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they get chocolate cream on death days. They learn to take dying as a matter of
course."
"Like any other physiological process," put in the Head Mistress professionally.
Eight o'clock at the Savoy. It was all arranged.
On their way back to London they stopped at the Television Corporation's factory at
Brentford.
"Do you mind waiting here a moment while I go and telephone?" asked Bernard.
The Savage waited and watched. The Main Day-Shift was just going off duty. Crowds
of lower-caste workers were queued up in front of the monorail station-seven or
eight hundred Gamma, Delta and Epsilon men and women, with not more than a
dozen faces and statures between them. To each of them, with his or her ticket, the
booking clerk pushed over a little cardboard pillbox. The long caterpillar of men and
women moved slowly forward.
"What's in those" (remembering The Merchant of Venice) "those caskets?" the Savage
enquired when Bernard had rejoined him.
"The day's soma ration," Bernard answered rather indistinctly; for he was masticating
a piece of Benito Hoover's chewing-gum. "They get it after their work's over. Four
half-gramme tablets. Six on Saturdays."
He took John's arm affectionately and they walked back towards the helicopter.
Lenina came singing into the Changing Room.
"You seem very pleased with yourself," said Fanny.
"I am pleased," she answered. Zip! "Bernard rang up half an hour ago." Zip, zip!
She stepped out of her shorts. "He has an unexpected engagement." Zip! "Asked
me if I'd take the Savage to the feelies this evening. I must fly." She hurried away
towards the bathroom.
"She's a lucky girl," Fanny said to herself as she watched Lenina go.
There was no envy in the comment; good-natured Fanny was merely stating a faet.
Lenina was lucky; lucky in having shared with Bernard a generous portion of the
Savage's immense celebrity, lucky in reflecting from her insignificant person the
moment's supremely fashionable glory. Had not the Secretary of the Young
Women's Fordian Association asked her to give a lecture about her experiences?
Had she not been invited to the Annual Dinner of the Aphroditeum Club? Had she
not already appeared in the Feelytone News visibly, audibly and tactually appeared
to countless millions all over the planet?
Hardly less flattering had been the attentions paid her by conspicuous individuals.
The Resident World Controller's Second Secretary had asked her to dinner and
breakfast. She had spent one week-end with the Ford Chief-Justice, and another
with the Arch-Community-Songster of Canterbury. The President of the Internal and
External Secretions Corporation was perpetually on the phone, and she had been to
Deauville with the Deputy-Governor of the Bank of Europe.
"It's wonderful, of course. And yet in a way," she had confessed to Fanny, "I feel as
though I were getting something on false presences. Because, of course, the first
thing they all want to know is what it's like to make love to a Savage. And I have to
say I don't know." She shook her head. "Most of the men don't believe me, of
course. But it's true. I wish it weren't," she added sadly and sighed. "He's terribly
good-looking; don't you think so?"
"But doesn't he like you?" asked Fanny.
"Sometimes I think he does and sometimes I think he doesn't. He always does his
best to avoid me; goes out of the room when I come in; won't touch me; won't even
look at me. But sometimes if I turn round suddenly, I catch him staring; and
then well, you know how men look when they like you."
Yes, Fanny knew.
"I can't make it out," said Lenina.
She couldn't make it out; and not only was bewildered; was also rather upset.
"Because, you see, Fanny, I like him."
Liked him more and more. Well, now there'd be a real chance, she thought, as she
scented herself after her bath. Dab, dab, dab a real chance. Her high spirits
overflowed in a song.
''Hug me till you drug me, honey;
Kiss me till I'm in a coma;
Hug me, honey, snuggly bunny;
Love's as good as soma."
The scent organ was playing a delightfully refreshing Herbal Capriccio rippling
arpeggios of thyme and lavender, of rosemary, basil, myrtle, tarragon; a series of
daring modulations through the spice keys into ambergris; and a slow return
through sandalwood, camphor, cedar and newmown hay (with occasional subtle
touches of discord a whiff of kidney pudding, the faintest suspicion of pig's dung)
back to the simple aromatics with which the piece began. The final blast of thyme
died away; there was a round of applause; the lights went up. In the synthetic music
machine the sound-track roll began to unwind. It was a trio for hyper-violin,
super-cello and oboe-surrogate that now filled the air with its agreeable languor.
Thirty or forty bars and then, against this instrumental background, a much more
than human voice began to warble; now throaty, now from the head, now hollow as
a flute, now charged with yearning harmonics, it effortlessly passed from Gaspard's
Forster's low record on the very frontiers of musical tone to a trilled bat-note high
above the highest C to which (in 1770, at the Ducal opera of Parma, and to the
astonishment of Mozart) Lucrezia Ajugari, alone of all the singers in history, once
piercingly gave utterance.
Sunk in their pneumatic stalls, Lenina and the Savage sniffed and listened. It was
now the turn also for eyes and skin.
The house lights went down; fiery letters stood out solid and as though
self-supported in the darkness. THREE WEEKS IN A HELICOPTER . AN
ALL-SUPER-SINGING, SYNTHETIC-TALK1NG, COLOURED, STEREOSCOPIC FEELY.
WITH SYNCHRONIZED SCENT-ORGAN ACCOMPANIMENT.
"Take hold of those metal knobs on the arms of your chair," whispered Lenina.
"Otherwise you won't get any of the feely effects."
The Savage did as he was told.
Those fiery letters, meanwhile, had disappeared; there were ten seconds of
complete darkness; then suddenly, dazzling and incomparably more solid-looking
than they would have seemed in actual flesh and blood, far more real than reality,
there stood the stereoscopic images, locked in one another's arms, of a gigantic
negro and a golden-haired young brachycephalic Beta-Plus female.
The Savage started. That sensation on his lips! He liited a hand to his mouth; the
titillation ceased; let his hand fall back on the metal knob; it began again. The
scent organ, meanwhile, breathed pure musk. Expiringly, a sound-track super-dove
cooed "Oo-ooh"; and vibrating only thirty-two times a second, a deeper than African
bass made answer: "Aa-aah." "Ooh-ah! Ooh-ah!" the stereoscopic lips came
together again, and once more the facial erogenous zones of the six thousand
spectators in the Alhambra tingled with almost intolerable galvanic pleasure. "Ooh & "
The plot of the film was extremely simple. A few minutes after the first Oohs and
Aahs (a duet having been sung and a little love made on that famous bearskin,
every hair of which the Assistant Predestinator was perfectly right could be [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]