have to join the volunteer geldings if I even want to keep my job.’
At that moment Beatrice-Joanna had a sharp revisitation of a sensation that, just for a blinding second, had buffeted her cortex when lying under Derek on that crumpled fever-bed. A sort of eucharistic moment of high-pitched trumpets and a crack of light like that (so it is said) seen at the instant of severing the optic nerve. And a tiny voice, peculiarly penetrating, squealing, ‘Yes yes yes.’ If everybody was talking about being careful, perhaps she’d better be careful, too. Not all that careful, of course. Only careful enough for Tristram not to know. Contraceptive devices had been known to fail. She said: ‘I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t mean that.’ She put her arms round his neck. ‘Now, if you like.’ If only it could be done under an anaesthetic. Still, it wouldn’t last long.
Tristram kissed her hungrily. ‘ I’ll take the tablets,’ he said, ‘not you.’ Ever since the birth of Roger – on the admittedly and blessedly few occasions of his seeking his conjugal rights – he had always insisted on taking the precautions himself. For he had not really wanted Roger. ‘I’ll take three,’ he said. ‘Just to be on the safe side.’ The tiny voice within had a miniature chuckle at that.
Thirteen
B EATRICE -J OANNA and Tristram, preoccupied in their several ways, did not see and hear the Prime Minister’s announcement on television. But in millions of other homes – generally on the bedroom ceiling, there being insufficient space elsewhere – the stereoscopic image of the pouched, bulbous, classical scholar’s face of the Right Hon. Robert Starling glowed and scolded like a fretful lamp. It spoke of the desperate dangers that England, that the English-Speaking Union, that the great globe itself would soon be running into unless certain strong repressive measures were, albeit regretfully, taken. This was war. War against irresponsibility, against those elements that were sabotaging – and such sabotage was clearly intolerable – the engines of state, against the wholesale flouting of reasonable and liberal laws, especially that law which, for the community’s good, sought to limit the growth of population. All over the planet, said the luminous face with gravity, the leaders of state would be speaking–tonight or tomorrow – in similar urgent terms to their various peoples; the whole world was declaring war on itself. The severest punishments for continued irresponsibility (hurting the punishers more than the punished, it was implied); planetary survival dependent on the balance of population and a scientifically calculated minimal food supply; tighten belts; win through; evil things they would be fighting; pull together; long live the King.
Beatrice-Joanna and Tristram also missed some excitingstereoscopic film-shots of the summary settling of the strike at the National Synthelac Works
– the police, nicknamed greyboys, using truncheons and carbines, laughing the while; a splash of chromatic brains on the camera lens.
They also missed a later announcement about the formation of a corps called the Population Police, its proposed Metropolitan Commissioner well-known to them both – brother, betrayer, lover.
Part Two
One
A N eight-hour shift system operated in all the State Utilities. But the schools and colleges split the day (every day, vacations being staggered) into four shifts of six hours each. Nearly two months after the opening of the Interphase, Tristram Foxe sat at midnight breakfast (shift starting at one) with a full summer moon slanting in. He was trying to eat a sort of paper cereal moistened with synthelac, and – though hungry at all hours these days, the rations having been cut considerably – he found it very difficult to spoon down the wet fibrous horror: it was somehow like having to eat one’s words. As he munched an endless mouthful, the synthetic voice of the Daily Newsdisc (23.00 edition)
At that moment Beatrice-Joanna had a sharp revisitation of a sensation that, just for a blinding second, had buffeted her cortex when lying under Derek on that crumpled fever-bed. A sort of eucharistic moment of high-pitched trumpets and a crack of light like that (so it is said) seen at the instant of severing the optic nerve. And a tiny voice, peculiarly penetrating, squealing, ‘Yes yes yes.’ If everybody was talking about being careful, perhaps she’d better be careful, too. Not all that careful, of course. Only careful enough for Tristram not to know. Contraceptive devices had been known to fail. She said: ‘I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t mean that.’ She put her arms round his neck. ‘Now, if you like.’ If only it could be done under an anaesthetic. Still, it wouldn’t last long.
Tristram kissed her hungrily. ‘ I’ll take the tablets,’ he said, ‘not you.’ Ever since the birth of Roger – on the admittedly and blessedly few occasions of his seeking his conjugal rights – he had always insisted on taking the precautions himself. For he had not really wanted Roger. ‘I’ll take three,’ he said. ‘Just to be on the safe side.’ The tiny voice within had a miniature chuckle at that.
Thirteen
B EATRICE -J OANNA and Tristram, preoccupied in their several ways, did not see and hear the Prime Minister’s announcement on television. But in millions of other homes – generally on the bedroom ceiling, there being insufficient space elsewhere – the stereoscopic image of the pouched, bulbous, classical scholar’s face of the Right Hon. Robert Starling glowed and scolded like a fretful lamp. It spoke of the desperate dangers that England, that the English-Speaking Union, that the great globe itself would soon be running into unless certain strong repressive measures were, albeit regretfully, taken. This was war. War against irresponsibility, against those elements that were sabotaging – and such sabotage was clearly intolerable – the engines of state, against the wholesale flouting of reasonable and liberal laws, especially that law which, for the community’s good, sought to limit the growth of population. All over the planet, said the luminous face with gravity, the leaders of state would be speaking–tonight or tomorrow – in similar urgent terms to their various peoples; the whole world was declaring war on itself. The severest punishments for continued irresponsibility (hurting the punishers more than the punished, it was implied); planetary survival dependent on the balance of population and a scientifically calculated minimal food supply; tighten belts; win through; evil things they would be fighting; pull together; long live the King.
Beatrice-Joanna and Tristram also missed some excitingstereoscopic film-shots of the summary settling of the strike at the National Synthelac Works
– the police, nicknamed greyboys, using truncheons and carbines, laughing the while; a splash of chromatic brains on the camera lens.
They also missed a later announcement about the formation of a corps called the Population Police, its proposed Metropolitan Commissioner well-known to them both – brother, betrayer, lover.
Part Two
One
A N eight-hour shift system operated in all the State Utilities. But the schools and colleges split the day (every day, vacations being staggered) into four shifts of six hours each. Nearly two months after the opening of the Interphase, Tristram Foxe sat at midnight breakfast (shift starting at one) with a full summer moon slanting in. He was trying to eat a sort of paper cereal moistened with synthelac, and – though hungry at all hours these days, the rations having been cut considerably – he found it very difficult to spoon down the wet fibrous horror: it was somehow like having to eat one’s words. As he munched an endless mouthful, the synthetic voice of the Daily Newsdisc (23.00 edition)
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