AN EXTRAORDINARY RUMOUR

 

"Did you hear that Michael Estov actually experienced Infused Contemplation the other day?" Stephanie Voltaire asked, primarily addressing herself to Serge Riley, her senior colleague at the Galactic Research Unit.

      "No, I can't say that I did," replied Riley, who happened to be seated opposite.

      "Maybe that explains why we haven't seen him so much recently,' Adam Kurtmüller commented, an ironic smile subtly qualifying his suggestion.  "He probably considers us all infra dignum now."  At twenty-three, Adam was the youngest and most promising of the Unit's junior research team, a high-level graduate in galactic geology from the University of Europe.

      "Yes, I wouldn't be surprised," Stephanie admitted, offering the young man to her left a complementary smile.  "Anyone who experiences that ... usually takes a rise in his own estimation.  He becomes one of the spiritual elect."

      "Virtually a superman," Adam confirmed, drawing on his Nietzschean scholarship.  "Isn't that so, Serge?"

      "So I'm told," the latter languidly replied.  "Though I must confess to not having anticipated any such spiritual breakthrough from him.  He never struck me as being one of the more accomplished or dedicated meditators before - not, at any rate, when he used to attend my centre.  Doesn't do more than five hours a day, does he?"

      "No, he doesn't actually," Stephanie confirmed while looking out through the narrow window of the small rest room in which she and her two colleagues were seated.  It gave-on to a view of another department of the Galactic Research Unit, some twelve yards away, and usually permitted her to watch or, rather, spy on the activities of various personnel there, activities which sometimes amused and often intrigued her.  In this instance, however, she was slightly baffled by the violent gestures a Senior Administrator was making, as he engaged himself in soundless conversation with an attractive young woman in a standard white one-piece zippersuit.  She wondered what he could be saying; for it wasn't often that one saw elderly men gesticulating in such a seemingly passionate, not to say theatrical, manner.  Perhaps he had fallen in love?  It still happened occasionally, though society took good care to protect itself from atavistic eruptions of this ancient passion by isolating its victims from contact with the rest of humanity, thereby precluding the possibility of contagion.  For the most part, however, love had been successfully stamped out, consigned, thanks to environmental and moral progress, to the rubbish bin of emotional history.  The modern world had neither use nor place for it.

      "Still, he may have achieved a more concentrated method of meditation without our knowing about it," Adam was saying, as Stephanie returned her attention to the occupants of her room and recalled the subject of Estov's spiritual breakthrough to higher levels of mystical experience.  "Some people have apparently perfected a technique which enables them to approach the threshold of total enlightenment in a much shorter time, with a mere 4-5 hours' meditation a day over as short a span as ten years.  I've heard of a number of cases in which a surprisingly quick breakthrough to pure knowledge has been achieved in recent years.  Our local meditation centre reported three such cases last month, one of which also involved astral levitation."

      "Well, I doubt if I shall ever have such good fortune," Riley commented.  "Even after thirty years' meditation at six hours a day for five days a week, I haven't achieved nearly anything so spectacular.  My transcendentalism has evidently been less ambitious.  There must be something about my temperament which inhibits real spiritual progress."

      "Ditto for me," Stephanie confessed, smiling temperamental complicity upon her senior colleague.  "Perhaps our scientific duties here detract from our transcendental potential?  After all, we have a fair number of mundane tasks to attend to, during the course of our two days work each week, don't we?  Studying the flora of the planet Galbrais isn't exactly the most spiritual of tasks."

      "Neither is classifying the fauna on Sestos," Riley declared, referring to his latest duty, which pertained to a smaller planet in the same solar system as Galbrais.  "But it has to be done.  Just as the rock formations on Hebatta have to be ..."

      "You needn't remind me!" Adam interposed, throwing up his arms in mock exasperation.  "I've been trapped in those damn rocks for the past three months!  Frankly, I envy Estov his investigations of the mineral deposits on Fulmer.  Those gems can hardly be accused of obscuring his view of Eternity!"

      "Whatever such a view happens to look like," Riley commented, as though from afar.  "Still, we mustn't grumble.  The path of evolution may be leading us towards a spiritual transformation into godlike entities, but we still have to attend to the more mundane affairs of this galaxy in the meantime.  As yet, we're still men, even if relatively advanced ones.  So our scientific activities cannot be discarded or underestimated, particularly with the prospect of a galactic war hanging over us!  Who knows, but the other alliance may be preparing to overrun our solar system at this very moment and plunge us all into slavery?"

