Chapter Ten
THE HANDS of all the four thousand electric clocks in
all the Bloomsbury Centre's four thousand rooms marked twenty-seven minutes
past two. "This hive of industry," as the Director was fond of calling it, was
in the full buzz of work. Every one was busy, everything in ordered motion.
Under the microscopes, their long tails furiously lashing, spermatozoa were
burrowing head first into eggs; and, fertilized, the eggs were expanding,
dividing, or if bokanovskified, budding and breaking up into whole populations
of separate embryos. From the Social Predestination Room the escalators went
rumbling down into the basement, and there, in the crimson darkness, stewingly
warm on their cushion of peritoneum and gorged with blood-surrogate and
hormones, the foetuses grew and grew or, poisoned, languished into a stunted
Epsilonhood. With a faint hum and rattle the moving racks crawled
imperceptibly through the weeks and the recapitulated aeons to where, in the
Decanting Room, the newly-unbottled babes uttered their first yell of horror
and amazement.
The dynamos purred in the sub-basement, the lifts rushed up and down. On
all the eleven floors of Nurseries it was feeding time. From eighteen hundred
bottles eighteen hundred carefully labelled infants were simultaneously
sucking down their pint of pasteurized external secretion.
Above them, in ten successive layers of dormitory, the little boys and
girls who were still young enough to need an afternoon sleep were as busy as
every one else, though they did not know it, listening unconsciously to
hypnopædic lessons in hygiene and sociability, in class-consciousness and the
toddler's love-life. Above these again were the playrooms where, the weather
having turned to rain, nine hundred older children were amusing themselves
with bricks and clay modelling, hunt-the-zipper, and erotic play.
Buzz, buzz! the hive was humming, busily, joyfully. Blithe was the singing
of the young girls over their test-tubes, the Predestinators whistled as they
worked, and in the Decanting Room what glorious jokes were cracked above the
empty bottles! But the Director's face, as he entered the Fertilizing Room
with Henry Foster, was grave, wooden with severity.
"A public example," he was saying. "In this room, because it contains more
high-caste workers than any other in the Centre. I have told him to meet me
here at half-past two."
"He does his work very well," put in Henry, with hypocritical generosity.
"I know. But that's all the more reason for severity. His intellectual
eminence carries with it corresponding moral responsibilities. The greater a
man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one
should suffer than that many should be corrupted. Consider the matter
dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offence is so heinous as
unorthodoxy of behaviour. Murder kills only the individual–and, after all,
what is an individual?" With a sweeping gesture he indicated the rows of
microscopes, the test-tubes, the incubators. "We can make a new one with the
greatest ease–as many as we like. Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of
a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself. Yes, at Society itself," he
repeated. "Ah, but here he comes."
Bernard had entered the room and was advancing between the rows of
fertilizers towards them. A veneer of jaunty self-confidence thinly concealed
his nervousness. The voice in which he said, "Good-morning, Director," was
absurdly too loud; that in which, correcting his mistake, he said, "You asked
me to come and speak to you here," ridiculously soft, a squeak.
"Yes, Mr. Marx," said the Director portentously. "I did ask you to come to
me here. You returned from your holiday last night, I understand."
"Yes," Bernard answered.
"Yes-s," repeated the Director, lingering, a serpent, on the "s." Then,
suddenly raising his voice, "Ladies and gentlemen," he trumpeted, "ladies and
gentlemen."
The singing of the girls over their test-tubes, the preoccupied whistling
of the Microscopists, suddenly ceased. There was a profound silence; every one
looked round.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the Director repeated once more, "excuse me for
thus interrupting your labours. A painful duty constrains me. The security and
stability of Society are in danger. Yes, in danger, ladies and gentlemen. This
man," he pointed accusingly at Bernard, "this man who stands before you here,
this Alpha-Plus to whom so much has been given, and from whom, in consequence,
so much must be expected, this colleague of yours–or should I anticipate and
say this ex-colleague?–has grossly betrayed the trust imposed in him. By his
heretical views on sport and soma, by the scandalous unorthodoxy of his
sex-life, by his refusal to obey the teachings of Our Ford and behave out of
office hours, 'even as a little infant,'" (here the Director made the sign of
the T), "he has proved himself an enemy of Society, a subverter, ladies and
gentlemen, of all Order and Stability, a conspirator against Civilization
itself. For this reason I propose to dismiss him, to dismiss him with ignominy
from the post he has held in this Centre; I propose forthwith to apply for his
transference to a Subcentre of the lowest order and, that his punishment may
serve the best interest of Society, as far as possible removed from any
important Centre of population. In Iceland he will have small opportunity to
lead others astray by his unfordly example." The Director paused; then,
folding his arms, he turned impressively to Bernard. "Marx," he said, "can you
show any reason why I should not now execute the judgment passed upon you?"
