That Hideous Strength

‘Isn’t it a little naïf,’ said Feverstone, ‘to suppose that being in on a thing involves any distinct knowledge of its official programme?’

‘Oh well, if you mean details,’ said Curry, and then stopped.

‘Surely, Feverstone,’ said Busby, ‘you’re making a great mystery about nothing. I should have thought the objects of the NICE were pretty clear. It’s the first attempt to take applied science seriously from the national point of view. The difference in scale between it and anything we’ve had before amounts to a difference in kind. The buildings alone, the apparatus alone –! Think what it has done already for industry. Think how it is going to mobilise all the talent of the country; and not only scientific talent in the narrower sense. Fifteen departmental directors at fifteen thousand a year each! Its own legal staff! Its own police, I’m told! Its own permanent staff of architects, surveyors, engineers! The thing’s stupendous!’

‘Careers for our sons,’ said Feverstone. ‘I see.’

‘What do you mean by that, Lord Feverstone?’ said Busby putting down his glass.

‘Lord!’ said Feverstone, his eyes laughing, ‘what a brick to drop. I’d quite forgotten you had a family, James.’

‘I agree with James,’ said Curry, who had been waiting somewhat impatiently to speak. ‘The NICE marks the beginning of a new era–the really scientific era. Up to now, everything has been haphazard. This is going to put science itself on a scientific basis. There are to be forty interlocking committees sitting every day and they’ve got a wonderful gadget–I was shown the model last time I was in town–by which the findings of each committee print themselves off in their own little compartment on the Analytical Notice-Board every half hour. Then, that report slides itself into the right position where it’s connected up by little arrows with all the relevant parts of the other reports. A glance at the Board shows you the policy of the whole Institute actually taking shape under your own eyes. There’ll be a staff of at least twenty experts at the top of the building working this Notice-Board in a room rather like the Tube control rooms. It’s a marvellous gadget. The different kinds of business all come out in the Board in different coloured lights. It must have cost half a million. They call it a Pragmatometer.’

‘And there,’ said Busby, ‘you see again what the Institute is already doing for the country. Pragmatometry is going to be a big thing. Hundreds of people are going in for it. Why this Analytical Notice-Board will probably be out of date before the building is finished!’

‘Yes, by Jove,’ said Feverstone, ‘and NO himself told me this morning that the sanitation of the Institute was going to be something quite out of the ordinary.’

‘So it is,’ said Busby sturdily. ‘I don’t see why one should think that unimportant.’

‘And what do you think about it, Studdock?’ said Feverstone.

‘I think,’ said Mark, ‘that James touched on the most important point when he said that it would have its own legal staff and its own police. I don’t give a fig for Pragmatometers and sanitation de luxe. The real thing is that this time we’re going to get science applied to social problems and backed by the whole force of the state, just as war has been backed by the whole force of the state in the past. One hopes, of course, that it’ll find out more than the old free-lance science did; but what’s certain is that it can do more.’

‘Damn,’ said Curry, looking at his watch. ‘I’ll have to go and talk to NO now. If you people would like any brandy when you’ve finished your wine, it’s in that cupboard. You’ll find balloon glasses on the shelf above. I’ll be back as soon as I can. You’re not going, James, are you?’

‘Yes,’ said the Bursar. ‘I’m going to bed early. Don’t let me break up the party for you two. I’ve been on my legs nearly all day, you know. A man’s a fool to hold any office in this College. Continual anxiety. Crushing responsibility. And then you get people suggesting that all the little research-beetles who never poke their noses outside their libraries and laboratories are the real workers! I’d like to see Glossop or any of that lot face the sort of day’s work I’ve had today. Curry, my lad, you’d have had an easier life if you’d stuck to economics.’

‘I’ve told you before,’ began Curry, but the Bursar, now risen, was bending over Lord Feverstone and telling him a funny story.

As soon as the two men had got out of the room, Lord Feverstone looked steadily at Mark for some seconds with an enigmatic expression. Then he chuckled. Then the chuckle developed into a laugh. He threw his lean, muscular body well back into his chair and laughed louder and louder. He was very infectious in his laughter and Mark found himself laughing too–quite sincerely and even helplessly, like a child. ‘Pragmatometers–palatial lavatories–practical idealism,’ gasped Feverstone. It was a moment of extraordinary liberation for Mark. All sorts of things about Curry and Busby which he had not previously noticed, or else, noticing, had slurred over in his reverence for the Progressive Element, came back to his mind. He wondered how he could have been so blind to the funny side of them.

