О дивный новый мир / Brave New World

Chapter Four

1

The lift was crowded with men from the Alpha Changing Rooms, and Lenina was greeted by many friendly nods and smiles. She was a popular girl and, at one time or another, had spent a night with almost all of them.

In the corner, she saw the small thin body and the melancholy face of Bernard Marx.

“Bernard!” she stepped up to him. “I was looking for you. I wanted to talk to you about our New Mexico plan.” Out of the corner of her eye she could see Benito Hoover gaping with astonishment.

It annoyed her. “I’d love to come with you for a week in July,” she went on. “That is, if you still want to have me.”

Bernard’s pale face flushed.

“Shouldn’t we talk about it somewhere else?” he stammered. “With all these people about…”

Lenina laughed. “How funny you are! You’ll give me at least a week’s warning, won’t you?”

Before Bernard could answer, the lift came to a standstill. They walked out to the roof.

It was warm and bright. The summer afternoon was drowsy with the hum of passing helicopters. Bernard Marx drew a deep breath. He looked up into the sky and round the blue horizon and finally down into Lenina’s face.

She smiled at him. “I must fly, Bernard. Henry gets cross if I keep him waiting. Let me know in good time about the date.” And waving her hand she ran away towards the hangars.

Henry Foster was already seated in the cockpit of his machine, waiting, when Lenina arrived.

“Four minutes late,” was all his comment, as she climbed in beside him. He started the engines. The machine shot vertically into the air. The speedometer showed that they were rising at the best part of two kilometres a minute. London diminished beneath them. The huge table-topped buildings [22 - table-topped buildings – здания с плоскими крышами]were no more, in a few seconds, than a bed of geometrical mushrooms sprouting from the green of park and garden.

In the midst of them, a taller fungus, the Charing-T Tower, lifted towards the sky.

Lenina looked down through the window in the floor between her feet. They were flying over the six kilometre zone of park-land that separated Central London from its first ring of suburbs. Centrifugal Bumble-puppy towers gleamed between the trees. Below, a Delta gymnastic display and community sing was in progress.