      "Well, it won't receive a very warm welcome if it is," Stephanie asseverated, her noble countenance stern with the knowledge of contemporary ideological rivalry.  "Our laser beams should be more than sufficient to repulse any such invasion."

      "I sincerely hope so," said Riley.  "For if not, then our beloved transcendental meditation won't be of much help to us.  If we're to attain to the millennial salvation which technological progress has been promising us for the greater part of the past two centuries, we shall certainly have to keep ourselves out of the gruesome clutches of the Kibalatics.  For if they get their greedy hands on the world, we'll be set back hundreds of years."

      This was fairly common knowledge among the Earthlings of 2200 A.D., even though no Kibalatic invasion had yet occurred and it seemed unlikely, in view of the fearsome potential of the then-existing military resources, that such an invasion would ever occur.  But if the earlier interplanetary wars had been anything by which to judge, then the possibility of a first galactic war between five or more different solar systems could by no means be ruled out, the Kibalatic League, comprising a military alliance between three of the most powerful planets in the Galaxy, being the most probable instigator of such a conflict.  However, the Earth, as one of four members of the Stanta Alliance, was prepared for the worst and had accordingly amassed a large arsenal of laser-defence weapons to safeguard its citizens from alien aggression.

      Meanwhile Stephanie had changed the subject to one more congenial to herself, by embarking on a conversation to do with the extraordinary rumour being spread about the sex-life of a certain Maria Gomez, a laboratory technician who, so it appeared, was indulging in clandestine sex as regularly as once a month.

      "Once a month!" Adam exclaimed, his eyes fairly bulging with the mental shock of this extraordinary allegation.  "But that's preposterous!"

      "So it sounds," Stephanie conceded.  "But that's what I was told by Phillippa Stuart, who happens to be a close acquaintance of hers.  Apparently, Maria's official sex partner is too ascetic for her needs, so she has acquired herself an unofficial one to take care of them on the sly, a certain Franz Jones, who isn't as spiritually conscientious.  And he doesn't ask questions."

      Adam Kurtmüller could scarcely believe his ears!  The fact of someone's having sex in naturalis as many as twelve times a year was virtually unheard of!  It was strictly against the moral code to indulge in naked carnal appetites that often.  Why, one could risk official disgrace and summary dismissal from one's profession!  One could even be sent away somewhere to labour at some unsatisfying task.  None of the intelligentsia - which included those working in scientific research - was permitted natural sex more than four times a year as a rule, once every three months.  It was against the grain of evolution to commit oneself more frequently to such a primitive passion or, rather, act.  For evolution was leading man towards the post-human Beyond, towards his ultimate spiritual transformation, and consequently away from the sensual.  No-one in any degree spiritually developed could possibly countenance the prospect of voluntarily submitting to the sensual to any great extent, least of all to an extent of twelve times a year!  Wasn't the widespread recourse to artificial insemination and test-tube reproduction, not to mention the use of plastic inflatables, or so-called 'sex dolls', and the availability of a variety of gadgets used in conjunction with certain types of approved sex videos, ample evidence of modern man's distaste for the sensual, proof of his ongoing spiritual evolution?  Hadn't it been conclusively demonstrated to people that sensual preoccupations were contrary to their deepest interests and to the will of God?  Hadn't Christianity - that ancient religion of second-stage man - put due emphasis on salvation of the spirit through sexual moderation, if not abstinence?  Hadn't it been shown by a certain twentieth-century philosopher that Hell signified consummate sensuality and Heaven consummate spirituality, and that the path of human evolution was accordingly leading men away from the hell of their beastly beginnings towards the heaven of their godlike endings, towards their ultimate salvation in transcendent union with true divinity?  And weren't they now closer to that heaven than ever before, now that they were approximately two-hundred years into third-stage life?  How, therefore, could anyone in his right mind possibly allow himself to be dragged back towards the hell of man's sensual past by copulating with another person to the extent of twelve times a year?

