by C. S. Lewis
‘So it is,’ said Busby sturdily. ‘I don’t see why one should think that unimportant.’
‘And what do you think about it, Studdock?’ said Feverstone.
‘I think,’ said Mark, ‘that James touched on the most important point when he said that it would have its own legal staff and its own police. I don’t give a fig for Pragmatometers and sanitation de luxe. The real thing is that this time we’re going to get science applied to social problems and backed by the whole force of the state, just as war has been backed by the whole force of the state in the past. One hopes, of course, that it’ll find out more than the old free-lance science did; but what’s certain is that it can do more.’
‘Damn,’ said Curry, looking at his watch. ‘I’ll have to go and talk to NO now. If you people would like any brandy when you’ve finished your wine, it’s in that cupboard. You’ll find balloon glasses on the shelf above. I’ll be back as soon as I can. You’re not going, James, are you?’
‘Yes,’ said the Bursar. ‘I’m going to bed early. Don’t let me break up the party for you two. I’ve been on my legs nearly all day, you know. A man’s a fool to hold any office in this College. Continual anxiety. Crushing responsibility. And then you get people suggesting that all the little research-beetles who never poke their noses outside their libraries and laboratories are the real workers! I’d like to see Glossop or any of that lot face the sort of day’s work I’ve had today. Curry, my lad, you’d have had an easier life if you’d stuck to economics.’
‘I’ve told you before,’ began Curry, but the Bursar, now risen, was bending over Lord Feverstone and telling him a funny story.
As soon as the two men had got out of the room, Lord Feverstone looked steadily at Mark for some seconds with an enigmatic expression. Then he chuckled. Then the chuckle developed into a laugh. He threw his lean, muscular body well back into his chair and laughed louder and louder. He was very infectious in his laughter and Mark found himself laughing too–quite sincerely and even helplessly, like a child. ‘Pragmatometers–palatial lavatories–practical idealism,’ gasped Feverstone. It was a moment of extraordinary liberation for Mark. All sorts of things about Curry and Busby which he had not previously noticed, or else, noticing, had slurred over in his reverence for the Progressive Element, came back to his mind. He wondered how he could have been so blind to the funny side of them.
‘It really is rather devastating,’ said Feverstone when he had partially recovered, ‘that the people one has to use for getting things done should talk such drivel the moment you ask them about the things themselves.’
‘And yet they are, in a sense, the brains of Bracton,’ said Mark.
‘Good Lord no! Glossop and Bill the Blizzard, and even old Jewel, have ten times their intelligence.’
‘I didn’t know you took that view.’
‘I think Glossop, etc., are quite mistaken. I think their idea of culture and knowledge and what not is unrealistic. I don’t think it fits the world we’re living in. It’s a mere fantasy. But it is quite a clear idea and they follow it out consistently. They know what they want. But our two poor friends, though they can be persuaded to take the right train, or even to drive it, haven’t a ghost of a notion where it’s going to, or why. They’ll sweat blood to bring the NICE to Edgestow: that’s why they’re indispensable. But what the point of the NICE is, what the point of anything is–ask them another. Pragmatometry! Fifteen sub-directors!’
‘Well, perhaps I’m in the same boat myself.’
‘Not at all. You saw the point at once. I knew you would. I’ve read everything you’ve written since you were in for your fellowship. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’
Mark was silent. The giddy sensation of being suddenly whirled up from one plane of secrecy to another, coupled with the growing effect of Curry’s excellent port, prevented him from speaking.
‘I want you to come into the Institute,’ said Feverstone.
‘You mean–to leave Bracton?’
‘That makes no odds. Anyway, I don’t suppose there’s anything you want here. We’d make Curry Warden when NO retires and–’
‘They were talking of making you Warden.’
‘God!’ said Feverstone and stared. Mark realised that from Feverstone’s point of view this was like the suggestion that he should become Headmaster of a small idiots’ school, and thanked his stars that his own remark had not been uttered in a tone that made it obviously serious. Then they both laughed again.
‘You,’ said Feverstone, ‘would be absolutely wasted as Warden. That’s the job for Curry. He’ll do it very well. You want a man who loves business and wire-pulling for their own sake and doesn’t really ask what it’s all about. If he did, he’d start bringing in his own–well, I suppose he’d call them “ideas”. As it is, we’ve only got to tell him that he thinks so-and-so is a man the College wants, and he will think it. And then he’ll never rest till so-and-so gets a fellowship. That’s what we want the College for: a drag net, a recruiting office.’
