О дивный новый мир / Brave New World. 4 уровень

” The clap on the shoulder made him start, look up. It was that brute Henry Foster. “What you need is a gramme of soma.”

“All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.”

“Ford, I should like to kill him!” But all he did was to say, “No, thank you,” and fend off the tube of tablets.

“Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology.”

“Take it,” insisted Henry Foster, “take it.”

“Stability was practically assured.

“One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments,” said the Assistant Predestinator.

“It only remained to conquer old age.”

“Damn you, damn you!” shouted Bernard Marx.

“Hoity-toity.”

“Gonadal hormones, transfusion of young blood, magnesium salts…”

“And do remember that a gramme is better than a damn.” They went out, laughing.

“All the physiological stigmata of old age have been abolished.

“Don’t forget to ask him about that Malthusian belt,” said Fanny.

“Along with them all the old man’s mental peculiarities. Characters remain constant throughout a whole lifetime.”

“… two rounds of Obstacle Golf to get through before dark. I must fly.”

“Work, play-at sixty our powers and tastes are what they were at seventeen.”

“Idiots, swine!” Bernard Marx was saying to himself, as he walked down the corridor to the lift.

“Now-such is progress-the old men work, the old men copulate-and there is always soma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon. Returning whence they find themselves on the other side of the crevice, safe on the solid ground of daily labour and distraction, scampering from feely to feely, from girl to pneumatic girl, from Electromagnetic Golf course to…”

Slowly, majestically, with a faint humming of machinery, the Conveyors moved forward, thirty-three centimeters an hour.

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.