chiefly consists in persuading or forcing other people to be as good as ourselves. It is not progress that we object to; on the contrary, we flatter ourselves that we are the most progressive people who ever lived. It is individuality that we war against: we should think we had done wonders if we had made ourselves all alike; forgetting that the unlikeness of one person to another is generally the first thing which draws the attention of either to the imperfection of his own type, and the superiority of another, or the possibility, by combining the advantages of both, of producing something better than either. We have a warning example in China.'
The next thing was that the lovely Rowena was showing him a photograph of a girl doing what he didn't want to see any girl doing ever except to him—school of 'Kensington,' in fact.
'I don't like that,' he said. 'And what I don't like about it isn't the activity itself, far from it, but being shown it going on between other people. It's not that I disapprove. Well yes actually come to think of it I do disapprove rather. Of that photograph being published I mean.'
'Fair enough,' she said, but spent the next minute or so looking through her folders, presumably in search of material that wouldn't offend his susceptibilities. At last she handed him a sheaf of seven or eight pictures and asked him to pick the two he liked best. That was easy: he chose one girl who, by the look of her, could have had no idea in the world why those men had asked her to lean against a tree wearing just a straw hat, and one with a faintly intellectual expression who reminded him of a 'Zoom' favourite of his. The procedure had an end-of-session feel to it and some nuance of the professorial manner, he thought, suggested the same thing. So he was surprised and a little fed up to be told, after both girls had been disposed of, that he could take a short rest.
He put on a smile. 'Before what?'
'Before the second part of the programme. Do smoke if you want to, Mr Richardson.'
'No thanks, I've given it up.' The same thing only live? 'What happens in the second part?'
'We stimulate you artificially.'
'As opposed to—'
'With an artificial stimulator,' explained the professor.
'Oh I see.'
She went across and seemed to confer with the group by the machine. Although they were so near he couldn't hear a word of what they were saying. Rosenberg came strolling out of the shadows, followed by the Ghanaian.
'Well now, and how's it going?'
'I thought you were supposed to tell me that.'
'I meant your personal reaction in mental and emotional terms.'
'How I feel, you mean. Well, I suppose one can get used to anything. Look here, what's this stimulator?'
'Ah, there's a cunning little gadget if you like.'
'No doubt, but what is it?'
'Let's see, it's metal, and it's powered by electricity, and it .... revolves rapidly.'
'You brave man,' interposed the observer.
Jake gave up Rosenberg and nodded appreciatively, hoping to be told what for this fellow said him brave man.
'Your ego has been subjected to a massive onslaught. Of the events in detail inducing you to set your foot on the path that has brought you here this afternoon, I know nothing; but of this I am quite sure, that they were of a sort to injure your pride most severely. So it must have gone with all the intervening events. Today, given among other factors your age and class, was the supreme test. I confess to having done a little to aggravate it; I apologise, and can plead only the excuse of scientific curiosity. I salute you, sir, and would ask you to do me the honour of allowing me to shake your hand.'
They shook; Jake had been about to get up from his chair to do so but remembered the state of his clothing, which indeed had seldom been far from his thoughts over the past half-hour and which now, for some reason, decided him against getting up. He was still most interested in the question of the artificial stimulator and was satisfied soon enough. Professor Trefusis, with Miss Newman at her side, again stood before him. She was holding up an object of yellowish metal about the size of a pepper pot with a small protuberance at the top.
'This,' she said, 'is the artificial stimulator.'
With a neat movement she tripped a switch on the device and a thin high-pitched whine started up. To Jake it sounded like a dentist's high-speed drill and some of his reaction to the thought must have shown in his face, because Trefusis smiled and spoke reassuringly, took his hand and laid the metal protuberance, which he now saw was spinning rapidly, against it.
He felt an agreeable stroking sensation, not intense, as if something between a fingertip and a feather were being applied with superhuman regularity. He nodded appreciatively again.
Part II now went ahead with businesslike dispatch. Artificial stimulator in hand, Miss Newman knelt before him. Professor Trefusis looked quickly through the contents of one of her folders and said,
'You'll now be subjected to the same stimuli as before while also being stimulated genitally. No doubt you'll appreciate that should your response come to climax the programme would have to be discontinued.'
'Yes,' said Jake, thinking this was a bit mealy-mouthed of her in the circumstances.
'So if you raise your hand the genital, stimulation will cease at once.'
'Fine.'
What followed was physical pleasure in its purest form, unaccompanied, in other words, by any of the range of feelings from tenderness to triumph normally embodied with it. Even the desire for its continuance was missing, so that every minute, every dozen seconds he had to strive not to send the damned contraption 'flying' and run for the door, no trousers or no no trousers. How can she do it? lie kept asking himself, not rhetorically: what
