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The swiftest crawlers were already at their goal. Small hands touched, grasped, the roses and the books. The Director waited until all were happily busy. Then, “Watch carefully,” he said. And, lifting his hand, he gave the signal.
The Head Nurse, who was standing by a switchboard at the other end of the room, pressed down a little lever.
There was a violent explosion. A siren shrieked. Alarm bells rang.
The children started, screamed; their faces were distorted with terror.
“And now,” the Director shouted (for the noise was deafening), “now we proceed to rub in the lesson with a mild electric shock.”
He waved his hand again, and the Head Nurse pressed a second lever. The screaming of the babies suddenly changed its tone. There was something desperate, almost insane, about their sharp yelps. Their little bodies twitched, their limbs jerked as if to the tug of unseen wires[12 - as if to the tug of unseen wires – как будто кто-то тянул за невидимые нити].
“We can electrify that whole strip of floor,” explained the Director. “But that’s enough,” he signaled to the nurse.
The explosions ceased, the bells stopped ringing, the shriek of the siren died down. The little bodies relaxed, and yelping turned into a normal cry of ordinary terror.
“Offer them the flowers and the books again.”
The nurses obeyed; but at the sight of the flowers and the colourful books, the infants shrank away in horror, the volume of their crying increased.
“Observe,” said the Director triumphantly, “observe.”
Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks—already in the infant mind they were linked.
“They’ll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an ‘instinctive’ hatred of books and flowers. They’ll be safe from books and botany all their lives.” The Director turned to his nurses. “Take them away again.”
Still yelling, the khaki babies were loaded on to their dumb-waiters and wheeled out.
One of the students held up his hand; he could see quite well why you couldn’t have lower-caste people wasting time on books, he 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 the children were made to scream at the sight of a rose, that was on grounds of high economic policy. Not so very long ago, Gammas, Deltas, even Epsilons, had been conditioned to like flowers—flowers in particular and wild nature in general. The idea was to make them want to go out into the country, and so compel them to consume transport[13 - to consume transport – использовать транспорт, покупать собственные средства передвижения].
“And didn’t they consume transport?” asked the student.
“Quite a lot,” the D.H.C. replied. “But nothing else.”
Primroses and landscapes, he pointed out, have one defect: they are gratuitous. A love of nature keeps no factories busy. It was decided to abolish the love of nature, at any rate among the lower classes; but to keep the tendency to consume transport.
“We condition the masses to hate the country,” concluded the Director. “But simultaneously we condition them to love all country sports. At the same time, we see to it [14 - we see to it – мы устраиваем все так]that all country sports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus. So that they consume manufactured articles as well as transport.”
“I see,” said the student, lost in admiration.
There was a silence; then, clearing his throat, “Once upon a time,” the Director began, “while our Ford was still on earth, there was a little boy called Reuben Rabinovitch. Reuben was the child of Polish-speaking parents.” The Director interrupted himself. “You know what Polish is, I suppose?”
“A dead language.”
“And ‘parent’?” questioned the D.H.C.
There was an uneasy silence. Several of the boys blushed. They had not yet learned to draw the distinction between smut and pure science. One, at last, had the courage to raise a hand.
“Human beings used to be…” he hesitated; the blood rushed to his cheeks. “Well, they used to be viviparous.”
“Quite right.” The Director nodded approvingly.
“And when the babies were decanted…”
“‘Born,’” came the correction.
“Well, then they were the parents—I mean, not the babies, of course; the other ones.” The poor boy was overwhelmed with confusion.
“In brief,” the Director summed up, “the parents were the father and the mother. These,” he said gravely, “are unpleasant facts; I know it. But then most historical facts are unpleasant.”
He returned to Little Reuben—to Little Reuben, in whose room, one evening, by an oversight, his father and mother happened to leave the radio turned on.
While the child was asleep, a broadcast programme from London suddenly started to come through; and the next morning Little Reuben woke up repeating word for word a long lecture by George Bernard Shaw. To Little Reuben this lecture was, of course, incomprehensible and, imagining that their child had suddenly gone mad, the parents sent for a doctor. He, fortunately, understood English, recognized the discourse as that which Shaw had broadcasted the previous evening, realized the significance of what had happened, and sent a letter to the medical press about it.