‘A recruiting office for the NICE, you mean?’
‘Yes, in the first instance. But it’s only part of the general show.’
‘I’m not sure that I know what you mean.’
‘You soon will. The Home Side, and all that, you know! It sounds rather in Busby’s style to say that Humanity is at the cross-roads. But it is the main question at the moment: which side one’s on–obscurantism or Order. It does really look as if we now had the power to dig ourselves in as a species for a pretty staggering period, to take control of our own destiny. If Science is really given a free hand it can now take over the human race and re-condition it: make man a really efficient animal. If it doesn’t–well, we’re done.’
‘Go on.’
‘There are three main problems. First, the interplanetary problem–’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘Well, that doesn’t really matter. We can’t do anything about that at present. The only man who could help was Weston.’
‘He was killed in a blitz, wasn’t he?’
‘He was murdered.’
‘Murdered?’
‘I’m pretty sure of it, and I’ve a shrewd idea who the murderer was.’
‘Good God! Can nothing be done?’
‘There’s no evidence. The murderer is a respectable Cambridge don with weak eyes, a game leg, and a fair beard. He’s dined in this College.’
‘What was Weston murdered for?’
‘For being on our side. The murderer is one of the enemy.’
‘You don’t mean to say he murdered him for that?’
‘Yes,’ said Feverstone, bringing his hand down smartly on the table. ‘That’s just the point. You’ll hear people like Curry or James burbling away about the “war” against reaction. It never enters their heads that it might be a real war with real casualties. They think the violent resistance of the other side ended with the persecution of Galileo and all that. But don’t believe it. It is just seriously beginning. They know now that we have at last got real powers: that the question of what humanity is to be is going to be decided in the next sixty years. They’re going to fight every inch. They’ll stop at nothing.’
‘They can’t win,’ said Mark.
‘We’ll hope not,’ said Lord Feverstone. ‘I think they can’t. That is why it is of such immense importance to each of us to choose the right side. If you try to be neutral you become simply a pawn.’
‘Oh, I haven’t any doubt which is my side,’ said Mark. ‘Hang it all–the preservation of the human race–it’s a pretty rock-bottom obligation.’
‘Well, personally,’ said Feverstone, ‘I’m not indulging in any Busbyisms about that. It’s a little fantastic to base one’s actions on a supposed concern for what’s going to happen millions of years hence; and you must remember that the other side would claim to be preserving humanity, too. Both can be explained psycho-analytically if they take that line. The practical point is that you
and I don’t like being pawns, and we do rather like fighting–specially on the winning side.’
‘And what is the first practical step?’
‘Yes, that’s the real question. As I said, the interplanetary problem must be left on one side for the moment. The second problem is our rivals on this planet. I don’t mean only insects and bacteria. There’s far too much life of every kind about, animal and vegetable. We haven’t really cleared the place yet. First we couldn’t; and then we had aesthetic and humanitarian scruples; and we still haven’t short-circuited the question of the balance of nature. All that is to be gone into. The third problem is Man himself.’
‘Go on. This interests me very much.’
‘Man has got to take charge of Man. That means, remember, that some men have got to take charge of the rest–which is another reason for cashing in on it as soon as one can. You and I want to be the people who do the taking charge, not the ones who are taken charge of. Quite.’
‘What sort of thing have you in mind?’
‘Quite simple and obvious things, at first–sterilisation of the unfit, liquidation of backward races (we don’t want any dead weights), selective breeding. Then real education, including pre-natal education. By real education I mean one that has no “take-it-or-leave-it” nonsense. A real education makes the patient what it wants infallibly: whatever he or his parents try to do about it. Of course, it’ll have to be mainly psychological at first. But we’ll get on to biochemical conditioning in the end and direct manipulation of the brain…’
‘But this is stupendous, Feverstone.’
‘It’s the real thing at last. A new type of man: and it’s people like you who’ve got to begin to make him.’
‘That’s my trouble. Don’t think it’s false modesty, but I haven’t yet seen how I can contribute.’
‘No, but we have. You are what we need: a trained sociologist with a radically realistic outlook, not afraid of responsibility. Also, a sociologist who can write.’
