opened his closet door and pointed to the row of boxes and labeled vials on the top shelf.

'SYRUP DECORPUSUEUTEUM.'Lenina read the names aloud. 'THEVARIN, GUARANTEED FRESH: MUST NOT BE USED AFTERANDAUGUST 1, AF 632.METROAMARYGRAMSTERRAmiEXTRACT: TO BE TAKENTTHREETIMESDAILY, BBEFOREMETROEALS, WITH AUELITTLE BITCAFTER.PAGLACENTIN: 5CC TO BEUEJETUENTRAVENAL ALLTTHIRDDIT IS...wow! Lenina shuddered. "How I hate IVs, don't you?"

'Yes. But when they do good... Fanny was a particularly sensible girl.

Our Ford - or Our Freud, as, for some inscrutable reason, he chose to call himself whenever he discussed psychological issues - Our Freud was the first to reveal the terrible dangers of family life. The world was full of parents; therefore he was full of misery; full of mothers, therefore, of all kinds of perversion, from sadism to chastity; full of brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts - full of madness and suicide.

'And yet, among the savages of Samoa, on certain islands off the coast of New Guinea...'

The tropical sun fell like warm honey on the naked bodies of the children who stumbled promiscuously among the hibiscus flowers. Home was in any one of twenty thatched houses. In the Trobriand Islands, conception was the work of ancient ghosts; no one had ever heard of a father.

'Extremes,' said the Controller, 'meet. For the good reason that they were forced to meet.

'dr. Wells says that a three month Surrogate Pregnancy will make all the difference in my health for the next three to four years.'

"Well, I hope you're right," Lenina said. 'But, Fanny, did you really mean that for the next three months you should not...'

Oh no, dear. Just for a week or two, that's all. I'm going to spend the night at the Club playing Bridge Musical. I guess you're leaving?

Lenin agreed.

'With whom?'

"Henry Foster".

'Again?' Fanny's kind, almost moonlike face took on an incongruous expression of pained and disapproving astonishment. Do you want to tell me that you areyetdating henry foster?

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

"Though you probably don't know what they are," Mustapha Mond said.

They shook their heads.

Family, monogamy, romance. Exclusivity everywhere, concentration of interests everywhere, narrow channeling of impulses and energies.

"But they all belong to everyone else," he concluded, quoting the hypnopedic proverb.

The students nodded, emphatically agreeing with a statement that more than sixty-two thousand repetitions in the dark had made it accepted, not only as true, but as axiomatic, self-evident, absolutely indisputable.

"But after all," Lenina protested, "I'm only four months pregnant with Henry."

'Solofour months! I like that. And besides," continued Fanny, pointing an accusing finger, "there's been no one but Henry all this time. Have the?

Lenina blushed scarlet; but her eyes, her tone of voice remained defiant. "No, there was no one else," she replied almost truculently. And I don't see why there should be.

"Oh, she doesn't quite understand why there should be," repeated Fanny, as if addressing an unseen listener behind Lenina's left shoulder. Then, with a sudden change of tone, 'But seriously,' she said, 'I really think you should be careful. It is terribly wrong to continue like this with a man. At forty or thirty-five, it wouldn't be so bad. But inareage, Lenin! No, it doesn't really work. And do you know how strongly D.H.C. it opposes everything intense or prolonged. Four months of Henry Foster, not having another man... well, he'd be furious if he knew...

'Think of water under pressure in a pipe.' They thought about it. "I was pierced once," the controller said. What jet!

He went through it twenty times. There were twenty small, insignificant fountains.

'My baby. My baby...!'

'Breast!' Madness is contagious.

'My love, my only, precious, precious...'

Mother, monogamy, romance. High flows the fountain; fierce and foaming the wild jet. Desire has only one way out. My love, my baby. No wonder those poor pre-moderns were crazy, wicked, and miserable. Their world did not allow them to take things easy, did not allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. With mothers and mistresses, with the prohibitions that they were not conditioned to obey, with the temptations and lonely sorrows, with all the diseases and the endless pain of isolation, with the uncertainties and poverty, they were forced to feel strongly . And feeling strong (and strong, moreover, in solitude, in desperate individual isolation), how could they be stable?

'Of course there is no need to give it up. Having someone once in a while, that's all. He has other girls, right?

Lenina admitted.

'Of course. Trust Henry Foster as the perfect gentleman, always right. And then there's the Director to think about. You know what a stubborn person is...'

Nodding, "He patted my butt this afternoon," Lenina said.

'Here, you see!' Fanny was triumphant. 'This shows whatto thesupports the strictest conventionality.

"Stability," the controller said, "stability." There is no civilization without social stability. There is no social stability without individual stability.' His voice was a trumpet. Listening, they felt bigger, warmer.

The machine turns and turns and must keep turning, forever. It's death if you stay still. One billion have walked the earth's crust. The wheels began to turn. In one hundred and fifty years, there were two billion. Stop all wheels. In a hundred and fifty weeks there are once again only a billion; a thousand, a thousand, a thousand men and women starved to death.

The wheels must turn constantly, but they cannot turn without attention. There must be men who care for them, men as firm as the wheels on their axles, healthy men, obedient men, constant in joy.

Crying: My baby, my mother, my one, only love; moaning: My sin, my terrible God; screaming in pain, muttering with fever, lamenting old age and poverty - how can they care for the wheels? And if they can't take care of the wheels... The corpses of thousands and thousands of men and women would be difficult to bury or burn.

“And after all,” Fanny's tone was persuasive, “it's not that there's anything painful or unpleasant about having one or two men besides Henry. And seeing this, youshouldbe a little more promiscuous...'

'Stability,' the Controller insisted, 'stability. The first and last need. Stability. Hence all this.

With a wave of her hand, she pointed out the gardens, the huge Gymnasium building, the naked children hiding in the undergrowth or running across the grass.

Lenina shook her head. 'Somehow,' she mused, 'lately I haven't been much interested in promiscuity. There are times not. Haven't you discovered that too, Fanny?

Fanny nodded sympathetically and understandingly. “But you have to make the effort,” she said sententiously, “you have to play the game. After all, everyone belongs to everyone else.

'Yes, each one belongs to all the others.' Lenina repeated it slowly and, sighing, she was silent for a moment; then, taking Fanny's hand, she squeezed it a little. "You're right, Fanny. As always. I will do my best.

The trapped impulse overflows, and the torrent is felt, the torrent is passion, the torrent is even madness: it depends on the strength of the current, the height and the strength of the barrier. The uncontrolled current flows gently through its designated channels for calm well-being. (The embryo is hungry; day after day, the surrogate blood pump spins its eight hundred revolutions per minute endlessly. The decanted baby howls; immediately a nurse appears with a vial of external secretion. and its consummation. Bridging that gap, breaking everything those old unnecessary barriers.)

Lucky guys! said the controller. "No effort has been spared to make life emotionally easier for them, to preserve them, as far as possible, from having any kind of emotion."

'Ford's in his flipver,' muttered the D.H.C. 'All is right with the world.'

"Lenina Crowne?" Henry Foster said, repeating the assistant doomsayer's question as he zipped up his pants. 'Oh, she's a splendid girl. Wonderfully pneumatic. I'm surprised you don't have it.

'I can't imagine how I didn't,' said the Assistant Predestinator. 'I will definitely go. At the first opportunity.

From his seat across the aisle from the changing rooms, Bernard Marx listened to what they were saying and blanched.

"And to tell you the truth," Lenina said, "I'm starting to get a little bored with just Henry every day." She put on her left sock. "Do you know Bernard Marx?" she asked herself in a tone whose excessive indifference was obviously forced.

Fanny seemed startled. 'Don't you mean...?'

'Why not? Bernard is an Alpha-Plus. Besides, he asked me to go with him to one of the Wild Reservations. I always wanted to see a Savage Reservation.

"But your reputation?"

'What do I care about your reputation?'

They say he doesn't like steeplechase golf.

"They say, they say," Lenina scoffed.

'And then he spends most of his time alone...solo.' There was horror in Fanny's voice.

'Well, you won't be alone when you're with me. And anyway, why are people so beastly to him? I think he is very sweet. She smiled to herself; How absurdly shy she was! Almost scared, like she was a world controller and he was a guardian of the Gamma-Minus machine.

"Consider your own lives," Mustapha Mond said. Have any of you ever encountered an insurmountable obstacle?

The question was answered with negative silence.

'Have any of you been forced to experience a long interval of time between the realization of a wish and its fulfillment?'

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

"Speak," said the D.H.C. “Don't keep his Ford waiting.

I once had to wait almost four weeks before the girl I wanted would let me have her.

'And did you feel a strong emotion as a result?'

'¡Horrible!'

'Awful; precisely,' said the Comptroller. "Our ancestors were so stupid and myopic that when the first reformers came along and offered to rid them of those horrible emotions, they had nothing to do with them."

Talk about her like she's a piece of meat. Bernard gritted his teeth. Have it here, have it there. like sheep Degrading her to so many sheep. He said she'd think about it, he said he'd call me this week. Oh, Ford, Ford, Ford. He would have liked to go up to them and punch them in the face, hard, over and over again.

"Yes, I really advise you to try it," Henry Foster was saying.

'Take Ectogenesis. Pfitzner and Kawaguchi had developed the entire technique. But would governments investigate it? No. There was something called Christianity. Women were forced to remain viviparous.

It's so ugly! said Fanny.

"But I really like the way he looks."

'and then like thislittleFanny made a face; The littleness was so hideous and typically low caste.

"I think that's very nice," Lenina said. “You feel that you would like to caress it. You know. Like a cat.'

Fanny was surprised. “They say someone made a mistake when she was still in the bottle, she thought she was Gamma and put alcohol in her blood substitute. That's why he's so stunted.

'How absurd!' Lenina was outraged.

In reality, the teaching of sleep was prohibited in England. There was something called liberalism. Parliament, if you know what that was, passed a law against you. The records survive. Discourses on the freedom of the subject. Freedom to be inefficient and miserable. Freedom to be a round peg in a square hole.

"But, my dear friend, you're welcome, I assure you." You are welcome.' Henry Foster patted the Assistant Predestinator on the shoulder. "After all, everyone belongs to everyone else."

One hundred repetitions, three nights a week, for four years, thought Bernard Marx, a specialist in hypnosis. Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions form a truth. Idiots!

Or the caste system. Constantly proposed, constantly rejected. There was something called democracy. As if men were more than physically and chemically the same.

'Well, all I can say is that I will accept your invitation.'

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

'The Nine Years' War began in 141 AF.'

'Not even ifWe arethe truth about alcohol in your blood substitute.

'Phosgene, chloropicrin, ethyl iodoacetate, diphenylcyanarsine, trichloromethyl chloroformate, dichloroethyl sulfide. Not to mention hydrocyanic acid.

"In which I simply do not believe," Lenina concluded.

'The noise of fourteen thousand planes advancing in open order. But on the Kurfürstendamm and the Eighth Arrondissement, the explosion of anthrax bombs is barely louder than the bursting of a paper bag.

'Because Iit doesI want to see a Wild Reserve.

CH₃C₆H₂(NO₂)₃+Hg(CNO)₂= well, what? A huge hole in the ground, a pile of masonry, some bits of meat and slime, a foot, boot still on, flying through the air and landing, flop, among the geraniums, the scarlet ones; What a splendid spectacle that summer!

"You are hopeless, Lenina, I give up for you."

"The Russian technique for infecting the water supply was particularly ingenious."

With their backs turned, Fanny and Lenina continued to change their silence.

'The Nine Years' War, the great Economic Collapse. There was a choice between world control and destruction. Between stability and...'

"Fanny Crowne is a good girl, too," said the Assistant Predestinator.

In the nurseries, the Elementary Class Consciousness class was over, the voices adapting future demand to future industrial supply. 'I love to fly,' they whispered, 'I love to fly, I love new clothes, I love...'

"Liberalism, of course, was dead with anthrax, but you still couldn't do things by force."

“Not as pneumatic as Lenina. Oh, not even close.

"But old clothes are horrible," the relentless whisper continued. “We always throw away old clothes. Finishing is better than fixing, finishing is better than fixing, finishing is better...'

'Government is a matter of sitting down, not touching. You rule with your brains and buttocks, never with your fists. For example, there was consumer recruitment.'

"There I am ready," said Lenina; but Fanny was speechless and avoided. Let's do it, dear Fanny.

Every man, woman and child forced to consume so much per year. In the interest of the industry. The only result...'

'Finishing is better than fixing. The more points, the less riches; more points...'

"One of these days," said Fanny, with grim emphasis, "you're going to be in trouble."

'Conscientious objection on a large scale. Anything not to consume. Back to nature.'

'I love to fly, I love to fly.'

'Back to culture. Yes, actually because of the culture. You can't consume too much if you sit still and read books.

"I look good?" asked Lenin. His jacket was made of green acetate fabric with green viscose fur on the cuffs and collar.

"Eight hundred Simple Lifers were mowed down by machine guns at GoldersGreen."

'Finishing is better than fixing, finishing is better than fixing'.

Green velvet shorts and white viscose wool socks turned up below the knee.

Then came the famous British Museum Massacre. Two thousand grow fans gassed with dichloroethyl sulfide.

A green and white jockey cap covered Lenina's eyes; her shoes were bright green and highly polished.

“In the end,” Mustapha Mond said, “the Controllers realized that the force was not good. The slower but infinitely safer methods of ectogenesis, neo-Pavlovian conditioning, and hypnopedia...

And around her waist she wore a belt of green Moroccan cartridges with silver trim, vaulted (for Lenina was not a freemartin) with the legal supply of contraceptives.

'The findings of Pfitzner and Kawaguchi were finally put to good use. An intense propaganda against viviparous reproduction...'

'Perfect!' exclaimed Fanny enthusiastically. She could never resist Lenina's charm for long. 'and that perfectlycaramelMalthusian belt!

'Accompanied by a campaign against the Past; by the closure of museums, by the explosion of historical monuments (fortunately most of them had already been destroyed during the Nine Years War); for the suppression of all books published before 150 A.F.'

"I just need one like this," said Fanny.

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

'My old varnished black shoulder bag...'

And a man named Shakespeare. Of course, you have never heard of them.

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

'Such are the advantages of a truly scientific education.'

'The more points, the less riches; the more points, the less...'

'The presentation of the first Model T of our Ford...'

I've had it for almost three months.

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

'Finishing is better than fixing; the ending is better...'

'There is such a thing, as I said before, called Christianity.'

'Finishing is better than fixing.'

'The ethics and philosophy of underconsumption...'

'I love new clothes, I love new clothes, I love...'

'So essential when there was underproduction; but in an age of machines and nitrogen fixation - positively a crime against society.'

"Henry Foster me deu".

All the crosses had their tops cut off and turned into a T. There was also a thing called God.

"He is a true Moroccan substitute."

Now we have the World State. And Ford Day celebrations, Community Songs and Charity Services.

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

'There was a thing called Heaven; but even then they used to drink large amounts of alcohol.

"I eat meat, I eat a lot of meat."

'There was a thing called soul and a thing called immortality.'

Ask Henry where he got it.

"But they used to take morphine and cocaine."

'And what's worse, she thinks of herself as meat.'

"Two thousand pharmacologists and biochemists were subsidized in A.F.178".

"He seems surly," said the Assistant Predestinator, pointing at Bernard Marx.

'Six years later, it was being produced commercially. The perfect drug.

"Let's make fun of him."

"Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly trippy."

"Frowning, Marx, sullen." The pat on his shoulder made him start, look up. It was that brute Henry Foster. 'What you need is an ounce ofsoma.'

'All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; None of your flaws

"Ford, I'd like to kill you!" But all he did was say 'No thanks' and defend himself against the tube of pills he was offered.

"Take a vacation from reality whenever you want and come back without the angst or mythology."

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

"Stability was virtually assured."

"One cubic centimeter heals ten dark feelings," said the Assistant Predestinator, citing an example of homegrown hypnopedic wisdom.

'All that remained was to conquer old age.'

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

'Hoity-toity.'

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

“And remember, a gram is better than a damn one. They left, 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 of the old man's mental quirks. Characters remain constant throughout life.'

'...two rounds of Obstacle Golf before sundown. I must fly

'Work, play: at sixty, our powers and tastes are the same as at seventeen. The old people from before resigned, retired, accepted religion, dedicated themselves to reading, thinking...thinking!'

'Idiots, pigs!' Bernard Marx told himself as he walked down the hall toward the elevator.

Now, this is progress, old people work, old people copulate, old people don't have time, they don't have leisure for pleasure, they don't have a moment to sit down and think, or if by some unfortunate chance that period of time yawns in the solid substance of your distractions is always theresoma, delicioussoma, half a gram for half a vacation, a gram for the weekend, two grams for a trip to the beautiful Orient, three for a dark eternity on the moon; coming back from where they are on the other side of the rift, safe on the mainland of daily work and distraction, running from sentient to sentient, from pneumatic girl to pneumatic girl, from Electromagnetic Golf Course to…”

'Go away, girl,' the D.H.C. yelled. with rage. 'Go away, child! Can't you see his Ford is busy? Go do your erotic games elsewhere.

Poor children! said the controller.

Slowly, majestically, with a faint hum of machinery, the Chargers advanced, a foot an hour. In the red darkness, countless rubies glowed.

Chapter IV

§ 1

The elevator was packed with men from Alpha Locker Rooms, and Lenina's entrance was greeted with many friendly greetings and smiles. She was a popular girl and, at some point, she had spent a night with almost all of them.

They were sweet boys, she thought, as she returned their greetings. lovely guys! Still, I wish George Edzel's ears weren't so big (maybe he has a little extra parathyroid at 328 meter?). And looking at Benito Hoover, she couldn't help but remember that he really wasfurtherhairy when he took off his clothes.

Turning around, her eyes a little sad as she remembered Benito's curly blackness, she saw in a corner the lean body, the melancholy face of Bernard Marx.

'Bernard!' she approached him. 'I was looking for you.' Her voice was clear above the hum of the soaring elevator. The others looked around her curiously. “I wanted to talk to you about our plan for New Mexico. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Benito Hoover gaping in amazement. Her open mouth pissed her off. 'Surprised I shouldn't be begging to go withdeleagain!' she told herself. Then, loudly, and with more warmth than ever, 'JustAmarspend a week with you in July,” he continued. (Anyway, she was publicly demonstrating her infidelity to Henry. Fanny should have been pleased, even if it was Bernard.) "That's it," Lenina gave him her most deliciously meaningful smile, "if you still want me."

Bernard's pale face flushed red. "What the hell for?" she wondered herself, amazed but at the same time moved by this strange homage to her power.

"Wouldn't it be better if we talked about this somewhere else?" he stammered himself, looking terribly uncomfortable.

“As if she had said something outrageous,” thought Lenina. He couldn't have seemed more upset if she'd pulled a dirty joke on him: I asked who her mother was or something.

'I mean, with all these people around...' He was choking with confusion.

Lenina's laugh was frank and not malicious at all. 'How funny you are!' said she; and she really thought he was funny. "You'll give the meat at least a week in advance, won't you?" she continued herself in another tone. What if we take the Blue Pacific Rocket? Does it start at the Charing-T Tower? Or is he from Hampstead?

Before Bernard could reply, the elevator stopped.

'The ceiling!' called a screeching voice.

The elevator operator was a small simian creature, dressed in the black robes of an Epsilon-Minus half-idiot.

'Here!'

He opened the doors. The warm glory of the afternoon sun made him shiver and blink. 'Oh, ceiling!' he repeated himself exultantly. It was as if he had suddenly and happily awakened from a dark, killing slumber. 'The ceiling!'

He smiled with a kind of expectant canine adoration at the faces of his passengers. Talking and laughing together, they came out into the open. The elevator operator took care of them.

'The ceiling?' she said once more, questioningly.

Then a bell rang, and from the roof of the elevator a loudspeaker began, very low and yet very imperiously, to give its orders.

'Down,' he said, 'down. eighteen floors. Come down, come down. He floor eighteen. Come down, come down...'

The elevator operator closed the doors, pressed a button, and instantly fell into the dim twilight of the shaft, the twilight of his own habitual stupor.

It was warm and bright on the roof. The summer afternoon was drowsy with the drone of passing helicopters; and the deeper hum of the rocket planes racing unseen through the clear sky five or six miles above was like a caress in the soft air. Bernard Marx took a deep breath. He looked up into the sky and around the blue horizon and finally to Lenina's face.

'It's not beautiful!' Her voice trembled a little.

She smiled at him with an expression of the most sympathetic understanding. "Just perfect for Obstacle Golf," she replied ecstatically. And now I must fly, Bernard. Henry gets mad if I keep him waiting. Let me know in advance of the date. And waving her hand, she ran across the wide flat roof toward the hangars. Bernard watched the fading sheen of the white stockings, the sunburned knees flexing and flexing energetically, over and over, and the gentler swing of those well-fitting velvet shorts beneath the bottle-green jacket. His face had an expression of pain.

"I must say she was pretty," said a loud, cheerful voice just behind him.

Bernard started and looked around. Benito Hoover's plump red face was smiling at him, he was smiling with open sympathy. Benito was notoriously good-natured. People said that he could have gone through life without touchingsoma. The malice and grumpiness that other people had to take vacations from never got to him. The reality for Benito has always been sunny.

Pneumatic too. And how!' Then, in another tone, 'But, I say,' she continued, 'you seem surly! What you need is a gram ofsoma.' Benito reached into his right pants pocket and pulled out a vial. 'One cubic centimeter cures ten dark... But I say!'

Bernard turned suddenly and ran.

Benito stared at him. 'What could be the problem with the theme?' he wondered and, shaking his head, decided that the story about the alcohol being put into the poor man's blood substitute must be true. I guess he touched her brain.

pushed away thesomabottle, and taking out a packet of sex hormone gum, put a plug in his cheek and walked slowly towards the hangars, ruminating.

Henry Foster had taken his machine out of the compartment, and when Lenina arrived, he was already sitting in the cabin, waiting.

"Four minutes late," was his entire comment, as she climbed in next to him. She started the engines and turned the screws on the helicopter. The machine shot vertically into the air. Henry sped up; the hum of the propeller passed from wasp to wasp, from wasp to mosquito; the speedometer showed that they were climbing at two kilometers per minute. London dwindled below them. The huge desktop buildings became, in a few seconds, nothing more than a bed of geometric mushrooms that sprouted from the green of the park and garden. In their midst, a slender-stemmed mushroom, taller and thinner, the Charing-T Tower lifted a shiny concrete disk into the sky.

Like the empty torsos of fabulous athletes, huge fleshy clouds floated in the blue air above their heads. From one of them suddenly dropped a small scarlet insect, buzzing as it fell.

"There's the Red Rocket," said Henry, "just in from New York." Looking at his watch, "Seven minutes late," he added, and shook his head. “These Atlantic services…are scandalously late.

He took his foot off the accelerator. The hum of the propellers dropped an octave and a half, going from wasp and hornet to bumblebee, to beetle to beetle. The upward acceleration of the machine slowed; a moment later they were hanging motionless in the air. Henry pushed a lever; there was a click. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, until it turned into a circular mist before his eyes, the propeller in front of them began to spin. The wind of horizontal speed whistled more and more shrill in the rooms. Henry kept his eyes on the rev counter; when the needle touched the twelve hundred mark, he unscrewed the screws on the helicopter. The machine had enough forward momentum to be able to fly its planes.

Lenina looked out the window at the ground between her feet. They were flying over the four-mile stretch of parkland that separated central London from its first ring of satellite suburbs. The green was full of larvae with their lives cut short. Forests of Bumble Puppy's centrifugal turrets glittered through the trees. Near Shepherd's Bush, two thousand Beta-Minus mixed doubles played Riemannian surface tennis. A double row of Fives Courts escalators lined the main road from Notting Hill to Willesden. At Ealing Stadium, a community singing and Delta gymnastics display was taking place.

"What a hideous color khaki is," Lenina observed, expressing the hypnopedic prejudices of her caste.

The Hounslow Feely Studio buildings spanned seven and a half acres. Close by, an army of black and khaki workmen was busy reviving the surface of the Great West Road. One of the huge moving crucibles was being touched as they flew. Molten stone spilled in a stream of dazzling incandescence across the road; asbestos rollers came and went; at the tail of an isolated trough, steam rose in white clouds.

In Brentford, the Television Corporation factory was like a small town.

"They must be changing shifts," Lenina said.

Like aphids and ants, leaf-green Gamma girls, black Demi-Idiots swarmed at the entrances or lined up to take their places on the monorail trams. Cranberry Beta-Minuses came and went through the crowd. The roof of the main building was littered with helicopters landing and taking off.

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

Ten minutes later they were at Stoke Poges and started their first round of Obstacle Golf.

§ 2

Eyes mostly downcast, and if ever they landed on such a creature, Bernard averted them immediately and stealthily, he hurried across the ceiling. He was like a hunted man, but hunted by enemies he does not want to see, lest they appear more hostile than he supposed, and he himself feel more guilty and even more helpless alone.

"That awful Benito Hoover!" And yet the man meant well. Which only made it, in a way, that much worse. Those with good intentions behaved in the same way as those with bad intentions. Even Lenina made him suffer. She remembered those weeks of self-conscious indecision, during which she had searched and yearned and desperate never to have the courage to ask him. Would you dare to be humiliated by a derogatory refusal? But if he said yes, what ecstasy! Well, now she had said it and he was still unhappy, unhappy that she had thought it was such a perfect afternoon for hurdling golf, that she should have jogged off to join Henry Foster, who should have thought it amusing for not wanting to talk. of their most private affairs in public. Miserable, in a word, because she behaved as every sane and virtuous Englishwoman should behave, and not in any other abnormal and extraordinary way.

He opened his cell door and called for a couple of Delta-Minus nurses to come over and push his machine up to the ceiling. it is awful. Bernard gave orders with a scathing tone, somewhat arrogant and even offensive, of someone who is not quite sure of his superiority. Having relations with members of the lower castes was always a very harrowing experience for Bernard. Whatever the cause (and the current rumors about alcohol being his blood substitute, as accidents can happen, are very likely to have been true), Bernard's physique was barely better than the average Gamma. He was three inches shorter than the standard Alpha height and slim in proportions. His contact with members of the lower castes always reminded her painfully of this physical inadequacy. 'It's me, and I wish I wasn't'; his shyness was sharp and agonizing. Every time he found himself looking up at level instead of looking down at 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 were, to some extent, conditioned to associate body mass with social superiority. In fact, a slight hypnopedic bias in favor of size was universal. the men. The mockery made him feel like an outsider; and feeling like a stranger, he behaved as such, which increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects. Which, in turn, increased his feeling of being strange and lonely. A chronic fear of being underestimated made him flee from his equals, made him remain, when it came to his inferiors, aware of his dignity. How intensely he envied men like Henry Foster and Benito Hoover! Men who never had to yell at an Epsilon to get them to obey an order; men who took his position for granted; men who moved through the caste system like fish to water, so completely at home that they were unaware of themselves and the beneficent and comfortable element in which they lived.

Lazily, it seemed to him, and reluctantly, the two assistants brought their plane to the roof.

'Hurry up!' said Bernard irritably. One of them looked at him. Was it some kind of bestial mockery that he detected in those empty gray eyes? he yelled louder, and there was an ugly hoarseness to his voice.

He got on the plane and a minute later it was flying south towards the river.

The various Offices of Propaganda and the College of Emotional Engineering were housed in a single sixty-story building on FleetStreet. In the basement and on the lower floors were the printing presses and the offices of the three great London newspapers.the hourly radio, a leaf of superior variety, the light greenGama Gazeta, and, on khaki paper and in monosyllables,the delta mirror. Then came the Propaganda Offices for Television, for Feeling Picture and for Synthetic Voice and Music, respectively, twenty-two floors of them. Upstairs were the research labs and padded rooms in which score writers and synthetic composers did their delicate work. The top eighteen floors were occupied by the College of Emotional Engineering.

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

Call Mr. Helmholtz Watson,” he ordered the Gamma-Plus doorman, “and tell him that Mr. Bernard Marx is waiting for you on the terrace.

He sat down and lit a cigarette.

Helmholtz Watson was typing when the message arrived.

"Tell him I'll be right back," he said and hung up the phone. Then, turning to the secretary: 'I'll let you keep my things,' she went on in the same official, impersonal tone; and, ignoring her bright smile, she got up and walked briskly to the door.

He was a powerfully built man, broad-chested, broad-shouldered, massive, yet swift in his movements, lean and agile. The strong round pillar of his neck supported a beautifully shaped head. His hair was dark and curly, his features sharp. He was emphatically and energetically handsome and looked, as his secretary never tired of repeating, every inch an Alpha-Plus. By profession, he was a professor at the Faculty of Emotional Engineering (Department of Writing) and, in the intervals of his educational activities, an active emotional engineer. He regularly wrote tothe hourly radioHe composed sentimental scenes and had the happiest gift for hypnopedic slogans and rhymes.

'Able', was the verdict of his superiors. 'Perhaps' (and they shook their heads, lowered their voices significantly) 'a littlefurtherable.'

Yes, a little too capable; they were right. A mental excess had produced in Helmholtz Watson effects very similar to those that, in Bernard Marx, resulted from a physical defect. Few bones and muscles insulated Bernard from his companions, and the feeling of that separation, being mental excess by all today's standards, became in turn the cause of a wider separation. What had made Helmholtz so uncomfortably self-aware was just too much skill. What the two men shared was the knowledge that they were individuals. Only very recently, realizing his mental excess, has Helmholtz Watson also realized how different he is from the people around him. This rolling squash champion, this tireless lover (he was said to have had six hundred and forty different girls in less than four years), this admirable committee member and best mixer had suddenly realized that sports, women, activities community were only, as far as he was concerned, second. Really, deep down, he was interested in something else. But in what? In what? That was the problem that Bernard had come to discuss with him, or rather, since it was always Helmholtz who spoke, to listen to his friend argue, once again.

Three lovely girls from the Synthetic Voiceway Propaganda Office played it when he got out of the elevator.

'Oh dear Helmholtz,it doescome and have a picnic with us on Exmoor. They clung to him pleading.

He shook his head, pushing his way through them. 'Nerd.'

We are not inviting any other man.

But Helmholtz remained unwavering even in the face of this charming promise. 'No', he repeated himself, 'I'm busy'. And he resolutely stayed on his course. The girl went after him. It was only when she actually got on Bernard's plane and closed the door that they gave up the chase. Not without reproach.

'Those women!' he said, as the machine rose into the air. 'Those women!' And he shook his head, frowned. "Too awful." Bernard half agreed, wishing as he said the words that he could have as many girls as Helmholtz and with as little trouble. He was seized by a sudden and urgent need to boast. "I'm taking Lenina Crowne to New Mexico with me," he said in as casual a tone as possible.

'You are?' Helmholtz said, with a complete lack of interest. Then after a short break, 'For the last week or two,' he continued, 'I've been cutting all my committees and all my girls. You can't imagine the fuss they're making over this at the university. Still, it was worth it I guess. The effects... he hesitated. "Well, they're weird, they're really weird."

A physical deficiency could produce a kind of mental excess. The process appeared to be reversible. Mental excess might 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 done in silence. When they arrived and were comfortably stretched out on the air sofas in Bernard's room, Helmholtz began again.

Speaking very slowly, 'Have you ever felt,' he asked, 'as if there is something inside of you that is waiting for you to give it a chance to come out? Some kind of extra energy that you're not using, you know, like all the water coming down the falls instead of through the turbines? She looked questioningly at Bernard.

"You mean all the emotions one might feel if things were different?"

Helmholtz shook his head. 'Not quite. I'm thinking about a strange feeling I sometimes get, a feeling that I have something important to say and the power to say it, I just don't know what it is and I can't use that power. If there was some other way to write... Or something else to write about...' he fell silent; then, 'You know,' he finally continued, 'I'm really good at coming up with phrases, you know, the kind of words that suddenly make you jump, almost like you've sat on a pin, they seem so fresh and exciting, even though it's about something hypnopedically obvious. But that doesn't seem enough. It is not enough that the sentences are good; what you do with them must also be good.'

“But your stuff is good, Helmholtz.

