Island - Aldous Huxley [75]
“I take it that your children all get this kind of training.”
“From the first moment they start doing for themselves. For example, what’s the proper way of handling yourself while you’re buttoning your clothes?” And suiting action to words, Vijaya started to button the shirt he had just slipped into. “We answer the question by actually putting their heads and bodies into the physiologically best position. And we encourage them at the same time to notice how it feels to be in the physiologically best position, to be aware of what the process of doing up buttons consists of in terms of touches and pressures and muscular sensations. By the time they’re fourteen they’ve learned how to get the most and the best—objectively and subjectively—out of any activity they may undertake. And that’s when we start them working. Ninety minutes a day at some kind of manual job.”
“Back to good old child labor!”
“Or rather,” said Dr. Robert, “forward from bad new child idleness. You don’t allow your teen-agers to work; so they have to blow off steam in delinquency or else throttle down steam till they’re ready to become domesticated sitting-addicts. And now,” he added, “it’s time to be going. I’ll lead the way.”
In the laboratory, when they entered, Murugan was in the act of locking his briefcase against all prying eyes. “I’m ready,” he said and, tucking the thirteen hundred and fifty-eight pages of the Newest Testament under his arm, he followed them out into the sunshine. A few minutes later, crammed into an ancient jeep, the four of them were rolling along the road that led, past the paddock of the white bull, past the lotus pool and the huge stone Buddha, out through the gate of the Station Compound to the highway. “I’m sorry we can’t provide more comfortable transportation,” said Vijaya as they bumped and rattled along.
Will patted Murugan’s knee. “This is the man you should be apologizing to,” he said. “The one whose soul yearns for Jaguars and Thunderbirds.”
“It’s a yearning, I’m afraid,” said Dr. Robert from the back seat, “that will have to remain unsatisfied.”
Murugan made no comment, but smiled the secret contemptuous smile of one who knows better.
“We can’t import toys,” Dr. Robert went on. “Only essentials.”
“Such as?”
“You’ll see in a moment.” They rounded a curve, and there beneath them were the thatched roofs and tree-shaded gardens of a considerable village. Vijaya pulled up at the side of the road and turned off the motor. “You’re looking at New Rothamsted,” he said. “Alias Madalia. Rice, vegetables, poultry, fruit. Not to mention two potteries and a furniture factory. Hence those wires.” He waved his hand in the direction of the long row of pylons that climbed up the terraced slope behind the village, dipped out of sight over the ridge, and reappeared, far away, marching up from the floor of the next valley towards the green belt of mountain jungle and the cloudy peaks beyond and above. “That’s one of the indispensable imports—electrical equipment. And when the waterfalls have been harnessed and you’ve strung up the transmission lines, here’s something else with a high priority.” He directed a pointing finger at a windowless block of cement that rose incongruously from among the wooden houses near the upper entrance to the village.
“What is it?” Will asked. “Some kind of electric oven?”
“No, the kilns are over on the other side of the village. This is the communal freezer.”
“In the old days,” Dr. Robert explained, “we used to lose about half of all the perishables we produced. Now we lose practically nothing. Whatever we grow is for us, not for the circumambient bacteria.”
“So now you have enough to eat.”
“More than enough. We eat better than any other country in Asia, and there’s a surplus for export. Lenin used to say that electricity plus socialism equals communism. Our equations are rather different. Electricity minus heavy industry plus birth control equals democracy and plenty. Electricity plus heavy industry minus birth control equals misery, totalitarianism