‘You don’t mean you want me to write up all this?’
‘No. We want you to write it down–to camouflage it. Only for the present, of course. Once the thing gets going we shan’t have to bother about the great heart of the British public. We’ll make the great heart what we want it to be. But in the meantime, it does make a difference how things are put. For instance, if it were even whispered that the NICE wanted powers to experiment on criminals, you’d have all the old women of both sexes up in arms and yapping about humanity. Call it re-education of the mal-adjusted, and you have them all slobbering with delight that the brutal era of retributive punishment has at last come to an end. Odd thing it is–the word “experiment” is unpopular, but not the word “experimental”. You musn’t experiment on children; but offer the dear little kiddies free education in an experimental school attached to the NICE and it’s all correct!’
‘You don’t mean that this–er–journalistic side would be my main job?’
‘It’s nothing to do with journalism. Your readers in the first instance would be Committees of the House of Commons, not the public. But that would only be a side line. As for the job itself–why, it’s impossible to say how it might develop. Talking to a man like you, I don’t stress the financial side. You’d start at something quite modest: say about fifteen hundred a year.’
‘I wasn’t thinking about that,’ said Mark, flushing with pure excitement.
‘Of course,’ said Feverstone, ‘I ought to warn you, there is the danger. Not yet, perhaps. But when things really begin to hum, it’s quite on the cards they may try to bump you off, like poor old Weston.’
‘I don’t think I was thinking about that either,’ said Mark.
‘Look here,’ said Feverstone. ‘Let me run you across tomorrow to see John Wither. He told me to bring you for the week-end if you were interested. You’ll meet all the important people there and it’ll give you a chance to make up your mind.’
‘How does Wither come into it? I thought Jules was the head of the NICE.’ Jules was a distinguished novelist and scientific populariser whose name always appeared before the public in connection with the new Institute.
‘Jules! Hell’s bells!’ said Feverstone. ‘You don’t imagine that little mascot has anything to say to what really goes on? He’s all right for selling the Institute to the great British public in the Sunday papers and he draws a whacking salary. He’s no use for work. There’s nothing inside his head except some nineteenth-century socialist stuff, and blah about the rights of man. He’s just about got as far as Darwin!’
‘Oh quite,’ said Mark. ‘I was always rather puzzled at his being in the show at all. Do you know, since you’re so kind, I think I’d better accept your offer and go over to Wither’s for the week-end. What time would you be starting?’
‘About quarter to eleven. They tell me you live out Sandawn way. I could call and pick you up.’
‘Thanks very much. Now tell me about Wither.’
‘John Wither,’ began Feverstone, but suddenly broke off. ‘Damn!’ he said. ‘Here comes Curry. Now we shall have to hear everything NO said and how wonderfully the arch-politician has managed him. Don’t run away. I shall need your moral support.’
The last bus had gone long before Mark left College and he walked home up the hill in brilliant moonlight. Something happened to him the moment he had let himself into the flat which was very unusual. He found himself, on the doormat, embracing a frightened, half-sobbing Jane–even a humble Jane–who was saying, ‘Oh Mark, I’ve been so frightened.’
There was a quality in the very muscles of his wife’s body which took him by surprise. A certain indefinable defensiveness had momentarily deserted her. He had known such occasions before, but they were rare. They were already becoming rarer. And they tended, in his experience, to be followed next day by inexplicable quarrels. This puzzled him greatly, but he had never put his bewilderment into words.