"Ah, how far will they go." Helmholtz shrugged. - But they go so far. They're not important enough, somehow. I feel like I could do something much more important. Yes, and more intense, more violent. But what? What is more important to say? And how can someone be violent about the kinds of things they are expected to write about? Words can be like X-rays if you use them right: they go through anything. You read it and you are transferred. That's one of the things I try to teach my students: how to write penetratingly. But what's the use of being pierced by an article about a Community Sing or the latest improvement in the organs of smell? Also, can you make really penetrating words, you know, like the hardest X-rays, when you write about this kind of stuff? Can you say something about nothing? That's what it ultimately boils down to. I try and I try...'

'Silence!' said Bernard suddenly, and held up a warning finger; They heard. "I think there's someone at the door," he whispered.

Helmholtz got up, tiptoed across the room, and with a quick, jerky movement, flung open the door. Of course there was no one there.

"I'm sorry," Bernard said, feeling and looking uncomfortably foolish. “I guess I'm a little nervous about things. When people suspect you, you start to suspect them.

She passed her hand over her eyes, sighed, her voice turning plaintive. He was justifying himself. “If you only knew what I've been through lately,” he said almost sobbing, and the surge of self-pity was like a spring suddenly released. 'If you only knew!'

Helmholtz Watson listened with some trepidation. Poor Bernard! he spoke to himself. But at the same time, he felt ashamed for his friend. He wished Bernard would show a little more pride.

Capítulo V

§ 1

At eight o'clock the light was going out. The loudspeakers in the tower of the Stoke Poges Club House began, in a more than human tone, to announce the closure of the courses. Lenina and Henry left the match and returned to the Club. From the grounds of the Internal and External Secretion Fund came the lowing of those thousands of cattle that provided, with their hormones and milk, the raw material for the great Farnham Royal factory.

An incessant drone of helicopters filled the twilight. Every two and a half minutes, a bell and the screeching of whistles heralded the departure of one of the monorail light rails that ferried lower-caste golfers from their separate course to the metropolis.

Lenina and Henry got on the machine and left. At eight hundred feet, Henry slowed the helicopter's blades, and they hovered for a minute or two over the vanishing landscape. Burnham Beeches Forest stretched like a great pool of darkness toward the bright edge of the western sky. Crimson on the horizon, the last sunset was fading, passing through orange, rising to yellow and a pale watery green. To the north, beyond and above the trees, the Internal and External Secretions factory glowed with a strong electric glow from every window on its twenty stories. Below them were the buildings of the Golf Club: the huge barracks for the lower castes 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 dark with the ant swarm of lower caste activity. Under the glass dome, a train jumped out into the open. Making their way southeast across the dark plain, their eyes were drawn to the stately buildings of Slough Crematorium. For the safety of night planes, its four tall funnels were lit with searchlights and topped with crimson danger signs. It was a milestone.

"Why do the chimneys have these things like balconies around them?" Lenina asked.

"Phosphorus recovery," Henry explained telegraphically. “Going up the chimney, the gases go through four separate treatments. P{2}O{5}It used to go out of circulation every time someone was cremated. Now more than ninety-eight percent are recovered. From that. More than a pound and a half per adult carcass. Which produces the greater part of four hundred tons of phosphorus each year in England alone. Henry spoke with happy pride, wholeheartedly rejoicing in the achievement as if it were his own. It's okay to think that we can continue to be socially useful even after we're dead. Grow the plants.

Meanwhile, Lenina had averted her gaze and was looking directly towards the monorail station. 'Good,' she agreed. 'But it's strange that Alphas and Betas don't grow more plants than those nasty Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons down there.'

"All men are physicochemically alike," said Henry sententiously. "Besides, even epsilons provide indispensable services."

"Even an Epsilon..." Lenina suddenly remembered a time when, as a child at school, she woke up in the middle of the night and realized, for the first time, the whisper that haunted all her dreams. She saw the moonbeam again, the row of little white flower beds; once again she heard the soft, sweet voice that she was saying (the words were there, unforgettable, unforgettable after so many nocturnal repetitions): 'Everyone works for everyone. We cannot be without anyone. Even epsilons are useful. We couldn't do without Epsilons. Each works for the other. We cannot do without anyone ... ”Lenina remembered the first shock of fear and surprise from her; the speculations of her during a waking half hour; and then, under the influence of those endless repetitions, the gradual stilling of her mind, the stilling, the softening, the stealthy advance of sleep...

"I guess epsilons don't really care about being epsilons," he said aloud.

'Of course not. As they can? They don't know what it's like to be something else. We would care, of course. But then we were conditioned differently. In addition, we start from a different heritage.

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

"And if you were an Epsilon," said Henry, "your conditioning wouldn't make you any less grateful that you weren't a Beta or an Alpha." He put the gear into gear and drove the machine towards London. Behind them, in the west, the crimson and orange were almost faded; a bank of dark clouds crept up to the zenith. As they flew over the Crematorium, the plane shot up into the column of hot air rising from the chimneys, only to drop suddenly as it passed into the descending cold beyond.

What a wonderful zigzag! Lenina laughed with delight.

But Henry's tone was almost, for a moment, wistful. "Do you know what that zigzag was?" he says he. “He was a human being who finally and definitely disappeared. Rising above a jet of hot gas. It would be curious to know who he was, a man or a woman, an Alpha or an Epsilon... he sighed. Then, in a decidedly cheerful voice, 'Anyway,' he concluded, 'there is one thing we can be sure of; whoever he was, he was happy when he was alive. Everyone is happy now.

"Yes, everyone is happy now," Lenina repeated. They heard the words repeated one hundred and fifty times every night for twelve years.

Landing on the roof of Henry's forty-story Westminster apartment, they descended directly into the dining room. There, in noisy and gay company, they ate an excellent meal.somait was served with coffee. Lenina took two half-gram pills and Henry three. At twenty past nine they crossed the street to the newly opened Westminster Abbey cabaret. It was an almost cloudless night, moonless and starry; but Lenina and Henry were blissfully unaware of this depressing fact. The electrical signals from the sky effectively closed off the outer darkness. 'CALVINOSTOPES AND THEIRSSSIXTEENSexophonists.' From the façade of the new Abbey, the giant letters glowed enticingly.'LOF ONDONFIt's notSONE HUNDRED ANDCCORORGAN.ANDLL OUECERTIFICATESSYNTHETICSMETROUSIC.'

They entered. The air was warm and choppy with the scent of ambergris and sandalwood. On the hall's vaulted ceiling, the colorful organ momentarily painted a tropical sunset. The sixteen sexophonists played an old favorite: "There's no bottle in the world like that dear bottle of mine." Four hundred couples took five steps around the polished floor. Lenina and Henry soon became the first four hundred. The sexphones howled like melodious cats under the moon, moaning in the alto and tenor registers as if a little death were stalking them. Rich with an abundance of overtones, its shuddering chorus rose to a climax, higher and higher, until finally, with a wave of his hand, the conductor unleashed the final note of ethereal music and blew the sixteen merely human blowers until disappear. . Thunder in A flat major. And then, almost silently, in almost darkness, there followed a gradual loosening, adecreasinggliding gradually, through quarter tones, down to a faintly whispered dominant chord that lingered (while the five-four rhythms still pulsed below) charging the dark seconds with intense anticipation. And finally the expectation was fulfilled. There was a sudden explosive dawn, and simultaneously the Sixteen began to sing:

My bottle, it's you who I've always wanted!
My bottle, why did I choose?
The skies are blue inside you,
The weather is always good;
For
There is no bottle in the whole world.
Like that darling little bottle of mine.

Taking five steps with the other four hundred round and round Westminster Abbey, Lenina and Henry were still dancing in another world: the warm, richly colored, infinitely friendly world ofsoma-holidays. How kind, beautiful, and deliciously funny they all were! 'My bottle, it's you I've always wanted...' But Lenina and Henry had what they wanted... They were inside, here and now—inside safety when the weather was fine, the sky always blue. And when, exhausted, the Sixteen had put down their sexphones and the Synthetic Music machine was churning out the latest slow Malthusian Blues, they might have been twin embryos rocking gently together on the waves of a bottled ocean of surrogate blood.

'Good night dear friends. Good night dear friends.' The loudspeakers veiled their orders with gentle musical courtesy. Good night dear friends....'

Obediently, along with everyone else, Lenina and Henry left the building. The dismal stars had traveled the heavens quite a bit. But although the separation screen of the heavenly signs had already largely dissolved, the two youths still maintained their blissful ignorance of the night.

Taken half an hour before closing, that second dose ofsomahe had built a rather impenetrable wall between the real universe and their minds. Bottled up, they crossed the street; bottled up, they took the elevator to Henry's room on the twenty-eighth floor. And yet, bottled as it was, and despite that second gram ofsoma, Lenina did not forget to take all contraceptive precautions prescribed by the regulation. Years of intensive hypnopedia and, from ages 12 to 17, Malthusian exercises three times a week made taking these precautions almost as automatic and inevitable as the blink of an eye.

“Oh, and that reminds me,” she said, coming back from the bathroom, “Fanny Crowne wants to know where you found that beautiful green Moroccan pencil case you gave me.

§ 2

Alternate Thursdays were the days of Bernard's Solidarity Service. After an early dinner at the Aphroditeum (to which Helmholtz had recently been elected under Rule Two) he said goodbye to his friend and, hailing a cab on the roof, told the man to fly to Fordson Community Singery. The machine climbed a few hundred meters, then headed east, and as it turned, before Bernard's eyes, gigantically beautiful, was the Cantoría. Standing out, its 1,000 feet of white Carrara shimmered with snowy incandescence on Ludgate Hill; at each of the four corners of his helicopter pad an immense crimson Tshone against the night and from the mouths of twenty-four vast trumpets boomed a solemn synthetic music.

Damn, I'm late, Bernard said to himself when he first saw Big Henry, the Canto clock. And sure enough, while he was paying for the taxi, Big Henry struck the time. 'Ford,' sang a great voice beneath all the golden trumpets. "Ford, Ford, Ford..." Nine times. Bernard ran to the elevator.

The large auditorium for the crowded Ford Day celebrations and other community chants was at the rear of the building. Above it, one hundred per floor, were the seven thousand rooms used by the Solidarity Groups for their fortnightly appointments. Bernard went down to the thirty-third floor, ran down the hall, hesitated for a moment outside room 3210, then, pulling himself together, opened the door and went inside.

Thanks Ford! he was not the last. Three of the twelve chairs arranged around the circular table were still unoccupied. He slid over to the nearest of them as discreetly as he could and prepared to scowl at the newcomers every time they arrived.

Turning to him, 'What were you playing this afternoon?' asked the girl to the left of her. 'Obstacle or electromagnetic?'

Bernard looked at her (Ford! It was Morgana Rothschild) and, blushing, had to admit that he wasn't playing games either. Morgan looked at him in astonishment. There was an awkward silence.

Then he turned and addressed the sportier man to his left.

'A good start for a Solidarity Service,' Bernard thought miserably, foretelling himself another failure to atone. I wish he had taken the time to look around him instead of running to the nearest chair! He could have sat between Fifi Bradlaugh and Joanna Diesel. Instead, he went and planted himself blindly at Morgana's side.¡Morgana!Ford! Those black eyebrows of his, or rather that eyebrow, because they met over his nose. Ford! And to the right of her was Clara Deterding. Right, Clara's eyebrows didn't come together. But she was reallyfurthertire. Whereas Fifi and Joanna were absolutely right. Plump, blond, not too big... And it was that big redneck, Tom Kawaguchi, who now sat between them.

The last arrival was Sarojini Engels.

"You're late," the group president said sternly. "Don't let that happen again."

Sarojini excused himself and slid into his seat between Jim Bokanovsky and Herbert Bakunin. The group was now complete, the circle of solidarity perfect and impeccable. Man, woman, man, in an endlessly alternating circle around the table. Twelve of them ready to become one, waiting to unite, to merge, to lose their twelve separate identities into one greater being.

The President rose, made the sign of T and, turning on the synthetic music, released the soft and tireless roll of drums and choruses of instruments - quasi-winds and superstrings - that piteously repeated and repeated the brief and inescapably bewitching melody of the first Hymn. of Solidarity. Once again, and it wasn't the ear that heard the pulsing rhythm, it was the diaphragm; the howl and clang of these recurring harmonies haunted, not the mind, but the eager bowels of compassion.

The president made another T sign and sat down. The service had started. the devoteesomathe pills were placed in the center of the dining room table. The Loving Cup of Strawberry Ice Creamsomait was passed from hand to hand and, with the formula 'I drink to my annihilation', it was drunk twelve times. Then, with the accompaniment of the synthetic orchestra, the First Solidarity Anthem was sung.

Ford, we are twelve; oh make us one
like drops in the Social River;
Oh make us run together now
As fast as your shiny Flivver.

Twelve verses of longing. And then the loving cup was passed a second time. 'I toast to the Greater Being' was now the formula. They all drank. Relentlessly the music played. The drums beat. The crying and the clash of harmonies were an obsession in the melted bowels. The Second Hymn of Solidarity was sung.

Come, be older, social friend,
Annihilating the Twelve in One!
We long to die, because when we're done,
Our great life has just begun.

Again twelve stanzas. At this time thesomahad started working. Her eyes sparkled, her cheeks flushed, the inner light of universal benevolence broke into all her faces with happy and friendly smiles. Even Bernard felt a little melted. When Morgana Rothschild turned and smiled at him, he did his best to return her smile. But the eyebrow, that two-in-one black one, unfortunately, was still there; he couldn't ignore it, couldn't, no matter how hard he tried. The collapse did not go far enough. Maybe if he was sitting between Fifi and Joanna... For the third time the cup of love spun. "I drink to the imminence of her coming," said Morgana Rothschild, whose turn it was to begin the circular rite. Her tone was high, exultant. She drank and passed the glass to Bernard. 'I drink to the imminence of his Coming,' she repeated, with a sincere attempt to feel that his Coming was imminent; but the brow continued to haunt him, and the Coming, as far as he was concerned, was terribly remote. She drank and handed the glass to Clara Deterding. "It's going to fail again," he told himself. "I know you'll do it." But he kept doing his best to smile.

The loving cup has made its circuit. Raising his hand, the President made a sign; the chorus began on the third Solidarity Hymn.

Feel how the Greater Being arrives!
Rejoice, and in joy die!
Melt into the music of the drums!
Because I am you and you are me.

As the verses continued, the voices vibrated with increasing emotion. The feeling of the imminence of the Coming was like an electrical tension in the air. The President turned off the music, and with the final note of the final verse there was utter silence: the silence of prolonged anticipation, shuddering and crawling with galvanic life. The president held out his hand; and suddenly a Voice, a deep, loud Voice, more musical than any merely human voice, richer, warmer, more vibrant with love and longing and compassion, a wonderful, mysterious, otherworldly Voice spoke over his head. Very slowly, "Oh, Ford, Ford, Ford," he said slowing down and down the scale. A shuddering sensation of heat radiated from the solar plexus to all the extremities of the bodies of those who listened; tears welled up in his eyes; their hearts, their entrails seemed to move within them, as if they had an independent life. 'Ford!' they were melting, 'Ford!' dissolved, dissolved Then, in another tone, suddenly, surprisingly. 'Listens!' trumpeted the Voice. 'I'm listening!' They heard. After a pause, it dropped to a whisper, but a whisper somehow more piercing than the loudest scream. 'The Elder Being's feet,' he continued, and repeated the words: 'The Elder Being's feet.' The whispering is almost over. The Major's feet are on the ladder. And again there was silence; and the anticipation, momentarily relaxed, stretched again, tighter and tighter, almost to the point of tearing. The feet of the Great One - oh, they heard them, they heard them, gently going down the stairs, getting closer and closer on the invisible stairs. The feet of the Greater Being. And suddenly the breaking point was reached. Eyes fixed, lips parted, Morgana Rothschild rose to her feet.

"I hear you," he exclaimed. "I hear you."

"He's coming," Sarojini Engels shouted.

“Yes, he is coming, I hear him. Fifi Bradlaugh and Tom Kawaguchi stood up simultaneously.

'Oh oh oh!' Joanna testified inarticulately.

'He's coming!' yelled Jim Bokanovsky.

The President leaned forward and, with a tap, unleashed a delirium of blown cymbals and brass, a tom-tom fever.

'Oh, he's coming!' exclaimed Clara Deterding. 'Oh!' and it was as if her throat had been cut.

Sensing that it was time for him to do something, Bernard jumped up too and yelled, 'I hear you; He's coming.' But it wasn't true. He did not hear anything and, for him, no one came. No one, despite the music, despite the rising emotion. But he waved his arms, shouted with the best; and when the others began to dance and stomp and shuffle, he too staggered and shuffled.

They went, a circular procession of dancers, each with his hands on the hips of the dancer in front of him, going round and round, shouting in unison, tapping their feet to the music, tapping, tapping their buttocks ahead of them; twelve pairs of hands striking as one; as one, twelve rumbling buttocks. Twelve as one, twelve as one. I hear it, I hear it coming. The music sped up; the faster the feet stomped, the faster, the faster the rhythmic hands fell. And suddenly a great synth bass blasted out the words announcing the approaching atonement and the final consummation of solidarity, the coming of the Twelve-in-One, the incarnation of the Greater Being. 'Orgy-porgy,' he sang, as the blows continued to pummel his feverish tattoo:

orgy-porgy, ford and fun,
Kiss the girls and make them one.
Boys in harmony with girls in peace;
Liberation Orgy-porgy.

'Orgy-porgy', the dancers took up the liturgical refrain, 'Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun, kiss the girls...' And as they sang, the lights began to slowly fade, fade and grow at the same time. warmer, richer, redder, until at last they were dancing in the crimson twilight of an Embryo Shop. 'Orgy-Porgy...' In their fetal, blood-colored darkness, the dancers continued for a while to twirl, pounding and pounding the relentless rhythm. 'Orgy-porgy...' Then the circle wobbled, broke, fell in partial disintegration onto the ring of sofas that surrounded—circle closing circle—the table and its planetary chairs. 'Orgy-porgy...' Tenderly the deep Voice sang and cooed; in the red twilight it was as if a huge black dove hovered benevolently over the recumbent or recumbent dancers.

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

'Wasn't it wonderful?' Fifi Bradlaugh said. "Wasn't it just wonderful?" She looked at Bernard with an expression of ecstasy, but in which there was no trace of agitation or excitement, because to be excited is still to be dissatisfied. His was the serene ecstasy of consummation consummation, the peace, not of mere empty satiety and nothingness, but of balanced life, of energies at rest and equilibrium. A rich and living peace. Because the Solidarity Service had given as much as it had taken, withdrawn only to replace. She was full, she was perfected, she was still more than herself. "Didn't you think it was wonderful?" she insisted, looking into Bernard's face with those preternaturally bright eyes.

'Yes, I thought it was wonderful,' he lied and looked away; the sight of her face transfigured from her was both an indictment and an ironic reminder of his own separation from her. He was as miserably isolated now as he had been when he began the service, more isolated because of the unfulfilled emptiness of him, the dead satiety of him. Separated and unredeemed, while the others merged into the Greater Self; Alone even in Morgana's embrace, much lonelier, in fact, more desperately himself than ever before in his life. He had emerged from that crimson twilight into the ordinary electric glow with self-awareness heightened to the point of agony. He was completely unhappy, and maybe (her bright eyes accused him) maybe it was his fault. "Very wonderful," he repeated; but the only thing he could think about was Morgana's eyebrow.

Chapter VI

§ 1

strange, strange,chance, was Lenina's verdict on Bernard Marx. So strange, in fact, that in the weeks that followed, she wondered more than once if she shouldn't change her mind about vacationing in New Mexico and going to the North Pole with Benito Hoover. The problem was that she knew about the North Pole, she had only been there with George Edzel last summer, and besides, she thought it was pretty grim. Nothing to do, and the hotel hopelessly out of date: no TVs in the rooms, no sniff organ, just the most putrid synthetic music, and no more than twenty-five escalators and squash courts for more than two hundred guests. No, she definitely couldn't face the North Pole again. Also, she had only been to the United States once before. And even then, how inappropriately! A cheap weekend in New York: was she with Jean-Jacques Habibullah or Bokanovsky Jones? She couldn't remember. Anyway, she was of absolutely no importance. The prospect of flying west again, and for a whole week, was very tempting. Also, for at least three days of that week she would be in the Wilderness Reserve. No more than half a dozen people in the entire Center have ever been inside a Wilderness Reserve. As an Alpha-Plus psychologist, Bernard was one of the few men she knew who was entitled to a license. For Lenina, the opportunity was unique. And yet, Bernard's strangeness was also so unique that she hesitated to accept it, in fact she thought of risking the Pole again with funny Benito. At least Benito was normal. While Bernardo...

"Alcohol in your blood substitute," was Fanny's explanation of each eccentricity. But Henry, with whom Lenina had discussed anxiously one night in bed together about her new lover, Henry compared poor Bernard to a rhinoceros.

"You can't teach a rhino tricks," he had explained in his short, concise style. 'Some men are almost rhinos; They do not respond adequately to conditioning. Poor devils! Bernardo is one of them. Lucky for him, he's pretty good at his job. Otherwise, the Director would never have kept it. "However," he added comfortingly, "I think he's harmless enough."

Harmless enough, perhaps; but also quite disturbing. That habit, to begin with, of doing things in private. Which meant, in practice, doing nothing. what was he there forI couldmake it private. (Besides, of course, going to bed: but you can't do that all the time.) Yes, whateraover there? little precious. The first afternoon they went out together was particularly good. Lenina had suggested swimming at the Torquay Country Club, followed by dinner at the Oxford Union. But Bernard thought there would be too many crowds. So how about a round of electromagnetic golf at St. Andrews? But again, no: Bernard thought that Electromagnetic Golf was a waste of time.

"So, at what time?" asked Lenina with some astonishment.

Apparently for walks around the Lake District; for this was what he now proposed. She lands on top of Skiddaw and walks for a few hours through the heather. "Alone with you, Lenina."

But, Bernard, we will be alone all night.

Bernard blushed and looked away. "I mean, just to talk," he murmured.

'Speaking? But what about that? Walking and talking: it seemed like a very strange way to spend an afternoon.

In the end, she convinced him, much against his will, to fly to Amsterdam to watch the semifinals of the Women's Heavyweight Wrestling Championship.

"In the crowd," he complained. 'As always.' He remained stubbornly gloomy all afternoon; he didn't talk to Lenina's friends (of whom they found dozens at the ice cream parlorsomacutting between fights); and, despite her misery, he steadfastly refused to accept the half-ounce raspberry ice cream she gave him. "I prefer to be myself," she said. myself and nasty. Not someone else, however cheerful.

"One gram in time saves nine," Lenina said, providing a glittering treasure trove of dream-taught wisdom.

Bernard impatiently pushed away the offered glass.

"Now, don't lose your temper," he said. "Remember, one cubic centimeter heals ten dark feelings."

"Oh, for Ford's sake, shut up!" the Scream.

Lenina shrugged. "A gram is always better than a damn," she concluded with dignity, and drank the ice cream herself.

On the way back across the channel, Bernard insisted on stopping the propeller and hovering on the helicopter blades within a hundred feet of the waves. The weather had changed for the worse; as the south-westerly wind had picked up, the sky was overcast.

'Look,' he ordered.

"But it's horrible," said Lenina, turning away from the window. She was horrified by the swift emptiness of the night, by the black foam-flecked water rising below them, by the pale face of the moon, so gaunt and distracted among the rushing clouds. 'Let's turn on the radio. Fast!' She reached for the dial knob on the dash and turned it haphazardly.

'...the skies are blue inside you', sang sixteen tremulous falsettoes, 'time is always...'

Then a sob and silence. Bernard had cut the power.

'I want to look at the sea in peace,' he said. You can't even look with that beastly noise.

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

"But I do," he insisted. 'It makes me feel like...' she faltered, searching for words to express herself, 'like I'm moremim, If you know what I mean. More by itself, not so completely as part of something else. Not just a cell of the social body. Doesn't it make you feel that way, Lenina?

But Lenina was crying. "It's horrible, it's horrible," she repeated. 'And how can you talk like that about not wanting to be part of the social body? After all, everyone works for everyone. We cannot live without anyone. Even epsilons...

"Yes, I know," Bernard said wryly. '"Even epsilons are useful"! Soam I. And I wish I wasn't!

Lenina was shocked by her blasphemy. 'Bernard!' she protested in a voice of startled anguish. 'How can you?'

In a different tone, 'How can I?' she repeated meditatively. 'No, the real problem is: how come I can't, or rather, because, after all, I know very well why I can't, what it would be like if I could, if I were free, not enslaved by my conditioning.

“But, Bernard, you are saying the most horrible things.

"Wouldn't you like to be free, Lenina?"

I do not know what you mean. I am free. Free to have the most wonderful time. Everyone is happy these days.

He laughed: 'Yeah, 'everyone is happy these days.' We started giving this to kids at five years old. But wouldn't you like to be free to be happy in another way, Lenina? Your way, for example; not in everyone's way.

"I don't know what you mean," he repeated. Then, turning to him, 'Oh, come back, Bernard,' she implored herself; "I hate this place.

'Don't you like being with me?'

"Of course Bernard!" It's a horrible place.

'I thought we would be more...moretogetherhere — With nothing but the sea and the moon. More together than in that crowd, or even in my rooms. Don't you understand that?

"I don't understand anything," she said decisively, determined to keep her incomprehension intact. 'Not a thing. Much less,' she continued in another tone, 'why don't you takesomawhen you have these terrible ideas of yours. You would forget about them. And instead of feeling miserable, you would be happy.sohappy,' she repeated, and smiled, despite all the puzzled anxiety in her eyes, with what was supposed to be delicious and inviting flattery.

He looked at her in silence, his face unfeeling and very serious, he stared at her. After a few seconds, Lenina's eyes drifted away; She giggled nervously, tried to think of something to say and couldn't. The silence lengthened.

When Bernard finally spoke, it was in a weak, tired voice. "Okay then," he said, "let's go back." And stepping on the accelerator, he sent the machine rocketing into the sky. At four thousand he started the propeller. They flew in silence for a minute or two. Then suddenly Bernard began to laugh. Strangely, thought Lenina; but still, it was a laugh.

'Do you feel better?' she dared to ask.

In response, he removed one hand from the controls and, putting his arm around her, began to caress her breasts.

"Thanks to Ford," she told herself, "she's good again."

Half an hour later they were back in their rooms. Bernard swallowed four tablets ofsomasuddenly, he turned on the radio and television and began to undress.

"Well," Lenina asked with significant mischief when they met on the roof the next afternoon, "did you have fun yesterday?"

Bernardo agreed. They got on the plane. A little bump and they were gone.

"Everyone says that I am terribly pneumatic," Lenina said thoughtfully, patting her legs.

'Much.' But there was a look of pain in Bernard's eyes. 'Like meat', he thought.

He looked up with some anxiety. 'But you don't think I'mfurtherfat, right?

He shook his head. I eat so much meat.

You think I'm fine. Another nod. 'Anyway?'

"Perfect," he said aloud. And internally, 'She thinks of herself that way. She doesn't mind being meat.

Lenina smiled triumphantly. But her satisfaction was premature.

"Even so," he continued, after a short pause, "I still wish it had ended differently."

'Differently?' Were there other endings?

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

Lenina was amazed.

"Not all at once, not the first day."

'But then what...?'

He began to say a lot of incomprehensible and dangerous nonsense. Lenina did her best to block the ears of her mind; but now and then a sentence insisted on making itself audible. "...to try to contain my urges," she heard him say. The words seemed to strike a chord in her mind.

"Never put off until tomorrow the fun you can have today," he said gravely.

"Two hundred reps, twice a week, fourteen to sixteen and a half," was his entire comment. The crazy bad talk continued. "I want to know what passion is," she heard him say. I want to feel something strongly.

“When the individual feels, the community staggers,” Lenina declared.

'Well, why shouldn't I turn around a bit?'

'¡Bernardo!'

But Bernard remained unperturbed.

"Adults intellectually and during working hours," he continued. "Babies, in regards to feelings and desire."

"Our Ford loved babies."

Ignoring the interruption, "it suddenly occurred to me the other day," Bernard continued, "that maybe it's possible to be an adult all the time."

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

I know not. And that's why we slept together last night, like children, instead of being adults and waiting.

"But it was fun," Lenina insisted. "It was not?"

"Ah, the greatest fun," he answered, but in such a sad voice, with such a deeply miserable expression, that Lenina felt all her triumph suddenly evaporate. She maybe she thought she was too fat after all.

"I told you," was all Fanny said, when Lenina appeared and confided. “It is the alcohol that they put on her replacement.

"Even so," Lenina insisted. 'I like him. He has such beautiful hands. And the way he moves his shoulders is very attractive." she sighed. But she wishes it wasn't so weird.

§ 2

Bernard paused for a moment in front of the door to the principal's office, took a deep breath and squared his shoulders, preparing himself to face the loathing and disapproval that he was sure to find within himself. He knocked and entered.

"A clearance for you to initial, Director," he said as cheerfully as he could, and placed the paper on the desk.

The director looked at him bitterly. But the seal of the Office of the World Comptroller was at the top of the paper and Mustapha Mond's signature, in bold, at the bottom. Everything was perfectly in order. The director had no choice. He scrawled his initials—two pale, abject letters at Mustapha Mond's feet—and was about to hand the paper back without a word of comment or witty Ford-speed, when something written on the body of the license caught her eye. attention from him.

"To the New Mexico reservation?" she said, and his tone, the face he raised to Bernard, expressed a kind of agitated astonishment.

Surprised by her surprise, Bernard nodded. There was silence.

The director leaned back in his chair, frowning. "How long has it been?" he said, speaking more to himself than to Bernard. Twenty years I guess. Almost twenty five. I should have been your age…' he sighed and shook his head.

Bernard felt extremely uncomfortable. A man as conventional, as scrupulously correct as the Director - and commit such a gross solecism! He made her want to hide her face from him, to run out of the room. Not that he himself saw anything inherently objectionable in people who talk about the remote past; this was one of those hypnopedic prejudices of which he had rid himself (so he imagined) completely. What made him self-conscious was the knowledge that the director disapproved, disapproved, and yet had been betrayed to do the forbidden. Under what internal compulsion? Despite his discomfort, Bernard listened intently.

"I had the same idea as you," said the director. "I wanted to take a look at the savages." I got a permit for New Mexico and went there for my summer vacation. With the girl he was having at the time. She was a Beta-Minus, I think' (he closed his eyes). “I think she had yellow hair. Still, she was pneumatic, particularly pneumatic; I remember this. Well, we went out, we looked at the savages, we rode horses and everything. And so, it was almost the last day of my leave, so… well, she got lost. We had climbed one of those disgusting mountains, and it was terribly oppressively hot, and after lunch we went to sleep. Or at least I did. She must have gone for a walk, alone. Anyway, when I woke up, she wasn't there. And the scariest storm I've ever seen in my life was blowing up on us. And it spilled and roared and flashed; and the horses broke loose and fled; Still, I searched and screamed and searched. But there was no sign of her. So I thought that she must have returned to the nursing home alone. So I crept back down the valley we came from. My knee was terribly sore and I had lostsoma. It took me hours. I did not return to the inn until after midnight. And she wasn't there; She wasn't there," the director repeated. There was silence. 'Well,' he finally summed up, 'the next day there was a search. But we couldn't find it. She must have fallen into a ravine somewhere; or she was eaten by a puma. Ford knows it. Anyway, it was horrible. He really annoyed me at the time. More than he should have done, I dare say. Because, after all, it's the kind of accident that could have happened to anyone; and, of course, the social body persists, although the cells that compose it may change. But this dream-taught consolation did not seem to be very effective. Shaking his head, 'I really do dream about it sometimes,' the Headmaster continued quietly. 'I dream of being woken by that thunder and finding her missing; He fell into the silence of reminiscence.

"You must have had a terrible fright," Bernard said, almost enviously.

