Chapter Eleven

After the scene in the Fertilizing Room, all upper-caste London was wild to see this weird creature who had fallen on his knees before the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning-or rather the ex-Director, for the poor man had resigned immediately afterwards-had flopped down and called him (the joke was almost too good to be true!) “my father.” At the same time, nobody wanted to see Linda. To say one was a mother – that was past a joke: it was an obscenity. Moreover, she wasn’t a real savage-she had been hatched out of a bottle and conditioned like anyone else. Finally, there was her appearance. Fat; having lost her youth; with bad teeth, and a blotched complexion-you simply couldn’t look at her without feeling sick. So people were quite determined not to see Linda. And Linda had no desire to see them. The return to civilization was for her the return to soma. The holiday it gave was perfect. Greedily she clamoured for ever larger, ever more frequent doses. Dr. Shaw at first resisted; then let her have what she wanted. She took as much as twenty grammes a day.

“Which will finish her off in a month or two,” the doctor told Bernard. “One day the respiratory centre will be paralyzed. No more breathing. Finished. And a good thing too.”

Surprisingly, as everyone thought, John raised objections.

“But aren’t you shortening her life by giving her so much?”

“In one sense, yes,” Dr. Shaw admitted. “But in another we’re actually lengthening it.” The young man stared, uncomprehending. “Soma may make you lose a few years in time,” the doctor went on. “But think of the immeasurable durations it can give you out of time. Every soma-holiday is like an eternity.”

John began to understand. “Eternity was in our lips and eyes,” he murmured.

“Eh?”

“Nothing.”

“Of course,” Dr. Shaw went on, “you can’t allow people to go popping off into eternity if they’ve got any serious work to do. But as she hasn’t got any serious work…”

“All the same,” John persisted, “I don’t believe it’s right.”

But in the end, John was forced to give in. Linda got her soma. She remained in her little room on the thirty-seventh floor of Bernard’s apartment house, in bed, with the radio and television always on, and the patchouli tap just dripping, and the soma tablets within reach.

“I’m very glad,” Dr. Shaw had concluded, “to have had this opportunity to see an example of senility in a human being. Thank you so much for calling me in.” He shook Bernard warmly by the hand.

It was John, then, they were all after. And as it was only through Bernard, that John could be seen, Bernard now found himself, for the first time in his life, treated not merely normally, but as a person of outstanding importance. There was no more talk of the alcohol in his blood-surrogate. Henry Foster went out of his way to be friendly; Benito Hoover made him a present of six packets of sex-hormone chewing-gum; the Assistant Predestinator came out and asked almost abjectly for an invitation to one of Bernard’s evening parties. As for the women, Bernard had only to hint at the possibility of an invitation, and he could have whichever of them he liked.

“And I had six girls last week,” he confided to Helmholtz Watson. “One on Monday, two on Tuesday, two more on Friday, and one on Saturday. And if I’d had the time or the inclination, there were at least a dozen more who were only too anxious…”

Helmholtz listened to his boastings in a silence so disapproving that Bernard was offended.

“You’re envious,” he said.

Helmholtz shook his head. “I’m rather sad, that’s all,” he answered.

Bernard went off in a huff. Never, he told himself, never would he speak to Helmholtz again.

The days passed. Success went to Bernard’s head, and in the process completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicant should do) to a world which, up till then, he had found very unsatisfactory. As long as it recognized him as important, all was good. But, he refused to quit criticizing its order. The act of criticizing made him feel important, and he did genuinely believe that there were things to criticize. But behind his back people shook their heads. “That young man will come to a bad end,” they said. “He won’t find another Savage to help him out a second time.” Meanwhile, however, while there was the first Savage, they were polite.

“Lighter than air,” said Bernard, pointing upwards.

The Weather Department’s captive balloon shone in the sunshine high above them.

Bernard’s instructions were to show the Savage all aspects of civilized life.

He was being shown a bird’s-eye view of it at present, from the platform of the Charing-T Tower. The Station Master and the Resident Meteorologist were acting as guides. But it was Bernard who did most of the talking.

The Bombay Green Rocket dropped out of the sky. The passengers got off. Eight identical Dravidian twins in khaki looked out of the eight portholes of the cabin-the stewards.

“Twelve hundred and fifty kilometres an hour,” said the Station Master impressively. “What do you think of that, Mr. Savage?”

John thought it very nice. “Still,” he said, “Ariel could put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes.”

“The Savage,” wrote Bernard in his report to Mustapha Mond, “shows surprisingly little astonishment at civilized inventions. This is partly due, no doubt, to the fact that he has heard about them from the woman Linda, his m-”

(Mustapha Mond frowned. “Does the fool think I’m too squeamish to read the full word?”)

“Partly on his interest in what he calls ‘the soul,’ which he keeps calling an entity independent of the physical environment, even though I tried to point out to him…”

The Controller skipped the next sentences and was just about to turn the page in search of something more concrete, when something on the page caught his eye. “… though I must admit,” he read, “that I agree with the Savage in finding civilized infantility too easy; and I would like to take this opportunity of drawing your fordship’s attention to…”

This angered Mustapha Mond. The idea of this creature lecturing him-him-about the social order was really too grotesque. “I ought to give him a lesson,” he said to himself.

