"Warden's Office," he said to the Gamma-green octoroon.
At ten fifty-four Bernard was shaking hands with the Warden.
"Delighted, Mr. Marx, delighted." His boom was deferential. "We have just received
special orders …"
"I know," said Bernard, interrupting him. "I was talking to his fordship on the phone
a moment ago." His bored tone implied that he was in the habit of talking to his
fordship every day of the week. He dropped into a chair. "If you'll kindly take all the
necessary steps as soon as possible. As soon as possible," he emphatically
repeated. He was thoroughly enjoying himself.
At eleven three he had all the necessary papers in his pocket.
"So long," he said patronizingly to the Warden, who had accompanied him as far as
the lift gates. "So long."
He walked across to the hotel, had a bath, a vibro-vac massage, and an electrolytic
shave, listened in to the morning's news, looked in for half an hour on the televisor,
ate a leisured luncheon, and at half-past two flew back with the octoroon to Malpais.
The young man stood outside the rest-house.
"Bernard," he called. "Bernard!" There was no answer.
Noiseless on his deerksin moccasins, he ran up the steps and tried the door. The
door was locked.
They were gone! Gone! It was the most terrible thing that had ever happened to
him. She had asked him to come and see them, asd now they were gone. He sat
down on the steps and cried.
Half an hour later it occurred to him to look through the window. The first thing he
saw was a green suit-case, with the initials L.C. painted on the lid. Joy flared up like
fire within him. He picked up a stone. The smashed glass tinkled on the floor. A
moment later he was inside the room. He opened the green suit-case; and all at
once he was breathing Lenina's perfume, filling his lungs with her essential being.
His heart beat wildly; for a moment he was almost faint. Then, bending over the
precious box, he touched, he lifted into the light, he examined. The zippers on
Lenina's spare pair of viscose velveteen shorts were at first a puzzle, then solved, a
delight. Zip, and then zip; zip, and then zip; he was enchanted. Her green slippers
were the most beautiful things he had ever seen. He unfolded a pair of
zippicamiknicks, blushed, put them hastily away again; but kissed a perfumed
acetate handkerchief and wound a scarf round his neck. Opening a box, he spilt a
cloud of scented powder. His hands were floury with the stuff. He wiped them on his
chest, on his shoulders, on his bare arms. Delicious perfume! He shut his eyes; he
rubbed his cheek against his own powdered arm. Touch of smooth skin against his
face, scent in his nostrils of musky dust–her real presence. "Lenina," he whispered.
"Lenina!"
A noise made him start, made him guiltily turn. He crammed up his thieveries into
the suit-case and shut the lid; then listened again, looked. Not a sign of life, not a
sound. And yet he had certainly heard something–something like a sigh, something
like the creak of a board. He tiptoed to the door and, cautiously opening it, found
himself looking on to a broad landing. On the opposite side of the landing was
another door, ajar. He stepped out, pushed, peeped.
There, on a low bed, the sheet flung back, dressed in a pair of pink one-piece
zippyjamas, lay Lenina, fast asleep and so beautiful in the midst of her curls, so
touchingly childish with her pink toes and her grave sleeping face, so trustful in the
helplessness of her limp hands and melted limbs, that the tears came to his eyes.
With an infinity of quite unnecessary precautions–for nothing short of a pistol shot
could have called Lenina back from her soma-holiday before the appointed time–he
entered the room, he knelt on the floor beside the bed. He gazed, he clasped his
hands, his lips moved. "Her eyes," he murmured,
"Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice;
Handlest in thy discourse O! that her hand,
In whose comparison all whites are ink
Writing their own reproach; to whose soft seizure
The cygnet's down is harsh …"
A fly buzzed round her; he waved it away. "Flies," he remembered,
"On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand, may seize
And steal immortal blessing from her lips,
Who, even in pure and vestal modesty,
Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin."