At the sound of his voice, the director began to realize where he was; he looked at Bernard and, looking away from him, blushed deeply; he looked at him again with sudden suspicion, and, angry at his dignity, 'Don't imagine,' he said, 'that I had any unseemly intercourse with the girl. Nothing emotional, nothing time consuming. Everything was perfectly healthy and normal. He handed over the license to Bernard. “I really don't know why I bored you with that trivial anecdote. Furious with himself for revealing a shameful secret, he took his anger out on Bernard. The look in his eyes now was downright evil. “And I would like to take this opportunity, Mr. Marx,” he continued, “to say that I am not at all satisfied with the reports I receive of his behavior outside of working hours. You can say it's none of my business. But this is. I have to think of the good name of the Center. My workers must be above suspicion, especially those of the highest castes. Alphas are so conditioned that they don'thavebe childish in your emotional behavior. But that's all the more reason for them to make a special effort to conform. It is your duty to be childish, even against your inclination. And so, Mr. Marx, I give you fair warning. The Director's voice vibrated with an indignation that had now become completely fair and impersonal: it was the expression of the Society's own disapproval. a Sub-Center - preferably for Iceland. Good day.' And turning in his chair, he took up his pen and began to write.

That will teach him, he told himself. But he was wrong. Because Bernard left the room with an arrogant, exultant air, as he banged on the door behind him, thinking that he was alone, fighting against the order of things; elated by the heady awareness of hisindividual significance and importance. Even the thought of the chase left him unfazed, more tonic than depressing. He felt strong enough to face and overcome the affliction, strong enough to face even Iceland. And this confidence was all the greater because he didn't believe for a moment that he would have to face anything at all. He just didn't move people for things like that. Iceland was just a threat. A most exhilarating and life-giving menace. Walking down the corridor, he actually whistled.

Heroic was the account he gave that night of his interview with the D.H.C. 'So,' he concluded, 'I simply told her to go to the bottomless past and left the room. And that was it. She looked at Helmholtz Watson expectantly, expecting her due reward of sympathy, encouragement, admiration. But no words came. Helmholtz was sitting quietly, staring at the ground.

She liked Bernard; he was grateful to her for being the only man in his acquaintance with whom he could discuss matters he considered important. However, there were things about Bernard that he hated. This boast, for example. And the outbursts of abject self-pity they alternated with. And his deplorable habit of being bold after the event and full, in absentia, of the most extraordinary presence of mind. He hated these things, just because he liked Bernard. Seconds passed. Helmholtz continued to stare at the ground. And suddenly Bernard blushed and turned away.

§ 3

The trip was pretty smooth. The Blue Pacific Rocket was two and a half minutes ahead of New Orleans, lost four minutes in a tornado over Texas, but flew into a favorable updraft at longitude 95 West and managed to land in Santa Fe less than forty seconds late.

'Forty seconds on a six and a half hour flight. It's not so bad,' Lenin admitted.

They slept that night in Santa Fe. The hotel was excellent, incomparably better, for example, than that horrible Aurora Bora Palace where Lenina had suffered so much the previous summer. Liquid air, television, vibro-vacuum massage, radio, boiling caffeine solution, hot contraceptives, and eight different types of perfume were placed in each room. The synthetic music plant was working when they entered the room and it left nothing to be desired. A notice in the elevator announced that there were sixty squash and racket courts in the hotel, and that obstacle golf and electromagnetic golf were available in the park.

"But it looks too adorable," Lenina exclaimed. She almost wishes we could stay here. Sixty squash courts with escalators...

"There won't be any in the Reserve," Bernard warned him. “And no smell, no television, no hot water. If you think you can't take it, stay here until I get back.

Lenina was quite offended. 'Of course I can. I only said it was beautiful here because... well, because progressit isadorable, ¿no?

"Five hundred repetitions once a week, from thirteen to seventeen," Bernard said wearily, as if talking to himself.

'What you say?'

“I said the progress was lovely. That's why you shouldn't come to the Reserve unless you really want to.

- But I want.

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

Their permit required the signature of the Director of the Reserve, at whose office they duly reported the following morning. A black Epsilon-Plus doorman took Bernard's card and they were admitted almost immediately.

The Director was a blond, brachycephalic, short, ruddy, round-faced, broad-shouldered Alpha-Minus, with a high-pitched, booming voice well suited to the expression of hypnopaedic wisdom. He was a mine of irrelevant information and unsolicited good advice. Once he started, he went on and on, with a bang.

'...560,000 square kilometers, divided into four distinct sub-reserves, each surrounded by a high-voltage wire fence.'

At that moment, and for no apparent reason, Bernard suddenly remembered that he had left the cologne tap in his bathroom running and running.

'...powered by current from the Grand Canyon Hydroelectric Station.'

"It will cost me a fortune when I get back." In his mind, Bernard saw the needle of the olfometer crawling and turning, like an ant, restless. "Call Helmholtz Watson quickly."

'...more than three thousand miles of fencing at sixty thousand volts.'

"Don't say that," Lenina said politely, not knowing the least of what the director had said, but taking cue from his dramatic pause. When the Guardian began to explode, he had discreetly swallowed half a gram ofsoma, with the result that he could now sit, serenely not listening, thinking of absolutely nothing, but with his great blue eyes fixed on the Director's face in an expression of rapt attention.

"To touch the fence is instant death," the director solemnly declared. 'There is no escape from a wild reserve.'

The word 'escape' was suggestive. "Perhaps," Bernard said, half rising, "we should consider going." The little black needle ran, an insect, nibbling at time, devouring its money.

"There is no escape," the director repeated, waving him back to his chair; and since the authorization was not yet signed, Bernard had no choice but to comply. that, in the Reserve, the children stillit isborn, yes, really born, disgusting as it sounds...' (He expected this reference to a shameful subject to make Lenina blush; but she only smiled with mock intelligence and said: 'You don't say that!' Disappointed, continued the Director.) 'Those, I repeat, who are born on the Reservation are destined to die there.'

Destined to die... One deciliter of cologne every minute. Six liters per hour. "Maybe," Bernard tried again, "we should..."

Leaning forward, the director tapped the table with his index finger. “You ask me how many people live on the Reserve. And I answer' - triumphantly - 'I answer that we don't know. We can only guess.

- Don't say that.

"My dear lady, I say so.

Six by twenty-four... no, it would be closer to six by thirty-six. Bernard was pale and trembling with impatience. But inexorably the boom continued.

'...about sixty thousand Indians and mestizos...absolute savages...our inspectors visit from time to time...otherwise no communication with the civilized world...they still retain their repulsive habits and customs.. .marriage, if you know what it is, my dear young lady; families...unconditional...monstrous superstitions...Christianity and totemism and ancestor worship...extinct languages ​​like Zuni and Spanish and Atapasco...pumas, porcupines and other feral animals...infectious diseases ...priests...venomous lizards...'

'Don't you say that?'

They finally escaped. Bernard ran to the phone. Faster Faster; but it took almost three minutes to reach Helmholtz Watson. "We may already be among the savages," he grumbled. 'Damned incompetence!'

"Take a gram," Lenina suggested.

He refused, preferring her anger. And finally, thanks to Ford, it was over and, yes, it was Helmholtz; Helmholtz, to whom he explained what had happened, and who promised to go right away and turn off the tap, yes, right away, but he took the opportunity to tell him what the D.H.C. He had said, in public, last night...

'What? Are you looking for someone to take my place? Bernard's voice was dying. 'So is it really decided? Did he mention Iceland? You say she did it? Ford! Iceland ... he hung up the phone and turned to Lenina. Her face was pale, her expression completely gaunt.

'What is the problem?' she asked.

'The matter?' She fell heavily into a chair. “I am going to be sent to Iceland.

Many times in the past he had wondered what it would be like to be subdued (soma-less and with nothing but his own inner resources to rely on) for some great trial, some pain, some persecution; he even craved grief. Just a week ago, in the Headmaster's office, he had imagined himself bravely enduring it, stoically accepting the pain without saying a word. The Headmaster's threats had really lifted him up, made him feel larger than life. But that, he now realized, was because he hadn't taken the threats very seriously; he had not believed that when he got to the point, the D.H.C. I would never do anything. Now that it seemed the threats would be carried out, Bernard was horrified. Of this imagined stoicism, of this theoretical courage, not a trace remains.

He raged against himself, what a fool! -against the Director- how unfair not to give him that other opportunity, that other opportunity that he, he no longer had any doubts, he had always intended to take advantage of. And Iceland, Iceland...

Lenina shook her head. 'She made me sick and will make me sick', she quoted her, 'I take an agramme and I just am'.

In the end, she convinced him to swallow four tablets ofsoma. Five minutes later, the roots and fruits were abolished; the gift flower bloomed pink. A message from the doorman announced that, by order of the director, a reserve guard had arrived with a plane and was waiting on the roof of the hotel. They immediately went up the stairs. An octoroon in a gamma green uniform saluted and began to recite the morning's program.

An aerial view of ten or a dozen major towns, then disembark for lunch in the Malpaís Valley. The nursing home was comfortable there, and in the village the savages were probably celebrating their summer festival. It would be the best place to spend the night.

They sat on the plane and left. Ten minutes later, they crossed the border between civilization and savagery. Up and down, through deserts of salt or sand, through forests, into the violet depths of canyons, over crags and peaks and mesas, the fence advanced without stopping. , the irresistibly straight line, the geometric symbol of triumphant human purpose. And at his feet, here and there, a mosaic of white bones, a dark corpse not yet decomposed on the reddish ground marked the place where the deer or the bull, the puma or the porcupine or the coyote, or the ravenous vultures were dragged. by the smell of carrion and struck down as if by poetic justice, he had come very close to the destructive threads.

"They never learn," the green-uniformed pilot said, pointing to the skeletons on the ground below them. "And they'll never learn," he stated, and laughed, as if he had won a personal triumph over the electrocuted animals.

Bernard laughed too; after two grams ofsomathe joke seemed, for some reason, good. He laughed and then almost immediately fell asleep and, asleep, was carried over Taos and Tesuque; about Nambe and Picuris and Pojoaque, about Sia and Cochiti, about Laguna and Acoma and the Enchanted Table, about Zuñi and Cibola and Ojo Caliente, and I finally woke up to find the machine lying on the ground, Lenina carrying the suitcases to a small square home , and the gamma green octopus conversing incomprehensibly with a young Indian.

"Bad country," explained the pilot, as Bernard jumped out. 'This is the nursing home. And there is dancing this afternoon in the town. He will take you there. He pointed at the taciturn young savage. "Funny, I guess." He smiled. Everything they do is funny. And with that he got on the plane and started the engines. 'Come back tomorrow. And remember," he addressed Lenina reassuringly, "they are perfectly docile; the savages will not harm you. They have enough experience with fuel pumps to know better than to do tricks. Still laughing, he tightened the screws on the helicopter, accelerated, and was gone.

Chapter VII

The table was like a ship stopped in a strait of lion-colored dust. The canal meandered between steep banks, and descending from wall to wall through the valley, ran a strip of green: the river and its fields. At the prow of that stone ship in the center of the strait, and apparently a part of it, a patterned, geometric outcropping of bare rock, was the town of Malpaís. Block after block, each story smaller than the one below, the tall houses rose like stepped, amputated pyramids into the blue sky. At his feet was a tangle of low buildings, a tangle of walls; and on three sides the precipices dropped precipitously into the plain. Some columns of smoke rose perpendicularly into the windless air and were lost.

"How strange," said Lenina. "Very strange." It was her common word of condemnation. 'I do not like it. And I don't like this man. She pointed to the Indian guide assigned to take them to town. Obviously, her sentiment was reciprocated; the man's own back, as he walked ahead of them, was hostile, scowling, and scornful.

Besides”—she lowered her voice—“it stinks.

Bernard did not try to deny it. They kept going.

Suddenly it was as if all the air had come alive and was pulsing, pulsing with the restless movement of blood. Up there, in Malpaís, the drums sounded. His feet followed the rhythm of that mysterious heart; they quickened their pace. His path led them to the bottom of the cliff. The sides of the great mesa ship towered above them, three hundred feet to the railing.

"I wish I had brought the plane," Lenina said, looking smugly at the approaching rock face. 'I hate walking. And you feel so small when you're on the ground at the bottom of a hill.

They walked for a while in the shadow of the table, around a ledge, and there, in a water-eroded ravine, was the path that led to the secondary stairs. They climbed. It was a very steep path that zigzagged from one side of the ravine to the other. Sometimes the beat of the drums was barely audible, other times it sounded like they were pounding around the corner.

When they were halfway there, an eagle flew so close that the wind from its wings struck them in the face. In a crack in the rock there was a pile of bones. Everything was oppressively strange, and the Indian smelled stronger and stronger. Finally they emerged from the ravine into the sunlight. The table top was a flat stone platform.

"Like the Charing-T Tower," was Lenina's comment. But she was not long allowed to enjoy the discovery of this reassuring resemblance. A soft stamp of feet made them turn. Naked from the throat to the navel, their swarthy bodies painted with white stripes ("like paved tennis courts," Lenina would later explain), their inhuman faces streaked with scarlet, black, and ochre, two Indians came running down the road. the hair was braided with fox fur and red flannel. Capes of turkey feathers fluttered about their shoulders; huge feather headbands flared brilliantly around their heads. With every step they took there was the clink and jingle of their silver bracelets, their heavy necklaces of bone and turquoise. They moved forward without a word, running silently in their deerskin loafers. One held a feather brush; the other carried, in each hand, what looked from a distance like three or four lengths of thick rope. One of the ropes moved with difficulty, and suddenly Lenina saw that they were snakes.

The men came nearer and nearer; Her dark eyes stared at her, but gave no sign of acknowledgment, not the slightest sign that she had been seen or knew of her existence. The wriggling snake hung clean again with the rest. The men passed.

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

She liked less the one waiting for her at the entrance to the town, where the guide had left them to enter to receive instructions. The dirt, for starters, the piles of rubbish, the dust, the dogs, the flies. Her face scrunched up in disgust. She raised the handkerchief to her nose.

'But how can they live like this?' she burst out with a voice of indignation and disbelief. (It was not possible.)

Bernard shrugged philosophically. 'Anyway,' he said, 'they have been doing it for the last five or six thousand years. So I guess you must be used to it by now.

"But cleanliness is next to laziness," he insisted.

"Yes, and civilization is sterilization," Bernard continued, wryly concluding the second hypnopaedic lesson in elementary hygiene. “But these people have never heard of Our Ford and they are not civilized. So it's no use...'

'Oh!' She grabbed his arm. 'See.'

An almost naked Indian was walking very slowly down the stairs from the terrace of the first floor of a neighboring house, step after step, with the trembling caution of extreme old age. His face was deeply wrinkled and black, like an obsidian mask. His toothless mouth had fallen off. At the corners of his lips and on either side of his chin, a few long bristles gleamed almost white against his dark skin. His long, flowing hair fell in wisps of gray around his face. His body was hunched and gaunt to the bone, with almost no flesh. He descended very slowly, pausing at each step before taking another step.

'What's the matter with him?' Lenina whispered. Her eyes were wide with horror and astonishment.

"He's old, that's all," Bernard answered as carelessly as he could. Hetoo was scared; but he made an effort to appear impassive.

'Ancient?' she repeated. “But the director is old; many people are old; they are not like that.

'That's because we don't allow them to be like that. We preserve them from disease. We keep your internal secretions artificially balanced in a youthful balance. We don't let the magnesium-calcium ratio drop below what it was in our thirties. We give them transfusions of young blood. We keep your metabolism permanently stimulated. So of course they don't look like that. Partly," she added, "because most die long before they reach the age of this old creature. Almost intact youth until sixty, and then - crack! the end.'

But Lenina was not listening. She was looking at the old man. Slowly, she slowly lowered herself. Her feet touched the ground. She turned. In his deep sockets, his eyes were still extraordinarily bright. They looked at her for a long time without expression, without surprise, as if she were not there. Then slowly, his back hunched, the old man limped past them and disappeared.

"But it's terrible," Lenina whispered. 'It is awful. We shouldn't have come here. She reached into her pocketsoma- only to discover that, through an unprecedented oversight, he had left the bottle at the nursing home. Bernard's pockets were also empty.

Lenina was left to face the horrors of Malpaís without help. They came at her, thick and fast. The sight of two young women nursing her babies made her blush and look away from her. She had never seen anything so indecent in her life. And what made it worse was that instead of tactfully ignoring her, Bernard began to make open comments about this disgustingly viviparous scene. Embarrassed, now that the effects ofsomaHe had been through, because of the weakness he had shown that morning in the hotel, he had made an effort to be strong and unorthodox.

"What a wonderfully intimate relationship," he said, pointedly outrageous. And what an intensity of feeling that must generate! I often think that someone may have missed something by not having a mother. And maybe you missed something in noto bea mother, Lenina. She imagine sitting there with a little baby of hers...'

'Bernard! How can you?' The death of an elderly woman with ophthalmia and a skin disease of hers distracted her from her outrage.

"Let's go," she begged. "I do not like it."

But at that moment the guide returned and, beckoning them to follow him, he led the way down the narrow street between the houses. They turned a corner. A dead dog lay in a garbage heap; a woman with agoitre checking a girl's hair for lice. Her guide stopped at the bottom of a ladder, raised her hand perpendicularly, and pushed her forward horizontally. They did as he silently ordered them: they went up the stairs and through the door that gave access to a long and narrow room, quite dark and smelling of smoke, boiled fat and very worn and unwashed clothes. At the other end of the room there was another door, through which a ray of sunlight entered and the noise, very loud and close, of the drums.

They crossed the threshold and emerged onto a wide terrace. Below them, surrounded by tall houses, was the town square, thronged with Indians. Shimmering blankets and feathers in black hair, and a turquoise sheen, and dark fur that shimmers in the heat. Lenina brought the handkerchief to her nose again. In the open space in the center of the plaza were two circular platforms of masonry and trampled clay: the roofs, evidently, of subterranean chambers; for in the center of each platform was an open hatch, with a ladder emerging from the darkness below. An underground flute sound surged up and was almost lost in the steady, relentless persistence of the drums.

Lenina liked drums. Closing her eyes, she gave in to the soft, repeating thunder of it, allowing it to invade her awareness more and more, until she finally-she was left with nothing in the world but that deep pulsing sound. She reminded him reassuringly of the synthetic noises made at Solidarity Services and Ford Day celebrations. 'Orgy-porgy,' she whispered to herself. These drums play exactly the same rhythms.

There was a sudden and startling burst of chanting: hundreds of male voices yelling ferociously in harsh, metallic unison. A few long notes and silence, the rumbling silence of the drums; then shrill, in a shrill whinny, the response of the women. Then again the battery; and again the deep and savage affirmation of men about their masculinity.

Strange - yes. The place was weird, as was the music, the clothes, goitres, skin diseases, and the elderly. But the performance itself, there didn't seem to be anything particularly strange about it.

“It reminds me of a low-caste community chant,” he told Bernard.

But a little later it reminded him much less of that innocuous function. Because suddenly a fearsome troop of monsters emerged from those round underground chambers. Horribly masked or painted with every semblance of humanity, they performed a strange lame dance around the plaza; round and round, singing as they went, round and round, each time a little faster; and the drums changed and quickened their rhythm, so that it became like the throbbing of a fever in the ears; and the crowd began to sing along with the dancers, louder and louder; and first a woman screamed, then another and another, as if they were being killed; and then suddenly the leader of the dancers broke out of the line, ran to a large wooden chest at one end of the plaza, lifted the lid, and pulled out a pair of black snakes. A great cry went up from the crowd, and all the other dancers rushed towards him with their hands outstretched. He tossed the snakes to the first to arrive, then dove back into the chest for more. More and more, black, brown and spotted snakes, he threw them. And then the dance resumed at a different pace. They circled and turned with their snakes, snaking, a gentle rippling motion at knees and hips. Round and round. Then the leader gave a signal, and one after another all the snakes were thrown into the center of the square; an old man came out of the cellar and sprinkled them with cornmeal, and from the other hatch a woman came out and sprinkled them with water from a black jug. Then the old man raised his hand and, surprisingly, terrifyingly, there was complete silence. The drums stopped beating, life seemed to have come to an end. The old man pointed to the two hatches that led to the underworld. And slowly, lifted from below by invisible hands, he emerged from one the painted image of an eagle, from the other that of a naked man nailed to a cross. They just stood there, seemingly self-sufficient, as if they were watching. The old man applauded. Naked except for white cotton breeches, a boy of about eighteen stepped out of the crowd and stood in front of him, hands folded across his chest, head bowed. The old man made the sign of the cross over him and walked away from him. Slowly the boy began to work his way around the heap of wriggling snakes. He had completed the first circuit and was halfway through the second when, from among the dancers, a tall man in a coyote mask, holding a braided leather whip in one hand, advanced toward him. The boy kept walking as if he didn't know of the other's existence. The coyote man raised his whip; there was a long moment of anticipation, then a quick movement, the hiss of the whip and its strong, monotonous impact on the flesh. The boy's body shuddered; but he didn't make any sound, he walked at the same slow and steady pace. The coyote attacked again, again; and with each blow, first a sigh and then a deep groan went up from the crowd. The boy moved on. Two, three, four times he turned around. The blood oozed. Five laps, six laps. Suddenly, Lenina covered her face with her hands and began to sob. 'Oh, stop them, stop them!' she begged. But the whip fell and fell inexorably. seven laps. Then suddenly the boy staggered and, still without making a sound, he fell on his face. Leaning over him, the old man touched her back with a long white feather, held it up for a moment, crimson, for the people to see, then waved it three times over the snakes. A few drops fell, and suddenly the drums broke out again in a panic of rushing notes; there was a great cry. The dancers rushed forward, grabbed the snakes and ran out of the square. Men, women, children, the whole crowd ran after them. A minute later the square was empty, only the boy remained, face down where he had fallen, motionless. Three old women came out of one of the houses and, with some difficulty, picked him up and carried him inside. The eagle and the man on the cross guarded the empty town for a time; then, as if they had seen enough, they slowly sank through their hatches, out of sight, into the underworld.

Lenina was still sobbing. "Too horrible," she repeated, and all Bernard's consolations were in vain. 'Too awful! That blood! She shuddered. 'Oh I wish I had minesoma.'

There was the sound of footsteps in the inner room.

Lenina did not move, but remained seated with her face in her hands, not looking away. Only Bernard turned around.

The dress of the young man who was now coming out onto the terrace was Indian; but his braided hair was the color of straw, his eyes a pale blue, and his skin a white and tan complexion.

'Hello. Good morning,” the stranger greeted in impeccable but peculiar English. "You are civilized, aren't you?" Do you come from the Other Place, outside the Reserve?

'Who the hell...?' Bernard was startled.

The young man sighed and shook his head. "A very unhappy gentleman." And, pointing to the bloodstains in the center of the square, "See that damn place?" he asked himself, his voice shaking with emotion.

"Better a gram than a damn," Lenina said mechanically behind her hands. 'I wish I had minesoma!'

'UEI should be there.' The young man continued. 'Why didn't they let me be the sacrifice? I would have done ten laps, twelve, fifteen. Palowhtiwa only reached seven. They could have had twice as much blood as me. The many red seas. He spread his arms in a sumptuous gesture; then desperately let them fall again. But they didn't let me. They didn't like me because of my skin. It was always like this. Always.' Tears welled up in the young man's eyes; he was embarrassed and walked away.

Astonishment made Lenina forget the deprivation ofsoma. He uncovered his face and, for the first time, looked at the stranger. 'Did you mean that youmy loveget hit by that whip?

Still far from her, the young man nodded. 'For the good of the people, so that it rains and the corn grows. And to please Pookong and Jesus. And then show that I can take the pain without screaming. Yes,' and his voice suddenly took on a new resonance, he turned with a proud erection of his shoulders, a proud defiant lift of his chin, 'to show that I am a man...! Oh!' He sighed and fell silent, speechless. He had seen, for the first time in his life, the face of a girl whose cheeks were not the color of chocolate or a dog's fur, whose hair was red and permanently curly, and whose expression (shocking news!) was one of benevolence. interest. Lenina smiled at him; Such a handsome boy, she thought to herself, and a really nice body. Blood rushed to the young man's face; he lowered his eyes, looked up again for a moment only to find that she was still smiling at him, and he was so touched that he had to pull away and pretend to be staring at something across the square.

Bernard's questions were funny. Who? What? When? Where from? With his eyes fixed on Bernard's face (he wanted so badly to see Lenina smile that he simply couldn't bring himself to look at her), the young man tried to explain. He and Linda-Linda was her mother (the word made Lenina uncomfortable)-were strangers on the Reservation. Linda had come from the Other Place a long time ago, before he was born, with a man who was her father. (Bernard's ears pricked up.) She had gone hiking alone in those northern mountains, she had fallen on a steep place and hurt her head. ("Keep going, keep going," Bernardo said excitedly.) Some hunters from Malpaís found her and brought her to town. As for the man who was her father, Linda never saw him again. His name was Tomakin. (Yes, 'Thomas' was the first name of the D.H.C.). He must have flown, back to the Other Place, away from her without her: an evil, cruel, unnatural man.

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

The filth of that little house on the outskirts of town!

A space of dust and garbage separated him from the town. Two hungry dogs were obscenely rummaging through the garbage outside her door. Inside, when they entered, the twilight was stinking and full of flies.

'Beautifull!' called the young man.

From the inner room, a rather hoarse female voice said, 'I'm on my way.'

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

The door opened. A very heavyset blonde Indian stepped across the threshold and stared at the strangers in disbelief, her mouth open. Lenina noted with disgust that she was missing two front teeth. And the color of those that remain... she shuddered. It was worse than before. very fat And all the lines on your face, the sagging, the wrinkles. And the drooping cheeks, with those purple spots. And the red veins on his nose, the red eyes. And that neck - that neck; and the blanket that covered the head, tattered and dirty. And under the baggy brown tunic those enormous breasts, the bulge of the belly, the hips. Alas, much worse than the old one, much worse! And suddenly the creature burst into a torrent of words, rushed at her with outstretched arms and - Ford! Ford! it was too disgusting, any other time she would be sick-she pressed against her bulge, her chest, and began to kiss her. Ford! forKiss, drooling and smelling really bad, obviously never showered and just reeked of that beastly stuff they put in Delta and Epsilon bottles (no, not true of Bernard), definitely reeked of alcohol. She pulled away as fast as she could.

A teary, distorted face faced her; the creature was crying.

"Oh, dear, dear. The torrent of words flowed between sobs. 'If you only knew how happy, after all these years! A civilized face. Yes, and civilized clothes. Because I thought I would never see an ornate piece of silk again. She ran her fingers down the sleeve of Lenina's shirt. Her nails were black. And those adorable viscose velvet shorts! You know, honey, I still have my old clothes, which I came with, stored in a box. I'll show you later. Although, of course, the acetate got into holes. But a beautiful white headband, although I must say that your green Moroccan is even more beautiful. not that i didmimVery good, that shoulder bag. Her tears began to flow again. "I guess John told you." What I had to suffer - and not an ounce ofsomato be had just a drink ofmezcalfrom time to time, when Pope brought him. Popé is a boy I met. But he makes you feel so bad afterwards, whatmezcalit does, and you're sick with itpeyotl; besides, she always made that horrible feeling of shame worse the next day. Me tooeraso embarrassed. Think about it: me, a Beta, having a child, put yourself in my shoes. (The mere suggestion made Lenina shudder.) “Although it wasn't my fault, I swear; because I still don't know how it happened, since I did the whole Malthusian exercise - you know, by numbers, one, two, three, four, always, I swear; but still it happened; and of course there was nothing like an Abortion Center here. By the way, are you still in Chelsea? she asked. added Lenin. "And are there still spotlights on Tuesdays and Fridays?" Lenina nodded again. 'That beautiful pink glass tower!' Poor Linda lifted her face and with her eyes closed she gazed in ecstasy at the brilliant image she remembered. "And the river at night," she whispered. Big tears fell slowly through her tightly closed eyelids. And back in the evening from Stoke Poges. And then a hot bath and a vibro-vacuum massage... But then. She took a deep breath, shook her head, opened her eyes again, sobbed once or twice, then blew her nose with her fingers and wiped them on the skirt of her robe. "Oh, sorry," she said in response to Lenina's involuntary scowl. - I shouldn't have. Very sorry. But whatit isWhat to do when there are no tissues? I remember how all that dirt and nothing aseptic bothered me. I had a nasty cut on my head when they brought me here. You can't imagine what they put on it. Dirt, just dirt. "Civilization is sterilization," he told them. And "Streptocock-Gee to Banbury-T, to see a good bath and W.C." As they were kids. But of course they didn't understand. How should they? And in the end I think I got used to it. And anyway, howmay lDo you keep things clean when there is no hot water? And look at those clothes. This bestial wool is not like acetate. It lasts and lasts. And you should fix it if it's broken. But I'm a Beta; I worked in the Fertilization Room; No one ever taught me how to do something like that. It's none of my business. Besides, it was never okay to fix clothes. Discard them when they have holes and buy new ones. "The more points, the less riches." Is not the same? Fixation is antisocial. But here everything is different. It's like living with crazy people. Everything they do is crazy. He looked around; she saw that John and Bernard had left them and were pacing in the dust and rubbish outside the house; but still, he lowering his voice confidentially and bowing, while Lenina tensed and stepped back, so close to her that the stench of embryonic poison spilled from her raised the hairs on her cheeks. 'For example,' she whispered hoarsely, 'look how they keep each other here. Crazy, I tell you, absolutely crazy. Everyone belongs to everyone, doesn't it? It is not? he insisted, tugging at Lenina's sleeve. Lenina nodded, letting out the breath she had been holding, and managing to inhale another, relatively immaculate one. “Well, here,” continued the other, “no one should belong to more than one person. And if you have ordinary people, others will think that you are wicked and unsociable. They hate you and despise you. Once many women came and made a scene because their men came to see me. Well why not? And then they ran to me... No, it was too horrible. I can not talk about that. Linda covered her face with her hands and shuddered. “They are so hateful, the women here. Crazy, crazy and cruel. And of course they don't know anything about the Malthusian drill, or bottles, or decanting, or anything like that. So they are having children all the time, like dogs. It's too disgusting. And to think that I... Oh, Ford, Ford, Ford! and even johneraa great consolation for me. I don't know what I should have done without him. Even though he got so annoyed every time a man... Almost like a little boy, even. Once (but that was when he was older) he tried to kill poor Waihusiwa, or was it Pope? -just because he used to have them sometimes. because i neverI couldmake him understand that this was what civilized people were supposed to do. Being crazy is contagious, I think. Anyway, John seems to have inherited it from the Indians. Because of course he was with them a lot. Even though they were always so rude to him and wouldn't let him do all the things the other boys did. Which was good in a way, because it made it easier for me to condition him a little bit. Although you have no idea how difficult this is. There is so much that is not known; it was none of my business to know. I mean, when a kid asks how a helicopter works or who made the world, well what are you supposed to answer if you're a Beta and have always worked in the Fertilization Room? Whatit isdo you answer?

Chapter VIII

Outside, among the dust and rubbish (there were now four dogs), Bernard and John walked slowly up and down.

“So hard for me to see,” Bernard said, “to piece together. As if we lived on different planets, in different centuries. A mother, and all that filth, and gods, and old age, and disease... he shook his head. It is almost inconceivable. I'll never understand unless you explain it to me.

'Explain what?'

'This.' He pointed to the town. 'What.' And it was the little house outside the town. 'Everything. All your life.'

"But what is there to say?"

'From the beginning. As far as you can remember.

"Since I can remember. John frowned. There was a long silence.

Which was very hot. They ate too many tortillas and sweet corn. Linda said, 'Come and lie down, baby.' They lay down together on the big bed. "Sing," Linda sang. She sang 'Streptocock-Gee to Banbury-T' and 'Bye Baby Banting, you'll need to decant soon.' Her voice was getting weaker and weaker...

