Together they hurried along the corridor to the lifts.

‘But do you like being slaves?’ the Savage was saying as they entered the Hospital. His face was flushed, his eyes bright with ardour and indignation. ‘Do you like being babies? Yes, babies. Mewling and puking,’ he added, exasperated by their bestial stupidity into throwing insults at those he had come to save. The insults bounced off their carapace of thick stupidity; they stared at him with a blank expression of dull and sullen resentment in their eyes. ‘Yes, puking!’ he fairly shouted. Grief and remorse, compassion and duty—all were forgotten now and, as it were, absorbed into an intense overpowering hatred of these less than human monsters. ‘Don’t you want to be free and men? Don’t you even understand what manhood and freedom are?’ Rage was making him fluent; the words came easily, in a rush. ‘Don’t you?’ he repeated, but got no answer to his question. ‘Very well, then,’ he went on grimly. ‘I’ll teach you; I’ll make you be free whether you want to or not.’ And pushing open a window that looked on to the inner court of the Hospital, he began to throw the little pill-boxes of soma tablets in handfuls out into the area.

For a moment the khaki mob was silent, petrified, at the spectacle of this wanton sacrilege, with amazement and horror.

‘He’s mad,’ whispered Bernard, staring with wide open eyes. ‘They’ll kill him. They’ll …’ A great shout suddenly went up from the mob; a wave of movement drove it menacingly towards the Savage. ‘Ford help him!’ said Bernard, and averted his eyes.

‘Ford helps those who help themselves.’ And with a laugh, actually a laugh of exultation, Helmholtz Watson pushed his way through the crowd.

‘Free, free!’ the Savage shouted, and with one hand continued to throw the soma into the area while, with the other, he punched the indistinguishable faces of his assailants. ‘Free!’ And suddenly there was Helmholtz at his side—‘Good old Helmholtz!’—also punching—‘Men at last!’—and in the interval also throwing the poison out by handfuls through the open window. ‘Yes, men! men!’ and there was no more poison left. He picked up the cash-box and showed them its black emptiness. ‘You’re free!’

Howling, the Deltas charged with a redoubled fury.

Hesitant on the fringes of the battle, ‘They’re done for,’ said Bernard and, urged by a sudden impulse, ran forward to help them; then thought better of it and halted; then, ashamed, stepped forward again; then again thought better of it, and was standing in an agony of humiliated indecision—thinking that they might be killed if he didn’t help them, and that he might be killed if he did—when (Ford be praised!), goggle-eyed and swine-snouted in their gas-masks, in ran the police.

Bernard dashed to meet them. He waved his arms; and it was action, he was doing something. He shouted ‘Help!’ several times, more and more loudly so as to give himself the illusion of helping. ‘Help! Help! Help!’

The policemen pushed him out of the way and got on with their work. Three men with spraying machines buckled to their shoulders pumped thick clouds of soma vapour into the air. Two more were busy round the portable Synthetic Music Box. Carrying water pistols charged with a powerful anæsthetic, four others had pushed their way into the crowd and were methodically laying out, squirt by squirt, the more ferocious of the fighters.

‘Quick, quick!’ yelled Bernard. ‘They’ll be killed if you don’t hurry. They’ll … Oh!’ Annoyed by his chatter, one of the policemen had given him a shot from his water pistol. Bernard stood for a second or two wambling unsteadily on legs that seemed to have lost their bones, their tendons, their muscles, to have become mere sticks of jelly, and at last not even jelly—water: he tumbled in a heap on the floor.

Suddenly, from out of the Synthetic Music Box a Voice began to speak. The Voice of Reason, the Voice of Good Feeling. The sound-track roll was unwinding itself in Synthetic Anti-Riot Speech Number Two