Very slowly, with the hesitating gesture of one who reaches forward to stroke a shy
and possibly rather dangerous bird, he put out his hand. It hung there trembling,
within an inch of those limp fingers, on the verge of contact. Did he dare? Dare to
profane with his unworthiest hand that … No, he didn't. The bird was too dangerous.
His hand dropped back. How beautiful she was! How beautiful!
Then suddenly he found himself reflecting that he had only to take hold of the
zipper at her neck and give one long, strong pull … He shut his eyes, he shook his
head with the gesture of a dog shaking its ears as it emerges from the water.
Detestable thought! He was ashamed of himself. Pure and vestal modesty …
There was a humming in the air. Another fly trying to steal immortal blessings? A
wasp? He looked, saw nothing. The humming grew louder and louder, localized itself
as being outside the shuttered windows. The plane! In a panic, he scrambled to his
feet and ran into the other room, vaulted through the open window, and hurrying
along the path between the tall agaves was in time to receive Bernard Marx as he
climbed out of the helicopter.
Chapter Ten
THE HANDS of all the four thousand electric clocks in all the Bloomsbury Centre's
four thousand rooms marked twenty-seven minutes past two. "This hive of
industry," as the Director was fond of calling it, was in the full buzz of work. Every
one was busy, everything in ordered motion. Under the microscopes, their long tails
furiously lashing, spermatozoa were burrowing head first into eggs; and, fertilized,
the eggs were expanding, dividing, or if bokanovskified, budding and breaking up
into whole populations of separate embryos. From the Social Predestination Room
the escalators went rumbling down into the basement, and there, in the crimson
darkness, stewingly warm on their cushion of peritoneum and gorged with
blood-surrogate and hormones, the foetuses grew and grew or, poisoned,
languished into a stunted Epsilonhood. With a faint hum and rattle the moving
racks crawled imperceptibly through the weeks and the recapitulated aeons to
where, in the Decanting Room, the newly-unbottled babes uttered their first yell of
horror and amazement.
The dynamos purred in the sub-basement, the lifts rushed up and down. On all the
eleven floors of Nurseries it was feeding time. From eighteen hundred bottles
eighteen hundred carefully labelled infants were simultaneously sucking down their
pint of pasteurized external secretion.
Above them, in ten successive layers of dormitory, the little boys and girls who were
still young enough to need an afternoon sleep were as busy as every one else,
though they did not know it, listening unconsciously to hypnop?dic lessons in
hygiene and sociability, in class-consciousness and the toddler's love-life. Above
these again were the playrooms where, the weather having turned to rain, nine
hundred older children were amusing themselves with bricks and clay modelling,
hunt-the-zipper, and erotic play.
Buzz, buzz! the hive was humming, busily, joyfully. Blithe was the singing of the
young girls over their test-tubes, the Predestinators whistled as they worked, and in
the Decanting Room what glorious jokes were cracked above the empty bottles! But
the Director's face, as he entered the Fertilizing Room with Henry Foster, was grave,
wooden with severity.
"A public example," he was saying. "In this room, because it contains more
high-caste workers than any other in the Centre. I have told him to meet me here
at half-past two."
"He does his work very well," put in Henry, with hypocritical generosity.
"I know. But that's all the more reason for severity. His intellectual eminence carries
with it corresponding moral responsibilities. The greater a man's talents, the greater
his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many should
be corrupted. Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that
no offence is so henious as unorthodoxy of behaviour. Murder kills only the
individual–and, after all, what is an individual?" With a sweeping gesture he
indicated the rows of microscopes, the test-tubes, the incubators. "We can make a
new one with the greatest ease–as many as we like. Unorthodoxy threatens more
than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itseff. Yes, at Society itself,"
he repeated. "Ah, but here he comes."
Bernard had entered the room and was advancing between the rows of fertilizers
towards them. A veneer of jaunty self-confidence thinly concealed his nervousness.
The voice in which he said, "Good-morning, Director," was absurdly too loud; that in
which, correcting his rnistake, he said, "You asked me to come and speak to you
here," ridiculously soft, a squeak.