“The principle of sleep-teaching, or hypnopaedia, had been discovered.” The D.H.C. made an impressive pause.
“The case of Little Reuben occurred only twenty-three years after Our Ford’s first T-Model was put on the market. And yet these early experimenters were on the wrong track. They thought that hypnopaedia could be made an instrument of intellectual education…”
(A small boy asleep on his right side. Through a round grating in the side of a box a voice speaks softly.
“The Nile is the longest river in Africa and the second in length of all the rivers of the globe. Although falling short of the length of the Mississippi-Missouri…”
At breakfast the next morning, “Tommy,” someone says, “do you know which is the longest river in Africa?” A shaking of the head. “But don’t you remember something that begins: The Nile is the…”
“The-Nile-is-the-longest-river-in-Africa-and-the-second-in-length-of-all-the-rivers-of-the-globe…” The words come rushing out. “Although-falling-short-of…”
“Well now, which is the longest river in Africa?”
The eyes are blank. “I don’t know.”
“But the Nile, Tommy.”
“The-Nile-is-the-longest-river-in-Africa-and-second…”
“Then which river is the longest, Tommy?”
Tommy burst into tears. “I don’t know,” he cries.)
That discouraged the earliest investigators. The experiments were abandoned. No further attempt was made to teach children the length of the Nile in their sleep. You can’t learn a science unless you know what it’s all about.
“Whereas, if they’d only started on moral education,” said the Director, leading the way towards the door. The students followed him. “Moral education, which ought never, in any circumstances, to be rational.”
“Silence, silence,” whispered a loud speaker as they stepped out at the fourteenth floor. The students and even the Director himself rose automatically to the tips of their toes. They were Alphas, of course, but even Alphas have been well conditioned.
Fifty yards of tiptoeing brought them to a door which the Director cautiously opened. Eighty cots stood in a row against the wall. There was a sound of light regular breathing and a continuous murmur.
A nurse rose as they entered and came to the Director.
“What’s the lesson this afternoon?” he asked.
“We had Elementary Sex for the first forty minutes,” she answered. “But now it’s switched over to Elementary Class Consciousness.”
Eighty little boys and girls lay softly breathing. There was a whisper under every pillow. The D.H.C. stopped and, bending over one of the little beds, listened attentively.
“Elementary Class Consciousness, did you say? Let’s have it repeated a little louder by the trumpet.”
At the end of the room was a speaker. The Director walked up to it and pressed a switch.
“… all wear green,” said a soft but very distinct voice, beginning in the middle of a sentence, “and Delta Children wear khaki. I don’t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able to read or write. I’m so glad I’m a Beta.”
There was a pause; then the voice began again.
“Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they’re so clever. I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard. And we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. I don’t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able…”
The Director pushed back the switch.
“They’ll have that repeated forty or fifty times more before they wake; then again on Thursday, and again on Saturday. After that they go on to a more advanced lesson.”
Once more the Director touched the switch.
“… so clever,” the soft voice was saying, “I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta, because…”
“Till at last the child’s mind is these suggestions, and the suggestions are the child’s mind. And the adult’s mind too—all his life long. These are suggestions from the State.” He banged the nearest table. “It therefore follows…”
A noise made him turn round.
“Oh, Ford!” he said in another tone, “I’ve woken the children.”
Chapter Three
Outside, in the garden, it was playtime. Six or seven hundred of naked little boys and girls were running with shrill yells over the lawns, or playing ball games, or squatting silently in twos and threes among the flowering shrubs. The air was drowsy with the murmur of bees and helicopters.
“That’s a charming little group,” said the Director, pointing.
In a little grassy bay two children, a little boy of about seven and a little girl who might have been a year older, were playing, very gravely and with all the focused attention of scientists intent on a labour of discovery, a rudimentary sexual game.
