“Later on, they faced better organised opposition. There was a party which contended that the disease which had struck down the men had run its course, and the balance could, and should, be restored they were known as Reactionists, and they became an embarrassment.
“Most of the Council of the Doctorate still had clear memories of a system which used every weakness of women, and had been no more than a more civilised culmination of their exploitation through the ages. They remembered how they themselves had only grudgingly been allowed to qualify for their careers. They were now in command: they felt no obligation to surrender their power and authority, and eventually, no doubt, their freedom to a creature whom they had proved to be biologically, and in all other ways, expendable. They refused unanimously to take a step that would lead to corporate suicide, and the Reactionists were proscribed as a subversive criminal organisation.
“That, however, was just a palliative. It quickly became clear that they were attacking a symptom and neglecting the cause. The Council was driven to realise that it had an unbalanced society at its hands a society that was capable of continuity, but was in structure, you might say, little more than the residue of a vanished form. It could not continue in that truncated shape, and as long as it tried to disaffection would increase. Therefore, if power was to become stable, a new form suitable to the circumstances must be found.
“In deciding the shape it should take, the natural tendencies of the little educated and uneducated woman were carefully considered such qualities as her feeling for hierarchical principles and her disposition to respect artificial distinctions. You will no doubt recollect that in your own time any fool of a woman whose husband was ennobled or honoured at once acquired increased respect and envy from other women though she remained the same fool; and also, that any gathering or society of unoccupied women would soon become obsessionally enmeshed in the creation and preservation of social distinctions. Allied to this is the high value they usually place upon a feeling of security. Important, too, is the capacity for devoted self-safrifice, and slavery to conscience within the canons of any local convention. We are naturally very biddable creatures. Most of us are happiest when we are being orthodox, however odd our customs may appear to an outsider; the difficulty in handling us lies chiefly in establishing the required standards of orthodoxy.
“Obviously, the broad outline of a system which was going to stand any chance of success, would have to provide scope for these and other characteristic traits. It must be a scheme where the interplay of forces would preserve equilibrium and respect for authority. The details of such an organisation, however, were less easy to determine.
“An extensive study of social forms and orders was undertaken but for several years every plan put forward was rejected as in some way unsuitable. The architecture of that finally chosen was said, though I do not know with how much truth, to have been inspired by the Bible a book at that time still unprohibited, and the source of much unrest, I am told that it ran something like: “Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways.”
“The Council appears to have felt that this advice, suitably modified, could be expected to lead to a state of affairs which would provide most of the requisite characteristics.
“A four class system was chosen as the basis, and strong differentiations were gradually introduced. These, now that they have become well established, greatly help to ensure stability there is scope for ambition within one’s class but none for passing from one class to another. Thus, we have the Doctorate, the educated ruling-class, fifty per cent of whom are actually of the medical profession. The Mothers, whose title is self-explanatory. The Servitors, who are numerous and, for psychological reasons, small. The Workers, who are physically and muscularly strong, to do the heavier work. All the three lower classes respect the authority of the Doctorate. Both the employed classes revere the Mothers. The Servitors consider themselves more favoured in their tasks than the Workers; and the Workers tend to regard the puniness of the Servitors with a semi-affectionate contempt.
“So you see a balance has been struck, and though it works somewhat crudely as yet, no doubt it will improve. It seems likely, for instance, that it would be advantageous to introduce subdivisions into the Servitor class before long, and the police are thought by some to be put at a disadvantage by having no more than a little education to distinguish them from the ordinary Worker…”
She went on explaining with increasing detail while the enormity of the whole process gradually grew upon me.
“Ants!” I broke in suddenly. “The ant-nest! You’ve taken that for your model?”
She looked surprised, either at my tone, or the fact that what she was saying had taken so long to register.
“And why not?” she asked. “Surely it is one of the most enduring social patterns that nature has evolved though of course some adaptation”
“You’re—are you telling me that only the Mothers have children?” I demanded.
“Oh, members of the Doctorate do, too, when they wish,” she assured me.
“But, but...”
“The Council decides the ratios,” she went on to explain. “The doctors at the clinic examine the babies and allocate them suitably to the different classes. After that, of course, it is just a matter of seeing to their specialised feeding, glandular control, and proper training.”
“But,” I objected wildly. “What’s it for? Where’s the sense in it? What’s the good of being alive, like that?”
“Well, what is the sense in being alive? You tell me,” she suggested.
“But we’re meant to love and be loved, to have babies we love by people we love.”
“There’s your conditioning again; glorifying and romanticising primitive animalism. Surely you consider that we are superior to the animals?”
“Of course I do, but...”
“Love, you say, but what can you know of the love there can be between mother and daughter when there are no men to introduce jealousy? Do you know of any purer sentiment than the love of a girl for her little sisters?”
“But you don’t understand,” I protested again. “How should you understand a love that colours the whole world? How it centres in your heart and reaches out from there to pervade your whole being, how it can affect everything you are, everything you touch, everything you hear… It can hurt dreadfully, I know, oh I know, but it can run like sunlight in your veins… It can make you a garden out of a slum; brocade out of rags; music out of a speaking voice. It can show you a whole universe in someone else’s eyes. Oh, you don’t understand… you don’t know… you can’t… Oh, Donald, darling, how can I show her what she’s never even guessed at… There was an uncertain pause, but presently she said: “Naturally, in your form of society it was necessary for you to be given such a conditioned reaction, but you can scarcely expect us to surrender our freedom, to connive at our own resubjection, by calling our oppressors into existence again.”
“Oh, you won’t understand. It was only the more stupid men and women who were continually at war with one another. Lots of us were complementary. We were pairs who formed units.”
She smiled. “My dear, either you are surprisingly ill-informed on your own period, or else the stupidity you speak of was astonishingly dominant. Neither as myself, nor as a historian, can I consider that we should be justified in resurrecting such a state of affairs. A primitive stage of our development has now given way to a civilised era. Woman, who is the vessel of life, had the misfortune to find man necessary for a time, but now she does no longer. Are you suggesting that such a useless and dangerous encumbrance ought to be preserved, out of sheer sentimentality? I will admit that we have lost some minor conveniences you will have noticed, I expect, that we are less inventive mechanically, and tend to copy the patterns we have inherited; but that troubles us very little; our interests lie not in the inorganic, but in the organic and the sentient. Perhaps men could show us how to travel twice as fast, or how to fly to the moon, or how to kill more people more quickly; but it does not seem to us that such kinds of knowledge would be good payment for re-enslaving ourselves. No, our kind of world suits us better all of us except a few Reactionists. You have seen our Servitors. They are a little timid in manner, perhaps, but are they oppressed, or sad? Don’t they chatter among themselves as brightly and perkily as sparrows? And the Workers, those you called the Amazons, don’t they look strong, healthy, and cheerful?”