Brave New World by Aldous Huxley Read Free Book Online Page A

Russian technique for infecting water supplies was particularly ingenious.”
    Back turned to back, Fanny and Lenina continued their changing in silence.
    “The Nine Years’ War, the great Economic Collapse. There was a choice between World Control and destruction. Between stability and …”
    “Fanny Crowne’s a nice girl too,” said the Assistant Predestinator.
    In the nurseries, the Elementary Class Consciousness lesson was over, the voices were adapting future demand to future industrial supply. “I do love flying,” they whispered, “I do love flying, I do love having new clothes, I do love …”
    “Liberalism, of course, was dead of anthrax, but all the same you couldn’t do things by force.”
    “Not nearly so pneumatic as Lenina. Oh, not nearly.”
    “But old clothes are beastly,” continued the untiring whisper. “We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending, ending is better …”
    “Government’s an affair of sitting, not hitting. You rule with the brains and the buttocks, never with the fists. For example, there was the conscription of consumption.”
    “There, I’m ready,” said Lenina, but Fanny remained speechless and averted. “Let’s make peace, Fanny darling.”
    “Every man, woman and child compelled to consume so much a year. In the interests of industry. The sole result …”
    “Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches; the more stitches …”
    “One of these days,” said Fanny, with dismal emphasis, “you’ll get into trouble.”
    “Conscientious objection on an enormous scale. Anything not to consume. Back to nature.”
    “I do love flying. I do love flying.”
    “Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can’t consume much if you sit still and read books.”
    “Do I look all right?” Lenina asked. Her jacket was made of bottle green acetate cloth with green viscose fur at the cuffs and collar.
    “Eight hundred Simple Lifers were mowed down by machine guns at Golders Green.”
    “Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending.”
    Green corduroy shorts and white viscose-woollen stockings turned down below the knee.
    “Then came the famous British Museum Massacre. Two thousand culture fans gassed with dichlorethyl sulphide.”
    A green-and-white jockey cap shaded Lenina’s eyes; her shoes were bright green and highly polished.
    “In the end,” said Mustapha Mond, “the Controllers realized that force was no good. The slower but infinitely surer methods of ectogenesis, neo-Pavlovian conditioning and hypnopædia …”
    And round her waist she wore a silver-mounted green morocco-surrogate cartridge belt, bulging (for Lenina was not a freemartin) with the regulation supply of contraceptives.
    “The discoveries of Pfitzner and Kawaguchi were at last made use of. An intensive propaganda against viviparous reproduction …”
    “Perfect!” cried Fanny enthusiastically. She could never resist Lenina’s charm for long. “And what a perfectly
sweet
Malthusian belt!”
    “Accompanied by a campaign against the Past; by the closing of museums, the blowing up of historical monuments (luckily most of them had already been destroyed during the Nine Years’ War); by the suppression of all books published before A.F . 150.”
    “I simply must get one like it,” said Fanny.
    “There were some things called the pyramids, for example.”
    “My old black-patent bandolier …”
    “And a man called Shakespeare. You’ve never heard of them of course.”
    “It’s an absolute disgrace—that bandolier of mine.”
    “Such are the advantages of a really scientific education.”
    “The more stitches the less riches; the more stitches the less …”
    “The introduction of Our Ford’s first T-Model …”
    “I’ve had it nearly three months.”
    “Chosen as the opening date of the new era.”
    “Ending is better than mending; ending is better …”
    “There was a thing,