‘On the basis of which they make their calculations.’

‘So many individuals, of such and such quality,’ said Mr. Foster.

‘Distributed in such and such quantities.’

‘The optimum Decanting Rate at any given moment.’

‘Unforeseen wastages promptly made good.’

‘Promptly,’ repeated Mr. Foster. ‘If you knew the amount of overtime I had to put in after the last Japanese earthquake!’ He laughed good-humouredly and shook his head.

‘The Predestinators send in their figures to the Fertilizers.’

‘Who give them the embryos they ask for.’

‘And the bottles come in here to be predestinated in detail.’

‘After which they are sent down to the Embryo Store.’

‘Where we now proceed ourselves.’

And opening a door Mr. Foster led the way down a staircase into the basement.

The temperature was still tropical. They descended into a thickening twilight. Two doors and a passage with a double turn insured the cellar against any possible infiltration of the day.

‘Embryos are like photograph film,’ said Mr. Foster waggishly, as he pushed open the second door. ‘They can only stand red light.’

And in effect the sultry darkness into which the students now followed him was visible and crimson, like the darkness of closed eyes on a summer’s afternoon. The bulging flanks of row on receding row and tier above tier of bottles glinted with innumerable rubies, and among the rubies moved the dim red spectres of men and women with purple eyes and all the symptoms of lupus. The hum and rattle of machinery faintly stirred the air.

‘Give them a few figures, Mr. Foster,’ said the Director, who was tired of talking.

Mr. Foster was only too happy to give them a few figures.

Two hundred and twenty metres long, two hundred wide, ten high. He pointed upwards. Like chickens drinking, the students lifted their eyes towards the distant ceiling.

Three tiers of racks: ground-floor level, first gallery, second gallery.

The spidery steelwork of gallery above gallery faded away in all directions into the dark. Near them three red ghosts were busily unloading demijohns from a moving staircase.

The escalator from the Social Predestination Room.

Each bottle could be placed on one of fifteen racks, each rack, though you couldn’t see it, was a conveyor travelling at the rate of thirty-three and a third centimetres an hour. Two hundred and sixty-seven days at eight metres a day. Two thousand one hundred and thirty-six metres in all. One circuit of the cellar at ground level, one on the first gallery, half on the second, and on the two hundred and sixty-seventh morning, daylight in the Decanting Room. Independent existence—so called.