He shut the book and handed it back, aware as he did so that no more observing was going on in his immediate neighbourhood. Whatever was next came out of one of the folders and was held up so that the group near the machine could see it. A moment later the professor was showing him a magazine photograph of one of the business-head-Carter-face sisterhood displaying her giraffe's ear.
"I don't like that," he said.
It was out of sight in an instant. "What don't you like about it?"
"It's ugly."
"You find the model ugly?"
"No, not at all. I mean her .... parts."
"They repel you?"
"Yes. What I see there repels me."
She hesitated and glanced momentarily to his left. That must be Rosenberg standing there, perhaps among others, and were those questions his, put on his behalf instead of directly out of what, etiquette? Never mind: with no more said the second exhibit was exhibited after the same fashion as the first. It was much more up Jake's street, a nice-looking girl who also looked nice, possible too in the sense that you met girls like her, and arranged or shown in what might be called 'neo-Zoom' style-advantage taken of some of the freedoms of the last few years without the surrender of decency.
"Better?"
"Fine."
"Concentrate on it." Trefusis leaned towards him, lowered her voice and said kindly, "And remember this: by now nobody's thinking of you as an individual or a person. You're just an object."
"Thank you."
He concentrated and quite soon it started being rather a success, nothing to cause any wild surmising at the instrument panel, but still. This part went on for some minutes. Then he was told to forget about that and given the book open at a different page. He read aloud,
"If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."
The third offering showed two girls being familiar with each other, no more than that, on a piece of very dean and neat garden furniture. That went down reasonably well too. Before his third bout of reading Jake said,
"May I ask a question?"
"Certainly."
"I'd just like to make it clear"—he resisted the temptation to look over his shoulder—"that what, well, appealed to me there wasn't what they were getting up to really, it was just the fair one, the look of her face and her breasts."
"I'm sorry, what's your question?"
"Oh. Oh well I haven't really got one, I just wanted to say that."
There was no reply apart from an undecided nod of the head, which he felt was quite as much as his non-question had deserved. Why had he bothered? Perhaps the same problem was exercising others: he heard whispers from the far side of the apparatus and a murmur behind him. But in a short time he was reading aloud,
"We take care that, when there is a change, it shall be for change's sake, and not from any idea of beauty or convenience; for the same idea of beauty or convenience would not strike all the world at the same moment, and be simultaneously thrown aside by all at another moment. But we are progressive as well as changeable: we continually make new inventions in mechanical things, and keep them until they are again superseded by better; we are eager for improvement in politics, in education, even in morals, though in this last our idea of improvement chiefly consists in persuading or forcing other people to be as good as ourselves. It is not progress that we object to; on the contrary, we flatter ourselves that we are the most progressive people who ever lived. It is individuality that we war against: we should think we had done wonders if we had made ourselves all alike; forgetting that the unlikeness of one person to another is generally the first thing which draws the attention of either to the imperfection of his own type, and the superiority of another, or the possibility, by combining the advantages of both, of producing something better than either. We have a warning example in China."
The next thing was that the lovely Rowena was showing him a photograph of a girl doing what he didn't want to see any girl doing ever except to him—school of 'Kensington,' in fact.
"I don't like that," he said. "And what I don't like about it isn't the activity itself, far from it, but being shown it going on between other people. It's not that I disapprove. Well yes actually come to think of it I do disapprove rather. Of that photograph being published I mean."
"Fair enough," she said, but spent the next minute or so looking through her folders, presumably in search of material that wouldn't offend his susceptibilities. At last she handed him a sheaf of seven or eight pictures and asked him to pick the two he liked best. That was easy: he chose one girl who, by the look of her, could have had no idea in the world why those men had asked her to lean against a tree wearing just a straw hat, and one with a faintly intellectual expression who reminded him of a 'Zoom' favourite of his. The procedure had an end-of-session feel to it and some nuance of the professorial manner, he thought, suggested the same thing. So he was surprised and a little fed up to be told, after both girls had been disposed of, that he could take a short rest.
He put on a smile. "Before what?"
"Before the second part of the programme. Do smoke if you want to, Mr Richardson."
"No thanks, I've given it up." The same thing only live? "What happens in the second part?"
"We stimulate you artificially."
"As opposed to—"
"With an artificial stimulator," explained the professor.
"Oh I see."
She went across and seemed to confer with the group by the machine. Although they were so near he couldn't hear a word of what they were saying. Rosenberg came strolling out of the shadows, followed by the Ghanaian.
"Well now, and how's it going?"
"I thought you were supposed to tell me that."
"I meant your personal reaction in mental and emotional terms."
"How I feel, you mean. Well, I suppose one can get used to anything. Look here, what's this stimulator?"
"Ah, there's a cunning little gadget if you like."
"No doubt, but what is it?"
"Let's see, it's metal, and it's powered by electricity, and it .... revolves rapidly."