The Primal Urge. Brian Aldiss

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      ‘Shall we dance?’ Jimmy said, and then, very seriously to counteract this facetiousness, ‘This looks a worthy gathering, Guy.’

      ‘Worthy of or for what, Solent?’ the dark young man parried. He could have been no more than four years older than Jimmy, but his habit of using surnames seemed to give him a good decade’s start. ‘The usual set of time-servers one finds at these bunfights: no more worthy than the next man, surely?’

      ‘Looking more worthy,’ Jimmy insisted. It was not a point he cared to labour, but he could think of nothing else to talk about. Gratefully, he accepted more champagne in his glass.

      ‘You, if I may say so,’ Guy said, cocking a sardonic eyebrow at Jimmy’s forehead, ‘look positively futuristic.’

      ‘Oh … the ER. Everyone’ll be wearing them in time, Laddie, yew mark moi words,’ Jimmy said, with that abrupt descent into dialect with which some of us cover our inadequacies.

      ‘Possibly,’ Guy said darkly. ‘Some of us have other ideas; some of us, I don’t mind telling you confidentially, are waiting to see which way the cat will jump. You realise, don’t you, you are the only person here wearing one of the ghastly things.’

      He could not, announcing Armageddon, have shattered Jimmy more thoroughly.

      ‘You’re all living in the past, you scientific fellows. These are the nineteen sixties, the Era of the ER,’ he replied, but he was already looking round the large room to check on Guy’s statement. Every brow, high or low – some of them were the really interestingly low brows of genius – was unimproved by science. The wish to conform hit Jimmy so hard that he scarcely heard Guy’s remark about oppressed minorities.

      ‘The Solent pioneering spirit …’ he said.

      ‘And another thing I ought to tell you,’ Guy said. ‘I’m sure you will not mind my mentioning it. People in the swim refer to these discs as Norman Lights; after the firm of Norman which invented them, you know. I rather think it’s only the lesser breeds without the law who refer to them as ERs – or nun chasers, which being pure music hall might just possibly catch on. Of course it’s too early for any convention to have crystallised yet, but take it from me that’s the way the wind’s blowing at the BIL.’

      ‘I’ll be terribly careful about it,’ Jimmy said earnestly. He concealed his earnestness by a parody of earnestness; Guy, the born Insider, had just the sort of information one listened to if one hoped to get Inside oneself.

      And then the group of men and women from which Guy had been separated flowed about the two young men, and a welter of introductions followed. Everybody looked well, cheerful and in good humour; that they were also interested in Jimmy lessened his interest in them. As if they had been waiting for a signal, they began talking about the registers; they were the topic of conversation at present. After a long burst of animation, a pause set in, during which all eyes turned on Jimmy, awaiting, as it were, a sign from the fountainhead.

      ‘As the only fox with a tail,’ he said, ‘I feel I ought not to give away any secrets.’

      ‘Has it lit up yet, that’s what I want to know?’ a commanding man in heavy glasses said, amid laughter.

      ‘Only once, so far,’ Jimmy said, ‘but I haven’t had it more than three hours.’

      More laughter, during which someone made a crushing remark about fancy dress parties, and a sandy woman said, ‘It really is appalling to think that everyone will know what we’re thinking when we have ours installed.’

      A man, evidently her husband by the laboured courtesy with which he addressed her, took her up instantly on this remark. ‘My dear Bridget, will you not remember that these Norman Lights go deeper than the thought centres. They register purely on the sensation level. They represent, in fact, the spontaneous as against the calculated. Therein lies the whole beauty of them.’

      ‘I absolutely couldn’t agree more,’ the heavy glasses said. ‘The whole notion of submitting ourselves to this process would be intolerable were it not that it gives us back a precious spontaneity, a freedom, lost for generations. It is analogous to the inconvenience of contraceptives: submit to a minor irk and you inherit a major liberty.’

      ‘But don’t you see, Merrick,’ Guy said, perching himself on tiptoe to address the heavy glasses, ‘—goodness knows how often I’ve pointed this out to people – the Norman Lights don’t solve anything. Such an infringement of personal dignity is only justifiable if it solves something.’

      ‘Personal dignity is an antique imperialist slogan, Leighton,’ a smart grey woman said, giving Guy some of his own medicine.

      ‘And what do you expect them to solve?’ Merrick of the heavy glasses asked, addressing the whole group.

      ‘Abolishing the death penalty entirely last year didn’t solve the problem of crime, any more than contraceptives have done away with bastards, but at least we are taking another step in the right direction. You must realise there are no solutions in life – life is not a Euclidean problem – only arrangements.’

      The smart grey woman laughed briefly. ‘Come, Merrick,’ she said, ‘We can’t let you get away with that; there are no “directions” in the socio-ethical meaning you attribute to right.’

      ‘Oh, yes, there are, Susan,’ Merrick contradicted imperturbably. ‘Don’t reactivate that old nihilist mousetrap. There are evolutionary directions, and in relation to them the Normal Lights are an advance. Why are they an advance? Because they enable the id for the first time to communicate direct, without the intervention of the ego. The human ego for generations has been growing swollen at the expense of the id, from which all true drives spring; now—’

      ‘Then surely these Norman Lights are causing a reversion,’ Bridget interrupted. ‘A return to the primitive—’

      ‘Not primitive: primal. You see, you’ve got to differentiate between two entirely separate but quite similar—’

      ‘I can’t help thinking Merrick’s right off the beam. However it comes wrapped, an increased subservience to the machine is something to reject out of hand. I mean, in the future—’

      ‘No, wait a moment, though, Norman Lights aren’t machines; that is to say, they aren’t instruments for the conversion of motion, but for the conversion of emotion. They’re merely registers – like a raised eyebrow.’

      ‘Well, I’m still capable of raising my own eyebrows.’

      ‘And other people’s, I hope.’

      ‘Anyhow, that’s not the point. The point is—’

      ‘Surely a return to the primitive—’

      ‘The point is, to wear them voluntarily is one thing; to have this law passed by our so-called government is quite—

      ‘And who elected this government, Susan? You, Susan.’

      ‘Don’t let’s go into all that again!’

      ‘After all, why drag evolution into this? How can a mere mechanical—’

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