Chapter Eleven
AFTER the scene in the Fertilizing Room, all
upper-caste London was wild to see this delicious creature who had fallen on
his knees before the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning–or rather the
ex-Director, for the poor man had resigned immediately afterwards and never
set foot inside the Centre again–had flopped down and called him (the joke was
almost too good to be true!) "my father." Linda, on the contrary, cut no ice;
nobody had the smallest desire to see Linda. To say one was a mother–that was
past a joke: it was an obscenity. Moreover, she wasn't a real savage, had been
hatched out of a bottle and conditioned like any one else: so couldn't have
really quaint ideas. Finally–and this was by far the strongest reason for
people's not wanting to see poor Linda–there was her appearance. Fat; having
lost her youth; with bad teeth, and a blotched complexion, and that figure
(Ford!)–you simply couldn't look at her without feeling sick, yes, positively
sick. So the best people were quite determined not to see Linda. And
Linda, for her part, had no desire to see them. The return to civilization was
for her the return to soma, was the possibility of lying in bed and
taking holiday after holiday, without ever having to come back to a headache
or a fit of vomiting, without ever being made to feel as you always felt after
peyotl, as though you'd done something so shamefully anti-social that
you could never hold up your head again. Soma played none of these
unpleasant tricks. The holiday it gave was perfect and, if the morning after
was disagreeable, it was so, not intrinsically, but only by comparison with
the joys of the holiday. The remedy was to make the holiday continuous.
Greedily she clamoured for ever larger, ever more frequent doses. Dr. Shaw at
first demurred; then let her have what she wanted. She took as much as twenty
grammes a day.
"Which will finish her off in a month or two," the doctor confided to
Bernard. "One day the respiratory centre will be paralyzed. No more breathing.
Finished. And a good thing too. If we could rejuvenate, of course it would be
different. But we can't."
Surprisingly, as every one thought (for on soma-holiday Linda was
most conveniently out of the way), John raised objections.
"But aren't you shortening her life by giving her so much?"
"In one sense, yes," Dr. Shaw admitted. "But in another we're actually
lengthening it." The young man stared, uncomprehending. "Soma may make
you lose a few years in time," the doctor went on. "But think of the enormous,
immeasurable durations it can give you out of time. Every soma-holiday
is a bit of what our ancestors used to call eternity."
John began to understand. "Eternity was in our lips and eyes," he
murmured.
"Eh?"
"Nothing."
"Of course," Dr. Shaw went on, "you can't allow people to go popping off
into eternity if they've got any serious work to do. But as she hasn't got any
serious work …"
"All the same," John persisted, "I don't believe it's right."
The doctor shrugged his shoulders. "Well, of course, if you prefer to have
her screaming mad all the time …"
In the end John was forced to give in. Linda got her soma.
Thenceforward she remained in her little room on the thirty-seventh floor of
Bernard's apartment house, in bed, with the radio and television always on,
and the patchouli tap just dripping, and the soma tablets within reach
of her hand–there she remained; and yet wasn't there at all, was all the time
away, infinitely far away, on holiday; on holiday in some other world, where
the music of the radio was a labyrinth of sonorous colours, a sliding,
palpitating labyrinth, that led (by what beautifully inevitable windings) to a
bright centre of absolute conviction; where the dancing images of the
television box were the performers in some indescribably delicious all-singing
feely; where the dripping patchouli was more than scent–was the sun, was a
million saxophones, was Popé making love, only much more so, incomparably
more, and without end.
"No, we can't rejuvenate. But I'm very glad," Dr. Shaw had concluded, "to
have had this opportunity to see an example of senility in a human being.
Thank you so much for calling me in." He shook Bernard warmly by the hand.