"Yes, Mr. Marx," said the Director portentously. "I did ask you to come to me here.
You returned from your holiday last night, I understand."
"Yes," Bernard answered.
"Yes-s," repeated the Director, lingering, a serpent, 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 preoccupied whistling of the
Microscopists, suddenly ceased. There was a profound silence; every one looked
round.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the Director repeated once more, "excuse me for thus
interrupting your labours. A painful duty constrains me. The security and stability of
Society are in danger. Yes, in danger, ladies and gentlemen. This man," he pointed
accusingly at Bernard, "this man who stands before you here, this Alpha-Plus to
whom so much has been given, and from whom, in consequence, so much must be
expected, this colleague of yours–or should I anticipate and say this
ex-colleague?–has grossly betrayed the trust imposed in him. By his heretical views
on sport and soma, by the scandalous unorthodoxy of his sex-life, by his refusal to
obey the teachings of Our Ford and behave out of office hours, 'even as a little
infant,'" (here the Director made the sign of the T), "he has proved himself an
enemy of Society, a subverter, ladies and gentlemen, of all Order and Stability, a
conspirator against Civilization itself. For this reason I propose to dismiss him, to
dismiss him with ignominy from the post he has held in this Centre; I propose
forthwith to apply for his transference to a Subcentre of the lowest order and, that
his punishment may serve the best interest of Society, as far as possible removed
from any important Centre of population. In Iceland he will have small opportunity
to lead others astray by his unfordly example." The Director paused; then, folding
his arms, he turned impressively to Bernard. "Marx," he said, "can you show any
reason why I should not now execute the judgment passed upon you?"
"Yes, I can," Bernard answered in a very loud voice.
Somewhat taken aback, but still majestically, "Then show it," said the Director.
"Certainly. But it's in the passage. One moment." Bernard hurried to the door and
threw it open. "Come in," he commanded, and the reason came in and showed
itself.
There was a gasp, a murmur of astonishment and horror; a young girl screamed;
standing on a chair to get a better view some one upset two test-tubes full of
spermatozoa. Bloated, sagging, and among those firm youthful bodies, those
undistorted faces, a strange and terrifying monster of middle-agedness, Linda
advanced into the room, coquettishly smiling her broken and discoloured smile, and
rolling as she walked, with what was meant to be a voluptuous undulation, her
enormous haunches. Bernard walked beside her.
"There he is," he said, pointing at the Director.
"Did you think I didn't recognize him?" Linda asked indignantly; then, turning to the
Director, "Of course I knew you; Tomakin, I should have known you anywhere,
among a thousand. But perhaps you've forgotten me. Don't you remember? Don't
you remember, Tomakin? Your Linda." She stood looking at him, her head on one
side, still smiling, but with a smile that became progressively, in face of the
Director's expression of petrified disgust, less and less self-confident, that wavered
and finally went out. "Don't you remember, Tomakin?" she repeated in a voice that
trembled. Her eyes were anxious, agonized. The blotched and sagging face twisted
grotesquely into the grimace of extreme grief. "Tomakin!" She held out her arms.
Some one began to titter.
"What's the meaning," began the Director, "of this monstrous …"
"Tomakin!" She ran forward, her blanket trailing behind her, threw her arms round
his neck, hid her face on his chest.
A howl of laughter went up irrepressibly.
"… this monstrous practical joke," the Director shouted.
Red in the face, he tried to disengage himself from her embrace. Desperately she
clung. "But I'm Linda, I'm Linda."'The laughter drowned her voice. "You made me
have a baby," she screamed above the uproar. There was a sudden and appalling
hush; eyes floated uncomfortably, not knowing where to look. The Director went
suddenly pale, stopped struggling and stood, his hands on her wrists, staring down
at her, horrified. "Yes, a baby–and I was its mother." She flung the obscenity like a
challenge into the outraged silence; then, suddenly breaking away from him,
ashamed, ashamed, covered her face with her hands, sobbing. "It wasn't my fault,