      Adam was astounded, and so, too, was Serge Riley; though, being older and more experienced in worldly affairs, he managed to hide his feelings to a greater extent than the young man who sat next to Stephanie and looked as though he had just been accused of some such sexual promiscuity himself.  But, in reality, Kurtmüller's past sensual record was a model of late-third-stage sexual morality, a testimony to the advanced state of spiritual evolution prevailing at the time.  Ever since coming of age, he had scrupulously adhered to the specifications laid down by the canons of transcendental ethics, and accordingly limited himself to just four sexual engagements a year.  Despite his tender years this had never proved too difficult for him in any case, not only because he was by nature predominantly cerebral and of a physiological disposition which W.H. Sheldon, a twentieth-century American psychologist, would have classified in terms of ectomorphy, i.e. leanness, but, no less significantly, because the society into which he had been born was so spiritually advanced ... that categorical limitations on sensual indulgences seemed the only reasonable and proper procedure.  It wasn't as though, by obeying this restriction on sexual activity, one was putting oneself out or undergoing punishment.  On the contrary, one's sexual appetites were usually so slight that the avoidance of regular natural sex (not to be confounded with artificial sex) proved as easy and logical a procedure as adherence to an artificial diet, in which vitamin capsules played a more significant role, or reliance on the artificial oxygen that was manufactured on a systematic basis.  So little incentive was there for one to indulge in regular sex, even when the women were pretty - as incidentally was more often the case - that one took one's celibacy for granted, grateful to know that one stood on a higher rung of the evolutionary ladder than the billions of more sensual men and women who had populated the Earth in times when nature had a much stronger influence on human behaviour than at present.

      In actual fact, nature currently had very little influence; though what it did have was still enough to prevent one from becoming ultimate divinity.  However, that someone who was ostensibly one of the spiritual elect - a brilliant chemistry graduate and zealous meditator - should have found it desirable or necessary, in this day and age, to rebel against the wisdom of spiritual progress and degrade herself in the manner described, Adam simply couldn't understand, no matter how hard he tried!  It was even stranger than if a caveman - ugh, horrible creature! - should have elected, through some inexplicable paradox, to spend more time meditating towards unitive knowledge of the Godhead than copulating with some beastly woman!  It was so entirely out-of-context.  And yet, if rumour was true - and they generally were concerning such distinguished people as Maria Gomez - then one would have no alternative but to accept it for fact, accept the fact, namely, that someone preferred Hell to Heaven, and carry on as though nothing unusual had happened.

      "D'you think she's gone mad?" asked Adam, becoming intimidated by the embarrassing silence which had fallen between them, like a cloudburst.

      Stephanie shrugged her shoulders, but briefly smiled acknowledgement of such a possibility.  It wasn't altogether implausible, considering that a number of responsible people - mostly female - had cracked-up under pressure of keeping abreast of the times in recent years, and thereupon reverted to an earlier stage of spiritual development.  But as she didn't know Maria Gomez personally, she was hardly in a position to say.  Only Phillippa Stuart could tell them the truth, assuming she was qualified to judge, of course.  Still, it was most unusual nonetheless, especially where people of her background and reputation were concerned.  Even among the European masses, the fact of anyone's having sex more than ten times a year was virtually unheard of; though it was still permissible for them to indulge their natural appetites from between eight and ten times, considering that they were generally less spiritually advanced than the intelligentsia, and therefore weren't expected to adhere to exactly the same criteria of transcendental ethics.  Only in certain parts of Africa and Latin America, where the level of sensuality had been traditionally so much higher on account of the climate, was it socially permissible for people to copulate more frequently: to the extent of fifteen times a year for the broad masses and ten times for the intellectual elite.  But in the most developed and least sensual parts of the world, particularly in Northern Europe, such criteria would have been at least a century out-of-date and hopelessly irrelevant to the moral dictates of the day, dictates that were slowly but surely goading the European people towards a still higher level of spirituality, such as had already been attained to in certain Oriental regions, where the leading lights could go without sex altogether and the masses confine themselves to a mere three or four times a year.

      Be that as it may, Europe was what essentially mattered to the three people in the private rest-room at the London-based Galactic Research Unit, and, as such, it was upon European criteria of spiritual evolution that they based their feelings.  Whether Maria Gomez had actually gone mad or simply regressed, through imperious atavistic eruptions from her subconscious, to a level of sensual criminality totally unworthy of a person of her intellectual calibre, there could be little doubt that the nature of her alleged promiscuity was utterly reprehensible in a society which put so strong a priority on transcendental progress and was justly proud of its advanced stage of spiritual evolution.  Madmen and criminals were equally dangerous to the cause of enlightenment, especially highly intelligent ones!

