О дивный новый мир / Brave New World

Voices called from the trumpet mouths.

“Main Day-shift off duty. Second Day-shift take over. Main Day-shift off…”

In the lift, on their way up to the changing rooms, Henry Foster and the Assistant Director of Predestination rather pointedly [16 - rather pointedly – специально, показательно]turned their backs on Bernard Marx from the Psychology Bureau.

Despite the change between shifts, machinery was still humming in the Embryo Store. The conveyors crept forward with their load of future men and women no matter what.

Lenina Crowne walked briskly towards the door.

His fordship Mustapha Mond! The eyes of the students almost popped out of their heads. Mustapha Mond! The Resident Controller for Western Europe! One of the Ten World Controllers. One of the Ten … and he was going to stay, to stay, yes, and actually talk to them … straight from the horse’s mouth. Straight from the mouth of Ford himself.

“You all remember,” said the Controller, in his strong deep voice, “you all remember, I suppose, that beautiful saying of Our Ford’s: History is bunk.

History,” he repeated slowly, “is bunk.”

He waved his hand; and it was as though, with an invisible feather whisk, he had brushed away a little dust, and the dust was Harappa, was Ur of the Chaldees; some spider-webs, and they were Thebes and Babylon and Cnossos and Mycenae. Whisk. Whisk—and where was Odysseus, where was Job, where was Jesus? Whisk—and those specks of antique dirt called Athens and Rome, Jerusalem and the Middle Kingdom—all were gone.

Whisk—the place where Italy had been was empty. Whisk, the cathedrals; whisk, whisk, King Lear and the Thoughts of Pascal. Whisk, Passion; whisk, Requiem; whisk, Symphony; whisk…

“Going to the Feelies this evening, Henry?” enquired the Assistant Predestinator. “I hear the new one at the Alhambra is great. There’s a love scene on a bearskin rug. Every hair of the bear reproduced.

The most amazing tactual effects.”

“That’s why you’re taught no history,” the Controller was saying. “But now the time has come…”

The D.H.C. looked at him nervously.

Mustapha Mond intercepted his anxious glance and the corners of his red lips twitched ironically.

“It’s all right, Director,” he said in a tone of faint derision, “I won’t corrupt them.”

The D.H.C. was overwhelmed with confusion.