The machine turns,turns and must keep on turning-for ever.It is death if it stands still.A thousand millions scrabbled the crust of the earth.The wheels began to turn.In a hundred and fifty years there were two thousand millions.Stop all the wheels.In a hundred and fifty weeks there are once more only a thousand millions;a thousand thousand thousand men and women have starved to death.
Wheels must turn steadily,but cannot turn untended.There must be men to tend them,men as steady as the wheels upon their axles,sane men,obedient men,stable in contentment.
Crying:My baby,my mother,my only,only love;groaning:My sin,my terrible God;screaming with pain,muttering with fever,bemoaning old age and poverty-how can they tend the wheels?And if they cannot tend the wheels……The corpses of a thousand thousand thousand men and women would be hard to bury or burn.
"And after all,"Fanny's tone was coaxing,"it's not as though there were anything painful or disagreeable about having one or two men besides Henry.And seeing that,you ought to be a little more promiscuous……"
"Stability,"insisted the Controller,"stability.The primal and the ultimate need.Stability.Hence all this."
With a wave of his hand he indicated the gardens,the huge building of the Conditioning Centre,the naked children furtive in the undergrowth or running across the lawns.
Lenina shook her head."Somehow,"she mused,"I hadn't been feeling very keen on promiscuity lately.There are times when one doesn't.Haven't you found that too,Fanny?"
Fanny nodded her sympathy and understanding."But one's got to make the effort,"she said sententiously,"one's got to play the game.After all,everyone belongs to everyone else."
"Yes,everyone belongs to everyone else,"Lenina repeated slowly and,sighing,was silent for a moment;then taking Fanny's hand,gave it a little squeeze."You're quite right,Fanny.As usual.I'll make the effort."
Impulse arrested spills over,and the flood is feeling,the flood is passion,the flood is even madness;it depends on the force of the current,the height and strength of the barrier.The unchecked stream flows smoothly down its appointed channels into a calm well-being.The embryo is hungry;day in,day out,the blood-surrogate pump unceasingly turns its eight hundred revolutions a minute.The decanted infant howls;at once a nurse appears with a bottle of external secretion.Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation.Shorten that interval,break down all those old unnecessary barriers.
"Fortunate boys!"said the Controller."No pains have been spared to make your lives emotionally easy-to preserve you,so far as that is possible,from having emotions at all."
"Ford's in his flivver,"murmured the DHC."All's well with the world."
"Lenina Crowne?"said Henry Foster,echoing the Assistant Predestinator's question as he zipped up his trousers."Oh,she's a splendid girl.Wonderfully pneumatic.I'm surprised you haven't had her."
"I can't think how it is I haven't,"said the Assistant Predestinator."I certainly will.At the first opportunity."
From his place on the opposite side of the changingroom aisle,Bernard Marx overheard what they were saying and turned pale.
"And to tell the truth,"said Lenina,"I'm beginning to get just a tiny bit bored with nothing but Henry every day."She pulled on her left stocking."Do you know Bernard Marx?"she asked in a tone whose excessive casualness was evidently forced.
Fanny looked startled."You don't mean to say……?"
"Why not?Bernard's an Alpha-Plus.Besides,he asked me to go to one of the Savage Reservations with him.I've always wanted to see a Savage Reservation."
"But his reputation?"
"What do I care about his reputation?"
"They say he doesn't like Obstacle Golf."
"They say,they say,"mocked Lenina.
"And then he spends most of his time by himself-alone."There was horror in Fanny's voice.
"Well,he won't be alone when he's with me.And anyhow,why are people so beastly to him?I think he's rather sweet."She smiled to herself;how absurdly shy he had been!Frightened almost-as though she were a World Controller and he a Gamma-Minus machine minder.
"Consider your own lives,"said Mustapha Mond."Has any of you ever encountered an insurmountable obstacle?"
The question was answered by a negative silence.
"Has any of you been compelled to live through a long time-interval between the consciousness of a desire and its fulfilment?"
"Well,"began one of the boys,and hesitated.
"Speak up,"said the DHC."Don't keep his fordship waiting."
"I once had to wait nearly four weeks before a girl I wanted would let me have her."
"And you felt a strong emotion in consequence?"
"Horrible?"
"Horrible;precisely,"said the Controller."Our ancestors were so stupid and short-sighted that when the first reformers came along and offered to deliver them from those horrible emotions,they wouldn't have anything to do with them."
"Talking about her as though she were a bit of meat."Bernard ground his teeth."Have her here,have her there.Like mutton.Degrading her to so much mutton.She said she'd think it over,she said she'd give me an answer this week.Oh,Ford,Ford,Ford."He would have liked to go up to them and hit them in the face-hard,again and again.
"Yes,I really do advise you to try her,"Henry Foster was saying.
"Take Ectogenesis.Pfitzner and Kawaguchi had got the whole technique worked out.But would the Governments look at it?No.There was something called Christianity.Women were forced to go on being viviparous."
"He's so ugly!"said Fanny.
"But I rather like his looks."
"And then so small."Fanny made a grimace;smallness was so horribly and typically low-caste.
"I think that's rather sweet,"said Lenina."One feels one would like to pet him.You know.Like a cat."
