Chapter Five

1

By eight o’clock the light was failing. Lenina and Henry abandoned their game and walked back towards the Club.

A buzzing of helicopters filled the twilight. Every two and a half minutes a bell announced the departure of one of the light monorail trains which carried the lower caste golfers back from their separate course to the metropolis.

Lenina and Henry climbed into their machine and started off. At eight hundred feet Henry slowed down the helicopter screws, and they hung for a minute or two above the fading landscape. The forest of Burnham Beeches stretched like a great pool of darkness towards the western sky. Their eyes were drawn to the buildings of the Slough Crematorium. For the safety of night-flying planes, its four tall chimneys were flood-lighted and tipped with crimson danger signals.

“Why do the smoke-stacks have those things like balconies around them?” enquired Lenina.

“Phosphorus recovery,” explained Henry. “P₂O₅ used to go right out of circulation every time they cremated someone. Now they recover over ninety-eight per cent of it. More than a kilo and a half per adult corpse. Fine to think we can go on being socially useful even after we’re dead. Making plants grow.”

Lenina, meanwhile, had turned her eyes away. “Fine,” she agreed. “But queer that Alphas and Betas won’t make any more plants grow than those nasty little Gammas and Deltas and Epsilons.”

“All men are equal on the chemical level. Besides, even Epsilons perform important services.”

“Even an Epsilon…” Lenina suddenly remembered an occasion when, as a little girl at school, she had woken up in the middle of the night and become aware, for the first time, of the whispering that had haunted all her sleeps. She saw again the beam of moonlight, the row of small white beds; heard once more the soft, soft voice that said: “Everyone works for everyone else. We can’t do without anyone. Even Epsilons are useful. We couldn’t do without Epsilons. Everyone works for everyone else. We can’t do without anyone…” Lenina remembered her first shock of fear and surprise; her speculations through half a wakeful hour; and then, under the influence of the endless repetition, the gradual soothing of her mind…

“I suppose Epsilons don’t really mind being Epsilons,” she said aloud.

“Of course they don’t. How can they? They don’t know what it’s like being anything else.”

“I’m glad I’m not an Epsilon,” said Lenina, with conviction.

“And if you were an Epsilon,” said Henry, “your conditioning would have made you no less thankful that you weren’t a Beta or an Alpha.” He put his forward propeller into gear and headed the machine towards London.

Landing on the roof of Henry’s forty-story apartment house in Westminster, they went straight down to the dining-hall. There, in a loud and cheerful company, they ate an excellent meal. Soma was served with the coffee. Lenina took two half-gramme tablets and Henry three. At twenty past nine they walked across the street to the newly opened Westminster Abbey Cabaret. It was a night almost without clouds, moonless and starry; but of this Lenina and Henry were fortunately unaware. The electric sky-signs effectively shut off the outer darkness. “CALVIN STOPES AND HIS SIXTEEN SEXOPHONISTS.” From the facade of the new Abbey the giant letters invitingly glared. “LONDON’S FINEST SCENT AND COLOUR ORGAN. ALL THE LATEST SYNTHETIC MUSIC.”

They entered. The air seemed hot and somehow breathless with the scent of sandalwood. On the domed ceiling of the hall, the colour organ had momentarily painted a tropical sunset. The Sixteen Sexophonists were playing an old favourite: “There ain’t no Bottle in all the world like that dear little Bottle of mine.” Four hundred couples were five-stepping round the polished floor. Lenina and Henry were soon the four hundred and first.

 

“Bottle of mine, it’s you I’ve always wanted!

Bottle of mine, why was I ever decanted?

Skies are blue inside of you,

The weather’s always fine;

For

There ain’t no Bottle in all the world

Like that dear little Bottle of mine.”

 

Five-stepping with the other four hundred round and round Westminster Abbey, Lenina and Henry were yet dancing in another world-the warm, the richly coloured, the infinitely friendly world of soma-holiday. How kind, how good-looking, how delightfully amusing everyone was! “Bottle of mine, it’s you I’ve always wanted…” But Lenina and Henry had what they wanted… They were inside, here and now-safely inside with the fine weather, the blue sky.

“Good-night, dear friends. Good-night, dear friends.” The loud speakers veiled their commands in a genial and musical politeness. “Good-night, dear friends…”

Obediently, with all the others, Lenina and Henry left the building.

Swallowed half an hour before closing time, that second dose of soma had raised an impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds. Bottled, they crossed the street; bottled, they took the lift up to Henry’s room. And yet, bottled as she was, Lenina did not forget to take all the contraceptive precautions. Years of intensive hypnopaedia and Malthusian drill three times a week had made it almost as automatic as blinking.

“Oh, and that reminds me,” she said, as she came back from the bathroom, “Fanny Crowne wants to know where you found that lovely green morocco-surrogate cartridge belt you gave me.”

2

Alternate Thursdays were Bernard’s Solidarity Service days. After an early dinner he hailed a taxi on the roof and told the man to fly to the Fordson Community Singery.

“Damn, I’m late,” Bernard said to himself as he first caught sight of Big Henry, the Singery clock. And sure enough, as he was paying off his cab, Big Henry sounded the hour. “Ford, Ford, Ford…” Nine times. Bernard ran for the lift.

The great auditorium for Ford’s Day celebrations and other Community Sings was at the bottom of the building. Bernard dropped down to floor thirty-three, hurried along the corridor, stood hesitating for a moment outside Room 3210, then opened the door and walked in.

Thank Ford! He was not the last. Three chairs of the twelve arranged round the table were still unoccupied. He slipped into the nearest of them as silently as he could.

Turning towards him, “What were you playing this afternoon?” the girl on his left asked. “Obstacle, or Electro-magnetic?”

