That Hideous Strength

IV

“You are in danger,” said Frost, when he had finished locking the door of Mark’s cell, “but you are also within reach of a great opportunity.”

“I gather,” said Mark, “I am at the Institute after all and not in a police station.”

“Yes. That makes no difference to the danger. The Institute will soon have official powers of liquidation. It has anticipated them. Hingest and Carstairs have both been liquidated. Such actions are demanded of us.”

“If you are going to kill me,” said Mark, “why all · this farce of a murder charge?”

“Before going on,” said Frost, “I must ask you to be strictly objective. Resentment and fear are both chemical phenomena. Our reactions to one another are chemical phenomena. Social relations are chemical relations. You must observe these feelings in yourself in an objective manner. Do not let them distract your attention from the facts.”

“I see,” said Mark. He was acting while he said it-trying to sound at once faintly hopeful and slightly sullen, ready to be worked upon. But within, his new insight into Belbury kept him resolved not to believe one word the other said, not to accept (though he might feign acceptance) any offer he made. He felt that he must at all costs hold on to the knowledge that these men were unalterable enemies: for already he felt the old tug towards yielding, towards semi-credulity, inside him.

“The murder charge against you and the alternations in your treatment have been part of a planned programme with a well-defined end in view,” said Frost. “It is a discipline through which everyone is passed before admission to the Circle.”

Again Mark felt a spasm of retrospective terror. Only a few days ago he would have swallowed any hook with that bait on it; and nothing but the imminence of death could have made the hook so obvious and the bait so insipid as it now was. At least, so comparatively insipid. For even now . . .

“I don’t quite see the purpose of it,” he said aloud.

“It is, again, to promote objectivity. A circle bound together by subjective feelings of mutual confidence and liking would be useless. Those, as I have said, are chemical phenomena. They could all, in principle, be produced by injections. You have been made to pass though a number of conflicting feelings about the Deputy Director and others in order that your future association with us may not be based on feelings at all. In so far as there must be social relations between members of the circle it is, perhaps, better that they should be feelings of dislike. There is less risk of their being confused with the real nexus.”

“My future association?” said Studdock, acting a tremulous eagerness. But it was perilously easy for him to act it. The reality might reawake at any moment.

“Yes,” said Frost. “You have been selected as a possible candidate for admission. If you do not gain admission, or if you reject it, it will be necessary to destroy you. I am not, of course, attempting to work on your fears. They only confuse the issue. The process would be quite painless, and your present reactions to it are inevitable physical events.”

“It-it seems rather a formidable decision,” said Mark.

“That is merely a proposition about the state of your own body at the moment. If you please, I will go on to give you the necessary information. I must begin by telling you that neither the Deputy Director, nor I, are responsible for shaping the policy of the Institute.”

“The Head?” said Mark.

“No. Filostrato and Wilkins are quite deceived about the Head. They have, indeed, carried out a remarkable experiment by preserving it from decay. But Alcasan’s mind is not the mind we are in contact with when the Head speaks.

“Do you mean Alcasan is really . . . dead.” asked Mark. His surprise at Frost’s last statement needed no acting.

“In the present state of our knowledge,” said Frost, “there is no answer to that question. Probably it has no meaning. But the cortex and vocal organs in Alcasan’s head are used by a different mind. And now, please attend very carefully. You have probably not heard of macrobes.”

“Microbes?” said Mark in bewilderment. “But of course . . .”

“I did not say microbes, I said macrobes. The formation of the word explains itself. Below the level of animal life we have long known that there are microscopic organisms. Their actual results on human life, in respect of health and disease, have, of course, made up a large part of history: the secret cause was not known till we invented the microscope.”

“Go on,” said Mark. Ravenous curiosity was moving like a sort of ground-swell beneath his conscious determination to stand on guard.

“I have now to inform you that there are similar organisms above the level of animal life. When I say “above” I am not speaking biologically. The structure of the macrobe, so far as we know it, is of extreme simplicity. When I say that it is above the animal level, I mean that it is more permanent, disposes of more energy, and has greater intelligence.

“More intelligent than the highest anthropoids.” said Mark. “It must be pretty nearly human, then.”

“You have misunderstood me. When I said it transcended the animals, I was, of course, including the most efficient animal, Man. The macrobe is more intelligent than Man.”

“But how is it in that case that we have had no communication with them?”

“It is not certain that we have not. But in primitive times it was spasmodic, and was opposed by numerous prejudices. Moreover the intellectual development of man had not reached the level at which intercourse with our species could offer any attractions to a macrobe. But though there has been little intercourse, there has been profound influence. Their effect on human history has been far greater than that of the microbes, though, of course, equally unrecognised. In the light of what we now know all history will have to be rewritten. The real causes of all the principal events are quite unknown to the historians; that, indeed, is why history has not yet succeeded in becoming a science.”

“I think I’ll sit down, if you don’t mind,” said Mark, resuming his seat on the floor. Frost remained, throughout the whole conversation, standing perfectly still with his arms hanging down straight at his sides. But for the periodic upward tilt of his head and flash of his teeth at the end of a sentence, he used no gestures.