It was John, then, they were all after. And as it was only through
Bernard, his accredited guardian, that John could be seen, Bernard now found
himself, for the first time in his life, treated not merely normally, but as a
person of outstanding importance. There was no more talk of the alcohol in his
blood-surrogate, no gibes at his personal appearance. Henry Foster went out of
his way to be friendly; Benito Hoover made him a present of six packets of
sex-hormone chewing-gum; the Assistant Predestinator came out and cadged
almost abjectly for an invitation to one of Bernard's evening parties. As for
the women, Bernard had only to hint at the possibility of an invitation, and
he could have whichever of them he liked.
"Bernard's asked me to meet the Savage next Wednesday," Fanny announced
triumphantly.
"I'm so glad," said Lenina. "And now you must admit that you were wrong
about Bernard. Don't you think he's really rather sweet?"
Fanny nodded. "And I must say," she said, "I was quite agreeably
surprised."
The Chief Bottler, the Director of Predestination, three Deputy Assistant
Fertilizer-Generals, the Professor of Feelies in the College of Emotional
Engineering, the Dean of the Westminster Community Singery, the Supervisor of
Bokanovskification–the list of Bernard's notabilities was interminable.
"And I had six girls last week," he confided to Helmholtz Watson. "One on
Monday, two on Tuesday, two more on Friday, and one on Saturday. And if I'd
had the time or the inclination, there were at least a dozen more who were
only too anxious …"
Helmholtz listened to his boastings in a silence so gloomily disapproving
that Bernard was offended.
"You're envious," he said.
Helmholtz shook his head. "I'm rather sad, that's all," he answered.
Bernard went off in a huff. Never, he told himself, never would he speak
to Helmholtz again.
The days passed. Success went fizzily to Bernard's head, and in the
process completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicant should do) to a
world which, up till then, he had found very unsatisfactory. In so far as it
recognized him as important, the order of things was good. But, reconciled by
his success, he yet refused to forego the privilege of criticizing this order.
For the act of criticizing heightened his sense of importance, made him feel
larger. Moreover, he did genuinely believe that there were things to
criticize. (At the same time, he genuinely liked being a success and having
all the girls he wanted.) Before those who now, for the sake of the Savage,
paid their court to him, Bernard would parade a carping unorthodoxy. He was
politely listened to. But behind his back people shook their heads. "That
young man will come to a bad end," they said, prophesying the more confidently
in that they themselves would in due course personally see to it that the end
was bad. "He won't find another Savage to help him out a second time," they
said. Meanwhile, however, there was the first Savage; they were polite. And
because they were polite, Bernard felt positively gigantic–gigantic and at the
same time light with elation, lighter than air.
"Lighter than air," said Bernard, pointing upwards.
Like a pearl in the sky, high, high above them, the Weather Department's
captive balloon shone rosily in the sunshine.
"… the said Savage," so ran Bernard's instructions, "to be shown civilized
life in all its aspects. …"
He was being shown a bird's-eye view of it at present, a bird's-eye view
from the platform of the Charing-T Tower. The Station Master and the Resident
Meteorologist were acting as guides. But it was Bernard who did most of the
talking. Intoxicated, he was behaving as though, at the very least, he were a
visiting World Controller. Lighter than air.
The Bombay Green Rocket dropped out of the sky. The passengers alighted.
Eight identical Dravidian twins in khaki looked out of the eight portholes of
the cabin–the stewards.
"Twelve hundred and fifty kilometres an hour," said the Station Master
impressively. "What do you think of that, Mr. Savage?"
John thought it very nice. "Still," he said, "Ariel could put a girdle
round the earth in forty minutes."
"The Savage," wrote Bernard in his report to Mustapha Mond, "shows
surprisingly little astonishment at, or awe of, civilized inventions. This is
partly due, no doubt, to the fact that he has heard them talked about by the
woman Linda, his m–––."
(Mustapha Mond frowned. "Does the fool think I'm too squeamish to see the
word written out at full length?")