      "Let's hope for her sake that, if what I heard is true, she doesn't get caught," Stephanie remarked, turning her gaze towards the window and briefly staring across at the department opposite, where the two occupants of the room most accessible to her view were still engaged in soundproofed conversation, albeit less passionately than before.  "Personally, I'm not one to go around informing on people myself," she went on, "but I'm fully aware that there are a number of persons here who, from a variety of motives, would relish the prospect of embarrassing this unfortunate woman by bringing her to trial and winning official favour for themselves."

      "Yes, you can say that again!" Riley exclaimed, nodding knowingly.  "Maybe this Maria-creature has already been reported by someone and deprived of her professional status?  Who knows?  After all, things happen pretty fast these days."

      "Especially where sexual indiscretions are concerned," Stephanie rejoined.  "The authorities are very stringent with 'the carnal enemies of progress', as we all know."

      "Yes, and not least of all by subjecting them to the ugly spectacle of various Christian paintings depicting the wrong side, as it were, of The Last Judgement," Riley confirmed, a sly smile on his lips.  "The sight of the Damned being punished for their sensual crimes, or sins, is certainly an excellent reminder to offenders against the spirit of what they're doing to themselves and where they'll end-up if they don't watch out: namely in a hell of their own making.  Now obviously, very few people wish to have their fate spelt out to them in such blunt terms these days."

      "You're not kidding!" Adam exclaimed, a slight but perceptible shudder shooting through him.  "The sight of a Damnation scene would be enough to precipitate me into Hell.  It's one of the worst psychological punishments imaginable!"

      "Fortunately, however, very few people have to undergo it," Stephanie reminded him, smiling reassuringly.  "Not, at any rate, among the intelligentsia.  We're much too spiritually disposed to run the risk of backsliding, and thus jeopardizing or ruining our impending prospects of Salvation.  We're much too aware of the direction in which our deepest interests lie, to run the risk of preferring the hellish to the heavenly."

      "Quite!" Riley seconded, nodding reaffirmatively.  "Although I have to say, in all fairness to my own gender, that that applies slightly more to the men than to the women, as a rule."

      Stephanie frowned impulsively and lowered her head, as though to hide the incipient shame and regret which were threatening to tarnish her relations with the older of the two men.  She recalled a remark Serge had casually let drop, a few months previously, about evolution working against the traditional interests of women, and it humiliated her slightly.  To be sure, there had been an element of truth in it, insofar as women were generally more sensual than men, having more fat on them, quite apart from the milk in their breasts, and therefore weren't qualified to embrace the spiritual with quite the same gusto.  But something about Serge's mode of communication at the time suggested a faint tone of mockery, much as though he secretly relished the fact.

      Yes, it was almost as though he had been subtly reproaching her for being a woman, criticizing, through her, the fundamentally sensual nature of women in general.  And she had resented it, considering it wasn't her fault that she had been born a woman anyway and, even so, she was pretty spiritual as women went - more spiritual, in fact, than a number of men she knew!  But now the thought came back to her and irritated her slightly.  She could almost feel a kind of mockery in Serge's presence beside her, an oblique mockery which sought to condemn her for being spiritually pretentious.  A delusion probably, but nevertheless hardly the most ennobling of delusions!  And it only sufficed to unearth depressing material from the depths of her subconscious, like the recollection, amongst other things, that she had more than once gone beyond the bounds of the current sexual morality herself in recent years, and 'made love' to another person to the extent of six or seven times a year.  And that without anyone but her regular sex-partner knowing.  Just as well, she reflected, that neither Serge nor Adam were mind-readers!

