He was a powerfully built man, broad-shouldered, massive, and yet quick in his movements. His hair was dark and curly. He was handsome and looked like an Alpha Plus. By profession he was a lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering (Department of Writing) and a working Emotional Engineer. He wrote regularly for The Hourly Radio, composed feely scenarios, and had the knack for slogans and hypnopaedic rhymes.
“Able,” was the verdict of his superiors. “Perhaps, a little too able.”
Yes, a little too able; they were right. A mental excess had produced in Helmholtz Watson effects very similar to those in Bernard Marx. It had isolated Bernard from his fellow men, and the sense of this became in turn a cause of wider separation. Helmholtz Watson had also become aware of his difference from the people who surrounded him. He had realized quite suddenly that sport, women, communal activities were only, so far as he was concerned, second bests. Really, and at the bottom, he was interested in something else. But in what? In what?
Three charming girls from the Bureau of Propaganda by Synthetic Voice walked up to him as he stepped out of the lift.
“Oh, Helmholtz, darling, do come and have a picnic supper with us on Exmoor.”
He shook his head, he pushed his way through them. “No, no. I’m busy.”
It was not till he had actually climbed into Bernard’s plane and slammed the door that they gave up pursuit.
“These women!” he said, as the machine rose into the air. “These women!” And he shook his head, he frowned. “Too awful,” Bernard hypocritically agreed, wishing that he could have as many girls as Helmholtz did, and with as little trouble. He was seized with a sudden urgent need to boast. “I’m taking Lenina Crowne to New Mexico with me,” he said in a tone as casual as he could make it.
“Are you?” said Helmholtz, with a total absence of interest. Then after a little pause, “This last week or two I’ve been cutting all my committees and all my girls. It’s been worth it, I think.”
The rest of the short flight was accomplished in silence. When they had arrived and were comfortably stretched out on the pneumatic sofas in Bernard’s room, Helmholtz began again.
Speaking very slowly, “Did you ever feel,” he asked, “as though you had something inside you that was only waiting for you to give it a chance to come out? Some sort of extra power that you aren’t using?” He looked at Bernard questioningly.
“You mean all the emotions one might be feeling if things were different?”
Helmholtz shook his head. “Not quite. I’m thinking of a queer feeling I sometimes get, a feeling that I’ve got something important to say and the power to say it-only I don’t know what it is. If there was some different way of writing… Or else something else to write about… You see, I’m pretty good at inventing phrases. But that doesn’t seem enough. It’s not enough for the phrases to be good; what you make with them ought to be good too.”
“But your things are good, Helmholtz.”
“Oh, as far as they go.” Helmholtz shrugged his shoulders. “But they go such a little way. They aren’t important enough, somehow. I feel I could do something much more important. But what? What is there more important to say? Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly-they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced. That’s one of the things I try to teach my students-how to write piercingly. But what on earth’s the good of being pierced by an article about a Community Sing, or the latest improvement in scent organs?”
“Hush!” said Bernard suddenly, and lifted a warning finger; they listened. “I believe there’s somebody at the door,” he whispered.
Helmholtz got up, tiptoed across the room, and with a sharp quick movement flung the door wide open. There was, of course, nobody there.
“I’m sorry,” said Bernard, feeling and looking uncomfortably foolish. “I suppose I’ve got things on my nerves a bit. When people are suspicious with you, you start being suspicious with them.”
He passed his hand across his eyes and sighed. “If you knew what I’d had to put up with recently,” he said almost tearfully. “If you only knew!”
Helmholtz Watson listened with a certain sense of discomfort. “Poor little Bernard!” he said to himself. But at the same time he felt rather ashamed for his friend. He wished Bernard would show a little more pride.
Chapter Five
1
By eight o’clock the light was failing. Lenina and Henry abandoned their game and walked back towards the Club.
A buzzing of helicopters filled the twilight. Every two and a half minutes a bell announced the departure of one of the light monorail trains which carried the lower caste golfers back from their separate course to the metropolis.
Lenina and Henry climbed into their machine and started off. At eight hundred feet Henry slowed down the helicopter screws, and they hung for a minute or two above the fading landscape. The forest of Burnham Beeches stretched like a great pool of darkness towards the western sky. Their eyes were drawn to the buildings of the Slough Crematorium. For the safety of night-flying planes, its four tall chimneys were flood-lighted and tipped with crimson danger signals.
“Why do the smoke-stacks have those things like balconies around them?” enquired Lenina.
“Phosphorus recovery,” explained Henry. “P
2
5
Lenina, meanwhile, had turned her eyes away. “Fine,” she agreed. “But queer that Alphas and Betas won’t make any more plants grow than those nasty little Gammas and Deltas and Epsilons.”
“All men are equal on the chemical level. Besides, even Epsilons perform important services.”
“Even an Epsilon…” Lenina suddenly remembered an occasion when, as a little girl at school, she had woken up in the middle of the night and become aware, for the first time, of the whispering that had haunted all her sleeps. She saw again the beam of moonlight, the row of small white beds; heard once more the soft, soft voice that said: “Everyone works for everyone else. We can’t do without anyone. Even Epsilons are useful. We couldn’t do without Epsilons. Everyone works for everyone else. We can’t do without anyone…” Lenina remembered her first shock of fear and surprise; her speculations through half a wakeful hour; and then, under the influence of the endless repetition, the gradual soothing of her mind…
“I suppose Epsilons don’t really mind being Epsilons,” she said aloud.
“Of course they don’t. How can they? They don’t know what it’s like being anything else.”
“I’m glad I’m not an Epsilon,” said Lenina, with conviction.
“And if you were an Epsilon,” said Henry, “your conditioning would have made you no less thankful that you weren’t a Beta or an Alpha.” He put his forward propeller into gear and headed the machine towards London.
Landing on the roof of Henry’s forty-story apartment house in Westminster, they went straight down to the dining-hall. There, in a loud and cheerful company, they ate an excellent meal. Soma was served with the coffee. Lenina took two half-gramme tablets and Henry three. At twenty past nine they walked across the street to the newly opened Westminster Abbey Cabaret. It was a night almost without clouds, moonless and starry; but of this Lenina and Henry were fortunately unaware. The electric sky-signs effectively shut off the outer darkness. “CALVIN STOPES AND HIS SIXTEEN SEXOPHONISTS.” From the facade of the new Abbey the giant letters invitingly glared. “LONDON’S FINEST SCENT AND COLOUR ORGAN. ALL THE LATEST SYNTHETIC MUSIC.”
They entered. The air seemed hot and somehow breathless with the scent of sandalwood. On the domed ceiling of the hall, the colour organ had momentarily painted a tropical sunset. The Sixteen Sexophonists were playing an old favourite: “There ain’t no Bottle in all the world like that dear little Bottle of mine.” Four hundred couples were five-stepping round the polished floor. Lenina and Henry were soon the four hundred and first.