Brave New World

Henry slowed down the helicopter screws, and they hung for a minute or two poisedabove the fading landscape. The forest of Burnham Beeches stretched like a greatpool of darkness towards the bright shore of the western sky. Crimson at thehorizon, the last of the sunset faded, through orange, upwards into yellow and apale watery green. Northwards, beyond and above the trees, the Internal andExternal Secretions factory glared with a fierce electric brilliance from every window ofits twenty stories. Beneath them lay the buildings of the Golf Club–the huge LowerCaste barracks and, on the other side of a dividing wall, the smaller housesreserved for Alpha and Beta members. The approaches to the monorail station wereblack with the ant-like pullulation of lower-caste activity. From under the glass vaulta lighted train shot out into the open. Following its southeasterly course across thedark plain their eyes were drawn to the majestic buildings of the SloughCrematorium. For the safety of night-flying planes, its four tall chimneys wereflood-lighted and tipped with crimson danger signals. It was a landmark."Why do the smoke-stacks have those things like balconies around them?"enquired Lenina."Phosphorus recovery," explained Henry telegraphically. "On their way up thechimney the gases go through four separate treatments. P 2 O 5 used to go right outof circulation every time they cremated some one. Now they recover overninety-eight per cent of it. More than a kilo and a half per adult corpse. Whichmakes the best part of four hundred tons of phosphorus every year from Englandalone." Henry spoke with a happy pride, rejoicing whole-heartedly in theachievement, as though it had been his own. "Fine to think we can go on beingsocially useful even after we're dead. Making plants grow."Lenina, meanwhile, had turned her eyes away and was looking perpendicularlydownwards at the monorail station. "Fine," she agreed. "But queer that Alphas andBetas won't make any more plants grow than those nasty little Gammas and Deltasand Epsilons down there.""All men are physico-chemically equal," said Henry sententiously. "Besides, evenEpsilons perform indispensable services.""Even an Epsilon …" Lenina suddenly remembered an occasion when, as a little girlat school, she had woken up in the middle of the night and become aware, for thefirst time, of the whispering that had haunted all her sleeps. She saw again thebeam of moonlight, the row of small white beds; heard once more the soft, softvoice that said (the words were there, unforgotten, unforgettable after so manynight-long repetitions): "Every one works for every one else. We can't do withoutany one. Even Epsilons are useful. We couldn't do without Epsilons. Every one worksfor every one else. We can't do without any one …" Lenina remembered her firstshock of fear and surprise; her speculations through half a wakeful hour; and then,under the influence of those endless repetitions, the gradual soothing of her mind,the soothing, the smoothing, the stealthy creeping of sleep. …"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 anythingelse. We'd mind, of course. But then we've been differently conditioned. Besides, westart with a different heredity.""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 youno less thankful that you weren't a Beta or an Alpha." He put his forward propellerinto gear and headed the machine towards London. Behind them, in the west, thecrimson and orange were almost faded; a dark bank of cloud had crept into thezenith. As they flew over the crematorium, the plane shot upwards on the column ofhot air rising from the chimneys, only to fall as suddenly when it passed into thedescending chill beyond."What a marvellous switchback!" Lenina laughed delightedly.