Brave New World - Aldous Huxley [18]
“And what makes it worse, she thinks of herself as meat.”
“Two thousand pharmacologists and bio-chemists were subsidized in A.F. 178.”
“He does look glum,” said the Assistant Predestinator, pointing at Bernard Marx.
“Six years later it was being produced commercially. The perfect drug.”
“Let’s bait him.”
“Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant.”
“Glum, Marx, glum,” The clap on the shoulder made him start, look up. It was that brute Henry Foster. “What you need is a gramme of soma.”
“All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.”
“Ford, I should like to kill him!” But all he did was to say, “No, thank you,” and fend off the proffered tube of tablets.
“Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology.”
“Take it,” insisted Henry Foster, “take it.”
“Stability was practically assured.”
“One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments,” said the Assistant Predestinator citing a piece of homely hypnopædic wisdom.
“It only remained to conquer old age.”
“Damn you, damn you!” shouted Bernard Marx.
“Hoity-toity.”
“Gonadal hormones, transfusion of young blood, magnesium salts …”
“And do remember that a gramme is better than a damn.” They went out, laughing.
“All the physiological stigmata of old age have been abolished. And along with them, of course …”
“Don’t forget to ask him about that Malthusian belt,” said Fanny.
“Along with them all the old man’s mental peculiarities. Characters remain constant throughout a whole lifetime.”
“… two rounds of Obstacle Golf to get through before dark. I must fly.”
“Work, play—at sixty our powers and tastes are what they were at seventeen. Old men in the bad old days used to renounce, retire, take to religion, spend their time reading, thinking—thinking!”
“Idiots, swine!” Bernard Marx was saying to himself, as he walked down the corridor to the lift.
“Now—such is progress—the old men work, the old men copulate, the old men have no time, no leisure from pleasure, not a moment to sit down and think—or if ever by some unlucky chance such a crevice of time should yawn in the solid substance of their distractions, there is always soma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon; returning whence they find themselves on the other side of the crevice, safe on the solid ground of daily labour and distraction, scampering from feely to feely, from girl to pneumatic girl, from Electromagnetic Golf course to …”
“Go away, little girl,” shouted the D.H.C. angrily “Go away, little boy! Can’t you see that his fordship’s busy? Go and do your erotic play somewhere else.”
“Suffer little children,” said the Controller.
Slowly, majestically, with a faint humming of machinery, the Conveyors moved forward, thirty-three centimetres an hour. In the red darkness glinted innumerable rubies.
Part 1
The lift was crowded with men from the Alpha Changing Rooms, and Lenina’s entry was greeted by many friendly nods and smiles. She was a popular girl and, at one time or another, had spent a night with almost all of them.
They were dear boys, she thought, as she returned their salutations. Charming boys! Still, she did wish that George Edzel’s ears weren’t quite so big (perhaps he’d been given just a spot too much parathyroid at Metre, 328?). And looking at Benito Hoover, she couldn’t help remembering that he was really too hairy when he took his clothes off.
Turning, with eyes a little saddened by the recollection of Benito’s curly blackness, she saw in a corner the small thin body, the melancholy face of Bernard Marx.
“Bernard!” she stepped up to him. “I was looking for you.” Her voice rang clear above the hum of the mounting lift. The others looked round curiously. “I wanted to talk to you about our New Mexico plan.” Out of the tail of her eye she could see Benito Hoover gaping with astonishment. The gape annoyed her. “Surprised I shouldn’t be begging to go with him again!” she said