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By Root 535 0

It's curious,' he went on after a little pause, 'to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to have imagined that it could be allowed to go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Still, in spite of everything, unrestricted scientific research was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were the sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled – after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for. You're paying for it, Mr Watson – paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty. I was too much interested in truth; I paid too.'

'But you didn't go to an island,' said the Savage, breaking a long silence.

The Controller smiled. 'That's how I paid. By choosing to serve happiness. Other people's – not mine. It's lucky,' he added, after a pause, 'that there are such a lot of islands in the world. I don't know what we should do without them. Put you all in the lethal chamber, I suppose. By the way, Mr Watson, would you like a tropical climate? The Marquesas, for example; or Samoa? Or something rather more bracing?'

Helmholtz rose from his pneumatic chair. 'I should like a thoroughly bad climate,' he answered. 'I believe one would write better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind and storms, for example . . .'

The Controller nodded his approbation. 'I like your spirit, Mr Watson. I like it very much indeed. As much as I officially disapprove of it.' He smiled. 'What about the Falkland Islands?'

'Yes, I think that will do,' Helmholtz answered. 'And now, if you don't mind, I'll go and see how poor Bernard's getting on.'

CHAPTER XVII

'ART, SCIENCE – YOU seem to have paid a fairly high price for your happiness,' said the Savage, when they were alone. 'Anything else?'

'Well, religion, of course,' replied the Controller. 'There used to be something called God – before the Nine Years' War. But I was forgetting; you know all about God, I suppose.'

'Well . . .' The Savage hesitated. He would have liked to say something about solitude, about night, about the mesa lying pale under the moon, about the precipice, the plunge into shadowy darkness, about death. He would have liked to speak; but there were no words. Not even in Shakespeare.

The Controller, meanwhile, had crossed to the other side of the room and was unlocking a large safe let into the wall between the bookshelves. The heavy door swung open. Rummaging in the darkness within, 'It's a subject,' he said, 'that has always had a great interest for me,' He pulled out a thick black volume. 'You've never read this, for example.'

The Savage took it. 'The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments,' he read aloud from the title-page.

'Nor this.' It was a small book and had lost its cover.

'The Imitation of Christ.'

'Nor this.' He handed out another volume.

'The Varieties of Religious Experience. By William James.'

'And I've got plenty more,' Mustapha Mond continued, resuming his seat. 'A whole collection of pornographic old books. God in the safe and Ford on the shelves.' He pointed with