perfectly healthy and normal.' He handed Bernard the permit. 'I really don't know why I bored you with this trivial anecdote.' Furious with himself for having given away a discreditable secret, he vented his rage on Bernard. The look in his eyes was now frankly malignant. 'And I should like to take this opportunity, Mr. Marx,' he went on, 'of saying that I'm not at all pleased with the reports I receive of your behaviour outside working hours. You may say that this is not my business. But it is. I have the good name of the Centre to think of. My workers must be above suspicion, particularly those of the highest castes. Alphas are so conditioned that they do not have to be infantile in their emotional behaviour. But that is all the more reason for their making a special effort to conform. It is their duty to be infantile, even against their inclination. And so, Mr. Marx, I give you fair warning.' The Director's voice vibrated with an indignation that had now become wholly righteous and impersonal--was the expression of the disapproval of Society itself. 'If ever I hear again of any lapse from a proper standard of infantile decorum, I shall ask for your transference to a Sub-Centre--preferably to Iceland. Good morning.' And swivelling round in his chair, he picked up his pen and began to write.
'That'll teach him,' he said to himself. But he was mistaken. For Bernard left the room with a swagger, exulting, as he banged the door behind him, in the thought that he stood alone, embattled against the order of things; elated by the intoxicating consciousness of his individual significance and importance. Even the thought of persecution left him undismayed, was rather tonic than depressing. He felt strong enough to meet and overcome affliction, strong enough to face even Iceland. And this confidence was the greater for his not for a moment really believing that he would be called upon to face anything at all. People simply weren't transferred for things like that. Iceland was just a threat. A most stimulating and life-giving threat. Walking along the corridor, he actually whistled.
Heroic was the account he gave that evening of his interview with the D.H.C. 'Whereupon,' it concluded, 'I simply told him to go to the Bottomless Past and marched out of the room. And that was that.' He looked at Helmholtz Watson expectantly, awaiting his due reward of sympathy, encouragement, admiration. But no word came. Helmholtz sat silent, staring at the floor.
He liked Bernard; he was grateful to him for being the only man of his acquaintance with whom he could talk about the subjects he felt to be important. Nevertheless, there were things in Bernard which he hated. This boasting, for example. And the outbursts of an abject self-pity with which it alternated. And his deplorable habit of being bold after the event, and full, in absence, of the most extraordinary presence of mind. He hated these things--just because he liked Bernard. The seconds passed. Helmholtz continued to stare at the floor. And suddenly Bernard blushed and turned away.
§ 3
The journey was quite uneventful. The Blue Pacific Rocket was two and a half minutes early at New Orleans, lost four minutes in a tornado over Texas, but flew into a favourable air current at Longitude 95 West, and was able to land at Santa Fé less than forty seconds behind schedule time.
'Forty seconds on a six and a half hour flight. Not so bad,' Lenina conceded.
They slept that night at Santa Fé. The hotel was excellent--incomparably better, for example, than that horrible Aurora Bora Palace in which Lenina had suffered so much the previous summer. Liquid air, television, vibro-vacuum massage, radio, boiling caffeine solution, hot contraceptives, and eight different kinds of scent were laid on in every bedroom. The synthetic music plant was working as they entered the hall and left nothing to be desired. A notice in the lift announced that there were sixty Escalator-Squash-Racquet Courts in the hotel, and that Obstacle and Electro-magnetic Golf could both be played in the park.
'But it sounds simply too lovely,' cried Lenina. I almost wish we could stay here. Sixty Escalator-Squash Courts...'
'There won't be any in the Reservation,' Bernard warned her. 'And no scent, no television, no hot water, even. If you feel you can't stand it, stay here till I come back.'
Lenina was quite offended. 'Of course I can stand it. I only said it was lovely here because... well, because progress is lovely, isn't it?'
'Five hundred repetitions once a week from thirteen to seventeen,' said Bernard wearily, as though to himself.
'What did you say?'
'I said that progress was lovely. That's why you mustn't come to the Reservation unless you really want to.'
'But I do want to.'
'Very well, then,' said Bernard; and it was almost a threat.
Their permit required the signature of the Warden of the Reservation, at whose office next morning they duly presented themselves. An Epsilon-Plus negro porter took in Bernard's card, and they were admitted almost immediately.
The Warden was a blond and brachycephalic Alpha-Minus, short, red, moon-faced, and broad-shouldered, with a loud booming voice, very well adapted to the utterance of hypnopædic wisdom. He was a mine of irrelevant information and unasked-for good advice. Once started, he went on and on--boomingly.
'...five hundred and sixty thousand square kilometres, divided into four distinct Sub-Reservations, each surrounded by a high-tension wire fence.'
At this moment, and for no apparent reason, Bernard suddenly remembered that he had left the eau-de-Cologne tap in his bathroom wide open and running.
'...supplied with current from the Grand Canyon hydro-electric station.'
'Cost me a fortune by the time I get back.' With his mind's eye, Bernard saw the needle on the scent meter creeping round and round, ant-like, indefatigably. 'Quickly telephone to Helmholtz Watson.'
'...upwards of five thousand kilometres of fencing at sixty thousand volts.'
'You don't say so,' said Lenina politely, not knowing in the least what the Warden had said, but taking her cue from his dramatic pause. When the Warden started booming, she had inconspicuously swallowed half a gramme of soma, with the result that she could now sit, serenely not listening, thinking of nothing at all, but with her large blue eyes fixed on the Warden's face in an expression of rapt attention.
'To touch the fence is instant death,' pronounced the Warden solemnly. 'There is no escape from a Savage Reservation.'
The word 'escape' was suggestive. 'Perhaps,' said Bernard, half rising, 'we ought to think of going.' The little black needle was scurrying, an insect, nibbling through time, eating into his money.
'No escape,' repeated the Warden, waving him back into his chair; and as the permit was not yet countersigned, Bernard had no choice but to obey. 'Those who are born in the Reservation--and remember, my dear young lady,' he added, leering obscenely at Lenina, and speaking in an improper whisper, 'remember that, in the Reservation, children still are born, yes, actually born, revolting as that may seem...' (He hoped that this reference to a shameful subject would make Lenina blush; but she only smiled with simulated intelligence and said, 'You don't say so!' Disappointed, the Warden began again.) 'Those, I repeat, who are born in the Reservation are destined to die there.'
Destined to die... A decilitre of eau-de-Cologne every minute. Six litres an hour. 'Perhaps,' Bernard tried again, 'we ought...'
Leaning forward, the Director tapped the table with his forefinger. 'You ask me how many people live in the Reservation. And I reply'--triumphantly--'I reply that we do not know. We can only guess.'
'You don't say so.'
'My dear young lady, I do say so.'
Six times twenty-four--no, it would be nearer six times thirty-six. Bernard was pale and trembling with impatience. But inexorably the booming continued.
'...about sixty thousand Indians and half-breeds... absolute savages... our inspectors occasionally visit... otherwise, no communication whatever with the civilized world... still preserve their repulsive habits and customs... marriage, if you know what that is, my dear young lady; families... no conditioning... monstrous superstitions... Christianity and totemism and ancestor worship... extinct languages,