At the sound of his voice the Director started into a guilty realization of where he was; shot a glance at Bernard, and averting his eyes, blushed darkly. Then he looked at him again with sudden suspicion and anger. “Don’t imagine,” he said, “that I’d had any relation with the girl. Nothing emotional, nothing long-drawn. It was all perfectly healthy and normal.” He handed Bernard the permit. “I really don’t know why I bored you with this story.” Furious with himself for having given away a discreditable secret, he vented his rage on Bernard. “And I should like to take this opportunity, Mr. Marx,” he went on, “to say that I’m not at all pleased with the reports I receive of your behaviour outside working hours. I have the good name of the Centre to think of. My workers must be above suspicion, particularly those of the highest castes. And so, Mr. Marx, I give you fair warning.” The Director’s voice was the expression of the disapproval of Society itself. “If ever I hear again of any lapse from a proper standard of infantile decorum, I shall ask for your transference to a Sub-Centre-preferably to Iceland. Good morning.” And swivelling round in his chair, he picked up his pen and began to write.
“That’ll teach him,” he said to himself. But he was mistaken. Bernard left the room elated by the feeling of his individual significance and importance. Even the thought of persecution didn’t bother him. He felt strong enough to face even Iceland. Walking along the corridor, he actually whistled.
The journey was quite uneventful. The Blue Pacific Rocket was two and a half minutes early at New Orleans, lost four minutes in a tornado over Texas, but was able to land at Santa Fe less than forty seconds behind schedule time.
“Not so bad,” Lenina conceded.
They slept that night at Santa Fe. The hotel was excellent-incomparably better, for example, than that horrible Aurora Bora Palace in which Lenina had suffered so much the previous summer. Liquid air, television, vibro-vacuum massage, radio, boiling caffeine solution, hot contraceptives, and eight different kinds of scent were laid on in every bedroom. The synthetic music plant was working as they entered the hall and left nothing to be desired. A notice in the lift announced that there were sixty Escalator-Squash-Racket Courts in the hotel, and that Obstacle and Electro-magnetic Golf could both be played in the park.
“But it sounds simply too lovely,” cried Lenina. “I almost wish we could stay here. Sixty Escalator-Squash Courts…”
“There won’t be any in the Reservation,” Bernard warned her. “And no scent, no television, no hot water even. If you feel you can’t stand it, stay here till I come back. You mustn’t come to the Reservation unless you really want to.”
“But I do want to.”
“Very well, then,” said Bernard; and it was almost a threat.
Their permit required the signature of the Warden of the Reservation, at whose office next morning they duly presented themselves. They were admitted almost immediately.
The Warden was a blond Alpha-Minus, short, red, moon-faced, and broad-shouldered, with a loud booming voice. Once started, he went on and on-boomingly.
“… five hundred and sixty thousand square kilometres, divided into four distinct Sub-Reservations, each surrounded by a high-tension wire fence.”
At this moment, and for no apparent reason, Bernard suddenly remembered that he had left the Eau de Cologne tap in his bathroom wide open and running.
“… supplied with current from the Grand Canyon hydro-electric station.”
“Cost me a fortune by the time I get back. Quickly telephone to Helmholtz Watson.”
“… upwards of five thousand kilometres of fencing at sixty thousand volts.”
“You don’t say so,” said Lenina politely, not knowing in the least what the Warden had said, but taking her cue from his dramatic pause. When the Warden started booming, she had swallowed half a gramme of soma, and now could sit serenely, not listening, thinking of nothing at all.
“To touch the fence is instant death,” pronounced the Warden solemnly. “There is no escape from a Savage Reservation.”
“Perhaps,” said Bernard, “we ought to think of going.” The little black needle on the tap was nibbling through time, eating into his money.
“No escape,” repeated the Warden, waving him back into his chair; and as the permit was not yet countersigned, Bernard had no choice but to obey. “Those who are born in the Reservation are destined to die there.”
“Perhaps,” Bernard tried again, “we ought…”
Leaning forward, the Warden tapped the table with his forefinger. “You ask me how many people live in the Reservation. And I reply”-triumphantly-“I reply that we do not know. We can only guess.”
“You don’t say so.”
“My dear young lady, I do say so.”
Bernard was pale and trembling with impatience. But the booming continued.
“… about sixty thousand Indians and half-breeds… absolute savages… our inspectors occasionally visit… otherwise, no communication whatever with the civilized world… still preserve their repulsive habits and customs… marriage, if you know what that is, my dear young lady; families… no conditioning… monstrous superstitions… Christianity and totemism and ancestor worship… extinct languages, such as Zuni and Spanish and Athapascan… pumas, porcupines and other ferocious animals… infectious diseases… priests… venomous lizards…”
They got away at last. Bernard dashed to the telephone. Quick, quick; but it took him nearly three minutes to get on to Helmholtz Watson. At last, thank Ford, he was through and, yes, it was Helmholtz, who promised to go round at once and turn off the tap, yes, at once, but took this opportunity to tell him what the D.H.C. had said, in public, yesterday evening…
“What? He’s looking out for someone to take my place?” Bernard’s voice was agonized. “So it’s actually decided? Did he mention Iceland?”
He hung up the receiver and turned back to Lenina. His face was pale.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“The matter?” He dropped heavily into a chair. “I’m going to be sent to Iceland.”
Often in the past he had wondered what it would be like to be subjected to some great trial, some pain, some persecution. As recently as a week ago, in the Director’s office, he had imagined himself stoically accepting suffering without a word. Now he realized that it was because he had not taken the threats quite seriously, he had not believed that, when it came to the point, the D.H.C. would ever do anything. Now there wasn’t a trace of that imagined stoicism, that theoretical courage.
He raged against himself[26]-what a fool! – against the Director-how unfair not to give him that other chance, that other chance which, he now had no doubt at all, he had always intended to take. And Iceland, Iceland…
Lenina shook her head.
In the end she persuaded him to swallow four tablets of soma. Five minutes later he felt better. A message from the porter announced that a Reservation Guard had come round with a plane and was waiting on the roof of the hotel. They went up at once.
The programme was: a bird’s-eye view of ten or a dozen of the principal pueblos, then a landing for lunch in the valley of Malpais. The rest-house was comfortable there, and up at the pueblo the savages would probably be celebrating their summer festival. It would be the best place to spend the night.
They took their seats in the plane and set off. Ten minutes later they were crossing the frontier that separated civilization from savagery. Uphill and down, across the deserts of salt or sand, through forests, into the violet depth of canyons, over mesas, the fence marched on and on. At its foot, here and there, a mosaic of white bones, a still unrotted carcass marked the place where an animal had come too close to the destroying wires.
“They never learn,” said the green-uniformed pilot. “And they never will learn,” he added and laughed.