There was a loud noise and he woke up with a start. A man was standing by the bed, huge, terrifying. He was saying something to Linda, and Linda was laughing. She pulled the blanket up to her chin, but the man pulled it back down. His hair was like two black ropes, and around his arm was a beautiful silver bracelet with blue stones. She liked the bracelet; but still she was afraid; he hid her face against Linda's body. Linda put her hand on it and he felt more secure. In those other words that he didn't quite understand, she said to the man, 'Not with John here.' The man looked at him, then at Linda, and said a few words in a low voice. Linda said, 'No.' But the man leaned across the bed towards him and his face was huge, terrible; the locks of black hair touched the blanket. "No," Linda said again, and he felt her hand tighten on him. 'Nerd!' But the man grabbed one of her arms and it hurt. The Scream. The man reached out with his other hand and picked him up. Linda was still hugging him, saying 'No, no'. The man said something short and angry, and suddenly his hands disappeared. - Beautiful, beautiful. She kicked and twisted; but the man carried him to the door, opened it, placed him on the floor in the middle of the other room, and went out, closing the door behind him. He got up, ran to the door. On tiptoes, he could barely reach the large wooden latch. He picked her up and pushed; but the door would not open. 'Beautiful', he cried he. She did not answer.

He remembered a huge room, very dark; and there were big wooden things with ropes tied to them, and lots of women around them, making blankets, Linda said. Linda told her to sit in the corner with the other children while she went to help the women. She played with the children for a long time. Suddenly, people started talking very loudly, and there were women pushing Linda, and Linda was crying. She went to the door and he ran after her. He asked why they were angry. "Because I broke something," she said. And then she got mad too. 'How am I supposed to know how to make your bestial weave?' she said. The best savages. He asked her what the jokers were. When they got back home, Pope was waiting at the door and went in with them. He had a big gourd filled with things that looked like water; only it wasn't water, but something stinky that burned your mouth and made you cough. Linda drank a little and Pope drank a little, and then Linda laughed a lot and talked a lot; and then she and Pope went into the other room. When Pope left, he entered the room. Linda was in bed and was sleeping so soundly that she couldn't wake her.

Pope used to come often. He said the thing in the pumpkin was calledmezcal; but Linda said that she should be calledsoma; It just made you feel bad afterwards. She hated the Pope. He hated them all, all the men who came to see Linda. One afternoon when she was playing with the other children—it was cold, she reminded herself, and there was snow on the mountains—she came home and heard angry voices in the bedroom. They were women's voices and they said words that she did not understand; but she knew they were terrible words. Then suddenly - shock! something was disturbed; she heard people moving quickly, and there was another thump and then a noise like she hit a mule, only not quite as bony; then Linda screamed. "Oh no no no!" she said. She ran inside. There were three women in dark blankets. Linda was in bed. One of the women was holding her by her wrists. Another of hers was lying on her lap, so she couldn't kick. The third beat her with a whip. Once, twice, three times; and every time she Linda screamed. Crying, she tugged at the corner of the woman's blanket. 'Please please.' With her hands free of hers, she hugged him. The whip fell again and she Linda screamed again. She took the woman's huge brown hand in hers and bit down as hard as she could. She screamed, released her hand, and gave him such a push that he fell. As he lay on the ground, she hit him three times with the whip. It hurt more than anything she had ever felt, like fire. The whip hissed again, fell. But this time it was Linda who screamed.

"But why would they want to hurt you, Linda?" she asked herself that night. She was crying because the red whip marks on her back still hurt terribly. But he also cried because people were so bestial and unfair, and because he was just a little boy and he couldn't do anything against them. Linda was crying too. She was quite an adult, but not big enough to fight three of them. It wasn't fair to her either. - Why would they want to hurt you, Linda?

'I dont know. How was she supposed to know?' It was hard to hear what she was saying because she was lying on her stomach with her face on the pillow. They say these men arefrom themmen', he continued; and she didn't seem to be talking to him; she seemed to be talking to someone inside of her. A long conversation that she did not understand; and at the end she began to cry harder than ever.

“Oh, don't cry, Linda. Do not Cry.

He pressed against her. He put her arm around her neck. Linda yelled. 'Oh, be careful. My shoulder! Oh!' and she pushed him hard. Her head hit the wall. 'Little idiot!' she screamed; and then all of a sudden she started slapping him. Touch touch...

"Beautiful," he yelled. 'Oh mother, no!'

'I'm not your mom. I will not be your mother.

But, Linda... Oh! She slapped her cheek.

"Go wild," he yelled. 'Having children like an animal... If it wasn't for you, I could have gone to the inspector, I could have run away. But not with a baby. That would have been very embarrassing.

He saw that she was going to hit him again and raised his arm to shield his face. “Oh no, Linda, please don't.

'Little beast!' She tugged at her arm; her face was uncovered.

- Not pretty. She closed her eyes, waiting for the blow.

But she didn't hit him. After a while, he opened his eyes again and saw that she was looking at him. She tried to smile at him. Suddenly, she hugged him and kissed him several times.

Sometimes, for several days, Linda would not get up. She was lying on the bed and she was sad. She or she drank what Pope brought her and she laughed a lot and fell asleep. She sometimes she was sick. She often forgot to wash it and there was nothing to eat except cold tortillas. She remembered the first time she had found those little bugs in her hair, how she had screamed and screamed.

The happiest moments were when she told him about the Other Place. "And can you really fly whenever you want?"

"Whenever you want." And she would tell him about the beautiful music that came out of a box, and all the cool games you could play, and the delicious things to eat and drink, and the light that came on when you pressed a little thing against the wall, and the pictures that you could hear and feel and smell as well as see, and another box to make nice smells, and the pink, green, blue, and silver houses as high as mountains, and everyone happy and no one sad or angry, and everyone belonged to everyone else, and the boxes where you could see and hear what was going on on the other side of the world, and babies in beautiful clean bottles, everything so clean, no unpleasant smell, no mess at all, and people never alone, but living together and being so happy and happy, like the summer dances here in Malpaís, but much happier, and happiness being present every day, every day... I listened for hours. And sometimes, when he and the other children were tired from playing so much, one of the old men of the village would tell them, in other words, of the great World Changer, and of the long struggle between the Right Hand and the Left Hand. . , between Humid and Dry; of Awonawilona, ​​who created a great mist by thinking of the night, and then made the whole world out of the mist; of Mother Earth and Father Sky; of Ahaiyuta and Marsailema, the twins of War and Chance; of Jesus and Pookong; of Maria and Etsanatlehi, the woman who is rejuvenated; de Pedra Negra in Laguna and the Águila Mayor and Nuestra Señora de la Acoma. Strange stories, all the more marvelous for him for being told in other words and therefore not fully understood. Lying in bed he thought of Heaven and London and Our Lady of Acoma and the rows and rows of babies in clean bottles and Jesus flying and Linda flying and the great World Hatchery Director and Awonawilona.

Many men came to see Linda. The guys started pointing fingers at him. In the other, weirder words, they said that Linda was mean; they called her names he didn't understand, but he knew they were bad names. One day they sang a song of hers about her over and over again. She threw stones at them. They pulled him back; a sharp stone cut into her cheek. Her blood did not stop; he was covered in blood.

Linda taught him to read. With a piece of charcoal she drew on the wall: a seated animal, a baby in a bottle; so she wrote letters. youTO THECIN IS INMETRONO.TTO THETOT IS NOTPAGOld Testament. She learned quickly and easily. When she learned to read all the words she wrote on the wall, Linda opened her big wooden box and took out from under those funny red pants that she had never worn a thin little book. She had seen it many times before. "When you're older," she said, "you can read." Well, now it was big enough. She was proud. "I'm afraid you don't find it very exciting," she said. "But it's all I have." she sighed. "If you could only see what lovely reading machines we had in London!" She started to read.The chemical and bacteriological conditioning of the embryo. Practical instructions for beta embryo storage workers.It took him a quarter of an hour to read the title himself. He dropped the book to the ground. 'Beastly, beastly book!' he said he, and began to cry.

The boys kept singing that awful song about Linda. Sometimes they also laughed at him for being so ragged. When he ripped his clothes, she Linda didn't know how to fix it. In the Other Place, she told him, people threw away their clothes with holes in them and bought new ones. "Rags, rags!" the boys yelled at him. 'But I know how to read,' he said to himself, 'and they don't. They don't even know what reading is. It was easy enough, if she thought hard enough about reading it, to pretend she didn't care when he was being teased. He asked Linda to give him the book back.

The more the children pointed and sang, the more I read. She soon she could read all the words very well. Even the longest. But what did they mean? He asked Linda; but even when she managed to reply, she didn't seem to make it quite clear. And usually she couldn't answer anything.

'What are chemicals?' he would ask.

"Oh, things like magnesium salts and alcohol to keep the Deltas and Epsilons small and retarded, and calcium carbonate for the bones, and all that sort of thing."

"But how are chemicals produced, Linda?" Where they are?'

'Well I do not know. You take them out of the bottles. And when the vials are empty, ask for more at the chemical store. It's the people at ChemicalStore who make them, I guess. Or they send it to the factory for them. I dont know. I never did chemistry. My work has always been with embryos.

It was the same with everything else he asked. Linda never seemed to know. The Town elders had much more definite answers.

'The seed of men and of all creatures, the seed of the sun and the seed of the earth and the seed of the sky - Awonawilona made them all from the Increment of Fire. Now the world has four wombs; and he put the seeds in the lowest of the four bellies. And little by little the seeds began to grow...'

One day (John later calculated that it must have been just after his twelfth birthday) he came home to find a book he had never seen before lying on his bedroom floor. It was a thick book and looked very old. The rats ate the union; some of its pages were loose and wrinkled. He picked it up, looked at the cover: the book was calledThe Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

Linda was lying in bed, drinking that horrible, stinkingmezcalfrom a glass "Popé brought it," he said. Her voice was thick and hoarse like someone else's voice. She was in one of Antelope Kiva's chests. It is assumed that he has been there for hundreds of years. I hope that's true, because I looked at it and it seemed to be full of nonsense. Uncivilized. Still, it will be good enough for you to practice your reading. He took one last drink, put the mug down by the bed, rolled over, sobbed once or twice, and fell asleep.

He opened the book at random.

no, but to live
In the stale sweat of a patched bed,
Cooked in corruption, honey and making love
About the nasty stye...

The strange words passed through her mind; she rumbled, like thunder speaking; like drums at summer dances, if drums could talk; like men singing the Corn Song, beautiful, beautiful, so much that you cried; like old Mitsima saying magic over her feathers and her carved sticks and her bits of bone and stone-kiathla tsilu no es correcto. Kiai silu silu, tsithl--but better than Mitsima's magic, because it meant more, because it spoke withdele; he spoke wonderfully and only partially understandable, a terrifyingly beautiful spell, about Linda; about Linda snoring in bed, her empty glass on the floor next to her bed; about Linda and Pope, Linda and Pope.

I hated the Pope more and more. A man can smile and smile and be a villain. Ruthless, treacherous, lustful and cruel villain. What exactly do the words mean? He only knew half. But his magic was strong and he kept rumbling in her head, and somehow it was as if he had never hated Pope before; he never really hated him because he was never able to tell how much he hated him. But now he had these words, these words like drums and singing and magic. Those words and the strange, strange story from which they were taken (he couldn't understand anything, but he was wonderful, wonderful all the same)—gave her a reason to hate Pope; and they made his hatred more real; they even made Pope himself more real.

One day, when he was returning from the game, the door to the inner room was open and he saw them lying in bed together, sleeping: Linda white and Pope almost black beside her, one arm under her shoulders and the other dark hand. above her. she. her chest, and one of her long hair braids falling down her throat like a black snake trying to strangle her. The pumpkin and a glass of Potato were on the floor next to the bed. Linda was snoring.

His heart seemed to have disappeared and left a hole. He was empty. Empty, cold, a little nauseating and dizzy. He leaned against the wall to steady himself. Unapologetically, treacherous, lustful… Like drums, like men singing to corn, like magic, the words played over and over again in his head. Because of the cold, she suddenly became hot. Her cheeks burned with the rush of blood, the room spinning and darkening before her eyes. She gritted her teeth. 'I'm going to kill him, I'm going to kill him, I'm going to kill him,' she said. And suddenly there were more words.

When he's drunk asleep, or in his rage
Or in the incestuous pleasure of your bed...

Magic was on his side, magic explained and commanded. She returned to the outer room. 'When he's drunk sleeping...' The steak knife was lying on the floor near the fireplace. She took it and tiptoed to the door again. 'When he's sleeping drunk, sleeping drunk...' he ran across the room and stabbed—oh, the blood! , insured and - alas, alas! -twisted he couldn't move, he was trapped, and there were Pope's little black eyes, very close, staring at him. He looked away. There were two cuts on Pope's left shoulder. Oh, look at the blood! Linda was crying. Look at the blood! He could never bear the sight of blood. Pope raised his other hand, to hit him, he thought. He stiffened to take the blow. But his hand only caught him under his chin and turned his face so that he had to meet Pope's eyes again. For a long time, for hours and hours. And all of a sudden, he couldn't help it, he started crying. The Pope laughed. 'Go,' he said, in other Indian words. 'Go, my brave Ahaiyuta.' He ran into the other room to hide the tears from him.

"You are fifteen years old," said old Mitsima, in Indian words. Now I can teach you how to work clay.

Crouching at the river's edge, they worked together.

“First,” Mitsima said, taking a piece of wet clay between her hands, “we make a little moon. The old man squeezed the hole into a disk, then tucked the ends in; the moon became a shallow cup.

Slowly and without skill, he imitated the old man's delicate gestures.

'A moon, a cup and now a snake.' Mitsima rolled another piece of clay into a long flexible cylinder, formed it into a circle, and pressed it against the rim of the cup. 'Then another snake. And other. And other.' Turn by turn, Mitsima built the sides of the pot; it was narrow, swollen, narrowing again toward the neck. Mitsima squeezed and patted, stroked and scratched; and there she was at last, shaped like the familiar Malpais pitcher, but creamy white instead of black, and still smooth to the touch. Mitsima's twisted parody, her own, stood next to her. Looking at the two pots, she had to laugh.

"But the next one will be better," he said, and started dipping another lump of clay.

Shaping, shaping, feeling her fingers gain skill and power, gave her extraordinary pleasure. 'A, B, C, Vitamin D', he sang to himself as he worked, 'The fat is in the liver, the cod is in the sea.' And Mitsima sang too - a song about killing a bear. They worked all day, and all day he was filled with an intense and absorbing happiness.

'Next winter,' said old Mitsima, 'I will teach you to make the bow.'

I was away from home for a long time; and finally the internal ceremonies ended. The door opened; they will come out Kothlu arrived first, his right hand outstretched and clenched tightly, as if he rested on a precious jewel. With her closed hand outstretched as well, Kiakimé followed her. They walked in silence, and in silence, behind them, came the brothers and sisters and cousins ​​and the whole troop of elders.

They left the town, crossed the table. They stopped at the edge of the cliff, facing the morning sun. Kothlu opened his hand. A pinch of cornmeal lay white in his palm; he blew on it, muttered a few words and then threw it, a handful of white powder, towards the sun. Kiakimé did the same. Then Kakimé's father stepped forward and, holding a feathered prayer stick, said a long prayer and threw the stick after the cornmeal.

"It is finished," said old Mitsima aloud. 'They are married.'

“Well,” said Linda, as they walked away, “all I can say is that it seems like a lot of fuss to do so little. In civilized countries, when a boy loves a girl, he just... But where?it isWill you do it, John?

He paid no attention to her call but ran, far, far away, anywhere to be alone.

It's over. Old Mitsima's words replayed in her mind. It's over, it's over... Silently and from afar, but violently, desperately, desperately, she had loved Kakimé. And now it's over. She was sixteen years old.

On the full moon, on the Kiva Antelope, secrets would be told, secrets would be created and carried. They went down, boys, to the kiva and came out again, men. The boys were all scared and impatient at the same time. And finally came the day. The sun has set, the moon has risen. He left with the others. The men stood in the dark at the entrance to the kiva; the stairway descended into the red-lit depths. The boys in front had already started to descend. Suddenly one of the men stepped forward, grabbed his arm, and led him out of the ranks. He broke free and returned to his place among the others. This time the man hit him, pulled his hair. "Not for you, white hair!" "Not for the son of a bitch," said one of the other men. The boys laughed. 'Go!' And while still hovering on the fringes of the group, 'Come on!' the men yelled again. One of them bent down, picked up a stone and threw it. 'Go! Go! Go!' There was a rain of stones. Bleeding, he fled into the darkness. From the red-lit kiva came the sound of singing. The last of the boys had come down the stairs. he was alone.

Alone, outside the town, on the bare plain of the table. The rock looked like bones bleached in the moonlight. In the valley, the coyotes howled at the moon. The bruises ached, the cuts still bled; but it was not from pain that she cried; it was because he was alone, because he had been thrown, alone, into this skeletal world of rock and moonlight. At the edge of the cliff he sat down. The moon was behind him; he looked at the black shadow on the table, the black shadow of death. He only had to take one step, one small jump... He stretched out his right hand to the moonlight. From the cut on his wrist, blood was still oozing. Every few seconds a drop fell, dark, almost colorless in the fading light. Let go, let go, let go. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...

He had discovered Time, Death and God.

"Alone, always alone," said the young man.

The words echoed plaintively in Bernard's mind. Just, just... 'Me too,' he said, in a burst of confidence. "Terribly lonely."

'You are?' John seemed surprised. “I thought the Other Place… I mean, Linda always said that no one was alone there.

Bernard flushed uncomfortably. “You know,” he said, muttering and looking away, “I guess I'm quite different from most people. If one chooses otherwise...'

'Yes, that's it.' The young man agreed. 'If someone is different, he will surely feel lonely. They are bestial for one. You know, they excluded me from absolutely everything? When the other boys were sent to spend the night in the mountains, you know, when you have to dream about your sacred animal, they wouldn't let me go with the others; They didn't tell me any of the secrets. But I did it myself,” he added. 'I didn't eat anything for five days and then I went out one night alone to those mountains over there.' He pointed.

Condescendingly, Bernard smiled. "And did you dream of something?" he asked her.

The other agreed. "But I shouldn't say what." She was silent for a while; then, in a low voice, 'Once,' he continued, 'I did something none of the others did: I stood against a rock in the middle of the day, in the summer, with my arms outstretched, like Jesus at the cross.'

"What the hell for?"

“I wanted to know what it was like to be crucified. Hanging there in the sun...'

'But why?'

'Why? Well…she hesitated. “Because I felt that I had to. If Jesus could take it. And then, if someone did something wrong... Besides, I was unhappy; that was another reason.

"Sounds like a fun way to cure your unhappiness," Bernard said. But thinking about it, he decided that it did make some sense after all.soma....

"I passed out after a while," the young man said. 'He fell flat on his face. Do you see the mark where I cut myself? He brushed his thick blond hair off his forehead. His scar was visible, pale and wrinkled, on his right temple.

Bernard looked and then quickly, with a little shudder, looked away. His conditioning had made him less pitiful than deeply sensitive. The mere suggestion of illness or injury was not only horrible, but even repulsive and disgusting. Like dirt, deformity or old age. Quickly, he changed the subject.

Would you like to come back to London with us? he asked, taking the first step in a campaign whose strategy he had been developing in secret since, in the little house, he realized who would be the 'father' of this savage young man. "Would you like that?"

The young man's face lit up. 'Does he really mean that?'

'Of course; if they give me permission, I mean.

- Beautiful too?

'Well...' he hesitated doubtfully. That disgusting creature! No, it was impossible. Unless, unless... It suddenly occurred to Bernard that his own rebellion might be to his great advantage. 'But it's clear!' he exclaimed, offsetting his first hesitancy with an excess of boisterous sympathy.

The young man took a deep breath. And to think that it should come true, what I have dreamed of all my life. Do you remember what Miranda said?

"Who is Miranda?"

But the young man evidently did not hear the question. 'O wonder!' he was saying; and his eyes were shining, his face was flushed. How many pleasant creatures are here! How beautiful is humanity! The blush suddenly deepened; he thought of Lenina, of an angel dressed in bottle-green viscose, gleaming with youth and nourishment for the skin, plump, smiling benevolently. His voice trembled. 'Oh, brave new world,' he began, but suddenly he stopped; blood had left his cheeks; he was pale as a sheet. "Are you married to her?" he asked him.

'It's me?'

'Married. You know, forever. They say "forever" in Indian words; it cannot be broken.

"Ford, no!" Bernard couldn't help but laugh.

John laughed too, but for a different reason: he laughed with sheer joy.

"Oh, brave new world," he repeated. 'Oh, brave new world that has such people in it. Let's get started right away.

"You have a very peculiar way of speaking sometimes," Bernard said, looking at the young man in puzzlement and astonishment. "And anyway, wouldn't it be better to wait until you actually see the new world?"

Chapter IX

Lenina felt entitled, after that day of strangeness and horror, to a complete and utter vacation. As soon as she returned to the nursing home, she swallowed six half-gram pills.soma, he lay down on his bed and in ten minutes he had embarked for lunar eternity. It would be at least eighteen hours before she returned in time.

Bernard, however, was pensive and wide-eyed in the dark. It was well past midnight when he fell asleep. Long after midnight; but his vigilance had not been in vain; he had a plan.

Promptly the next morning, at ten o'clock, the octopus in the green uniform descended from his helicopter. Bernard was waiting for him among the agaves.

'Miss Crowne is gonesoma-holidays,' he explained. I can hardly be back before five. Which leaves us seven hours.

He could fly to Santa Fe, do all the business he needed to do, and be back in Malpais long before she woke up.

"Will she be safe here alone?"

"Safe as a helicopter," the octoroon assured him.

They got on the machine and left immediately. At half past ten they landed on the roof of the Santa Fe Post Office; at 10:37 Bernard managed to reach the World Comptroller's Office in Whitehall; at ten thirty-nine he was talking to his Fordship's fourth personal secretary; at ten forty-four he repeated his story to the first secretary, and at half past ten forty-seven it was the deep, resonant voice of Mustapha Mond himself that resounded in his ears.

"I ventured to think," Bernard stammered, "that your ship at Ford might find the subject of sufficient scientific interest..."

"Yes, I think it's of scientific interest enough," the deep voice said. “Bring these two individuals back to London with you.

'Your Ford knows I'll need a special license...'

“The necessary orders,” Mustapha Mond said, “are being sent to the Director of the Reserve at the moment. You will immediately go to the Principal's Office. Good morning Mr. Marx.

There was silence. Bernard hung up the phone and ran to the roof.

"Headmaster's office," he told the gamma-green octuard.

At ten fifty-four, Bernard shook the director's hand.

"Delighted, Mr. Marx, delighted." The boom from him was respectful. 'We just received special orders...'

"I know," Bernard said, cutting him off. He was talking to his Ford on the phone just now. His bored tone suggested that he was in the habit of talking to his ship at a ford every day of the week. He fell into a chair. — Make all necessary arrangements as soon as possible. As soon as possible,” he repeated emphatically. He was having a lot of fun.

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

"Bye," he said paternally to the Director, who had followed him to the elevator doors. 'So long.'

He crossed the hotel, showered, massaged himself with a vibrovac and shaved with electrolytes, listened to the morning news, watched television for half an hour, had a leisurely lunch, and at two-thirty he flew with the octoroon to Malpaís.

The young man was outside the nursing home.

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

Silent in her deerskin loafers, she climbed the steps and tried the door. The door was closed.

They left! Lost! It was the most terrible thing that has ever happened to you. She asked him to come see them, and now they're gone. She sat on the steps and cried.

Half an hour later, it occurred to him to look out the window. The first thing she saw was a green suitcase with the initials L.C. painted on the lid. Joy burned like fire inside her. She picked up a stone. Broken glass clinked on the floor. A moment later, she was inside the room. She opened the green suitcase; and suddenly he was breathing in Lenina's scent, filling her lungs with her essential being. Her heart was beating wildly; for a moment she almost fainted. Then, leaning over the precious box, he touched it, held it up to the light, examined it. The zippers on Lenina's replacement viscose corduroy shorts were a puzzle at first and then, solved, a delight. zip and then zip; zip and then zip; he was delighted. Her green slippers were the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in her life. He unfolded a pair of zippered bikinis, blushed, and quickly put them away; but he kissed a scented acetate scarf and wrapped a scarf around her neck. Opening a box, he spilled out a cloud of scented powder. Her hands were floured with the thing. He wiped them on his chest, his shoulders, his bare arms. Delicious perfumes! He closed his eyes; he rubbed his cheek against her powdered arm. Touch of soft skin on her face, scent of musky powder in her nostrils: the real presence of her. "Lenina," he whispered. "Lenina!"

A noise made him start, made him feel guilty. He put his loot in the trunk and closed the lid; then he listened again, looked. No signs of life, no sound. And yet he certainly heard something, something like a sigh, something like the creak of a board. He tiptoed to the door, opening it carefully to find himself looking out onto a wide landing. On the opposite side of the landing was another door ajar. He got out, pushed, looked.

There, on a low bed, with the sheet thrown back, dressed in pink one-piece pajamas, was Lenina, sound asleep and so beautiful in her curls, so touchingly childlike with her pink fingers and face. confident in the impotence of her limp hands and melted limbs that tears came to her eyes.

With a host of totally unnecessary precautions, since nothing short of a pistol shot could have thrown Lenina out of hersoma- holiday before the appointed time - entered the room, knelt on the floor by the bed. He looked, clasped his hands, moved his lips. 'Here,' she murmured,

'Your eyes, your hair, your face, your walk, your voice;
Drive in your speech, oh! that his hand
In whose comparison all whites are ink
Writing your own reproach; whose sweet apprehension
The fall of the swan is hard...'

A fly buzzed around him; he walked away. 'Flies,' he recalled,

'In the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand, may grasp
And steal the immortal blessing from your lips,
that, even in pure and vestal modesty,
They still blush, thinking that their own kissing is a sin.

Very slowly, with the hesitant gesture of someone reaching out to pet a shy and possibly quite dangerous bird, he reached out his hand. I stood there trembling, an inch from those limp fingers, on the brink of contact. Did she dare her? Dare to desecrate with the most unworthy hand that... No, you didn't. The bird was very dangerous. Her hand fell back. How beautiful she was! That beautiful!

Then, suddenly, she found herself reflecting that all she had to do was grab the zipper around her neck and give it a long, hard pull... She closed her eyes, shook her head like a dog pricking up its ears. of the water. Nasty thought! He was ashamed of himself. Pure and vestal modesty...

There was a buzz in the air. Another fly trying to steal Immortal Blessings? A wasp? She looked, she saw nothing. The hum grew louder and louder, locating outside the closed windows. The plane! In a panic, she got up and ran into the other room, jumped out of the open window, and running down the path between the tall agaves, was just in time to meet Bernard Marx as he was descending from the helicopter.

Chapter X

The hands of the four thousand electric clocks in the four thousand rooms of the Bloomsbury Center mark two twenty-seven. "This hive of industry," as the director liked to call it, was in full swing. Everybody was busy, everything in orderly movement. Under the microscopes, with their long tails whipping furiously, the spermatozoa buried their heads in the ova; and, fertilized, the eggs expanded, divided, or, if bokanovskified, budded and fragmented into whole populations of separate embryos. From the Room of Social Predestination the escalators thundered down to the basement, and there, in the crimson darkness, sweltering hot on their peritoneal cushion and gorged on blood substitutes and hormones, the fetuses grew and grew or, poisoned, they withered into an abyss. Epsilon state atrophied. With a faint hum and rattle, the moving shelves slid imperceptibly through the recapping weeks and eons to where, in the Decanting Room, the freshly unbottled babies let out their first gasp of horror and amazement.

The dynamos purred in the basement, the elevators went up and down. In the eleven floors of the nurseries it was time to eat. Of 1,800 feeding bottles, 1,800 carefully labeled babies simultaneously sucked their liter of pasteurized external secretion.

Above them, in ten successive layers of dormitories, the boys and girls still young enough to need afternoon sleep were as busy, though they did not know it, as everyone else, unconsciously listening to hypnopaedic lessons on hygiene and sociability. in class consciousness. and the love life of the child. Above them, again, were the arcades where, after it started to rain, nine hundred older children had fun with bricks and clay, zipper hunting, and erotic games.

Buzz Buzz! the hive hummed, busy, happy. Joyful was the song of the girls over their test-tubes, the Predestinators whistled as they worked, and in the Decanting Room what glorious jokes were told about empty bottles! But the Director's face, when he entered the Fertilizing Room with Henry Foster, was serious, hard with severity.

"A public example," he was saying. “In this room, because it contains more high caste workers than any other in the Center. I told him to meet me here at half past two.

"He does his job very well," added Henry, with hypocritical generosity.

'I know. But that's one more reason for gravity. His intellectual eminence carries with it corresponding moral responsibilities. The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to deceive. It is better for one to suffer than for many to be corrupted. Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you'll see that no offense is as egregious as unorthodox behavior. Murder kills only the individual, and what is an individual anyway? With a sweeping gesture, he indicated the rows of microscopes, the test tubes, the incubators. 'We can make a new one with the greatest of ease, as many as we want. Heterodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; attack the Society itself. Yes, in the Society itself, ”he repeated. 'Ah, but here it comes.'

Bernard had entered the room and was making his way through the rows of fertilizer toward them. A look of cheerful self-confidence barely masked his nervousness. The voice with which he said 'Good morning, Director' was absurdly too loud; The one where, correcting his mistake, she said, 'You asked me to come talk to you here,' ridiculously soft, a shriek.

"Yes, Mr. Marx," said the director solemnly. “I asked you to come here. You came back from vacation last night, I understand.

"Yes," Bernardo replied.

'Yes-s', the Director repeated, lingering, a snake, on the 's'. Then suddenly raising his voice, 'Ladies and gentlemen,' he trumpeted, 'Ladies and gentlemen.'

The singing of the girls over their test tubes, the worried whistling of the microscopists suddenly ceased. There was a deep silence; they all looked around.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' the director repeated once more, 'I apologize for interrupting your work. A painful duty constrains me. The security and stability of the Society are in danger. Yes, in danger, ladies and gentlemen. This man" - he pointed accusingly at Bernard - "this man who stands here in front of you, this Alpha-Plus to whom so much has been given and from whom, consequently, so much is to be expected, this colleague of yours... Or? Should I anticipate and say this old colleague? - rudely betrayed the trust placed in him. Because of his heretical views on sport andsoma, by the scandalous unorthodoxy of his sexual life, by his refusal to obey the teachings of Our Ford and to behave outside office hours "like a baby in a bottle"' (here the director made the T sign), 'has shown to be an enemy of Society, a subverter, ladies and gentlemen, of all Order and Stability, a conspirator against Civilization itself. That is why I propose to dismiss him, dismiss him with ignominy from the position he held in this Center; I propose to immediately request his transfer to a sub-center of the first order and, so that his sanction serves the best interest of the Society, as far away as possible from any major Population Center. In Iceland he will have little opportunity to lead others astray by his rude example. The director paused; then, folding his arms, he turned impressively to Bernard. 'Marx,' he said, 'can you show me any reason why I should not now carry out the judgment I have passed on you?'

"Yes, I can," Bernard replied very loudly.

Somewhat surprised, but still majestic, 'Then show,' said the Director.

'Surely. But she is in the pass. Just a moment.' Bernard ran to the door and opened it. "Come in," he commanded, and reason entered and showed itself.

There was a gasp, a murmur of shock and horror; shouted a young woman; Climbing up on a chair to get a better look, someone knocked over two test tubes full of sperm. Puffy, flabby, and among those firm, youthful bodies, those stolid faces, a strange and terrifying middle-aged monster, Linda strode into the room, smiling flirtatiously with her broken, pale smile, and rolling as she walked, her what was . It's supposed to be a voluptuous swell, her huge hips. Bernard walked next to her.

"There it is," he said, pointing at the director.

"Did you think I didn't recognize you?" Linda asked indignantly; then, turning to the director, 'Of course she knew him; Tomakin, I should have met you anywhere in a thousand. But maybe you forgot me. You do not remember? Don't you remember, Tomakin? You're cute. She stared at him, head cocked, still smiling, but with a smile that grew steadily larger as the headmaster's expression of petrified disgust, less and less sure of himself, wavered and finally faded. "Don't you remember, Tomakin?" she repeated herself with a shaky voice. Her eyes were anxious, agonized. Her blotchy, drooping face contorted grotesquely in a grimace of extreme pain. "Tomakin!" She spread her arms. Someone started laughing.

'What is the meaning,' the Director began, 'of this monstrous...'

"Tomáquim!" He rushed forward, her blanket trailing behind her, throwing his arms around her neck and burying his face in her chest.