"Partly on his interest being focussed on what he calls 'the soul,' which
he persists in regarding as an entity independent of the physical environment,
whereas, as I tried to point out to him …"
The Controller skipped the next sentences and was just about to turn the
page in search of something more interestingly concrete, when his eye was
caught by a series of quite extraordinary phrases. " … though I must admit,"
he read, "that I agree with the Savage in finding civilized infantility too
easy or, as he puts it, not expensive enough; and I would like to take this
opportunity of drawing your fordship's attention to …"
Mustapha Mond's anger gave place almost at once to mirth. The idea of this
creature solemnly lecturing him–him-about the social order was really
too grotesque. The man must have gone mad. "I ought to give him a lesson," he
said to himself; then threw back his head and laughed aloud. For the moment,
at any rate, the lesson would not be given.
It was a small factory of lighting-sets for helicopters, a branch of the
Electrical Equipment Corporation. They were met on the roof itself (for that
circular letter of recommendation from the Controller was magical in its
effects) by the Chief Technician and the Human Element Manager. They walked
downstairs into the factory.
"Each process," explained the Human Element Manager, "is carried out, so
far as possible, by a single Bokanovsky Group."
And, in effect, eighty-three almost noseless black brachycephalic Deltas
were cold-pressing. The fifty-six four-spindle chucking and turning machines
were being manipulated by fifty-six aquiline and ginger Gammas. One hundred
and seven heat-conditioned Epsilon Senegalese were working in the foundry.
Thirty-three Delta females, long-headed, sandy, with narrow pelvises, and all
within 20 millimetres of 1 metre 69 centimetres tall, were cutting screws. In
the assembling room, the dynamos were being put together by two sets of
Gamma-Plus dwarfs. The two low work-tables faced one another; between them
crawled the conveyor with its load of separate parts; forty-seven blonde heads
were confronted by forty-seven brown ones. Forty-seven snubs by forty-seven
hooks; forty-seven receding by forty-seven prognathous chins. The completed
mechanisms were inspected by eighteen identical curly auburn girls in Gamma
green, packed in crates by thirty-four short-legged, left-handed male
Delta-Minuses, and loaded into the waiting trucks and lorries by sixty-three
blue-eyed, flaxen and freckled Epsilon Semi-Morons.
"O brave new world …" By some malice of his memory the Savage found
himself repeating Miranda's words. "O brave new world that has such people in
it."
"And I assure you," the Human Element Manager concluded, as they left the
factory, "we hardly ever have any trouble with our workers. We always find …"
But the Savage had suddenly broken away from his companions and was
violently retching, behind a clump of laurels, as though the solid earth had
been a helicopter in an air pocket.
"The Savage," wrote Bernard, "refuses to take soma, and seems much
distressed because of the woman Linda, his m–––, remains permanently on
holiday. It is worthy of note that, in spite of his m–––'s senility and the
extreme repulsiveness of her appearance, the Savage frequently goes to see her
and appears to be much attached to her–an interesting example of the way in
which early conditioning can be made to modify and even run counter to natural
impulses (in this case, the impulse to recoil from an unpleasant object)."
At Eton they alighted on the roof of Upper School. On the opposite side of
School Yard, the fifty-two stories of Lupton's Tower gleamed white in the
sunshine. College on their left and, on their right, the School Community
Singery reared their venerable piles of ferro-concrete and vita-glass. In the
centre of the quadrangle stood the quaint old chrome-steel statue of Our Ford.
Dr. Gaffney, the Provost, and Miss Keate, the Head Mistress, received them
as they stepped out of the plane.
"Do you have many twins here?" the Savage asked rather apprehensively, as
they set out on their tour of inspection.
"Oh, no," the Provost answered. "Eton is reserved exclusively for
upper-caste boys and girls. One egg, one adult. It makes education more
difficult of course. But as they'll be called upon to take responsibilities
and deal with unexpected emergencies, it can't be helped." He sighed.
Bernard, meanwhile, had taken a strong fancy to Miss Keate. "If you're
free any Monday, Wednesday, or Friday evening," he was saying. Jerking his
thumb towards the Savage, "He's curious, you know," Bernard added. "Quaint."
