‘O brave new world …’ By some malice of his memory the Savage found himself repeating Miranda’s words. ‘O brave new world that has such people in it.’

‘And I assure you,’ the Human Element Manager concluded, as they left the factory, ‘we hardly ever have any trouble with our workers. We always find …’

But the Savage had suddenly broken away from his companions and was violently retching, behind a clump of laurels, as though the solid earth had been a helicopter in an air pocket.

‘The Savage,’ wrote Bernard, ‘refuses to take soma, and seems much distressed because the woman Linda, his m—, remains permanently on holiday. It is worthy of note that, in spite of his m—’s senility and the extreme repulsiveness of her appearance, the Savage frequently goes to see her and appears to be much attached to her—an interesting example of the way in which early conditioning can be made to modify and even run counter to natural impulses (in this case, the impulse to recoil from an unpleasant object).’

At Eton they alighted on the roof of Upper School. On the opposite side of School Yard, the fifty-two stories of Lupton’s Tower gleamed white in the sunshine. College on their left and, on their right, the School Community Singery reared their venerable piles of ferro-concrete and vita-glass. In the centre of the quadrangle stood the quaint old chrome-steel statue of Our Ford.

Dr. Gaffney, the Provost, and Miss Keate, the Head Mistress, received them as they stepped out of the plane.

‘Do you have many twins here?’ the Savage asked rather apprehensively, as they set out on their tour of inspection.

‘Oh no,’ the Provost answered. ‘Eton is reserved exclusively for upper-caste boys and girls. One egg, one adult. It makes education more difficult, of course. But as they’ll be called upon to take responsibilities and deal with unexpected emergencies, it can’t be helped.’ He sighed.

Bernard, meanwhile, had taken a strong fancy to Miss Keate. ‘If you’re free any Monday, Wednesday, or Friday evening,’ he was saying. Jerking his thumb towards the Savage, ‘He’s curious, you know,’ Bernard added. ‘Quaint.’

Miss Keate smiled (and her smile was really charming, he thought); said Thank you; would be delighted to come to one of his parties. The Provost opened a door.

Five minutes in that Alpha-Double-Plus classroom left John a trifle bewildered.

‘What is elementary relativity?’ he whispered to Bernard. Bernard tried to explain, then thought better of it and suggested that they should go to some other classroom.

From behind a door in the corridor leading to the Beta-Minus geography room, a ringing soprano voice called, ‘One, two, three, four,’ and then, with a weary impatience, ‘As you were.’

‘Malthusian Drill,’ explained the Head Mistress. ‘Most of our girls are freemartins, of course. I’m a freemartin myself.’ She smiled at Bernard. ‘But we have about eight hundred unsterilized ones who need constant drilling.’

In the Beta-Minus geography room John learnt that ‘a savage reservation is a place which, owing to unfavourable climatic or geological conditions, or poverty of natural resources, has not been worth the expense of civilizing.’ A click; the room was darkened; and suddenly, on the screen above the Master’s head, there were the Penitentes of Acoma prostrating themselves before Our Lady, and wailing as John had heard them wail, confessing their sins before Jesus on the cross, before the eagle image of Pookong. The young Etonians fairly shouted with laughter. Still wailing, the Penitentes rose to their feet, stripped