Brian Aldiss - The Primal Urge

‘My dear man, mechanisation is a natural step – natural, mark you – in man’s evolution. Really, some people’s world pictures are so antiquated . Darwin might as well never have sailed in the Beagle at all!’

‘I cannot honestly see how anyone could expect anybody—’

‘All I’m trying to say is—’

‘—in the nation’s best interests. Everyone bogged down by inhibition, and then like a clean slash of a scalpel—’

‘If you’ve ever observed an operation in progress, Merrick, you will know surgeons do not slash.’

‘—comes this glorious invention to set us free from all the accumulation of five thousand years of petty convention. Here at last is hope handed to us on a plate, and you worry—’

‘Last week he was attacking and I was defending.’

It was at this point in the argument spluttering around him that Jimmy, listening in interested silence, found that a man he had heard addressed as Bertie was tipping rum into his – Jimmy’s – champagne from a pocket flask.

‘Give it a bit of body,’ Bertie said, winking conspiratorially and gripping Jimmy’s arm.

‘Thanks. No more,’ Jimmy said.

‘Pleasure,’ Bertie said. ‘All intellectuals here. I’m a cyberneticist myself. What are you?’

‘I sort of give exhibitions.’

‘You do? Before invited audiences? You’d better count me in on that. I tell you, when I get my red light, it’s going to wink in some funny places.’ He laughed joyously.

‘I’m afraid these are only book exhibitions,’ Jimmy said, adding, for safety, ‘Clean books.’

‘Who’s talking about books? They’re full of antique imperialist slogans,’ Guy said, butting in and making a face at Susan. ‘Don’t change the subject, Jimmy. There’s only one subject in England at the moment – it’s even ousted the weather. You, presumably, are more pro NLs than anyone else here. Why are you pro?’

‘For practical reasons,’ Jimmy said airily. The champagne was already making him feel a little detached from the group; they were only talkers – he was a pioneer. ‘You see, entirely through my own stupidity, Penny Tanner-Smith, my fiancée, broke off our engagement last week. I hoped that if she could see how steadily my ER glowed for her, she would agree to begin again.’

There was much sympathetic laughter at this. Susan said, ‘What a horribly trite reason!’ But Merrick said ‘Bloody good. Excellent. That’s what I mean – cuts through formality and misunderstanding. Our friend here has inherited a major liberty: the ability to prove to his fiancée exactly how he feels about her; try and estimate what that is worth in terms of mental security. I’m going to get my Norman Light stuck on tomorrow.’

‘Then you disappoint me, Merrick,’ Guy Leighton said.

‘I cannot wait on fashion, Guy; I have an aim in life as well as a role in society,’ Merrick said amiably. It sounded as if he knew Guy fairly closely.

Gazing beyond them, Jimmy could see Sir Richard still welcoming an occasional late arrival, his eyebrows astir with hospitality. A tall, silver man had just come in escorting a tall girl with a hatchet face who, in her survey of the company, seemed to ‘unsee the traffic with mid-ocean eye’, to borrow a phrase from a contemporary poet Jimmy disliked. The man smiled and smiled; the girl seemed barely to raise a grin. She wore the silver disc on her brow.

‘There’s someone—,’ Jimmy said, and then stopped, foreseeing an awkward situation. But Guy had also noticed the newcomer; he became tense and his manner underwent a change.

‘Oh, she’s here, is she!’ he muttered, turning his back on that quarter of the room and shuddering as if he had witnessed a breach of etiquette. ‘I say, Solent, here’s a chance for us all to try out your gadget.’

‘Include me out,’ Jimmy said hastily. ‘I don’t like public demonstrations. Besides, I can tell from here that she would have no attraction for me; she doesn’t look as if she could make a firefly glow.’

‘You haven’t met her yet,’ Guy said, with surprising fierceness.

‘You never know what’s in your id,’ Bertie said, appearing again with his pocket flask. ‘Or in hers, Freud save us.’ He crossed himself and nudged Merrick, who did not smile.

The inevitable, as it inevitably does, happened. Guy, with unexpected delicacy, did not go over to the newcomers. Instead, Sir Richard and Lady Clunes ushered them over to Jimmy’s group in a frothy tide of introductions, among which two waiters sported like dolphins, dispensing drink.

‘Martini for me this time,’ Jimmy said and, turning, was introduced to Felix Garside and his niece, the hatchet-faced girl, Rose English.

Seen close to, she was no longer hatchet-faced, though her countenance was long and her features sharply moulded; indeed she could be considered attractive, if we remembered that attraction is also a challenge. As Rose English glanced round the company, she was making no attempt, as most of the others present would have done upon introduction, to conceal the engagement of her mind and feelings in her surroundings. In consequence the unconventional face, less a mask than an instrument, drew to itself the regard of all men and most of the women. Her countenance was at once intelligent and naked; invulnerable perhaps, but highly impressionable.

Her clothes, although good, seemed to fit her badly, for the jacket of her suit, in the new over-elaborate style, did her disservice, making her look to some extent top heavy. She was tall; ‘rangy’ was the word which occurred to Jimmy. She might have been thirty-five, perhaps ten years his senior. Under her cheekbones faint and by no means unattractive hollows showed, ironing themselves out by her mouth, which, together with her eyes, belied the hint of melancholy determination in her attitude.

Her eyes rested momentarily on Jimmy’s brow. She smiled, and the smile was good.

‘Et tu, Brute,’ she said and then turned with a suspicion of haste to talk to Guy, who showed little inclination to talk back; though he remained on the balls of his feet, his poise had deserted him. This at once disappointed and relieved Jimmy, for he discovered he was flushing slightly; Merrick and several of the others were watching his Norman Light with eagerness.

‘It is just turning faintly pink, I think,’ the sandy woman said. ‘It’s rather difficult to tell in this lighting.’

‘The maximum intensity is a burning cerise,’ a clerical-looking man informed them all.

‘Then cerise will be the fashionable colour next season,’ Lady Clunes said. ‘I’m so glad. I’m so tired of black, so very tired of it.’

‘I should have thought it ought to have registered a little more than that,’ Merrick said, with a hint of irritation, staring at Jimmy’s forehead. ‘Between any normal man and woman, there’s a certain sexual flux.’

‘That’s what it’ll be so interesting to find out,’ Lady Clunes said. ‘I am just longing for everyone to get theirs.’

‘Oh yes, it’ll be O.K. for those who’re exempt: a damn good sideshow, I’d say,’ Bertie remarked, precipitating a frosty little silence. The new ER bill just passed through Parliament, which specified that everyone should have a Norman Light fitted by September 1, exempted those under fourteen or over sixty; it was generally agreed that this upper age limit would preserve the status quo for Maude Clunes. Her friends were waiting, hawk-like, to see if she would have a disc installed.

Guy, to fill the gap in the conversation, brought Rose back into it with a general remark. Seizing his chance, Merrick bunched heavy eyebrows over his heavy spectacles and said, ‘Miss English, your having your Norman Light installed so promptly shows you to be a forward-looking young lady. Would you cooperate in a little experiment, a scientific experiment, for the benefit of those of us who have still to, er, see the light?’