      But, even so, she was beginning to regret that she had brought-up the subject of Maria Gomez's alleged promiscuity in the first place.  Hadn't she been slightly envious of Maria's immorality, and wasn't the fact that she had brought it up sufficiently indicative of her status as a woman, a creature for whom the sensual or sexual was never very far away, not even in the year 2200, and therefore apt to manifest itself subliminally and indirectly, if not concretely and directly?  Yes, in all probability!  And yet she was spiritually earnest, like most contemporary women, being only too keen to spiritualize herself to the extent that she could, irrespective of the pressures put upon her by feminine sensuality.  Evolution might be working to undermine the fundamental or traditional interests of women, but that was the way it had to be, and all one could do was adjust oneself to the reality of the situation as best one could and endeavour to take it for granted.  For what else could one do?  Men were always the deeper and stronger sex, the sex that shaped the world, and, as such, one had to follow their lead.  As a woman, it was one's duty to help them thrive, not hinder them.  One had to go along with whatever was in their best interests, even if this meant that some or most of one's sensuality would have to be sacrificed in the process.  And at the highest point of human evolution, at that point where women had most spiritualized themselves, one would have preferred to be treated as a man than regarded as a woman.  Yes, absolutely!  Otherwise one would be damned, left behind in a world which man, in attaining to his spiritual transformation, no longer inhabited.  So one had better make a determined effort to keep abreast of the latest spiritual developments, even if one couldn't be expected to lead the way.  For in spite of the emphasis on sexual equality, these past two-hundred years, men and women were still fundamentally different creatures who couldn't be expected to act and think exactly alike.  Women would generally have a stronger sensual allegiance than men, no matter how spiritual they strove to make themselves.

      Not particularly surprising, therefore, if the majority of people punished for sexual immorality these days were females, and that even the ranks of the female intelligentsia weren't immune to sensual aberrations, as they were somewhat euphemistically termed by the spiritual authorities.  What would happen to women in due course, remained to be seen.  But Stephanie sincerely hoped that they wouldn't be 'left behind' when men took off, as it were, for a higher realm of transcendentalism.  That would certainly be unfair on them, especially when one bore in mind the immense efforts they usually made to live in the spirit!

      Indeed, ever since the Women's Liberation Movement initiated the drive towards sexual equalitarianism, way back in the twentieth century, woman had increasingly made efforts in this context and, by and large, she had been highly successful, witnessing, over the passing decades, the reduction of sexual intercourse from as many as a hundred times a year to as few as three or four times, with a corresponding fall in the ratio of sexual promiscuity.  Thus she had sound reason to believe that evolution was as much a fact of her life as of men, in consequence of which she would be properly rewarded in due course.  But how ironic that Women's Lib, as it used to be called, should have been feared and misunderstood by so many men when it made its first appearance in the European world, in response to the exigencies of commercial and/or industrial progress, and accordingly precipitated women in the general direction of greater professional responsibility and, as a direct corollary of that, increased intellectualization.  As Serge had once remarked to a colleague in Stephanie's company one day, it was a wonder that so many men had either openly or secretly opposed this liberation movement, since it was in their interests that women should increasingly assume responsible roles in society and thereby testify to evolutionary progress away from the sensual! 

      For a society in which woman was very much in her sexual/maternal element and man, under nature's domination, was largely sensual and worldly in his social outlook, still had a long way to go before any spiritual transformation could come about.  But a society, on the other hand, in which woman was making a determined effort to spiritualize herself, in response to the artificial ideals of industrialism and its corollary of large-scale urbanization, had reason to believe that the long-awaited consummation of human evolution was closer to-hand than at any time in the nature-bound past, where the worldly ideal of mundane sensuality was uppermost and the otherworldly ideal of transcendent spirituality no more than a distant dream.  Like so many other aspects of twentieth-century change, however, this one hadn't been widely understood or appreciated at the time, and was consequently subject to varying degrees of pessimistic interpretation.

      To be sure, one cannot now be surprised that the twentieth century, as the great turning-point in Western man's evolution, should have been the source of so much confusion, since it signalled the transition between second- and third-stage development, between middle and late man, town and city man, and thus provided sufficient grounds for uncertainty.  In shaking off the old anthropomorphic religious impulse, many people were convinced, after Nietzsche, that 'God was dead' when, in effect, all that had really died was the old way of conceiving of divinity.  And out of this futile conviction, born of ignorance and confusion, had come various absurd philosophies of a nihilistic import which sought to repudiate the existence of God!  As if God were here one moment and gone the next! 