A burst of irrepressible laughter broke out.

'...this monstrous practical joke,' exclaimed the director.

Red in the face, he tried to wriggle out of her embrace. She clung desperately. 'But I am Linda, I am Linda.' Laughter drowned out her voice. “You made me have a baby,” he yelled at her over the ruckus. There was a sudden and terrible silence; her eyes drifted uncomfortably, not knowing where to look. The Headmaster suddenly turned pale, stopped struggling, and stood with his hands on her wrists, looking at her in horror. 'Yes, a baby-and I was her mother.' He cast obscenity as a challenge to outraged silence; then she, suddenly turning away from him, embarrassed, embarrassed, she covered her face with her hands, sobbing. It wasn't my fault, Tomakin. Because I always did my exercise, right? I did not do it? Always... I don't know how... If you knew how terrible you are, Tomakin... But he was a comfort to me, just the same. Turning to the door, 'John!' she called. 'John!'

He immediately entered, stood for a moment near the door, looked about him, then, on his soft moccasin feet, hurried across the room, knelt in front of the director, and said in a clear voice: 'My father! '

The word (because 'father' was not so obscene as - with its connotation of something far removed from hatred and the moral obliquity of childbearing - simply disgusting, a scatological impropriety rather than a pornographic one), the comically obscene word assuaged what had been felt. become intolerable. strain. Laughter broke out, huge, almost hysterical, laugh after laugh, as if it would never stop. My father, and he was the director! Mepai!Oh Ford, oh Ford! This was also very good. The screams and roars were renewed, the faces seemed about to collapse, the tears flowed. Six more test tubes of sperm were knocked over. Mepai!

Pale, wide-eyed, the director looked around in an agony of bewildered humiliation.

Mipai!The laughter, which was already showing signs of ceasing, resumed with more force than ever. She covered her ears with her hands and ran out of the room.

Chapter XI

After the scene in the Fertilization Room, the entire London upper caste went berserk at the sight of this delicious creature who fell to their knees before the Director of Hatchery and Conditioning, or rather the former Director, because the poor fellow resigned immediately afterward and never set foot. inside the Center again- fell down and called him (the joke was almost too good to be true!) 'my dad'. Linda, by contrast, cut through the noise; no one had the least desire to see Linda. To say that someone was a mother, this was more than a joke: it was obscenity. Besides, she wasn't a true savage, she was out of a bottle and conditioned like everyone else: so she didn't get really weird ideas. Finally, and this was by far the strongest reason why people didn't want to see poor Linda, there was her appearance. Fat; to have lost youth; with bad teeth, mottled skin, and that figure (Ford!), you just couldn't look at her without feeling dizzy, yes, positively dizzy. So the best people were pretty determined.noto see Linda. And Linda, for her part, didn't want to see them. The return to civilization was for her the return tosoma, was being able to lie in bed and take vacation after vacation, never having a headache or a bout of vomiting, never feeling like you always did afterward.peyotl, like you've done something so embarrassingly antisocial that you'll never be able to raise your head again.somaplayed none of these nasty tricks. The vacation he gave was perfect, and if the next morning was unpleasant, he was not intrinsically unpleasant, but only in comparison with the joys of the vacation. The remedy was to make the vacation continuous. Greedily, she clamored for larger and more frequent doses. Doctor Shaw initially objected; so he let her have what he wanted. He was taking up to twenty grams a day.

"Which will kill her in a month or two," the doctor confided to Bernard. 'One day the respiratory center will be paralyzed. There is no more breathing. Finish. And a good thing too. If we could rejuvenate, of course it would be different. But we can not.

Surprisingly, as everyone thought (because insoma-Holiday Linda was more conveniently out of the way), John raised objections.

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

"In a sense, yes," Dr. Shaw admitted. "But in another we're really stretching it." The young man stared, not understanding. 'somait can make you lose a few years in time - continued the doctor. But think of the enormous and immeasurable durations it can give you out of time. Everysoma-holidays are a bit of what our ancestors called eternity.'

Juan began to understand. "Eternity was on our lips and eyes," he murmured.

'¿Eh?'

'Not a thing,'

“Of course,” Dr. Shaw continued, “you can't let people go off to eternity if they have serious work to do. But since he doesn't have any serious work...'

"Still," John insisted, "I don't think it's right."

The doctor shrugged. 'Of course, if you prefer her to be angry all the time...'

In the end, John was forced to relent. I understoodsomaFrom then on she was in her little room on the thirty-seventh floor of Bernard's apartment building, in bed, with the radio and television always on, and the patchouli faucet dripping, and thesomapills at your fingertips - there it stayed; and yet she was not there, she was always far away, infinitely far away, on vacation; vacationing in some other world, where the music on the radio was a maze of sonorous colors, a slippery, throbbing maze that led (by what marvelously inescapable turns) to a scintillating center of utter conviction; where the dancing images of the television box were the performers in an indescribably delicious sung sentiment; where the dripping patchouli was more than a perfume: it was the sun, it was a million sexes, it was the Pope making love, only much more, incomparably more, and without end.

'No, we can't rejuvenate. But I am very happy,' concluded Dr. Shaw, 'to have had the opportunity to see an example of senility in a human being. Thank you very much for calling me. He warmly shook Bernard's hand.

It was John, so they were all behind. And since only through Bernard, his accredited guardian, could John be seen, Bernard now found himself, for the first time in his life, treated not just normally but as a person of great importance. There was no more talk of alcohol in his blood substitute, no more mocking of his personal appearance. Henry Foster did his best to be friendly; Benito Hoover gave her six packs of sex hormone gum; the predestinator's assistant came and almost abjectly asked for an invitation to one of Bernardo's soirees. As for women, Bernard had only to suggest the possibility of an invitation, and he could have any he wanted.

"Bernard asked me to meet Savage next Wednesday," Fanny announced triumphantly.

"I'm so glad," Lenina said. And now you must admit that you were wrong about Bernard. Don't you think he is very sweet?

Fanny agreed. "And I must say," she said, "I was pleasantly surprised."

The head bottler, the director of predestination, three assistant general assistants for fertilizers, the Feelies professor in the College of Emotional Engineering, the dean of the Westminster Community Song Hall, the supervisor of Bokanovskification: Bernard's list of notables was endless.

"And I had six girls last week," she confided to Helmholtz Watson. 'One on Monday, two on Tuesday, two more on Friday and one on Saturday. And if I had the time or the inclination, there were at least a dozen more who were very eager...'

Helmholtz listened to her boast in a silence so wistfully disapproving that Bernard was offended.

"You're jealous," he said.

Helmholtz shook his head. "I'm pretty sad, that's all," he replied.

Bernard stormed off. Never, he told himself, he would never speak to Helmholtz again.

The days passed. Success went to Bernard's head, and in the process he completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicant should) with a world he had, until then, found very unsatisfying. To the extent that he recognized it as important, the order of things was good. But, reconciled to his success, he still refused to give up the privilege of criticizing that order. Because the act of criticizing increased his sense of importance, it made him feel bigger. Besides, he really believed that there were things to criticize. (At the same time, he was genuinely enjoying success and having all the girls he wanted.) To those who now, for the Savage's sake, courted him, Bernard exhibited a grim unorthodoxy. He was politely listened to. But behind him people were shaking their heads. 'That youth will end badly,' they said, prophesying with more confidence because they themselves, in due time, would personally see that the end ended badly. "You won't find another Savage to help you a second time," they said. Meanwhile, however, there was the first Savage; they were polite. And because they were polite, Bernard felt positively gigantic, gigantic and at the same time light with joy, lighter than air.

"Lighter than air," Bernard said, pointing up.

Like a pearl in the sky, high above them, the tethered balloon of the Weather Department glowed pink in the sun.

'...said Savage,' Bernard's instructions read, 'to be shown civilized life in all its aspects...'

Right now he was getting a bird's eye view of her, a bird's eye view of the platform of the Charing-T Tower. The stationmaster and the resident meteorologist acted as guides. But it was Bernard who spoke the most. Inebriated, he behaved as if he were, at the very least, a visiting world controller. Lighter than air.

The Bombay Green Rocket fell from the sky. The passengers disembarked. Eight identical Dravidian twins in khakis peered out of the cabin's eight portholes: the butlers.

"A thousand miles an hour," said the stationmaster impressively. "What do you think of that, Mr. Wild?

John thought it was really cool. "Still," he said, "Ariel could put a belt around the earth in forty minutes."

'The Savage', Bernard wrote in his report to Mustapha Mond, 'shows surprisingly little wonder or wonder at civilized inventions. subway----.'

(Mustapha Mond frowned. 'Does the idiot think I'm too squeamish to see the full written word?')

'In part, his interest is concentrated in what he calls 'the soul', which he persists in considering as an entity independent of the physical environment; whereas, as I tried to show you...'

The Controller skipped over the next few sentences and was about to turn the page in search of something more interesting and concrete, when his eyes caught on a rather extraordinary series of sentences. '...though I must admit,' he read to him, 'that I agree with the Savage in finding civilized childhood too easy, or, as he puts it, not costly enough; and I would like to take this opportunity to draw Ford's attention to him to...'

Mustapha Mond's anger gave way almost immediately to joy. The thought of this creature solemnly rebuking him...dele- On the social order it was really very grotesque. The man must have gone mad. 'I should teach you a lesson,' he told himself; then he threw his head back and laughed out loud. For the moment, at least, the lesson would not be taught.

It was a small helicopter light fixture factory, a branch of the Electrical Equipment Corporation. They were received on the roof itself (because that circular letter of recommendation from the Controller had magical effects) by the Chief Technician and the Manager of the Human Element. They went down the stairs to the factory.

'Each process', explained the Human Element Manager, 'is carried out, as far as possible, by a single Bokanovsky Group'.

And indeed, eighty-three near-nosed black brachycephalic Deltas were cold-pressed. The fifty-six four-spindle drilling and turning machines were being manned by fifty-six red-headed, aquiline Gammas. One hundred and seven thermally conditioned Epsilon Senegalese worked in the foundry. Thirty-three Delta females, long-headed, sandy, narrow-pelvised, and all within 20 millimeters of 1 meter 69 centimeters tall, were cutting bolts. In the assembly room, two sets of Gamma-Plus dwarfs were assembling the dynamos. The two low tables faced each other; between them dragged the transporter with its load of spare parts; forty-seven blonde heads faced off against forty-seven brunettes. Forty-seven snobs for forty-seven hooks; forty-seven receding for forty-seven protuberant wattles. The completed mechanisms were inspected by eighteen curly redheaded girls in gamma green, packed into boxes by thirty-four short-legged, left-handed Delta-Minus and loaded onto the waiting trucks and vans by sixty-three blue-eyed blondes. , freckled epsilons. Semi-idiots.

"Oh, Brave New World..." Through some malice of his memory, the Savage found himself repeating Miranda's words. 'Oh, brave new world to have people like that.'

“And I guarantee you,” concluded the Human Elements Manager, upon leaving the factory, “we almost never have problems with our workers. We always find...'

But the Savage suddenly broke away from his companions and vomited violently behind a laurel tree, as if the solid earth were a helicopter in an air pocket.

"The Savage," wrote Bernard, "refuses tosoma, and seems very distressed that the woman Linda, his m ----, remains permanently on vacation. It should be noted that despite his mother's senility and the extreme disgust of her appearance, the Savage goes to see her frequently and seems to be very attached to her, an interesting example of the way early conditioning can be done to modify and even go against natural impulses (in this case, the impulse to recoil from an unpleasant object).'

At Eton, they landed on the roof of the High School. Opposite the School Yard, the fifty-two stories of Lupton's Tower gleamed white in the sun. The school on the left and, on the right, the Corner of the School Community raised their venerable piles of reinforced concrete and glass vita. In the center of the courtyard stood the ancient chrome-steel statue of Nuestro Vado.

Doctor Gaffney, Dean and Miss. Keate, the Director, greeted us when they got off the plane.

'Do you have many twins here?' asked the Savage, a bit apprehensive, as they headed for the inspection.

"Oh no," replied the dean. 'Eton is reserved exclusively for boys and girls of higher castes. One egg, one adult. This makes education more difficult, of course. But since they will be required to take responsibility and deal with unexpected emergencies, there is no way around it. The sigh.

Bernard, meanwhile, had a strong attraction to Mrs. Keate. "If you're free Monday, Wednesday, or Friday night," she'd say. "He's curious, you know," Bernard added, jerking a thumb at the Savage.

Miss Keate smiled (and her smile was really lovely, he thought); she said thank you; She would be delighted to attend one of your parties. Cato stopped before a door.

Five minutes in that Alpha-Double-Plus classroom left John a little confused.

'Whatit iselementary relativity? he whispered to Bernard. Bernard tried to explain, then thought better of it and suggested they go to another classroom.

Behind a door in the hallway that led to the Beta-Minus Geography classroom, a booming soprano voice called out, "One, two, three, four," and then, with tired impatience, "How were you?"

“Malthusian exercise,” the headmistress explained. “Most of our girls are freemartins, of course. I myself am a freemartin. She smiled at Bernardo. "But we have about eight hundred unsterilized that need constant drilling."

In the Beta-Minus geography room, John learned that 'a nature reserve is a place that, due to unfavorable climatic or geological conditions, or the poverty of natural resources, has not been worth the cost of civilization.' One click; the room was dark; and suddenly, on the screen above the Master's head, thepenitentsof Acoma prostrating themselves before Our Lady and wailing as Juan heard them wail, confessing their sins before Jesus on the cross, before the image of the eagle of Pookong. The young Etonians roared with laughter. still mourningpenitentsthey got up, stripped off their upper garments and, with whips tied together, began to beat each other, blow after blow. Redoubled, the laughter muffled even the amplified register of her moans.

'But why are they laughing?' asked the Savage in painful bewilderment.

'Why?' The dean turned to him with a wide smile on his face.Why?But because it's extraordinarily fun.

In the cinematic twilight, Bernard risked a gesture that, in the past, even total darkness would not have encouraged him to make. Strong in his new importance, he slipped an arm around the headmistress's waist. He stubbornly gave up. He was about to get a kiss or two and maybe a gentle pinch when the blinds opened again.

"Maybe we'd better get on with it," said the young lady. Keate, and headed for the door.

"And this," said the dean a moment later, "is the hypnopedic control room."

Hundreds of synthetic music boxes, one for each bedroom, were arranged on shelves on three sides of the room; In the room were packed the reels of the soundtrack on which the various hypnopaedic lessons were printed.

"Put the roller here," Bernard explained, interrupting Dr. Gaffney, 'press this button...'

"No, this one," the dean corrected irritably.

"He then. The roll unrolls. Selenium cells transform light impulses into sound waves and...'

"And there it is," concluded Dr. Gaffney.

"Do they read Shakespeare?" asked the Savage as they walked, towards the Biochemistry Laboratories, past the School Library.

"Certainly not," the headmistress said, blushing.

"Our library," said Dr. Gaffney, 'contains only reference books. If four young people need distraction, they can get it in sensations. We do not encourage you to indulge in any solitary fun.

Five buses full of boys and girls, singing or in silent embrace, overtook them on the glazed road.

“Just got back,” Dr. Gaffney explained, while Bernard, in a whisper, made an appointment with the headmistress for the same evening, “from Slough Crematorium. Death conditioning begins at eighteen months. Everytot spends two mornings a week in a hospital for the dying. All the best toys are kept there and are given chocolate cream in their last days. They learn to take death for granted.

“Like any other physiological process,” the director said professionally.

Eight hours at the Savoy. Everything was fixed.

On the way back to London, they stopped at the Television Corporation factory in Brentford.

"Would you mind waiting here for a moment while I call?" asked Bernardo.

The Savage waited and watched. The main day shift was out of order. Crowds of low-caste workers lined up in front of the monorail station: seven or eight hundred Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon men and women, with no more than a dozen faces and sizes among them. ticket, the receptionist pushed a cardboard box. The long caterpillar of men and women inched forward.

'What's in them' (rememberingThe merchant of Venice), 'these coffins?' asked the Savage when Bernard joined him.

'The dayssomaration,” replied Bernard, somewhat indistinctly; because he was chewing a Benito Hoover gum. “They get paid after the job is done. Four half gram tablets. Six on Saturdays.

He took John's arm affectionately and they walked back to the helicopter.

Lenina entered the dressing room singing.

"You seem very pleased with yourself," said Fanny.

'UEinI'm glad,' she replied. I zip! Bernard called half an hour ago. Zip, zip! She took off her shorts. She has an unexpected engagement. I zip! She “asked me if she would take the Savage on the air tonight. I must fly. She hurried towards the bathroom.

"She's a lucky girl," Fanny said to herself as she watched Lenina go.

There was no envy in the comment; Fanny, in a good mood, was only stating a fact. leninaeralucky; fortunate to have shared with Bernard a generous portion of the Savage's immense celebrity, fortunate to reflect in his insignificant person the supremely elegant glory of the moment. Hadn't she been invited to the Aphroditaeum Club's annual dinner? She hadn't she she had already appeared on Feelytone News, visibly, audibly and tactically, before millions of people around the planet?

Hardly less flattering were the attentions paid to him by notable persons. The Second Secretary to the Resident World Controller invited her to dinner and breakfast. She had spent a weekend with the chief judge of Ford and another with the arch-actor of the Commonwealth of Canterbury. The president of the Corporation for Internal and External Secretions was always on the phone and had been in Deauville with the lieutenant governor of the Bank of Europe.

It's wonderful, of course. And yet, in a way I confessed to Fanny, I feel as if she was getting something under false pretenses. Because of course the first thing everyone wants to know is what it's like to make love to a savage. And I must say that I don't know. She shook her head. “Most men don't believe me, of course. But it is true. I wish it wasn't,” she added sadly and sighed. “He is incredibly handsome; Don't you think?

"But he doesn't like you?" Fanny asked.

“Sometimes I think yes and sometimes I think no. He always goes out of his way to avoid me; He leaves the room when I enter; it will not touch me; he doesn't even look at me. But sometimes, if I suddenly turn around, I catch him looking at me; and then... well, you know how men get when they like you.

Yes, Fanny knew.

"I can't understand," said Lenina.

She couldn't understand; and she was not only perplexed; I was also quite upset.

Because, you see, Fanny,UEAs the.'

I liked it more and more. Well, now there would be a real chance, she thought, as she perfumed herself after her shower. Dab, dab, dab: a real opportunity. Her good humor overflowed into songs.

'Hold me until I'm high, baby;
Kiss me until I go into a coma:
Hug me, dear cozy bunny;
love is as good assoma.'

The scent organ played a delicious, refreshing herbal Capriccio: undulating arpeggios of thyme and lavender, of rosemary, basil, myrtle, tarragon; a series of bold modulations through spicy shades of ambergris; and a slow return through sandalwood, camphor, cedar and freshly cut hay (with occasional subtle hints of discord - a whiff of kidney pudding, the faintest hint of pig manure) to the simple aromas with which the piece began. . The final burst of thyme died; there was a round of applause; the lights came on. On the synthetic music machine, the soundtrack reel began to unwind. It was an atrium for the hyperviolin, supercello, and substitute oboe that now filled the air with their pleasant languor. Thirty or forty bars, and then, against this instrumental backdrop, a voice far more than human began to warble; now guttural, now in the head, now hollow as a flute, now laden with eager harmonics, it passed effortlessly from Gaspard Forster's low register at the very limits of musical pitch to a hackneyed bat-note well above the highest C at that (in 1770, at the ducal opera in Parma and, to Mozart's amazement, Lucrezia Ajugari, unique among all female singers in history, once expressed herself penetratingly.

Submerged in their pneumatic compartments, Lenina and the Savage sniffed and listened. Now it was also the turn of the eyes and skin.

The lights in the house went out; the fiery letters stood out solid and as if they were supporting themselves in the dark.THREECEEKS EM UMHHELICOPTER.ANDnorteANDLL-Sup-SIN G,SSYNTHETICS-TALKING,CORIDO, STHEROSCOPICFEELY.CITHSSYNCEDSPENNY-ORGANANDPARTNER.

“Attach those metal knobs to the arms of your chair,” Lenina whispered. 'Otherwise, you won't get any of the sentient effects.'

The Savage did as he was told.

Those letters of fire, however, had disappeared; there were ten seconds of complete darkness; then suddenly, looking dazzling and incomparably more solid than they would have been in real flesh and blood, far more real than reality, came the stereoscopic images, embracing each other, of a gigantic black male and a young brachycephalic Beta-brachycephalic female. Plus golden hair. .

The Savage has begun. That feeling on the lips! She put her hand to her mouth; the excitement has ceased; let her hand fall on the metal doorknob; everything started again. Meanwhile, the scent organ exuded pure musk. Exhaling, a super pigeon from the soundtrack cooed 'Oo-oh'; and vibrating only thirty-two times a second, a bass deeper than the African replied: 'Aa-aah.' 'Ooh-ah! Ooh! the stereoscopic lips came together again, and once more the facial erogenous zones of the six thousand Alhambra spectators vibrated with an almost intolerable galvanic pleasure.

The plot of the movie was extremely simple. A few minutes after the first Ooh and Aah (a duet was sung and a little love was made on that famous bearskin, each thread of which - the Predestinator's Assistant was quite right - could be clearly separated and felt), the Black had an accident. by helicopter, he landed on his head. Boom! What a stitch in the forehead! a chorus ofHolamithere isgot up from the audience.

The shock removed all conditioning from the black in a cocked hat. He developed an exclusive and manic passion for the blonde Beta. she protested. He persisted. There were fights, chases, assaults on arrival, finally a sensational kidnapping. The blonde Beta was snatched up into the sky and held there, floating, for three weeks in a rampant anti-social environment.dear to dearwith the crazy black Finally, after a whole series of adventures and a lot of aerobatics, three beautiful young Alphas managed to rescue her from her. The black man was sent to an Adult Rehabilitation Center and the film ended happily and decorously, with the blonde Beta becoming the lover of the three saviors of hers. They paused momentarily to sing a synthetic quartet, with full super-orchestral accompaniment and gardenias on the fragrance organ. lips like a dying moth that quivers and quivers, weaker and weaker and weaker, and finally lies utterly, utterly still.

But for Lenina the moth did not completely die. Even after the lights came on, as they walked slowly with the crowd toward the elevators, her ghost still fluttered against her lips, still traced thin, shuddering paths of anxiety and pleasure across her skin. her breathing deepened. She seized the Savage's arm and pressed it limply against her body. He looked at her for a moment, pale, aching, wanting, and ashamed of her wanting. It wasn't dignified, no… Her eyes met for a moment. What treasures hers promised! The rescue of a queen's temper. She hastily looked away and released her trapped arm from hers. He was terribly terrified that she would stop being something he might feel unworthy of.

"I don't think you should look at it that way," she said, quick to blame any past or future lack of perfection in Lenina herself on the circumstances surrounding her.

"Things like what, John?"

'Like this awful movie.'

'Awful?' Lenina was really amazed. "But I thought she was adorable."

"It was vile," he said indignantly, "it was ignoble."

She shook her head. - I do not know what you mean. Why was it so weird? Why did she go out of her way to mess things up?

In the taxicopter, he barely looked at her. Bound by strong vows that were never spoken, obedient to laws that have long ceased to operate, he sat distant and silent. Sometimes, as if a finger had tightened a thread, almost breaking it, his whole body would shake with a sudden attack of nerves.

The taxicopter landed on the roof of Lenina's apartment building. 'Finally,' he thought exultantly as he got out of the cab. Finally, although heHe gotbeen so weird now. Standing under a lamp, she looked at herself in her hand mirror. Finally. if your noseeraa little shiny. He shook off the loose dust from his puff. While she paid for the taxi, she would only have time. She rubbed at the glitter, thinking, 'He's very handsome. There's no need for him to be shy like Bernard. And yet... Any other man would have done it long ago. Well finally That fragment of face in the small round mirror suddenly smiled at him.

"Good night," a strangled voice said from behind her. Lenina turned around. She was standing at the door of the taxi, her eyes fixed, fixed; she evidently had been watching all this time as she powdered her nose, waiting, but what? or doubting, trying to make up her mind, and all the time thinking, thinking, she couldn't imagine what extraordinary thoughts. "Good evening, Lenina," she repeated, and made an odd attempt at a grimace.

'But, John…I thought you were…I mean, right?…'

He closed the door and bent down to say something to the driver. The taxi was thrown into the air.

Looking out the window of the flat, the Savage could see Lenina's upturned face, pale in the bluish light of the lamps. Her mouth was open, she was calling. The reduced figure of her moved away from him; the shrinking square of the ceiling seemed to be falling into darkness.

Five minutes later, he was back in his room. From her hiding place he took out his mouse-gnawed volume, turned with religious care its stained and wrinkled pages, and began to read.Othello. Othello, remembered here, was like the hero ofThree weeks by helicopter--a black.

Wiping her eyes, Lenina crossed the roof to the elevator. On the way to the twenty-seventh floor, she pulled hersomabottle. One gram, she decided, would not be enough; hers had been an affliction of more than an ounce. But if you took two grams, you risked not waking up on time tomorrow morning. She relented and, into the cupped palm of her left hand, she waved three half-gram pills.

Chapter XII

Bernard had to shout through the closed door; the Savage would not open.

But everyone is there, waiting for you.

"Let them wait," the muffled voice answered through the door.

'But you know very well, John' (how hard it is to sound persuasive at the top of your lungs!), 'I purposely invited them to meet you'.

'You should have askedmimfirst if you wanted to knowthem.'

“But you always came first, John.

“That's exactly why I don't want to go back.

"Just to please me," Bernard yelled fawningly. Won't you come to please me?

'No.'

'You speak seriously?'

'Sim.'

Desperately, 'But what should I do?' Bernardo regretted it.

'He's going to hell!' shouted the exasperated voice from inside.

But the Canter of the Archfellowship of Canterbury is there tonight. Bernard was on the verge of tears.

'Oh yeah too!' It was only in Zuñi that the Savage was able to adequately express what he felt for the Arch-Fellowship Singer. '¡No!' directed as an afterthought; and then (with what mocking ferocity!):'Children that tse-ná.' And he spat on the ground, as Pope would have done.

At last Bernard had to drag himself, diminished, to his chambers and inform the impatient assembly that the Savage would not appear that night. The news was greeted with outrage. The men were furious at having been forced to behave politely to this insignificant individual of his unpleasant reputation and heretical views. The higher his position in the hierarchy, the deeper his resentment will be.

"To play such a trick on me," the arch-singer repeated, "inmim!'

As for the women, they were outraged that they had been deceived under false pretenses, by a miserable little man who had alcohol mistakenly poured into his bottle, by a creature with a Gamma-Minus physique. It was an outrage, and they said it louder and louder. The Eton headmistress was particularly scathing.

Lenina alone did not say anything. Pale, her blue eyes clouded with an unusual melancholy, she sat in a corner, cut off from those around her by an emotion they didn't share. She had come to the party filled with a strange sense of eager elation. 'In a few minutes,' she said to herself, as she entered the room, 'I'll see him, I'll talk to him, I'll tell him' (because he came with the decision made up) 'that I like him... more than anyone there has ever seen. known. And then maybe he'll say...

What would I say? Her blood had risen to her cheeks.

Why was he so strange the other night, after the forebodings? So weird. And yet, I'm pretty sure he really did like me. I'm sure...'

It was at this time that Bernard made his announcement; the Savage would not come to the party.

Suddenly, Lenina felt all the sensations one normally experiences at the beginning of a Violent Passion substitute treatment: a terrible emptiness, gasping apprehension, nausea. Her heart seemed to stop beating.

'Maybe it's because he doesn't like me,' she told herself. And immediately that possibility became an established certainty: John had refused to come because he didn't like her. he didn't like her...

'It really is a bitfurtherthick,' the Headmaster of Eton was telling the Director of Crematoria and Phosphorus Recovery. 'When I think that actually...'

'Yes,' said the voice of Fanny Crowne, 'it is absolutely true about alcohol. Someone I know knew someone who worked at the Embryo Store at the time. She told my friend, and my friend told me...'

"Too bad, too bad," said Henry Foster, sympathizing with Arch-Community-Songster. You might be interested to know that our old manager was about to transfer you to Iceland.

Pierced by each word spoken, the tight balloon of Bernard's happy self-confidence slipped through a thousand wounds. Pale, haggard, abject and agitated, he moved among the guests, muttering incoherent apologies, assuring them that next time the Savage would surely be there, begging them to sit down and have a carotene sandwich, a slice of vitamin A...crown, a glass of champagne substitute. They ate properly, but ignored him; they drank and were rude to him or talked to each other about him, loudly and offensively, as if he hadn't been there.

'And now, my friends,' said the cantor of the Archcommunity of Canterbury, in that beautiful booming voice with which he conducted the proceedings at Ford's Day celebrations, 'now, my friends, I think perhaps the time has come. ...' He got up, put down his glass, brushed the crumbs of a hearty meal from his purple viscose waistcoat, and headed for the door.

Bernard fired to intercept it.

'Do you really need it, Archcantor?... It's still too early. I was waiting for you...'

Yes, which he hadn't expected, when Lenina told him in confidence that the Arch-Fellowship Chanter would accept an invitation if he sent one. 'He's very, very sweet, you know?' And she had shown Bernard the little gold zipper the Archcantor had given her as a souvenir from last weekend at the Cantoria Diocesana.To meet the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury and Mr. Wild.Bernard had proclaimed his triumph at every invitation. But the Savage had chosen this night of all nights to lock himself in his room, to scream '¡No!' and even (it was lucky Bernard didn't understand Zuñi) 'No more!What should have been the highlight of Bernard's entire career turned out to be the moment of his greatest humiliation.

"I expected so much…" he repeated stammeringly, looking at the great dignitary with pleading, absent-minded eyes.

"My young friend," said the Archcanto of the Commonwealth in a high, solemn tone of sternness. there was a general silence. "Let me give you some advice." He pointed a finger at Bernard. "Before it's too late. Good advice." (Her voice of his turned sepulchral.) 'Amend your ways, my young friend, amend your ways.' She made the T sign over him and turned around. "Lenina, dear," he called in another tone. 'Come with me.'

Obediently, but without smiling and (utterly insensitive to the honor being done) without jubilation, Lenina followed him out of the room. The other guests followed at a respectful interval. The last of them closed the door. Bernardo was alone.

Pierced, completely withered, he fell into a chair and, covering his face with his hands, began to cry. A few minutes later, however, he thought better of it and took four pills ofsoma.

Upstairs in his room the Savage was readingRomeo and Juliet.

Lenina and the community's archscantor went out onto the roof of the Cantoría. "Hurry up, my young friend, I mean Lenina," the archcantor called impatiently from the elevator doors. Lenina, who had taken a moment to look at the moon, lowered her eyes and ran across the roof to join him.

"A New Theory of Biology" was the title of the article Mustapha Mondhavia had just read. He sat for a while, frowning thoughtfully, then took the pen from him and wrote on the title page. “The author's mathematical treatment of the conception of purpose is novel and highly ingenious, but heretical and, as far as the current social order is concerned, dangerous and potentially subversive.It must not be published.He underlined the words. The perpetrator will be kept under surveillance. Transfer to St. Helena Marine Biological Station may be required. Too bad, she thought as she signed. It was a masterpiece. But once you started admitting explanations in terms of purpose, well, you didn't know what the result would be. It was the kind of idea that could easily uncondition the most unstable minds among the upper castes: make them lose faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and begin to believe instead that the goal lies somewhere beyond, somewhere outside. of the current human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some elevation and refinement of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge. Which was, the Controller reflected, possibly true. But not, in the present circumstances, admissible. He took the pen from him again, and under the words 'should not be published' drew a second line, thicker and blacker than the first; then she sighed. 'How funny,' she thought, 'if only we didn't have to think about happiness!'

With his eyes closed, his face flushed with ecstasy, João softly declaimed into the void:

Oh, she teaches the torches to shine!
Seems to hang over the face of the night
like a precious jewel in the ear of an Ethiopian;
Beauty too rich to wear, for the earth too dear...'

The golden T glittered on Lenina's chest. Sportingly, the Archcommunity-Singer grabbed him, sportily he pulled, he pulled.soma.'