"Yes, I can," Bernard answered in a very loud voice.
Somewhat taken aback, but still majestically, "Then show it," said the
Director.
"Certainly. But it's in the passage. One moment." Bernard hurried to the
door and threw it open. "Come in," he commanded, and the reason came in and
showed itself.
There was a gasp, a murmur of astonishment and horror; a young girl
screamed; standing on a chair to get a better view some one upset two
test-tubes full of spermatozoa. Bloated, sagging, and among those firm
youthful bodies, those undistorted faces, a strange and terrifying monster of
middle-agedness, Linda advanced into the room, coquettishly smiling her broken
and discoloured smile, and rolling as she walked, with what was meant to be a
voluptuous undulation, her enormous haunches. Bernard walked beside her.
"There he is," he said, pointing at the Director.
"Did you think I didn't recognize him?" Linda asked indignantly; then,
turning to the Director, "Of course I knew you; Tomakin, I should have known
you anywhere, among a thousand. But perhaps you've forgotten me. Don't you
remember? Don't you remember, Tomakin? Your Linda." She stood looking at him,
her head on one side, still smiling, but with a smile that became
progressively, in face of the Director's expression of petrified disgust, less
and less self-confident, that wavered and finally went out. "Don't you
remember, Tomakin?" she repeated in a voice that trembled. Her eyes were
anxious, agonized. The blotched and sagging face twisted grotesquely into the
grimace of extreme grief. "Tomakin!" She held out her arms. Some one began to
titter.
"What's the meaning," began the Director, "of this monstrous …"
"Tomakin!" She ran forward, her blanket trailing behind her, threw her
arms round his neck, hid her face on his chest.
A howl of laughter went up irrepressibly.
"… this monstrous practical joke," the Director shouted.
Red in the face, he tried to disengage himself from her embrace.
Desperately she clung. "But I'm Linda, I'm Linda."' The laughter drowned her
voice. "You made me have a baby," she screamed above the uproar. There was a
sudden and appalling hush; eyes floated uncomfortably, not knowing where to
look. The Director went suddenly pale, stopped struggling and stood, his hands
on her wrists, staring down at her, horrified. "Yes, a baby–and I was its
mother." She flung the obscenity like a challenge into the outraged silence;
then, suddenly breaking away from him, ashamed, ashamed, covered her face with
her hands, sobbing. "It wasn't my fault, Tomakin. Because I always did my
drill, didn't I? Didn't I? Always … I don't know how … If you knew how awful,
Tomakin … But he was a comfort to me, all the same." Turning towards the door,
"John!" she called. "John!"
He came in at once, paused for a moment just inside the door, looked
round, then soft on his moccasined feet strode quickly across the room, fell
on his knees in front of the Director, and said in a clear voice: "My father!"
The word (for "father" was not so much obscene as–with its connotation of
something at one remove from the loathsomeness and moral obliquity of
child-bearing–merely gross, a scatological rather than a pornographic
impropriety); the comically smutty word relieved what had become a quite
intolerable tension. Laughter broke out, enormous, almost hysterical, peal
after peal, as though it would never stop. My father–and it was the Director!
My father! Oh Ford, oh Ford! That was really too good. The whooping and
the roaring renewed themselves, faces seemed on the point of disintegration,
tears were streaming. Six more test-tubes of spermatozoa were upset. My
father!
Pale, wild-eyed, the Director glared about him in an agony of bewildered
humiliation.
My father! The laughter, which had shown signs of dying away, broke
out again more loudly than ever. He put his hands over his ears and rushed out
of the room.
