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
"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
"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
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,
"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
"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.