      No, it was subsequently realized that only second-stage man had gone, his outdated concept of God being replaced by the transcendental concept appertaining to his more spiritual successor.  That was what had happened, though it wasn't absolutely clear to most people at the time, just as the Women's Liberation Movement had caused quite a degree of uncertainty or hostility, whilst other developments, both political and scientific, were likewise exposed to varying interpretations, some of which were highly unfavourable.  And yet things eventually sorted themselves out, in spite of all those who believed that the end of the world was nigh and man's religious evolution accordingly drawing to a close.  The transition between the two stages of Western man's spiritual evolution was successfully bridged and weathered, willy-nilly, in the interests of posterity, who repudiated the absurdities and confusions of the twentieth century and pressed-on with the destiny of humanity towards its ultimate goal in spiritual transformation, a transformation which, two centuries into third-stage life, had still to come about, but was a great deal more feasible now than in the age of writers like Aldous Huxley and Henry Miller.  With transcendental meditation five days a week, mankind was now closer to its ultimate salvation than at any previous time in the world's history, even if a few sensual mishaps still occurred, from time to time, and not everyone had direct experience of Infused Contemplation.  Perhaps when the working period was cut from two days to one day a week, as rumour suggested it might soon be, more people would have a better chance of breaking through onto the higher levels of mystical contemplation and thus of achieving a real glimpse of the post-human Beyond, the millennium of millennia which would last not merely a thousand years but for ever? 

      This was a prospect, however, which Stephanie Voltaire half-cherished and half-feared.  For deep down in her sensuous nature she didn't want evolution to proceed too quickly, although she was fairly resigned to its gradual progress.  Frankly, there were still too many things in life that mattered to her besides God, not the least of which was her growing fondness for Adam Kurtmüller, the shy, sensitive young research colleague to her left, who was now in conversation with Serge Riley about the latest development or, rather, scandal at the meditation centre they both frequented - a different one, incidentally, from Stephanie's - in which a promising scientist by name of Gregory Smith-Solti had been requested to take-up a new position in the ranks, in consequence of the fact that he had only recently discovered he was gay and therefore not entitled to sit among the men.

      "You know, I almost missed his presence in front of me yesterday," Adam was saying, his lips curved into a sardonic smile, his eyes bright with the ironic amusement which the scandal in question had engendered, "and was slightly distracted from my concentration by the different-shaped head there."

      "You're lucky he didn't make a habit of sitting behind you," Riley disrespectfully joked, warming to his younger colleague's amusement.  "Otherwise you might have distracted him from his concentration.  After all, you can't be sure, can you?"

      "No, I guess not," Adam conceded, before bursting into a little snigger which merely served to embarrass him in the presence of Stephanie and elicit a perfunctory apology on his part.  And, as though this gave him the necessary inspiration, he continued: "I expect he felt humiliated, having to sit behind the women for the first time, especially as he'd been regarded as a heterosexual all along."

      "Yes, I expect he did indeed!" tittered Riley, newly elated by this further consideration.  "It's the only occasion I've known such a thing to happen, you know.  Quite remarkable really!  I'm surprised he didn't keep quiet about his little self-realization and carry on meditating with us in the male section of the centre.  No-one would have known any better, would they?"

      This semi-rhetorical question momentarily managed to upset young Adam's moral equilibrium and thus precipitate a few additional sniggers, which were duly qualified by a "Hopefully not!"  Still, it was less than fair of them to treat poor Smith-Solti's predicament with levity, so Adam quickly brought a degree of seriousness to bear on the ticklish subject by reminding Serge of the absolute necessity of honesty in such matters, as well as conveying to him his personal admiration for Smith-Solti's moral integrity in the face of psychological inconvenience and possible social repercussions.

      "Oh, I quite agree," Riley rejoined, slightly taken-aback.  "It was the correct and proper thing to do.  The question is, why did it take him so long to discover that he was, in fact, homosexual?  After all, he'd been sitting among the men for at least three years.  So if the regulation regarding a person's sexuality - or assumed sexuality - in relation to his position in the meditation centre is to be taken seriously, it would seem that he has defied convention ever since he first took his place amongst  us.  Which is no minor indiscretion!"

