Page 125 - BraveNewWorld

Thirteen

HENRY FOSTER loomed up through the twilight of the Embryo Store.
“Like to come to a feely this evening?”

Lenina shook her head without speaking.
“Going out with some one else?” It interested him to know which of his friends
was being had by which other. “Is it Benito?” he questioned.

She shook her head again.
Henry detected the weariness in those purple eyes, the pallor beneath that glaze
of lupus, the sadness at the corners of the unsmiling crimson mouth. “You’re
not feeling ill, are you?” he asked, a trifle anxiously, afraid that she might be
suffering from one of the few remaining infectious diseases.

Yet once more Lenina shook her head.
“Anyhow, you ought to go and see the doctor,” said Henry. “A doctor a day
keeps the jim-jams away,” he added heartily, driving home his hypnopædic
adage with a clap on the shoulder. “Perhaps you need a Pregnancy Substitute,”
he suggested. “Or else an extra-strong V.P.S. treatment. Sometimes, you know,
the standard passion surrogate isn’t quite .”
“Oh, for Ford’s sake,” said Lenina, breaking her stubborn silence, “shut up!”
And she turned back to her neglected embryos.
A V.P.S. treatment indeed! She would have laughed, if she hadn’t been on the
point of crying. As though she hadn’t got enough V. P. of her own! She sighed
profoundly as she refilled her syringe. “John,” she murmured to herself, “John
.” Then “My Ford,” she wondered, “have I given this one its sleeping sickness
injection, or haven’t I?” She simply couldn’t remember. In the end, she decided
not to run the risk of letting it have a second dose, and moved down the line to
the next bottle.
Twenty-two years, eight months, and four days from that moment, a pro-

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