‘It really is rather devastating,’ said Feverstone when he had partially recovered, ‘that the people one has to use for getting things done should talk such drivel the moment you ask them about the things themselves.’

‘And yet they are, in a sense, the brains of Bracton,’ said Mark.

‘Good Lord no! Glossop and Bill the Blizzard, and even old Jewel, have ten times their intelligence.’

‘I didn’t know you took that view.’

‘I think Glossop, etc., are quite mistaken. I think their idea of culture and knowledge and what not is unrealistic. I don’t think it fits the world we’re living in. It’s a mere fantasy. But it is quite a clear idea and they follow it out consistently. They know what they want. But our two poor friends, though they can be persuaded to take the right train, or even to drive it, haven’t a ghost of a notion where it’s going to, or why. They’ll sweat blood to bring the NICE to Edgestow: that’s why they’re indispensable. But what the point of the NICE is, what the point of anything is–ask them another. Pragmatometry! Fifteen sub-directors!’

‘Well, perhaps I’m in the same boat myself.’

‘Not at all. You saw the point at once. I knew you would. I’ve read everything you’ve written since you were in for your fellowship. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’

Mark was silent. The giddy sensation of being suddenly whirled up from one plane of secrecy to another, coupled with the growing effect of Curry’s excellent port, prevented him from speaking.

‘I want you to come into the Institute,’ said Feverstone.

‘You mean–to leave Bracton?’

‘That makes no odds. Anyway, I don’t suppose there’s anything you want here. We’d make Curry Warden when NO retires and–’

‘They were talking of making you Warden.’

‘God!’ said Feverstone and stared. Mark realised that from Feverstone’s point of view this was like the suggestion that he should become Headmaster of a small idiots’ school, and thanked his stars that his own remark had not been uttered in a tone that made it obviously serious. Then they both laughed again.

‘You,’ said Feverstone, ‘would be absolutely wasted as Warden. That’s the job for Curry. He’ll do it very well. You want a man who loves business and wire-pulling for their own sake and doesn’t really ask what it’s all about. If he did, he’d start bringing in his own–well, I suppose he’d call them “ideas”. As it is, we’ve only got to tell him that he thinks so-and-so is a man the College wants, and he will think it. And then he’ll never rest till so-and-so gets a fellowship. That’s what we want the College for: a drag net, a recruiting office.’

‘A recruiting office for the NICE, you mean?’

‘Yes, in the first instance. But it’s only part of the general show.’

‘I’m not sure that I know what you mean.’

‘You soon will. The Home Side, and all that, you know! It sounds rather in Busby’s style to say that Humanity is at the cross-roads. But it is the main question at the moment: which side one’s on–obscurantism or Order. It does really look as if we now had the power to dig ourselves in as a species for a pretty staggering period, to take control of our own destiny. If Science is really given a free hand it can now take over the human race and re-condition it: make man a really efficient animal. If it doesn’t–well, we’re done.’

‘Go on.’

‘There are three main problems. First, the interplanetary problem–’

‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘Well, that doesn’t really matter. We can’t do anything about that at present. The only man who could help was Weston.’

‘He was killed in a blitz, wasn’t he?’

‘He was murdered.’

‘Murdered?’

‘I’m pretty sure of it, and I’ve a shrewd idea who the murderer was.’

‘Good God! Can nothing be done?’

‘There’s no evidence. The murderer is a respectable Cambridge don with weak eyes, a game leg, and a fair beard. He’s dined in this College.’

‘What was Weston murdered for?’

‘For being on our side. The murderer is one of the enemy.’

‘You don’t mean to say he murdered him for that?’

‘Yes,’ said Feverstone, bringing his hand down smartly on the table. ‘That’s just the point. You’ll hear people like Curry or James burbling away about the “war” against reaction. It never enters their heads that it might be a real war with real casualties. They think the violent resistance of the other side ended with the persecution of Galileo and all that. But don’t believe it. It is just seriously beginning. They know now that we have at last got real powers: that the question of what humanity is to be is going to be decided in the next sixty years. They’re going to fight every inch. They’ll stop at nothing.’

‘They can’t win,’ said Mark.

‘We’ll hope not,’ said Lord Feverstone. ‘I think they can’t. That is why it is of such immense importance to each of us to choose the right side. If you try to be neutral you become simply a pawn.’