It is doubtful whether he could have understood her feelings even if they had been explained to him; and Jane, in any case, could not have explained them. She was in extreme confusion. But the reasons for her unusual behaviour on this particular evening were simple enough. She had got back from the Dimbles at about half-past four, feeling much exhilarated by her walk, and hungry, and quite sure that her experiences on the previous night and at lunch were over and done with. She had had to light up and draw the curtains before she had finished tea, for the days were getting short. While doing so, the thought had come into her mind that her fright at the dream and at the mere mention of a mantle, an old man, an old man buried but not dead, and a language like Spanish, had really been as irrational as a child’s fear of the dark. This had led her to remember moments when she had feared the dark as a child. Perhaps, she allowed herself to remember them too long. At any rate, when she sat down to drink her last cup of tea, the evening had somehow deteriorated. It never recovered. First, she found it rather difficult to keep her mind on her book. Then, when she had acknowledged this difficulty, she found it difficult to fix on any book. Then she realised that she was restless. From being restless, she became nervous. Then followed a long time when she was not frightened, but knew that she would be very frightened indeed if she did not keep herself in hand. Then came a curious reluctance to go into the kitchen to get herself some supper, and a difficulty–indeed, an impossibility–of eating anything when she had got it. And now, there was no disguising the fact that she was frightened. In desperation she rang up the Dimbles. ‘I think I might go and see the person you suggested, after all,’ she said. Mrs Dimble’s voice came back, after a curious little pause, giving her the address. Ironwood was the name–Miss Ironwood, apparently. Jane had assumed it would be a man and was rather repelled. Miss Ironwood lived out at St Anne’s on the Hill. Jane asked if she should make an appointment. ‘No,’ said Mrs Dimble, ‘they’ll be–you needn’t make an appointment.’ Jane kept the conversation going as long as she could. She had rung up not chiefly to get the address
but to hear Mother Dimble’s voice. Secretly she had had a wild hope that Mother Dimble would recognise her distress and say at once, ‘I’ll come straight up to you by car.’ Instead, she got the mere information and a hurried ‘Good-night.’ It seemed to Jane that there was something queer about Mrs Dimble’s voice. She felt that by ringing up she had interrupted a conversation about herself–or no–not about herself but about something else more important, with which she was somehow connected. And what had Mrs Dimble meant by, ‘They’ll be–’ ‘They’ll be expecting you?’ Horrible, childish night-nursery visions of They ‘expecting her’ passed before her mind. She saw Miss Ironwood, dressed all in black, sitting with her hands folded on her knees and then someone leading her into Miss Ironwood’s presence and saying, ‘She’s come,’ and leaving her there.
‘Damn the Dimbles!’ said Jane to herself, and then unsaid it, more in fear than in remorse. And now that the life-line had been used and brought no comfort, the terror, as if insulted by her futile attempt to escape it, rushed back on her with no possibility of disguise, and she could never afterwards remember whether the horrible old man and the mantle had actually appeared to her in a dream or whether she had merely sat there, huddled and wild eyed, hoping, hoping, hoping (even praying, though she believed in no one to pray to) that they would not.
And that is why Mark found such an unexpected Jane on the doormat. It was a pity, he thought, that this should have happened on a night when he was so late and so tired and, to tell the truth, not perfectly sober.
‘Do you feel quite all right this morning?’ said Mark.
‘Yes, thank you,’ said Jane shortly.
Mark was lying in bed and drinking a cup of tea. Jane was seated at the dressing table, partially dressed, and doing her hair. Mark’s eyes rested on her with indolent, early-morning pleasure. If he guessed very little of the mal-adjustment between them, this was partly due to our race’s incurable habit of ‘projection’. We think the lamb gentle because its wool is soft to our hands: men call a woman voluptuous when she arouses voluptuous feelings in them. Jane’s body, soft though firm and slim though rounded, was so exactly to Mark’s mind that it was all but impossible for him not to attribute to her the same sensations which she excited in him.
‘You’re quite sure you’re all right?’ he asked again.
‘Quite,’ said Jane more shortly still.
Jane thought she was annoyed because her hair was not going up to her liking and because Mark was fussing. She also knew, of course, that she was deeply angry with herself for the collapse which had betrayed her last night, into being what she most detested–the fluttering, tearful ‘little woman’ of sentimental fiction running for comfort to male arms. But she thought this anger was only in the back of her mind, and had no suspicion that it was pulsing through every vein and producing at that very moment the clumsiness in her fingers which made her hair seem intractable.
‘Because,’ continued Mark, ‘if you felt the least bit uncomfortable, I could put off going to see this man Wither.’
Jane said nothing.
‘If I did go,’ said Mark, ‘I’d certainly have to be away for the night, perhaps two.’
Jane closed her lips a little more firmly and still said nothing.
‘Supposing I did,’ said Mark, ‘you wouldn’t think of asking Myrtle over to stay?’
‘No thank you,’ said Jane emphatically, and then, ‘I’m quite accustomed to being alone.’
‘I know,’ said Mark in a rather defensive voice. ‘That’s the devil of the way things are in College at present. That’s one of the chief reasons I’m thinking of another job.’
Jane was still silent.