Bernard, by then, was fast asleep and smiling in the private paradise of his dreams. Smiling, smiling. But inexorably, every thirty seconds, the minute hand on the electric clock on his bed advanced with an almost imperceptible click. Click, click, click, click... And it was morning. Bernard returned to the miseries of space and time. It was in the darkest of spirits that he headed to work for him at the Fitness Center. The intoxication of success had evaporated; he was soberly the same as before; and, in contrast to the time globe of these last few weeks, the old me seemed extraordinarily heavier than the surrounding atmosphere.

Bernard the Wild, discouraged, was unexpectedly sympathetic.

“You're more like you're in Malpaís,” she said, when Bernard told her his sad story. 'Do you remember when we first spoke? Outside the house. You are as you were then.

'Because I'm unhappy again; and so.'

'Well, I'd rather be unhappy than have the kind of fake, fake happiness you were having here.'

"I like that," Bernard said bitterly. 'When it's you who was the cause of everything. By refusing to come to my party and turning everyone against me!' He knew that what he was saying was absurd in its injustice; inwardly, and at last even out loud, the truth of all that the Savage was now saying about the uselessness of friends who could be driven to pursue enemies by so slight a provocation. But despite this knowledge and these confessions, despite the fact that his friend's support and sympathy were now his only consolation, Bernardo perversely continued to cherish, along with his genuine affection, a secret grievance against the Savage, thinking of a small revenge campaign to be thrown on him. Feeding a complaint against the arch-community-singer made no sense; there was no chance of revenge against the Chief Bottler or the Assistant Fatemaker. As a victim, the Savage possessed, for Bernard, this enormous superiority over others: being accessible. One of the main functions of a friend is to suffer (in a softer and more symbolic way) the punishments that we would like, but cannot, inflict on our enemies.

Bernard's other friend-victim was Helmholtz. When, puzzled, he came and asked once more for the friendship which in his prosperity he did not think worth keeping, Helmholtz granted it; and he gave it without reproach, without comment, as if he had forgotten that there was ever a fight. Moved, Bernardo felt at the same time humiliated by this magnanimity, a magnanimity all the more extraordinary and therefore more humiliating since he owes nothing tosomaand all because of the character of Helmholtz. He was the forgetful and forgiving Helmholtz of everyday life, not the Helmholtz of a half-gram vacation. Bernard was duly grateful (it was a great consolation to get his friend back) and duly resentful (it would be a pleasure to get even with Helmholtz for his generosity).

In the first meeting after the separation, Bernardo told the story of his miseries and accepted the consolation. It wasn't until a few days later that he learned, to his surprise and a pang of shame, that he wasn't the only one in trouble. Helmholtz also clashed with the Authority.

"It was about some rhymes," he explained. 'I was teaching my regular Advanced Emotional Engineering course for juniors. Twelve lectures, of which the seventh is on rhymes. "On the use of rhymes in propaganda and moral propaganda", to be precise. I always illustrate my lectures with lots of technical examples. This time I thought I'd give you one that I just wrote. Pure madness, of course; but I couldn't resist.' He laughed. 'I was curious to see what his reaction would be. Besides," he added more seriously, "he wanted to do a little publicity; He was trying to make them feel what I felt when I wrote the rhymes. Ford! He laughed again. What a cry there was! The director picked me up and threatened to fire me immediately. I am a marked man.

'But what were your rhymes?' asked Bernardo.

"It was about being alone."

Bernard's eyebrows rose.

I can recite them for you if you want. And Helmholtz began:

'Yesterday's committee,
Sticks, but a broken drum,
Midnight in the city
flutes in the void,
Closed lips, sleeping faces,
Every machine stopped
stupid places full of garbage
Where the multitudes have been--
All silences rejoice
Cry (loud or soft),
Speak - but with your voice
From whom, I don't know.
Absence, let's say, of Susan,
Absence of Egeria
arms and her breasts,
Lips and, ah, hindquarters,
Slowly it forms a presence;
Whose? and I ask that
Such an absurd essence,
That something, which is not,
However, you must complete
empty night more solidly
that with what we copulate,
Why should she look so miserable?

Well, I gave it to them as an example and they reported me to the director.

"I'm not surprised," Bernard said. It is totally against all your teachings during sleep. Remember, they received at least a quarter of a million warnings against loneliness.

'I know. But I thought I'd like to see what the effect would be.

'Well, you've seen it.'

Helmholtz just laughed. “I feel,” he said, after a silence, “like he's starting to have something to write about. As if I started to use this power that I feel I have inside of me, this extra, latent power. Something seems to come for me. Despite all his troubles, he seemed, Bernard thought, profoundly happy.

Helmholtz and the Savage fell in love immediately. So cordially that Bernard felt a pang of jealousy. In all those weeks, he had never been so close to intimacy with the Savage as Helmholtz immediately did. Watching them, listening to their conversations, he found himself sometimes resentfully wishing he had never met them. He was ashamed of his jealousy and alternately exerted his will and tooksomato stop feeling it. But the efforts were not very successful; and between thesoma- holidays there were necessarily breaks. The feeling of hate kept coming back.

In his third encounter with nature, Helmholtz recited his rhymes about loneliness.

'What do you think about them?' she asked when she was done.

The Savage shook his head. 'Listensis', was his answer; and opening the drawer in which he kept his book gnawed by rats, she opened it and read:

'May the bird with the loudest noise,
In the only Arabian tree,
Sorrowful herald and trumpet to be...'

Helmholtz listened with growing enthusiasm. In the 'only Arabian tree' it began; at 'you howling herald' he smiled he with sudden delight; but at the 'extinguished music' he turned pale and trembled with unprecedented emotion. The Savage continued reading:

'The property was thus appalled,
That the self was not the same;
Double name of unique nature
They did not call two or one.

reason itself confused
We watched the division grow together...

Orgy-porgy! Bernard said, interrupting his reading with a loud, nasty laugh. It's just an anthem of the Solidarity Service. She was taking revenge on his two friends for loving each other more than him.

In the next two or three encounters, he would often repeat this little act of revenge. It was simple and, since both Helmholtz and the Savage suffered terribly from the breaking and desecration of a favorite poetic crystal, extremely effective. In the end, Helmholtz threatened to throw him out of the room if he dared to interrupt again. And yet, oddly enough, the next, most embarrassing of all, interruption came from Helmholtz himself.

the savage was readingRomeo and Julietaloud, reading (while seeing himself as Romeo and Lenina as Juliet) with intense, quivering passion. Helmholtz had listened to the scene of the lovers' first meeting with intrigued interest. The garden scene had enchanted him with its poetry; but the sentiments expressed from him made him smile. Getting to such a state of having a girl seemed pretty ridiculous. But taken detail by verbal detail, what a magnificent piece of emotional engineering! "That old man," he said, "makes our best propaganda technicians look utter fools." The savage smiled triumphantly and resumed reading. Everything went reasonably well until, in the last scene of the third act, Capulet and Lady Capulet begin to bully Juliet into marrying Paris. Helmholtz was restless throughout the scene; but when, pathetically imitated by the Savage, Juliet exclaimed:

'There's no mercy sitting in the clouds,
Does that see the bottom of my pain?
Oh my sweet mother, don't throw me away!
Postpone this wedding for a month, a week;
Or, if not, make the bridal bed
In that dark monument where Teobaldo lies...

when Juliet said this, Helmholtz burst into uncontrollable laughter.

The mother and father (grotesque obscenity) forcing their daughter to have someone she didn't want! And the stupid girl that she didn't say that she was having someone else whom she (at least at this moment) she preferred! In its bawdy absurdity, the situation was irresistibly comic. She had managed, with heroic effort, to hold back the mounting pressure of her hilarity; but "sweet mother" (in the anguished tone of the Savage) and the reference to Tybalt dead but evidently not cremated and wasting his game on a dark monument, were too much for him. He laughed and laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks, he laughed and laughed as, pale with indignation, the Savage looked at him over the top of the book, and then, as the laughter continued, shut it indignantly, stood up, and with his gesture of who removes pearls from pigs, locked him in a drawer.

“And yet,” Helmholtz said when, having caught his breath enough to apologize, he pacified the Savage to listen to his explanations, “I know very well that we need ridiculous and crazy situations like this; You can't write very well about anything else. Why was that old man such a wonderful propaganda technician? Because he had so many crazy unbearable things to get excited about. You must be hurt and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good and penetrating X-ray sentences. But fathers and mothers! He shook his head. “You can't expect me to keep a straight face about mothers and fathers. And who's going to be excited about a boy having a girl or not having a girl? (The Savage shuddered, but Helmholtz, looking thoughtfully at the ground, saw nothing.) 'No,' he concluded with a sigh, 'it won't do. We need some other kind of madness and violence. But what? What? Where can you find it?' He was silent; then, shaking his head, 'I don't know,' he finally said, 'I don't know.'

Chapter XIII

Henry Foster appeared in the Embryo Shop twilight.

'Would you like to come for a Feely tonight?'

Lenina shook her head without speaking.

'Dating someone else?' She was interested in knowing which of his friends was being possessed by which other. Is it Benedict? she questioned herself.

She shook her head again.

Henry detected the weariness in those purple eyes, the pallor under that lupus glow, the sadness at the corners of the dark crimson mouth. "You don't feel bad, do you?" he asked, a little anxious, afraid that she might be suffering from one of the few remaining infectious diseases.

However, once again, Lenina shook her head.

"Anyway, you should go see the doctor," Henry said. "A doctor a day keeps traffic jams at bay," he added vehemently, reinforcing his hypnotic adage with a pat on the shoulder. "Perhaps you need a Surrogate Pregnancy," he suggested. 'Or else a V.P.S. Super strong. Sometimes, you know, the default substitute for passion isn't quite...

“Oh, for the love of Ford,” Lenina said, breaking her stubborn silence, “shut up! And she returned to the abandoned embryos of her.

A V.P.S. treatment indeed! She would have laughed if she hadn't been on the verge of tears. As if she didn't have V.P. enough. on their own! She sighed heavily as she reloaded her syringe. 'John', she murmured to herself, 'John...' Then 'My Ford', she asked herself, 'did I give this one the sleeping sickness shot or not?' She just couldn't remember. In the end, she decided not to risk letting him take a second drink and moved on to the next bottle.

Twenty-two years, eight months and four days from that moment, a promising young manager of Alpha-Minus in Mwanza-Mwanza would die of trypanosomiasis, the first case in more than half a century. Sighing, Lenina continued her work.

An hour later, in the dressing room, Fanny was protesting vigorously. “But it is absurd to get carried away by that state. Just absurd,” she repeated. 'It's about? A man--1cara.'

"But he's the one I want."

"As if there were not millions of other men in the world."

But I don't want them.

'How can you know until you've tried?'

'I tried.'

"But how many?" asked Fanny, with a scornful shrug. - One two?

'Dozens. But', shaking his head, 'it wasn't good at all,' he added.

"Well, you must persevere," said Fanny sententiously. But it was obvious that her confidence in her own recipes had weakened. 'Nothing can be achieved without perseverance.'

'But meanwhile...'

"Don't think about him."

"I can't help it."

'Carrysoma, after.'

'I do.'

"Well, go ahead."

'But in the breaks I still like it. I will always like it.

"Well, if that's the case," said Fanny decidedly, "why don't you go and take him away?" Whether he wants to or not.

But if you knew how terriblyqueerhe was!'

"All the more reason to take a firm line."

'Everything is fine forsaywhat.'

'Don't accept nonsense. Act.' Fanny's voice was a trumpet; she may have been a Y.W.F.A. speaker giving an evening talk for Beta-Minuses teens. “Yes, she acts immediately. Do it now.'

"It would scare me," said Lenina.

'Well, you only have to take half a gram ofsomafirst. And now I'm going to take my shower. She walked away, trailing the towel.

The bell rang, and the Savage, who had been waiting impatiently for Helmholtz to arrive that afternoon (having finally decided to speak to Helmholtz about Lenina, he could not put off his confidence a moment longer), jumped up and ran to the door. . .

"I had a feeling it was you, Helmholtz," he yelled as he opened it.

On the threshold, in a white satin sailor suit and a round white cap tilted over her left ear, stood Lenina.

'Oh!' said the Savage, as if someone had struck him hard.

Half a gram was enough for Lenina to forget her fears and shame. "Hello, John," she said, smiling, and walked past him into the room. She automatically closed the door and followed her. Lenin sat down. There was a long silence.

"You don't seem very happy to see me, John," he finally said.

"Is not happy?" The Savage looked at her reproachfully; then suddenly he fell to his knees before her and, taking Lenina's hand, kissed it reverently. 'Is not happy? Ah, if you only knew," he whispered and, venturing to look up into her face, "I admired Lenina," he continued, "truly, the height of admiration is worth the most expensive thing in the world. She smiled at him with delicious tenderness. 'Oh, you are so perfect' (she was leaning towards him with parted lips), 'so perfect and so incomparable you think' (closer and closer) 'to the best of all creatures'. Even closer. The Savage jumped to his feet. 'That's why,' he said, speaking with an averted face, 'I wanted toit doessomething first... I mean, prove to you that I was worthy of you. Not that it can really be that. But anyway to show that I was absolutely notmivaluable. I wanted to dosomething.'

"Why do you think it's necessary..." Lenina began, but left the sentence unfinished. There was a note of irritation in her voice. When someone leans forward, closer and closer, lips parted, only to find themselves, suddenly, like some clumsy idiot standing up, leaning on nothing, well, there's a reason, even with half a gram ofsomacirculating in the bloodstream, a real source of discomfort.

"In Malpaís," the Savage murmured incoherently, "you had to bring her puma skin... In other words, when you wanted to marry someone." Or a wolf.

"There are no lions in England," Lenina almost snapped.

'And even if there were,' added the Savage, with a sudden contemptuous resentment, 'people would kill them from helicopters, I suppose, with poison gas or something. I would not do itwhat, Lenin. He squared his shoulders, ventured a look at her, and was met with a look of annoyed incomprehension. Confused, 'I'll do anything,' he continued, increasingly incoherent. Anything you tell me. Some sports are painful, you know. But your pleasure of working on them begins. That's what I feel. I mean, I'd sweep the floor if you wanted.

"But here we have vacuum cleaners," Lenina said, perplexed. "It is not necessary."

'Of course notnecessary. But some kinds of meanness are nobly endured. I would like to pass for something noble. You do not see?

'But if there isit isvacuum cleaner...'

'That's not the point.'

'And Epsilon Semi-Idiots to work with,' he continued, 'well, actually,why?

'Why? But for you, foryou guys. Just to show that I..."

'And what the hell do vacuum cleaners have to do with lions...'

'To show how much...'

'O lions glad to seemim...' She was getting more and more exasperated.

"How I love you, Lenina," he exclaimed almost desperately.

Emblem of the inner tide of frightened euphoria, blood rose to Lenina's cheeks. "Are you serious, John?

"But I didn't mean that," exclaimed the Savage, clasping his hands together in a kind of agony. “Not until... Listen, Lenina; in Malpaís people get married.'

'Get what?' Irritation began to show in her voice. What was she talking about now?

'Forever. They promise to live together forever.

What a horrible idea! Lenina was really surprised.

'The exterior of surviving beauty, with a mind that renews itself faster than blood rots.'

'What?'

It is also so in Shakespeare. "If you break your virgin knot before all the hypocritical ceremonies and sacred rite can be completed..."

“For Ford's sake, John, speak common sense. I can't understand a word you're saying. First there are the vacuum cleaners; that's how we are. You are driving me crazy. She jumped to her feet, and as if he were afraid he might run away from her both physically and mentally, he grabbed her wrist. 'Answer me this question: do you really like me or not?'

There was a moment of silence; then, very softly, 'I love you more than anything in the world,' she said.

"Then why the hell didn't you say that?" she screamed, and so intense was her exasperation that she dug her sharp nails into the skin of her wrist. Instead of blabbering about us vacuum cleaners and lions and making me miserable for weeks on end.

He dropped his hand and flung it furiously away from her.

"If I didn't love you so much," she said, "I'd be mad at you."

And suddenly her arms were around his neck; she felt the soft lips of hers against hers. So deliciously soft, so warm and electric that she inevitably found herself thinking of the hugs inThree weeks by helicopter.Oh! Oh! the stereoscopic blonde and aah! the more than true blackamoor. Horror, horror, horror...she tried to pull away; but Lenina tightened her embrace.

'Why didn't you say that?' she whispered, turning her face away to look at him. Her eyes were tenderly disapproving.

'The darkest lair, the most opportune place' (the voice of conscience thundered poetically), 'the strongest suggestion that our worst genius can, will never melt my honor in lust. Never never!' she solved it herself.

'Stupid child!' she was saying I wanted you so much. And if you loved me too, why not?...'

'But, Lenina...' she began to protest; and when she immediately uncrossed her arms as she walked away from him, he thought for a moment that she took her unspoken hint. But when she unbuckled her white lacquer cartridge belt and hung it carefully over the back of a chair, he began to suspect that she had been wrong.

"Lenina!" she repeated apprehensively.

He put his hand to his neck and gave it a long vertical tug; the white sailor's blouse was torn at the hem; suspicion condensed into too solid a certainty. 'Lenin, what?it isyou're doing?'

Close close! Her response was speechless. She took off her flared pants. Her zip-up jumpsuits were pale pink. The golden Arch-Community-Songster T bounced off her chest.

'For those paparazzi who pierce men's eyes through the bars of the window...' The magic words, resounding and chanting made her seem doubly dangerous, doubly seductive. Soft, soft, but so penetrating! Penetrating and penetrating reason, tunneling through resolution. 'The strongest oaths are straw for the fire and' blood. Be more teetotal, or else...'

I zip! The rounded pink crumbled like a well-split apple. A movement of the arms, a lift first of the right foot, then of the left: the zippered jumpsuit lay lifeless and withered on the floor.

Still in her shoes and stockings, and her elegantly tipped round beret, she advanced toward him. 'My love.My love!If you had said it before! She spread her arms.

But instead of also saying 'Honey!' and holdingarearms, the Savage recoiled in terror, waving his hands at her as if trying to scare off some dangerous animal intruder. He took four steps back and he was backed against the wall.

'Candy!' said Lenina and, placing her hands on her shoulders, she pressed against him. "Put your arms around me," he commanded. 'Hug me methyl drugs me, honey.' She also had poetry at her disposal, she knew words that sang and were spells and drums. 'Kiss Me'; She closed her eyes, let her voice fade to a sleepy murmur, 'kiss me into a coma'. Hug me darling, snuggle...'

The Savage seized her wrists, wrenched her hands from her shoulders, and hauled her up at arm's length.

'Oh, you're hurting me, you're… oh!' She suddenly she went silent. Terror made her forget the pain. Opening her eyes, she saw her face-no, noareface, that of a fierce stranger, pale, distorted, writhing with an insane and inexplicable fury. Horrified, 'What is this, John?' she whispered. He didn't answer, he just looked into her face with those crazy eyes. The hands that held her wrists trembled. She was breathing deeply and irregularly. Faintly, barely perceptible, but terrifying, he suddenly heard her teeth gnash. 'What's that?' she almost screamed.

And as if awakened by her scream, he grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. 'Prostitute!' the Scream. 'Prostitute! insolent bitch!

"Oh no, don't do that," she protested, her voice grotesquely shaky from her trembling.

'Prostitute!'

"Please relax."

'Damn bitch!'

'A gra-amme is better...' he began.

The Savage pushed her so hard that she staggered and fell. 'Go away,' he yelled, looming over her, 'get out of my way or I'll kill you.' He clenched his fists.

Lenina raised her arm to cover her face. 'No, please don't, John...'

'Hurry up. Fast!'

With one arm still raised, and following his every move with a terrified gaze, she scrambled to her feet and still crouched, still covering her head, she ran to the bathroom.

The sound of that prodigious slap that hastened his departure was like a pistol shot.

'Over there!' Lenina jumped forward.

Safely locked in the bathroom, she had free time to take stock of her injuries. Standing with her back to the mirror, she turned her head. Looking over her left shoulder, she could see the imprint of an open hand standing out clearly crimson in the pearly flesh. Carefully, she rubbed at the injured spot.

Outside, in the other room, the Savage paced up and down, marching, marching to the beat of drums and the music of magic words. "The wrengos to't, and the little goldfly ravages my sight." 'The fitchew nor the dirty horse will not have a more riotous appetite. Below the waist they are centaurs, though above they are women. But in the belt the gods inherit. Below are all the demons. There is hell, there is darkness, there is the sulphurous, burning, boiling, stinking, consuming pit; Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my fancy.

'John!' ventured a small, flirtatious voice from the bathroom. 'John!'

'Oh weed, you are so lovely, beautiful and smell so sweet that your senses ache. This beautiful book was made to write "whore"? Heaven turns a blind eye to this...'

But her perfume still wafted over him, his jacket white with the powder that had perfumed his velvet body. Bold bitch, Bold bitch, Bold bitch. The inexorable rhythm pulsed. 'Fresh...'

'John, do you think I can have my clothes?'

She picked up the flared pants, the blouse, the zippered jumpsuit.

'Opened!' he ordered, kicking the door open.

'No, I do not go.' Her voice was scared and defiant.

'Well, how do you expect me to give them to you?'

Push them through the fan above the door.

He did as she suggested, pacing the room restlessly again. “Cheeky whore, cheeky whore. The Devil Luxury with his fat ass and fries...'

'John.'

He did not want to answer. Thick butt and potato sticks.

'John.'

'What's that?' she asked abruptly.

"Would you 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 walk like that; if she would have to wait until he left the apartment; or if he would be safe, after allowing his madness to subside for a reasonable amount of time, open the bathroom door and run.

In the midst of these awkward speculations, she was interrupted by the sound of the telephone ringing in the other room. Suddenly, the march stopped. She heard the Savage's voice breaking through the silence.

'Hola.'

......

'Sim.'

......

'If I don't usurp myself, I am.'

......

'Yeah, haven't you heard me say that? Mister. Wild talk.

......

'What? Who is sick? Of course I'm interested.

......

'But is it serious? Is it really bad? I'll do it right away...'

......

"Aren't you in his chambers anymore?" Where was she taken to?

......

'Oh my goodness! Which is the address?'

......

'Three Park Lane, is that it? Three? Thanks.'

Lenina heard the click of the replaced earpiece, then hurried footsteps. A door slammed shut. There was silence. Has it really gone?

With a multitude of precautions, he opened the door a quarter of an inch; she looked through the gap; he was encouraged by the vision of emptiness; he opened it a little more and took out the whole head; he finally tiptoed into the room; he stayed for a few seconds with his heart racing, listening, listening; then he ran to the front door, opened it, slid it open, slammed it shut, and ran. It wasn't until he was in the elevator and fell down the shaft that she began to feel safe.

Chapter XIV

The Park Lane Hospital for the Dying was a sixty-story primrose-colored tower. As the Savage stepped out of his taxi, a convoy of brightly colored hearses shot off the roof and raced across the park, heading west towards Slough Crematorium. At the elevator door, the main doorman gave him the necessary information and he went down to room 81 (a room for rampant senility, the doorman explained) on the seventeenth floor.

It was a large, sunlit room, painted yellow, containing twenty beds, all occupied. Linda was dying in company, in company, and with all the modern conveniences. The air was continually alive with happy synthetic melodies. At the foot of each bed, facing the dying occupant of it, was a television box. The television was on, with the tap running, from morning to night. Every quarter of an hour, the predominant smell in the room changed automatically. "We've tried," explained the nurse, who had attended the Savage at the door, "we've tried to create a completely pleasant atmosphere here, something between a first-class hotel and a luxurious palace, if you know what." I mean."

'Where is she?' asked the Savage, ignoring these polite explanations.

The nurse was offended. 'Youit isin a hurry," he said.

"Is there any hope?" she asked her.

"You mean she didn't die?" (She shook her head.) 'No, of course not. When someone is sent here, there is no...' She Startled by the anguished expression on her pale face, she suddenly broke off. "OK, what happened?" she asked. She wasn't used to this kind of thing for visitors. (Not that there were many visitors anyway: or any reason why there should be many visitors.) 'You don't feel bad, do you?'

He shook his head. "She is my mother," she said in a barely audible voice.

The nurse looked at him with startled, horrified eyes; then she quickly looked away. From throat to temple, she was all hot.

"Take me to her," said the Savage, struggling to speak in a normal tone.

Still flushed, she crossed the room. Faces still fresh and not withered (for her senility galloped so hard that she had no time to age her cheeks, only her heart and brain) turned as she passed. Her progress was followed by the indifferent blank eyes of second childhood. The savages shuddered when he looked.

Linda was lying in the last row of beds, against the wall. Propped up on pillows, she watched the semifinals of the South American Riemann Surface Tennis Championships, which were taking place in silence and with reduced playback on the television box screen at the foot of the bed. Back and forth across its illuminated square of glass the little figures moved silently, like fish in an aquarium: the silent but restless denizens of another world.

Linda watched, smiling vaguely and incomprehensibly. Her pale, puffy face wore an expression of idiotic happiness. From time to time, her eyelids would droop and, for a few seconds, she seemed to be asleep. until you drug me, my dear,' to the hot stream of vervain that had been blowing through the fan over her head-would awaken to these things, or rather to a sleep from which these things, transformed and embellished by thesomain his blood were the wonderful components, and he smiled once more his broken, faded smile of childish satisfaction.

"Well, I have to go," said the nurse. I have my group of children on the way. Also, there's number 3. He pointed to the infirmary. - It could explode at any moment. Well, be my guest. She walked away quickly.

The Savage sat down by the bed.

"Beautiful," he whispered, taking her hand.

Hearing his name, he turned. Her empty eyes sparkled with recognition. She squeezed his hand, smiled, her lips moved; then suddenly her head fell forward. She was sleeping. He sat looking at her, searching through tired flesh, seeking and finding that young and luminous face that had bent over her childhood in Malpaís, remembering (and he closed his eyes) her voice, her movements, all the events of the night. her life together. 'Streptocock-Gee to Banbury-T...' How beautiful was her singing! And those children's songs, how strange and mysterious!

A, B, C, vitamina D:
The fat is in the liver, the cod is in the sea.

She felt hot tears welling up on her eyelids as she remembered Linda's words and her voice as she repeated them. And then the reading classes; The child is in the pot, the cat is on the mat; e Elementary instructions for beta workers in embryo storage. And the afternoons by the fireplace or, in summer, on the roof of the house, when she told him those stories of the Other Place, outside the Reserve: that beautiful, beautiful Other Place, whose memory, as of a heaven, a paradise of goodness and beauty that was still whole and intact, unblemished by contact with the reality of this real London, these real civilized men and women.

A sudden noise of high-pitched voices made her open her eyes, and after hastily wiping away her tears, she looked around. What seemed like an endless stream of eight-year-old identical twins was streaming into the room. Twin after twin, twin after twin, they came: a nightmare. Their faces, their repeated faces—because there was only one among them—were looking at each other sheepishly, all nostrils and wide-open pale eyes. His uniform was khaki. Everyone had their mouths open. Creaking and chattering, they entered. At one point, it seemed, the room was filled with vermin. They swarmed between the beds, climbing, crawling under, peering into TV booths, making faces at the patients.

Linda surprised and even alarmed them. A group were huddled at the foot of her bed, staring with the stupid, surprised curiosity of animals suddenly faced with the unknown.

“Oh, look, look! They spoke in low, frightened voices. 'What's wrong with her? Why is she so fat?

They had never seen a face like hers before, never seen a face that was not young and tight-skinned, a body that was no longer slender and upright. These dying sixty-year-olds all looked like childish girls. At forty-four, Linda seemed instead a monster of flabby, twisted senility.

"Isn't she horrible?" came the whispered comments. 'Look at her teeth!'

Suddenly, under the bed, a pug-faced twin appeared between John's chair and the wall and began to peer into Linda's sleeping face.

'I say...' he began; but her sentence ended prematurely with a shriek. The Savage grabbed him by the neck, hauled him up onto the saddle, and with a good whack to the ears sent him howling.

Her screams brought the head nurse rushing to the rescue.

"What have you been doing with him?" she demanded fiercely. “I will not allow you to hit the children.

'Well then, keep them out of this bed.' The Savage's voice trembled with outrage. 'What are these filthy brats doing here anyway? It is shameful!

'Shameful? But what do you mean? They are being conditioned to death. And I tell you," she chided truculently, "if I have any more interference from you with his conditioning, I'll send for the porters and send you away."

The Savage got up and took a few steps towards him. His movements and the expression on his face were so menacing that the nurse backed away in terror. With great effort she controlled herself and, without speaking, she turned and sat back down on the edge of the bed.

Reassured, but with a somewhat strident and uncertain dignity, "I already told you," the nurse said, "so pay attention." Still, she took the very curious twins and had them participate in the zipper hunting game, which had been set up by one of her colleagues across the room.

"Come now and have your cup of caffeine fix, dear," she told the other nurse. Her exercise of authority restored her confidence, made her feel better. 'Now, children!' she called.

Linda fidgeted, opened her eyes for a moment, looked around vaguely, and then fell asleep once more. Sitting next to her, the Savage struggled to regain the mood of a few minutes before. "A, B, C, vitamin D," he repeated to himself, as if the words were a spell that revived the dead past. But the spell was ineffective. Stubbornly, the beautiful memories refused to surface; there was only a hateful resurrection of jealousy, ugliness, and misery. Potato with blood oozing from his severed shoulder; and Linda sleeping hideously, and the flies buzzing around the spillmezcalon the floor next to the bed; and the boys cursing in their wake... Oh, no, no! She closed her eyes, shook her head, relentlessly denying those memories. "A, B, C, vitamin D..." She tried to think of those moments when he would sit on her knee and she would hold him and sing over and over again, rocking him, rocking him to sleep. 'A, B, C, vitamin D, vitamin D, vitamin D...'

The Super-Vox-Wurlitzerian had risen to a sobbing crescendo; and suddenly the verbena gave way, in the olfactory circulation system, to an intense patchouli. Linda stirred, woke up, stared at the semi-finalists in bewilderment for a few seconds, then, raising her face, sniffed the freshly perfumed air once or twice, and suddenly smiled, a smile of childish ecstasy.

'Father!' she murmured to herself, and closed her eyes. 'Oh, I like it so much, I like it...' She sighed and let herself sink back into the pillows.

"But cute!" The Savage spoke imploringly. 'You don't know me?' He tried very hard, he did the best he could; Why wouldn't he let her forget? He squeezed her limp hand almost violently, as if to force her out of that dream of ignoble pleasures, of those vile and hateful memories: return to the present, return to reality: the terrible present, the terrible reality, but sublime, but significant. but desperately important precisely because of the imminence of what they were so afraid of. "Don't you know me, Linda?"

He felt the light pressure of his hand in response. Tears began to fall into her eyes. He leaned over her and kissed her.

His lips moved. 'Father!' she whispered back to her, and it was as if he had thrown a bucket of dung in her face.

Anger suddenly boiled within him. Rejected a second time, his passion for grief found another outlet, turned into a passion of dying rage.

'But I'm John!' the Scream. 'I'm John!' And in her wretched wrath, he grabbed her by the shoulder and shook her.

Linda's eyes widened; she saw him, recognized him - 'John!' - but she situated the real face, the real violent hands, in an imaginary world - between the intimate and private equivalents of patchouli and Super-Wurlitzer, between the transfigured memories and strangely transposed sensations that made up the universe of her dreams. . She knew him as John, her son, but she imagined him as an intruder in that paradisiacal Malpaís where she spent hersoma-Holidays with the Pope. He was angry because she liked Pope, was he shaking her because Pope was there in bed, as if something was wrong, as if all civilized people didn't do the same? "Everyone belongs to everyone..." her voice trailed off suddenly in a barely audible squawk, her mouth fell open: she made a desperate effort to fill her lungs with air. But it was as if she had forgotten how to breathe. She tried to scream, but no sound came out; only the terror in her wide eyes revealed what she was suffering from. His hands went to her throat, then he clawed at the air, the air she could no longer breathe, the air that, to her, had ceased to exist.

The Savage was standing, leaning over her. "What's wrong darling?" What's that?' Her voice was pleading; it was as if she begged to be reassured.