It was a small factory of lighting-sets for helicopters, a branch of the Electrical Equipment Corporation. They were met on the roof by the Chief Technician and the Human Element Manager. They walked downstairs into the factory.

“Each process,” explained the Human Element Manager, “is carried out, so far as possible, by a single Bokanovsky Group.”

Here, eighty-three black Deltas were cold-pressing. Machines were being manipulated by fifty-six aquiline and ginger Gammas. One hundred and seven heat-conditioned Epsilon Senegalese were working in the foundry. Thirty-three Delta females, long-headed, sandy, with narrow pelvises, were cutting screws. In the assembling room, the dynamos were being put together by two sets of Gamma-Plus dwarfs.

“O brave new world…” The Savage found himself repeating Miranda’s words. “O brave new world that has such people in it.”

“And I assure you,” the Human Element Manager concluded, as they left the factory, “we hardly ever have any trouble with our workers. We always find…”

But the Savage had suddenly broken away from his companions and was violently retching behind a clump of laurels.

“The Savage,” wrote Bernard, “refuses to take soma, and seems much distressed because of the woman Linda, his m-, remains permanently on holiday. In spite of his m-’s senility and her repulsive appearance, the Savage often goes to see her and appears to be very attached to her. This is an interesting example of early conditioning overriding natural impulses (in this case, the impulse to recoil from an unpleasant object).”

At Eton they alighted on the roof of Upper School.

Dr. Gaffney, the Provost, and Miss Keate, the Head Mistress, met them as they stepped out of the plane.

“Do you have many twins here?” the Savage asked rather apprehensively, as they set out on their tour of inspection.

“Oh, no,” the Provost answered. “Eton is reserved exclusively for upper-caste boys and girls. One egg, one adult. It makes education more difficult of course.” He sighed.

They spent five minutes in an Alpha Double Plus classroom, which left John a bit bewildered.

“What is elementary relativity?” he whispered to Bernard. Bernard tried to explain, then suggested that they should go to some other classroom.

From behind a door in the corridor leading to the Beta-Minus geography room, a ringing soprano voice called, “One, two, three, four,” and then, with a weary impatience, “As you were.”

“Malthusian Drill,” explained the Head Mistress. “Most of our girls are freemartins, of course. But we have about eight hundred unsterilized ones who need constant drilling.”

In the Beta-Minus geography room John learned that “a savage reservation is a place which, because of its bad climatic or geological conditions, or poverty of natural resources, has not been worth the expense of civilizing.” A click; the room went dark; and suddenly, on the screen above the Master’s head, there were the Penitentes of Acoma prostrating themselves before Our Lady, wailing, confessing their sins before Jesus on the Cross, before the eagle image of Pookong. The young Etonians laughed. The Penitentes rose to their feet, stripped off their upper garments and, with knotted whips, began to beat themselves, blow after blow. The laughter became louder.

“But why do they laugh?” asked the Savage in a pained bewilderment.

“Why? But because it’s so extraordinarily funny.”

Once the light turned back on, Miss Keate suggested that they move on and moved towards the door.

“And this,” said the Provost a moment later, “is Hypnopaedic Control Room.”

Hundreds of synthetic music boxes, one for each dormitory, stood on the shelves round three sides of the room. On the fourth wall there were the paper soundtrack rolls on which the various hypnopaedic lessons were printed.

“You slip the roll in here,” explained Bernard, interrupting Dr. Gaffney, “press down this switch…”

“No, that one,” corrected the Provost, annoyed.

“That one, then. The roll unwinds. The selenium cells transform the light impulses into sound waves, and there you are.”

“Do they read Shakespeare?” asked the Savage as they walked, on their way to the Bio-chemical Laboratories, past the School Library.

“Certainly not,” said the Head Mistress, blushing.

“Our library,” said Dr. Gaffney, “contains only books of reference. If our young people need distraction, they can get it at the feelies.”

Five buses full of boys and girls rolled past them over the highway.

“Just returned,” explained Dr. Gaffney, “from the Slough Crematorium. Death conditioning begins at eighteen months. Every child spends two mornings a week in a Hospital for the Dying. They learn to take dying as a matter of course.”

“Like any other physiological process,” put in the Head Mistress professionally.

On their way back to London they stopped at the Television Corporation’s factory at Brentford.

“Do you mind waiting here a moment while I make a call?” asked Bernard.

The Savage waited and watched. The Main Day-Shift was just going off duty. Lower-caste workers were queued up in front of the monorail station-seven or eight hundred Gamma, Delta and Epsilon men and women. To each of them, with his or her ticket, the booking clerk pushed over a little cardboard pillbox.

“What’s in those” (remembering The Merchant of Venice) “those caskets?” the Savage asked when Bernard had rejoined him.

“The day’s soma ration,” Bernard answered. “They get it after their work’s over. Four half-gramme tablets. Six on Saturdays.”

