Outside,in the garden,it was playtime.Naked in the warm June sunshine,six or seven hundred 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 roses were in bloom,two nightingales soliloquized in the boskage,a cuckoo was just going out of tune among the lime trees.The air was drowsy with the murmur of bees and helicopters.
The Director and his students stood for a short time watching a game of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy.Twenty children were grouped in a circle round a chrome-steel tower.A ball thrown up so as to land on the platform at the top of the tower rolled down into the interior,fell on a rapidly revolving disk,was hurled through one or other of the numerous apertures pierced in the cylindrical casing,and had to be caught.
"Strange,"mused the Director,as they turned away,"strange to think that even in Our Ford's day most games were played without more apparatus than a ball or two and a few sticks and perhaps a bit of netting.Imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption.It's madness.Nowadays the Controllers won't approve of any new game unless it can be shown that it requires at least as much apparatus as the most complicated of existing games."He interrupted himself.
"That's a charming little group,"he said,pointing.
In a little grassy bay between tall clumps of Mediterranean heather,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 focussed attention of scientists intent on a labour of discovery,a rudimentary sexual game.
"Charming,charming!"the DHC repeated sentimentally.
"Charming,"the boys politely agreed.But their smile was rather patronizing.They had put aside similar childish amusements too recently to be able to watch them now without a touch of contempt.Charming?but it was just a pair of kids fooling about;that was all.Just kids.
"I always think,"the Director was continuing in the same rather maudlin tone,when he was interrupted by a loud boo-hooing.
From a neighbouring shrubbery emerged a nurse,leading by the hand a small boy,who howled as he went.An anxious-looking little girl trotted at her heels.
"What's the matter?"asked the Director.
The nurse shrugged her shoulders."Nothing much,"she answered."It's just that 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……"
"Honestly,"put in the anxious-looking little girl,"I didn't mean to hurt him or anything.Honestly."
"Of course you didn't,dear,"said the nurse reassuringly."And so,"she went on,turning back to the Director,"I'm taking him in to see the Assistant Superintendent of Psychology.Just to see if anything's at all abnormal."
"Quite right,"said the Director."Take him in.You stay here,little girl,"he added,as the nurse moved away with her still howling charge."What's your name?"
"Polly Trotsky."
"And a very good name too,"said the Director."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.
"Exquisite little creature!"said the Director,looking after her.Then,turning 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 sound incredible."
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.
A look of astonished incredulity appeared on the faces of his listeners.Poor little kids not allowed to amuse themselves?They could not believe it.
"Even adolescents,"the DHC was saying,"even adolescents like yourselves……"
"Not possible!"
"Barring a little surreptitious auto-erotism and homosexuality-absolutely nothing."
"Nothing?"
"In most cases,till they were over twenty years old."
"Twenty years old?"echoed the students in a chorus of loud disbelief.
"Twenty,"the Director repeated."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 round.On the fringe of the little group stood a stranger-a man of middle height,black-haired,with a hooked nose,full red lips,eyes very piercing and dark."Terrible,"he repeated.
The DHC had at that moment sat down on one of the steel and rubber benches conveniently scattered through the gardens;but at the sight of the stranger,he sprang to his feet and darted forward,his hands outstretched,smiling with all his teeth,effusive.
"Controller!What an unexpected pleasure!Boys,what are you thinking of?This is the Controller;this is his fordship,Mustapha Mond."
In the four thousand rooms of the Centre the four thousand electric clocks simultaneously struck four.Discarnate 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 turned their backs on Bernard Marx from the Psychology Bureau:averted themselves from that unsavoury reputation.
The faint hum and rattle of machinery still stirred the crimson air in the Embryo Store.Shifts might come and go,one lupus-coloured face give place to another;majestically and for ever the conveyors crept forward with their load of future men and women.
Lenina Crowne walked briskly towards the door.
