— Oh, he’s unemployed? I see. It really is an insoluble problem, isn’t it? And I assure you that it isn’t prejudice, Denton’s gone into it very carefully, the figures show that prejudice is definitely not part of the overall picture, though of course it may occur in individual cases here and there. You see, you can’t get away from the fact that the Colourless are more unreliable, oh, not that they mean to be of course — except in individual cases, throw-backs, so to speak, who can’t adapt to new environments— but simply because they’re weaker, they go sick more often, and they’re more susceptible to the — well, of course I don’t know why I’m talking in the third person like this, I’m as Colourless as you are, but somehow I’ve been caught up, as it were, in a manner of speaking, but I’m with you all the way, naturally. But I thought you told me he had a job up at Denise Mgulu’s? Temporary, oh I see. It is difficult isn’t it? I should have thought that with the BAUDA there’d be plenty of extra work. Oh, it stands for Ball in Aid of Under Developed Areas. Lilly, you should know that, it’s an annual event. Oh, I see, well maybe she’s right, it does make it sound a bit grim, I suppose. But I always think it’s best to face facts. You know Denise strikes me as awfully out of touch sometimes. All this lady of the manor business. Of course I approve of her food-growing experiments, I think she and Severin have done wonders round here, but you know Severin is always up at that farm of theirs, he’s hardly ever seen in the House of Reps and for heaven’s sake one must be seen. I mean one is elected for something I suppose and what is it if it isn’t representation? And they wouldn’t’ve been able even to start the farm if it hadn’t been for the Government reclaiming schemes. Denton had a big hand in that you know. Still, I always support Severin when Denton runs him down, and I positively persuaded him that this year we must come down and support their ball. So here we are, and of course I just had to look you up. I do think you have a charming kitchen. And this meal was delicious, Lilly, but then you always were a marvellous cook, even at school you always came out top in domestic science, didn’t you. D’you remember when Miss er, what was her name, Miss Mgoa, that’s it, she asked me, how will you find and feed a husband, Joan, if you don’t learn how to cook, and I said I shall have servants, it’s strange, isn’t it, how I knew even then, and she said coldly, I doubt that very much. She did, you know, I remember it as if it were today. Oh yes, I’ve had my share of prejudice, and of course it was much worse in those days as you know, the first reaction being a complex of relief and revenge, and then the fear of the malady, but I believe all these things like health and luck and success are a matter of attitude, they’re a state of mind. They’re not things outside us that come to us. We project them. Now you never did project that, Lilly, and I imagine your husband projects even less. I mean fancy getting a foothold of employment in that big house, just at the time of the big ball as she calls it, and then losing it.
— Oh, I see. I didn’t know. What did they say? It isn’t …? No. Not that they’d tell you of course, until it was too obvious. Psychoscopy? But that’s marvellous. What did I tell you, I knew he didn’t project, one only has to look at him. How clever of Denise. And how very kind. He’s tremendously lucky, you know, very few Colourless get it. Oh, in theory of course, but in practice they’re given up as hopeless, and there is a tremendous demand and a shortage of qualified psychoscopists, not to mention the machines and operators. It’s highly skilled and takes years to train them. It breaks one’s heart when the unemployment is so acute, but there it is, it’s always the same old story. There are jobs for the specialists or rather for some specialists like astro-computors and isofertilisers and demographers and geoprognologists regardless of race or creed, but not for the unskilled or even the semi-skilled and the unskilled literally cannot even be trained for such jobs, their standard of brain-function is too low, well, it’s a chemical fact, and the semi-skilled and specialists in other things are too set in their ways to adapt. Adaptation, that’s the thing, you see. But what with one thing and another, and the priority on cosmoindustry, bathyagriculture, psychostellar communications and all that, and of course, medicine, I mean all other medical ways and means of dealing with the malady, psychoscopy’s somehow become a luxury. So you see he’s very lucky. I hope it will have done some good. I’m sorry to talk about you in the third person like that, my dear, it’s very rude I know, but then, you don’t say much, and besides, it’s a sort of habit Lilly and I got into, a sort of game we used to play at school, talking about people as if they weren’t there. Very unnerving. That was the idea, of course, to show we weren’t put out by the others’ treatment. Oh, they were very nice to us, but there was a sort of undercurrent, if you know what I mean, and it was much worse then than now, which was understandable really. I mean, what with history and the displacement and all that, and of course the malady, I mean things have improved considerably, thanks largely to their extraordinary energy and efficiency and generosity. Because they really are superbly generous, you know, very warm-hearted people, that’s one thing one can say, they are warm-hearted, in fact I’ll tell you one thing, now that I feel so much one of them, you remember how at school they used to call us cold fish, cold-blooded, cold-hearted? Well they still do, you know, that’s entirely between you and me, and you of course, but there’s a tradition, going way back, no doubt into tribal history, that this is the fundamental difference between the Melanian races and the Colourless. Even I feel it sometimes, this basic attitude I mean. That’s why I have psychoscopy every month. It’s absolutely invaluable to me. I mean, I have to meet so many people all the time, I’d be lost without it.
— Only one. Oh, well, it’s better than nothing, you know, and as I say you were lucky to get it. And presumably they gave you your biogram. They didn’t? But why on earth didn’t you ask for it? Yes I’d love some coffee thank you Lilly. Oh, the biogram is indispensable. It’s the extracted absolute of your unconscious patterns throughout your life, well, the average, if you like, telescoped in time into one line that shows your harmonious rhythm, your up and down tendencies, you know, when the sub is most or least at one with the super. Then all you have to do is to choose your safe periods for social intercourse. It’s possible of course to work it out for yourself, very roughly I mean, and only for the time under survey, and it’s even possible to work out other people’s biograms, the people you constantly deal with I mean, and so choose their safe periods to coincide with yours. But the observation does take time and tends to be subjective and therefore unscientific. Still, it all comes to the same thing in the end, a technique for living. You should try it, it really does work. The psychoscope is better of course, it telescopes a whole life-time after all, and quite, quite objectively. As a matter of fact I’ll let you into a secret. Denton and I know our psychoscopist so well by now, he has given us the biograms of most people we come into constant contact with, and I must say it has made the world of difference. I wonder whether the psychoscopist here is anyone I know, he might give me the Mgulus’ biograms. After all we are staying at the house several days. Thanks awfully, that does smell good. Denton has things to discuss with Severin. What was your chap’s name? Dr. Lukulwe. Hmm. No, I don’t know him.
— Oh but they have. Well of course. All politicians are psychoscoped regularly. And their wives. Well, they have to be. I mean the situation would be too dangerous otherwise. Look what happened last time. I’d go so far as to say it’s thanks to psychoscopy that everything’s been running as smoothly as it has, quite under control in fact, as far as that is concerned. Because you know, it’s quite incredible but people do forget, oh yes, new generations, despite history and everything. I suppose that’s the trouble, really, we started with too many that had the highest possible informative content, or, which is the same thing, the lowest possible probability, then we seized every opportunity to test them with the utmost severity, eliminating and eliminating, well, there you are, those that survive enjoy the prestige that traditionally attaches to survivors.