From a neighbouring shrubbery emerged a nurse, leading by the hand a small boy, who cried as he went. An anxious-looking little girl followed them.
“What’s the matter?” asked the Director.
The nurse shrugged her shoulders. “Nothing much,” she answered. “This little boy seems rather reluctant to join in the ordinary erotic play. I’d noticed it once or twice before. And now again today. He started yelling just now…”
“I didn’t mean to hurt him or anything. Honestly,” said the anxious-looking little girl.
“Of course you didn’t, dear,” said the nurse reassuringly. She turned back to the Director. “I’m taking him to see the Assistant Superintendent of Psychology. Just to see if anything’s at all abnormal.”
“Quite right,” said the Director. “Take him. You stay here, little girl,” he added, as the nurse and the boy walked away. “What’s your name?”
“Polly Trotsky.”
“Run away now and see if you can find some other little boy to play with.”
The child scampered off into the bushes and was lost to sight[15 - was lost to sight – скрылась из виду].
The Director turned to his students. “What I’m going to tell you now,” he said, “may sound incredible. But then, when you’re not accustomed to history, most facts about the past do.”
He let out the amazing truth. For a very long period before the time of Our Ford, and even for some generations afterwards, erotic play between children had been regarded as abnormal (there was a roar of laughter); and not only abnormal, actually immoral (no!); and had therefore been rigorously suppressed.
An astonished look appeared on the faces of his listeners. They could not believe it.
“Even adolescents,” the D.H.C. was saying, “even adolescents like yourselves…”
“Not possible! Nothing?”
“In most cases, till they were over twenty years old.”
“Twenty years old?” echoed the students in disbelief.
“I told you that you’d find it incredible.”
“But what happened?” they asked. “What were the results?”
“The results were terrible.” A deep resonant voice broke startlingly into the dialogue.
They looked around. On the side stood a stranger—a man of middle height, black-haired, with a hooked nose, full red lips, eyes very piercing and dark.
The D.H.C. darted forward, his hand outstretched, smiling with all his teeth.
“Controller! What an unexpected pleasure! Boys, what are you thinking of? This is the Controller; this is his fordship, Mustapha Mond.”
The clock struck four. Voices called from the trumpet mouths.
“Main Day-shift off duty. Second Day-shift take over. Main Day-shift off…”
In the lift, on their way up to the changing rooms, Henry Foster and the Assistant Director of Predestination rather pointedly [16 - rather pointedly – специально, показательно]turned their backs on Bernard Marx from the Psychology Bureau.
Despite the change between shifts, machinery was still humming in the Embryo Store. The conveyors crept forward with their load of future men and women no matter what.
Lenina Crowne walked briskly towards the door.
His fordship Mustapha Mond! The eyes of the students almost popped out of their heads. Mustapha Mond! The Resident Controller for Western Europe! One of the Ten World Controllers. One of the Ten … and he was going to stay, to stay, yes, and actually talk to them … straight from the horse’s mouth. Straight from the mouth of Ford himself.
“You all remember,” said the Controller, in his strong deep voice, “you all remember, I suppose, that beautiful saying of Our Ford’s: History is bunk. History,” he repeated slowly, “is bunk.”
He waved his hand; and it was as though, with an invisible feather whisk, he had brushed away a little dust, and the dust was Harappa, was Ur of the Chaldees; some spider-webs, and they were Thebes and Babylon and Cnossos and Mycenae. Whisk. Whisk—and where was Odysseus, where was Job, where was Jesus? Whisk—and those specks of antique dirt called Athens and Rome, Jerusalem and the Middle Kingdom—all were gone. Whisk—the place where Italy had been was empty. Whisk, the cathedrals; whisk, whisk, King Lear and the Thoughts of Pascal. Whisk, Passion; whisk, Requiem; whisk, Symphony; whisk…
“Going to the Feelies this evening, Henry?” enquired the Assistant Predestinator. “I hear the new one at the Alhambra is great. There’s a love scene on a bearskin rug. Every hair of the bear reproduced. The most amazing tactual effects.”