Miss Keate smiled (and her smile was really charming, he thought); said
Thank you; would be delighted to come to one of his parties. The Provost
opened a door.
Five minutes in that Alpha Double Plus classroom left John a trifle
bewildered.
"What is elementary relativity?" he whispered to Bernard. Bernard
tried to explain, then thought better of it and suggested that they should go
to some other classroom.
From behind a door in the corridor leading to the Beta-Minus geography
room, a ringing soprano voice called, "One, two, three, four," and then, with
a weary impatience, "As you were."
"Malthusian Drill," explained the Head Mistress. "Most of our girls are
freemartins, of course. I'm a freemartin myself." She smiled at Bernard. "But
we have about eight hundred unsterilized ones who need constant drilling."
In the Beta-Minus geography room John learnt that "a savage reservation is
a place which, owing to unfavourable climatic or geological conditions, or
poverty of natural resources, has not been worth the expense of civilizing." A
click; the room was darkened; and suddenly, on the screen above the Master's
head, there were the Penitentes of Acoma prostrating themselves before
Our Lady, and wailing as John had heard them wail, confessing their sins
before Jesus on the Cross, before the eagle image of Pookong. The young
Etonians fairly shouted with laughter. Still wailing, the Penitentes
rose to their feet, stripped off their upper garments and, with knotted whips,
began to beat themselves, blow after blow. Redoubled, the laughter drowned
even the amplified record of their groans.
"But why do they laugh?" asked the Savage in a pained bewilderment.
"Why?" The Provost turned towards him a still broadly grinning face.
"Why? But because it's so extraordinarily funny."
In the cinematographic twilight, Bernard risked a gesture which, in the
past, even total darkness would hardly have emboldened him to make. Strong in
his new importance, he put his arm around the Head Mistress's waist. It
yielded, willowily. He was just about to snatch a kiss or two and perhaps a
gentle pinch, when the shutters clicked open again.
"Perhaps we had better go on," said Miss Keate, and moved towards the
door.
"And this," said the Provost a moment later, "is Hypnopædic Control Room."
Hundreds of synthetic music boxes, one for each dormitory, stood ranged in
shelves round three sides of the room; pigeon-holed on the fourth were the
paper sound-track rolls on which the various hypnopædic lessons were printed.
"You slip the roll in here," explained Bernard, interrupting Dr. Gaffney,
"press down this switch …"
"No, that one," corrected the Provost, annoyed.
"That one, then. The roll unwinds. The selenium cells transform the light
impulses into sound waves, and …"
"And there you are," Dr. Gaffney concluded.
"Do they read Shakespeare?" asked the Savage as they walked, on their way
to the Bio-chemical Laboratories, past the School Library.
"Certainly not," said the Head Mistress, blushing.
"Our library," said Dr. Gaffney, "contains only books of reference. If our
young people need distraction, they can get it at the feelies. We don't
encourage them to indulge in any solitary amusements."
Five bus-loads of boys and girls, singing or in a silent embracement,
rolled past them over the vitrified highway.
"Just returned," explained Dr. Gaffney, while Bernard, whispering, made an
appointment with the Head Mistress for that very evening, "from the Slough
Crematorium. Death conditioning begins at eighteen months. Every tot spends
two mornings a week in a Hospital for the Dying. All the best toys are kept
there, and 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
fact. 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 pretences. 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 lifted 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 separately and distinctly felt), the negro had a helicopter
accident, fell on his head. Thump! what a twinge through the forehead! A chorus
of ow's and aie's went up from the audience.