He took John’s arm affectionately and they walked back towards the helicopter.

Lenina came singing into the Changing Room.

“You seem very pleased with yourself,” said Fanny.

“I am pleased,” she answered. “Bernard asked me if I’d take the Savage to the feelies this evening. I must fly.” She hurried away towards the bathroom.

“She’s a lucky girl,” Fanny said to herself as she watched Lenina go.

Good-natured Fanny was merely stating a fact. Lenina was lucky; lucky in having shared with Bernard a generous portion of the Savage’s immense celebrity. Had not the Secretary of the Young Women’s Fordian Association asked her to give a lecture about her experiences? Had she not been invited to the Annual Dinner of the Aphroditeum Club? Had she not already appeared in the Feelytone News-visibly, audibly and tactually, to countless millions all over the planet?

“It’s wonderful, of course. And yet,” said Lenina, “I feel as though I were getting something on false pretences. Because, of course, the first thing they all want to know is what it’s like to make love to a Savage. And I don’t know. Most of the men don’t believe me, but it’s true. I wish it weren’t,” she added sadly. “He’s terribly good-looking; don’t you think so?”

“But doesn’t he like you?” asked Fanny.

“Sometimes I think he does and sometimes I think he doesn’t. He always does his best to avoid me. But sometimes I catch him staring. Well, you know how men look when they like you. I can’t make it out.”

She was rather upset.

“Because, you see, Fanny, I like him.”

Liked him more and more. Well, now there’d be a real chance, she thought, as she scented herself after her bath.

The scent organ was playing a delightfully refreshing melody-rippling arpeggios of thyme and lavender, of rosemary, basil, myrtle, tarragon.

Sunk in their pneumatic stalls, Lenina and the Savage sniffed and listened. It was now the turn also for eyes and skin.

The house lights went down. “Take hold of those metal knobs on the arms of your chair,” whispered Lenina. “Otherwise you won’t get any of the feely effects.”

The Savage did as he was told.

There were ten seconds of complete darkness; then suddenly, dazzling and incomparably more solid-looking than they would have seemed in actual flesh and blood, far more real than reality, there stood the stereoscopic images, locked in one another’s arms, of a gigantic negro and a golden-haired young Beta-Plus female.

The Savage started. That sensation on his lips! He lifted a hand to his mouth; it stopped; let his hand fall back on the metal knob; it began again. The scent organ, meanwhile, breathed pure musk. The stereoscopic lips came together again, and once more the facial erogenous zones of the six thousand spectators tingled with almost intolerable pleasure.

The plot of the film was extremely simple. A few minutes after the first scene, the negro had a helicopter accident, fell on his head. The concussion knocked his conditioning out. He developed an exclusive and maniacal passion for the Beta blonde. She protested. He persisted. There were struggles, pursuits, an assault on a rival, finally a sensational kidnapping. Finally, after a whole series of adventures three handsome young Alphas succeeded in rescuing her. The film ended happily and decorously, with the Beta blonde becoming the mistress of all her three rescuers. The last stereoscopic kiss faded into darkness, the last electric sensation died on the lips like a dying moth that quivers, quivers, and at last is quiet, quite still.

But for Lenina the moth did not completely die. Even after the lights had gone up, while they were walking along with the crowd towards the lifts, its ghost still fluttered against her lips. She caught hold of the Savage’s arm and pressed it against her side. He looked down at her for a moment, pale, desiring, and ashamed of his desire. He was not worthy, not… Their eyes for a moment met. What treasures hers promised! Hastily he looked away, took away his arm.

“I don’t think you ought to see things like that,” he said.

“Things like what, John?”

“Like this horrible film.”

“Horrible?” Lenina was genuinely astonished. “But I thought it was lovely.”

“It was base,” he said indignantly, “ignoble.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.” Why was he so queer? Why did he go out of his way to spoil things?

In the taxicopter he hardly even looked at her. Bound by strong vows that had never been pronounced, he sat in silence. Sometimes, his whole body would shake with a sudden nervous start.

The taxicopter landed on the roof of Lenina’s apartment house. “At last,” she thought as she stepped out of the cab. Standing under a lamp, she peered into her hand mirror. At last. She thought: “He’s terribly good-looking. No need for him to be shy like Bernard. Well, now at last.”

“Good-night,” said a strangled voice behind her. Lenina turned round. He was standing in the doorway of the cab, his eyes staring. “Good-night, Lenina,” he repeated, and made a strange grimacing attempt to smile.

“But, John… I thought you were… I mean, aren’t you?…”

He shut the door and bent forward to say something to the driver. The cab shot up into the air.

Five minutes later he was back in his room. From its hiding-place he took out his volume, turned with religious care its stained and crumbled pages, and began to read Othello. Othello, he remembered, was like the hero of Three Weeks in a Helicopter-a black man.

Drying her eyes, Lenina walked across the roof to the lift. On her way down to the twenty-seventh floor she pulled out her soma bottle. She thought about the dose and shook out three half-gramme tablets into her palm.