The look she gave him was charged with indescribable terror, with terror and, it seemed, with reproach. She tried to get out of bed, but fell backwards against the pillows. Her face was terribly distorted, her lips blue.

The Savage turned and ran across the room.

'Faster Faster!' the Scream. 'Fast!'

Standing in the center of a circle of twins hunting for zippers, the head nurse looked around. The first moment's astonishment gave way almost instantly to disapproval. 'Do not scream! Think of the little ones,” she said, frowning. 'You can decondition... But what are you doing?' She had broken the ring. 'Be careful!' A child was screaming.

'Faster Faster!' He grabbed her sleeve and dragged her after him. "Quick! Something happened. I killed her.

By the time they reached the end of the room, Linda was dead.

The Savage stood for a moment in icy silence, then fell to his knees by the bed and, covering his face with his hands, sobbed uncontrollably.

The nurse hesitated, looking now at the figure kneeling by the bed (what an outrageous sight!) and now (poor children!) eyes and nostrils at the shocking scene taking place around the bed 20. Should I speak to he? try to restore his sense of decency? remind her where she was? What fatal harm could he do to these poor innocents? Undoing all his healthy conditioning for death with that sick scream, as if death were something terrible, as if anyone mattered so much! This can give them the most disastrous ideas on the subject, it can bother them to react in a totally wrong way, totally antisocial.

He stepped forward and touched her shoulder. "Can't you behave?" she said in a low, angry voice. But as she looked around her, she saw that half a dozen twins had already gotten to their feet and were crossing the room. The circle was disintegrating. At another time... No, the risk was too great; The entire Group can take six or seven months to prepare. She ran back to her threatened charges.

Now, who wants a chocolate cake? she asked herself in a loud and cheerful tone.

'To me!' shouted the entire Bokanovsky Group in chorus. Bed 20 was completely forgotten.

'Oh, God, God, God...' the Savage repeated to himself. In the chaos of pain and regret that filled his mind, it was the only word uttered. 'God!' he whispered aloud. 'God...'

'Whichever isit isare you saying? said a voice, very close, distinct and shrill over the chirping of the Super-Wurlitzer.

The Savage started violently and, uncovering his face, looked around him. Five khaki twins, each holding a piece of a long éclair in his right hand, their identical faces smeared with liquid chocolate in various ways, stood in a row, staring at him with wide eyes.

They looked into her eyes and at the same time smiled. One of them pointed with her ass eclair.

"She's dead?" she asked her.

The Savage looked at them for a moment in silence. Then he silently got up, silently he walked slowly towards the door.

"She's dead?" repeated the curious twin trotting beside her.

The Savage looked at him and still without speaking pushed him. The twin fell to the ground and immediately started howling. The Savage did not even look back.

Chapter XV

The menial staff of the Park Lane Hospital for the Dying consisted of one hundred and sixty-two Deltas divided into two Bokanovsky Groups of eighty-four redheaded women and seventy-eight dark dolichocephalic twins, respectively. At six o'clock, the working day finished, the two groups met in the hall of the Hospital and were attended by the Deputy Sub-Econome with hissomapart.

From the elevator, the Savage entered their midst. But his mind was elsewhere: with death, with her pain and his remorse; mechanically, not realizing what he was doing, he began to push through the crowd.

'Who are you pushing? Where do you think you are going?'

High, low, from a crowd of parted throats, only two voices screeched or growled. Repeated over and over again, as if through a series of mirrors, two faces, one a bald, freckled moon with an orange halo, the other a thin, pointed bird mask, with stubble and two days' stubble, turned furiously at him. His words and, on his ribs, the strong push of his elbows, shattered his unconsciousness. He awoke once more to outer reality, looked around him, knew what he saw, knew, with a sense of horror and revulsion, from the recurring delirium of his days and nights, the nightmare of a swarm indistinguishable from the same . Twins, twins... Like worms, they swarmed, defiling the mystery of Linda's death. Worms again, but larger, adults, now crawling in her pain and his grief. He stopped and, with bewildered and horrified eyes, looked around at the khaki crowd, in the midst of which, outnumbering them by a full head, he stood. How many pleasant creatures are here! The sung words mocked him ironically. 'How beautiful is humanity! O brave new world...'

'somadistribution!' a loud voice yelled. "In order, please. Hurry upstairs."

A door was opened, a table and chair were brought into the hall. The voice was that of a cheerful young alpha, who had entered with a black iron box. A contented murmur rose from the pregnant twins. They completely forgot about the Savage. His attention was now focused on the black box, which the young man had placed on the table and was now being opened. The lid was lifted.

'Oo-oh!' all one hundred and sixty-two said simultaneously, as if they were watching fireworks.

The young man picked up a handful of pillboxes. “Now,” he said peremptorily, “come in, please. One at a time, and without pushing.

One at a time, without pushing, the twins advanced. First two males, then one female, then another male, then three females, then...

The Savage watched. 'O brave new world, oh brave new world...' In his mind, the chanted words seemed to change tone. They mocked him through his misery and remorse, mocked him with a note of hideous, cynical contempt! Laughing devilishly, they insisted on the base filth, the sickening ugliness of the nightmare. Now, suddenly, they proclaimed a call to arms. "Oh Brave New World!" Miranda proclaimed the possibility of enchantment, the possibility of turning even the nightmare into something beautiful and noble. 'New world of work!' It was a challenge, an order.

'Don't push there, now!' the deputy undertreasurer yelled furiously. He closed the lid of his money box. 'I must stop the distribution unless it is well behaved.'

The Deltas muttered, pushed each other a bit, then fell silent. The threat had worked. deprivation ofsoma--terrible thought!

"That's better," said the young man, and opened his box again.

Linda had been a slave, Linda had died; others will live in freedom, and the world will become beautiful. A repair, a duty. And suddenly it became luminously clear to the Savage what he must do; it was as if a blind had been opened, a drawn curtain.

"Now," said the assistant treasurer.

Another khaki woman stepped forward.

'Stop!' called the Savage in a loud, ringing voice. 'Stop!'

He pushed his way to the table; the Deltas looked at him in amazement.

'Ford!' said the deputy undertreasurer, in a low voice. It is the Savage. He felt afraid.

"Listen, I beg you," exclaimed the Savage seriously. 'Lend me your ears...' he had never spoken in public before and it was very difficult for him to express what he wanted to say. 'Don't take this horrible thing. It's poison, it's poison.

'I say, Mr. Savage,' said the deputy undertreasurer with a conciliatory smile. 'Would you mind leaving me...?'

Poison for the soul and the body.

'Yeah, but let me get on with my distribution, okay? There is a good partner. With the cautious tenderness of one who caressed a notoriously cruel animal, he patted the Savage's arm. 'Just leave me...'

'Never!' shouted the Savage.

'But look, old man...'

"Throw it all away, this horrible poison."

The words "Throw it all away" pierced the enveloping layers of misunderstanding to the very core of Delta consciousness. An angry murmur rose from the crowd.

"I came to bring you freedom," said the Savage, turning to the twins. 'I come...'

The deputy sub-economist knew nothing more; he had come out of the lobby and was looking up a number in the phone book.

"Not in their own rooms," Bernard summarized. Not mine, not yours. Not in the Aphroditaeum; neither in the Center nor in the College. Where could he have gone?

Helmholtz shrugged. They came back from work expecting to find the Savage waiting for them at one or other of the usual meeting places, and there was no sign of the guy. Which was irritating, since they intended to drive to Biarritz in Helmholtz's sporty four-seat quadcopter. They would be late for dinner if he didn't show up soon.

"Let's give him another five minutes," Helmholtz said. 'If he doesn't show up by then, we…'

The ringing of the telephone interrupted him. He picked up the phone. 'Hello. Speaking.' Then, after a long interval of listening, 'Ford on Flivver!' he swore. "I will leave immediately."

'What's that?' asked Bernardo.

"A guy I know from Park Lane Hospital," Helmholtz said. The Savage is there. It seems that he has gone crazy. Anyway, it's urgent. Come with me?'

Together they ran down the hall to the elevators.

'But do you like being a slave?' said the Savage when they entered the Hospital. His face was flushed, his eyes shining with heat and indignation. 'Do you like being a baby? If you drink. Moaning and vomiting,” he added, exasperated by his bestial stupidity to the point of insulting those he had come to save. The insults bounced off his thick shell of stupidity; they looked at him with an empty expression of dull, sullen resentment in his eyes. 'Yes, vomiting!' the Scream. Pain and remorse, compassion and duty, all forgotten now and, as it were, absorbed in an intense and overwhelming hatred for these far-from-human monsters. 'Don't you want to be free and men? You don't even understand what masculinity and freedom are? Anger was making him speak fluently; the words came easily, in a hurry. "It's not?" he repeated he, but got no answer to his question. "Very well, then," he continued grimly. "I'm going to teach you; I'm goingdoYou are free whether you like it or not. And opening a window that overlooked the interior patio of the Hospital, she began to throw the boxes of medicines fromsomaPills by handfuls for the area.

For a moment the khaki mob was silent, petrified with amazement and horror at the spectacle of this rampant sacrilege.

"He's crazy," Bernard whispered, looking at him with wide eyes. - They'll kill him. They...' Suddenly, a great shout came from the crowd; a wave of movement hurled him menacingly toward the Savage. "Ford, help him!" said Bernard, and looked away.

"Ford helps those who help themselves." And with a laugh, an exultant laugh, Helmholtz Watson pushed his way through the crowd.

'Free free!' exclaimed the Savage, and with one hand continued to throw thesomain the area while, with the other, he pummeled the indistinguishable faces of his attackers. 'Free!' And suddenly Helmholtz appeared next to him: "Good old Helmholtz!" - also punches - 'Finally men!' 'Yes men! mens!' and he was no more poison. He took the box and showed them its black void. 'You are free!'

Howling, the Deltas attacked with redoubled fury.

Hesitating on the sidelines of the battle, 'They are lost,' said Bernardand, impelled by a sudden impulse, ran to their aid; then he thought better of it and stopped; then, embarrassed, he took a step forward again; then he again thought better of it, and he was in an agony of humiliated indecision-thinking thatthemthey could be killed if I didn't help them, and thatto thethey could die if it did, when (praise Ford!), wide-eyed and pig-snouted in their gas masks, police said.

Bernard ran to meet him. He waved his arms; and it was action, he was doing something. He yelled 'Help!' several times, getting stronger each time to give himself the illusion of helping. 'Help!Help!HELP!'

The officers pushed him aside and continued their work. Three men with spray machines strapped to their shoulders pumped out thick clouds ofsomavapor in the air. Two more were busy around the synthetic portable music box. With squirt pistols loaded with a powerful anesthetic, four others pushed their way through the crowd, methodically dispersing, stream by stream, the fiercest fighters.

'Faster Faster!' Bernardo yelled. They will kill them if you don't hurry. They will... Oh! Annoyed by his talk, one of the officers shot him with a water pistol. Bernard froze for a second or two, wobbling unsteadily on legs that seemed to have lost their bones, their tendons, their muscles, to become mere sticks of jelly, and finally not even jelly-water: it fell in a heap on the floor. .

Suddenly, from the Synthetic Music Box a Voice began to speak. The Voice of Reason, the Voice of Good Feeling. The soundtrack reel was being developed on Anti-Riot Synthetic Speech Number Two (Medium Force). Straight from the depths of a non-existent heart, 'My friends, my friends!' said the Voice so pathetically, with such infinitely tender note of reproach that, behind their gas masks, even the policemen's eyes were momentarily misted with tears, 'what does that mean? Why aren't they being happy and good together? Happy and good,' repeated the Voice. "In peace, in peace." She shuddered, dropped to a whisper, and momentarily expired. 'Oh, I want you to be happy,' she began, with anxious earnestness. 'I want you to be good! Please, please, be good and...'

Two minutes later, the Voice and thesomathe steam had taken its toll. Tearfully, the Deltas kissed and hugged, half a dozen twins at once in an all-encompassing embrace. Even Helmholtz and the Savage were close to tears. A fresh supply of medicine boxes was brought in from the Exchange; another hastily distributed, and to the richly affectionate, baritone farewells of the Voice, the twins scattered, sobbing as if their hearts would break. 'Goodbye, my dear, dear friends, stay with you! Goodbye, my dear, dear friends. Ford keep it. Goodbye, dear, dear...'

When the last Delta left, the policeman cut off the power. The angelic Voice was silent.

Will you come quietly? asked the sergeant, 'or should we anesthetize?' He pointed his water pistol menacingly.

"Oh, let's go quietly," replied the Savage, alternately wiping a cut lip, a scratch on his neck, and a bite on his left hand.

Still holding the handkerchief to his bleeding nose, Helmholtz nodded in confirmation.

Awake and recovering the movement of his legs, Bernard had chosen that moment to go as discreetly as possible towards the door.

"Hello, you," the sergeant called, and a policeman in a pig mask strode across the room and put a hand on the young man's shoulder.

Bernard turned with an expression of indignant innocence. Running away? He had not dreamed of such a thing. 'Though what the hell do you wantmimbecause', he told the sergeant, 'I really can't imagine.'

"You are a friend of the prisoners, aren't you?"

"Well..." Bernard said, and hesitated. No, he really couldn't deny it. 'Why shouldn't it be?' he asked him.

"Let's go then," the sergeant said, and pushed his way toward the door and the waiting police car.

Chapter XVI

The room the three were led into was the Controller's office.

Your ford will collapse in no time. Butler Gama left them alone.

Helmholtz riu alto.

"It's more of a caffeinated party than a trial," he said, and plopped into the most luxurious of airline seats. Cheer up, Bernard,” he added, seeing the unhappy green face of his friend. But Bernard did not move; Without answering, without even looking at Helmholtz, he went to sit in the most uncomfortable chair in the room, carefully chosen in the dim hope of somehow diverting the wrath of higher powers.

The Savage, meanwhile, wandered restlessly about the room, scrutinizing with vague and superficial curiosity the books on the shelves, the reels of soundtracks, and the reels of the reading machine in their numbered pigeonholes. On the table below the window was an enormous volume bound in smooth black leather and stamped with large gold T's. He took it and opened it. MY LIFE AND WORK, FOR OUR FORD. The book was published in Detroit by the Society for the Propagation of Fordian Knowledge. He turned the pages lazily, reading a sentence here, a paragraph there, and had just concluded that the book did not interest him, when the door opened and the Resident World Controller for Western Europe hurried into the room.

Mustapha Mond shook hands with all three; but it was to the Savage that he addressed himself. "So you don't like civilization very much, Mr. Savage," he said.

The Savage looked at him. He was ready to lie, to brag, to remain sullenly indifferent; but, reassured by the good-humored intelligence on the Controller's face, he decided to tell the truth, bluntly. 'Not.' He shook his head.

Bernard was surprised and horrified. What would the controller think? To be labeled a friend of a man who said he didn't like civilization, he said so openly himself and, of all people, to the Controller, it was terrible. "But, John," he began. A glance from Mustapha Mond reduced him to abject silence.

“Of course,” the Savage continued to admit, “there are some very good things. All that music in the air, for example...'

'Sometimes a thousand vibrating instruments hum in my ears, and sometimes voices.'

The Savage's face lit up with sudden pleasure. "Did you read it too?" he asked. "I thought no one knew about this book here in England."

'Almost nobody. I am one of the few. It's forbidden, you know. But since I make the laws here, I can also break them. With impunity, Mr. Marx,' he added, turning to Bernard. 'what I fear youcan notIt does.'

Bernard plunged himself into even more desperate misery.

'But why is it forbidden?' asked the Savage. In the excitement of meeting a man who had read Shakespeare, he momentarily forgot everything else.

The controller shrugged. 'Because he is old; that is the main reason. We have no use for old stuff here.

'Even when they're beautiful?'

Especially when they are beautiful. Beauty is attractive and we don't want people to be attracted to old things. We want you to like the new ones.

'But the new ones are so stupid and horrible. These plays, where there's nothing but helicopters flying by and youTo feelpeople kissing. He winced. Goats and monkeys! Only in Othello's words could he find a suitable vehicle for his contempt and hatred.

"Good tame animals, anyway," the controller muttered in parentheses.

why don't you let them seeOthelloinstead of?'

'I told you; he is old. Also, they couldn't understand.

Yes, that was true. She remembered how Helmholtz laughed atRomeo and Juliet. 'Well,' she said, after a pause, 'something new which is likeOthello, and that they may understand.'

“This is what we all wanted to write,” Helmholtz said, breaking a long silence.

"And it is what you will never write," said the controller. Cause if it really was likeOthellono one could understand him, no matter how young he was. And if he was new, he couldn't be likeOthello.'

'Why not?'

'Yes, why not?' Helmholtz repeated. He, too, was oblivious to the unpleasant realities of the situation. Green with anxiety and apprehension, only Bernard remembered them; the others ignored him. 'Why not?'

'Because our world is not like Othello's world. You can't make fivers without steel, and you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world is stable now. The people are happy; they get what they want and never want what they can't get. They are well; are you sure; they are never sick; they do not fear death; they happily ignore passion and old age; they are tormented by not having mothers or fathers; they have no wives, children, or lovers to feel strong about; they are so conditioned that they practically cannot help but behave as they should. And if something goes wrong, theresoma. Let him go and throw it out the window in the name of freedom, Mr. Savage.Liberty!' He laughed. I hope the Deltas know what freedom is! And now hoping they understandOthello! My good boy!

The Savage was silent for a while. 'Even so,' he stubbornly insisted, 'Othello'It's good,Othellois better than these feelings.'

"Of course it is," the controller agreed. “But that is the price we have to pay for stability. You have to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We sacrifice high art. Instead, we have the senses and the organ of smell.

"But they don't mean anything."

They refer to themselves; they mean many pleasant sensations for the public.'

'But they're... they're said by an idiot.'

The controller laughed. 'He's not being very courteous to his friend, Mr. Watson. One of our most distinguished Emotional Engineers...'

"But you're right," Helmholtz said sadly. 'Why thatit isfool. Writing when there is nothing to say...'

'Precisely. But this requires the greatest ingenuity. You're making flivvers with the absolute minimum of steel: masterpieces of practically nothing more than pure sensation.

The Savage shook his head. “It all sounds pretty horrible to me.

'Of course. Real happiness always seems rather meager compared to the excessive compensations for misery. And, of course, stability is not as spectacular as instability. And being content does not have the charm of a good fight against misfortune, nor the picturesqueness of a fight against temptation, or a fatal defeat due to passion or doubt. Happiness is never great.

"I suppose not," said the Savage after a silence. "But does it have to be as bad as those twins?" He wiped a hand across his eyes as if trying to erase the remembered image of those long lines of identical dwarfs at the assembly tables, those twin packs lined up at the entrance to the Brentford monorail station, those human vermin swarming around the Linda's bed . death, the infinitely repeated face of her aggressors. He looked down at his bandaged left hand and grimaced.

'How useful! I see you don't like our Bokanovsky Groups; but I assure you that they are the foundation on which everything else is built. They are the gyroscope that stabilizes the state's rocket plane on its unwavering course. The deep voice vibrated with excitement; the gesturing hand implied all the space and advance of the irresistible machine. Mustapha Mond's oratory was almost up to synthetic standards.

“I was wondering,” said the Savage, “why you had them, since you can take whatever you want from these bottles. Why don't you turn everyone into Alpha Double Plus while you're at it?

Mustapha Mond laughed. 'Because we don't want our throats slit,' he replied. “We believe in happiness and stability. An Alpha society could not help but be unstable and miserable. Imagine a factory run by Alphas, that is, by separate and unrelated individuals of good heredity and conditioned to be capable (within limits) of free choice and responsibility. Imagine!' he repeated.

The Savage tried to imagine it, without much success.

'It's stupid. A man decanted to Alpha and conditioned to Alpha would go crazy if he had to do the job of Epsilon Demi-Idiot: go crazy or start breaking things. Alphas can be fully socialized, but only on the condition that you force them to do alpha work. An Epsilon can only be expected to make Epsilon sacrifices, for the good reason that they are not sacrifices to him; They are the line of least resistance. His conditioning has laid out paths that he must run. He can't help it; he is doomed. Even after decantation, he remains in a bottle, an invisible bottle of embryonic and infantile fixations. Each one of us, of course, the Controller continued meditatively, spends his life inside a bottle. But if we are Alphas, our bottles are, relatively speaking, huge. We would suffer a lot if we were confined in a narrower space. No substitute for higher caste champagne can be poured into lower caste bottles. It is theoretically obvious. But it has also been proven in actual practice. The outcome of the Cyprus experience was convincing.'

'What was that?' asked the Savage.

Mustafa Mond smiled. “Well, you can call it a rebottling experiment if you want. It all started in 473 A.F. The Controllers cleared the island of Cyprus of all its existing inhabitants and recolonized it with a specially prepared batch of twenty-two thousand Alphas. All agricultural and industrial equipment was issued to them and they were left to mind their own business. The result exactly met all theoretical predictions. The land was not well worked; there were strikes in all the factories; laws were annulled, orders were disobeyed; all the people assigned to a low-level work period were constantly scheming for high-level jobs, and all the people with high-level jobs were counter-scheming at all costs to stay where they were. Within six years, they were having a first class civil war. When nineteen of the twenty-two thousand had been killed, the survivors unanimously petitioned the World Controllers to resume rule of the island. What did you do. And that was the end of the only Alpha society the world had ever seen.

The Savage sighed deeply.

"The optimal stock," said Mustapha Mond, "is modeled on the iceberg: eight ninths below the waterline, one ninth above."

"And are they happy below the waterline?"

Happier than on top of him. Happier than your friends here, for example. He pointed.

"Despite this horrible job?"

'¿Horrible?Themdon't believe it. On the contrary, they like it. It is light, it is childishly simple. There is no tension in the mind or muscles. Seven and a half hours of light and tireless work, and then thesomaration and games and copulation and feelings without restrictions. What more can they ask for? True,” she added, “they can ask for shorter hours. And of course we could give them shorter hours. Technically, it would be perfectly simple to reduce all lower caste working hours to three or four a day. But would they be happier for it? No, they wouldn't. The experiment was attempted more than a century and a half ago. All Ireland was subject to the four-hour day. Which it was the result? The turmoil and a large increase in the consumption ofsoma; that was it. These three and a half hours of extra leisure were so far from being a source of happiness that people felt compelled to take a vacation from them. The Invention Office is full of blueprints for labor-saving processes. Thousands of them. Mustapha Mond made a generous gesture. And why don't we execute them? For the workers; it would be sheer cruelty to afflict them with excessive idleness. It is the same with agriculture. We could synthesize every morsel of food if we wanted to. But we don't. We prefer to keep a third of the population on earth. For your own good, because you needmore timetake food from the earth than from a factory. Also, we have to think about our stability. We don't want to change. Every change is a threat to stability. That is another reason why we are so cautious when it comes to applying new inventions. Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy. Yes, even science.

Science? The Savage frowned. He knew the word. But what exactly that meant, he couldn't say. Shakespeare and the old folks in town never mentioned science, and from Linda he got only the vaguest hints: science was something you made helicopters with, something that made you laugh at corn dances, something that kept you from crinkling up and getting lost. head. . teeth. He made a desperate effort to understand the meaning of the controller.

“Yes,” said Mustapha Mond, “that's another item in the cost of stability. It is not only art that is incompatible with happiness; it is also science. Science is dangerous; we have to keep him carefully chained and gagged.

'What?' Helmholtz said, amazed. “But we always say that science is everything. It's a hypnopedic commonplace.

"Three times a week between the ages of thirteen and seventeen," Bernard added.

'And all the scientific propaganda we do at the College...'

'Yes; but what kind of science? Mustapha Mond asked sarcastically. “You have not had scientific training, so you cannot judge. I was a very good physicist in my time. Too good, good enough to realize that all our science is just a cookbook, with orthodox culinary theory that no one can question, and a list of recipes not to be added except with special permission from the head chef. I'm the boss now. But I was once a curious young kitchen helper. I started cooking a little by myself. Unorthodox cooking, illicit cooking. A bit of real science, actually. He was silent.

'What happened?' asked Helmholtz Watson.

The controller sighed. “Almost what will happen to you. He was about to be sent to an island.

The words propelled Bernard into violent and inappropriate activity. 'Sendmimto an island? She jumped up, ran across the room, and stood gesturing at the controller. 'you can't sendmim. I did nothing. It was the others. I swear it was the others. He pointed accusingly at Helmholtz and the Savage. 'Oh, please don't send me to Iceland. I promise I'll do what I have to do. Give me another chance. Please give me another chance. The tears began to flow. "I tell you it's his fault," he sobbed. – And not to Iceland. Oh please, his ship, please... And in a paroxysm of abjection he knelt before the Controller. Mustapha Mond tried to get him up; but Bernard persisted in humiliating him; the flow of words poured out inexhaustibly. In the end, the Comptroller had to call his fourth secretary.

'Bring three men,' he ordered, 'and lead Mr. Marx through a room. give him a good onesomavaporization and then put him to bed and leave him.'

The fourth secretary left and returned with three twin footmen in green uniforms. Still screaming and sobbing, Bernard let himself go.

"You'd think his throat would be cut," the controller said, as the door closed. —Whereas, if he had any common sense, he would understand that his punishment is actually a reward. He is being sent to an island. In other words, he is sent to a place where he will meet the most interesting group of men and women to be found anywhere in the world. All people who, for one reason or another, have consciously become too individual to fit into community life. All people who are not satisfied with Orthodoxy, who have their own independent ideas. Each one, in a word, which is anyone. I almost envy you, Mr. Watson.

Helmholtz laughed. "Then why aren't you on an island yourself?"

'Because, in the end, I preferred it,' replied the Controller. 'I was given a choice: be sent to an island, where I could have continued my pure science, or be brought to the Board of Controllers with the prospect of eventually succeeding in a true Comptrollership. I chose this and let the science go. After a brief silence, 'Sometimes,' he added, 'I prefer to mourn science. Happiness is a tough teacher, especially other people's happiness. A much more difficult teacher, if one is not conditioned to accept it without question, than the truth. He sighed, fell silent again, then continued in a more forceful tone. Well, duty is duty. You cannot consult your own preferences. I am interested in the truth, I like science. But the truth is a threat, science is a public danger. As dangerous as beneficial. She gave us the stable balance of the story. China was hopelessly insecure by comparison; even primitive matriarchies were no more stable than we are. Thanks, I repeat, to science. But we cannot allow science to undo its own good work. That's why we've so carefully limited the scope of your searches, that's why they almost sent me to an island. We do not allow you to deal only with the most immediate problems of the moment. All further investigations are carefully discouraged. It's funny,” he continued after a short pause, “to read what people in Our Ford's time used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to have figured it could go on and on, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the highest value; everything else was secondary and subordinate. It is true that ideas were already beginning to change. Our own Ford did much to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production required a change. Universal happiness keeps the wheels turning constantly; truth and beauty cannot. And of course, whenever the masses seized political power, it was happiness that mattered, not truth and beauty. However, despite everything, scientific research was still allowed without restrictions. People still talked about truth and beauty as if they were sovereign goods. Until the time of the Nine Years War.Whatmade them change tune. What good is truth, beauty or knowledge when anthrax bombs are exploding all around you? It was then that science began to be controlled, after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to control even their appetites. Anything for a quiet life. Since then, we continue to control. It has not been very good for the truth, of course. But it has been very good for happiness. You can't have something for nothing. Happiness has to be paid for. You are paying for this, Mr. Watson, paying because you are so interested in beauty. I was very interested in the truth; I also paid.

'Butyou guysI didn't go to an island,” said the Savage, breaking a long silence.

The controller smiled. 'This is how I paid. Choosing to serve happiness. Other people's, not mine. It's lucky,' he added after a pause, 'that there are so many islands in the world. I don't know what we would do without them. Put them all in the death chamber, I guess. By the way, Mr. Watson, would you like a tropical climate? The Marquesas, for example; or Samoa? Or something much more stimulating?

Helmholtz rose from his pneumatic chair. "I would like completely bad weather," he replied. “I think we would write better if the weather was bad. If there was a lot of wind and storm, for example...'

The controller nodded approvingly. “I like the spirit of him, Mr. Watson. I like it a lot. As much as I officially disapproved of it. He smiled. — And the Malvinas Islands?

"Yes, I think it will," Helmholtz replied. And now, if you don't mind, I'm going to see how poor Bernard is doing.

Chapter XVII

"Art, science, it seems you have paid a high price for your happiness," said the Savage, when they were alone. 'Anything else?'

"Well, religion, of course," replied the controller. 'There used to be a thing called God, before the Nine Years War. But I was forgetting; you know all about God, I guess.

"Well…" The Savage hesitated. He would have wanted to say something about loneliness, about the night, about the pale plateau under the moon, about the precipice, about the plunge into the dismal darkness, about death. He would have liked to talk; but there were no words. Not even in Shakespeare.

Meanwhile, the controller had crossed to the other side of the room and was opening a large wall safe between the bookshelves. The heavy door opened. Plunging into the inner darkness, 'It's a subject,' she said, 'which has always interested me very much.' She pulled out a thick black volume. "You never read this, for example."

The Savage took it. 'The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments', he read aloud on the cover.

"Not even that". It was a small book and had lost the cover.

'The Imitation of Christ.'

"Not even that". He handed me another volume.

'Varieties of religious experiences.By William James.

"And I have a lot more," Mustapha Mond continued, returning to his seat. “A whole collection of old pornographic books. God in the vault and Fordon on the shelves. He gestured with a smile to his declared library: to the shelves of books, the shelves lined with reels from reading machines and reels from soundtracks.

'But if you know about God, why don't you tell them?' asked the Savage indignantly. 'Why don't you give them these books about God?'

'For the same reason that we do not give themOthello: They're Old; they are about God hundreds of years ago. Not about God now.

'But God doesn't change.'

But men do.

'What difference does it make?'

"All the difference in the world," said Mustapha Mond. He got up again and walked towards the vault. "There was a man named Cardinal Newman," he said. "A cardinal," he exclaimed parenthetically, "he was sort of an arch-community-singer."

"I, Pandulfo, of the handsome cardinal of Milan." I read about them in Shakespeare.

'Of course yes. Well, as he said, there was a man named Cardinal Newman. Oh, here's the book. She pulled it out. "And while I think about it, I'll take this one too." It is from a man named Maine de Biran. He was a philosopher, if you know what he was.

"A man who dreams of fewer things than are in heaven and on earth," said the Savage quickly.

'It's true. I'm going to read you one of the things that hefezI dream in a moment. Meanwhile, she listens to what this old Archcommunity-Singer said. She opened the book at the place marked by a sheet of paper and began to read. “We are not ours, just as we are not ours. We do not create ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters. We are owned by God. Is it any happiness, or any consolation, to consider thatit isour own? Perhaps the young and prosperous think so. These may think it's a great thing to have everything, as they suppose, in their own way, not to depend on anyone, not to have to think of anything out of sight, to be without the hassle of continual acknowledgment, continual prayer, continual prayer. reference to what they do with the will of another. But, as time passes, they, like all men, will find that independence was not made for man, that it is an unnatural state, it will do for a while, but it will not carry us safely to the end... Mustapha Mond paused, put down the first book, and picking up the other, turned the pages. "Take this one, for example," he said, and in his gravelly voice he began to read once more: "A man grows old; he feels in himself that radical feeling of weakness, of apathy, of restlessness, which accompanies progress... old, and feeling thus, he imagines himself only sick, dispelling his fears with the notion that this distressing condition is due to some particular cause, from which, like a disease, he hopes to be cured. a horrible disease. They say it is the fear of death and what comes after death that turns men to religion as they grow older. But my own experience has convinced me. that, apart from such terrors or imaginations. Religious feeling tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions subside, as fancy and sensibility become less excited and excitable, our reason becomes less disturbed in its performance better , less obscured by the images, desires and distractions in which she used to be absorbed; then God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; it rotates naturally and inevitably; because now that everything that has given the world of sensations its life and charm has begun to fade from us, now that the existence of phenomena is no longer sustained by internal or external impressions, we feel the need to lean on something that remains. . , something that never makes us false - a reality, an absolute and eternal truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious feeling is of such a pure nature, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up for all our other losses.” Mustapha Mond closed the book and leaned back in his chair. “One of the innumerable things in heaven and earth that these philosophers did not dream of was this' (he waved his hand), 'us, the modern world. "You can only be independent of God while you are young and prosperous; independence will not carry you safely to the end." Well, now we have youth and prosperity to the end. Whats Next? Obviously, we can be independent of God. “Religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses. “But there are no losses to make up; religious feeling is superfluous. And why should we look for a substitute for youthful cravings, when youthful cravings never fail? A substitute for distractions, when we're still enjoying all the old Last nonsense? What need have we of rest when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we havesoma? of something immovable, when there is social order?'