The concussion knocked all the negro's conditioning into a cocked hat. He
developed for the Beta blonde an exclusive and maniacal passion. She
protested. He persisted. There were struggles, pursuits, an assault on a
rival, finally a sensational kidnapping. The Beta blond was ravished away into
the sky and kept there, hovering, for three weeks in a wildly anti-social
tête-à-tête with the black madman. Finally, after a whole series of
adventures and much aerial acrobacy three handsome young Alphas succeeded in
rescuing her. The negro was packed off to an Adult Re-conditioning Centre and
the film ended happily and decorously, with the Beta blonde becoming the
mistress of all her three rescuers. They interrupted themselves for a moment
to sing a synthetic quartet, with full super-orchestral accompaniment and
gardenias on the scent organ. Then the bearskin made a final appearance and,
amid a blare of saxophones, the last stereoscopic kiss faded into darkness,
the last electric titillation died on the lips like a dying moth that quivers,
quivers, ever more feebly, ever more faintly, and at last is quiet, quite
still.
But for Lenina the moth did not completely die. Even after the lights had
gone up, while they were shuffling slowly along with the crowd towards the
lifts, its ghost still fluttered against her lips, still traced fine
shuddering roads of anxiety and pleasure across her skin. Her cheeks were
flushed. She caught hold of the Savage's arm and pressed it, limp, against her
side. He looked down at her for a moment, pale, pained, desiring, and ashamed
of his desire. He was not worthy, not … Their eyes for a moment met. What
treasures hers promised! A queen's ransom of temperament. Hastily he looked
away, disengaged his imprisoned arm. He was obscurely terrified lest she
should cease to be something he could feel himself unworthy of.
"I don't think you ought to see things like that," he said, making haste
to transfer from Lenina herself to the surrounding circumstances the blame for
any past or possible future lapse from perfection.
"Things like what, John?"
"Like this horrible film."
"Horrible?" Lenina was genuinely astonished. "But I thought it was
lovely."
"It was base," he said indignantly, "it was ignoble."
She shook her head. "I don't know what you mean." Why was he so queer? Why
did he go out of his way to spoil things?
In the taxicopter he hardly even looked at her. Bound by strong vows that
had never been pronounced, obedient to laws that had long since ceased to run,
he sat averted and in silence. Sometimes, as though a finger had plucked at
some taut, almost breaking string, his whole body would shake with a sudden
nervous start.
The taxicopter landed on the roof of Lenina's apartment house. "At last,"
she thought exultantly as she stepped out of the cab. At last–even though he
had been so queer just now. Standing under a lamp, she peered into her
hand mirror. At last. Yes, her nose was a bit shiny. She shook the loose
powder from her puff. While he was paying off the taxi–there would just be
time. She rubbed at the shininess, thinking: "He's terribly good-looking. No
need for him to be shy like Bernard. And yet … Any other man would have done
it long ago. Well, now at last." That fragment of a face in the little round
mirror suddenly smiled at her.
"Good-night," said a strangled voice behind her. Lenina wheeled round. He
was standing in the doorway of the cab, his eyes fixed, staring; had evidently
been staring all this time while she was powdering her nose, waiting–but what
for? or hesitating, trying to make up his mind, and all the time thinking,
thinking–she could not imagine what extraordinary thoughts. "Good-night,
Lenina," he repeated, and made a strange grimacing attempt to smile.
"But, John … I thought you were … I mean, aren't you? …"
He shut the door and bent forward to say something to the driver. The cab
shot up into the air.
Looking down through the window in the floor, the Savage could see
Lenina's upturned face, pale in the bluish light of the lamps. The mouth was
open, she was calling. Her foreshortened figure rushed away from him; the
diminishing square of the roof seemed to be falling through the darkness.
Five minutes later he was back in his room. From its hiding-place he took
out his mouse-nibbled volume, turned with religious care its stained and
crumbled pages, and began to read Othello. Othello, he remembered, was
like the hero of Three Weeks in a Helicopter–a black man.
Drying her eyes, Lenina walked across the roof to the lift. On her way
down to the twenty-seventh floor she pulled out her soma bottle. One
gramme, she decided, would not be enough; hers had been more than a one-gramme
affliction. But if she took two grammes, she ran the risk of not waking up in
time to-morrow morning. She compromised and, into her cupped left palm, shook
out three half-gramme tablets.