      The regulation to which Riley was referring had been introduced approximately 150 years ago, in response to a growing demand for greater fidelity to transcendental ethics.  It required that all meditation centres throughout Europe maintain sexual segregation, in order to preclude the possibility of anyone's being distracted from his devotions by the immediate and visible proximity of members of the opposite sex.  If one was hoping to attain, through regular meditation, to a higher level of spirituality, it wouldn't help to be surrounded by the visible embodiments of sensuality and thus exposed, at any moment, to lustful temptation.  On the contrary, one had need of a context in which there was no place for sex, if transcendentalism was to properly flourish.  And so, traditionally, the males sat in the front half of the centres' meditation areas and the females sat behind them, out of sight.  Nowadays, however, the sexual instinct was generally so much weaker than when the law regarding sexual segregation had first been introduced, that it was scarcely necessary to maintain it.  Though the spiritual authorities were still in favour of its retention, if only for form's sake and because it did, after all, signify fidelity to the nature and direction of human evolution.  So the males continued to sit in front and the females behind.  But in such exceptional cases as that to which Riley had just referred, it was deemed necessary for the homosexual to sit right at the back, behind the women, where he wouldn't be exposed to carnal desires at the sight of certain males or, conversely, expose certain females to such desires on his account.  Moreover, a further clause of this regulation stipulated that if, due to lack of space, he couldn't sit right at the back, he should have at least two-thirds of the women in front of him, which quite plainly meant that he shouldn't sit immediately behind the men in the first rows of female meditators but, rather, as far back as possible, in order to be delivered from the sight of them.  Furthermore he should not, under any circumstances, have other homosexuals seated immediately in front of him, but either in the same row as himself or hidden from view somewhere among the female ranks.  Since a meditation centre normally held approximately 350 of each sex, there was sufficient scope for making this arrangement feasible, as a rule.  Though it must be admitted that in some centres the clause wasn't always scrupulously adhered to, there being so many homosexuals in the locale.  However, very few people quibbled with its logic, even among the lesbians who, logically enough, sat right behind the males.  And so, despite the progressive weakening of the sex instinct, it retained general respect among the meditators, primarily dedicated, as they were, to spiritual matters.  Hence Riley's concern with regard to Smith-Solti's delayed sexual self-realization and consequent social indiscretion of having sat in the wrong half of his meditation centre for over three years.  And hence, too, the humour that preceded it.  Poor Smith-Solti's personal discovery and appropriate transference to another part of the centre had come as quite a shock to his fellow-transcendentalists, not least of all to Serge and Adam!

      "Oh well, I guess his self-discovery is better late than never," said Adam in sympathetic response to his senior colleague's previous comment.  "The meditation masters won't punish him for it."

      "No, not these days," Riley admitted, half-smiling.  "Though they certainly would have done a century ago.  He'd have been obliged to pay a heavy fine and/or meditate in solitude for a number of weeks."

      "It almost sounds funny now," Stephanie opined, thrusting her way back into the conversation and thereby reminding the two men of her existence.  "One simply can't imagine anyone being punished, these days, for what, to us, is such a minor offence.  I'm sure most people in his situation would have kept quiet about any such sexual self-realization in those days."

      "Not least of all when of a gregarious nature," Riley rejoined, smiling.  "Still, what Smith-Solti has been doing, these past few years, is nothing compared to the alleged promiscuity concerning Maria Gomez, is it?  In all probability, his sexual incertitude owed more than a little to the infrequency of his heterosexual commitments and to the correspondingly modest character of his copulatory appetites, which we must regard as a credit to our environmental and moral progress.  In the future, no-one will have any copulatory appetites at all, so no such embarrassing indiscretion will arise.  One must assume that even sensual aberrations like Maria Gomez's will cease to occur."

      "I sincerely hope so!" declared Adam, glancing uneasily at Stephanie who, at that moment, was staring out through the room's narrow window again at the scene opposite, which, in respect of the Senior Administrator and young woman, had become relatively calm.  Not the slightest agitation discernible on the faces of the two people, who were now, it appeared, just sitting quietly, oblivious of each-other's existence.  It seemed that they had concluded their argument.

      "Yes, so do I," Stephanie seconded, suddenly aware of Adam's puzzled curiosity and anxious not to appear sympathetic towards Maria Gomez herself.  "One can only hope that more people will follow Michael Estov's spiritual example and thereby attain to the higher levels of mystical experience.  For in that lies the key to our ultimate salvation."

      "Right on!" exclaimed Adam and Serge, each of whom felt newly strengthened in his transcendental resolve.