"So you think that God doesn't exist?"

“No, I think there probably is one.

'Then why?...'

Mustapha Mond stopped him. 'But it manifests itself in different ways for different men. In pre-modern times, he manifested as the being described in these books. Now...'

'How does it manifest now?' asked the Savage.

'Well, it manifests as an absence; like she wasn't there.

'This is your fault.'

Call it the fault of civilization. God is not compatible with machinery, scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery, medicine and happiness. That's why I have to keep these books locked up in the vault. are obscene. People would be surprised if...

The Savage interrupted him. 'But it is notnaturalfeel that there is a God?

"You might as well ask if it's natural to zip up your pants," the controller said sarcastically. You remind me of another one of those old guys named Bradley. He defined philosophy as the discovery of bad reasons for what one instinctively believes. As if someone instinctively believed something! Someone believes things because they have been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what you believe for other bad reasons: that is philosophy. People believe in God because they have been conditioned to believe in God.

'But even so,' insisted the Savage, 'it is natural to believe in God when you are alone, all alone, at night, thinking about death...'

“But now people are never alone,” Mustapha Mond said. “We make them hate loneliness; and we arrange their lives so that it is almost impossible for them to have it.'

The Savage nodded wistfully. In Malpais he had suffered because he had been excluded from the communal activities of the town, in civilized London he had suffered because he could never escape these communal activities, he was never quiet alone.

'Do you remember that part inRey Lear? said the Savage at last: “The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices they make instruments to torment us; -- "You spoke well, it's true. The wheel has given a full turn, here I am." Doesn't there seem to be a God managing things, punishing, rewarding?'

"Good and you?" questioned the Controller in turn. "You can indulge in a number of pleasurable vices with a freemartin and not risk having your son's mistress gouge your eyes out." "The wheel has come full circle; I am here." But where would Edmund be these days? Sitting in a booster seat, arm around a girl's waist, sucking on her sex hormone gum and watching the sensations. The gods are fair. Undoubtedly. But its code of laws is ultimately dictated by the people who organize society; Providence follows the example of men.

'Are you sure?' asked the Savage. "Are you sure the Edmund in that pneumatic chair wasn't punished as severely as the Edmund who's wounded and bleeding to death?" The gods are fair. Didn't they use his pleasant vices as an instrument to degrade him?

'Demote him from what position? As a happy citizen, worker and consumer of goods, it is perfect. Of course, if you choose a standard other than ours, you might say it's downgraded. But you need to stick to a set of postulates. You can't play electromagnetic golf by the rules of CentrifugalBumble-puppy.

"But the value does not reside in a particular will," said the Savage. 'He retains his esteem and dignity also where 'it is precious in itself as in the prize'.

"Come on, come on," Mustapha Mond protested, "this is going too far, isn't it?"

'If you allowed yourself to think of God, you would not allow yourself to be degraded by pleasant vices. You would have a reason to endure things patiently, to do things bravely. I have seen this with the Indians.

"I'm sure you did," Mustapha Mond said. But we are not Indians. There is no need for a civilized man to put up with anything seriously unpleasant. And as for doing things, Ford forbids you to put the idea in your head. He would upset the entire social order if men started doing things for themselves.

"What about selflessness, then?" If you had a God, you would have a reason to deny yourself.

“But industrial civilization is only possible when there is no self-denial. Self-complacency up to the limits imposed by hygiene and the economy. Otherwise the wheels stop turning.

You would have a reason for chastity! said the Savage, blushing a little as he spoke the words.

But chastity means passion, chastity means neurasthenia. And passion and neurasthenia mean instability. And instability means the end of civilization. You cannot have a lasting civilization without many pleasant vices.

"But God is the reason for all that is noble, beautiful, and heroic." If you had a God...'

'My dear young friend,' said Mustapha Mond, 'civilization has no need of nobility or heroism at all. These things are symptoms of political inefficiency. In a properly organized society like ours, no one gets the chance to be noble or heroic. Conditions must be completely altered before the occasion can arise. Where there are wars, where there are divided alliances, where there are temptations to resist, love objects to fight or defend, there, obviously, nobility and heroism have some meaning. But there are no wars today. The greatest care is taken to prevent you from loving someone too much. There is no divided loyalty; you are so conditioned that you cannot help but do what you must do. And what to do is generally so pleasurable, so many of the natural urges are freely indulged, that there is really no temptation to resist. And if ever, through bad luck, something unpleasant happens, well, there's alwayssomato give you a break from the facts. and there is alwayssomato calm his anger, to reconcile him with his enemies, to make him patient and long-suffering. In the past, you could only get these things by putting in a lot of effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gram pills, and there you have it. Anyone can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half of your morality in a bottle. Christianity without tears - that's whatsomaIt is.'

But the tears are necessary. Don't you remember what Othello said? "If after each storm such calms come, let the winds blow until they have awakened death." There is a story that one of the old Indians told us about the Mátsaki Girl. The young men who wanted to marry her had to do a morning of weeding in her garden. It sounded easy; but there were werewolves and mosquitoes, wizards. Most guys just couldn't take bites and stings. But what could... got the girl.

'Charming! But in civilized countries,” said the Comptroller, “you can have girls without a mattock; and there are no flies or mosquitoes to bite you. We got rid of them years ago.

The Savage nodded, frowning. You got rid of them. Yes, that's like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it. If it is nobler to the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take up arms against a sea of ​​troubles and oppose ending them... But you do neither. Neither suffer nor oppose. You have just abolished slings and arrows. Too easy.

Suddenly he fell silent, thinking of his mother. In her room on the thirty-seventh floor, Linda had floated in a sea of ​​singing lights and scented caresses, floating away, out of space, out of time, out of the prison of her memories, her habits, her aging, bloated body. Tomakin, former Director of Hatchery and Conditioning, Tomakin was still on vacation, on vacation from humiliation and pain, in a world where he couldn't hear those words, that mocking laugh, couldn't see that hideous face, feel those wet , arms limp around her. your neck, in a beautiful world...

"What you need," continued the Savage, "is somethingcomtears for a change Nothing costs enough here.

(“Twelve and a half million dollars,” Henry Foster had protested when the Savage told him this. “Twelve and a half million: that's what the new Fitting Center cost. Not a penny less.”)

'Expose the deadly and uncertain to all that fortune, death, and danger dare, even for an eggshell. Isn't there something about it? he asked, looking at Mustafa Mond. “Totally cut off from God, although of course God is a reason for that. Isn't there something about living dangerously?

"There's a lot of that," replied the controller. 'Men and women should have their adrenal glands stimulated from time to time.'

'What?' asked the Savage, not understanding.

“It is one of the perfect health conditions. That's why we created the V.P.S. mandatory treatments.'

'¿V.P.S.?'

'Substitute for Violent Passion. Regularly once a month. We flood the entire system with adrenaline. It is the complete physiological equivalent of fear and anger. All the tonic effects of killing Desdemona and being killed by Othello, without any of the drawbacks.

But I like the drawbacks.

"Not us," said the controller. We prefer to do things comfortably.

But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want the sin.'

“Actually,” said Mustapha Mond, “you are claiming the right to be unhappy.

'Very well, then,' said the Savage defiantly, 'I am claiming the right to be unhappy.'

'Not to mention the right to grow old, ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to eat little; the right to breastfeed; the right to live in constant apprehension about what may happen tomorrow; the right to contract typhoid fever; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pain of all kinds.'

There was a long silence.

"I claim them all," the Savage finally said.

Mustapha Mond shrugged. "You're welcome," he said.

Chapter XVIII

The door was ajar; they entered

'¡John!'

From the bathroom came a characteristic unpleasant sound.

"Is there a problem?" Helmholtz called.

There was no answer. The unpleasant sound was repeated twice; there was silence. Then, with a click, the bathroom door opened and, very pale, the Savage came out.

"I say," Helmholtz exclaimed solicitously, "thatit doesHe looks sick, John!

'Did you eat something that wasn't good for you?' asked Bernardo.

The Savage agreed. 'I ate civilization.'

'What?'

He poisoned me; I was contaminated. And so," she added, in a lower tone, "I lament my own wickedness.

'Yeah, but what exactly... I mean, right now you were...'

'Now I am purified,' said the Savage. — I drank some mustard and lukewarm water.

The others looked at him in astonishment. "You mean you were doing it on purpose?" asked Bernardo.

This is how the Indians always purify themselves. She sat up and, sighing, rubbed her hand over her forehead. "I'm going to rest for a few minutes," she said. I'm so tired.

"Well, I'm not surprised," Helmholtz said. After a silence, "We come to say goodbye", he continued in another tone. "We leave tomorrow morning."

"Yes, we leave tomorrow," said Bernard, in whose face the Savage saw a new expression of determined resignation. "And by the way, John," he continued, leaning forward in his chair and placing a hand on the Savage's knee, "I want to say that I'm sorry about everything that happened yesterday." He blushed. 'Shame on you,' he continued, despite the unsteadiness of his voice, 'how really...'

The Savage interrupted him and, taking his hand, shook it affectionately.

"Helmholtz was wonderful to me," Bernard continued after a brief pause. "If it wasn't for him, I would have...

"Now, now," Helmholtz protested.

There was silence. Despite your sadness - because of this, even; because their sadness was the symptom of their mutual love - the three young people were happy.

"I went to see the Controller this morning," the Savage finally said.

'Hence?'

“To ask if I can't go to the islands with you.

'And what did he say?' Helmholtz asked anxiously.

The Savage shook his head. "He didn't leave me."

'Why not?'

He said he wanted to continue the experiment. But damn it,' added the Savage, with sudden fury, 'damn if they keep experimenting on me. Not for all drivers in the world.UEI also have to leave tomorrow.

'But where?' the others asked in unison.

The Savage shrugged. 'Any place. I do not care. As long as I can be alone.

From Guildford the downline followed the Wey Valley to Godalming, then over Milford and Witley continued to Haslemere and Petersfield towards Portsmouth. Roughly parallel to it, the upline ran through Worplesden, Tongham, Puttenham, Elstead and Grayshott. Between Hog's Back and Hindhead there were points where the two lines were not more than four or seven miles apart. The distance was too close for careless pilots, especially at night and when they had ingested an extra half gram. There were accidents. Really. It was decided to divert the ascending line a few kilometers to the west. Between Grayshott and Tongham, four abandoned towering lighthouses marked the course of the old road from Portsmouth to London. The skies above them were silent and deserted. It was over Selborne, Borden and Farnham that the helicopters buzzed and roared incessantly.

The Savage had chosen for his hermitage the old lighthouse that stood on the top of the hill between Puttenham and Elstead. The building was bare concrete and in excellent condition: almost too comfortable, the Savage thought when he first explored the place, almost too civilly luxurious. He pacified his conscience by promising himself a compensatory harsher self-discipline, even more thorough and complete purifications. His first night in the hermitage was deliberately sleepless. He spent hours on his knees praying, now to that Heaven to which the guilty Claudio had implored forgiveness, now in Zuni to Awonawilona, ​​now to Jesus and Pookong, now to his own guardian animal, the eagle. He would from time to time stretch out his arms as if he were on the cross, and hold them there for long minutes of pain that gradually increased until it became a shuddering, heartbreaking agony; he held them, in voluntary crucifixion, while he repeated, through gritted teeth (sweat, meanwhile, running down his face): 'Oh, forgive me! O make me pure! Oh help me to be good! repeatedly, until he nearly passed out from the pain.

At dawn, he felt that he had earned the right to inhabit the lighthouse: yes, although there are stilleraglass in most windows, although the view from the platformeravery good. The very reason she chose the lighthouse almost instantly became a reason to go elsewhere. He had decided to live there because the view was so beautiful, because, from his point of view, he seemed to be looking at the incarnation of a divine being. But who was he to be pampered with the daily and hourly vision of beauty? Who was he to live in the visible presence of God? The only thing he deserved was to live in a filthy pigsty, in a blind hole in the ground. Stiff and still sore from his long night of pain, but inwardly calm, he climbed to his tower platform, gazed out at the brilliant dawn world he had reclaimed his right to inhabit. To the north the view was bounded by the long limestone ridge of Hog's Back, behind whose eastern edge rose the spiers of the seven skyscrapers that made up Guildford. Seeing them, the Savage grimaced; but he was to reconcile with them in the course of time; for at night they glowed gaily with geometrical constellations, or else, illuminated by searchlights, they pointed their luminous fingers (with a gesture whose meaning no one in England but the Savage now understood) solemnly towards the unfathomable mysteries of heaven.

In the valley that separated Hog's Back from the sandy hill where the lighthouse stood, Puttenham was a modest little town, nine stories high, with granaries, a poultry farm, and a small vitamin D factory. heather-clad slopes to a chain of ponds.

Beyond them, over the middle woods, rose the fourteen-story tower of Elstead. Obscured in the misty English air, Hindhead and Selborne beckoned from a blue, romantic distance. But it wasn't just the distance that drew the Savage to his spotlight; the near was as seductive as the far. The woods, the open stretches of yellow heather and gorse, the clusters of Scotch firs, the glittering lakes with their drooping birch trees, their water lilies, their beds of reeds: all this was beautiful and, to an eye accustomed to the barrenness of the American Wilderness, , amazing. And then loneliness! Entire days passed during which he never saw a human being. The lighthouse was only a quarter of an hour's flight from the Charing-T Tower; but the Malpais Hills were no more desolate than this Surrey moor. The crowds that poured out of London every day came out only to play electromagnetic golf or tennis. Puttenham had no ties; the closest Riemann surfaces were at Guildford. The flowers and the scenery were the only attractions here. And so, since there was no good reason to come, no one came. For the first few days the Savage lived alone and undisturbed.

Of the money that, on his first arrival, John had received for his personal expenses, most of it was spent on his equipment. Before leaving London he bought four rayon blankets, rope and twine, nails, glue, some tools, matches (though he intended, in due course, to have a fire drill), some pots and pans, two dozen packets of seeds and ten kilos. of wheat flour. 'Not,nosynthetic starch and cotton waste meal substitute,' he had insisted. Although it is more nutritious. But when it came to pangland cookies and vitaminized meat substitutes, he couldn't resist the merchant's persuasion. Looking at the cans now, he chastised himself bitterly for his weakness. Disgusting civilized thing! He had decided that he would never eat it, even if he was starving. This will teach them, he thought vindictively. That would also teach you.

He counted his money. He hoped that what little was left would be enough to get him through the winter. By next spring, his garden will produce enough to make him independent of the outside world. Meanwhile, there would always be hunting. He had seen many rabbits and there were waterfowl in the lakes. He immediately went to work making a bow and arrow.

There were ash trees near the lighthouse and, like arrows, a whole grove full of beautiful straight hazelnuts. She began by felling a young ash tree, cut six feet of branchless trunk, stripped off the bark, and chip by chip scraped away the white wood, as old Mitsima had taught her, until she had a stake as tall as herself. , hard in the center thickened. , alive and fast in fine tips. Work gave him intense pleasure. After those idle weeks in London, with nothing to do, whenever he wanted something more than to push a button or turn a crank, it was pure pleasure to be doing something that required skill and patience.

He had almost finished carving the staff when he realized with a start that he was singing...singing! It was as if, stumbling over himself on the outside, he suddenly stopped, he found himself flagrantly guilty. Feeling guilty, he blushed. After all, it wasn't for singing and having fun that he came here. It was to escape further contamination by the filth of civilized life; it was to be purified and healed; he actively went to make amends. He found, to his dismay, that, engrossed in cutting his bow, he had forgotten what he had sworn to himself he would constantly remember: poor Linda, and his own murderous cruelty to her, and those disgusting twins, swarming like lice all over the place. I usually. mystery. of her death, insulting, with her presence, not only her own pain and sorrow, but the gods themselves. He swore to remember, swore incessantly to mend his ways. And here he was, sitting happily on his bow stick, singing, really singing...

He went in, opened the box of mustard, and put water on the stove to boil.

Half an hour later, three Delta-Minus farm workers from one of the Puttenham Bokanovsky Groups were driving towards Elstead and, at the top of the hill, were shocked to see a young man standing outside the derelict lighthouse, stripped to the waist and punching. same same. with a whip of knotted cords. His back was streaked crimson horizontally, and from one ridge to the other ran thin strips of blood. The truck driver pulled to the side of the road and, with his two companions, gaped at the extraordinary spectacle. One, two, three - they counted the beats. After the eighth, the young man interrupted his self-punishment to run to the edge of the forest and there vomit violently. When he finished, he took the whip and began to beat himself again. Nine ten eleven twelve...

'Ford!' whispered the driver. And his twins were of the same opinion.

“Fordey! they said.

Three days later, like vultures landing on a corpse, the reporters arrived.

Dried and hardened over a slow fire of green wood, the bow was ready. The Savage was busy with his arrows. Thirty hazelnut sticks were carved and dried, with the sharp nail tips carefully trimmed. She had raided Puttenham Farm one night, and now she had enough feathers to equip an entire arsenal. He was working on the plumage of his arrows when the first of the reporters found him. Silent with his pneumatic shoes, the man went after him.

"Good morning, Mr. Savage," he said. I am the representative ofhourly radio.'

Frightened as if bitten by a snake, the Savage sprang to his feet, scattering arrows, feathers, a can of tail, and brush in all directions.

"I'm sorry," the reporter said, with genuine remorse. "I didn't mean..." he touched his hat, the aluminum chimney hat in which he wore his wireless receiver and transmitter. "Sorry, I didn't take it off," he said. It's a bit heavy. Well, as he told you, I am the representative ofhourly...'

'What do you want?' asked the Savage, frowning. The reporter returned his most flattering smile.

"Well, of course, our readers would be deeply interested..." She cocked her head to the side, her smile turning almost flirtatious. "Just a few words from you, Mr. Savage. And quickly, with a series of ritual gestures, he uncoiled two cables connected to the portable battery strapped to his waist; connected them simultaneously to the sides of his aluminum hat; touched a spring on the crown, and the antennae shot into the air; he touched another spring at the tip of the rim and, like a jack-in-the-box, bounced a microphone and it lay there, quivering, six inches in front of his nose; he attached a pair of headphones over his ears; he pressed a button on the left side of the hat, and from within came a slight wasplike buzz; he turned a knob to the right, and the buzz was interrupted by a stethoscopic hiss and pop, by sudden hiccups and squeaks. 'Hello,' he said into the microphone, 'hello, hello...' Suddenly, a bell rang inside his hat. "Is that you, Edzel? Cousin Mellon speaking. Yes, I managed to speak to him. Mr. Savage will now take the microphone and say a few words. It's not, Mr. . Wild? He looked at the Savage with another of his seductive smiles. 'Just tell our readers why you came here. What made you leave London (wait, Edzel!) so suddenly. And, of course, that whip. (The Savage began. How did they know about the whip?) 'We are all dying to know about the whip. And then something about Civilization. You know the kind of thing. "What I think of Civilized Girl". A few words, very few...'

The Savage obeyed with disconcerting literalness. Five words he said and no more, five words, the same ones he had said to Bernard about the Canterbury Archcommunity Cantor. 'Sim! Sonséso tse-ná!And grabbing the reporter by the shoulder, he spun him around (the young man was tantalizingly well covered), took aim, and with all the power and precision of a soccer champion on foot delivered a prodigious kick.

Eight minutes later, a new edition ofthe hourly radiowas for sale on the streets of London. 'hWOWRFAREWELLRTHE GOALKEEPER HASCOCCYX KICKED BYMETROYSTERIOSOPENED' Read the headlines on the front page. 'sTEST ONSURREY.'

'Sensation even in London,' thought the reporter when, on his return, he read the words. And a very painful sensation, what's more. He cautiously sat down to eat lunch.

Unfazed by that preemptive bruise on their colleague's tailbone, four other reporters, representing New YorkSchedules, or FrankfurtFour-dimensional continuum,The Fordian Scientific Monitor, mithe delta mirror, called the lighthouse that afternoon and received receptions of progressively increasing violence.

From a safe distance and still rubbing his buttocks, 'You ignorant fool!' shouted the manThe Fordian Scientific Monitor, 'why don't you takesoma?

'Fall out!' The Savage shook his fist.

The other took a few steps back and turned around again. "Evil is an unreality if you take a few grams."

'Tos iyathtokyai!The tone was menacingly mocking.

"Pain is an illusion."

'Oh yeah?' said the Savage, and, picking up a stout stick of hazelnut, he advanced.

the man ofThe Fordian Scientific MonitorHe ran to his helicopter.

After that, the Savage was left alone for a while. A few helicopters arrived and circled the tower questioningly. He shot an arrow at the troublemaker closest to them. Holes drilled in the aluminum cabin floor; there was a shrill scream and the machine was thrown into the air with all the acceleration its supercharger could give it. The others then respectfully kept their distance. Ignoring his weary hum (he compared himself in his imagination to one of the Maiden of Mátsaki's suitors, impassive and persistent among the winged worms), the Savage wandered into what would be his garden. After a while, the worm evidently got bored and flew away; for hours and hours the sky above his head was empty and, except for the larks, silent.

The weather was awesome, there was thunder in the air. He had been digging all morning and was resting, lying on the ground. And suddenly Lenina's thought was a real, naked, tangible presence, saying 'Sweet!' and 'Put your arms around me!' - in shoes and socks, scented. insolent bitch! But oh, oh, her arms around her neck, the elevation of her breasts, her mouth! Eternity was on our lips and eyes. Lenina... No, no, no, no! He got up and, half naked as he was, ran out of the house. At the edge of the moor was a clump of old juniper trees. She lunged at them, embraced, not the smooth body of her desire, but a handful of green thorns. Sharp, with a thousand points, they pricked him. He tried to think of poor Linda, gasping and speechless, her hands clasped together, and unspeakable terror in her eyes. Poor Linda, who he swore she would remember. But it was still Lenina's presence that haunted him. Lenina, whom he had promised to forget. Even through the sting and sting of the juniper needles, his quivering flesh was aware of it, inescapably real. 'Sweet, sweet... And if you wanted me too, why not...?'

The whip hung on a nail by the door, ready to be used against incoming reporters. In a frenzy, the Savage ran back into the house, grabbed him, and spun him around. The twisted ropes penetrated his flesh.

'Prostitute! Prostitute!' she screamed at each blow as if she were Lenina (and with what frenzy, without knowing it, she wished she were!), white, hot, perfumed, infamous Lenina, that's how she whipped. 'Prostitute!' And then, in a desperate voice, 'Oh, Linda, forgive me. Forgive me God. I am bad. I am bad. I'm... No, no, bitch, bitch!

From his carefully constructed hide in the woods a thousand feet away, Darwin Bonaparte, the Feely Corporation's most experienced big-game photographer, had watched the entire process. Patience and skill were rewarded. He had spent three days sitting inside the trunk of an artificial oak tree, three nights crawling facedown through heather, hiding microphones in gorse bushes, burying wires in soft gray sand. Seventy-two hours of deep discomfort. But now the big moment had arrived. The greatest, Darwin Bonaparte had time to reflect, as he moved among his instruments, the greatest since his capture of the famous stereoscopic sensation of all the gorilla wedding howls. Splendid, he told himself. , when the Savage began the amazing performance of him. 'Gorgeous!' He kept his telescopic cameras carefully aimed, glued to his moving target; he taps a higher power to get a close-up of the frantic, distorted face (admirable!); he switched, for half a minute, to slow motion (an exquisitely comic effect, he promised himself); he listened, meanwhile, to the thumps, the moans, the wild and delirious words that were recorded on the soundtrack at the end of his film, he tried the effect of a little amplification (yes, that was decidedly better); he was delighted to hear, in a moment's pause, the high-pitched song of a lark; he asked the Savage to turn around so he could get a good close up of the blood on his back, and almost instantly (what incredible luck!) the obliging guy turned around and was able to get a perfect close up.

'Well that was great!' he told himself when it was all over. 'Really great!' He wiped his face. When they put the sensible effects in the studio, it would be a wonderful movie. Almost as good, thought Darwin Bonaparte, as theThe love life of the sperm whaleAnd that, by Ford, was saying a lot!

twelve days laterThe Surrey Savageit had been launched and could be seen, heard and felt in every first-class palace in Western Europe.

The effect of the Darwin Bonaparte film was immediate and enormous. The afternoon after the night of his launch, John's rustic solitude was suddenly interrupted by the arrival of a large swarm of helicopters.

He was digging in his garden, digging also in his own mind, laboriously revealing the substance of his thought. He death-and poked the shovel at her once, and again, and again. And all our yesterdays have lit the fool's path to dusty death. Convincing thunder rumbled through the words. She picked up another shovel full of dirt. Why did Linda die? Why had she been allowed to gradually become less than human herself and finally...? She shuddered. a good carrion of kisses. She planted her foot on the shovel and stomped it hard into the ground. As flies to lascivious children are we to the gods; they kill us for sport. thunder again; words that pretended to be true, truer than the truth itself. And yet that same Gloucester called them ever-kind gods. Also, your best rest is sleep, and you often provoke this; I am still very afraid of your death, which no longer exists. No more than sleep. To sleep. maybe dream Her shovel rang against a stone; she bent down to pick it up. Because in this dream of death, what dreams?...

A buzz above became a roar; and suddenly he was in the shadow, there was something between him and the sun. He looked up, startled, from his digging, from his thoughts; he looked up dazed and bewildered, his mind still wandering in that more than true other world, still focused on the immensities of death and divinity; he looked up and saw, far above him, the swarm of machines closing in on him. Like locusts they came, suspended, descended around him on the heather. semi-unzipped t-shirts - a pair of each. Within minutes there were dozens of them, standing in a wide circle around the lighthouse, looking, laughing, shooting their cameras, dropping (monkey-like) peanuts, packets of sex hormone gum, pan-glandularshortenings. And every moment, because on the other side of Hog's Back the stream of traffic now flowed ceaselessly, their numbers increased. Like a nightmare, the dozens became dozens, the dozens became hundreds.

The Savage had taken refuge and now, in the stance of a cornered animal, stood with his back to the wall of the lighthouse, staring face to face in mute horror, like a man beside himself.

From this stupor, he was awakened to a more immediate sense of reality by the impact of a well-aimed pack of gum on his cheek. A shot of terrifying pain—and he was wide awake, awake, and fiercely angry.

'Leave!' the Scream.

The monkey had spoken; there was an explosion of laughter and applause. Good old savage! Hooray, hooray! And in the midst of the confusion he heard cries of: 'Whip, whip, whip!'

Following the word's suggestion, he seized the bundle of knotted ropes from his nail on the back of the door and swung it at his tormentors.

There was a shout of ironic applause.

He advanced menacingly towards them. A woman screamed in fear. The line wavered at its most immediately threatened point, then stiffened again, held firm. The awareness of overwhelming force had given these visitors a courage the Savage had not expected from them. Startled, he stopped and looked around.

¿Why do not you leave me alone? There was an almost plaintive undertone to her anger.

'Eat some almonds with magnesium salt!' The man said that if the Savage advanced, he would be the first to be attacked. He handed me a package. "They're really good, you know," he added, with a slightly nervous smile of conciliation. And magnesium salts will help you stay young.

The Savage ignored his offer. 'What do you want with me?' he asked, moving from one smiling face to another. 'What do you want with me?'

"The whip," answered a hundred confused voices. Do the whipping. Let's see the whipping trick.

Then, in unison and with a slow heavy rhythm, 'We want - the whip', a group at the end of the line shouted. "We... want... the whip."

Immediately others began to shout, and the phrase was repeated, like a parrot, over and over again, increasing the volume of the sound, until, on the seventh or eighth repetition, no more words were spoken. "We... want... the whip."

They were all crying together; and, intoxicated by the noise, the unanimity, the sense of rhythmic atonement, they seemed to have gone on for hours, almost indefinitely. But around the twenty-fifth iteration, the proceedings surprisingly stopped. Another helicopter had come in from the other side of the Hog's Back, hovering over the crowd, then crashed a few yards from where the Savage was standing, in the open space between the line of spectators and the lighthouse. The roar of air bolts momentarily drowned out the screams; then, when the machine landed and the engines died: 'We - want - the whip; we…want…the whip,” he broke out again in the same high-pitched, insistent tone.

The helicopter door opened and out came, first a young man with blond hair and a ruddy face, then, in green velvet shorts, a white shirt, and a jockey cap, a young woman.

Seeing the girl, the Savage shuddered, recoiled, turned pale.

The young woman rose to her feet and smiled at him: an uncertain smile, pleading, almost abject. Seconds passed. Her lips moved, she was saying something; but the sound of her voice was drowned out by the loud and repeated chorus of tourists.

"We... want... the whip!" We... want... the whip!

The young woman pressed both hands against her left side, and on that pretty doll's face, bright as a peach, appeared a strangely incongruous expression of anguish and longing. Her blue eyes seemed to grow larger, brighter; and suddenly two tears rolled down her cheeks. Inaudibly, she spoke again; then, with a quick, passionate gesture, she held out her arms to the Savage and stepped forward.

"We... want... the whip!" We want...'

And suddenly they had what they wanted.

'Prostitute!' The Savage pounced on her like a madman. -Fitchew! Like a madman, he slashed at her with his short-rope whip.

Terrified, she turned to run, tripping and falling into the heather. "Henry, Henry!" she screamed. But her ruddy-faced companion had fled from danger behind the helicopter.

With a whoop of joy, the line broke; there was a converging stampede towards that magnetic center of attraction. The pain was a fascinating horror.

'Fry, lust, fry!' Frantic, the Savage cut off again.

Hungry, they gathered around, pushing and fighting like pigs around the trough.

'Oh, the meat!' The Savage ground his teeth. This time it was onto his shoulders that he lowered the whip. 'Kill him, kill him!'

Drawn by the allure of the horror of pain, and driven from within by that habit of cooperation, that desire for unanimity and atonement, which their conditioning had so indelibly implanted in them, they began to mimic the frenzy of their gestures, striking each other. each other. ..for others like the Savage slashing at his own rebellious flesh, or that plump incarnation of baseness writhing in the heather at his feet.

'Kill him, kill him, kill him...' the Savage kept shouting.

Then all of a sudden someone started singing 'Orgy-porgy' and at one point they all got into the chorus and, singing along, they started dancing. Orgy-porgy, round and round, beating each other for counts of six to eight. orgia-orgia...

It was after midnight when the last of the helicopters took off.soma, and exhausted by a long frenzy of sensuality, the Savage slept in the heather. The sun was already up when he woke up. He lay there for a moment, blinking with the incomprehension of an owl in the light; then suddenly he remembered everything.

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh! She covered her eyes with her hand.

Tonight the swarm of helicopters whizzing across Hog's Back was a dark cloud six miles wide. The description of the orgy of atonement the night before was all over the papers.

'Wild!' they called the first arrivals out of their machines. 'Mister. Wild!'

There was no answer.

The lighthouse door was ajar. They opened it and walked into the closed twilight. Through an archway to the other side of the room, they could see the base of the stairs that led to the upper floors. Just below the crown of the arch dangled a pair of feet.

'Mister. Wild!'

Slowly, very slowly, like the two needles of an unhurried compass, the feet turned to the right; north, northeast, east, southeast, south, south-southwest; then it stopped and after a few seconds slowly turned to the left. South-southwest, south, southeast, east...

Por Aldous Huxley

TV SOAPS

point against point
These barren leaves
old hay
chrome yellow

STORIES

brief candles
two or three thanks
little mexican
death spirals
Limbo

TESTS AND TRAVELS

music at night
Vulgarity in literature
do what you want
proper studies
pilate joking
along the road
on the shore

POETRY

the cicadas
Leda

DRAMA

the world of light
The discovery, adapted from Frances Sheridan

[End ofwonderful new world, por Aldous Huxley]