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

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

“A good beginning for a Solidarity Service,” thought Bernard miserably. If only he had given himself time to look around instead of scuttling for the nearest chair! He could have sat between Fifi Bradlaugh and Joanna Diesel. Instead he had gone and blindly planted himself next to Morgana. Morgana! Ford! Those black eyebrows of hers-that eyebrow, rather-Ford! And on his right was Clara Deterding. She was really too pneumatic. Whereas Fifi and Joanna were absolutely right.

The last arrival was Sarojini Engels.

“You’re late,” said the President of the Group severely. “Don’t let it happen again.”

Sarojini apologized and slid into her place. The group was now complete. Man, woman, man, in a ring of endless alternation round the table. Twelve of them ready to be made one, waiting to come together, to be fused, to lose their twelve separate identities in a larger being.

The President stood up, made the sign of the T and, switching on the synthetic music, let loose the soft beating of drums and a choir of instruments, haunting melody of the first Solidarity Hymn.

The President made another sign of the T and sat down. The service had begun. The dedicated soma tablets were placed in the centre of the table. The loving cup of strawberry ice-cream soma was passed from hand to hand and, with the formula, “I drink to my annihilation.” Then the First Solidarity Hymn was sung.

 

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

Like drops within the Social River,

Oh, make us now together run

As swiftly as thy shining Flivver.”

 

Twelve stanzas. And then the loving cup was passed a second time. “I drink to the Greater Being” was now the formula. All drank. The Second Solidarity Hymn was sung.

 

“Come, Greater Being, Social Friend,

Annihilating Twelve-in-One!

We long to die, for when we end,

Our larger life has but begun.”

 

Again twelve stanzas. By this time the soma had begun to work. Eyes shone, cheeks were flushed. Even Bernard felt himself a little melted. When Morgana Rothschild turned and beamed at him, he did his best to beam back. But the eyebrow, it was still there; he couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t, however hard he tried. For the third time the loving cup went round; “I drink to the imminence of His Coming,” said Morgana Rothschild. She drank and passed the cup to Bernard. “I drink to the imminence of His Coming,” he repeated. He handed the cup to Clara Deterding. “It’ll be a failure again,” he said to himself. “I know it will.”

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

 

“Feel how the Greater Being comes!

Rejoice and, in rejoicings, die!

Melt in the music of the drums!

For I am you and you are I.”

 

The sense of the Coming’s imminence was like an electric tension in the air. The President switched off the music and, with the final note of the final stanza, there was absolute silence. The President reached out his hand; and suddenly a Voice, a deep strong Voice, more musical than any merely human voice, richer, warmer, more vibrant with love and yearning and compassion, a wonderful, mysterious, supernatural Voice spoke from above their heads. Very slowly, “Oh, Ford, Ford, Ford,” it said on a descending scale. A sensation of warmth radiated thrillingly out from the bodies of those who listened; tears came into their eyes. “Listen!” trumpeted the voice. “Listen!” They listened. “The feet of the Greater Being,” it went on. The whisper almost expired. “The feet of the Greater Being are on the stairs.” And once more there was silence. And suddenly the tearing point was reached. Morgana Rothschild sprang to her feet.

“I hear him,” she cried. “I hear him.”

“He’s coming,” shouted Sarojini Engels.

“Yes, he’s coming, I hear him.” Fifi Bradlaugh and Tom Kawaguchi rose simultaneously to their feet.

“Oh, oh, oh!” Joanna testified.

“He’s coming!” yelled Jim Bokanovsky.

“Oh, he’s coming!” screamed Clara Deterding.

Feeling that it was time for him to do something, Bernard also jumped up and shouted: “I hear him; He’s coming.” But it wasn’t true. He heard nothing and, for him, nobody was coming. But he waved his arms, he shouted with the best of them; and when the others began to jig and stamp and shuffle, he also jigged and shuffled.

Round they went, a circular procession of dancers, each with hands on the hips of the dancer in front of them, round and round, shouting in unison, stamping to the rhythm of the music with their feet. Twelve as one, twelve as one. The music quickened. And all at once a great synthetic bass boomed out the words which announced the approaching atonement and final consummation of solidarity, the coming of the Twelve-in-One. “Orgy-porgy,” it sang, while the drums continued to beat their feverish rhythm:

 

“Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun,

Kiss the girls and make them One.

Boys at One with girls at peace;

Orgy-porgy gives release.”

 

The dancers caught up the refrain. And as they sang, the lights began slowly to fade-to fade and at the same time to grow warmer, richer, redder, until at last they were dancing in the crimson twilight of an Embryo Store. “Orgy-porgy…” In their blood-coloured darkness the dancers continued for a while to circulate. “Orgy-porgy…” Then the circle wavered, broke, fell in partial disintegration on the ring of couches which surrounded the table. “Orgy-porgy…” Tenderly the deep Voice crooned and cooed.

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

“Wasn’t it wonderful?” said Fifi Bradlaugh. “Wasn’t it simply wonderful?” She looked at Bernard with an expression of rapture. Hers was the calm ecstasy of achieved consummation, the peace. A rich and living peace. “Didn’t you think it was wonderful?” she insisted, looking into Bernard’s face with those supernaturally shining eyes.

“Yes, I thought it was wonderful,” he lied and looked away. He was as miserably isolated now as he had been when the service began. Alone even in Morgana’s embrace-much more alone, indeed, more hopelessly himself than he had ever been in his life before. He was utterly miserable, and perhaps (her shining eyes accused him), perhaps it was his own fault. “Quite wonderful,” he repeated; but the only thing he could think of was Morgana’s eyebrow.