Читать книгу О дивный новый мир / Brave New World - Олдос Леонард Хаксли, Олдос Хаксли - Страница 9

The journey was quite uneventful. The Blue Pacific Rocket was two and a half minutes early at New Orleans, lost four minutes in a tornado over Texas, but was able to land at Santa Fe less than forty seconds behind schedule time.

“Not so bad,” Lenina conceded.

They slept that night at Santa Fe. The hotel was excellent—incomparably better, for example, than that horrible Aurora Bora Palace in which Lenina had suffered so much the previous summer. Liquid air, television, vibro-vacuum massage, radio, boiling caffeine solution, hot contraceptives, and eight different kinds of scent were laid on in every bedroom. The synthetic music plant was working as they entered the hall and left nothing to be desired. A notice in the lift announced that there were sixty Escalator-Squash-Racket Courts in the hotel, and that Obstacle and Electro-magnetic Golf could both be played in the park.

“But it sounds simply too lovely,” cried Lenina. “I almost wish we could stay here. Sixty Escalator-Squash Courts…”

“There won’t be any in the Reservation,” Bernard warned her. “And no scent, no television, no hot water even. If you feel you can’t stand it, stay here till I come back. You mustn’t come to the Reservation unless you really want to.”

“But I do want to.”

“Very well, then,” said Bernard; and it was almost a threat.

Their permit required the signature of the Warden of the Reservation, at whose office next morning they duly presented themselves. They were admitted almost immediately.

The Warden was a blond Alpha-Minus, short, red, moon-faced, and broad-shouldered, with a loud booming voice. Once started, he went on and on—boomingly.

“… five hundred and sixty thousand square kilometres, divided into four distinct Sub-Reservations, each surrounded by a high-tension wire fence.”

At this moment, and for no apparent reason, Bernard suddenly remembered that he had left the Eau de Cologne tap in his bathroom wide open and running.

“… supplied with current from the Grand Canyon hydro-electric station.”

“Cost me a fortune by the time I get back. Quickly telephone to Helmholtz Watson.”

“… upwards of five thousand kilometres of fencing at sixty thousand volts.”

“You don’t say so,” said Lenina politely, not knowing in the least what the Warden had said, but taking her cue from his dramatic pause. When the Warden started booming, she had swallowed half a gramme of soma, and now could sit serenely, not listening, thinking of nothing at all.