“The vocal organs and brain taken from Alcasan,” he continued, “have become the conductors of a regular intercourse between the macrobes and our own species. I do not say that we have discovered this technique; the discovery was theirs, not ours. The circle to which you may be admitted is the organ of that co-operation between the two species which has already created a new situation for humanity. The change, you will see, is far greater than that which turned the sub-man into the man. It is more comparable to the first appearance of organic life.”

“These organisms, then,” said Mark, “are friendly to humanity?”

“If you reflect for a moment,” said Frost, “you will see that your question has no meaning except on the level of the crudest popular thought. Friendship is a chemical phenomenon; so is hatred. Both of them presupposes organisms of our own type. The first step towards intercourse with the macrobes is the realisation that one must go outside the whole world of our subjective emotions. It is only as you begin to do so that you discover how much of what you mistook for your thought was merely a by-product of your blood and nervous tissues.”

“Oh, of course. I didn’t quite mean ‘friendly’ in that sense. I really meant, were their aims compatible with our own?”

“What do you mean by our own aims?”

“Well-I suppose-the scientific reconstruction of the human race in the direction of increased efficiency-the elimination of war and poverty and other forms of waste-a fuller exploitation of nature-the preservation and extension of our species, in fact.”

“I do not think this pseudo-scientific language really modifies the essentially subjective and instinctive basis of the ethics you are describing. I will return to the matter at a later stage. For the moment, I would merely remark that your view of war and your reference to the preservation of the species suggest a profound misconception. They are mere generalisations from affectional feelings.”

“Surely,” said Mark, “one requires a pretty large population for the full exploitation of nature, if for nothing else? And surely war is disgenic and reduces efficiency? Even if population needs thinning, is not war the worst possible method of thinning it?”

“That idea is a survival from conditions which are rapidly being altered. A few centuries ago, war did operate in the way you describe. A large agricultural population was essential; and war destroyed types which were then still useful. But every advance in industry and agriculture reduces the number of work-people who are required. A large, unintelligent population is now becoming a deadweight. The real importance of scientific war is that scientists have to be reserved. It was not the great technocrats of Koenigsberg or Moscow who supplied the casualties in the siege of Stalingrad: it was superstitious Bavarian peasants and low-grade Russian agricultural workers. The effect of modern war is to eliminate retrogressive types, while sparing the technocracy and increasing its hold upon public affairs. In the new age, what has hitherto been merely the intellectual nucleus of the race is to become, by gradual stages, the race itself. You are to conceive the species as an animal which has discovered how to simplify nutrition and locomotion to such a point that the old complex organs and the large body which contained them are no longer necessary. That large body is therefore to disappear. Only a tenth part of it will now be needed to support the brain. The individual is to become all head. The human race is to become all Technocracy.”

“I see,” said Mark. “I had thought-rather vaguely-that the intelligent nucleus would be extended by education.”

“That is a pure chimera. The great majority of the human race can be educated only in the sense of being given knowledge: they cannot be trained into the total objectivity of mind which is now necessary. They will always remain animals, looking at the world through the haze of their subjective reactions. Even if they could, the day for a large population has passed. It has served its function by acting as a kind of cocoon for Technocratic and Objective Man. Now, the macrobes, and the selected humans who can co-operate with them, have no further use for it.”

“The last two wars, then, were not disasters in your view?”

“On the contrary, they were simply the beginning of the programme-the first two of the sixteen major wars which are scheduled to take place in this century. I am aware of the emotional (that is, the chemical) reactions which a statement like this produces in you, and you are wasting your time in trying to conceal them from me. I do not expect you to control them. That is not the path to objectivity. I deliberately raise them in order that you may become accustomed to regard them in a purely scientific light and distinguish them as sharply as possible from the facts.”

Mark sat with his eyes fixed on the floor. He had felt, in fact, very little emotion at Frost’s programme for the human race; indeed he almost discovered at that moment how little he had ever really cared for those remote futures and universal benefits whereon his co-operation with the Institute had at first been theoretically based. Certainly at the present moment there was no room in his mind for such considerations. He was fully occupied with the conflict between his resolution not to trust these men, never again to be lured by any bait into real co-operation, and the terrible strength-like a tide sucking at the shingle as it goes out-of an opposite emotion. For here, here surely at last (so his desire whispered him) was the true inner circle of all, the circle whose centre was outside the human race-the ultimate secret, the supreme power, the last initiation. The fact that it was almost completely horrible did not in the least diminish its attraction. Nothing that lacked the tang of horror would have been quite strong enough to satisfy the delirious excitement which now set his temples hammering. It came into his mind that Frost knew all about this excitement, and also about the opposite determination, and reckoned securely on the excitement as something which was certain to carry the day in his victim’s mind.

A rattling and knocking which had been obscurely audible for some time now became so loud that Frost turned to the door. “Go away,” he said, raising his voice.

“What is the meaning of this impertinence?” The indistinct noise of someone shouting on the other side of the door was heard, and the knocking went on. Frost’s smile widened as he turned and opened it. Instantly a piece of paper was put into his hand. As he read it, he started violently. Without glancing at Mark, he left the cell. Mark heard the door locked again behind him.